100 Books Like Hatter Fox

This book, a classic of the atomic age, knocked my socks off rereading it.

While outwardly about a group of marooned boys scrapping for dominance on a remote island, it also resembled my late-seventies, Southern California prep school.

Some kids survived there by physically menacing playground “Piggy’s.” Others, like decent-hearted Jack, appealed for unity, demanding they keep a fire stoked for potential rescue before the savages within all of them aren’t worth saving anymore.

With that conch and bloody glasses, we appreciate mankind’s warring dualities.

I read it in the 5th grade, and it set the bar for the type of story I yearn to read. It’s such a heartwarming story up until it rips open the heart. It helped me through a difficult loss in my youth.

I found myself walking beside the main character and his two dogs, enduring their cold hunts and sobbing over his loss. 

In contrast to his books about the Old West, McMurtry’s contemporary Westerns tell a more unvarnished truth. I read this book for the umpteenth time just prior to beginning my first novel, Where the Hurt Is. My book was a crime novel. McMurtry’s was a coming-of-age story. Nevertheless, his depiction of his book’s quasi-fictional Thalia, Texas rang so many bells and reminded me so much of the small Oklahoma towns where I grew up, I can’t deny being influenced by it.

At times, I would grow short of breath as I was reminded of parallel characters and events from my own childhood. Even today, the claustrophobia of Thalia and its characters’ fear of being unable to escape scares the crap out of me.

I read this short story when I was about 13 or 14 years old, I wish I had understood it then the way I do now.

Sometimes, with the people we love we find fault, and that is what this story is about, how the faults we perceive to be within our loved ones can sometimes diminish their stature in our eyes, and that their falling short of our expectations can sometimes even cause us to be angry with them. It’s another sad aspect of the human condition, and I enjoyed the manner in which the story confronted it.

I was in my forties, the first time I ever read a novel about a Gujarati American family, and this was the one. I was on a beach in Mexico, experiencing for the first time what it felt like to see my comfort foods, my family’s mannerisms, and my culture’s ideologies represented in a book. The story is told from the perspective of three generations of women in a family and it made me think about my own relationships with my mother and grandmother, and what secrets each of them may be carrying because nothing is ever as simple as it seems. 

I like poetry that teaches me something, and I like how Harjo can teach me about Native American myth and culture (as a member of the Muscogee Nation)in a poem set within the context of something as mundane as an airport.

She expertly threads together the modern with the historical, and the sacred within the ordinary. “Once a woman fell from the sky. The woman who fell from the sky was neither murderer nor saint. She was rather ordinary…”

I am also struck with how Harjo unifies her own unique culture with the shared experiences of all of us, as in: “Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last/ sweet bite”.

And another Montana writer, Debra Magpie Earling grew up in Spokane, and is a member of the Salish tribe. Her 2002 debut novel, Perma Red, became an immediate classic. It’s the story of Louise White Elk, a young woman living on the reservation in the 1940s who is determined to avoid the trap of becoming the possession of a man. A challenge for any woman during that time period, but especially for a native woman living in a place with few options. Earling’s prose is elegant but tough, and that would be a pretty apt description of her main character as well as Louise makes a valiant effort to fight off the powerful men trying to take control of her life. 

I was drawn to Harness’ incredible memoir because she speaks truth to power from an Indigenous perspective as a survivor of Indian adoption.

As an infant in the 1960s, Harness was adopted by a white couple and raised far from the rez, far from her birth community, and completely segregated from her cultural heritage. This story is about her weaving her way back home and making sense of her traumatic adoption.

As an adoptee myself I found her story gut wrenching and inspiring. Harness is a brilliant writer and a phenomenal woman. Her wisdom, authenticity, and strength reverberate through the pages of this beautiful memoir.

My main focus in my book is people, Meg Wilkinson the first female veterinarian and other adventurers and pioneers who wound up on the Klondike Gold Rush.

Though the wolf like nature of humans and the human nature of wolves permeates the whole story. I also had to research veterinary history but I found no particular book on that to recommend.

Pauline Johnson did not go to the Klondike but she is a very influential figure of the times and in the life of Meg. I’m a fan of Charlotte Gray’s biographies and I think her biography of Pauline Johnson is the best. 

This superb book is a culturally and indigenous-language-focused study of women in four central Mesoamerican native societies—Aztecs (Nahuas), Mixtec, Zapotec, and Mixe.

In addition to a deep dive into texts dealing with all facets of women’s lives, Sousa uses visual evidence to great effect, showing how images contain much information about women’s and gender history, a history in which women struggled over centuries to maintain agency and authority despite efforts by a newly imposed colonial state to erode their power and status and exploit their labor.