The Hidden Child

by Camilla Lӓckberg

Pegasus     2014

400 pages     Fiction

The Hidden Child is another of Lӓckberg's Fjallbacka mysteries featuring Erika, the author, and Patrik, the police detective. This time, however, Patrik is on paternity leave from the police department with full care of their daughter Maja while Erika writes a novel. The story line extends beyond Erika and Patrik with Lӓckberg exploring the Nazi connections in Sweden and Norway during World War II, and the neo-Nazi movement in Sweden currently.

Erika, who is ostensibly writing a novel, is in actuality using her time to explore her mother's youth. Erika's mother has always been an enigma to her, and she is hoping to gain some understanding by reading her teenage diaries, which were written in 1944 and 1945. Although Fjallbacka is a small town, Erika had never met her mother's childhood friends, and she never could understand her mother's aloofness and lack of affection for her children. Among her mother's effects, she finds a Nazi war medal and this leads her on a search for a reason why her mother would have such a medal. Then, quite abruptly, two of her mother's childhood friends are found murdered, and Erika's search becomes intensified.

The police characters are much the same as in the previous Fjallbacka mysteries—including the police superintendent, Mallberg, one of my favorite characters in this series. In this episode, he has found love, has become tolerant of the lesbian detective Paula and her partner (who are expecting a baby by the way) and has been adopted by a stray dog. The good humored acceptance of Mallberg by the other detectives adds some lightness to the otherwise dark novel.

The story line goes back and forth between the search for the murderer and the scene in Fjallbacka in 1944-1945 when Erika's mother was a teenager. One reviewer says that Lӓckberg uses "steely skill" in handling the time and generation changes. Like the rest of the books in the series, Lӓckberg explores family secrets—those things that never get talked about but remain just under the surface of family life. 

There may be a few too many characters to keep everyone straight. I had particular trouble keeping Erika's sister's family organized in my brain. I'm not sure they even need to be in the book, unless Lӓckberg has a plan for them in the next novel. I remember in a review of a past Lӓckberg novel that the reviewer suggested keeping a character list to keep all the characters straight.

Three old men are major characters in The Hidden Child; all of their lives changed by World War II—Erik, a historian specializing in World War II, Axel who ran an organization that tracked down and prosecuted Nazis, and Frans, who became a neo-Nazi in adulthood. Now in their late 70s they are still dealing with the consequences of their actions in the 1940s. Axel asks Frans, "How did things turn out this way?" Frans replies, "That's what I'm trying to tell you. It doesn't matter how things turned out this way. It is what it is. And all we can do is try to make changes, to survive. Not to look back, not to wallow in regret or speculation as to how things might have been. . .You mustn't look back. What's done is done. The past is the past. There is no such thing as regret." Axel responds: "That's where you're wrong, Frans. That's where you're very wrong." Regret permeates the novel. 

My book club recently read a novella written by John Steinbeck about the Nazi invasion of Norway, The Moon is Down. It was a perfect companion novel to The Hidden Child.

My only complaint about The Hidden Child is the title. It gives away an important detail of the novel that the reader keeps waiting and waiting to be revealed. The novel was published in Swedish several years ago, and was made into a Swedish movie. It has just now been released in English. I have written about two other Lӓckberg novels, The Ice Princess and The Preacher. While all three are part of a series they don't need to be read in order. I enjoyed them all.

Camilla Lӓckberg website: http://www.camillalackberg.com/

An Altar in the World

by Barbara Brown Taylor

Harper One  2010

240 pages     Spiritual

An Altar in the World is a book about spiritual practices, but not the sort you find in esoteric spirituality. Taylor discusses the spiritual practices of the everyday. Taylor is a woman of great wisdom; her life has made many twists and turns, but she remains true to her Christian roots. A pastor once asked her to preach on what was "saving her life" now. She says: "What is saving my life now is the conviction that there is no spiritual treasure to be found apart from the bodily experiences of human life on earth. My life depends on engaging the most ordinary physical activities with the most exquisite attention I can give them. . . What is saving my life now is becoming more fully human, trusting that there is no way to God apart from real life in the real world." She claims no distinction between the secular and the sacred—every moment is a sacred moment to Taylor.

In twelve chapters, she focuses on sacred practices that requires a body as well as a soul. She discusses living with purpose, paying attention and being present to God, encountering others, feeling pain, and practicing Sabbath. This practice she calls "the practice of saying no." This chapter was especially meaningful to me as I attempt to disengage myself from activities that wear me out rather than build me up. This is a project that I am not very good at, but Taylor says that in our culture, not too many people are very good at it because "being busy is how our culture measures worth." So, therefore, I am consciously practicing Sabbath frequently.

Yesterday, we were supposed to have been driving to visit a son and family in West Virginia, but at the last minute the trip was called off. My husband and I declared it a day of Sabbath. We had already said no to everything that we were committed to doing, so we had a delightfully free day. We ate lunch and dinner out; we went looking for a new couch; we watched a movie; we took naps, and drank wine. And we woke up this morning refreshed. We celebrated a Sabbath, even though it was Friday.

Another practice I appreciated was the practice of valuing the people around you and finding the face of God in each person. When I was driving my friend home yesterday, we came upon the garbage truck in her neighborhood. She said, "You see that garbage man! He is the most pleasant fellow. He knows the names of each family, and speaks to everyone. He even knows our dog's name." Now, here is a person who recognizes the worth of all the people around him. And my friend recognized the worth as well, because she acknowledges his worth as a human being and not just as her garbage man. Taylor says that Jesus was the prime example of a person who appreciated those around him and acknowledged their worth. 

For the past six months, a group I belong to have been studying ancient spiritual practices using a book by Ruth Haley Barton called Sacred Rhythms. Taylor's approach is more earthy and earthly, but the message is the same. Spiritual growth comes from living life true to yourself, which also makes your life true to God.

Time Magazine named Taylor one of 2014's 100 most influential people, and then the very next week (April 28) she appeared on the cover with a review of her new book Learning to Walk in the Dark. The magazine calls her "a centering voice in the wilderness." She is the author of 13 books. I think I need to read them all.

The Time Magazine review of Learning to Walk in the Dark. http://time.com/magazine/us/66258/april-28th-2014-vol-183-no-16-u-s/

Barbara Brown Taylor's website: http://www.barbarabrowntaylor.com

Monday Monday

by Elizabeth Crook

Farrar, Straus and Giroux  2014

340 pages     Fiction

The Shortlist

One of the women with whom I spent a weekend retreat this past week discussed how she is continually haunted with memories of her childhood in Germany during the final years of World War II, and how she is unable to view life except through the lens of the war. 

For many of us, there are defining moments when our lives change forever—for good or ill—and, like my friend, we view the rest of our lives through the lens of that experience. For the characters in the book Monday, Monday by Elizabeth Crook, the event that shaped the rest of their lives was the August 1, 1966 shooting at the University of Texas. The book begins with the first shots ringing out from the bell tower and it ends 40 years later when one of the victims, Shelly, is able to go up into the

tower and look down to the place where she lay after being shot and see how the trajectory of her life came from that moment.

There have been far too many mass shootings, and the shooting that fateful day in Austin Texas seems to have been the first. It is an intriguing and appropriate place to begin a novel about the life effects of trauma. Like most sagas, Monday Monday is the story of the twists and turns in the lives of three characters who were there at that day. The story is fascinating, the characters are well drawn, and the plot line is plausible. Even more, the book begins with tragedy, but ends with hope.

The reviewer in the Book Page review says: "... what makes this book so compelling is the open and tender way each character is honestly but lovingly portrayed. Monday, Monday is a wonderful book that will make you cry, but also uplift you."

In an interview, Crook says that she had begun a far different novel, but an article about the shooter, Charles Whitman, in the Texas Monthly changed her perspective, and the mother in the novel she was writing suddenly became the character, Shelly, crossing the mall at the University of Texas on a sunny summer afternoon. The entire focus of her book changed in that instant. She said that the value of what she was writing became all the more important with the escalation of school shootings in recent years. It is a valuable and insightful book,well worth reading.

The review and interview in The Rivard Report: http://therivardreport.com/book-review-monday-monday-by-elizabeth-crook/

The review in Book Page website: http://bookpage.com/reviews/16572-elizabeth-crook-monday-monday#.U2gEe1cShqM

Elizabeth Crook's website: http://www.elizabethcrookbooks.com/

Autumn in Carthage

by Christopher Zenos

CreateSpace     2014

319 pages     Fiction

The Shortlist

A strange novel of time travel, madness, and love. Nathan Price is a professor at the University of Chicago. A friend named Jamie has disappeared, and no one has heard from him. Strangely Nathan finds his name in a letter from the time of the Salem Witch Trials. Connected with that is the mention of a small town in Wisconsin named Carthage. Nathan, with an available sabbatical, decides to go to Carthage and see if he can root out the mystery and find Jamie. In Carthage, however, nothing is as it seems and the mystery, the time travel, the madness and the love all converge to change his life forever.

Autumn in Carthage takes some getting used to. It is a book you haven't read before. It wavers between the trite and the profound. Sometimes the reader just feels lost in the words and the imagery, but there is enough plot that the reader just keeps reading, trying to figure it all out. Sometimes the reader feels that there is too much going on with too many characters, back stories, and mental illness, but again, the reader just keeps reading, trying to figure it all out.

The fun part of the book for me was knowing exactly where Nathan was in Chicago, since my son and his family spent 6 years a couple of blocks from the University of Chicago campus. I also know northern Wisconsin well, so it was fun to read about it, although I've never been to Carthage, and I would guess that most Wisconsinites haven't been there either.

It's worth a try for readers who like mysteries, time travel, and love stories. 

One last word: Christopher Zenos is a pseudonym. He has written for several blogs explaining himself and his book. I took his explanation from Sheila Deeth's blog.

"Autumn in Carthage emerged from two sets of interests. First, since I’m a hopeless romantic, it is very much a love story. Well, more than one, in point of fact. Both the male and female protagonists are people with enormous burdens, broken by life. The entire plot revolves around their journey to each other, and the sanctuary they have the potential to build together.

Second, this book was written at the intersection of “hard” SciFi and historical romance. So…what does that mean? Well, it takes both an analytic and a descriptive approach to humanity’s trajectory. The descriptive part came easily. I’ve always been a history buff—playing truant from work to sink into online material on the emergence of social structure in Neolithic Göbekli Tepe, the Late Bronze Age Collapse due to the arrival of the Sea Peoples, or the exploits of the Hapsburg tercios. Much of the action, then, occurs against the backdrop of Colonial America and King William’s War, itself part of the worldwide struggle against the Sun King. The conflict strongly influenced the emergence of the colonies that were to become America, as well as that of French Canada. On a larger scale, it was a time of cataclysmic change, when the old religious and civic orders were giving way to a more “rational” one, and unprecedented links were being forged between Europe and the civilizations of Asia and Africa. The Salem Witch Trials—the microcosm within which the historical action occurs—unfolded within that macrocosm, a fact that is often overlooked. 

But while these descriptive parts coalesce into subplots, the analytic theme pervades the narrative. Simply put, the book is a vehicle to explore the social nature of time. And this is where “hard” SciFi comes in—specifically, the classic works of Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert. I remember the first time I read Dune—the original, the classic, not the shallower works that followed. There’s this crucial scene early in the novel where young Paul Atreides, the future Mentat Emperor, lost in the unforgiving deserts of Arrakis, first glimpses time itself—the probabilistic course of human events—and understands his role in its evolution. The conception of history as a structured-but-stochastic process that could be predicted and shaped fascinated me. And, of course, like every other nerdy kid on the planet, I’d read and reread Asimov’s Foundation series. This book is partly about fleshing out the vision of time nascent in his notion of “psychohistory,” or the mathematics of human social process.

In the years since Herbert and Asimov wrote, we social scientists have learnt much about how history flows and is structured by human institutions, how temporal nodes emerge and are utilized by informed actors, and what an authentic mathematics of social evolution could look like. Hence the intertwining in this novel of historical events—thirteenth century eastern Europe, Germany during the Holocaust, seventeenth century Salem—with chaos theory and computational social science.

To summarize, then, the book falls squarely within the boundaries of genre fiction—but of the more cerebral kind. At the same time, it is rawly human, plumbing the murky depths of human experience to layer emotional flesh over the cognitive bones. It is about flawed individuals making difficult choices under immense pressures—and the outcomes, both beautiful and terrible, of those decisions. Above all, it narrates one man’s physical and spiritual journey through a difficult lifescape toward serenity. It is that human dimension, ultimately, that I hope readers will respond to. "

The Weight of Blood

by Laura McHugh

Spiegel & Gray     2014

300 p.      Fiction

Sometimes family can be your salvation. Sometimes family can be your undoing. McHugh explores both in the coming-of-age murder mystery, The Weight of Blood. Set in small-town Missouri, the story focuses on a teenager named Lucy who is reeling from the discovery of the chopped-up body of her friend, Cheri who had been missing for a year. Cheri's body was found stuffed in a tree across from Lucy's family store, run by her uncle Crete. Lucy's own mother, Lila, had disappeared from the community when Lucy was a baby, and as Lucy sets out to figure out what happened to Cheri, she also hopes that she may come to some conclusions about what happened to her mother as well.

It is the secrets that gives the story life—the weight of blood—as it were. Lucy has been an innocent bystander to secrets that have haunted her family since before she was born. Even her much loved father, Carl, has secrets he is keeping from Lucy. He is also burdened with secrets about his brother Crete whose money-making ventures are just plain evil and whose secrets threaten the family's stability, indeed its very existence.

The Ozark community is also a character in the novel. In some ways, it is like small town America. Everybody knows everybody, and everybody shares the community's secrets at the same time that they gossip about them. Strangers are worthy of suspicion, and weird community members are sheltered. Lucy's mother was never accepted by the community, so Lucy tends to be viewed with suspicion, even though her father's family have always been prominent community members. The story is told from several points of view, chief among them Lucy and Lila. Because of the way Lila tells her story, we know more about Lila than Lucy does, although there are some startling similarities between their lives. Lucy keeps a journal with one entry being "Things I Know About My Mother."

 Lucy has the foolhardy bravery of a teenager, but she misses some of the clues that are right before her eyes, including those about her dear father and more importantly her evil uncle Crete. The reader pretty  much knows what is going to happen, but we are compelled to keep reading because of the skillfully written narration and tight characterization. One reviewer says, "McHugh is an artful, efficient writer who tells her story in vicious blows." 

It all ends a little too quickly, and things get wrapped up a little too neatly—which is often the case in murder mysteries. Even if we know how it's going to end, the ride is good enough to keep going.

While I was reading this, a 7-year-old cold case murder in a nearby small town was being solved—a crime not that dissimilar to the murders in The Weight of Blood. And the man finally arrested for the murder of the 11-year-old girl in Constantine, Michigan was a man very close to the family. Apparently, this kind of murder case doesn't just happen in the Ozarks.

Read The Weight of Blood. It's gritty but it's worth it.

The Review in the LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-laura-mchugh-20140323,0,4969266.story#axzz2ztwyMW8l

Laura McHugh's website: http://www.weightofblood.com/