What would your stage name be if you were a stripper? I’m going with Aquamarine since colors seems to be popular. In Marie Rutkoski’s Real Easy we get to know the inner world of a strip club. Samantha aka Ruby is a stripper in 1999 at the Lovely Lady. She’s such an awesome person. An amazing stepmom, loving girlfriend, adored daughter, and a caring coworker. She also suffers from a medical condition in which she doesn’t have female hormones, so she takes medications to keep her more feminine qualities. We get to know a handful of strippers who all have colorful lives which we get to appreciate through the chapters they narrate. One of the strippers gets killed and another is missing. In the investigation into the murder and disappearance, we also get to know, Detective Holly Meylin, an investigator whose son died when her husband leaves him in a hot car. She’s traumatized but keeps going the best she can. Holly seeks out help from a stripper called Gigi/Georgia. There are so many suspects due to the less-than-moral characters frequenting the strip club. One thing I loved about the book was all the different narrators so we have so many perspectives. While we love Samantha, we also get to know all the different people who are a part of her life. Samantha’s stepdaughter Rosie will have you wrapped around her little finger. Then we know the bouncer, club owner, police officers, etc. when you get to the end, you’ll realize it was “real easy” to understand the characters and even the killer. The characters learn that when you stop, ask questions, and care about others things can be real easy when we help others.
If you are looking for an indigenous author to support in November, then This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger has a great historical fiction read for you. Krueger is a member of the Anishinaabe ( Ojibwe ) tribe. This dialogue between a bit so likable character Jack and the teen narrator Odie will give you a good idea of the story. “Ask me, God’s right here. In the dirt, the rain, the sky, the trees, the apples, the stars in the cottonwoods. In you and me, too. It’s all connected and it’s all God. Sure this is hard work, but it’s good work because it’s a part of what connects us to this land, Buck. This beautiful, tender land.” Jack in Chapter 20. Odie then replies with his theory about how “God is a tornado.” which refers back to when a tornado killed a loving teacher, Mrs. Frost. The book was originally published in 2019 and is great as an audiobook coming in at 14 hours and 19 minutes on regular speed versus 464 pages of hard copy. ...
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