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Book Review | What Was Mine by Helen Klein Ross

Book review | what was mine.

AUTHOR: Helen Klein Ross

PUBLISHER: Gallery, Threshold, Pocket Books

RELEASE DATE: January 5, 2016

GENRE: Women’s Fiction

BUY LINKS : AMAZON | B&N | GOOGLEPLAY | INDIEBOUND | BAM!

Simply told but deeply affecting, in the bestselling tradition of Alice McDermott and Tom Perrotta, this urgent novel unravels the heartrending yet unsentimental tale of a woman who kidnaps a baby in a superstore—and gets away with it for twenty-one years.

Lucy Wakefield is a seemingly ordinary woman who does something extraordinary in a desperate moment: she takes a baby girl from a shopping cart and raises her as her own. It’s a secret she manages to keep for over two decades—from her daughter, the babysitter who helped raise her, family, coworkers, and friends.

When Lucy’s now-grown daughter Mia discovers the devastating truth of her origins, she is overwhelmed by confusion and anger and determines not to speak again to the mother who raised her. She reaches out to her birth mother for a tearful reunion, and Lucy is forced to flee to China to avoid prosecution. What follows is a ripple effect that alters the lives of many and challenges our understanding of the very meaning of motherhood.

Author Helen Klein Ross, whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, weaves a powerful story of upheaval and resilience told from the alternating perspectives of Lucy, Mia, Mia’s birth mother, and others intimately involved in the kidnapping. What Was Mine is a compelling tale of motherhood and loss, of grief and hope, and the life-shattering effects of a single, irrevocable moment. (Description from NetGalley.com)

MY THOUGHTS

As soon as I started reading What Was Mine, I became engrossed by it and could’t put it down. I don’t have children yet, but I feel that What Was Mine still had the same affect on me as it would to a mother. It would be truly devastating for my child to be kidnapped. This book also made me think about how I’d feel towards the person who kidnapped by child. I’d be thankful that he/she wasn’t harmed, but I’d definitely be angry about the amount of time that was stolen from me. I hope I’d follow Marilyn’s example and think about my son or daughter and how they feel about the situation. It’d be difficult, but sometimes you have to look at the big picture and what is best for your child.

What Was Mine is told in several different perspectives, mostly by the main characters Lucy Wakefield (the kidnapper), Mia Wakefield (the kidnapped child), and Merilyn Featherstone (the biological mother). There are a few supporting character perspectives sprinkled in that were an interesting addition, but if removed, they wouldn’t change much of the plot.

The most interesting aspect of reading What Was Mine is that I felt sorry for Lucy Wakefield, who was essentially a child abductor. In everyday life, if I see a kidnapping story on the news, I tell myself “that person needs to go to prison” , but I didn’t feel that way with Lucy. She was a woman who couldn’t have children in any way and her desire for a child got the best of her causing her to kidnap Mia. I felt sorry for her during several points in the book.

Overall, I would highly recommend this book. Even though it’s a women’s fiction book, sometimes it felt like a suspense novel because I was always wondering if she’d be caught.

OVERALL RATING

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

WEBSITE | FACEBOOK | GOODREADS | TWITTER

Helen is a former creative director at top ad agencies in New York who spent over 20 years in the ad business before turning to other kinds of fiction. Her stories, poems and essays have been published by the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and The New Yorker. (Found on Helen’s website).

Thank you to the publisher for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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What Was Mine

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What Was Mine tells the story of Lucy Wakefield—a seemingly ordinary woman who does something extraordinary in a desperate moment: she takes a baby girl from a shopping cart and raises her as her own. It’s a secret she manages to keep for over two decades—from her daughter, the babysitter who helped raise her, family, coworkers, and friends. When Lucy’s now-grown daughter Mia discovers the devastating truth of her origins, she is overwhelmed by confusion and anger and determines not to speak again to the mother who raised her. What follows is a ripple effect that alters the lives of many and challenges our understanding of the very meaning of motherhood.

Helen Klein Ross weaves a powerful story of upheaval and resilience told from the alternating perspectives of Lucy, Mia, Mia’s birth mother, and others intimately involved in the kidnapping. What Was Mine is a compelling tale of motherhood and loss, of grief and hope, and the life-shattering effects of a single, irrevocable moment.

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Audiobook Excerpt

Q & a with helen klein ross, how did you come to choose kidnapping as the subject of a novel, is the book based on a true story.

No. But in the years I spent writing it, a number of people sent links to articles in which similar incidents happened in real life. Frankly, I’m grateful I didn’t know how common kidnapping was when my kids were little, or I might have been too afraid to take them out of the house!

What Was Mine  isn’t based on facts, but I hope it rings true for readers. For me, fiction has always been the best conduit to discovering truths. The author Bill Roorbach teases friends who teach science that his high school physics book is fiction now, but Anna Karenina is still true.

What prompted you to tell the story from 15 points of view?

I felt that this story couldn’t be told by just one character, because no one character could know the whole story. This story doesn’t happen to just one person, even though it’s one person who sets the story in motion. This story is about how a split-second decision can change the course of many lives.

I loved the idea of telling the story in many first person accounts, something for which I felt somewhat trained by the years I spent as a copywriter in advertising. Ads speak in the singular voice of a brand, but a good copywriter writes convincingly in the voice of many brands. My years of exposure to focus groups for products that ran the gamut from fashion to dog food to antacid helped me channel characters as different as a 21 year old college student from Manhattan and a woman in her fifties who lived through China’s cultural revolution.

Which character do you most sympathize with? Which mother do you hope readers will end up deciding to side with?

Some readers feel that marilyn is harder to like than lucy. did you intentionally try to make a birth mother less likeable than a kidnapper.

This isn’t a morality tale. I didn’t want to make Lucy out to be purely evil, even though she commits a monstrous deed. I didn’t want to make Marilyn out to be purely good, though she would seem to be the more sympathetic character, given her situation. I didn’t want to make things black and white because I don’t think they would have been if this story had happened for real.

Some readers have compared this book to Gone Girl  but I see it more as that book in reverse–in Gillian Flynn’s story, a normal woman turns out to be crazy. In What Was Mine , someone we assume is crazy because of what she did, turns out to be normal, or close to normal, whatever that means.

Why isn't the ending more of a resolution?

I feel that the ending is a resolution – the resolution being that the dust has settled from the maelstrom created by the discovery of Lucy’s actions and that things are irreparably changed.

The ending is meant to keep readers thinking and talking about what happens next. It’s meant to allow each reader to imagine, in accordance with her own life experience and feelings, what happens when Mia walks out that door.

What Reviewers Say

Library journal.

A compelling and moving story that asks many questions about family, love, and justice… Moving at a hard-to-put-down, breathless pace, this is suspenseful fiction at its best.

Full review

Publisher's Weekly

Ross crafts a surprisingly sensitive meditation on the definitions of family and motherhood around a ripped-from-the-tabloids story.

Ross brings an entirely new twist to the usual abduction story. Fans of Gillian  Flynn and Maria Semple will enjoy the intensely introspective What Was Mine.

Ross’ prose is both readable and enjoyable, and she touches on interesting ideas about identity, family, and the malleability of the human psyche.

A suspenseful, moving look at twisted maternal love and the limits of forgiveness.

Full article

What Readers Say

Rebekah crain rated it 5 of 5 stars.

How to describe this book? Shattering. Moving. Incredible. Fiction is often times stronger or as strong as non-fiction, and this book read like it had roots in a true crime story. The day Lucy decides, on the spot, to take an infant who does not belong to her, she sets a ball in motion. A ball of lies and deceit. A ball of heartache and destruction. But what she also does is begin a journey, one so genuine it hurts.

For there are times in our lives where we all do something foolish, something that will hurt those around us. We don’t necessarily intend to inflict pain, yet because of our own shortsightedness we simply don’t recognize the dire situations we, on occasion, create. And this is as it was for Lucy Wakefield. Caught up in her own ache of desire as she was, she simply couldn’t allow herself to rationalize what she was doing. Was it wrong? Undoubtedly, a hundred million times over. However, once done, once set into place, how could Lucy ever give back the daughter she had already come to love? This is a story of loss and betrayal. A story of a criminal act so awful, and yet you still can’t decide whose side of the law to be on. Without hesitation, Lucy is guilty of her heinous crime. So much so that several lives were destroyed in the wake of it. Though within the barriers of her crime she created a loving environment where “her” child never wanted for anything. It’s a fine line, a line between morally wrong and indisputable right. A life she so carefully worked to construct, and then with one wrong move- just like that- the house of cards comes crashing down.

When the past you thought was yours turns out to be a lie and the only life you ever knew begins to come undone like a ball of string, how would you respond? Could you see past the glaring obviousness of the deceit or would your views be forever tainted by the truth? Once the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, Lucy’s “daughter” Mia must live with her mother’s choices and from there decide which path to follow. Nurture or nature? Which is the stronger bond?

This really was an amazing book to read. My heart went out to the characters on both sides. I can not imagine what it would be like to fill any of the shoes these characters wore. I pray to God I never have to. What kind of pure emptiness one must feel to be able to ever do what Lucy did at the beginning of this book. What utter helplessness and torture parents like Marilyn and Tom must feel. Never mind the emotional torture and conflicted emotions the child, no matter how old, caught in the middle must feel. So glad I’m just a reader on the sidelines. Kudos to the author on a well written, thoroughly engaging story.

Raymond G. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Carolyn rated it 5 of 5 stars.

What Was Mine is not like any kidnapping story you have read before. Instead of seeing just one side of the story, the chapters are told from different perspectives as different characters tell parts of the story in their own words.

It begins with Lucy, a successful business woman who tried to have a baby for years. Her determined, compulsive, effort to get pregnant drives a wedge between Lucy and her husband until he finally leaves her. On her own, she begins a quest to adopt, but as a single woman she is always rejected. Then one day she sees a beautiful baby girl, left all alone in a shopping cart in an empty aisle of a large store. Without thinking, Lucy picks the child up and walks out. She justifies her act by telling herself the baby’s mother doesn’t love her or she wouldn’t have left her alone in the shopping cart.

But Marilyn, the little girl’s mother, does love her. She got a call from her office and paced while working out the problem on the phone. She’s surprised when she hangs up and realizes she’s walked away from the cart, and completely devastated when she can’t find her baby. In an echo of Lucy’s story, Marilyn’s frantic, compulsive search for her baby destroys her marriage.

The lives of these two women are changed forever by that moment in the aisle of the store, but not as much as the life of Natalie/Mia, the stolen baby. Her chapters begin when she learns the life-shattering truth during her last year of college. For 21 years she was Lucy’s daughter, Mia, an only child. Learning how to be Marilyn’s daughter and half sister to three siblings is a challenge.

Other chapters are told by Ali, Mia’s Chinese nanny, by Lucy’s sister, by Marilyn’s son, by Ali’s son, and by others. Each new character adds another layer to this complex and many faceted story.

What was Mine would be a great choice for a book discussion group. There are so many questions raised. How far would you go to be a mother? What would you do if your child was stolen? If a kidnapper turns out to be a good mother, should she be punished less? What would you do if you discovered your sister had kidnapped a child and lied about it to you for years? Could you forgive her? When a child is raised by a full time nanny, who is the real mother?

If you discovered your whole life was a lie, could you learn to forgive and move on?

Elyse rated it 5 of 5 stars

I can’t say enough high praise for author Helen Klein Ross in the way she wrote this book. (the roller coaster emotions & thoughts she pulled out of us readers).

If there was a voting award category for BEST BOOK CLUB pick for readers to vote, “What Was Mine” would make not only make the list … but could win the grand award.

There are many things I’d like to share in this review – yet almost anything I do, becomes a spoiler.  So….. instead of a normal ‘review’… ( 5 stars from me)…I’ll share one detail: A Baby is Kidnapped and raised by the single woman who took her for 20 years. (but you may have already read that). Oh well! 🙂

As for the rest of this review, I will share directly to a few of the characters.

LUCY: Here is what I have to say to you > what you did from the moment you kidnapped a baby was WRONG… wrong … wrong … ( we all know that)….

However, I didn’t ‘directly FEEL “intense anger” towards you until one morning when you went for a swim when in China. I HATED you when you said “the water made you feel calmer”. I was pissed at you for feeling annoyed that you had to share the public pool with another swimmer. I wanted to kill you in that moment. Oh, I was soooo MAD at you!!!!! And yes…. ( at times), I even felt compassion towards you too. WE CAN THANK Our VERY TALENTED AUTHOR!!!

CHERYL: We need to have a conversation – sister!!! You said something that I will continue to think about long after having read this book. YOU KNOW WHAT YOU SAID… ( we can debate pros and cons later)… let’s not give anything away to our readers, though. ( they can read this themselves). Other readers might debate with later too.

MIA: I’m soooooo sorry sweetheart!!!!

TOM: Do you realize you were somewhat of a turd?? If you have doubts..I’m happy to set you straight!

MARILYN: What can I possibly say? OH MY GOD, my heart broke for you!!!

I was also very moved and inspired of the difference Yoga, meditation and a vegan diet added to your life. Your years of getting support – practicing forgiveness -was realistic and incredible. You became my hero. Thank you..I’m sincerely moved.

MOTHERS … [MOTHER TO MOTHER], CUT IT OUT!!!! Stop comparing who is a better mother by who cooks more – who is a stay at home mother – or a working mother. STOP THE MOTHER WARS! (daughters might take a lesson too).

About the Characters

Lucy Wakefield left a small town in upstate New York to seek a bigger life in Manhattan. She found a career in advertising and married her college boyfriend, Warren. When they decide to have children, they discover that Lucy can’t get pregnant. Warren doesn’t want to adopt. Lucy doesn’t want to be childless. They separate. But Lucy doesn’t give up her dream of having a baby.

Marilyn Featherstone is a rising sales executive for AT&T in 1990 when she suffers every mother’s worst nightmare—and must figure out how to pick up the pieces of her life and move on.

Tom Featherstone is a partner at a Manhattan law firm whose unflappable wife calls him at the office and tells him—between sobs— that their child is has been kidnapped.

Mia Wakefield is a senior at Middlebury College, who was raised in Manhattan, a product of New York City private school and privilege. One day she discovers that everything she thought she knew about her life is a lie.

Wendy Ma was born in Shanghai and married during China’s Cultural Revolution. She came to the United States in 1988 to build a better life for her husband and son, both of whom she must leave behind.

Cheryl Winterhauser is Lucy’s only sibling, a nurse who lives with her husband and sons in the Victorian house they grew up. Cheryl is happy living a quiet life, never seeking the limelight. Until her sister makes her famous all over town.

Places in the Book

What Was Mine  takes place in a fictional world, but some places can be found in the real world, too:

Riverside Park The park where Lucy takes Mia and learns secrets of New York parenting by listening in on conversations it stretches four miles on the far west side of Manhattan, where Lucy lives. Its park benches, bike paths, playgrounds and tennis courts provide a haven to those raising children in the city. Virtual Tour here.

IKEA – Elizabeth, New Jersey In 1990, Ikea built its fourth US store (now there are 38) in Elizabeth, New Jersey, on a landfill off a highway near Newark. A few months later, a fifth store opened in Burbank, CA. Ikea’s “Babysitting Ballroom” was a popular draw for shopping parents then, but has been discontinued, although no babies were ever kidnapped from the store, as far as the author knows.

Red Roof Inn Lucy ghost-writes  Baby Drive,  the novel that ultimately gives her away, in a Red Roof Inn. There isn’t actually a Red Roof Inn in Fort Lee, New Jersey, but a rating for it exists, guest-posted by Lucy on a website promoting Rick Moody’s new book Hotels of North America.

China Some of the novel takes place in China which I have been visiting since 1982. I’ve kept a blog of my most recent trips, here.

Research Links

To research this novel, I immersed herself for years in accounts of real kidnapping cases, such as:

• In France, A Baby Switch and a Lesson in Maternal Love, Maïa de la Baume, The New York Times
• Kidnapped at Birth, Robert Kolker, New York Magazine
• The Mixed-Up Brothers of Bogotá, Susan Dominus, The New York Times Magazine
• The Real Lolita, Sarah Weinman, Hazlitt Magazine
• South African Teen Stolen as Infant Found After Befriending Sister, Robin Dixon, Los Angeles Times

For Book Clubs

This reading group guide for What Was Mine includes an introduction, discussion questions and ideas for enhancing your book club. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and subjects for discussion. Relevant topics include:

One Child Policy

Birth tourism, restorative justice, alternative medicine, gallery reading group guide.

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Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, what was mine.

  Lucy’s now-grown daughter Mia discovers the devastating truth of her origins, she is overwhelmed by confusion and anger and determines not to speak again to the mother who raised her. She reaches out to her birth mother for a tearful reunion, and Lucy is forced to flee to China to avoid prosecution. What follows is a ripple effect that alters the lives of many and challenges our understanding of the very meaning of motherhood.

Reviewed by on July 8, 2015

What Was Mine by Helen Klein Ross

• Publication Date: January 5, 2016
• Genres: Adventure , Fiction , Parenting , Women's Fiction
• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Gallery Books
• ISBN-10: 1476732353
• ISBN-13: 9781476732350

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What Was Mine   Helen Klein Ross, 2016 Gallery Books 336 pp. ISBN-13: 9781476732350 Summary Simply told but deeply affecting, this urgent novel unravels the heartrending yet unsentimental tale of a woman who kidnaps a baby in a superstore—and gets away with it for twenty-one years . Lucy Wakefield is a seemingly ordinary woman who does something extraordinary in a desperate moment: she takes a baby girl from a shopping cart and raises her as her own. It’s a secret she manages to keep for over two decades—from her daughter, the babysitter who helped raise her, family, coworkers, and friends. When Lucy’s now-grown daughter Mia discovers the devastating truth of her origins, she is overwhelmed by confusion and anger and determines not to speak again to the mother who raised her. She reaches out to her birth mother for a tearful reunion, and Lucy is forced to flee to China to avoid prosecution. What follows is a ripple effect that alters the lives of many and challenges our understanding of the very meaning of motherhood. Author Helen Klein Ross, whose work has appeared in The New Yorker , weaves a powerful story of upheaval and resilience told from the alternating perspectives of Lucy, Mia, Mia’s birth mother, and others intimately involved in the kidnapping. What Was Mine is a compelling tale of motherhood and loss, of grief and hope, and the life-shattering effects of a single, irrevocable moment. ( From the publisher .)

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What Was Mine

A book club recommendation.

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Table of Contents

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About The Book

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About The Author

Helen Klein Ross is a poet and novelist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker , The Los Angeles Times , The New York Times , and in The Iowa Review where it won the 2014 Iowa Review award in poetry. She graduated from Cornell University and received an MFA from The New School. Helen lives with her husband in New York City and Salisbury, CT.

Product Details

• Publisher: Gallery Books (January 5, 2016)
• Length: 336 pages
• ISBN13: 9781476732350

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Raves and Reviews

"What Was Mine is an emotionally-grounded read...By giving readers the chance to examine what may be unforgivable, Ross brings an entirely new twist to the usual abduction story. Fans of Gillian Flynn and Maria Semple will enjoy the intensely introspective What Was Mine ."

“A compelling and moving story that asks many questions about family, love, and justice… Moving at a hard-to-put-down, breathless pace, this is suspenseful fiction at its best.”

– Library Journal (starred review)

“Helen Klein Ross has written a truly brilliant book. I’m obsessed by the change this book made in my thinking of what is, and what is not, forgivable.”

– Abigail Thomas, New York Times bestselling author of A Three Dog Life

“A suspenseful, moving look at twisted maternal love and the limits of forgiveness.”

– People Magazine (Best New Books Pick)

"Helen Klein Ross--like Amity Gaige with Schroder , or Emma Donoghue with Room --takes a shocking premise and uses it to illuminate our human condition. A writer of compelling lucidity and vivid precision, she has compassion for all her characters."

– Claire Messud, New York Times bestselling author of The Woman Upstairs

"Not only a terrific, spellbinding read but a fascinating meditation on the choices we make and the way we love."

– Elin Hilderbrand, New York Times bestselling author of The Rumor

“In a tale ripe with opportunities for drama, Helen Klein Ross never puts a foot wrong. She lets the story tell itself, and in so doing heightens both suspense and emotional impact. Readers will be moved to understanding, but never to judgmentalism. A stellar performance, and highly recommended."

– Ann Arensberg, National Book Award winner

“Sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes joyous, and always riveting, What Was Mine masterfully makes you question where your sympathy should lie at every turn. I couldn’t put down this fast-paced, fascinating psychological study of motherhood."

– Lynn Cullen, bestselling author of Twain's End and Mrs. Poe

"Ross crafts a surprisingly sensitive meditation on the definitions of family and motherhood around a ripped-from-the-tabloids story… Ross deftly creates genuinely sympathetic characters and emotionally resonant prose around what could have felt sensationalistic.”

– Publishers Weekly

"Helen Klein Ross pulled me into her intimate tale of loss, love, redemption, and forgiveness that had me turning pages long into the night. You’ll fall in love with What Was Mine .”

– Marci Nault, author of The Lake House

"A powerful plot told with exactly the right approach, What Was Mine is capable of sparking plenty of discussion, whether it is over a water cooler, in a book club or simply in the reader's mind."

– Shelf Awareness

"Helen Klein Ross writes with such emotion from all sides."

– Fresh Fiction

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Book Review: “What Once Was Mine” is An Enchanting and Darker Addition to Disney’s Twisted Tales

Running, adventuring, meeting witches and human demons, seeing violence firsthand and learning about life. Disney’s New York Times Best-Selling  A Twisted Tale Series continues to grow and enchant its readers, while also appearing to get darker.

The series, renowned for twisting well-known Disney stories and giving them alternate taglines or driving plot points to their traditional Disney counterparts, invites readers on an all-new adventure alongside classic characters they know and love. The real intrigue of these stories is that they indulge in darker fairytales which perhaps target a slightly older (middle grade and up) audience.

What Once Was Mine  is the twelfth book and newest addition to the series (a full list of the books in this series can be found at the bottom of this article). Written by famed A Twisted Tale series author Liz Braswell, Rapunzel’s tale stays close to the original story framework and vibe of Disney’s Tangled , and yet adds an arguably even more adventurous – and certainly darker – touch to the story. Original (and even historically-inspired) characters are a welcome addition and perhaps my favorite part of the story involves a fun twist on none other than Maximus, the Corona Kingdom Guard’s most faithful steed.

What if Rapunzel’s mother drank a potion from the wrong flower?

The Twisted Tale series is known for its unique taglines that get curious readers thinking about what twist the tale might take. The taglines reel the reader in, for they will surely want to know “What if Rapunzel’s mother drank a potion from the wrong flower?” After all, we know what happened when Rapunzel’s mother drank from the right flower: Tangled , of course. The twist in Braswell’s latest tale goes a little something like this…

Desperate to save the life of their queen and her unborn child, the good citizens of the kingdom of Corona comb the land for the all-healing Sundrop flower to cure her… but someone mistakenly picks the blossom of the Moondrop instead. This shimmering flower heals the queen and she delivers a healthy baby girl – with hair as silver and gray as the moon. But with her mysterious hair comes dangerous magical powers: the power to harm, not to heal. For the safety of the kingdom, Rapunzel is locked away in a tower and put under the care of the sinister goodwife, Mother Gothel.

For 18 years Rapunzel stays imprisoned in her tower, knowing she must protect everyone from her magical hair. When she finally decides to leave the only home she’s ever known – to see the floating lights that appear each year on her birthday – she gets caught up in an unexpected adventure with two thieves: a would-be outlaw named Gina, and Flynn Rider, a rogue on the run. Before she can read her happy ending, Rapunzel learns that there is far more to her story, her hair and her future than she ever could have known.

What Once Was Mine  is darker than its predecessors

The dark themes in this book are particularly striking compared to earlier novels in the series. This is largely thanks to the involvement of Countess Bathory who is in fact based on the infamous Hungarian noblewoman and serial killer. In real life, Bathory is rumored to have bathed in the blood of virgins to retain her youth. In What Once Was Mine , this fact is shared with Rapunzel who spends some time in Bathory’s castle. Bathory is a fun albeit surprising addition to the story.

Another darker theme transpires through Rapunzel’s “murder hair” and its power to harm rather than to heal. (It is also an intriguing moon silver color rather than the sunshine gold locks we are familiar with in the film.) Baby Rapunzel accidentally kills a nurse and thus she is whisked away to her tower under Gothel’s care. Later in the story, Gothel forces Raps to kill a chicken to remind her why it is not safe for her to leave the tower. If murder isn’t dark enough, coercion to kill certainly is. While this sounds particularly grim for our protagonist, it triggers an interesting journey in seeing how Rapunzel learns about and uses her magic – thanks to her friends and one very kind and quirky witch.  

This Twisted Tale is arguably more adventurous, layered, and mature than the Disney film

While there are relatively few major plot point differences between  What Once Was Mine  and Disney’s Tangled  (Rapunzel is still a girl in a tower with magical hair dreaming of a great escape to see the floating lights), there is a greater sense of adventure, personal discovery and more characters to love in Braswell’s book. This is largely what makes it worth reading for any Tangled fan. There is a more detailed forest adventure sequence and, as all great books adapted from films (and vice versa) should do, the relationships between key characters are further explored. An interesting shift in character dynamic is also added with the introduction of Gina who transforms the Raps-Rider dynamic duo into a fun-loving trickster trio.

Another interesting aspect to this book is that it captures a story-within-a-story. The “outer” story is a young boy is telling his sister his version of Rapunzel’s tale while his sister is receiving cancer treatment in a hospital. The “inner” story is Rapunzel’s tale. The epilogue tells us that both outer and inner stories were inspired by the author’s younger sister who survived cancer. Braswell explains that following treatment, her sister opted for a silver wig which was complimentary to Games of Thrones’  Khaleesi’s style. Thus, Raps’ silvery locks were born, which makes for a special, deeply personal connection between author and story.

What Once Was Mine  satisfies the series’ demand for a mix of young adult and adult themes to keep fans of all ages interested and involved. Pearls of wisdom abound (“[y]ou can’t step into the same tower or goat farm twice; for it is not the same goat farm or tower, and you are not the same person”) and Braswell’s contemplative storytelling is complimented by typical themes like teamwork, friendship, and pursuing unrealized dreams. Interesting questions also arise from ideals of motherhood and power that were left comparatively untouched by the Disney film.

The twelfth Twisted Tale proves that the series continues to soar

What Once Was Mine  is a worthy and compelling twelfth addition to the New York Times Best-Selling series. A Twisted Tale fans will not be disappointed, and I expect that Tangled  fans will be pleasantly surprised by the magic Braswell weaves in this book.

For newcomers, please check out the below list of books in the series to date. Note that there is no narrative connection or continuation between each of the books, so they do not have to be read collectively or sequentially to be enjoyed. As standalone stories they shine and this is thanks to Disney, the authors, and the enchanting twists therein.

Books in Disney’s A Twisted Tale series so far:

1)   A Whole New World  (by Liz Braswell, based on Aladdin)

2)   Once Upon a Dream  (by Liz, Braswell, based on Sleeping Beauty)

3)  As Old as Time  (by Liz Braswell, based on Beauty and the Beast)

4)   Reflection   (by Elizabeth Lim, based on Mulan)

5) Part of Your World  (by Liz Braswell, based on The Little Mermaid)

6) Mirror, Mirror  (by Jen Calonita, based on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs)

7) Conceal, Don’t Feel   (by Jen Calonita, based on Frozen)

8) Straight on Till Morning   (by Liz Braswell, based on Peter Pan)

9)  So This is Love   (by Elizabeth Lim, based on Cinderella)

10) Unbirthday  (by Liz Braswell, based on Alice in Wonderland)

11) Go The Distance  (by Jen Calonita, based on Hercules)

12) What Once Was Mine   (by Liz Braswell, based on Tangled)

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WHAT WAS MINE

by Ann Beattie ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1991

Beattie's fifth collection of stories, 12 in all, continues to chart the course of fractured love and family in modern, restless times. Marriage bonds are broken, new alliances formed, children and parents struggle with their feelings. In "Honey," couples eye one another on the sophisticated suburban party circuit, subtly testing the waters of infidelity, while family tensions lurk just below the surface. In "The Longest Day of the Year," "Home to Marie," and "Windy Day at the Reservoir," marriages disintegrate. However, all is not forlorn: A divorced couple vacations together in "In Amalfi." In "Imagine a Day at the End of a Life," a husband walks in the woods, ruminates on his 40 years of marriage and the different ways his five grown children have turned out, and calmly reflects on the next milestone in his life. And in the title story, one of the collection's best, a boy is raised by his unhappy mother and his "uncle" Herb (his widowed mother's lover). Years later, when both are dead, the boy, now a man, receives a legacy from Herb—some Billie Holiday sheet music, a drawing of a cocktail cherry on a placemat, love letters to Herb from his mother, and an envelope with two pictures of the boy's father—seemingly meager leavings that summon up the caring of an unsung mentor. Deftly crafted, particularly in the child-parent quandary, these stories nonetheless leave surprisingly little impact on the reader when taken as a whole, save perhaps for the sense of disquiet and aimless search these characters are destined to go through.

Pub Date: May 1, 1991

ISBN: 0679739033

Page Count: -

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1991

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by Ann Beattie

THE THINGS THEY CARRIED

by Tim O’Brien ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 28, 1990

It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.

Pub Date: March 28, 1990

ISBN: 0618706410

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990

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IN THE NEWS

HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST THEIR ACCENTS

by Julia Alvarez ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1991

Told through the points of view of the four Garcia sisters- Carla, Sandi, Yolanda and Sofia-this perceptive first novel by poet Alvarez tells of a wealthy family exiled from the Dominican Republic after a failed coup, and how the daughters come of age, weathering the cultural and class transitions from privileged Dominicans to New York Hispanic immigrants. Brought up under strict social mores, the move to the States provides the girls a welcome escape from the pampered, overbearingly protective society in which they were raised, although subjecting them to other types of discrimination. Each rises to the challenge in her own way, as do their parents, Mami (Laura) and Papi (Carlos). The novel unfolds back through time, a complete picture accruing gradually as a series of stories recounts various incidents, beginning with ``Antojos'' (roughly translated ``cravings''), about Yolanda's return to the island after an absence of five years. Against the advice of her relatives, who fear for the safety of a young woman traveling the countryside alone, Yolanda heads out in a borrowed car in pursuit of some guavas and returns with a renewed understanding of stringent class differences. ``The Kiss,'' one of Sofia's stories, tells how she, married against her father's wishes, tries to keep family ties open by visiting yearly on her father's birthday with her young son. And in ``Trespass,'' Carla finds herself the victim of ignorance and prejudice a year after the Garcias have arrived in America, culminating with a pervert trying to lure her into his car. In perhaps one of the most deft and magical stories, ``Still Lives,'' young Sandi has an extraordinary first art lesson and becomes the inspiration for a statue of the Virgin: ``Dona Charito took the lot of us native children in hand Saturday mornings nine to twelve to put Art into us like Jesus into the heathen.'' The tradition and safety of the Old World are just part of the tradeoff that comes with the freedom and choice in the New. Alvarez manages to bring to attention many of the issues-serious and light-that immigrant families face, portraying them with sensitivity and, at times, an enjoyable, mischievous sense.

ISBN: 0-945575-57-2

Page Count: 308

Publisher: Algonquin

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1991

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by Julia Alvarez

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• March 2, 2021

WHAT’S MINE AND YOURS By Naima Coster

It is 1992 when Naima Coster’s sophomore novel, “What’s Mine and Yours,” opens in the Piedmont Triad of North Carolina. Two men, smoking cigarettes outside an empty cafe, share the stories of their families. Though their chat seems little more than “15 minutes of smoking and standing together,” it is through this brief but candid exchange that we come to share two fathers’ dreams for four children who will be brought together by the impending misfortunes of these very men.

After a harrowing and gut-wrenching opening chapter, we discover Gee, a contemplative and grieving Black boy living with two steely women who have chosen to love him despite not loving each other. Gee masturbates compulsively — and the compulsion only worsens when he finds himself in the midst of a school busing dispute where he will be emotionally terrorized, not only by new classmates and their parents, but by his own mother, who pushes in all the wrong ways.

On the other side of town, Gee’s classmate Noelle, a biracial Latina who passes for white, has been forced into a home with her mother’s new lover. The relationships between her mother and the two men she recklessly and unequally loves shape the dysfunction that develops between Noelle and her sisters. If Noelle isn’t careful, it could infect all her relationships.

Oscar Wilde once wrote, “Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.” At its heart, “What’s Mine and Yours” is a coming-of-age story — one that, in its foreground, examines the unraveling of marriages, complexities of siblinghood and reckonings with parents. Beneath it all lie tragedy and myriad loves that are tender and rich and fraught.

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• NKY COMMUNITY CALENDAR

Northern Kentucky's Newspaper

Book review: Lawyer Roger Braden’s homage to the coal miner; is it lights out for King Coal?

By James P. Dady Special to NKyTribune

King Coal, it was called, and never has there been a more powerful force in the economic, social, and political life of Kentucky.

Mining coal has always been a job fraught with peril. The shadow of danger stalks the coal-miner, coal families, coal communities. The miner’s life is the subject of the memoir of Roger N. Braden, Always at the Edge of Death: the Life of a Coal Miner. Braden, now semi-retired and living in Taylor Mill, was born in Providence in Webster County, Kentucky. He represented families of two miners among ten killed in the 1989 explosion at Pyro Mining’s William Station Mine near Wheatcroft, Kentucky.

Braden is the son of a coal miner. He grew up around coal mines and coal miners. He explored abandoned coal mines as a teen-ager. He was, he says, steeped in coal culture. After service in the U.S. Army and a decade as a health-care worker, he enrolled at Chase Law School intending to represent coal miners. On his office wall when he took the first call from the widow of one of the miners killed at William Station was a print of an underground miner at work next to his mule. That first call from a family member of one of the miners killed at William Station was transformative. He was almost immediately caught up in the families’ personal and legal drama. It was a lawyer’s existential moment.

“If we did not prevail, the ten widows and 19 children of the dead miners, who lived in nice middle-class houses, would almost immediately be placed in poverty,” he writes.

He also observes about his first client in the case, “Either I would help her or she would find someone else who would. That phone call was the beginning of a journey that not only re-shaped my law practice, but also re-shaped my thinking as to what my capabilities were as a lawyer and as a person.”

Braden knew he needed help and soon associated with attorney John Whitfield in Madisonville. The two lawyers sought help from nine law firms capable of high-stakes litigation. All of them said ‘no. The last call was to the office of Stan Chesley, the mass-tort expert in Cincinnati, which agreed to help with the case, and assigned Sherill Hondorf, who was experienced in high-stakes litigation.

The lawyers faced the practice problem of how to circumvent the general rule that the sole remedy for recovery against an employer is a workers compensation claim. The claims were supported by a federal case called Boggs v. Blue Diamond Coal Co., which stands for the principle that while and employing company enjoys immunity from ordinary lawsuits by workers, their parent company does not.

Within a month of the explosion, hearings were convened by the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration in Madisonville to take testimony from survivors of the explosion. The two lawyers learned facts fundamental to how they worked up the case. The mine was a vast place, some twenty-five square miles.They learned that methane, an odorless, invisible gas formed by the decomposition of organic matter, was present in the mine, as it always is in an underground mine. Methane of sufficient quantity is lethal to humans, and can be touched off into an explosion from a seemingly insignificant spark, such as from mining equipment itself. The lawyers concluded that the spark in this case was caused by the removal of a longwall mining machine from one part of the mine before its transfer to another. The lawyers also determined that the mine operator, Pyro Mining, had been cited by MSHA 356 times in the nine months prior to the explosion, 310 of the citations for serious violations. There was an elaborate body of rules and law regulating how air is circulated in a mine to maintain methane at a less-than-lethal level. There was testimony at the Madisonville hearings from survivors close enough in time to the explosion to still be vivid.

Based upon what they heard, the two lawyers developed a theory that the venting system had been compromised by the removal of a brattice directing air flow and by a flood that had been allowed to stand in the mine, impairing air circulation.

It also became clear to the two lawyers that MSHA inspectors had been less than vigilant in enforcing rules and permits governing the ventilation system, and that the operators had altered the system and concealed alterations from the inspectors.

Methane, Braden reports, has contributed to the deaths of more than 10,000 miners in the past 60 years.

The lawyers’ resolve to see their case to the end was hardened when they were invited to a meeting at a prominent law firm defending the mine operator, where they were told, “Boys, I don’t know how to say this, and I hope I don’t hurt your feelings, but I don’t think you’re up to the task of taking us on.”

Braden remembers telling himself, “I would rather die than lose this case.”

It was a long, difficult road to obtain a proper recovery for the victims’ families. He doesn’t dwell on the intricacies of litigation, intending that his focus should remain on the miners and the survivors of deceased ones, one what he refers to as the coal culture. He attempts to set the Williams Station disaster in an historical context, reciting a litany of similar disasters; that is, those caused by methane explosions:  • August 4, 1917, at West Kentucky Coal Company’s Webster County mine; 62 miners died in a methane explosion;

• May 19, 1902. An explosions killed 216 miners near Fraterville, Tennessee. Fraterville remains the worst mass disaster in the history of Tennessee;

• April 8, 1911. A spark ignited methane causing an explosion in which 128 miners died in Littleton, Alabama. Two years later, explosions in Dawson, New Mexico, left 260 dead;

• December, 1907. The Manangah Mine Complex, West Virginia Simultaneous explosions in two different mines killed 362 miners;

• March 5, 1930. Eighty-two men, including some inspectors killed at Poston Mine in Athens County, Ohio;

• March 2, 1915. In Fayette County, West Virginia, a methane explosion at a mine of the New River & Pocahontas Consolidated Coal Company killed 112 miners;

• March 8, 1924. 171 miners killed in a methane explosion at a mine near Castle Gate, Utah;

• July 14, 1939. The Duvin Mine Explosion near Providence, Kentucky. Twenty-eight miners were killed because of the premature detonation of explosives igniting coal dust;

• March 25, 1947. Centralia, Illinois. One hundred eleven miners killed when blown-out shot ignited coal dust;

• December 21, 1951. A methane explosion trapped 120 miners underground at a mine in West Frankfort, Illinois. Escaped miners dug frantically to free the trapped miners, but could rescue only one and the rest perished;

• November 20, 1968. An explosion at the Conrad No. 9 mine north of Farmington, West Virginia, killed 78 miners. The explosion could be heard in Fairmont twelve miles away;

• December 30, 1970. Thirty-nine men died in the Hurricane Creek, mine disaster, near Hyden, Kentucky, a year to the day after enactment of the Coal Mine Safety and Health Act. Kentucky-born musician Tom T. Hall’s “Trip to Hyden” and The Band’s song “The Caves of Jericho” lamented the disaster and mourned the miners;

• December 19, 1984. A Utah Power and Light Company’s mine near Orangeburg, Utah. A fire claimed the lives of 28 miners;

• March 9 & 11, 1976. Two different explosions touched off by a spark from a battery-powered locomotive killed 28 miners at the Scotia mine near Oven Fork, Letcher County, Kentucky. This disaster led to enactment by Congress of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977;

• January 2, 2006. Twelve miners were killed by a methane explosion at a mine in Sago, West Virginia;

• May 20, 2006. A methane explosion at Darby Mine No. 1 killed five miners at Holmes Mill, Harlan County, Kentucky;

This list fails to capture the smaller cases where one or a few miners died.

The title of Braden’s book is Always at the Edge of Death , and his book is primarily about mine explosions and their consequences for the miners, their families and communities. But then there are the slower but still fatal consequences of coal mining: pneumoconiosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, disabling injuries, orthopaedic conditions.

The rate of fatal injuries in the coal industry was 24.8 per thousand, nearly six times the rate for all of private industry. Regulators at the state and federal level have sought for more than a century to make coal-mining safer, but the evidence is that underground mining is and always has been an inherently dangerous occupation.

he events of Braden’s formative case in representing the families of deceased coal miners happened more than 35 years ago. Beyond the threat of methane the methane explosion has been the downward spiral of the coal industry itself.

Coal faces the existential threat of the scientific consensus that burning coal leads to climate change. The industry has been in steep decline over the past decade. The insistent push for air-quality regulation and competition from other fuels in the energy marketplace. As of 2023, coal-fired power plants generated 16.2 percent of U.S. electricity, down from 52 percent in 1990. About 200 coal-fired plants are still operating.

Dr. Thomas Clark, the noted Kentucky historian, wrote in his standard text that “The existence of the vital coal resource has shaped the quality of the lives of hundreds of thousands of Kentuckians. The tentacles of the mining industry and the mineral run deep into the human resource, Kentucky politics, and even into the physical topography itself.”

Coal is formed from organic matter that is buried and subsequently altered by a combination of time, pressure, and heat. Coal has been mined in what became Kentucky since 1750. The first known commercial production of coal occurred in Lee County in 1790. Intrepid geologists gauged the extent of the coal resource in the eastern mountains as early as 1836. Canny entrepreneurs in Perry County began to dig coal by the bushel to be floated down the Kentucky River for sale at Richmond or Frankfort. There was also some early small-scale mining in Bell County.  The second half of the nineteenth century brought a worldwide expansion of industrial activity, much of it powered by coal, with more than half of Kentucky coal production coming from the Western Coalfield. By 1912, rail lines had been run through the mountains to Middlesboro, Harlan, and Hazard. [Citations.]

The world clamored for coal to feed its industrial production and war-making capacity, and demand as a home-heating and electricity source, and Kentucky coal met the market. At the onset of World Ward I, Pike County in 1920 produced as much coal as had the entire Commonwealth in 1900. Coal has been found in 57 counties. Coal employment in Kentucky peaked at 76,000 in 1949. Coal supplied Kentuckians incomes, profits, and tax revenues for state and local governments.

King Coal reigned in Kentucky, subject to the booms and busts of the business cycle and to seismic events such as the Great Depression, World War II, and the oil embargoes of the 1970s. For a time in the 1970s, coal was a rather better buy in the energy market than other fuels, and Kentucky coal boomed. Coal production peaked in Kentucky in 1992 at 173.3 million tons.

Coal has been found in 57 of Kentucky’s 120 counties. The ratio of production between the western and eastern coalfields is roughly 60-40. East Kentucky coal tends to have a higher heat content but is more difficult and expensive to mine. Seventy-six percent of Kentucky coal production is deep-mined; the rest, surface-mined.

Kentucky in a recent year ranked fourth among states in coal production.

Former President Donald J. Trump is very popular in coal country and has promoted the development of American fossil-fuel energy. But his four years in office failed to reverse the steep decline for the industry.

King Coal has shrunk to a relative commoner in the Kentucky economic hierarchy. More than 100,000 Kentuckians are employed in the automotive industry, 76,000 in agriculture. Tourism accounts for 91,000 jobs; bourbon distilling 23,000. More than 300,000 are in some form of government service. Kentucky coal employment is now about 5,000.

The Administration of President Joe Biden, as have others before him, has been a full-throated advocate for green energy and for tighter restrictions on the burning of coal. The Biden coal policy has been met with push-back from the Kentucky legislature, which has funded a lawsuit to be conducted by Attorney General Russell Coleman and other attorneys general in raising legal challenges to the Biden environmental regulation. The General Assembly has also enacted a law intended to prevent utilities from decommissioning coal-fired power plants.

Braden’s book is an homage to the miner, but in view of the fate of the industry itself since its main events occurred 35 years ago, it feels like an elegy.

See all of Roger Braden’s books here.

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Radical changes to the code that governs how mineral deposits can be reported to investors would not have protected backers of gold miner Regis Resources from a shock Indigenous heritage ruling that derailed a $1 billion project in NSW , an industry meeting in Perth has been told.

The Regis example was raised on Monday as mining industry figures listened to the rationale behind proposed changes to the JORC code (which has its origins in the early publications of the Joint Ore Reserve Committee). The code dictates how companies describe the size and quality of their discoveries and mineral deposits.

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Endzone 2 early access review: rebuild humanity as a post-apocalyptic plate-spinner

Drought's a-comin'

Sometimes you forget to build a graveyard. It happens. When ten citizens dropped dead on the roads of one of my settlements in post-apocalyptic city builder Endzone 2 , I had to work fast to avoid a sickness breaking out. But graveyards require a lot of space, and if you've already filled your shanty town with a sea of corrugated metal roofs, this poses a problem. Welcome to the pleasant headache of town planning in a post-nuclear world, where most of the land is brown and uninhabitable.

Endzone 2 conforms to a lot of expectations when it comes to building games, although it does have a small side hustle in CRPG-style scene exploration (more on that in a bit). You play a band of underground survivors repopulating the surface. But the resentful earth dictates your use of space, with little red squares of swamp or mountain or lake or wasteland refusing to conform to your desire for more housing, or a market in the otherwise perfect spot. The resulting townships often feel organic and real, rather than the endless rows of apartments or perfectly round suburbs that might be permissible in other building games.

There are plenty of building types to plop down and plenty of workers to assign. Little unseen fishermen will add to your food stash, little invisible weavers will increase your stack of fabrics. Many buildings get bonuses for being near others of a certain type. A coal furnace near a lumberjack's shack, for example. A storage depot near... uh, anything. But since you are sometimes forced to squeeze stuff together in awkward ways, you'll often have to abandon hopes for a perfect level of output. This, I think, is the game's quiet appeal. It's about efficiency, sure, about clicking the knobs of a machine back and forth. but it's a machine that doesn't want to accommodate you all the time. It says: "Look, this is how things are in the deadlands, deal with it."

There are moments of seasonal peril that require you to stockpile goods for difficult moments. A drought causes lakes to completely vanish, and your water supplies to dwindle rapidly. Toxic rain demands protective clothing, or radiation sickness will befall your frontiersfolk. It definitely subscribes to the "ant vs grasshopper" school of building games wherein the tension comes from wanting to expand while also squirrelling away bags of grub for successive crises (hello Banished , hello Northgard , hello Timberborn ). So there is some level of ongoing threat. But aside from this tension I found the whole thing strangely relaxing.

Maybe that's because, at any time, you can leave the workshops ticking over and go on a road trip. A toylike truck offers Endzone 2's side gig in scavengey adventuring. You guide the truck along the cracked roads of the garbage future, looting various ruins for extra resources. Some locations allow your drivers to hop out of the vehicle and explore the surroundings, interacting with objects from an isometric perspective in an almost CRPG style. Find an axe and force open some doors. Discover a book that will help you identify plants, thus unlocking new seeds to farm. Blowtorch open a shipping container and scoop out all the iron ingots inside, like a child in an irradiated yellow raincoat cracking open a long-lost Kinder egg.

This is also how you advance up the game's research tree. By exploring these urban dives and roadside dumping grounds (sometimes quite far from your settlement) you gain "knowledge points" that allow you to work your way down a traditional tech tree of mines, water treatment plants, bathhouses, crematoriums, not to mention plenty of upgraded versions of the same buildings you already own.

It's a nice distraction, and linking it to the research tree makes it feel important to indulge in an outing now and again. That said, Endzone 2 is first and foremost a game of checking in on green arrows and dispelling red arrows with judicious meter tweaking and on-the-hoof construction projects. This becomes clear once you use that same little exploration truck to establish whole new settlements on the same big map, at which point the plate spinning begins in earnest.

Each small zone of green and habitable land that you discover will have distinct strengths and weaknesses. One settlement might get a lot of fresh water from many lakes, great for keeping a cloth industry thriving. Another will be in the swamp, well-suited for making medicinal herbs. Another might boast a seam of iron to capitalise upon, or an iodine mine. Since each village on your wider map will come to specialise in these specific goods, you then have to set up transport links, again using the road trip trucks as lil' lorries, nipping back and forth between your towns with their boots full of syringes or rubber gloves or clay bricks or gas masks.

In time, a small network of goods starts to form. Interdependent chains of productions arise, and you might start to try to optimise things. Workshops will produce tools faster if there is a scrapyard and a woodcutter's lodge nearby to provide materials, and fisheries will gather more seafood when those toolmaking workshops are placed nearby. It's a fairly standard base-building process of creating multiple towns with criss-crossing logistical needs. The challenge comes in placing these buildings when the terrain doesn't allow for perfect efficiency, or when the haphazard decisions you made previously have created a sprawl that makes new building placement its own puzzle. Folks, do we really need a graveyard?

When a sudden drought or a blast of illness sweeps through the landscape and threatens the stability of your provincial paradises, you end up tweaking those import-export routes in micro-managey ways, trying to ensure that Grimdork Lakes gets enough medicine from other towns, or that plenty of water is delivered to Garbageville (yes, you can rename your settlements). When toxic storms strike, a little geiger meter shows how much radiation your settlers are getting exposed to. And you have to keep an eye on the soil as well, because it too can become poisoned with radiation.

If the sound of the geiger doesn't unsettle you, the rickety voice acting might. The music too feels very placeholder. The synthwave soundtrack, while not obnoxious in and of itself, doesn't pair well with the art style or subject matter. It's the kind of music you hear in sci-fi space games, an almost robotic beat that might fit if this were a base-building game set in a twinkling cyberpunk city ruin. But against the bucolic backdrops and overgrown country houses it creates a strange clash of ambience. I turned this music down to 0% and put on a "chill guitar" playlist instead. It works a little better.

I have other misgivings. For a game about efficiency and chains of production, there is sometimes unnecessary friction. The long loading times when resuming your save file will hopefully shake out in early access. As for other stuff, I don't know. A pharmacist and a pharmacy are two different buildings you can create, for example - one to make drugs and another to distribute them. Not only do the similar names cause confusion, it also feels like overkill in a society that has to cut corners by nature. Can't one building do both?

There are other restrictive quirks. For instance, since each settlement has its own pool of resources, you need to toggle between towns, opening the research tree in each one before finding the settlement with enough iron or glass or whatever to punch the "research" button on a particular piece of tech. This also means you sometimes have to funnel a meagre handful of clay or meds or clothes to where they are necessary, just to press a button, when your logistics brain is busy shouting "I already have all the things I need!".

In general, this is why research and skill trees in games often operate on their own separate currency - it ringfences them from problems like this. But the research tree of Endzone 2 requires not only knowledge points, but also worldly goods. This makes it more rooted to your production and transport network, yes, but also results in these sometimes unintuitive moments. It is, at times, a slow game, even on its fastest-forwardedest setting.

For those who prefer their logistical twiddling to be more abstract and neat, this isn't going to tear you away from the factory lines of Shapez 2 . But it might be worth a pop for those who prefer their number-fiddling to be wrapped up in a thematic purpose. It doesn't have the moral compassing nor the defined flavour of Frostpunk (which, for me, remains the more eye-catching post-apocalyptic city builder). But it does enough with its humble scavengers and salvaging expeditions to at least invest you in the populace as a whole. Even if that concern is always attached to a selfish desire to avoid resources plummeting.

"Oh no, the residents of Bogbottom are being lashed with acid rain again," you'll say to yourself. "This will slow down vaccine production." Better get digging now, those bodies won't bury themselves.

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Blog The Education Hub

https://educationhub.blog.gov.uk/2024/08/20/gcse-results-day-2024-number-grading-system/

GCSE results day 2024: Everything you need to know including the number grading system

Thousands of students across the country will soon be finding out their GCSE results and thinking about the next steps in their education.   

Here we explain everything you need to know about the big day, from when results day is, to the current 9-1 grading scale, to what your options are if your results aren’t what you’re expecting.  

When is GCSE results day 2024?  

GCSE results day will be taking place on Thursday the 22 August.     

The results will be made available to schools on Wednesday and available to pick up from your school by 8am on Thursday morning.  

Schools will issue their own instructions on how and when to collect your results.   

When did we change to a number grading scale?  

The shift to the numerical grading system was introduced in England in 2017 firstly in English language, English literature, and maths.  

By 2020 all subjects were shifted to number grades. This means anyone with GCSE results from 2017-2020 will have a combination of both letters and numbers.  

The numerical grading system was to signal more challenging GCSEs and to better differentiate between students’ abilities - particularly at higher grades between the A *-C grades. There only used to be 4 grades between A* and C, now with the numerical grading scale there are 6.  

What do the number grades mean?  

The grades are ranked from 1, the lowest, to 9, the highest.  

The grades don’t exactly translate, but the two grading scales meet at three points as illustrated below.  

The bottom of grade 7 is aligned with the bottom of grade A, while the bottom of grade 4 is aligned to the bottom of grade C.    

Meanwhile, the bottom of grade 1 is aligned to the bottom of grade G.  

What to do if your results weren’t what you were expecting?  

If your results weren’t what you were expecting, firstly don’t panic. You have options.  

First things first, speak to your school or college – they could be flexible on entry requirements if you’ve just missed your grades.   

They’ll also be able to give you the best tailored advice on whether re-sitting while studying for your next qualifications is a possibility.   

If you’re really unhappy with your results you can enter to resit all GCSE subjects in summer 2025. You can also take autumn exams in GCSE English language and maths.  

Speak to your sixth form or college to decide when it’s the best time for you to resit a GCSE exam.  

Look for other courses with different grade requirements     

Entry requirements vary depending on the college and course. Ask your school for advice, and call your college or another one in your area to see if there’s a space on a course you’re interested in.    

Consider an apprenticeship    

Apprenticeships combine a practical training job with study too. They’re open to you if you’re 16 or over, living in England, and not in full time education.  

As an apprentice you’ll be a paid employee, have the opportunity to work alongside experienced staff, gain job-specific skills, and get time set aside for training and study related to your role.   

You can find out more about how to apply here .  

Talk to a National Careers Service (NCS) adviser    

The National Career Service is a free resource that can help you with your career planning. Give them a call to discuss potential routes into higher education, further education, or the workplace.   

Whatever your results, if you want to find out more about all your education and training options, as well as get practical advice about your exam results, visit the  National Careers Service page  and Skills for Careers to explore your study and work choices.   

You may also be interested in:

• Results day 2024: What's next after picking up your A level, T level and VTQ results?
• When is results day 2024? GCSEs, A levels, T Levels and VTQs

Tags: GCSE grade equivalent , gcse number grades , GCSE results , gcse results day 2024 , gsce grades old and new , new gcse grades

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You Are Mine Kindle Edition

The spirit of the age contradicts all that Christ teaches, and many reject or leave the Church to satisfy their longing for the supernatural in esoteric traditions governed by the spirits of the underworld. The occult is now an unashamed feature of modern life, yet discussion of its danger often results in snorts of derision. Like many wounded by life and dissatisfied with the emptiness of modern existence, Sister Anastasia hungered for healing and thirsted for genuine spiritual experience. This propelled her into an intense spiritual search. Abandoning Christianity, she plunged into the depths of ancient, elemental witchcraft. In this raw and unflinching account, which reveals the pain that drives a person to seek release through magic and the suffering that results from worship of demons, Sister Anastasia traces what it means to be healed and transformed by the love of Christ and the blessings available to those who accept His call to be reborn in the kingdom of God.

About the Author : Sister Anastasia grapples with hard truths related to the unseen realm. A member of an Orthodox monastery, she received her MA in Theology from St Vladimir's Seminary. She has long studied ancient praxis and modern addiction in all its varieties, which informs her writing on purification, inner prayer, and the role of the Church in a rapidly changing world.

• Print length 327 pages
• Language English
• Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
• Publication date April 3, 2024
• File size 2230 KB
• Page Flip Enabled
• Word Wise Enabled
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• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0CZTYV7NL
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ St Vladimir's Seminary Press (April 3, 2024)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 3, 2024
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 2230 KB
• Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 327 pages
• #22 in Faith & Spirituality (Kindle Store)
• #134 in Christian Faith (Kindle Store)
• #544 in Spiritual Self-Help (Kindle Store)

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Sister anastasia.

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Customers find the book offers profound insights and spiritual nourishment. They also describe the overall impact as life affirming, life changing, and Christ-centered.

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Customers find the book life affirming, life changing, and thought-provoking. They also say it's accessible and joyful.

""You are Mine" is an extraordinary journey into the realms of spirituality and the unseen world, inviting readers of all backgrounds to delve into..." Read more

"...I have both been quietened and quickened by beautiful waves of truth, joyful and painful through this gift from Sister Anastasia...." Read more

"...Fundamentally this is a book about hope, perseverance , and true growth and change, repentance...." Read more

"This is a deeply moving and very candid memoir of a woman deeply involved in the occult, New Age, yoga, and also traditional psychedelic work...." Read more

Customers find the book offers profound insights and spiritual nourishment. They also say the author skillfully weaves together teachings that challenge conventional perspectives.

"...This book challenges readers to question their beliefs , explore new perspectives, and contemplate the deeper meaning of life itself and the Creator..." Read more

"I am His, He is mine. I have both been quietened and quickened by beautiful waves of truth , joyful and painful through this gift from Sister..." Read more

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