New March Fiction: Ways to Escape and Seek Truth

Spring 2021 has much to celebrate. Vaccines are becoming available, friends are able to abandon Zoom for meetings in person, and publishers are promoting books to be excited about. New releases to end the month include: 

The Consequences of Fear: A Maisie Dobbs Novel by Jacqueline Winspear
   September 1941. While on a delivery, young Freddie Hackett, a message runner for a government office, witnesses an argument that ends in murder. Crouching in the doorway of a bombed-out house, Freddie waits until the coast is clear. But when he arrives at the delivery address, he’s shocked to come face to face with the killer.
   Dismissed by the police when he attempts to report the crime, Freddie goes in search of a woman he once met when delivering a message: Maisie Dobbs. While Maisie believes the boy and wants to help, she must maintain extreme caution: she’s working secretly for the Special Operations Executive, assessing candidates for crucial work with the French resistance. Her two worlds collide when she spots the killer in a place she least expects.
   I have been a longtime fan of Maisie Dobbs and consider this to be one of the best in the series! 

How Beautiful We Were: A Novel by Imbolo Mbue
   The opening paragraph gives indication of the story ahead:
"We should have known the end was near. How could we not have known? When the sky began to pour acid and rivers began to turn green, we should have known our land would soon be dead. Then again, how could we have known when they didn’t want us to know? When we began to wobble and stagger, tumbling and snapping like feeble little branches, they told us it would soon be over, that we would all be well in no time. They asked us to come to village meetings, to talk about it. They told us we had to trust them."
   Set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, it tells of a people living in fear amid environmental degradation wrought by an American oil company. Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying from drinking toxic water. Promises of cleanup and financial reparations to the villagers are made—and ignored. The country’s government, led by a brazen dictator, exists to serve its own interest. Left with few choices, the people of Kosawa decide to fight back. Their struggle will last for decades and come at a steep price.
   Told from the perspective of a generation of children and the family of a girl named Thula who grows up to become a revolutionary, How Beautiful We Were is an exploration of what happens when the reckless drive for profit, coupled with the ghost of colonialism, comes up against one community’s determination to hold on to its ancestral land and a young woman’s willingness to sacrifice everything for the sake of her people’s freedom. 

Machinehood by S.B. Divya
  It’s 2095 and people don’t usually die from violence. Humanity is entirely dependent on pills that not only help them stay alive, but allow them to compete with artificial intelligence in an increasingly competitive gig economy. Daily doses protect against designer diseases, flow enhances focus, zips and buffs enhance physical strength and speed, and juvers speed the healing process.
   All that changes when executive bodyguard, Welga Ramirez’s client is killed in front of her. Claiming responsibility for the death is The Machinehood, a new and mysterious terrorist group that has simultaneously attacked several major pill funders. The Machinehood operatives seem to be part human, part machine, something the world has never seen. They issue an ultimatum: stop all pill production in one week.
   Global panic ensues as pill production slows and many become ill. Thousands destroy their bots in fear of a strong AI takeover. But the US government believes The Machinehood is a cover for an old enemy. One that Welga is uniquely qualified to fight.
   Chapter headings include parts of The Machinehood Manifesto, news feeds, lecture notes, and rally speeches covering events from 2055-2095. There is much to think about: AI (Artificial Intelligence), economic inequality, workers’ rights, privacy and the nature of intelligence. If we won’t see machines as human, will we instead see humans as machines? 

Infinite Country: A Novel by Patricia Engel
   Talia is being held at a correctional facility for teenage girls in the forested mountains of Colombia after committing an impulsive act of violence that may or may not have been warranted. She urgently needs to get out and get back home to Bogotá, where her father and a plane ticket to the United States are waiting for her. If she misses her flight, she might also miss her chance to finally be reunited with her family in the north.
   How this family came to occupy two different countries, two different worlds, comes into focus as the fifteen years leading up to this reunion are revealed. We see Talia’s parents, Mauro and Elena, fall in love in a market stall as teenagers against a backdrop of civil war and social unrest. We see them leave Bogotá with their firstborn, Karina, in pursuit of safety and opportunity in the United States on a temporary visa, and we see the births of two more children, Nando and Talia, on American soil. We witness the decisions and indecisions that lead to Mauro’s deportation and the family’s splintering—the costs they’ve all been living with ever since.
   Author Patricia Engel, herself a dual citizen and the daughter of Colombian immigrants, gives voice to all five family members as they navigate the particulars of their respective circumstances. Today’s news is full of immigration battles and the misery of border separation. Infinite Country ends with this notion: “ I wondered about the matrix of separation and dislocation, our years bound to the phantom pain of a lost homeland, because now that we are together again that particular hurt and sensation that something is missing has faded. And maybe there is no nation or citizenry; they’re just territories mapped in place of family, in place of love, the infinite country.” 

Silence Is a Sense by Layla AlAmmar
   A young woman sits in her apartment, watching the small daily dramas of her neighbors. She is an outsider, a mute voyeur, safe behind her windows, and she sees it all—the sex, the fights, the happy and unhappy families. Journeying from her war-torn Syrian homeland to this unnamed British city has traumatized her into silence, and her only connection to the world is the column she writes for a magazine under the pseudonym “the Voiceless,” where she tries to explain the refugee experience without sensationalizing it—or revealing anything about herself.
   Gradually, though, the boundaries of her world expand. She ventures to the corner store, to a bookstore and a laundromat, and to a gathering at a nearby mosque. And it isn’t long before she finds herself involved in her neighbors’ lives. When an anti-Muslim hate crime rattles the neighborhood, she has to make a choice: Will she remain a voiceless observer, or become an active participant in a community that, despite her best efforts, is quickly becoming her own?
   Layla AlAmmar, a Kuwaiti-American writer, has written a complex book about memory, revolution, loss, and safety. Most of all, Silence is a Sense reminds us just how fundamental human connection is to survival. My copy is well marked as I know I will return again and again to remember how the observations of the voiceless are not to be ignored. 

As you venture outside don't forget to support your favorite independent coffeehouses, bars, restaurants, and bookstores.  The employees are excited to see you as you are to see them!

Another Reading Challenge

Missoula Public Library’s New Reading Challenge Lists are fun to review when you are looking for something to read. This week I want to highlight some choices from Left-handed Authors. 

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
   A national bestseller when it first appeared in 1963, The Fire Next Time galvanized the nation, gave passionate voice to the emerging civil rights movement—and still lights the way to understanding race in America today.
  The book is a personal and provocative document from the iconic author of If Beale Street Could Talk and Go Tell It on the Mountain. It consists of two ”letters,“ written on the occasion of the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, that exhort Americans, both black and white, to attack the terrible legacy of racism. Described by The New York Times Book Review as ”sermon, ultimatum, confession, deposition, testament, and chronicle…all presented in searing, brilliant prose," The Fire Next Time stands as a classic of literature.

The Story of My Life: The Restored Edition by Helen Keller
   Helen Keller’s story of struggle and achievement is one of unquenchable hope. From tales of her difficult early days, to details of her relationship with her beloved teacher Anne Sullivan, to her impressions of academic life, Keller’s honest, straightforward writing lends insight into an amazing mind.
   Originally published in 1903, Keller’s fascinating memoir narrates the events of her life up to her third year at Radcliffe College. In addition to reprinting Keller’s long-lost original work, this edition contains excerpts from her little-known, deeply personal memoir The World We Live In, which give readers a detailed look into an otherwise unimaginable existence, as well as an excerpt from Out of the Dark, a political commentary Keller wrote during her years as a socialist.
   Helen Keller, born in 1880, was the first deaf-blind graduate of Radcliffe College. Later, she became a high-profile socialist, and throughout her life she was a strong advocate for the blind and deaf communities, visiting over thirty-five countries and publishing fourteen books about her experiences, which have been translated into more than fifty languages. She died in 1968. 

Centennial by James A. Michener
   Written to commemorate the Bicentennial in 1976, James A. Michener’s magnificent saga of the West is a celebration of the frontier. The story of Colorado—the Centennial State—is manifested through its people: Lame Beaver, the Arapaho chieftain and warrior, and his Comanche and Pawnee enemies; Levi Zendt, fleeing with his child bride from the Amish country; the cowboy, Jim Lloyd, who falls in love with a wealthy and cultured Englishwoman, Charlotte Seccombe. In Centennial, trappers, traders, homesteaders, gold seekers, ranchers, and hunters are brought together in the dramatic conflicts that shape the destiny of the legendary West—and the entire country.

The Portable Mark Twain by Mark Twain
   Satirist, novelist, and keen observer of the American scene, Mark Twain remains one of the world's best-loved writers. This delightful collection of Twain's favorite and most memorable writings includes selected tales and sketches such as The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, How I Edited an Agricultural Journal Once, Jim Baker's Blue-Jay Yarn, and A True Story. It also features excerpts from his novels and travel books (including Roughing It, The Innocents Abroad, and Life on the Mississippi, among others; autobiographical writings; as well as selected letters and speeches. The collection also reprints the complete text of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, including the often omitted raftsmen passage.

One Writer's Beginnings by Eudora Welty
   Born in 1909 in Jackson, Mississippi, Eudora Welty shares details of her upbringing that show us how her family and her surroundings contributed to the shaping not only of her personality but of her writing as well. Everyday sights, sounds, and objects resonate with the emotions of recollection: the striking clocks, the Victrola, her orphaned father’s coverless little book saved since boyhood, the tall mountains of the West Virginia back country that became a metaphor for her mother’s sturdy independence, Eudora’s earliest box camera that suspended a moment forever and taught her that every feeling awaits a gesture.
   Part memoir, part exploration of the seeds of creativity, this unique insight of a writer’s beginnings offers a rare glimpse into the Mississippi childhood that made Eudora Welty the acclaimed and important writer she would become.

Other left-handed writers on the list: Bill Bryson, Lewis Carroll, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germaine Greer, Franz Kafka, Ted Koppel, Barack Obama, Helen Hoover Santmyer, R.L. Stine, and H.G. Wells. 

As Spring arrives, vaccines are in arms, and people venture outside—remember to support local bookstores. If you are still shopping on-line visit these websites:

Fact & Fiction

Bookshop.org

Deadline Reading

This week I was faced with deadline reading.  My book club was meeting, a friend sent a new book, a review was due and I wanted to finish another book.  It was a great reading week! 

 This was the March selection of the Fact & Fiction Book Club:

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
   The first science fiction written by a black woman, Kindred has become a cornerstone of black American literature. This combination of slave memoir, fantasy, and historical fiction is a novel of rich literary complexity. Having just celebrated her 26th birthday in 1976 California, Dana, an African-American woman, is suddenly and inexplicably wrenched through time into antebellum Maryland. After saving a drowning white boy there, she finds herself staring into the barrel of a shotgun and is transported back to the present just in time to save her life. During numerous such time-defying episodes with the same young man, she realizes the challenge she’s been given: to protect this young slaveholder until he can father her own great-grandmother.
   The first part of our discussion was, what defines science fiction. But all members were glad to have read Kindred no matter what the classification.  Octava Butler writes about the the horrors of slavery and explore the impacts of racism, sexism, and white supremacy then and now.
   " Octavia Butler is a writer who will be with us for a long, long time, and Kindred is that rare, magical artifact…the novel one returns to, again and again, through the years, to learn, to be humbled, and to be renewed. Do not, I beg you, deny yourself this singular experience.”—Harlan Ellison

After reading Octava Butler, I received a copy of a new paperback:

Every Drop of Blood: The Momentous Second Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln by Edward Achorn
   By March 4, 1865, the Civil War had slaughtered more than 700,000 Americans and left intractable wounds on the nation. After a morning of rain-drenched fury, tens of thousands crowded Washington’s Capitol grounds that day to see Abraham Lincoln take the oath for a second term. As the sun emerged, Lincoln rose to give perhaps the greatest inaugural address in American history, stunning the nation by arguing, in a brief 701 words, that both sides had been wrong, and that the war’s unimaginable horrors—every drop of blood spilled—might well have been God’s just verdict on the national sin of slavery.
   Edward Achorn reveals the nation’s capital on that momentous day—with its mud, sewage, and saloons, its prostitutes, spies, reporters, social-climbing spouses and power-hungry politicians—as a microcosm of all the opposing forces that had driven the country apart. A host of characters, unknown and famous, had converged on Washington—from grievously wounded Union colonel Selden Connor in a Washington hospital and the embarrassingly drunk new vice president, Andrew Johnson, to poet-journalist Walt Whitman; from soldiers’ advocate Clara Barton and African American leader and Lincoln critic-turned-admirer Frederick Douglass (who called the speech “a sacred effort”) to conflicted actor John Wilkes Booth—all swirling around the complex figure of Lincoln.
   Having just discussed Kindred and the issues of slavery, Every Drop of Blood gave a good historical review of the war and times in 1865.  Insights into this national crisis resonate in our own time. 

New books for The Missoulian On the Bookshelf column include: 

Cloudmaker by Malcolm Brooks
   The summer of 1937 will be a turning point for fourteen year old Houston “Huck” Finn. He is building an airplane, a fact that he hides from his mother. But there are signs that he is doing the correct thing. First good sign, his cousin Annelisle comes to live with his family, she has had flying lessons. Then he and a friend discover a rare Lindbergh flight watch on the body of a dead bank robber. The news is full of the flight and disappearance of Amelia Earhart. Plus summer brings a carnival and a tent revival to further distract Huck and his friends.
   Huck’s plane starts out as a glider, with an early morning test flight on Main Street that ends in a crash that brings the local sheriff. The descriptions of innovations Huck makes to his plane and each new flight are some of the best parts of the book---all leading to an amazing life-saving flight during a thunderstorm at the end of the book.
   Cloudmaker is part coming-of-age, part adventure, part gangster melodrama, with bits of Montana history that make an engaging and entertaining book. 

Click to listen to a fun interview with the author  presented by MBF+ (Montana Book Festival+)  

Dark Sky by C. J. Box
   Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett is chosen by the governor to accompany Steve Price a Silicon Valley CEO on an elk hunting trip. Price steps off the plane with far too much luggage, including tech equipment to record and post all the details of the living off the grid hunting trip. As they head into the woods, a man-hunter seeking revenge is also tracking Price’s every move. Finding himself without a weapon, a horse, or a way to communicate, Joe must rely on his wits and his knowledge of the outdoors to protect himself and his companion.
   In the battle of basic knowledge versus modern high technology—Joe also relies on his librarian wife, Marybeth with her many non-internet connections to information. There are shout-outs to the writing of three Montana authors—Smoke Elser, Steve Rinella and Walter Kirn and appearances of Nate Romanowski, and his own daughter Sheridan learn of the threat to Joe’s life and follow him into the woods. Fans will not be disappointed!

The book I wanted to finish (and glad I did) was: 

Ridgerunner by Gil Adamson
   November 1917. William Moreland is in mid-flight. After nearly twenty years, the notorious thief, known as the Ridgerunner, has returned. Moving through the Rocky Mountains and across the border to Montana, the solitary drifter, impoverished in means and aged beyond his years, is also a widower and a father. And he is determined to steal enough money to secure his son’s future.
   Twelve-year-old Jack Boulton has been left in the care of Sister Beatrice, a formidable nun who keeps him in cloistered seclusion in her grand old house. Though he knows his father is coming for him, the boy longs to return to his family’s cabin, deep in the woods. When Jack finally breaks free, he takes with him something the nun is determined to get back — at any cost.
   Set against the backdrop of a distant war raging in Europe and a rapidly changing landscape in the West, Gil Adamson’s follow-up to her award-winning debut, The Outlander, is a vivid historical novel that draws from the epic tradition and a literary Western brimming with a cast of unforgettable characters.  I had not read The Outlander but now it is on my ever-growing list of books to read next.

The Many Forms of March Madness

One definition of madness is: behavior or thinking that is very foolish or dangerous.  In some way these new books may fit that definition. 

Lost Apothecary: A Novel by Sarah Penner
   There are two rules in the back room of the back alley apothecary shop:
Rule #1: The poison must never be used to harm another woman.
Rule #2: The names of the murderer and her victim must be recorded in the apothecary’s register.
   One cold February evening in 1791, at the back of a dark London alley in a hidden apothecary shop, Nella waits for her newest customer. Once a respected healer, Nella now uses her knowledge for a darker purpose—selling well-disguised poisons to desperate women who would kill to be free of the men in their lives. But when her new customer turns out to be a precocious twelve-year-old named Eliza Fanning, an unexpected friendship sets in motion a string of events that jeopardizes Nella’s world and threatens to expose the many women whose names are written in her register.
   In present day London, aspiring historian Caroline Parcewell spends her tenth wedding anniversary alone, reeling from the discovery of her husband’s infidelity. When she discovers an old apothecary vial in the River Thames, she can’t resist investigating, only to realize she’s found a link to the unsolved “apothecary murders” that haunted London two centuries ago. As she deepens her search, Caroline’s
   The Lost Apothecary is an examination of women struggling against the patriarchal society that limits them—both in Georgian England and present day.  

Fans: How Watching Sports Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Understanding by Larry Olmsted
   March Madness is about to begin, or rather college basketball will have an adjusted tournament. Brackets will soon appear on sports pages, it’s a tradition! This year some of the excitement has been gone, most games did not allow fans in stadiums, ballparks, or courts. But fans still watched games, sharing frustrations and victories via text messages. The book, Fans is a reminder of how games, teams, and the communities dedicated to them are vital to our lives.
   Larry Olmsted makes the case that the more you identify with a sports team, the better your social, psychological, and physical health is; the more meaningful your relationships are; and the more connected and happier you are. Fans maintain better cognitive processing as their gray matter ages; they have better language skills; and college students who follow sports have higher GPAs, better graduation rates, and higher incomes after graduating. And there’s more: On a societal level, sports help us heal after tragedies, providing community and hope when we need it most.    Go Zags!  

Flight of the Diamond Smugglers: A Tale of Pigeons, Obsession, and Greed Along Coastal South Africa by Matthew Gavin Frank
   For nearly eighty years, a huge portion of coastal South Africa was closed to the public. Now many of the diamond pits are deemed “overmined” and abandoned. American journalist Matthew Gavin Frank sets out across the infamous Diamond Coast to investigate an illicit trade that supplies a global market. Immediately, he became intrigued by the ingenious methods used in facilitating smuggling particularly, the illegal act of sneaking carrier pigeons onto mine property, affixing diamonds to their feet, and sending them into the air.
   Entering Die Sperrgebiet (“The Forbidden Zone”) is like entering an eerie ghost town, but Frank is surprised by the number of people willing—even eager—to talk with him. Soon he meets Msizi, a young diamond digger, and his pigeon, Bartholomew, who helps him steal diamonds. It’s a deadly game: pigeons are shot on sight by mine security, and Msizi knows of smugglers who have disappeared because of their crimes. For this, Msizi blames “Mr. Lester,” an evil tall-tale figure of mythic proportions.
   From the mining towns of Alexander Bay and Port Nolloth, through the “halfway” desert, to Kleinzee’s shores littered with shipwrecks, Frank investigates a long overlooked story. Weaving interviews with local diamond miners who raise pigeons in secret with harrowing anecdotes from former heads of security, environmental managers, and vigilante pigeon hunters, Frank reveals how these feathered bandits became outlaws in every mining town. 

Who is Maud Dixon? : A Novel by Alexandra Andrews
   Florence Darrow is a low-level publishing employee who believes that she's destined to be a famous writer. When she stumbles into a job the assistant to the brilliant, enigmatic novelist known as Maud Dixon — whose true identity is a secret — it appears that the universe is finally providing Florence’s big chance.
   The arrangement seems perfect. Maud Dixon (whose real name, Florence discovers, is Helen Wilcox) can be prickly, but she is full of pointed wisdom -- not only on how to write, but also on how to live. Florence quickly falls under Helen’s spell and eagerly accompanies her to Morocco, where Helen’s new novel is set. Amidst the colorful streets of Marrakesh and the wind-swept beaches of the coast, Florence’s life at last feels interesting enough to inspire a novel of her own.
   But when Florence wakes up in the hospital after a terrible car accident, with no memory of the previous night — and no sign of Helen — she’s tempted to take a shortcut. Instead of hiding in Helen’s shadow, why not upgrade into Helen's life? Not to mention her bestselling pseudonym . . . 

The Swallowed Man: A Novel by Edward Carey
   In November 2019, I viewed an art exhibit in Florence, Italy, that featured artists interpretations of Pinocchio, thus began my fascination with all things Collodi. New films were released in 2020 and 2021 and now Edward Carey reimagines the time-honored fable: the story of an impatient father, a rebellious son, and a watery path to forgiveness for the young man known as Pinocchio.
   In the small Tuscan town of Collodi, a lonely woodcarver longs for the companionship of a son. One day, “as if the wood commanded me,” Giuseppe—better known as Geppetto—carves for himself a pinewood boy, a marionette he hopes to take on tour worldwide. But when his handsome new creation comes magically to life, the woodcarver screams at him…and the boy, Pinocchio, leaps from his arms and escapes into the night. Though he returns the next day, the wily boy torments his father, challenging his authority and making up stories—whereupon his nose, the very nose his father carved, grows before his eyes like an antler. When the boy disappears after one last fight, the father follows a rumor to the coast and out into the sea, where he is swallowed by a great fish—and consumed by guilt, as he hunkers in the creature’s belly awaiting the day when he will reconcile with the son he drove away.
   With The Swallowed Man, Carey offers a story of a controlling father, a disobedient son, and a rift that takes forever to heal—using a beloved story to explore ideas about parenting and toxic masculinity.