My niece Kelly, one of the famous Bremer-girls, is graduating from high school this year. She will leave home, move into an apartment, continue her education, and proceed with the business of living ... I hate that. I want to go back 15 years to when she was just a little girl of three. She stayed at my house for several days while Mother Faye attended a business seminar. We always played Barbie and Ken. Ken’s arm would fall off. We’d grab the pretend-phone and call a pretend Dr. Morgan. He always prescribed the same thing — give Ken a shot in the butt. This was very funny to us. Barbie gave Ken the shot and the arm was repaired. Then it would fall out again and we would repeat the whole sequence over and over. Sometimes we’d do it in opera.After her bath it was time to sit on the couch and read Rootie Kazootie and the Pineapple Tree. "It wasn’t a pine tree. It wasn’t an apple tree. It wasn’t even a pineapple tree. It was a Pineapple Pie Tree!!" I clearly recall how she looked up at me with her little face flushed from the warm bath and her damp blond hair in little ringlets, giggling about some line in the story. We loved each other. That was the same night she got sick and threw up on the bed. I woke up, turned on the light, and we observed a rather minimal mess. I checked to see if she had a fever. She didn’t, so I threw a towel over the mess and we went back to sleep. This was when God said to me: "Glenda you are not mother-material." Several days later she was back home. When it was time to go to bed that night, she sobbed inconsolably and cried to her mother, "How can I go sleep without Glenda?" If the truth were to be known, I didn’t sleep very well that night either. As graduation looms on the horizon, we are proud of our graduates. We encourage their plans for the future and pray for their success in the world. But, Kelly, if you don’t like it out there, come back to Luverne and move in with me. We’ll play Barbie dolls and add a stall on the garage for your car. I desperately need a good book to take my mind off graduation. "Ties That Bind" by Philip Margolin just might do the trick. Success is fleeting; nobody knows this better than lawyer Amanda Jaffe. She had been the undisputed rising star of Portland's legal community, but the same case that put her on the map — the Cardoni trial, left her traumatized, doubting her instincts, and shunning the limelight. This reticence ends when Amanda agrees to handle the case no one else will touch. Jon Dupre, who runs an upscale escort service, is accused of murdering a U.S. senator. Dupre claims to possess proof of the existence of a secret society of powerful men who have banded together for a commonly held political agenda. The rite of passage that binds them together — the initiation into this powerful brotherhood — is murder. To Amanda these seem the desperate claims of a man who will lie to save his own skin — until she is pressured to walk away from the case. She refuses to abandon her investigation … a decision that will place her directly in the path of a deadly juggernaut with ambitions that extend all the way to the presidency of the United States. (This book is also available as a Book on Cassette and a Book on CD.
