The Mrs. & the Minister

Karen Kingsbury's Waiting for Morning is the first of her novels I've ever read.  So I was excited to get to review Waiting for Morning , and although it had its imperfections, I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I think the characters are, for the most part, very real. The story recounts the tragedy of Hannah Ryan.  Hannah waits at home for her family -- her husband and two teenaged daughters -- to return from a camping trip.  But what she wants, isn't want she gets. Instead, a police car pulls into her driveway, delivering to her the worst news a mother and wife could imagine.  The aftermath of what has happened is simple:  Hannah is full of rage and grief and makes it her missing to get revenge on Brian Wesley, the drunk driver who took her family from her.  Somewhere along the way, she began to blame God, too, and now it's up to two people to bring her peace and forgiveness and closeness to God again. The story weaves the biblical text of La...

Karen Kelsky's The Professor is In:  The Essential Guide to Turning your Ph.D. into Your Job is intended to be practical advice for job-seeking graduate students. Kelsky left her tenured position as an anthropology professor and department head in 2010, in order to begin a new venture -- "The Professor is In", a counseling service and blog aimed at helping graduate students mount a job search. Aware of the current competitive job market, with colleges and universities increasingly trying to save money by staffing departments with part-time adjuncts, Kelsky offers smart, frank, and often witty advice to lead applicants through the complicated process of securing a tenure-track position.  She has no illusions about her readers' ability to do this on their own.  But she does offer these job seekers wisdom through a process that is often infantilizing -- one that leaves former students " insecure, defensive, paranoid, beset by feelings of inadequacy, pretentious...