WPLongform

How to catch a sociopath

A Good Reed Review Book Review , , ,

By Ande Jacobson

Pray for Silence is the second book in Linda Castillo’s Kate Burkholder series. This one picks up where the first one left off, and Kate and her team are again faced with a horrible crime against an Amish family in the fictional Ohio town of Painters Mill. This time, an entire family is brutally murdered, and it’s up to the Painters Mill PD, led by Chief Kate Burkholder, to stop the assailants from continuing their spree. For a quiet little town, the murder rate appears to be rivaling that of that quaint fictional Maine village of Cabot Cove, but instead of an amateur sleuth like Jessica Fletcher, Kate is a professional crime fighter. She and her team are faced with seven victims from the Plank family, hardworking Amish farmers with a passel of kids ranging from a toddler to older teens. Continue reading →

I don’t like politics, but …

A Good Reed Review Commentary & Pubs , ,

By Ande Jacobson

I don’t like politics, but I have voted in every election since I turned 18 because I see it as my civic duty as an American to not only vote, but do so responsibly.

I don’t like politics, but I study the issues to understand how they affect us all and where our representation stands.

I don’t like politics, but I studied US history and civics in high school when they were still required courses, so I understand how our government is supposed to work. I even went through the citizenship study questions for fun to test my knowledge. Sadly, the vast majority of native-born adults couldn’t pass the citizenship test today which randomly draws 20 US history and civics questions from the 128 study questions. A score of 60% (12/20) or better is required to pass. Our government’s political structure is there to truly make a positive difference for the country and the world if we work together to make it happen. Continue reading →

Taxes are not a bad thing

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By Ande Jacobson

There’s a serious misconception driven by decades of GOP propaganda regarding taxes. While there is a group of pro-business/anti-regulation Republicans who see tax cuts as the cure all solution to what ails us, the vast majority of Americans don’t see tax cuts and elimination of all regulations (or protections) as a positive thing. People understand that the government services they need have costs that we all must share. What upsets the vast majority of people is that the morbidly wealthy and corporations keep finding ways to avoid paying their fair share. Additionally, the Reagan, George W. Bush, and Trump administrations have seriously hurt the vast majority of Americans with their blatant market manipulation and tax cuts while at the same time creating the most extreme wealth gap in American history. It’s not that the country lacks wealth. It’s that under modern Republican administrations wealth has been systematically been moved from the lower 90% of the population and concentrated at the top 1% at the expense of the services that we all need since around 1981. The result has been the destruction of the middle class and the creation of a small group of billionaires who have benefited. Continue reading →

Quiet can be deceptive

A Good Reed Review Book Review , , , ,

By Ande Jacobson

Sworn to Silence is the first book in Linda Castillo’s Kate Burkholder series and was first released in 2009. Kate is the chief of police in the quaint, fictional Ohio town of Painters Mill, a small, rural community. About a third of the town’s residents are Amish, and the rest are what the Amish refer to as English, or non-Amish. They had coexisted for centuries until a series of brutal murders occurred. Since that time, the Amish and the police suffer from mutual suspicion. The killer wasn’t caught, but eventually life went on, until, sixteen years later at the time of the current story the killings begin anew with the same signature. A lot changed in that time. For one thing, Kate lived through the first killing spree and has since harbored a secret. Although most Amish children commit to their church and community when they reach 18, Kate took a different path. Continue reading →

Nobody should have to settle for being less than

A Good Reed Review Commentary & Pubs , , , , ,

By Ande Jacobson

I had a disturbing discussion with a good friend the other day. We got into a discussion about gay and trans rights. While neither of us are gay or trans, we know and love people who are and support a person’s right to be who they are. That said, my friend talked about the past when people who were gay or trans lived their lives as they could and kept their views and actions that went counter to what was considered mainstream private. My friend asserted that before things became so contentious, people who were apart from the mainstream didn’t and shouldn’t make their differences public and lamented that it wasn’t still the case. My friend claimed to understand how some people might see somebody living a lifestyle counter to the mainstream as a threat, particularly in religious communities, and their concerns needed to be taken into account in the law and in allowed public behavior. Continue reading →

Surviving and thriving despite family challenges

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By Ande Jacobson

Teri Kanefield has had multiple careers from teaching, to practicing law as an appellate attorney, to entertaining and informing through her writing. There is some overlap in all of it as she’s pursued her writing from many perspectives. She’s written numerous books across a wide spectrum from detailed biographies of various icons from American history, to entertaining and informative novels, to children’s books. And of course there were her appellate briefs that also told serious, factual stories and in doing so had to capture the attention of and persuade her intended audience – the judges and justices sitting in judgement. More recently, she’s also taken her writing to the internet through her blog and social media as she entertains and informs her audience.

When Kanefield releases a new work, it’s always worth reading, and she’s releasing a new novel entitled The Family Liar at the end of March 2026. The story is riveting and tough to put down. It’s a coming of age story that takes readers on quite a journey. Despite the challenges that Natalie faces at home and in life overall she perseveres and ultimately thrives. Her humble and tortured beginnings are more than a little disturbing. Her family is dysfunctional. It’s led by her mother, Lenora, who is clearly a disturbed individual. Lenora also has difficult beginnings which undoubtedly inform her later dysfunction. Kanefield begins with Lenora’s background in her Prelude chapter. She then picks up the main story which follows Natalie’s life from her troubled childhood through her eventual emergence as a well-rounded, highly educated force for good in the world. Continue reading →

Musical ensembles are like family

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By Ande Jacobson

Aja Gabel’s debut novel, The Ensemble, is a masterwork combining her early training as a musician with her prowess as a writer. She follows Jana, Brit, Henry, and Daniel from their first meeting as graduate students at the San Francisco Conservatory through the twists and turns of their lives as musicians playing together in a tight string quartet. Of course the closeness the ensemble requires tightly intertwines their personal and professional lives. Gabel injects her thorough knowledge of music and the idiosyncrasies of the instruments involved given her experience as a violinist and cellist into the story. She alternates voices between the members of the quartet by chapter focusing on each individual’s point of view. Continue reading →

Our national trauma

A Good Reed Review Commentary & Pubs , , ,

By Ande Jacobson

Everyone experiences trauma of one sort or another during their lifetime, often more than once. For some, it’s part of the normal cycle of life such as losing an elderly grandparent who was dear to them. It’s still traumatic, but it’s also not unexpected. For others, it might be a physical injury that takes time to heal. For still others it’s a childhood trauma that takes years or even a lifetime to absorb and process such as losing a parent through a tragic accident as a child. That’s harder to deal with. When the trauma involves violence, it’s even more difficult to process and cope with the aftermath. What’s happening in the US under the current administration (or regime) is inflicting trauma at a national level. For adults who have lived a good portion of their lives before this era, it’s a painful and scary turn. For children who haven’t known any different, it’s even worse. Their entire life experience is one of fear caused by a government that’s supposed to working for everyone but instead is showing these young people that the federal government is something to be feared. Continue reading →

2025 is finally ending

A Good Reed Review Commentary & Pubs , ,

By Ande Jacobson

For the last several years, I’ve given up sending a holiday letter out or posting one on social media or my website talking about what I’d done over the course of the year. Instead, I’ve taken to writing a year-end essay looking at the bigger picture from my vantage point as an American. As I mentioned in my 2024 year-end essay, my personal accomplishments aren’t worth mentioning anymore as there are far bigger concerns that have overshadowed anything I as an individual may have done. Thinking back over the course of the year that is finally ending, too much has happened to us all, far too much for any one person to track though many are trying. It’s been a tumultuous year, one that has spawned far too much anxiety and concern because of the political situation that has unfolded here in the U.S. At the end of last year, much was unknown about how 2025 would progress. Now we know how this is unfolding, and it’s far worse than many of us had imagined it could be. We knew that a second Trump administration would be challenging to say the least, but it’s been far more cruel and chaotic than we thought possible. Continue reading →

Understanding how to deal with extremism and intolerance

A Good Reed Review Book Review , ,

By Ande Jacobson

For several years now Teri Kanefield has been trying to help people understand how we got to where we are in the U.S. and the world, and more importantly, what we can do about it. After taking another deep dive in a lengthy blog post written over the course of several months explaining why extremism and intolerance happen, Kanefield decided to take a another look at the material with the intention of further focusing her presentation. Over time, she rewrote the piece and ended up with a crisp book of around 100 pages. The blog post now contains the content of the book, Why Intolerance and Extremism Happen: Understanding Our Deepest Divides.

Kanefield has given the public a great gift by offering the book through multiple outlets for free. She lists those outlets at the top of her post. She also offers readers a downloadable PDF version of the book through her website if they prefer to read it in that format. She’s not trying to profit off of this effort but is instead attempting to help the widest possible audience better understand the country, the divides we face, and what we can all do to improve the situation. Continue reading →