Our First Impressions selection this week is Joshua Henkin's Morningside Heights, a moving novel about a brilliant professor's descent into Alzheimer's and the effects of his illness on his wife and children. It is the ABA's #1 Indie Next pick this month.

In Editor's Choice, we feature a review of Francisco Goldman's novel Monkey Boy, along with a Beyond the Book article about the Guatemalan Civil War. Then, we round things up with the answer to our latest Wordplay.

Very best,

Davina

Each month we give away books to BookBrowse members who live in the U.S. to read and review. Members who choose to participate receive a free book about every 3-4 months. Here are their opinions on one recently released title.

"I was so moved by Morningside Heights that I had to let it sit for a couple of days before I could write about it. It took me no time at all to become invested in Joshua Henkin's characters. They are alive and their experiences ring true, from the sweetness to the excruciating pain. Through it all, it is love and compassion that keeps them putting one foot in front of the other. This is one of the best books I have read in a long time." - Patty S. (Towson, MD)

Members! This month's First Impressions and Book Club books are now available. Request at bookbrowse.com/arc before end of Saturday, June 19.

If you're not currently a member and wish to become one, join and request a book and you will receive it. If you are a past member, you can renew here.

Use coupon code JUNE21 for $7 off a first time or lapsed membership.

Books are mailed to members free of charge with the understanding that they'll do their best to either write a short review or take part in an online discussion forum, depending on whether the book is assigned for First Impressions or the Book Club.

Due to publisher restrictions, books are only available to US residents. Members who take part fairly regularly generally receive a book about every 3-4 months.

The book's semi-eponymous narrator is Francisco Goldberg — Frankie — a 49-year-old journalist-cum-novelist; its title comes from the name given to him by childhood bullies. Frankie has recently returned to New York City from Mexico City, where he was living, because of death threats he received following publication of his book about the murder of a Guatemalan bishop, a murder with links to the highest echelons of the country's government. On its face, Monkey Boy is the story of a five-day trip to Boston; inwardly, it is a far-ranging quest to come to terms with childhood, family history and the multifaceted inheritance of violence that shaped the narrator's life.

The narrator of Francisco Goldman's autobiographical novel Monkey Boy, like Goldman himself, was a journalist who reported on the Guatemalan Civil War. The brutal war began in 1960 and lasted a total of 36 years. Over 200,000 were killed or "disappeared," more than 600 villages were attacked or completely destroyed by the army and 150 million people were displaced. Approximately 83 percent of the victims were Indigenous Maya, and 93 percent of human rights violations were carried out by the army and its paramilitary groups. Repercussions from the war still reverberate through the country today, and reconciliation remains elusive...

Review and article by Naomi Benaron

See more articles about People, Eras and Events

Solve our Wordplay puzzle to reveal a well-known expression, and be entered to win a 6-month membership to BookBrowse.

"H I T Best P"

Look around the web and you'll find many references to "feed a cold, starve a fever" being a misinterpretation of a line in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales that reads "fede a cold and starb ob feber" which is translated as "encourage a cold and die of fever." - in other words, a cautionary message that if you allow yourself to get a relatively minor cold you could contract something much nastier.

There is one tiny catch with this - despite searching hard and long, we cannot find this phrase in The Canterbury Tales. If you know otherwise and can point us to the reference, please do send an email as we would love to be corrected...

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