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.
