Marburg’s lonely, desperate characters struggle to find human connection

Louise Marburg’s new short story collection presents snapshots of twelve women at difficult and painful turning points. Written during the pandemic lock-down, “You Have Reached Your Destination,” due out Nov. 10, exudes the anxiety, fear, and sometimes despair that many were feeling at that time.

The youngest of these women is just 12 years old and struggling to understand and accept her father’s suicide while tiptoeing around her alcoholic and abusive mother. Her one ally, her sister, who is 10 years older, inexplicably turns on her, adhering instead to an alcoholic and abusive boyfriend. Not even a teenager yet, Katie realizes she is utterly alone, with only herself to trust and depend on.

At 91, June is the oldest of Marburg’s protagonists. June lives alone in New York City, “an easy place to be old.” She can take a taxi wherever she wants to go and have her groceries delivered, and she has a best friend in her building. However, June’s friend dies suddenly while having tea with her.

When newlyweds move in next door, she is happy to find the young wife is friendly and even offers to pick up items for June on her shopping trip. It is not long before June hears loud noises coming from her new neighbors’ apartment: loud voices, thumps, and crashes. The next day she sees the young wife with a bruise on her face. June, having escaped an abusive first husband, tries to help her neighbor, but the woman becomes angry. June confides in her daughter, who never knew about her mother’s first marriage. The daughter doesn’t believe her and implies that June is becoming senile. June misses her best friend and feels abandoned by her daughter.

The other ten stories feature young women desperate for family, middle aged women desperate for love, and older women desperate to be seen. Many are orphaned or come from abusive homes. One is so ashamed of her parents, she tells everyone they are dead.

Marburg’s stories of loneliness are not without humor and hope. Matronly, 60-something Lydia finds an obscene and threatening note on her desk. Her patronizing boss promises to find out who left it although he never intends to do anything about it at all. Then Lydia’s duplicitous and self-involved best friend accuses Lydia of leaving it herself for attention. To console herself, Lydia takes an all-afternoon lunch at a downtown bar, not realizing it is a gay bar, even after meeting a woman named Dade who actually turns out to be David.

In “Next of Kin,” a 41-year-old freelancer who has been “actively wooing” a rare-book dealer “despite his obvious lack of interest” finally makes her move on him only to discover that he’s gay. Neither of them can understand how she missed this. Although they don’t make love, they do become close friends, and he promises to be her next-of-kin.

Marburg’s protagonists are searching for human connection, something that was painfully missing for many people during 2020. They are looking for friends, allies, lovers, or children. They are realistically drawn characters struggling with their very human needs in a cold and chaotic world. This fourth collection of shorts stories cements Marburg’s place as an important and compelling voice in contemporary literature as she captures American angst and loneliness as few have done since Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. 

Magickal mystery arrives in time for Halloween

Part murder mystery, part psychological thriller, with a heavy dose of magical realism, “River Woman, River Demon” by Jennifer Givhan is an entertaining page-turner ahead of Halloween.

Eva, Chicana/indigenous artist and mother of two, lives on a dusty ranch near Albuquerque with her college professor/magickian husband, Jericho. Eva is also a practitioner of brujería and curanderisma.

Just a couple of weeks before Halloween, or Hallows as Eva and Jericho call it, Eva is drowsing at her kitchen table when she awakens to a woman’s screams coming from the direction of the river. She runs barefoot across the scrubby grasses, cactus, and rocks to find Jericho in the water with their friend Cecilia. Cecilia is beaten bloody and drowned.

Cecilia’s blood is found both in her car and Jericho’s, and the police find intimate photos of Cecilia in the glovebox of Jericho’s car. Eva, still traumatized by the drowning death of her best childhood friend, Karma, is now re-traumatized by both Cecilia’s murder and her husband’s betrayal.

Where before she was haunted just by Karma’s memory and her fragmented recollections of her death, Eva is now also haunted by Cecilia, sometimes in the form of an owl. And someone—or something—is cursing her with unexplained bruises, statues running blood, fainting, and paralysis.

Then suddenly, people from Eva’s past begin appearing. First the boyfriend that abandoned her in San Diego shows up at Cecilia’s funeral. He and Eva rekindle their relationship. Then the girl, now woman, that had accused Eva of drowning Karma arrives at Eva’s house offering to help her. Although Karma’s death was eventually ruled an accident, Eva had come under suspicion because of the girl’s accusations.

Not knowing who she can trust, Eva has to rely on herself and her magick to make sense of the tragic events of her life and keep herself and her children from danger.

Although Cecilia’s murder and the climax of the story are the only parts of intense action, the author uses short chapters to keep the story from dragging, even the passages that are just Eva dreaming or talking with her sister.

Eva’s memory gaps and fainting spells make her a somewhat unreliable narrator, suggesting to the reader, and to Eva herself, that perhaps she is responsible for the deaths of her two friends. The suspense builds even further at the end when the reader realizes before Eva who the killer is.

“River Woman, River Demon” releases Oct. 4, just in time for Hallows. It is a fun, quick read that will entertain and intrigue.

Imagery and mystery make debut novel enjoyable read

Virginia Hartman’s debut novel, “The Marsh Queen” is a treasure trove of birds, swamps, moss, and herbs. Add to that family secrets, stalkers, and murderous bad guys and the result is an interesting read.

Smithsonian bird artist Loni Murrow returns to her Florida pan-handle hometown after her mother suffers a fall and starts displaying signs of dementia. Her relationship with her mother has always been tense. In addition, returning home dredges up painful memories of Loni’s father’s suicide when Loni was 12 years old.

Officially recorded as an accident, Loni keeps the facts of her father’s death from her brother, who was an infant when Boyd died. But as she is going through her mother’s things, she finds a cryptic note from Henrietta saying it’s time that they talk about what really happened to Boyd. Loni begins searching for this Henrietta, whom everyone in town denies knowing.

As Loni spends week after week in Florida, she takes long canoe trips through the swamp looking for models for her free-lance work. Hartman’s precise and beautiful detail put the reader in the quiet swamp, the only sounds the oar’s dip in the water and the occasional bird calling its mate.

Although the mystery of Henrietta and her note drive the plot, the narrative does drag a bit. At least 100 pages could have been cut from the book’s 384. After the third canoe trip through the swamp, we have the idea. And Loni has lots of breakfasts and lunches with her brother where she learns a little bit more to aid her search for the truth about her dad. Several of these conversations could have been combined.

However, readers looking for beautiful prose, well-drawn characters, and intriguing mystery will enjoy “The Marsh Queen.”

Unique memoir describes the power of story

Elisa Bernick’s new book, “Departure Stories,” is unique among the many memoirs—from Mary Karr to Julia Child to Stephen King—that I’ve read.

Out Oct. 4, the book is seasoned with history, statistics, science, philosophy, jokes, and recipes. The first half is primarily Elisa’s story growing up Jewish in “Minneapolis…the most antisemitic city in the country” with an abusive mother and an emotionally absent father. The second half of the book is a thoughtful treatise on how what we remember and what we forget shapes us and our lives.

Arlene, Elisa’s mother, is verbally and physically abusive and views her children as impediments to her happiness. Arlene constantly harangues her husband as a cheapskate who never gives her enough money to feed the family and run the home.

Elisa endures the chaos at home and antisemitic taunts at school and in the neighborhood. She comes home one day and asks her parents if their family killed Christ. And who is Christ, by the way?

In 1964, Arlene enters the Mrs. Minnesota contest. When she finishes ninth, her mother tells her “I told you they’d never let a Jew win.”

In 1969, Elisa’s parents divorce and a couple of years later Arlene takes three of her children and moves to California where her boyfriend, Bernie, moves in with them. Things do not improve. Bernie is also physically, and possibly sexually, abusive to Elisa.

In addition to telling the story of her childhood, Bernick also gives the historical context that explains her mother’s behavior. She discusses the history of trauma of the Jewish people, the limited opportunities afforded women in the mid-20^th century, the “divorce revolution” of the 1970s, as well as the dysfunctional family that Arlene grew up in.

Bernick also explains how humans remember and mis-remember events and how they remember events they were not even witness to. Like Tim O’Brien in “The Things They Carried,” Bernick posits that stories don’t have to be factual to be “true”; that there is “truth” and “Truth.” More important that facts, capital-T Truth, relates a truth about human nature, experience, emotion, or the world in general.

However, the most interesting part of Bernick’s work is her explanation about the power of storytelling. According to Bernick, the words we choose and how we tell our stories determine how we see ourselves and how we live our lives, that “As we shape our stories, they shape us.”

Just as many people who experience crime or violence describe themselves as “survivors” instead of “victims,” people who shape their stories of trauma into stories of resilience become the authors of their own stories. They overcome their trauma instead of living each day inside of it. This is how Bernick describes herself.

In addition to being a unique way to present her life, “Departure Stories” is an informative, moving, and uplifting story of resilience and forgiveness—and the power of storytelling.

Psychological thriller questions perception, mortality

Best-selling author Iain Reid’s newest, “We Spread,” is a riveting, disturbing examination of the isolation and decrepitude of old age. Some believe that death, and our foreknowledge of it, are the worst part of the human experience, but Reid’s latest novel shows us that there could be worse things.

Penny is an elderly woman living alone in a large city. Her long-time partner is dead. She goes for days or weeks without speaking to another human being and doesn’t seem to have any family. There is nothing about her existence that she enjoys.

The first part of the novel is quite difficult to read. Penny’s first person narration emphasizes her miserable marking of time without love or companionship. Even her cat has died. Then weird things begin happening.

She begins hearing voices coming from the next apartment, which is unoccupied. One day, standing at the window she sees a mysterious stranger staring up at her from the street. After she suffers a fall in her apartment, her landlord packs her up and deposits her at Six Cedars, an assisted living residence.

However, strange things continue to happen once she is at Six Cedars. There are only four residents. The only staff are Shelley, the director, and Jack, an assistant. At first, Penny is happy to find that she sleeps soundly at night and that her appetite has returned. However, when she’s been there just four days, she is told she has been there for three years.

And there are mysterious gaps in her memory. She wakes from naps she doesn’t remember lying down for. She looks out a window briefly to find that hours have passed. Her slippers fit fine one day but are too small the next and too large the day after that.

Penny suspects that Shelley is up to something nefarious. Her conversations with Jack convince her of it. Shelley tells Penny that everyone wants more time. More time to live, to work. However, Penny comes to realize that immortality comes at a price, one that is perhaps too high.

Although Penny is suspicious of Shelley and mourns the loss of her memories, she does find human connection that renews her energy and appreciation of life. Hilbert, another resident, becomes a particular friend to Penny. She quickly comes to care for him and tries to protect him.

Hilbert explains to her about Pando, as aspen tree colony that is actually one organism with a massive, connected root system. Pando, Latin for “I spread,” becomes the primary metaphor of the novel. It’s suggested that Shelley, a former biologist, is trying to prove that a similar interconnectedness among people will give them infinite time on Earth. Penny concludes that interconnectedness is what gives our lives meaning and purpose but that infinite time is too much.

Penny’s narration and limited point of view ask the reader to wonder if Shelley is up to no good, or if Penny is merely suffering from dementia. The novel’s ending gives no clear answers. However, this psychological thriller, out Sept. 27, will certainly leave the reader thinking about how we live our lives, especially how we end them, and how much we should rely on our own perceptions. Certainly not light reading, the novel is rewarding for those who appreciate an unreliable narrator and an ambiguous ending.

Best wartime reads focus on areas other than battles

As a child, I recall my brother and father watching WWII movies, “The Big Red One” being one of their favorites. They liked to jokingly call it “The Big RED One,” instead of the “Big Red ONE.” I couldn’t have been less interested.

The war movies of my childhood were primarily about men. If there were any women characters at all, they were merely “skirts” or “broads” to chase. The films were violent and, frankly, simplistic. There was an emphasis on the physical conflict between armies, and none of the characters or events were nuanced in any way. There were “good guys” (the Allies) and “bad guys” (the Axis powers). No thank you.

But something changed. For me, it started with “Das Boot” in 1981. This film depicts sailors aboard a German U-boat patrolling the Atlantic in 1941. Although the characters are “the enemy,” they are portrayed as human, complex, and sympathetic. The film shows not only tense scenes of battle, but also the mundane and tedious lulls between battles.

Most good movies are based on excellent books. This is true of most popular WWII movies. Fortunately, many of the titles from the last decade that are set during the war feature aspects of the war other than battles and some with female protagonists.

One highly acclaimed title is Erik Larson’s “The Splendid and the Vile,” which focuses on Churchill’s first year as Prime Minister and the effects the war has on his family as well as the British people. The book opens on Churchill’s first day as Prime Minister and recounts the devastating year that follows.

As with all of Larson’s immensely readable works, “The Splendid and the Vile” recreates both public and private scenes based on meticulous research and interviews. This particular book details not only Churchill’s incredible leadership, but also the importance and influence of the women around him, specifically his wife, Clemmy, and his daughter Mary.

Larson’s “In the Garden of the Beasts” recounts the rise of the Third Reich and the build-up to the war from inside Berlin. The book focuses on the first US ambassador to Nazi Germany and his party- and uniform-loving daughter.

One of my favorite wartime stories is “The Woman Who Smashed Codes” by Jason Fagone. Elizebeth Friedman, the mother of modern cryptography and cryptoanalysis, first became indispensable to the government when she went to work breaking codes used by smugglers during Prohibition. When the war broke out, she went to work decoding enemy messages, including those produced by the “unbreakable” Nazi code machine, Enigma—using just pencil and paper.

Friedman’s work was forgotten for decades because J. Edgar Hoover claimed her accomplishments for his own agents, and Friedman herself often allowed her work to be attributed to her cryptologist husband, William.

“The Girls of Atomic City” by Denise Kiernan focuses not on just one person, but on many of the women who helped create a community in a secret government facility set on a muddy clearing in a Tennessee forest. They had dangerous and dirty jobs, and although they weren’t told what exactly they were working on, many of them figured it out themselves. They were helping to create the uranium that would go into the world’s first nuclear weapons.

My most recent wartime read is “A Covert Affair” by Jennet Conant. The cover features Julia and Paul Child and suggests that the book is about their time in the OSS—the precursor to the CIA—and the FBI investigation of Paul. However, the book is primarily about Jane Foster, a socialite heiress and artist from California.

The book is a fascinating account of Foster’s bohemian life and her wartime work for the OSS. She was in the propaganda division. She made friends with Julia and Paul while they were all stationed in Ceylon and later in China. She also lived in Paris at the same time as the Childs and socialized with them.

It was because of this long friendship that Paul came under suspicion as Jane had been accused of spying by another American spy. The book does go into detail about how Paul responded to the investigation and fought to have his name cleared, eventually succeeding.

Although the book is not really what is advertised either on the cover or on Amazon, it is still an interesting read. It gives a detailed look at the work of the OSS during the war and a cogent explanation of how Europe’s insistence on returning to colonial dominance of Asia after the war led to the expansion of communism in the region and the conflicts that followed.

John Wayne and “The Big Red One” notwithstanding, I am now a fan of books and movies about WWII.

Ishiguro defies genre labels

Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro is one of my newest favorite authors not only because his prose is perfect, his characters complex and sympathetic, his plots compelling, and his themes thought-provoking, but also because he defies genre distinctions. I was first introduced to Ishiguro in 1993 with the film version of ‘Remains of the Day.’ I didn’t feel moved to read the book because the story was so sad.

A few months ago my book club selected ‘Klara and the Sun,’ Ishiguro’s latest novel. I think it may be his best so far.

Klara is an AF (artificial friend) waiting to be chosen when 14-year-old Josie sees her in a store window. Klara waits expectantly for Josie to return and take her home. When she does, Klara believes that things will be wonderful for the two of them. However, Josie has bouts of a mysterious illness that keep her bedridden for weeks at a time. Klara concludes that if she asks in just the right way, the Sun will use his special nourishment to cure Josie and save her life.

The themes of this novel have to do with love and mortality, but the secondary issues--pollution, consumerism, gene editing, economic displacement, and distrust of others--left me hoping for sequels in the coming years.

‘Klara’ was labeled Young Adult, but like any good YA book, it is just as appealing to adult readers. Some might label ‘Klara’ as science fiction since it is set in some undetermined future and includes not-yet-invented technology.

Since I loved ‘Klara’ so much, I then read some of Ishiguro’s earlier works, including ‘Never Let Me Go,’ which also might be labeled sci-fi. And it, too, has been adapted to the screen, although I’ve not seen the movie.

The story opens when Kathy is ending her unusually long career as a carer after attending her childhood friends, Tommy and Ruth, through "completion." She recalls their childhoods in Hailsham, and later at the Cottages. Their "guardians" at Hailsham teach them that they are special, but outsiders shun them, even seem afraid of them.

Although Kathy and her friends are doomed to a pretty grim fate, they do nothing to escape it. They are not imprisoned and can simply run away, but they don’t. They accept their fate with dignity and compassion. Ishiguro’s insightful portrayal of people resigned to a hopeless future demonstrate his keen understanding of human nature and human failings.

Like ‘Remains of the Day,’ ‘When We Were Orphans’ is ostensibly “mainstream literary fiction.” Famous London detective Christopher Banks recalls his childhood in Shanghai and the disappearances of his parents when he was nine years old. He spends 20 years researching his most pressing case and finally returns to Shanghai to solve the mystery and rescue his parents.

The narrator's voice is objective, sometimes detached, as you would expect from a detective. However, the mystery of his parents is secondary. This novel is really an examination of the fallibility of memory and how people delude themselves.

‘The Buried Giant,’ which might be labeled fantasy, is the strangest and perhaps the darkest of Ishiguro’s novels.

Iron-age Britons Axl and Beatrice leave their village to visit their grown son in another village, a three-day walk from them. On the way they encounter ogres, pixies, King Arthur’s knight Sir Gawain, and other strange and mysterious creatures and people. They lament that they cannot really remember their son because of a “dense mist which hung over the marshes” that clouds everyone’s mind so that they cannot recall things that happened even a few days or hours ago.

This strange and entrancing story offers interesting characters, plot twists, and an exploration of importance and purpose of memory and of forgetting. The dark and ambiguous ending will make readers reevaluate the strength of their relationships.

Moreover, Ishiguro has two other novels that might be called historical, ‘A Pale View of Hills,’ and ‘An Artist of the Floating World.’

But what is the difference between genre fiction and literary fiction? Can’t any genre novel (say, horror, romance, sci-fi) be elevated to literary fiction? Ishiguro’s works illustrate that it’s a matter of quality not subject or setting as demonstrated by the author’s ease at using the tropes and trappings of genre to create literary masterpieces.

 

Complex story filled with struggling characters

Complex characters scarred by trauma and a complex plot structure that seamlessly flows from present to past and back again make Charles Forrest Jones’s debut novel, “The Illusion of Simple,” a nuanced and intriguing masterpiece.

A group of girls finds a severed hand in a creek bed in rural western Kansas. Sheriff Billy Spire’s investigation uncovers right-wing extremism and government corruption. Spire’s painful past and the lessons he’s learned from it and from those that saved him lead him to see that things are far from
simple.

Spire, from a dirt poor and abusive family, was sold by his parents to a benevolent banker and his wife for the price of a repossessed station wagon when Billy was in high school. Muscular, tough, and violent, he joins the military and serves for 20 years as an MP. On the advice of his foster father, he goes home to Kansas to run for sheriff. He learns to temper his violence and that “the first pulse to take is your own.”

His foster brother inherits the bank, wins a seat in the state senate, and continues his father’s legacy of working for the benefit of his hometown, never letting ethics or honesty get in his way. He is smart, shrewd, kind to his wife, and tender with his mistress.

Even the town ne’er-do-well, who is the victim Russ Haycock, is complex. He, like the sheriff, grows up poor in a large, dysfunctional family. He joins the army and returns with a Vietnamese wife. He is drawn to the racist conspiracy-theory-loving Posse Comitatus although his own wife is Asian. Violent by nature, Haycock is tender and possessive with his wife.

The harsh western Kansas setting of dying towns, racial conflicts, and corrupt officials makes survival a strong motivator for all of the characters. They do their best with the little they have, in terms of wealth, opportunity, and emotional security.

“The Illusion of Simple” presents readers with intimately drawn characters struggling with complex situations and conflicts. Nothing in the novel is simple but everything in it is real. The story is difficult to watch but impossible to look away from.

 

Character-driven stories stay with reader

Sometimes a novel is good because of its complex plot structure, its sophisticated symbolism, or its sweeping dimension. But other times, a novel that seems less important than a literary masterpiece is good because its characters swirl around in our heads long after we’ve closed the book.

One example of the latter is Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s new novel, “Take My Hand,” which is told through two chronologies. In 1973, Civil Townsend, fresh out of nursing school, goes to work in a Montgomery, Alabama family planning clinic. Two of her first clients are sisters, Erica and India, whom Civil is supposed to give birth control shots to. Civil is stunned to learn that the girls are just eleven and thirteen years old.

Neither girl is sexually active, and India hasn’t even started her period. So troubled by the situation, Civil stops giving the girls their shots. When the clinic's director finds out, she takes the girls to the hospital and has them sterilized.

The story is framed by Civil’s narrative in 2016 as she travels back to Montgomery to visit Erica and India, who has been diagnosed with cancer. Civil recalls the guilt she felt about what happened to the girls and how she unwittingly contributed to their tragedy.

The book does a good job of presenting the historical facts about the government-funded sterilizations and the lawsuit that revealed that over 150,000 low-income women were sterilized under federally funded programs and that 55 percent of these were teens. Ironically, this revelation came just one year after the public learned of the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, in which Black men were intentionally left untreated for syphilis.

“Take My Hand” examines the emotional toll on the women and girls who were coerced or tricked into sterilization and their families. The story is rich in ideas of freedom, justice, and autonomy. The book is a quick read, and the accessible prose makes this a good novel for both adult and young adult audiences.

Another set of characters still swimming in my brain are from Namrata Patel’s debut novel, “The Candid Life of Meena Dave,” which launches June 1. Adopted and then orphaned, Meena feels alone and rootless in the world. As a free-lance photojournalist, Meena travels the world and has no fixed address other than a friend’s rented spare room. She convinces herself that this is all she needs or will ever want, that she doesn’t need the same interpersonal connections of close friends or family that others have.

She returns to the US from six months abroad to find that she has inherited an apartment from someone she’s never met or even heard of. She moves into the apartment, intending to stay just long enough to sell it, when she begins finding cryptic notes from her benefactor, Neha.

Meena begins to suspect that Neha has some connection to her birth family and sets out to discover the truth about her background. She starts to see similarities between herself, with her dark hair and brown skin, and the other residents of the building, all Indian Americans.

But Meena also learns that Neha doesn’t like people—she says as much in her notes—and that she did not even love her husband. In fact, Neha admits that she’s never felt love for anyone.

Neha is the true embodiment of what Meena has convinced herself that she herself is: without any emotional connection to other people. Meena is shocked and saddened by Neha’s lack of human feeling. Objectively, Meena is nothing like Neha. She loved her parents dearly, she does have one friend she truly enjoys being with, and she finds herself attracted to Sam, the young game designer in the building.

When she starts to suspect that she may actually have a heritage and a family, she finds herself longing for things she has previously dismissed as unnecessary.

The other residents of the building are three “aunties,” who are best friends and into everyone’s business. The aunties walk into her apartment, which they insist she keep unlocked, whenever they like, but they also teach her to make chai and how to wrap a sari.

The story is sweet and funny, and if a 30-something woman can be said to be “coming of age,” then it is a coming-of-age novel, too. Most importantly, Meena learns how to let other people into her heart after the trauma of losing her parents. She also learns to see things for the way they are instead of how she would like them to be. It is just this kind of small story that leaves us thinking about the characters for weeks and months.

Allende's 'Violeta' recalls century of life

Isabel Allende packs 100 years’ worth of life, memory, love, passion, wisdom, and foolishness in her latest novel, “Violeta.”

Violeta Del Valle is born in 1920, the same year that the Spanish flu arrives in Chile, her home. In the 100 years of her life, she recalls the changes, disasters, and upheavals of the 20^th century as well as the births, deaths, marriages, and love affairs that punctuate her own story.

After Violeta’s overbearing and unethical father loses his fortune and takes his life, Violeta’s family “exiles” themselves to the far south of the country where they live without electricity or indoor plumbing on the farm of a family friend.

Violeta marries young and foolishly, and not long after falls in love and runs away with Julián Bravo, a gorgeous pilot. Despite his infidelities and criminal activities, Violeta stays with Julián for many years, having two children with him.

After a military coup that plunges her country into a brutal dictatorship and her activist son’s name appears on a wanted list, Violeta helps him escape the capital before he is “disappeared.”

Violeta, who always had a head for business and finds myriad ways to earn a very comfortable living, raises her grandson in the capital and is determined to do a better job with him than she did with her own children. However, she eventually finds that possessions are meaningless and that money is only worth the good you can do with it. At age 63, she describes herself as “reborn.”

Violeta’s change in direction is not the result of one huge event, but rather “the turns that we don’t notice in the moment they occur” (p 254). Her story is told by her 100-year-old self, full of the wisdom derived from decades of “stumbling down narrow, winding paths” (p 286) that take us from one day, one week, one year to the next.

Allende of course draws upon her own life to fill her novel with the people and events that fascinate the reader. Like Allende, Violeta survives earthquakes, patriarchy, and a cruel dictator. “Violeta” touches on themes present in many of Allende’s works. A friend and mentor tells Violeta, “Exert some independence; you’re not a little girl…You have to take care of yourself in this world” (p 99). And Violeta observes the difference in how the world treats men and women, writing “Julián…went wherever he pleased; he was free of blame, while I was the adulteress, the concubine, the wayward woman who dared to parade around pregnant by her lover” (p 137).

Allende has created another sweeping saga in “Violeta” that whisks the reader through the last century, offering readers fascinating and endearing characters. The world events in Violeta’s life may be familiar, but Allende presents them in a way that demonstrates the cyclical nature of history and offers a subtle warning about the present.

Erdrich's 'The Sentence' is moving, enjoyable

When I began reading Louise Erdrich’s newest novel, “The Sentence,” I immediately fell in love with the story and the characters.

Tookie, and Indigenous woman living in Minneapolis, is sentenced to 60 years after being tricked by two women into committing a serious crime. She is released after 10 years, and begins working at a bookstore where her former middle school teacher works, the same teacher who sent her a dictionary while she was in prison.

In November of 2019, Tookie’s most annoying customer dies and begins haunting the bookstore whenever Tookie is there alone. Tookie survives the trauma of her incarceration and her childhood with a drug-addicted mother, but the haunting, and then the start of the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd push her to her limits.

I loved all the characters, especially Tookie’s husband, Pollux, whom she calls her Potawatomi conscience. Pollux is a former boxer and tribal cop (who in fact arrested Tookie) and now works to preserve his culture, especially the spiritual aspects. He is quiet and gentle and completely in love with Tookie.

I also loved that nearly every character is a book lover whose life revolves around books. One proposes getting a Mount Rushmore-style tattoo on her chest of her favorite authors. And, since most of the characters work at a bookstore, they offer to their customers and to us, the readers, recommendations on current and classic fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. In fact, at the end of the novel, Erdrich includes “A Totally Biased List of Tookie’s Favorite Books.” I pored over the list, looking for titles I’d read and titles that I want to read. I even made a copy of the list to keep.

The story is narrated by Tookie, except for two brief passages that Pollux narrates, both of them in the last third of the book. I was pleased to hear Pollux’s voice, and expected to learn more about Tookie, that perhaps she was not an entirely reliable narrator. However, I was disappointed. Pollux’s passages are too brief and offer no insight about Tookie. I fail to see how these passages fit the structure of the novel or add anything essential to the story.

Another flaw has to do with the climax of the story and how Tookie finally comes to terms with her trauma and herself. I won’t spoil it for you, but I’ll just say, I felt there was not enough foundation earlier in the novel about what would happen at the end.

Of course, I could be wrong, and it could simply be that Erdrich is avoiding a trope that she has become tired of in literature. Tookie says about reading in prison, “I found that I could not read just any book. It had gotten so I could see through books—the little ruses, the hooks, the setup in the beginning, the looming weight of a tragic ending, the way at the last page the author could whisk out of the carpet of sorrow and restore a favorite character” (p 164).

Despite these minor flaws, “The Sentence” is an excellent, moving book. We see the real trauma that Minneapolis residents experience after Floyd’s murder, the protests, the police violence, and the riots. However, we see it through the lens of Indigenous Americans, whose own oppression is mirrored by that of Floyd’s. Tookie says “…it seemed that around the central fact of any tragedy there swirled a flotsam of extrania like the twenty-dollar bill that led to the police call at Cup Foods, the broken taillight that led the police to stop Philando Castile, the hunger for eggs and a farm woman’s fury to defend those eggs, an incident that started the Dakota War, the let them eat grass phrase that has kept it in memory ever since…’ (p 273). Moreover, the prose is beautiful.”

“The Sentence” is a thoroughly enjoyable read. And I continue to port over Tookie’s Biased List as I mark off titles that I’ve read.

Blood and suspense fill pages of new works

The thing about being a hero is that first you must lose nearly everything, and then you must sacrifice whatever you have left. Park ranger Richard Sundstrum is that hero in Scott Johnson’s “Ungeheuer,” due out in April.

During a prolonged Central Texas drought, four young spelunkers find an underwater cave entrance in the river and inadvertently let loose….something. At the same time, Richard and his young son are camping near the river just two weeks after the death of Richard’s wife.

The pair’s trip is cut short when Richard is called in to help investigate an “animal attack” that killed all of the staff and diners at the Grist Mill restaurant. What follows is a grueling marathon of violence, gore, and death for the characters as well as the reader.

What sets this novel apart from other blood-fests is the structural complexity. Although the third-person narration gives us a relatively objective bird’s-eye view of the slaughter, Johnson alternates perspectives among the primary characters.  He often uses a sound effect to signal the reader that the action rewinds a few minutes and begins another character’s point of view.

The gruesome, heart-racing action will appeal to fans of the horror genre. However, the Central Texas setting and scenery, the suspense, and a few surprises will appeal to all readers.

Those who prefer ghosts to monsters will enjoy “The Hacienda” by Isabel Cañas, which releases May 3. Although it has been compared to Du Maurier’s “Rebecca,” it is closer to 2020’s “Mexican Gothic” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

Beatriz marries young, handsome widower Rodolfo to escape poverty and her cruel tia’s kitchen. She moves into his hacienda on a remote maguey plantation and soon discovers that no one else is willing to live in the house, and in fact, that the house doesn’t want Beatriz there either.

Young Padre Andrés tries to help Beatriz “heal” the house of the strange voices and apparitions but must hide his native powers from the Inquisition and his fellow priests. He must also hide his feelings for Beatriz.

This title was a fun, chilling read that transports the reader to 1820’s Mexico, just after the Revolution and the social turmoil that followed. Beatriz and Andrés each narrate alternating chapters, including Andrés’s flashbacks to his youth, and why he was banished from the hacienda by Rodolfo’s first wife.

Colson Whitehead’s latest, “Harlem Shuffle,” is no hero’s journey and offers nothing supernatural but it has plenty of suspense and not a little bloodshed.

Furniture dealer Ray Carney isn’t crooked; he’s just a little bent in a city where anyone who’s not probably isn’t breathing. Carney is happy with his sideline in radios and TVs that have fallen off trucks, and sometimes the odd piece of jewelry, when his cousin Freddie gets him involved in a hotel heist.

The heist puts Carney on the radar of the local mob as well as the local “bent” detective. Not long after Carney settles back into his old routine, he gets swindled by a Harlem banker, which of course requires Carney to exact revenge, just as his crook father would have done.

Whitehead approaches Carney with more than a little humor. When a “colleague” dispatches another crook who has come gunning for them, Carney rolls the body in a “Moroccan Luxury rug” and delivers it to the local body dumping ground. Near the end of the novel, when he and the colleague go to ransom cousin Freddie, the mob lawyer supervising the “deal” is seated in an office furnished with “Templeton Office’s new fall line.”

Whitehead’s graceful prose captures Harlem of 1950s and 60s: “This first hot spell of the year was a rehearsal for the summer to come. Everyone a bit rusty but it was coming back, their parts in the symphony and assigned solos. On the corner, two white cops recapped the fire hydrant, cursing. Kids had been running in and out of the spray for days” (p 21). 

The novel traces the mid-twentieth century changes to New York and its skyline as well as Carney’s maturity from small-time fence, to grudge-bearing criminal, to slightly-bent businessman. It is a fun and rewarding read.

Bad weather is great for good books

Although Texas ‘winter’ has many folks alternating between flip-flops and down jackets, there have actually been enough cold days and rainy days for me to hunker down under the blankets and plow through some really good books.

Non-fiction

The summer after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, sending 120,000 Japanese Americans who were living on the West Coast to prison camps despite their never committing any crime. Bradford Pearson’s book ‘The Eagles of Heart Mountain,’ focuses on the young people, whose educations were interrupted, some just before their senior year in high school, who were sent to northwestern Wyoming to a prison camp named Heart Mountain.

Some of these young men turned to their love of sports to alleviate boredom and the sting of racism and discrimination. This book traces the paths that lead to their incarceration and their triumph on the football field despite a lack of proper equipment and training field.

The first half of this excellent book details about 150 years of Japanese migration to the US and the blatant racism--by individuals as well as government policy--that led to the undeserved imprisonment of innocent Americans. The second half focuses on the resilience of the Japanese American community and how, even under terrible conditions, they never wavered from their love of their country, the US.

The title of Chuy Renteria’s latest, ‘We Heard It When We Were Young,’ suggests that the memoir is primarily about racism and discrimination. Actually, the memoir is about so much more. Yes, Renteria recounts instances of both “casual racism”—name-calling and teasing—and the uglier, more visceral absolute hatred that he and his Hispanic and Laotian friends faced. However, the most compelling aspects of this work are the fraught relationships with his parents and his sister, the violence that permeates every aspect of life for him and the rest of his small town of West Liberty, Iowa, and the eating disorder that resulted from a lifetime of trauma.

The structure of Renteria’s book is not entirely chronological. There is some moving back and forth among his childhood, adolescence, and adult years that is suggestive of how memories flow from one to another. The effect is natural and organic storytelling accompanied by the insights that develop after reflection and time and maturity.

Short fiction

Mewborn, North Carolina, is like any small rural town. The locals relax at Duck’s Tavern, celebrate the Shad Festival and reigning Shad Queen, gossip about their neighbors, and sometimes flee their hometown. 'Proof of Me’ by Erica Plouffe Lazure, which releases March 24, is a collection of linked short stories, all about residents or exiles of Mewborn.

Each of the book’s five sections deals with one family or group of Mewborners. The second section, ‘Stitch,’ which includes the title story, concerns 16-year-old Anna, mother of little Cassidy Penelope. After Anna’s mother, and only defender, dies suddenly, Anna tries to raise her daughter. When the girl is four, Anna drops her off at the family home with her older brother and sister and leaves for good. The rest of the stories in this section follow Cass through her childhood and young adulthood.

All of the characters are set adrift by forces they have no control over: absent or incompetent parents, perfidious lovers, life-changing illnesses, or a profound sense of insignificance. Their complexity and humanity and voice make it no surprise that ‘Proof of Me’ is the 2022 New American Fiction Prize Winner.

Crime fiction

When 15-year-old Oscar Dreyer-Hoff goes missing, his wealthy, prominent family claim that he’s been kidnapped. But the note left behind is cryptic at best and makes no demand for ransom. As Copenhagen police detectives Anette Werner and Jeppe Korner investigate, the mystery only deepens.

A body is found at the city’s waste incineration plant, and Oscar’s backpack is discovered at a dock near the family’s home by the odd caretaker at a fortress island in Copenhagen Harbor. A number of plot twists and no shortage of suspects make the book an interesting and enjoyable read.

‘The Harbor,’ the third installment of Katrine Engberg’s Korner and Werner series, is due out Feb. 22. Set in the perfumed and sunny Danish spring, Engberg’s book is not nearly as dark as the masterpieces that inspired the Nordic Noir genre: The Martin Beck series, ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,’ and the Wallander books.

The detectives are fully-functional adults who are not alcoholics and don’t torture themselves with guilt of their failings. And although Copenhagen is realistically portrayed through the author’s use of actual places, there is very little criticism of the failure of the state to fulfill its promise of a livable world and a just society.

Although I would never wish for bad weather, I’m not going to complain much when it inevitably arrives and offers me an excuse to do nothing but work on the to-be-read pile on the night stand.

Latest Orphan X installment is a trip to the theme park

‘Can you save a bad man?’ is the question Gregg Hurwitz’s Orphan X asks in “Dark Horse,” the latest in the series, due out Feb. 8. And if the answer is ‘yes,’ then was the man really bad? These questions apply equally to the South Texas drug lord that Evan Smoak, aka Orphan X, agrees to help and to Evan himself.

Those who do not know the series will be caught up quickly in this seventh installment. Smoak was an off-the-books government assassin who left the program and is now pursued by his former trainers and handlers. He lives by his own 10 commandments and helps those who have nowhere else to turn.

Aragón Urrea is the patrón of Eden, Texas, and an elaborate, worldwide, high-tech drug and money laundering operation. His 18 year-old daughter has been kidnapped by a ruthless rival gang, and he is willing to give everything he has to get her back. And everything is just what Smoak asks of him.

The impossibly-wealthy, impossibly fit and fast-thinking Smoak is part Jason Bourne, part Batman. He has a multitude of identities and safe houses as well as nearly-magical technology readily available to him. His untraceable, unhackable phone has nanosuction backing that makes it stick to any surface he throws it at, so that he can watch a hologram of his phone call. Oh, and he MacGyvers a mask out of a plastic coke bottle and some trash so that he can enter a burning building to save some burning junkies.

Orphan X books are pure escapism, akin to a visit to the theme park. It’s no wonder that Hurwitz is a best-selling author. The prose is tight and the descriptions are detailed and quite good at creating the atmosphere of danger and desperation in South Texas and Mexico, where the story is set. At more than 400 pages, the book is still a quick read as it is loaded with action and suspense. The short chapters and alternating settings give the story a cinematic feel.

However, the conversation between Smoak and his protégé, Joey, I found grating. They are so cute that it’s annoying. But that is just a small drawback. She is, after all, a 16 year-old computer genius, maybe the most realistic character in the book.

The other characters are typical of the fantasy-thriller genre. Good guys, bad guys, innocents. Hurwitz tries to avoid this trope by making Smoak painfully aware that he is both good and bad. Drug lord Urrea is both brutal to those that violate his rules (rapists) and generous with his family and the townspeople that he takes a patrician responsibility for.

On the other hand, the villain, Mexican crime boss Raúl Montesco, is unnecessarily cruel and ruthless. He belittles his own son, holds women in a cage to be sex-trafficked, and feeds those who offend him (even accidentally) to his ‘pet’ lion. He is the ‘bad’ man, utterly unredeemable.

So, maybe you can’t save a ‘bad man,’ but you might be able to make a man that is both good and bad a little less bad.