West with Giraffes

 By Lynda Rutledge

Lake Union     2021

356 pages     Historical Fiction

Woodrow Wilson Nickel (or Woody Nickel as he is called) is a very old man in a nursing home who has a story that he has to get told before he dies. And what a story it is!

When he was a teenager, a victim of the Dust Bowl era in the Texas Panhandle, Woody attempts to travel to New York to meet his cousin, his only living relative, but the cousin can’t be found once Woody gets to the city. While in New York, he witnesses an historical event so bizarre, his whole life is changed. A pair of giraffes, on their way to be the first giraffes at the San Diego Zoo, miraculously survive a hurricane while they are crossing the Atlantic. Absolutely fascinated by the experience of seeing the giraffes, Woody decides to follow the truck to California.

A series of circumstances finds him driving the truck across the country for the zookeeper--the “old man “-- across the country. What follows is one of the craziest journeys ever—every moment compelling and dramatic. Some of the events are historically accurate, and some come from the mind of Lynda Rutledge, the author. But as the reader goes West with Giraffes, we are led to imagine what the real trip was like. Throughout the journey, Woody, the boy, becomes Woody, the man. He learns to care for the giraffes, learns to appreciate the old man, and falls in love with a young photographer who is following the truck.

Rutledge backs up her crazy story with newspaper articles that appeared during the actual trip as well as the wired messages the old man sent to Belle Jennings Benchley, the head zookeeper at the San Diego Zoo. And Benchley is one of the incredible factual characters in the story. She was the first female zookeeper in the country, and she was responsible for making the San Diego Zoo one of the most famous zoos in the world. Rutledge says that she first came across the story when she was in the zoo’s archives working on another story. Apparently the story of the giraffes' cross country trip made the newspapers across the country every day of their 12-day trip, and Rutledge’s imagination took hold as she was reading the newspaper accounts. The result of her imagination is West with Giraffes. And by the way, I found this picture of the actual truck and giraffes. This trip really did happen!

Rutledge tells the story beautifully—which is an important asset to the book, because it would be easy to get bogged down in the details of a 12-day trip. We are able to see Woody maturing before our eyes, at the same time that we witness all the dangers the truck and the giraffes are experiencing. One of my favorite moments in the book happens while in the desert. Woody and the old man look up to see that they are being followed by a flock of birds and both men and giraffes are struck by the magic of that moment—remarkable in its peacefulness. A meant-to-be moment.

This is my book club’s reading for the month. I would not have picked it out on my own, and I am very grateful for the choice. I can’t wait to ask my friend how she heard about the book and to discuss it Thursday night with my book club.  

Lynda Rutledge website. By the way, Rutledge has a new book coming out in January, Mockingbird Summer. It is another historical fiction book taking place in 1964. Wait? Is it possible that 1964 could be history? Makes me feel like old man Woody.

Murder Ballads Old & New

 By Stephen L. Jones

Feral House     2023

224 pages     Music History

Here is the book’s description. “Murder Ballads Old & New: A Dark and Bloody Record is an exploration of an age-old topic— our human need to document the horrors of the world around us.  The murder ballad, here expanded to include songs about traumatic loss in modern variants and multiple styles, including punk, post-punk, alt-country, and folk. The book is a graveyard stroll past tombs both well-kept and half-hidden. Murder Ballads Old & New excavates facts about killers, victims, and the folkloric storytellers who disseminated their tales in song.

Author Steven L. Jones focuses the tragic ballad as “an act of remembering and a soul-reckoning with the ineffable.” Songs examined range from obscure tunes from the founding days of the United States to familiar canonical songs learned in schoolrooms and honkytonks. Jones tackles each song in a manner that’s equal parts musicological, psychosocial, and genealogical as he uncovers stories that reveal larger contexts and maps the lineages of songs and themes, forebears, and ancestors. Murder Ballads Old & New includes a wide range of songs and performers from the relatively unknown (Boiled in Lead, Freakons, Nelstone’s Hawaiians) to the ironically famous (Johnny Cash, Lou Reed, Sonic Youth). Highlights include tales of Muddy Waters guitar sideman Pat Hare, whose incendiary blues boast “I’m Gonna Murder My Baby” proved grimly prophetic. And honky-tonk pioneer Eddie Noack, whose morbid stab at late-career rebirth, “Psycho,” couldn’t match the bottomless tragedy of his own life.  As well as Depression-era holdup man Pretty Boy Floyd, Schubert’s mythical Erlkönig, and the Manson Family.”

Although I did not read the entire book, the introduction was very informative. And then, I read specifically about two songs: Lou Reed’s The Day John Kennedy Died and Desolation Row by Bob Dylan. I was particularly interested in Desolation Row because Dylan wrote it about a lynching in his father’s hometown, Duluth, which is my home town. Dylan grew up in Hibbing MN, but his father was a young boy in Duluth when three circus workers were lynched. I found it a fascinating example of history preserved in music.

Murder Ballads Old and New is a very dense, quite scholarly book, but music lovers will very much appreciate it. This copy is going to my musician brother. It came to me from the publisher, and it is on the market this week.

Here are YouTube versions about both songs: Lou Reed The Day John Kennedy Died and Bob Dylan  Desolation Row.

Life After God

By Mark Feldmeir

Westminster John Knox     2023

220 pages     Spiritual Growth

Here is the publisher’s summary of the book. “The understanding of God that many Christians insist is so clear in the Bible makes faith seem like an all-or-nothing proposition. When much of that rigid projection seems in doubt, it’s not surprising that many people leave behind this take-it-or-leave-it religion. Pastor Mark Feldmeir offers an introduction to a God that many people weren’t aware existed—a mysterious, uncontainable, still-active God who loves and cares for real people with real problems. Life after God offers glimpses of the ineffable God, who can emerge when we forget what we think we’re supposed to believe about God and open us up to the mystery, wonder, and compelling love we crave.”

Last night, a young woman close to my family called me for some help. She has had 4 or 5 deaths in her family within the past year, including her mother. In the course of the conversation, she asked me, “Do you think God is mad at me?” Thank goodness I had just read Rev. Mark Feldmeir’s book because I was able to answer her with some truths, rather than some platitudes or a wake-up call to pray for forgiveness for wrongs she may have committed. Feldmeir’s truth helped me to tell her that what God was offering was strength to carry through during the times when life seemed overwhelming.

The subtitle of the book is “Finding faith when you can’t believe anymore.” Feldmeir explores the Biblical concept of God, traditional evangelical views of God, and a more cognitive awareness of the presence of a loving, trusting, and supportive God. The text is written in almost a prose poem style, or perhaps sermon style. It is very easy to read and digest. And, more importantly, it is encouraging and supportive.

It is a perfect book for those who are struggling with their faith, and those who wonder about why we are believing in a God at all. For me, it put into words the faith in a God whose arms are wrapped around me and supporting me.

Life After God is composed in a way that allows the reader to get through the book in a couple of sittings or to do as I did, read one section a night as my evening meditation. I have suggested the book for my spiritual growth book group at church, when I will read it again. I also think that it would do well as a 6-or-8 week study because there are study questions at the end of the book.

Mark Feldmeir is the pastor of St. Andrew United Methodist Church in Highland Park, Colorado. I identified so well with the book, it makes me want to visit the church sometime.

Killers of the Flower Moon

By David Grann

Vintage Books    2017

377 pages     History

The subtitle is: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. In anticipation of seeing the movie Killers of the Flower Moon this week, I decided to read the historical book of the same name by David Grann. The book is the horrific study of a time in American history when white men chose to steal the money and the lives of members of the Osage tribe of native peoples in Oklahoma.

In the early 20^th century, the Osage were pushed out of Kansas into what appeared to be sterile and unoccupied land in Oklahoma. After suffering for several years, the tribe discovered that the land they had been forced to settle was rich in oil, and the tribe became very rich—rich enough that they exposed themselves to the greed and avarice of white America.

Grann tells the stories of several families who became so wealthy that most of them had to have appointed white guardians to watch over them and determine how their money would be spent. After a few years, natives, both women and men, went missing, were found dead, or died of poisoning at alarming rates. Federal officials were called in to solve the murders, and the young J. Edgar Hoover was delegated to solve the mysteries. Thus the beginning of the FBI.

It is history told in great detail with a huge number of characters, all very well drawn. Sometimes, I felt that there were too many characters, but I kept reading and trying to keep it all straight. Tom White, a former Texas Ranger, put together an undercover team that, along with Osage help, began to “expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American History.” The reader tries to keep up with the details.

The most interesting part of the book to me was when the author David Grann tells the story of how he began to do the research for the book, including interviewing descendants of the people massacred. By doing so, he found evidence of crimes and conspiracies that were never discovered by Hoover’s men, 90 years previously. The reviewer on the Book Forum concludes, “Remarkably he succeeds. But there’s nothing triumphant or Agatha Christie-like about the end result. What we’re left with, instead, are circles of complicity that widen and widen until, terrifyingly, they grow to encompass the reader as well.”

I am very much looking forward to seeing the movie later this week. My thinking is that the many names in the book will be easier to identify when we are looking at visuals, rather than reading the names. Hoping.

Additionally, I have an unsolved question in my own life. My great aunt Helma taught American history in Tulsa Oklahoma in the 1940s and 1950s. Did she know about this part of Oklahoma history, or the part about the murders in Tulsa’s Black Wall Street? I know we will never know the answer. My guess is that both of those horrific times were never discussed and she never taught them.  

 David Grann website.

Another review of the book in the New York Times by Dave Eggers.

Normal Family

By Chrysta Bilton

Back Bay    2022

272 pages     Memoir

The subtitle, “On Truth, Love, and How I Met My 35 Siblings” created some anxiety in me. I had just watched a documentary called Taken at Birth about Dr. Thomas Hicks, who sold over 200 babies from his clinic in Mississippi in the 1950s and 1960s. I worried that this might be a similar story, but Normal Family has a totally different perspective and is a first-person account of Chrysta Bilton’s life as the daughter of a single gay woman and a paid sperm donor.

Bilton’s mother is quite a character, and Chyrsta and her sister Kaitlyn had a very unstable childhood. Debra, their mother, wanted more than anything for joy in their lives, but because of alcohol, drugs, and an off-and-on career, she was pretty much unable to provide what the girls needed. Jeffrey, their father, shows up whenever Debra pays him to come over, but what they don’t know is that he is regularly donating sperm to a fertility clinic, resulting in more than 35 half-siblings.

As the girls grow up, they come to understand their mother better and see less of their father, who has his own demons. Jeffrey, on the other hand, is beginning to realize that the other children of his sperm may want to know him and starts to reach out as Donor 150. This realization came as a result of a New York Times article about sperm donors and Donor 150. In his own way, he was proud of Chrysta and Kaitlyn, and wanted his other children to know him as well.

Bilton tells this story in such an delightful way that the reader is totally engaged with her life story, the trials she and her sister experienced, and the strength that guided them through to adulthood. At one point, Bilton even tells about how she was dating a guy, who turned out to be her brother. The Kirkus reviewer says, “Bilton’s warts-and-all depiction is sometimes hilarious, sometimes horrifying, always grounded in extraordinary forgiveness and resilience.”

Of course, this happened in the early days of sperm donation and sperm purchase. Now, DNA and ancestry websites help people find their relatives. Chrysta tells about how several of her siblings met each other, in part because of the urging of her husband, who felt that Chrysta needed to have that closure in her life. The meetup made her sister, Kaitlyn, very uncomfortable, and she only stayed for a short time. On the other hand, the meetup helped finish Chrysta's journey.

I have an acquaintance whose son was the sperm donor for a lesbian couple, and they had a beautiful little girl. Right away, the couple  asked my friend if she would fill the role of grandma to the little girl. My friend was thrilled because she doesn’t have any other grandchildren. The little group meets several times a year, and my friend and her granddaughter Zoom with each other frequently. I certainly recommended Normal Family to her. Actually, I would like to recommend it to anyone who likes memoirs. It is fascinating and a “wholly absorbing page turner.” And you thought your childhood was crazy!!!

Chrysta Bilton’s website

Holy Food

 By Christina Ward

Feral House     2023

368 pages     History/Cookbook

The subtitle for Holy Food reads: How cults, communes, and religious movements influenced what we eat.

And here is a summary from the publisher: “Religious beliefs have been the source of food "rules" since Pythagoras told his followers not to eat beans (they contain souls), Kosher and Halal rules forbade the shrimp cocktail (shellfish are scavengers, or maybe G-d just said "no"). A long-ago Pope forbade Catholics from eating meat on Fridays (fasting to atone for committed sins). Rules about eating are present in nearly every American belief, from high-control groups that ban everything except air to the infamous strawberry shortcake that sated visitors to the Oneida Community in the late 1800s. Only in the United States—where the freedom to worship the God of your choice and sometimes of your own making—could people embrace new ideas about religion. It is in this over-stirred pot of liberation, revolution, and mysticism that we discover God cares about what you put in your mouth.”

Until I looked over Holy Food, I really had not considered the food implications of religious movements and cults. I knew that we could get a really good meal in Amish Shipshewana, Indiana, and that cereal came from religious Dr. Kellogg in Battle Creek, Michigan, but I had never looked very deeply into the topic. Christina Ward truly has done an incredible job of delving into the topic of food and religion in the United States. One reviewer says, “As Ward demonstrates, by no means were all relationships wacky, coercive, or deceptive. But the centrality of food to people’s lives meant that again and again—especially in a country that was inventing itself repeatedly over centuries—new ideas about religion came with new ideas about eating and drinking.’

Of particular interest to me was the section on The Lost Tribes of Israel that included the group called the House of David in Benton Harbor, Michigan. When I first moved to Southwest Michigan, we visited the House of David several times. In the early 1900s the cult had created a resort near Lake Michigan that included an amusement park. Because of their vegetarian and kosher background, the resort created an atmosphere that was comfortable for the many vacationing Jewish people from the Chicago area. By the time we got there in the mid-1960s, the House of David was in its last days. Only a few practitioners were left and the amusement park and restaurants were closed. We walked the grounds and imagined what it must have been like in its heyday. Oh, and I do have to say that when my father was a teenager in southern Minnesota, he played a baseball game against the famous House of David baseball team.

I also enjoyed the section about the Kellogg sanitarium in Battle Creek, our neighboring community, and about how Dr. Kellogg created cereal as a way to clean out the bowels. The Seventh Day Adventists, of which Kellogg was a member, is a very strong denomination in Southwest Michigan, in part because of Kellogg’s notoriety. Berrien Springs MI, in the southwest corner of the state, is the headquarters for the Seventh Day Adventists, and they have one of the very best vegetarian grocery stores I have ever been to.

Ward includes lots of very interesting recipes from the many denominations, cults, and cultures. “It is a fascinating exploration of the American soul and table” By the way, there is even a recipe for Funeral Potatoes.

The publisher sent me this amazing book, and I discovered that I had another book by Christina Ward on my Kindle, American Advertising Cookbooks. I've got to look at that book next. 

Sure, I'll Join Your Cult

 By Maria Bamford

Gallery     2023

288 pages     Memoir

It was the title Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult that really caught my attention when the advanced readers copy was offered to me by the publisher. I had been going down a cult rabbit hole with books and TV shows, and I thought Bamford’s book would fit right in.

First, I am sorry to say that I had no idea who the author was because of my lack of familiarity with stand-up comedy. I also had no idea what her interpretation of the word “cult” would be, but I dove into the book and read and laughed my way through it. The book hit home with me on many levels.

I loved her understanding of cults. I had never looked at cults the way she did. She used the term to describe Overeaters Anonymous and other 12-step programs, Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People and even to describe Suzuki violin training. Once she described these programs, I bought into her idea that these are very cult-like although non-religious operations. I completely understood her predilection for joining these organizations to help her out of whatever mental state she was in—and at the same time to participate in something, even when she’s not very good at it.

The Washington Post reviewer says that the book becomes a “portal directly into Bamford’s mind.” The review also suggests that there is an “authenticity to her words that elevates them into something beyond the category of comedy memoir.” The reader is able to identify with her even as we are laughing at her pain and misfortune—because of the very clever way she presents her life to the reader. Each chapter closes with a crazy recipe (not real recipes), and I found myself looking forward to these recipes because they tied the entire chapter together.

I particularly appreciated her honesty about her mental health issues—even though they are told with self-deprecating humor. She mentions in the introduction: “I do not know what I’m talking about. And full disclaimer: cults, books, books about cults, and comedy are no replacement for meds. Medicine is the best medicine.”

I listened to the first third of the book on a car trip and then read the rest on my Kindle. I recommend that you listen if you can. The audio version of the book is extremely funny because it is read by the author, and she has a quirky and wonderful way of emphasizing words, sentences, and even whole paragraphs that makes listening a fantastic experience.

I watched several YouTube videos of Bamford’s comedy and a couple episodes of her Netflix series, Lady Dynamite. So, I was really surprised when I read that she had grown up in Duluth, Minnesota, my hometown. She had even gone to the same elementary school my siblings and I had attended. More than that, her mother had belonged to the same women’s organization that my mother had belonged to and her father had been active in the community theater—just like my dad.

More of the Washington Post review: “Some of her misadventures—among them, being committed to a psych ward and accidentally killing a beloved pug — feel like anything but laughing matters. But it’s a testament to Bamford that she’s able to fill these pages with stories that are relatable and consistently hilarious, even when they’re harrowing … This material, and the quirks of its presentation, make the memoir feel like a 270-some-page portal directly into Bamford’s mind. That notion would probably be terrifying to Bamford, who worries frequently on the page that she may be coming across as a massive narcissist. But there’s an authenticity to her words that elevates them into something beyond the category of comedy memoir.”

Recommended

Small Things Like These

 By Claire Keegan

Faber     2022

110 pages     Literary

When I was a girl in the 1960s, I knew a couple of girls who disappeared from school for several months, only to return after “visiting some relatives” or “living with Grandma and Grandpa.” Claire Keegan explores this all-too-common occurrence in her 2022 Booker Prize-nominated novella, Small Things Like These. And just like in 1960s Minnesota, in 1980s Ireland, these things are not talked about and remain a secret.

Small Things Like These is so intricately woven in only 110 pages, that I realized after I read it the first time that I was missing something. So I read it again, and my heart broke at the integrity of Bill Furlong, an almost 40-year-old man who owns the village coal and lumber company. Bill is married and the father of five daughters. He is a stalwart, well-respected  member of the community. He goes to mass every week and his daughters go to school and get music training at the school run by the local nuns. One day he makes a discovery that makes him confront both his past and the complicit silence of his community—a community completely controlled by the Catholic Church.

Christmas plays a role in the story line. In one delightful scene, Furlong’s children all write letters to Santa with their lists of presents. Bill and his wife Eileen read the letters after the children go to bed, choose the presents they can afford from the list, and then burn the letters in the fireplace. We are made completely aware of the unity and the love within this family.

Yet Furlong yearns for more. This paragraph is profound in the way he thinks about life. “Always it was the same, Furlong thought; always they carried mechanically on without pause, to the next job at hand. What would life be like, he wondered, if they were given time to think and reflect over things? Might their lives be different or much the same—or would they just lose the run of themselves?”

Claire Keegan is one of Ireland’s most prominent authors, and this was the first book I had read written by her. It is brilliant in the concept as well as in the composition. I am absolutely amazed at her ability to say so much in so few words. We understand Bill Furlong; we understand his community; and we understand the secret the community is holding. I was overwhelmed.

Two awesome reviews of her book.  New York Times and NPR.

A Darker Shade of Noir

Edited by Joyce Carol Oates

Akashic Books     2023

266 pages     Noir/Horror

Joyce Carol Oates has written a remarkable introduction to A Darker Shade of Noir, Akashic Books’ newest addition to their collections of Noir fiction. It really tells you everything you need to know about the book and its outstanding group of women authors, each of whom contributed a story to the collection, including Oates, Margaret Atwood, Tananarive Due, and Megan Abbott—authors that I knew about and had read before. The introduction can be found here.

 The stories in the collection tell every type of modern versions of female-related horror similar to the mythological figures whose names we know, such as Medusa, or the Salem witches. Each of the stories considers one type of female horror. For example, “Frank Jones” by Aimee Bender really captures your attention when she tells the story of a young woman with skin tags that she saves to horrifying results. The woman in the next story by Tananarive Due can’t stop dancing. She has been dancing ever since her grandmother died.

I think most women understand the idea of body horror in its more basic forms, as well as the history of the subjugation of women through the centuries. Joyce Carol Oates addresses this superbly in the written diary of a woman in a mental asylum in the mid-1800s. And, of course, there is the accounting by Margaret Atwood of a snail that invades a woman’s skull, her soul, and her psyche. Way creepy!

But I really got spooked by Megan Abbott’s story about a haunted house in Penny’s neighborhood. Apparently the doctor who owned the house killed his wife and children many years before. Through the years, neighborhood children told the story of the killing and the haunting. Young Penny decides to investigate one night to disastrous results. I remembered a big deserted house on the river in the small Minnesota town I lived in as a child. The really brave kids would run up the steps and knock on the door on Halloween. One Halloween,  I thought I saw a light in one of the upstairs rooms, and everyone ran out of that yard as fast as we could! I had a bad dream the night I read Abbott’s story!

I could go on and on. These are marvelous stories that touched a real nerve—in both my body and my mind. Highly recommended.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Saving Myles

By Carl Vonderau

Oceanview     2023

33 pages     Thriller

It is every parent’s worst nightmare: Wade and Fiona Bosworth are shocked to find that their 18-year-old son, Myles,  is using drugs and may even be selling them.  They had already spent a huge amount of money at a drug-rehab program at the Hidden Road Academy in Utah, and now, he seems to have stooped even lower. The stress has caused his parents to separate, and the carefully crafted training Myles has been under has crashed. He has a new girlfriend, and together they cross the border to Tijuana to buy drugs to sell.

Myles is kidnapped by a drug cartel, and the kidnappers are asking a huge amount of ransom. Although Wade is a banker, he does not have the resources to meet the ransom demands until Fiona’s boss at the nonprofit she works for says he can help with the ransom. Everything in all of their lives falls apart at the moment.

The first half of Saving Myles is very much concerned with Myles’ welfare—his training at the Academy, his rebellion, his kidnapping, and the ways his parents negotiate to pay the ransom with help from Andre, Fiona’s boss. It is then that Wade’s banker training kicks in. We learn more than we might want to learn about real estate bankers, the complexities of banking, and possible collusion with rich Mexican criminals. Everything bogs down for a while, and then in the last quarter of the book, we reach a satisfactory conclusion on all fronts.

It is obvious that Vonderau knows a lot about banking, because, of course, his first career was as a banker. I have often chuckled about how many thriller authors are former lawyers, and now we have a banker. The kind of business he does is very much like the kind of business my husband did, real estate investment. I understood the complexities that Wade is negotiating as he works to find the money to pay the kidnappers, but I could only imagine what the reader who knows nothing about this type of finance is thinking.  Luckily, readers are so concerned about saving Myles that they can just read through the morass of business dealings.

In other words, the worry about Myles supersedes the complexities of the narrative. One reviewer says, “Carl Vonderau masterfully weaves a complex and twisted narrative, exploring the depths of a parent’s love when faced with seemingly unfathomable criminal situations, intrigue, suspense and tension.”

I don’t think that I would have found Saving Myles on my own, but it came to me from the publisher. The cover and description intrigued me, and the tension of the plot kept me reading. I think you will as well.

Carl Vonderau website.

The Cabin

 By Landon Beach

Landon Beach Books     2019

327 pages       Thriller

On we go to Lake Ontario and another book by Landon Beach, part of his Great Lakes Saga series of books. While Lake Huron is a major part of Huron Breeze, which I read last week, Lake Ontario is just a minor player in The Cabin. Here is the summary.

“A potential worldwide catastrophe looms large, while CIA Officer Jennifer Lear waits in a Berlin café to meet with her agent who has critical information regarding the chilling emerging threat. But the agent is late, and the meeting turns into a frantic struggle to survive, generating many questions about how it all could have gone so wrong--the first being: Who exactly is Jennifer Lear?

Six months later, Iggi and Maria Hilliard arrive at their secluded log cabin on the southern shore of Lake Ontario to celebrate the 4th of July with two friends. One is a co-worker of Maria's, Haley Girard, who is struggling with the idea of turning thirty and just looking for a place to relax away from Rochester. The other guest is recently divorced Detroit Detective Cal Ripley, a man who has been on the front lines since 9/11 and needs time away from his job and Detroit.

The plan is to relax, reflect on life, and reconnect. Maria is also hoping that Haley and Cal find some chemistry. However, as the weekend unfolds, it becomes clear that not everyone in the cabin is who they say they are.”

One of the major attractions of the book are the delightful main characters, who are all in their early 30s and are trying to make sense of adulthood. Maria, a teacher, is trying to connect her friend and fellow teacher, Haley, with Cal, who she knows from her youth. Iggi, a sports journalist, is not particularly eager to spend the weekend with people he doesn’t know, but as the weekend wears on, and the men kayak and swim, they realize that they have more in common than they anticipated.

The plot is intense, and the reader gets so caught up in the unfolding espionage that it is very difficult to turn out the lights and go to sleep. I guess that I was expecting The Cabin to be more like Huron Breeze as a mystery set on a beach, but instead the beach is only part of the setting. The story spends time in Detroit, Berlin, Vietnam, New York City, and Langley Virginia.  Be sure to read the title of each chapter, because the time, the year, and setting changes in every chapter, and reading each title carefully will eliminate confusion that may arise.

Much of the story takes place in the early 2000s, with 9/11 still very present in everyone’s minds. There is quite a lot of political discussion—some of it quite intense. Frankly, I found this to be the one drawback to the novel. There is no denying, however, that the action and suspense overrides the politics.

Landon Beach has had an interesting career as an educator—and now a novelist. I love that he has based most of his novels around the Great Lakes. He was interviewed by The Real Book Spy, Ryan Steck, who by the way is a Kalamazoo writer and reviewer. Steck has reviewed most of Landon Beach’s books. Tune in to his great interview podcasts.

Landon Beach website. Here is what he has to say about his Great Lakes Saga, of which The Cabin is the Lake Ontario setting. “I have always thought that the Great Lakes region, beautiful and rich with history, would provide the perfect place to set stories. My approach for the 5-book saga is to tell one story set on or around each Great Lake. Don’t let the different genres dissuade you. The books are all summer reads full of drama, tension, betrayal, murder, lust, romance, mystery, and suspense.”

So now, my summer reading journey is complete. I have re-read The Long Shining Water (Lake Superior), Famous in a Small Town and Tom Lake (Lake Michigan), Huron Breeze (Lake Huron), Cleveland Noir (Lake Erie) and The Cabin (Lake Ontario). Where shall I go next?

Tom Lake

By Ann Patchett

Harper     2023

320 pages     Literary

And the next book on my tour of the Great Lakes takes us back to Lake Michigan. Tom Lake by
Ann Patchett is based in a cherry farm near Traverse City, Michigan. I read the book during Michigan cherry season, and loved the book as much as I loved this season’s cherries.

The book begins when young Lara is registering people who are auditioning for roles in a local production of the classic play, Our Town. She becomes so disgusted with the quality of the actors, that she decides to audition for the part of Emily herself.

Because of her classic portrayal of Emily, a few years later, she is called by the area’s summer stock theater, Tom Lake, to take over the role of Emily when the actress playing the role leaves. There she meets and has a brief affair with Peter Duke, a young actor who went on to become a famous movie and television actor.

Fast forward more than 20 years to 2020. Lara farms a cherry orchard near Traverse City with her husband Joe. Joe inherited the farm and orchard from his aunt and uncle after he and Lara met at the Tom Lake Theater. It is the pandemic summer, and Lara and Joe’s three daughters have returned home. All five of them are picking cherries, because it is too difficult to find workers due to the pandemic.

Over the course of the summer, the girls ask their mother to tell them the story of her summer at Tom Lake, and she, very poignantly, recalls that magical summer in her life. By listening to her stories, the daughters come into a realization of who they are and what they want their lives to be.

The Washington Post reviewer says, “Tom Lake is about romantic love, marital love, and maternal love, but also the love of animals, the love of stories, love of the land and trees and the tiny, red, cordiform object that is a cherry.”

Tom Lake fit my summer perfectly. I had been having cherry spitting contests on the Lake Michigan beachfront with my grandchildren, and telling lots of stories of my childhood. Then a group of family went to see The Wizard of Oz at our local summer stock theater, The Augusta Barn Theater, and I was able to transfer what I saw that night to what Tom Lake theater must have been like. And while I was absorbing Patchett’s writing, I was visiting with my siblings, and we were telling stories of our childhood.

That is the beauty of Patchett’s writing. She elicits great respect for her characters, particularly Lara. She understands her life well—the adventures of the theater and the affair with a soon to be famous actor, the choice to marry a cherry farmer, and the pandemic that brought her family all together. Patchett loves her characters and hence we love them as well.

The New Yorker had a wonderful review of Tom Lake in their August 7 edition, and the Shelf Awareness website named it one of the best books for the week of August 18. The reviewer neatly summed up the book. “In many ways, Patchett’s stunning novel is a story of opportunity missed or not taken; her daughter’s unspoken questions hang between them. ‘Are you sorry? Don’t you wish?’ Tom Lake, though, is not a novel of regret but rather one of clarity, offering a tale of gratitude borne of perspective and experience, a life lived in the present—even as it is shaped by the past.”

Huron Breeze

By Landon Beach

Kindle Edition    2021

381 pages     Mystery

Huron Breeze is the first book in the Sunrise-Side series of books by Landon Beach. Books 1 and 2 are available; book 3 will be available at the end of this month, and book 4 available at the end of 2023. Huron Breeze is, of course, located on the shoreline of Lake Huron, on the “thumb” of Michigan. Here is the plotline.

Ten years ago, Riley Cannon (a legendary author) produced three of the bestselling thrillers of all time. Then, she up and vanished, leaving the last three books of the saga not finished and producing the largest mystery in all of publishing.
Now, one decade later, there’s word from her mega-agent, the powerful and glamorous Topaz Kennedy, that there’s a new Cannon novel all but finished. However, Topaz knows the actual truth: Riley Cannon’s not even begun writing it yet. With the clock ticking down toward the publication date, there are desperate measures are needed.

At the same time, Kaj Reynard is in the sunrise-side town of Hampstead, Michigan, and emerges from Lake Huron on a cool night in June and falls face down onto the beach right next to a fading bonfire with a knife sticking out of his back. Who would murder him? And why?

That’s where veteran Hampstead PI Obediah Ben-David, a guy that has never taken on a case which he couldn’t solve, comes in. However this is a whole different sort of mystery. The one piece of evidence is the knife, which doesn’t have any prints on it. Not a soul saw or heard a boat that night, and the woman sitting next to her bonfire didn’t see anybody else in the water. It’s almost as though the deep blue waters of Lake Huron murdered Kaj Reynard, and the Huron breezes blew him up to the shore.
With Hampstead now in jeopardy of losing its summer revenue from vacationers that are chilled to their bones about a killer on the loose. Ben-David takes an apprentice on, some computer coder, named Rachel Roberts, who lives just down the beach from where Kaj came ashore. Bored by her solitary existence spent behind a screen all day, she believes becoming a PI would be a welcome sea change in her life. However neither of them could possibly foresee the web of treachery, lies, and danger that they’ll encounter.

For when the summer Huron breezes show up, the inhibitions vanish, the blood boils, and nobody’s safe.

I especially enjoyed following the crime and its solution through the eyes of Rachel Roberts. She needs a plot for her next novel, and following Ben-David as he pursues the killer is like a dream come true for her. At the same time, Ben-David enjoys helping teach Rachel detective skills. Does he know that she has a pen name and a series of novels and movies in her past? Does he understand that she is searching for a plot, rather than a new career as a detective? I am anxious to read the rest of the series to see what she decides to do with her life.Beach is a very clever, creative writer and has created a propulsive can’t stop reading plot. He said in an interview with the Real Book Spy when he wrote Huron Breeze, he intended it to be a stand-alone mystery, but an audience of readers convinced him that he had the beginnings of a series featuring Rachel Roberts and based on the Lake Huron coastline.

My own summer challenge is to read books based in the Great Lakes region. I read Famous in a Small Town which takes place on the shore of Lake Michigan, Cleveland Noir where several of the stories take place on Cleveland’s Lake Erie beachfront, and now Huron Breeze, taking place on Lake Huron. In past years, I read a couple of books based on Lake Superior, my favorite of which was The Long Shining Water, and now I need to find one based in Lake Ontario. 

 
Hope you have as much fun with Huron Breeze as I did.

Cleveland Noir

Edited by Michael Ruhlman and Miesha Wilson Headen

Akashic Books     2023

288 pages     Noir

When Akashic sent me Cleveland Noir to review, I noticed immediately that I had read books by Paula McLain and Thrity Umriger, both of whom had stories in this iteration of the noir genre and the great series that Akashic publishes. The book was published this week and is very much worth a read.

Apparently the city of Cleveland has had it’s share of real life noir, including Eliot Ness, who worked for a while as Cleveland’s Director of Public Safety, the disappearance of Beverly Potts that has been an unsolved crime for the last 60 years, and the murder of Marilyn Sheppard, which resulted in her husband Dr. Sam Sheppard being charged and subsequently acquitted for her murder. All of these brought crime in Cleveland to the nation’s attention.

The stories in Cleveland Noir have a lot going for them. Each story oozes atmosphere and compelling danger. The editors suggest: “ It’s this mix of the wealthy and the working class that makes the city—an urban center of brick and girders surrounded by verdant suburbs—a perfect backdrop for lawlessness.” They also suggest that these stories are love letters to their city and suburbs. I must also note that several of the stories take place or mention the lake and the beach, which, of course, is Lake Erie.

The first story in the book is by Paula McLain. In that story, two teenagers  enter into a “business” of robbing drunk people of their property, credit cards, whatever. My favorite sentence in the story is “We had accidentally landed on a planet where the air was to thin for guilt to populate.” Says a lot, doesn’t it!

I had to look up the facts related to Susan Petrone’s story, “The Silent Partner.” The story retells the story of Ray Chapman, a Cleveland Indians player who was killed by a pitch—the only major league player to ever die from an injury received during a major league game. Fifty years later, a reporter is exploring the death for an anniversary story and comes across information that seems to indicate that the incident wasn’t an accident. I’ll leave you to guess what happened as a result.

And the stories go on and on. I really enjoyed Cleveland Noir. Look up the Akashic Noir series of more than 100 books. If you are going on a trip, use the list as a guide to the underbelly of whichever city you are going to visit. You won’t be wasting your time, and you can find whatever crimes you might enjoy to explore.

Zero Days

 

By Ruth Ware

Gallery Books     2023

368 pages      Thriller 

What a page-turning, breathless, romp Zero Days is! Although I figured out fairly early who the villain was, I just kept reading and reading and reading until I could breathe again!

Jacintha, or Jack as she is known, certainly has the most unusual career I have ever read about. She is the partner, with her husband, Gabe, in a company that tests security systems. She does the dirty work in the middle of the night penetrating on site a company’s cybersecurity, while Gabe manages the computer work at his desk. After one very hazardous night where she is picked up by the police, she returns home to find Gabe dead with his throat slit.

Jack is absolutely grief stricken, but when she realizes that the police consider her the prime suspect, she uses her best skillset to escape from the police station. Injured and full of grief, with a phone that keeps alerting people to her whereabouts, Jack sets out to pursue her leads and to try to piece together her husband’s murder. The only person she trusts is her sister, Helena, but even Hel’s phone and house may be compromised by the police.

For eight days, Jack is on the run, and the reader is running right along with her. The Booklist reviewer calls her a “very original and very real protagonist.” I was fascinated by everything Jack knew how to do to get into and out of all the places she was exploring. She was seriously injured climbing out of one building, but she continues to persist. Using several burner phones and a variety of tools she continued to solve every problem that came her way. “Solve the next problem. And then the next one after that. Keep putting one foot in front of the other. Until you can’t walk any further.” And just when the reader thinks that she will finally be captured, she escapes yet again.

When I finally had some time to reflect on my feelings about the book, I had to be impressed in two ways. I loved the protagonist that Ware created. Although she is headstrong, she has an amazing will to succeed and persist. And frankly, she is incredibly smart. And so is the author Ruth Ware. I can only imagine how much research Ware had to put into the cyber-verse and cyber crime to be able to put this novel together.

Oh my gosh, I was looking up reviews of the book, and I discovered that Zero Days has a definition beyond the number of days Jack had to solve the crime that killed Gabe. According to the Kaspersky website, zero-day is a broad term that describes recently discovered security vulnerabilities that hackers can use to attack systems. The developer just has “zero days” to fix the system. Whoo! That gives the book’s title a much deeper meaning, and gives me even more to admire Ruth Ware for!   

Don’t get too worried about not understanding the terminology in the book. The plot moves so quickly and Jack is so amazing, the reader is able to navigate the cyber terminology and run right along with Jack.

Loved this book!

Famous in a Small Town

 By Viola Shipman

Graydon House     2023

352 pages     Fiction

Just what I needed—a Lake Michigan beach read while I was at a Lake Michigan beach! Of course I know Viola Shipman (Wade Rouse) and her/his books. This is my fourth Viola Shipman Lake Michigan novel, and I have loved them all. Famous in a Small Town was especially fun to read because I was at our cottage while I was reading it and it is cherry season, one of the main details of the novel.

Not only is the novel a look at cherries and summer at Lake Michigan, but also a very introspective look at two women facing crossroads in their lives. Mary is 80 and the owner of a small village general store and post office. Her main call to fame is that she won a cherry-spitting contest when she was 15 years old. Her life has had a lot of ups and downs, but she has carried on the ownership tradition of the Very Cherry General Store for her entire adult life. She doesn’t know who will take over the business when she can no longer manage it.

Becky Thatcher (yes, that is her real name) is also at a crossroads. She is the asst. principal at an elementary school in St. Louis MO and has just ended a long term relationship. She and her best friend decide to come up to Michigan to visit the vacation spot of Becky’s childhood, Good Hart MI. Mary and Becky meet and realize that they have had similar visions of the future. Mary believing that a women will come to take over her store and her legacy, and Becky believing that something will happen to make her feel alive again.

Of course there is a plot, but as in all Shipman novels, the primary focus of the novel is the character study and the relationships between the main characters. I connected particularly with Mary, of course, since I have just had my 80^th birthday, but I also connected with Becky because I had a similar career in education.

Because I was reading Famous in a Small Town at the Lake Michigan beach during cherry season, I bought several quarts of cherries at the local Pentwater farmer’s market. I engaged in a bunch of cherry spitting contests with my grandchildren, and I was always beaten by my 10-year-old grandson, Davick. Perhaps he better go up to Good Hart and compete in the spitting contest next summer.

I had to laugh at one quote early in the book. Becky and her friend are watching some teenagers behaving badly. Becky quips: “Think teenagers are bad? You should run into a middle-school girl on a bad day.” Ahh—I had just spent two weeks with two middle-school girls. How well I knew!

My favorite description came fairly early in the book. Mary muses about Lake Michigan: “When you stand here and look out onto the lake with the water this still, it looks as if God has finger-painted the entire world in blue and gold stripes.”

Some would say that there is much too many musings and philosophical ponderings in the book and not enough plot, but I found most of it enlightening and sometimes consoling. Perhaps it was because I was sitting in a spot much like the spot Mary and Becky were viewing in Good Hart, and I was feeling many of the same things.

You do need to know if you are not from Michigan that there is a tiny village named Good Hart on the west coast of lower Michigan. It is situated in the Tunnel of Trees which plays a big role in the novel. I was surprised to see on the map that Good Hart has a general store much like the one in the novel. Shipman did some good research.

My advice to you would be to read Famous in a Small Town on the beach somewhere. You will absorb it the same way I did.

Here are my reviews of the other Viola Shipman books I have read: The Summer Cottage, The Clover Girls, and The Secret of Snow.  Wade Rouse aka Viola Shipman has also written several memoirs. I have one from the publisher that I haven’t gotten to yet. I’ll save it for another week.

Wade Rouse website. Viola Shipman website.

The Soul of an Octopus

 By Sy Montgomery

Atria     2016

272 pages     Zoology

I was in the middle of reading The Soul of an Octopus when my grandson and I arrived and the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. The aquarium is a bit daunting to visit since there is no paper map or paper list of aquatic life to be found. So, I asked the nearest employee where we could find the octopuses. (By the way, the plural of octopus is indeed, octopuses. Learned that in the book.) She said that they only had one, but she took me to the tank where the octopus hung in the front corner where we could see its entire body. I was so excited that I read the rest of the book with enthusiasm.

And what an amazing discussion we had at book group. We all admitted that nature books would not be our first choice of genres, but The Soul of an Octopus was so brilliantly written that we took the deep dive into it and loved every minute.

Sy Montgomery is a naturalist and a nature writer. She has written several books about animals, including pigs, hummingbirds, turtles, tigers, and hawks. Many of her books are for children as well as adults, and she has traveled around the world exploring and discovering the richness of the animal world.

Most of The Soul of an Octopus takes place at the New England Aquarium in Boston, where Montgomery first was exposed to an octopus, and she basically fell in love with these strange, highly-intelligent shape-shifters. Montgomery documents her experiences with several inhabitants of the aquarium, and also shares the relationships she creates with the other volunteers at the aquarium. We learn a lot about those people who love the animals of the aquarium as much as she does.

One of the most interesting chapters in the book concerns Montgomery learning to deep sea dive. It is not an easy process for her, but reading about it is extraordinary. Here is what she says: “ At last, in the warm embrace of the sea, breathing underwater, surrounded by the octopus’s liquid world, my breath rising in silver bubbles like a song of praise; here I am.”   

I also watched the documentary, My Octopus Teacher, which is on Netflix. It won the Oscar for best documentary in 2020, and it compliments the book completely.

The Soul of an Octopus was a finalist for the National Book Award, and is a terrific read. I heartily recommend it.