The Fugitives, by Christopher Sorrentino****

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The fugitivesSandy Mulligan is a renowned author, but he’s hit a crisis. He’s left his wife and children for someone else, and it didn’t work out. Now he’s taken to the hinterlands to try to write the book he’s contracted to produce. Meanwhile, he runs across John Salteau, who claims to be an Ojibway storyteller, but it doesn’t ring quite true. Like Mulligan, Salteau is hiding from something. And if that isn’t enough, we have Kat Danhoff, herself a refugee of sorts, and she has landed in the same tiny burg, first to write about Salteau, and then to write about Mulligan interviewing Salteau. And before I can say more, I need to tell you that this clever satirical work was given me free of charge by Net Galley and Simon and Schuster in exchange for this honest review. It goes up for sale on February 9, 2016.

Early in the book we read of Mulligan’s infidelity, and I have to tell you, reader, that the explicit sex scenes and above all, the words selected to describe them, are not words that I am comfortable with. I am from the Boomer generation; if you are younger and don’t mind passages of erotica dropped into your novel, you might find this is a five star read for you. I was horrified, and read through it quickly.

Where are my smelling salts?

Where were we? Ah yes, the story. The dialogue in this thing is absolutely hilarious at times, and although Mulligan’s literary agent is a secondary character, I loved the sly, deliberate way Sorrentino crafted what we must regard as the typical agent, one who just wants him to write something, anything for heaven’s sake, so they don’t lose the deal. If Mulligan needs to retreat to the wilderness of Northern Michigan, then fine. Go. “Go walk in the footsteps of Hemingway, catch a trout or something…”

Mulligan does a lot of walking, alrighty, but what he does not do, is write. The internal dialogue is rich in many places; in a few, I wanted a red pen to edit it down a bit. The fact is, Mulligan is an exasperating character, but that’s okay; he is intended to be so. Not every protagonist is supposed to be lovable.

And so he ruminates endlessly, thinking of everything except his book. He recalls his affair, the one that snapped his already-fragile marriage like a twig. When the whole thing is over, he realizes that he could as easily had a conversation with the other woman’s underwear as he could have with her. But it’s too late now; water under the bridge. A lot of it.

Kat is from Chicago; she is married but also restless. She cheats in her marriage, but doesn’t turn it into a spectacle the way Mulligan does. Her work involves travel, and what Justin doesn’t know won’t hurt him.

Underlying all of this is the question of the storyteller, John Salteau. He’s a fake. Danhoff can smell it a mile away. At one point she witnesses him telling school children a Nigerian folk tale. What the hell? Her journalist antennae twitch, and she is on a mission.

Sorrentino is not a novice, and has been nominated for the National Book Award for Sound on Sound, a novel he published in 1995. His experience shows. His capacity to render setting immediate (and sometimes really funny) is important, because he constantly changes it up, bouncing us back and forth to the points of view of three different characters, switching from first person to third in the wink of an eye. If he isn’t proficient, the reader will get lost. As it is, this is a hyperliterate read, which suits me just fine, but if your mother tongue is not English, you might want to consider something else.

No one could possibly predict the way this story ends!

Recommended for those that love strong fiction.

Practical Sins for Cold Climates, by Shelley Costa*****

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practicalsinsWhat a terrific surprise! Shelley Costa is a contender. This is the first of her books that I have read, although she has won the Agatha Award with her first novel, You Cannoli Die Once, which I have to find and read now. For those that love a snarky, spirited female investigator, Practical Sins for Cold Climates is a must-read. Thank you to both Net Galley and Henery Press for the DRC. The title is available for purchase January 26.

Val Cameron has been sent out to Lake Wendaban, which is out in the middle of nowhere way too far from Toronto. Worse, she has been directed by her boss to find Bob’s Bait Shop in order to be directed to the home of a reclusive writer with a hot new book that her publishing house covets. She figures it will take two days to achieve, since the train just goes once each way per day. Get off; take a day to get to the writer and get the signature; and then the next day, she can be back in her own Manhattan apartment, away from the bears, the mud, the snakes, the invertebrates. Done deal. Because the fact is, “She wasn’t a bait-buying kind of gal.”

Of course, it doesn’t go as quickly as she had hoped. What kind of story would that provide us? For starters,

“There had to be some mistake. Where was the town?
“When Peter Hathaway, her boss, first told her she had to get to the town of Wendaban, Ontario, she figured on awnings and sidewalk café seating. Some charming cross between Fire Island and Bedford Falls…Barbershops and garden clubs. …Had the train let her off pre-maturely, say, at a whistle stop? Some little pre-station station where you just had to wait while the moose crossed the tracks?…The town looked like the outskirts of itself.”

By the time Val successfully navigates the terrain—think of a cross between Mirkwood Forest and Venice, where the only way through all those hostile damn trees is by all-too-rare boat ride—she has learned of a murder that took place awhile back, but has never been solved. Once she is stuck out there in mosquito paradise, it occurs to her that it would really be a journalistic coup to sign the author AND solve the murder! Her career would take off like a rocket. No more doomed adventures in the hinterland, thanks. She can’t believe people actually paid money to come sit in the middle of the wilderness!

Stuck waiting for a ride out to the author’s almost-inaccessible cabin, “Val spent the night at the Hathaway cottage, listening for noises that portend god-awful death. Snuffling, growling, clawing, heavy footfalls, buzzing chainsaws, that sort of thing. When nothing materialized, she realized she’d been condemned to a day in somebody else’s paradise.”

This book made me laugh out loud all the damn time! I started considering it my reward for slogging through a few pages of a less desirable galley. But at the three-quarters mark, the casual city girl snobbery recedes as one discovery leads to another, and the tension is thick, tight, and unmistakable.

I fell for two red herrings Costa casually dangled, but she did cheat the reader a trifle by introducing late, new plot elements necessary to the solution; we really can’t figure it out without the information provided around the 90% mark. So for this, I should probably lop off half a star, but I’m laughing too hard to change my rating. Sorrr—eee.

When the last page was turned, I wanted more, and I realized that although there was no “Val Cameron #1” below the title, this could indeed become a series; in fact, it could become another Edgar winner. Oh, yes please! And I was gratified to discover while reading the notes that more Val Cameron mysteries are planned. Hell yes! I will be avidly prowling the Henery Press section of Net Galley looking for new opportunities to read and review this series as it unfurls.

In a nutshell: fan-damn-tastic. This is a terrific book in which to bury oneself on a holiday break or even a long, cold weekend. Not a bad beach read, either for that matter. Just buy it. Just read it!

The Complete Flying Officer X Stories*****

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thecompleteflyingofficerxHE Bates wrote these stories during WWII; he served in the British Royal Air Force and received the unusual commission of author. His whole job was to write one short story after another. He was stationed with British pilots from 1941-1942, and he sat with them when they were between flights and listened with a sympathetic ear. He listened well, and the result is a collection of nearly 30 short stories, one of which is novella length, and they are strong, resonant fictional stories whose protagonists were inspired by actual pilots. Thank you twice to Net Galley and to Bloomsbury Publishers for the DRC. This collection is for sale now.

When I told my spouse that I was reading a collection of short stories about RAF pilots during this time period, he asked if that wasn’t a lot of stories to plow through, all on the same subject. I can understand why he—and maybe you—might think so, but the stories are all so different, and their characters so richly drawn, that it’s a bit like asking a mother of a very large family whether she might not like to trim a few sons and daughters from the herd. Although I can tell you which ones are my favorites, I also have to say there is no filler or weaker material here. Everything is very well written, and each story distinct in setting and characters from all others.

I sat down and read it start to finish, but once you have the collection, you can jump around however you like. The stories are not in any particular order. If your household has a book tucked into the bathroom or the guest room, a solid short story collection like this is a good choice, because the person that’s in that room won’t be there that long; this gives them a look at something they can finish. Most of the short stories are just a few pages, with just one toward the end in the part labeled as extra stories that might qualify as a novella.

Although I do have favorites, mine might not be the same as yours. I was drawn to “There’s No Future in It”, a story in which a father tries to dissuade his daughter from becoming involved with a pilot. It’s dark and resonates strongly. I also loved “K for Kitty”, a poignant tale about a pilot that strongly preferred one particular fighter plane; “The Young Man from Kalgoorie”, whose parents attempted to hide the very existence of the war from their son by keeping him busy on the farm and away from newspapers; and “O’Callahan’s Girl”, a young woman that loves a shy young flyer who only wants France to be restored to its previous state.

A happy surprise, given the era in which it was written, was the inclusion of a female soldier (in what is referred to as the “Russian” army, though the fact is it was the USSR and therefore Soviet Army at that time). This was a welcome addition. Unfortunately, there are two racist references, and if the stories were being written today, I would have knocked more than half a star off the rating because of them, but from the World War II generation’s Caucasians, I know (my parents having been among them) that the terms they used were thoughtless but made from ignorance rather than malice.

For example, in one story there is a brief mention made of a West Indian “boy” that used to work as a barrister. I blinked for a moment, not getting it at first. What kind of prodigy must that boy have been to have had a law career already and be out doing something else now? And then the penny dropped, and I realized this is actually a man, but he was referred to this way because of his race and ethnicity.

The second reference is to a brave pilot who nevertheless is described as being unusually ugly; his features bear some unflattering characteristics of the “Red Indian” and the “Mongoloid”.

Both of these go by in the blink of an eye, yet it’s only fair you be told in advance.

Finally, the thing that impressed me the most about these stories is that every last one of them had an unusually strong closing. The first few that left me gaping at their brilliance on the last page, last paragraph, last line were noted, but eventually it became clear that all or most of the collection was going to be like that, and of course I am not going to quote them here and ruin the stories’ endings for you. But one thing I will also say is that short stories that end with planned, maddening ambiguity are my pet peeve. For example, if a man is about to go through a door to either meet special delight or certain doom and the writer ends the story by having the man go through the door and gasp, and that’s the whole thing, he may be gasping with delight, or with horror, and we will never know which…? I hate that! And this set of short stories has none of it. Some end poignantly, some beautifully, some tragically, but every ending is in one way or another deeply satisfying and free of ambiguity.

For those that love military fiction, highly recommended.

Coal River, by Ellen Marie Wiseman***

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coalriverCoal River is a work of historical fiction set in Coal River, Pennsylvania. A region by that name exists, and was the location of pitched battles between the United Mine Workers of America and local cops, strikebreakers, and company goons. Wiseman does a creditable job in her rendering of the setting in which it all unfolded. Thank you to Kensington Publications and Net Galley for the DRC, which I received in exchange for this honest review. It is now available for purchase.

Emma Malloy has been orphaned; a fire killed her mother and father. Her only surviving family owns the local coal mine, and she is taken to live with them. Uncle Otis is a tyrannical big boss, and spirited Emma tangles with him almost immediately when she sees the way coal miners, and in particular the breaker boys, small children that worked in the mines prior to the creation of child labor laws, are treated. She is forced to work in the company store, where she sees miners’ wives lining up to purchase overpriced goods. Once they are sufficiently behind in their accounts, they are turned away, their children hungry and undernourished, unless and until the account can be brought current. It’s a wrenching thing, and Emma refuses to be complicit.

The strength in this work is that it informs readers that may be unaware of the industry’s past as to the conditions that existed. Wiseman brings in the Mollie Maguires, a group of Irish-American anarchists, as well as famed photographer Lewis Hine, whose work is credited with speeding the creation of labor laws that protected small children from adult work in mines and other dangerous industries. Those that haven’t explored this aspect of the US’s past could do a lot worse than to learn it through this novel, which renders the setting palpable and vivid. It’s a time many people aren’t aware of, before the New Deal brought food stamps, health care initiatives, and other lifesaving aid to the unemployed and underemployed. Before that time, any who didn’t work, and whose family could not keep them, starved.
A particularly moving scene is the one in which the Black Maria comes to deliver a dead miner to the door of his widow, and everyone waits breathlessly to see at which home it will arrive.

Your reviewer had a much loved grandfather that died from Black Lung, the form of emphysema contracted by coal miners, particularly those who worked in the mines from an early age as he did. If anyone ought to see this as a five-star book just from sympathy with the material, I would be the one. This is why I requested the DRC. I wish I could rate it higher, but there are a couple of issues that I can’t ignore.

The weaknesses here are twofold. The first is in character development. Emma is not a dynamic character, and indeed, the bad guys are oh so very bad, and the brave young protagonist starts out spunky and but for a few moments toward the climax, remains that way. There is a brief scene in the climax in which Hazard Flint shows a fluctuation in character, but for the most part, our characters are on the very brink of becoming caricatures.

The second problem, which could be overlooked for rating purposes but which troubles me nevertheless, is that although small children no longer work the mines, those places are as dangerous as they ever were. The story carries with it the tacit message that all of these miscarriages of justice took place in a dark past that has no relationship to the present day. If Wiseman cares for the well being of miners and their families, she would have done well to add a post-script acknowledging that miners still get Black Lung; mines still cave in and trap scores of miners every year, and many don’t make it out alive; that union busting is alive and well in the good old US of A. By ending the story as she does, she infers incorrectly that all may rest easy. It just isn’t true.

In short, this is a great story for those new to the history of child labor in America and of those that fought to end it, but as a great literary work, or as a tangible plea for social justice in the present, it is left wanting.

Chameleo: A Strange but True Story of Invisible Spies, Heroin Addiction, and Homeland Security, by Robert Guffey****

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ChameleoastrangeChameleo is a twisted but true story of an addict who unwittingly becomes an experimental subject in a classified government research program, and the bizarre events that took place then and in the aftermath. My thanks go to the author, who provided me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Dion Fuller (not the person’s actual name) had been released from a psychiatric hospital in Southern California. He had procured some heroine and nodded off, permitting various equally marginal characters access to his home. Sometimes he was out of it and had no idea what was happening. It was likely during this time that the guy with the stolen classified documents and a couple dozen pairs of night-vision goggles belonging to the US government made his way into Dion’s apartment. The ensuing chaos proves once and for all that just because a person is crazy does not mean nobody is out to get them. Just ask Dion!

Guffey, the author, is a Cal State creative writing teacher who found himself involved in Dion’s situation. He had a free term at the same time that Dion, an old childhood friend, called for help. With a certain amount of necessary remove, he did his best to advise his friend while taking copious notes. Soon he became convinced that his old friend was not hallucinating.

“Imagine a ridiculous college fraternity with the resources of the entire black budget of the United States of America deciding to play one long prank on some faceless guy in San Diego. And imagine that the faceless guy is you.”

The author’s description of a malicious antic known as “Street Theater” in government circles reminded me of the dirty tricks that the Democratic Party played on the Nixon camp during the early 1960’s—cruising into town in advance, for example, and moving street signs around so that the Republicans would get lost and be late to a speaking engagement—which were later used in turn by Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect the President in 1972. Dion hoped that leaving his home, which was located very near a Naval installation, would make it all stop, and it did. He left California and headed cross country, but every time he got close to a US military installation, a whole train of personnel would follow him once more, like a trail of ducklings after their mother, right out there in the middle of the freaking desert.

Guffey’s story, which includes the Masons, the Illuminati (note the cover), and assorted other conspiratorial ingredients that would ordinarily cause me to stay completely fucking clear of this whacked out tale, follows Dion as far north as Minnesota, then oh dear God, to Seattle where Guffey was staying. But just as it seems it can’t get any more strange and stressful, the whole thing becomes hilarious! Your humble reviewer sat and laughed out loud about two-thirds of the way into the story, and the lighter tone that marks the book until near the end is what prevents the whole thing from degenerating into a bottomless abyss.
My only quibble with this story—and it’s a small one—is that if we must read entire transcribed passages of conversations, then the persons involved in the conversation in question should all be named, with no pseudonyms involved, so that the reader can use that transcript as a primary document if they want or need to. If that can’t happen, then some of these conversations ought to be summarized or paraphrased, at least in places. But this shouldn’t keep you from getting a copy of this memoir and reading it.

In fact, those that question authority and wonder just how far the US government has strayed from its stated ideals will welcome this strange little book, which is just well documented enough to convince me that it’s entirely true.

It’s available for purchase now.

Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry*****

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lonesomedoveSince when do I read westerns? Since never…until a Goodreads friend recommended this title. He knew I liked history and historical fiction, and I couldn’t dismiss the recommendation, not only because this person has never steered me wrong, but because this book won the Pulitzer. That doesn’t guarantee I will like it either, of course, but it certainly enhances the likelihood. So on one of my increasingly-rare ventures to my favorite local used bookstore, I searched out the title. There it was, 857 pages bound in a beautiful hard cover, foliated-paged tome, for less than ten bucks. Sold!

It took me a long time to read, not because of its length—psssh, my readers know me better than that—but because of its physical size. A very lengthy book in an electronic reader is light weight no matter how many pages it has, but this gorgeous, old school novel was hell on a frozen shoulder. So for a long time I read it in little chunks, propping it on top of pillows on top of my lap. It took awhile, but it was worth it.

McMurtry earned his laurels, that much is certain. I was mesmerized by the way he took us to a place that no longer exists, immense swaths of nothing across the Midwestern USA and Northern Rockies. The idea that a person could travel long and hard for days and still not even be out of Texas just blew me away, and then there was still most of the journey yet to come. There are no roads; the protagonists have a kind-of, sort-of map; a list of rivers to sustain themselves, replenish their drinking water; water their mounts, with water being the equivalent of gassing up; and also water their herd.

I realized that one reason I never chose to read westerns is because I grew up during a time when cowboys were considered the enemy of the American Indian. I didn’t want to be allied with the white guys on the horses. And of course, that was one stereotype I later realized I should not have bought into, because not all cowboys were white guys; most were, for sure, but some were of Mexican heritage, some were Black, and once in a rare while there would be an American Indian riding with the cowboys. And cowboys did not always fight Indians; sometimes they were just moving cattle.

Apart from the almost tangible settings the author creates, we also have some complex relationships. I confess that some of the more peripheral characters among the cowboy crew were hard for me to keep straight. Which one is Dish, and which is Pea Eye? But it didn’t matter that much in terms of ability to enjoy the novel, because the main characters were so well developed, and there wasn’t a stereotype in the pack. Gus is the chief protagonist, and in my mind he was somewhere between Ralph Waite and Tom Hanks. Call, his very quiet, solitary partner, was a tow-headed version of Robert Redford. Lorena, the complicated woman that fell in love with Gus, eventually formed herself in my own mind to resemble country singer Miranda Lambert. Sometimes you just need a face to go with your main characters. Jake turned up as Dan Ackroyd without the sense of humor. Blue Duck is one of the most terrifying villains in literature!

Why go north? There was never any really good reason apart from Call’s wanderlust, and Gus’s unwillingness to be separated from his partner, with whom he had worked since their days as Texas Rangers. Gus also wanted to look up a woman from his past who had settled in Nebraska, and I loved how that played out.

And when all was said and done, I realized that this is one of those haunting stories that will forever remain in my mind. That’s saying a lot; I usually read 8-10 books per month, and often by the time I am invited to host a book giveaway or blog tour by the publisher, I have forgotten the name of the main character and all but the broadest contours of the story being promoted. They approach me 3 months after I wrote the review, and there are 30 books in between that story and the present. But that won’t happen here. In fact, because this wasn’t a galley, I waited to review it until I had the time and felt the urge. I still remember so much, and there have been several books gone by in the interim.

If you have the stamina to read a book of this length—and I have to tell you, though it’s a western it is not all actionactionaction, but rather deeply insightful in many places—and if you enjoy historical fiction, you ought to give this book consideration. It isn’t hard to find it used, and given its exalted status in literature, your local library probably also has a copy. But even if you have to pony up the cover price—pun intended—you could do much worse for your reading dollar.

An outstanding novel.

Thirty-Eight Witnesses: the Kitty Genovese Case, by AM Ronsenthal***

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38witnessesAM Rosenthal was a journalist, but in the 1960’s he was moved to write this relatively brief book—if fictional it would be considered a novella—about the failure of neighboring New Yorkers to come to the aid of Kitty Genovese, a woman that was murdered in 1964. I received this DRC free of charge from Net Galley and Open Road Integrated Media in exchange for an honest review.

The crime, one that occurred before drive-by shootings and mass killings in schools and other public places became an all-too-frequent occurrence in the USA, horrified New York and all that heard about it. The killer attacked 28 year old Kitty Genovese as she returned home from work. She lived in a middle class neighborhood, and when police later investigated, they would learn that 38 witnesses heard her scream for help. Nobody called the police until it was too late to save her. This is especially horrifying given that the killer left her bleeding after stabbing her several times, and she had the time, while he moved the car, to approach an apartment building and make her way inside its doors. But before she was able to go further, her murderer parked the car and returned to finish the job. She screamed a number of times, and one man opened his window and yelled at whoever was down there to leave her alone. Later the coroner would testify that had any of the witnesses phoned the police sooner, Kitty could have been saved. Instead she bled to death.

Largely Ronsenthal uses this opportunity to wax philosophical, both about the callous nature of people in general, and of New Yorkers. One New York newspaper managed to infer that it was her own fault by referring to her as a “barmaid” and mentioning that she was not living with her husband; the takeaway from this appearing to be that had she stayed with the mister and been home raising kids, she would not have been in danger. In this instance I think we can surmise that half a century later, any journalist who got that kind of misogynistic garbage past his editor would have heard from readers.

I found this little nugget hard to review. Part of it was due to a stereotype I wasn’t aware I carried; I assumed this attack was somehow related to the mafia (note the Italian last name). Whoopsie! Yes, I know that not everyone that bears an Italian name has a mobster in the family. So it goes.

But also, it’s an unusual piece of writing in that it isn’t really a memoir, isn’t really philosophy, isn’t really sociology. But the overall thesis appears to be that human beings don’t take good enough care of each other. He also uses the occasion to speak in defense of New York cops, who performed their jobs as well as they could in this circumstance. But what timing, given the behavior of NYPD of late! The piece hasn’t really aged all that well.

The writer speaks of a time in India when he himself failed to help others, a time when he regularly strolled past beggars that were ragged, often badly disabled or diseased, and he didn’t help them. He brought this item back time and again to where it felt a little like breast-beating and gnashing of teeth. I wasn’t interested in providing the author with the catharsis he seemed to be reaching for. For that, get a therapist already!

In all, I think his narrative is probably geared more toward native New Yorkers, and since the event is long gone and doesn’t really have a modern parallel, the niche that may be interested has shrunk to New Yorkers of Social Security age.

The writing was fluent, as one might expect of a seasoned journalist, but its prime period has come and gone. I was happy to read it free, but would not have wished to pay for the privilege.

Bonnet Strings: An Amish Woman’s Ties to Two Worlds, by Saloma Miller Furlong*****

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bonnetstringsA few years ago I read and reviewed this author’s first memoir, Why I Left the Amish. Her reasons were compelling, some of them inherent in the Amish tradition, others probably atypical of most Amish families, but all together they provided a powerful impetus, that little voice inside all but the dullest that cries out, “Man the life boats! Save yourself!” I understood, having read it, why Furlong would choose to bail, but I was left with other questions, mostly regarding a gap between the end of the book and the author’s biographical blurb. Happily, I heard from her a couple of months ago; she had written a sequel, and this is it. She volunteered kindly to send it in my direction for a chance to read and review, and it is just as riveting as the first.

The first volume dealt with the horrifying domestic abuse within her family, and the failure of the church to deal with it. Furlong wondered whether she might have remained Amish had she not dreaded her home life, or at least many aspects of it, so tremendously.

It also dealt with her independent nature and intellectual curiosity (my own terms, not hers). Why would the Amish so persistently seek to stamp out the desire of some of its own members to seek higher education, I had to wonder. Would they not want Amish nurses, professors, plumbers, electricians?

The e-mail I received from the author mentioned a PBS miniseries in which she was featured, The Amish followed by The Amish: Shunned. Once I finished reading Bonnet Strings, I decided to hold my review until I could view these productions, some four hours all told. Between what she tells us in this second memoir and what is said in the miniseries, I understand. Not that I know what it is like to be Amish; far from it. But I see now why they set such strict parameters in order to preserve their culture.

The metaphor the Amish use for the individual is that of a grain of wheat. The church is a loaf of bread, and one person can’t be in that loaf without crushing out their individual needs and desires. I have heard of other cultures abroad that take this approach—the Chinese come to mind—but for a quarter million such people to be here in the USA with its John Wayne culture of independence is remarkable indeed, and it is clear to me now that to permit its members to put even one toe into the world of freedom, independence, and yes, greater risk, is to invite its youth to leave and not return. But ninety percent of Amish children grow up to be Amish. They stay Amish. And I really think the twin practices of shunning those—even one’s own children or yikes, parents!—when they leave, combined with the standing offer of reconciliation upon return, is the powerful engine that sucks many of those that have departed back into the fold.

Furlong has been independent and living in Burlington, Vermont, has built new friendships and has a serious boyfriend, but she goes back to the Amish when they come for her. She recounts how it is almost as if a mental switch has been thrown, and she suddenly no longer feels she has a choice. Until I watched the documentaries to accompany the poignant and visceral material in her memoir, I thought this was crazy. But the combination of religion, family, and the fact that there is another language, that old German dialect spoken only by the Amish, weaves a powerful spell. It is as if a voice says, “We know you in a way no one else can.” Saloma goes back to live in her old home town once. Others go back multiple times before they are able to tear away. Actually, our author made a pretty good job of it compared to others that tear themselves away, and in the end is happier that she has returned once in order to put to rest her own doubts, her own questions about whether, once out of her father’s home, she could become a successful Amish woman.

Her memoir is punctuated with memories scribed by her husband, David Furlong, who was a part of her journey out into the world. He provides a different perspective, perhaps closer to what the reader might have seen.

In reading the memoir, it occurred to me that the practice of shunning creates selective breeding. If those that become independent are allowed to return to the community at will and be welcomed, allowed to mix and mingle, then before you know it, they would intermarry. And though science has still not teased apart the mystery of which qualities in us are inbred, and which are the result of how we are raised, the stunning level of passivity among those that remain in the community is remarkable. And it is those truly passive folk that have babies, babies, and more babies. I suspect that this is how they have managed to not only not die out, as those of us on the outside would have anticipated, but thrive and grow.

With a thoughtful memoir such as Bonnet Strings, I like to read the foreword and introduction, read the book, then go back and reread both of them again. The producer of the documentaries wrote the foreword, and she mentioned that Saloma has taken the time—some thirty years–to let her experiences gel. The memoir, therefore, is not written for a therapeutic purpose, but rather to provide an account, both of the strengths and tenacity within the Amish culture, and of the resilience required of those that simply cannot find a place within it.

Because there is no middle ground. There probably never will be.

This articulate, engaging memoir is available for purchase right now. This is a great way to spend your own holiday weekend, and it would also make a terrific gift. Fascinating!

Chasing Ghosts: the Policing of Terrorism, by John Mueller and Mark Stewart***

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chasingghostsI suspect just about everyone in the USA, or who frequently has to travel to the USA, is heartily sick of the extreme security measures that raise our taxes through the roof and cause so many delays, inconveniences, and even the confiscation of ordinary products that cost us a fair amount of money, on those occasions that we foolishly forget not to take them with us on the plane. The racial profiling makes it even worse. And so I requested this DRC from Net Galley and Oxford University Press with the expectation that I would agree with it wholeheartedly and immediately form the virtual simpatico with its writers that readers form with their favorite authors. Alas, not so much.

It’s not a terrible book, but it’s also not a great one. The writing style comes across as strangely antagonistic, odd given that I was ready to agree with them when I began the book. They make a lot of good points, particularly in comparing the expenditures of the Federal government to the amount that was spent on the Cold War and the anti-communist hysteria of the 1950’s. But whenever I read scholarly nonfiction, I am inclined to check out the end notes early on, and I was struck by the large number of times Mueller and Stewart quoted themselves (or sometimes one or the other of themselves separately). Their other sources were more likely to be newspapers and magazines rather than primary documents, which were used sparingly.

My sense is that if you’re going to challenge the status quo, you have to roll up your sleeves and do it right. In this case, a worthy thesis, at least to some extent, is less credible than it might have been with more diligent research and more legitimate scholarship.

My gut was inclined to rate this book two stars rather than three, but then I realized that my gut was responding to the ISIS mass killings in France. For the writers, it’s just pure dumb bad luck that the real terrorists created such tremendous outrage and heartfelt sympathy throughout the Western world, and in doing so underscored the reason such stringent security measures are in place, just as their book was nearing publication.

The most compelling argument against the Patriot Act and all of its associated agencies and agents is that when someone is willing to die in order to commit a mass killing, nobody and nothing can really stop them. The security measures being utilized are effective against people that want to enter an establishment or a vehicle and kill as many people in it as possible, then walk away and live to kill more people another day. This wasn’t the primary argument Mueller and Stewart rolled out. Their main argument, that the Bill of Rights is being trampled by the very government that was invented to uphold the Constitution, is a good one and I think would have been easier to get behind had events not unfolded as they did, and of course, had the source material been more impressive; yet the safety of all of us will always preclude individual liberties. So in a sense, ISIS gives the conservative, locked-down wing of the ruling class a red-carpet invitation to clamp down on civil liberty; but that would not have made a book that would sell, and perhaps that is why the authors didn’t make this their focus.

If this is an area of interest to you, you can get a copy November 30. I wouldn’t pay hard cover price for it unless you have tremendous interest and very deep pockets, though.

Breaker: A Windy City Dark Mystery, by Richard Thomas*****

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breakerawindycityRichard Thomas is a monstrously great writer. In Breaker, a Windy City Dark mystery, he presents us with Ray, a man of unusual and intimidating appearance; a sinister stranger in a white van who victimizes Chicago’s working class school girls; and Natalie, the girl that lives next door to Ray. Though this is the first Windy City Dark mystery I read, I fell in, only extricating myself close to bedtime, because this is not the kind of thing you want entering your dreams. This smashing thriller came to me free of charge from Net Galley and Random House Alibi.

The first thing I usually look for in fiction is strong character development. In excellent fiction, sometimes the setting drives the character; sometimes the setting and character drive the plot; sometimes the plot is driven by character. Breaker definitely falls into the last of these categories. Told primarily in Ray’s first person and counterpointed by Natalie’s, along with a narrative that pops in and out surrounding the white van, the suspense is almost unbearable. The character is so palpable that I impulsively reached into my Goodreads account and checked the “literary fiction” box among my own library categories. The story is dark and haunting; fans of Stephen King, a writer Thomas lists among those that have influenced him, won’t want to miss out on this story. Though it is not driven by the supernatural, the tone and level of nightmarish suspense are quite similar.

Part of the hook is the affinity the reader must feel for Ray after just a short time. He lives alone; others are often afraid of him on sight because of his enormous size and ghastly pallor. His mother is dead, and we learn more about this eerie aspect of Ray’s past as the story progresses. He lives in the city’s gritty underbelly, spends almost nothing of what money he makes as a cage fighter—a sport so much more horrible than boxing—on himself, and he is constantly alone.

Meanwhile, Natalie, the 15-year-old next door, is being stalked by the white van. Because Natalie is kind to him and does not fear him, Ray reaches out to her in an uncharacteristic way and teaches her the self-defense tips none of her high school teachers will ever be able to provide. Their friendship is platonic but the bond is tight.

Meanwhile, the white van has Chicago even more on edge than it usually is; girls are disappearing, and no one knows who is taking them. Every white van begins to look sinister. I found myself gripping my electronic reader, and though I had been resting the arm that held it on a pillow, I found myself holding it up in the air because my hand had nearly tightened into a fist.

It’s that creepy.

I marked a number of really stellar passages—this guy is fantastic with gripping figurative language—but at the end of the day, I am not supposed to reveal any quotes till the book is on the shelves, and I want you to know about this one right now.

It’s up for sale January 5, 2016, and it will help you forget all about your post-holiday blues. Get this book!