You Should Read HESTIA STRIKES A MATCH by Christine Grillo
Because fiction may be the only place we’ll get to see a Madame President.
Check out a You Should Read author interview with Kristin Koval after my review! Click on “View entire message” to read the full post in your email app.
If you’d told me a week ago that the novel to get me through my post-election disappointment would be a rom-com set in a current-day, dystopian America in the midst of a civil war, I wouldn’t have believed you. (There are a lot of things I wouldn’t have believed last week.)
But I’m telling you, Hestia Strikes a Match was the book for me.
I was sold on the second page: “The war had begun in earnest in February. Or rather, that’s when it began officially. The warfare had been quite earnest for years, but we were in the habit of giving it names like ‘arson’ or ‘shootings’” (4). These sentences read like a wrist-slap. When Hestia offered a correction—that subtle but powerful “Or rather”—on the war’s origins, I felt Grillo sitting on my shoulder, asking if I’ve been paying attention. Yes, I thought. The words we use to describe trauma and catastrophe matter.
Before you worry this book is a downer, let me point out that immediately preceding this killer (sorry!) line, Hestia lists acceptable typos and clichés for online dating profiles: “I knew I wouldn’t be in danger of falling too hard, because he’d written, ‘I’m doing my up-most to live life to the fullest.’ … In my thirties, ‘up-most’ would have been a hard pass, but at forty-two, it was a point in his favor” (4). Therein lies the magic of Grillo’s book: She had me laughing in one paragraph and shaking my head in resigned recognition the next. The vibe, if not the premise, reminded me of Somebody Somewhere.1
I couldn’t stop reading.
The book opens two months after the start of the war. Southern states have seceded and formed the New Confederated States of America. Hestia, a proud Unionist, lives in Maryland and works at a retirement village. Her husband has abandoned her to fight for the Union; her parents have abandoned her to live in the Confederacy. Amidst bombings, power outages, and poisoned water supplies, Hestia is lonely. “Pipe bombs can kill you quickly,” Hestia reflects, “but loneliness will kill you slowly. Life is a near-constant calculation of risks” (12). Lucky for her, even a civil war can’t stop online dating.
While she struggles to find a romantic connection, Hestia teaches a writing class at the village. Residents answer questions to record their lives for posterity. At first, this narrative construct seems like a clever form of world-building. Instead of dumping background information on us, Grillo includes a Q&A series from the writing group. For instance, when Hestia asks residents to describe what this war is about, one woman notes that it’s “the same civil war from more than one hundred fifty years ago. . . . It’s so simple that it’s boring. It’s always racism. And misogyny—of course. The perfect cocktail. A Black Madame president was a bridge too far” (14).
Indeed.2
As Hestia begins to write alongside her students, she asks more personal questions, and her responses function as flashbacks. To answer a question about “early signs of incompatibility in [her] marriage,” Hestia describes witnessing a climate change protest where men in pickups ran their engines and spewed exhaust into the air around the protesters. Her infuriated husband pressed Hestia on her lukewarm response to the incident. She recalls, “I shrugged, because I was used to people like that, and I don’t think he ever accepted that some people are just unkind” (159).
Hestia’s husband may need to come to such a realization, but Hestia herself needs to realize that love is not synonymous with a sweeping love story. As she cycles through partners, breaking hearts and becoming broken-hearted, she questions both the possibility of intimacy and the impossibility of romance. Weighing whether or not to pursue one particular relationship, she thinks, “If I were with him, I’d have to give up on being romanced and find a way to love someone who was blunt and graceless, like me. I’d have to believe in myself and trust that he loved me” (314).
At the same time, she must navigate the tenuous relationship with her confederate parents. She’s not alone in her conflicted feelings. Her co-worker’s boyfriend becomes a confederate sympathizer. Her friend’s daughters take turns visiting her at the village but no longer speak to each other because they live in different countries. How are we, Hestia wonders, supposed to live in a country with such vast fissures?
Good question.
Today I took Nell for a run, and she buried her head in the snow. At first I thought, Me too. But then she popped to the surface, tail wagging and ready to chase that next squirrel up a tree.3
Okay, Nell. I get your point. Last week was my head-in-the-snow week. Now it’s time to resurface and face the question.
I don’t have an answer for you—other than to keep reading and writing and listening and explaining and showing compassion and citing your sources, dammit!—and I won’t tell you the answer Hestia finds, but I will share some of her hard-earned wisdom: “When we’re young and new to [love], we know by instinct how to be with someone . . . But with every breakup or falling-out, we unlearn what we were born knowing. We doubt ourselves, mistrust our instincts, defend ourselves, prioritize the wrong things” (384).
Consider adding Hestia Strikes a Match to your list of priorities. I hope it is for you, like it was for me, the book you never knew you needed.
I can’t think of many things more exciting than walking into a bookstore, pointing at a book on the shelf, and saying, “I know that author!” And while I can’t do that quite yet, I’m counting down because Kristin Koval’s first novel, Penitence, will be out on January 28, 2025.
, who I met at a Lighthouse Writers LitFest workshop in 2018, is a lawyer-turned-writer who lives in the Boulder area. She writes about her publication journey in . You can also follow her on Instagram, Threads, and Facebook (@kristinkovalwriter) for gorgeous nature photos and half-Ironman training updates. She hopes you support the Boulder Bookstore, and she thinks you should read Burn by Peter Heller. Serendipitously, her pick is also a post-secession portrait of America, but it sounds very different than Hestia Strikes a Match. I can’t wait to check it out!
Thanks for sharing, Kristin!
As I posted on Notes earlier, teaching is one way I roll up my sleeves. This week we’re working on evaluating sources and media literacy. I’ve got two free resources available for you:
Evaluate Online Sources with SIFT: If you’re not using Mike Caulfield’s SIFT method, you should give it a try. SIFT is an acronym to stop, investigate the source, find better coverage, and trace claims to original sources. This lesson focuses on the second step: investigating the source. I pulled four sources that addressed a single topic from different angles and with varying levels of research. First students discuss what the sources said and how authors supported their claims. Then students use the SIFT Wikipedia trick to investigate the sources before determining when (and if) these sources might be credible or useful. Because I’m in Colorado, I chose sources about the Granby, Colorado “Killdozer” incident from 20 years ago. But you could also adapt the template by including four sources of your own. This is most engaging if you choose a newsy, interesting topic.
Media Literacy Lesson: Introduce students to concepts such as lateral reading and reverse image searching using this four-part, self-paced lesson. This resource is designed for self-paced individual or small group learning, but you could also use it as a whole-class lesson.
If you aren’t watching this show, I give you permission to stop reading RIGHT NOW and go stream the entire thing. Somebody, please, get Hestia one of Trisha’s embroidered pillows!!
The other book that got me through last week was Kate Baer’s What Kind of Woman. If you haven’t read her poetry yet, check out “Female Candidate” first. Then scream. Then start at the beginning and read the whole book.
I don’t really bother with interval workouts anymore. I just wait for Nell to see a squirrel. Or a goose. Or a coyote cut-out meant to scare geese. They don’t work for geese, but they sure scare the hell out of my dog.
I’m immediately hooked! Will request from my library stay