Bane Bloom by Sharon Lynn Fisher

Mug gifted from Sister when I graduated med school, 1999

Thanks to the Google random number generator, tonight you get reflections on Book #95 from the 2026 list: Bane Bloom by Sharon Lynn Fisher.

The blurb:

A botanical illustrator in Victorian England uncovers a country garden’s secrets in a fantastical novel of dark enchantments by the author of Tea & Alchemy.

In 1850, Catherine Gray, a botanical illustrator from London, travels to a remote estate in the Lake District to catalog and paint the specimens thriving in a mysterious glasshouse garden. The most bewildering find is a water lily that somehow alters its appearance. Nearly as puzzling is Thomas Bane, the brooding groundskeeper, who closely guards the estate’s secrets—including the disappearance of Catherine’s predecessor.

The mystery deepens when Catherine discovers the diary of Prudence Bane, Thomas’s late mother, which contains revelations about the odd flora and its hold on a family touched by madness. The more she uncovers, the more the line between fantasy and reality—and superstition and fact—begins to blur.

Unable to trust her own thoughts, Catherine draws closer to Thomas, her only anchor in this strange place. But even he can’t fully protect her from the house and his otherworldly family. Only Catherine can break the Bane family’s cycle of heartbreak…but first she’ll have to confront her own.

My review:

Review of advance copy received from Author
[FIVE STARS]

Typically excellent; highly recommend!
I have only known Sharon Lynn Fisher’s writing since January, when I listened to Tea & Alchemy, because Marisa Calin and Shane East perform it. Since then I have listened to Grimm Curiosities, Salt & Broom, and now Bane Bloom, thanks to an Advance Listener Copy from Sharon herself (thank you, ma’am!). I can now write with authority: Sharon writes the MOST satisfying and engaging slow burn, low spice romances! Catherine, like Sharon’s other heroines, exudes honest, humble smarts and spunk, and follows her intuition to connect with (super)nature. Thomas, not quite tormented but cranky with a heart of gold, could live alone forever, but that soft metal melts eventually, to all our collective delight. This story delivers mystery, intrigue, and real human emotion, with just enough angst to engage for binge without torturing us. Bronwen Price does a loving and beautiful job with the vast majority of the narration, and Will Watt’s deep, warm timbre gives Thomas’s voice something to look forward to. I will soom embark on the rest of Sharon’s backlist–can’t wait!

I have since finished The Absinthe Earl, and will continue with The Raven Lady, Books 1 and 2 of The Faery Rehistory Trilogy.

*Sigh* I might attribute my mild obsession with romantasy in 2026 to the Crowns Trilogy by Nicola Tyche, which I have listened to at least six times in its totality, and the last book alone, War Queen, at least nine, since this time last year. It’s possible that I just wanted to escape reality in this year that began with ICE murdering regular people on the street and sliding into various other atrocities and disgraces with almost no meaningful accountability at the highest levels of US government.

These books highlight the best in humanity (in contrast to the news), wherein characters face mortal threats from outside actors, and must find in both themselves and each other the courageous vulnerability and calm rationality to problem solve and save their communities. The romances bloom from emergent mutual admiration, each hero/ine of the other’s perceptiveness, knowledge, intelligence, and fortitude. They are complementary equals; the heroes respect their heroines above all. That’s true in Crowns also. Maybe that’s what really draws me to these stories, as the current US federal administration dominated by toxic white men all but denigrates women. All the more satisfying that so many women (and women physicians!) were just elected to Congress.

From Facebook, cannot remember source, sorry!
Also according to Google, there are currently 20 physicians serving in the 119th Congress, 4 senators and 16 representatives. They are almost all white, and there is one woman among them.

Last night I wrote about how romance can teach us self-love. Tonight I highlight romances that teach us mutual respect and value intellectual acumen in women and emotional attunement in men. Romance is the best selling book genre year over year, and yet we ignore its significance. Maybe if we paid more attention to these quintessentially human stories, we could treat ourselves and one another better and make the world better for it.

Romance and Self-Compassion

Alexis Hall and everything you need to know about how to engage with them

What parts of your personality are both fundamentally you and also shameful?

Maybe shameful is too strong or not the right word. But what unique and fundamental aspects of your personality also cause you to dislike yourself? Maybe they cause you to feel like a misfit among ‘normal’ people. Or so few people relate to (or even reject) this part of you that you hardly share it? Maybe it’s a behavior pattern that puts people off a little, but you can’t help it because it’s just who you are and you refuse to deny or repress your core self.

I wonder how Alexis Hall would think of what I’m about to write, but I hope they would know it’s written respectfully and out of admiration, curiosity, and exploration.

Never After, Something Extraordinary, and For Real

In the three books of theirs that I have devoured multiple times (highly recommend you do, too) and written about twice (Never After and Something Extraordinary), all of the main characters are both irrepressibly authentic and at least somewhat self-loathing. Every one of them finally comes to accept and love themselves more fully with the help of their respective love interest, often having to be told and shown multiple times, both subtly and forcefully, how valuable they are.

Hall writes so lovingly and relatably about the human condition of self-criticism, how organically it occurs, how insidiously, and how it shows up in all of our relationships, not just romantic ones. I hope every one of us has felt at least partially saved by a supportive other who shows up and loves us for our strengths and gifts before we fully perceive and celebrate them. How lucky if it was a parent or teacher early in life, or a life partner who continually reminds us? But what about those parts that we have yet to reconcile?

Self-Compassion, Kristin Neff

I listened to Kristin Neff’s Self-Compassion years ago and highly recommend it. She definitely leads by example and walks her talk. I think I’m still integrating the concepts and practices, and life is so much better. “With self-compassion, we give ourselves the same kindness and support we’d give to a good friend,” says the banner on the website landing page. How did society become so perfectionist and hypercritical? Such a downward spiral, the self-criticism that fuels judgment and criticism of others and manifests in harsh words and harmed relationships. [facepalm]

The Dark Side of the Light Chasers, Debbie Ford

Long before taking up audiobooks or Self-Compassion, I read (or tried to read–never actually finished) The Dark Side of the Light Chasers by Debbie Ford. In her attempt to show us the parts of ourselves that we most loathe, I stepped waist deep in my inner psychological shitpile and picked a fight with Hubs that lasted two weeks. I was too afraid to open the book again then, but maybe I will now? Oh, the gift of living longer and learning about oneself…

I will be forever grateful to Book Club for teaching me the value of fiction, and how it opens us more deeply to both empathy and self-awareness. I get so much more out of the non-fiction I consume when I live vicariously through characters’ lives, feel their emotions so closely adjacent to my own.

I so admire and appreciate authors like Alexis Hall, whose prose can so deftly pierce our armor and open our hearts through lyrical expressions of characters’ utterly vulnerable and quintenssentially human fears and longings. Consuming these stories makes me more compassionate in general, to both myself and others. It reminds me that we are all here to love–to seek it, offer it, receive and share it, and thrive on it. And one of the most empowering things we can do for the world–exponentially so–is love ourselves first.

Trust

What makes you think you can trust me, your doctor?

What do we need to trust our politicians and elected officials?

Friend Anna and I spent three hours together in the pottery studio today talking about this and other things. Walk the talk, of course, we agreed. And when you fuck up, because we all do, own it. Admit ya’ done wrong. There may be a fine line between making excuses and giving ourselves grace for the circumstances that brought about our transgression, but regardless, accountability, simple and difficult, is key for earning and maintaining trust.
What else do we need to trust you?
What do our leaders need to trust us, their supporters (or opponents)?

I have been a fan and follower of Brené Brown for years, and I like to think I have integrated many of her central tenets and practices in my life, professionally and personally. She introduced her BRAVING framework, the so-called anatomy of trust, in Rising Strong, and further developed it in subsequent books Braving the Wilderness and Dare to Lead.

Take a look at the seven elements of trust: Boundaries, Reliability, Accountability, Vault (confidentiality), Integrity, Nonjudgment, and Generosity. What think you?
How many and which ones could be absent and you would still trust someone?
With whom and about what do you think, speak, and act with all seven?

The BRAVING Inventory

Brown also references and incorporates tenets from Charles Feltman’s The Thin Book of Trust, in which he (per Google AI overview) “defines trust not as an abstract feeling, but as something built on four distinct assessments. In his framework, trust is the assessment that what is important to you is safe with another person’s actions, while distrust is the assessment that it is not.

“The four distinctions of trust are:

“Care: The assessment that you have the other person’s best interests at heart and will not act solely out of self-interest. It means looking out for the well-being of others and protecting what matters to them.

“Sincerity: The assessment that you are honest, say what you mean, mean what you say, and express your opinions and feelings genuinely. It is the alignment between your internal thoughts and external actions.

“Reliability: The assessment that you keep your promises and fulfill your commitments. It means your actions match your words over time, making your behavior predictable and dependable.

“Competence: The assessment that you have the specific ability, skills, knowledge, and resources to do what you say you will do or what is expected of you. Competence is situational and domain-specific.”

It is a actually very thin book, and worth reading.

On walking the talk: I have recommended Barack Obama and Ben Sasse’s memoirs this week. I think it’s important to hear and read our leaders’ own words, spoken and written out of the spotlight and in their most thoughtful and nonperformative states. But even then, it’s just talk. So I look for town hall meeting footage, images of candid moments, and assessments made by others who know them, and whom I trust. My cynical brain whispers that it could all be staged, that we never see these people’s real selves. I don’t believe that. We just have to look, listen, and think harder at them as whole people and make our assessments as honestly as possible.

Funny how honesty itself is not listed in either framework of trust, right? Maybe that’s because honesty is too hard to assess?. How does honesty manifest–how do we feel it? It’s sincerity and reliability, repeatedly.

Trust takes time and multiple instances of interaction and observation to establish and deepen. Just like high blood pressure, one measurement does not the diagnosis make. Context matters. Lifestyle matters. Measurement devices matter. We can withhold judgment about a person/leader’s character and trustworthiness until we’ve witnessed multiple real instances of expression, and not jump to conclusions after just seeing the viral click-bait instigations. Trust is also partly intuitive, and heavily influenced by our default biases. So we must also be self-aware about our default mistrusts.

I often think of trust as a great oak tree: Stable, and strong, reverent and admirable. But when branches are broken, they do not grow back and the tree remains forever altered. So while fully grown and deeply rooted trust can withstand myriad challenging forces, it must also be tended and protected to flourish long term. That’s relationship and communication.

Of the seven BRAVING elements, accountability and integrity come up most frequently in my assessments and conversations. What about you?

Them and Us

Them, Ben Sasse

Former Nebraska senator Ben Sasse and his wife lived just up the road from Hubs and me in Evanston, Illinois in the summer of 1995. It was the deadliest heat wave in US history. Apparently they did the same as we that July–sat in front of the window AC unit as temperatures sat in the mid 100s for days on end. We were just engaged and they had just been married a year. I like that I feel connected in this way, as I admired him while he was in office. I have just started listening to his 2018 book, Them: Why We Hate Each Other–And How to Heal.

I spent this evening with dear friends (and thus not writing) and I really want to go to bed now, so I will just leave you with the descriptions of this book and another one with the same thesis, that loneliness is tearing us apart and killing us: Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World by Vivek Murthy.

Together, Vivek Murthy

I appreciate so much how these two people from either side of the political aisle and each with their own perspective and style of writing, recognize the same central problem in our current culture. Sasse even quotes Murthy in Chapter 3. I have listened to Together and am tempted to obtain print copies of both books to compare annotations. I imagine Sasse’s focus and conclusions will differ from Murthy’s, and I may well disagree with some of the them. But I respect him as a historian, educator, and former legislator. I could fairly think of these two works as companion books, ‘Them and Us’, worthy of shared space on the bookshelf.

I think of Sasse, Jeff Flake, and Olympia Snowe as conservative senators whom I respected and who left when Capitol Hill got too toxic. Who would their progressive counterparts be? How can we attract and elect more moderates to Congress, or at least people who have the wherewithal to engage with opponents civilly and professionally?

The best part of posting daily is that I can relax and continue today’s ideas tomorrow, if needed. Good night and back again soon!

Them by Ben Sasse

Something is wrong. We all know it.

American life expectancy is declining for a third straight year. Birth rates are dropping. Nearly half of us think the other political party isn’t just wrong; they’re evil. We’re the richest country in history, but we’ve never been more pessimistic.

What’s causing the despair?

In Them, bestselling author and U.S. senator Ben Sasse argues that, contrary to conventional wisdom, our crisis isn’t really about politics. It’s that we’re so lonely we can’t see straight—and it bubbles out as anger.

Local communities are collapsing. Across the nation, little leagues are disappearing, Rotary clubs are dwindling, and in all likelihood, we don’t know the neighbor two doors down. Work isn’t what we’d hoped: less certainty, few lifelong coworkers, shallow purpose. Stable families and enduring friendships—life’s fundamental pillars—are in statistical freefall.

As traditional tribes of place evaporate, we rally against common enemies so we can feel part of a team. No institutions command widespread public trust, enabling foreign intelligence agencies to use technology to pick the scabs on our toxic divisions. We’re in danger of half of us believing different facts than the other half, and the digital revolution throws gas on the fire.

There’s a path forward—but reversing our decline requires something radical: a rediscovery of real places and human-to-human relationships. Even as technology nudges us to become rootless, Sasse shows how only a recovery of rootedness can heal our lonely souls.

America wants you to be happy, but more urgently, America needs you to love your neighbor and connect with your community. Fixing what’s wrong with the country depends on it.

Together by Vivek Murthy

Humans are social creatures: In this simple and obvious fact lies both the problem and the solution to the current crisis of loneliness. In his groundbreaking book, the 19th surgeon general of the United States Dr. Vivek Murthy makes a case for loneliness as a public health concern: a root cause and contributor to many of the epidemics sweeping the world today from alcohol and drug addiction to violence to depression and anxiety. Loneliness, he argues, is affecting not only our health, but also how our children experience school, how we perform in the workplace, and the sense of division and polarization in our society.

But, at the center of our loneliness is our innate desire to connect. We have evolved to participate in community, to forge lasting bonds with others, to help one another, and to share life experiences. We are, simply, better together.

The lessons in Together have immediate relevance and application. These four key strategies will help us not only to weather this crisis, but also to heal our social world far into the future.

  1. Spend time each day with those you love. Devote at least 15 minutes each day to connecting with those you most care about.
  2. Focus on each other. Forget about multitasking and give the other person the gift of your full attention, making eye contact, if possible, and genuinely listening.
  3. Embrace solitude. The first step toward building stronger connections with others is to build a stronger connection with oneself. Meditation, prayer, art, music, and time spent outdoors can all be sources of solitary comfort and joy.
  4. Help and be helped. Service is a form of human connection that reminds us of our value and purpose in life. Checking on a neighbor, seeking advice, even just offering a smile to a stranger six feet away, all can make us stronger.

During Murthy’s tenure as Surgeon General and during the research for Together, he found that there were few issues that elicited as much enthusiastic interest from both very conservative and very liberal members of Congress, from young and old people, or from urban and rural residents alike. Loneliness was something so many people have known themselves or have seen in the people around them. In the book, Murthy also shares his own deeply personal experiences with the subject–from struggling with loneliness in school, to the devastating loss of his uncle who succumbed to his own loneliness, as well as the important example of community and connection that his parents modeled. Simply, it’s a universal condition that affects all of us directly or through the people we love—now more than ever.

Make Some Good Sausage, Please

Barack Obama, A Promised Land

There are no shortcuts, no substitutes for time, thought, care, patience, experience, and real human connection. These are the ingredients of good leadership and policy cooking, and we need better folks in organizational kitchens everywhere.
Poor metaphor of fantasy incoming: What if this Congress rolled up its sleeves and engaged fully and in good faith with the proverbial, messy sausage making machine? What would that crew look like and need?

Calm, knowledgeable, creative, exacting head chef.
Multiple competent, energetic, collaborative sous chefs.
Reliable lighting, appliances, cookware, and physical plant.
Efficient and effective back of the house staff.
Friendly, engaged, well-compensated servers.
Welcoming, clean, inclusive space and ambience.
Skeptical and fair critics with well respected platforms.
High standards for safety and working conditions for all.
Windows into the kitchen so consumers may watch their food being made, and so appreciate the labor and complexity involved.
This is the ideal situation, of course, like a Michelin starred restaurant.
The reality of legislative cooking seems more like Ratatouille.

Barack Obama’s memoir of his first term, The Promised Land, calls me to listen again. Oh how I miss seeing him and hearing his words on a regular basis, so inspiring and motivating. The book is long and fascinating. I listened at 1.2x until the last chapter–didn’t want it to end, and I’m still waiting for the second term edition.

So much happened between 2009 and 2013, but the most memorable part of the book chronicled the creation of the Affordable Care Act–in excrutiating detail. It may have been why I sped up the playback; the frustration and sense of repeatedly stalled progress practically gave me heartburn as listener; I can only imagine what it felt like in the White House and congressional chambers. I am so proud that all involved finally hammered something out that has outlived many of their terms in office. I consider it a win for Progressives and the general population, but I wonder how it could have been made better had the process not been quite so adversarial. It did not occur to me until just now to seek an alternative perspective on the process. Ask Google and you shall receive…

Query: “Boener account of ACA negotiations”
AI Overview:
“In his memoir, On the House: A Washington Memoir, former House Speaker John Boehner presents a highly critical account of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) negotiations, blaming what he viewed as President Barack Obama’s “haughty” negotiation style while simultaneously disparaging his own party’s subsequent strategies to dismantle it. [1, 2]
“His reflections on the ACA span the initial 2009–2010 legislative battle and the subsequent 2013 government shutdown:
Initial 2009 Negotiations: Boehner (who was House Minority Leader at the time) claims that a “bunch” of Republicans were open to finding a bipartisan, common-sense compromise on healthcare. However, he asserts that President Obama chose to negotiate “behind closed doors” and was too rigid, pushing the final bill too far to the left rather than engaging in genuine cross-party outreach.
“The 2013 Government Shutdown: Boehner recounts the intense pressure he faced from the Tea Party faction to hold the federal debt ceiling and government funding hostage in exchange for defunding Obamacare. He famously writes that he knew the strategy was a “dumbass” idea and likened it to being “on the Titanic playing chicken with an iceberg.” However, he felt compelled to go along with it because it was his job as the Republican leader. [1, 2]
“The “Repeal and Replace” Illusion: Following his retirement, Boehner openly laughed at the Republican campaign promises of a quick “repeal and replace.” He noted that in his 25 years in Congress, Republicans never once agreed on what a healthcare alternative should actually look like. He warned party leaders that passing a repeal without a viable replacement would leave them entirely responsible for a broken system. [1]
“Ultimately, Boehner acknowledged that the core framework of the ACA—including protections for pre-existing conditions and allowing adult children to stay on their parents’ plans until age 26—was here to stay, and that his party would only ever be able to conservatively tweak its margins rather than fully destroy it. [1]”

The work, the time, the cooks, the kitchen, the end product, the failed attempts to unmake it: Sausage. Some love it, some hate it. Nobody sees it as high cuisine.

Medicare, Medicaid, Women’s suffrage, Title 9: I bet they all looked and felt similar in the political cookhouses of their times. For now, they and the ACA stand, more or less in their inceptual forms, no?

Interestingly, this is NOT the case (pun!) with Roe v. Wade or marriage equality. Wisely, RBG expressed her concerns about the fragile vulnerability of abortion rights, and here we are.

Google AI overview of ‘case that decided marriage equality’

What legislation tops your priority list?
How do you envision that sausage getting made?
Who should lead the effort, and what cooking methods do you endorse them to use?
Do you wish them to rule the kitchen as harsh dictator, cultural guru, or something else?
What costs of your method do you recognize, and how willing are you to pay them (or let someone else pay) in the short and long terms?

It’s so easy for us to demand legislators to ‘get sh*t done’, then yell at them when we don’t hear what we want when they speak publicly. But when we hold their positions hostage to our most extreme and rigid ideological standards, what leeway, autonomy, and creativity do we allow them to do the job we expect?

I had not intended to write so many nights in a row about politics for this 30 day blog challenge. But it’s kind of perfect, and I feel a cosmic smirk at the corners of my lips. The embers of my activist heart reignite a little with each post and it feels gratifying. “Activate to collaborate,” I want to say.

How can we each fan the flames of connection in service of good sausage making?