Reviews: 'The Moth Presents: Occasional Magic,' edited by Catherine Burns, and 'An Innocent Bystander,' by Julie Salamon

The Moth Presents: Occasional Magic

Edited by Catherine Burns. (Crown Archetype, 248 pages, $25.)

I wasn't familiar with the Moth podcast's brand of live storytelling when I opened this collection, but now I'm a convert. Even without the audience and the stage, the 47 brief stories pulse with energy and vulnerability. There are some well-known names along with new voices, sharing stories of bravery from all over the world. I told myself to savor the pages, but instead I raced through them, like a child at bedtime. Just one more story. Just one more.

A dental-school resident tells of being held hostage by rebels at a hospital in Colombia, forced to treat a dangerously infected boy — with no anesthesia, little experience and at the point of a rifle. A lonely Jehovah's Witness describes venturing outside the church's rules (and onto Tinder) to find a partner. South Sudanese refugees recount settling in Maine. They misunderstood the instructions about the fire alarm and fled their apartment at the sound of the doorbell. A Macalester English professor describes keeping a secret, dangerous cache of books as a child during China's Cultural Revolution and learning the power of storytelling when they were destroyed.

That magical power is more than occasional in this collection, and the book would make a great gift, perhaps even whetting the appetites of reluctant readers for one more story of bravery. Just one more.

HOLLY COLLIER WILLMARTH

An Innocent Bystander: The Killing of Leon Klinghoffer By Julie Salamon. (Little, Brown, 349 pages, $29.)

Sandwiched between the terrorist attacks that killed 11 Israeli Olympic team members at the 1972 Munich Games and the Sept. 11 attacks that killed 3,000, there was a terrorist incident that resulted in a single death, but which claimed international attention and even spawned an opera.

Leon Klinghoffer was shot to death during an ill-planned Palestinian terrorist attack on a cruise ship, the Achille Lauro, in the Mediterranean in 1985. What made Klinghoffer's death so horrific is that the 69-year-old New Yorker, a stroke victim, was shot in his wheelchair. Then his body and wheelchair were tossed overboard.

"An Innocent Bystander: The Killing of Leon Klinghoffer" examines the case and its prolonged aftermath — personal, legal and artistic — in journalistic fashion. Author Julie Salamon gained the trust not only of Klinghoffer's daughters, but also of the wife and ex-wife of the Palestinian terrorist leader, Abu al-Abbas, who was responsible for plotting the cruise ship attack. Salamon tells all their stories with an even hand.

Three days after Klinghoffer was killed, a peaceful Arab-American anti-discrimination activist was killed in a bombing at his California office, a terrorist attack that drew far less notice. Salamon weaves in details about that slaying. In chronicling the impact of both these killings on all three families — those of the two victims and the terrorist mastermind — Salamon provides a 360-degree view of the tragic, endless cycle of the killing of innocents.

DENNIS J. MCGRATH