Flags on the Bayou, by James Lee Burke****

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James Lee Burke is one of the finest prose stylists the U.S. has to offer. His brilliant, lush descriptions, quirky, resonant characters with interesting names, and his passion for the rights of the working class are the stuff of legends. My thanks go to Net Galley and Simon and Schuster for the invitation to read and review his latest novel, Flags on the Bayou. This book is for sale now.

Our protagonist is Hannah Laveau, a former slave who’s on the run from the law. With her is Florence Milton, an abolitionist from Massachusetts. Hannah is determined not to be caught, but also to retrieve her little boy, Samuel, a preschooler from whom she was separated at the battle of Shiloh. Her determination is singular. Along the way we have officers from both sides of the Civil War, corrupt rich guys, and bushwhackers. The story is complex, as are all of Burke’s novels, and the setting atmospheric.

All of these things being said—and I’ve said them many times before, since I began reading his work about a decade ago—there are some things that I would like to see done differently. Burke has always intertwined social and political messages within his novels, and so it’s the subtext in this book that jars me. In fact, it bothers me enough that I abandoned this story twice before I finally dug in, determined to finish it.

The first category here is the American Civil War, and the fallout we still deal with today. In past novels, Burke has told us that the slaveocracy was wrong, and that the war was indefensible. I feel as if he has retreated from that here. We have some ugly Confederate characters, to be sure, but we also have ugly Union officers, and General Sherman—one of this reviewer’s most beloved heroes—gets run through the mud multiple times. It’s as if Burke wants us to know that actually, both sides were bad, and that war itself is just plain awful. This is weak tea indeed.

The second is one I’ve been eyeing for the last few of Burke’s novels, and I have soft-pedaled it because of my great admiration for the body of his work, and for his ageing dignity, but I do have to say something here. His development of female characters needs work. Lots of it. All of his females are either Madonnas or whores (and sometimes, Madonnas that are forced to be whores, through no real fault of their own.) I would dearly love to see a female character in his books who is not there for her sexuality, and who is not either a victim or a potential victim. With Burke’s Dave Robicheaux detective novels, progress was made with a lesbian cop character, and I was thrilled. But she came and then went, and his experience creating her hasn’t overflowed into his other work.

More than any one thing, I want to see Mr. Burke write a book—just one, seriously—where there is no sexual assault, no threat of sexual assault, and no memory of sexual assault. It’s getting old, sir. You surely have the ability to provide female characters with other motivations. I want to see it.

I was nearly annoyed enough to rate this book three stars, but I liked the ending a lot, and so the fourth star remains.

So that’s my two cents, because as much as I love his work in general, this is getting in the way. There will doubtless be some blowback from his other devoted fans once I publish this review; bring it.

A final note: because I was struggling with this book, I checked out the audio version from Seattle Bibliocommons. The voice actors that perform it are world class. However, because the story is so complex, bouncing back and forth in point of view and setting, it is hard to follow in audio alone. The best way to read this is with both the printed word, whether on paper or digitally, accompanied by the audio.

Mother-Daughter Murder Night, by Nina Simon****

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Nina Simon’s debut novel, Mother-Daughter Murder Night, marks a fine beginning to an auspicious career. My thanks go to Net Galley and William Morrow for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

The story unfolds with three generations of women—Lana, Beth, and Jack—solving a murder mystery together. Lana, the grandmother, has just received dreadful news from her doctor, and she’s forced to rely upon Beth, her estranged daughter, for help to and from chemo appointments. Jack is her granddaughter, Beth’s daughter. Although all three are important characters, Lana is the protagonist.

Lana doesn’t deal well with helplessness.

No sooner has she moved into the little beach house in central California where the other two reside, than Jack, a teenager with a job as a kayak tour guide when not in school, finds a dead body while she is working. Suspicion initially falls on Jack, and so Beth and Lana dive in, first seeking to prove that Jack is innocent, and then, led by Lana, to find out who actually did it.

Amateur sleuth books come with an inherent challenge to the author, because obviously, civilians that have never worked in law enforcement are badly outmatched by actual cops. They don’t have the tools, the connections, or the experience to carry it off, and so such mystery novels sometimes end up looking ridiculous. Simon holds her own here nicely.  Another issue I see frequently is with characters that are children. Jack is a teen, and she’s a bright girl, but Simon doesn’t fall into the trap of creating an unbelievably smart teen in order to justify making her walk and talk exactly like an adult. Jack has the naivete and occasional bad judgement common to kids her age, and because of this, the story rings true.

There are a couple of things that I’d change if I could. First, the whole “fiercely independent” and “tiny firecracker” personas are badly overused and becoming a cliché. The second may be partially due to my own false assumptions. Between the cover and the title, I initially thought this would be a comic caper, with the women planning to mete out some vigilante justice with hilarious missteps and hijinks along the way. Although the book has its moments, it’s not as funny as I anticipated.

Nonetheless, this is a fun read, easily followed, and with more character development than one usually sees in a novel of this nature. The chemo occasionally seems a little too easy on Lana, but it’s not beyond the pale; after all, different people tolerate these things at different levels. There’s never a moment where I slam down the book due to disbelief. I appreciate the working class realism in Beth and Jack’s lives.  

I recommend Mother-Daughter Murder Night  to those that enjoy the genre, and I look forward to seeing what Simon writes next.

Those We Thought We Knew, by David Joy*****

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David Joy is a brilliant writer. His stories, set in the Carolina mountains that he calls home are resonant, visceral, and always about believable characters that hail from the hardscrabble working class. Those We Thought We Knew is his best. My thanks go to Net Galley and Putnam Penguin for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

Sylva, North Carolina is the sort of insular, homespun community that you don’t see much of anymore. Everybody knows everybody, not only by name but by family, religion, and a host of salient details that form their backstories. There’s not a lot of traffic in or out of Sylva, nestled as it is in a hollow of the mountains. Now, however, two newcomers have arrived, but they aren’t together. Surely not. One is a lowlife vagrant, a pencil-necked, mullet-headed, greasy drunk in an ’84 Caprice named William Dean Cawthorne. When the sheriff’s deputies roust him, one of them finds a small notebook that contains some surprising names; he also has a long, white robe in the car, and with it, a conical white head covering with eyeholes in it. Mr. Cawthorne, you see, is a recruiter for the Klan.

Toya Gardner comes to town at about the same time to visit her grandmother and work on her thesis. She’s a graduate student from Atlanta; she creates meaningful African-American sculptures and other art works. But when she finds the statue of the Confederate soldier in the town square, she is inspired to make a different artistic statement than she’d originally planned, and when she does, all hell breaks loose.

This searing story sees two terrible crimes unfold in sleepy little Sylva. The dynamics that exist between the county sheriff, the Sylva police force, and the local citizenry—particularly Toya’s family—are rich and complex, and they showcase Joy’s best character development to date. In the end, we must concede that alongside the horrors represented by overt white supremacists, the more chilling may be that which simmers below the surface of men and women that, yes, We Thought We Knew.

This is brave writing. Joy will no doubt be the subject of some unfriendly attention because of it. My hope is that it draws the accolades that it deserves from those that seek true social justice, and that it will inspire useful, critical introspection and conversation on the part of its readers.

Highly recommended.

Lucky Red, by Claudia Cravens*****

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Larry McMurtry, eat your heart out. There’s a fine new word-slinger come to town, and her name is Claudia Cravens.

My thanks go to Random House and Net Galley for the invitation to read and review Lucky Red. This book is for sale now, and you should get it and read it.

Bridget lives a life of hardscrabble deprivation; her mother died in childbirth, and all she has is her pa. He loves her, but he’s worthless; when he finally gets a bit of money, he invariably drinks and gambles till it’s nearly gone. During one such episode, he gambles away their little house, and then buys a homestead, sight unseen and many miles away. What they find instead is a tar paper shack; there are no crops or tilled acreage, no tools or even a decent place to live. They crawl into the miserable hovel to get out of the elements, at least, and get some sleep; a rattler has the same notion, but when pa thrashes in his sleep, the rattler bites him in the neck, and then there is only teenage Bridget.

Bridget makes her way to Dodge City, and in no time, she is stone cold broke. She’s recruited to work in a brothel, the only one in town owned and run by women. She doesn’t mind the work and makes friends among the other “sporting women,” and is curiously removed from the process for which she is paid; slide prong A into slot V; moan a little, gush, and collect your pay. But later, she finds herself obsessed with a new sex worker; a lovely blonde woman named Sallie. Everyone around her understands the significance of this fascination, but Bridget herself doesn’t get it. She’s young, and she’s naïve. But when Spartan Lee, a female bounty hunter, comes to town and asks to hire Bridget, the sun shines and the angels sing.

This story is epic, and in many ways reminds me of Little Big Man, but with a female protagonist. And in many ways, what makes it so successful is its restraint. At the book’s outset, there’s a slimy man that wants to buy Bridget’s hand in marriage, which would give her father a nice chunk of change, but she hates the man, and her father doesn’t push it. A less capable writer would have done it the other way, but here, and in every instance where I predict what will happen because it’s so obvious, Cravens does something else. And the lesbian sex is brief and almost free of physical details—a sad thing for anyone looking for soft porn, but it serves to keep the story moving forward—with the emotion behind it carrying the internal narrative.

Although Bridget has no complaint about the work she does, and the management is more benign than in houses owned and run by men, Cravens keeps it real. One night, Sallie is attacked by a client, and Bridget bursts in to rescue her. It doesn’t go well. Sallie berates her for her naivete:

“You don’t see the first thing about this, though, do you. They all have a knife, Bridget. They all have a gun, and they were all born with two fists on the ends of their arms. You think you’ve got this all figured out, but any single one of ‘em could take a swipe at you some night and you’d be dead before you hit the ground.”

To tell you more would be to spoil it for you, so I’ll leave you with this: Lucky Red is the best debut novel of 2023, and one of the best books I’ve seen this year, period. Don’t miss it.

The West, by Naoise Mac Sweeney****-*****

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4.5 stars, rounded up.

Those that have taken a course on Western Civilization—as college freshmen or otherwise—are familiar with its framework, that the modern world can attribute its earliest, most progressive, democratic, and technically superior attributes to the dead White European men that came before us. Archeologist and award-winning historian Naoise Mac Sweeney has taken a sledgehammer to this construct, proving that many of the smartest scientists, inventors, and social, military, and political leaders were not White, not European, and not male.

My thanks go to Net Galley and Random House for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

Mac Sweeney demonstrates her thesis by discussing fourteen key figures from the past that don’t fit into the standard framework. She begins with Herodotus and ends with Carrie Lam. Some chapters read like a college text or lecture, one where I know that this information is important, but my mind keeps wandering, and I check to see how much longer the chapter will be. Others woke me up. In chapter seven, she features Safiye Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. She was not legally able to become sultan following her husband’s death, so she saw her son installed, and then “summarily executed” his nineteen younger brothers to prevent anyone from contesting his right to rule. Another that made me sit up and take notice is Njinga of Angola. I was riveted by this one, to the extent that I actually shouted at one point. (It’s all right; I was at home.)  If we judge her work by whether she has proven her thesis, then unquestionably she has done so. 

There are two aspects that I didn’t care for here. The first is a mannerism. The use of the Victorian “we” is grating. “As we shall see…” “We have discussed…” No. She has already seen, and the only one doing the discussing within the pages of this book is the author.  Also, since the title itself identifies this tome as a history book, Carrie Lam of Hong Kong, whose quotes date from 2021 and 2017, has no business being included here. History is defined as what has occurred fifty years or more prior to publication. Mac Sweeney knows this.

In a fit of pique over these two flaws, in addition to the snoozy parts of the narrative, I initially rated this book with four stars, but this is a groundbreaking body of work, and after reflection, I changed my rating to 4.5 stars, rounded up.

Highly recommended to students and to anyone interested in world history.

The Wind Knows My Name, by Isabel Allende****

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Isabel Allende is a living legend, a literary genius and fierce defender of human rights, foremost of women and immigrants. The Wind Knows My Name is a novel that features the struggle of two generations of immigrants, those that came to the U.S. during the Holocaust, and those that are coming here now from Latin America. Allende moves us seamlessly from one set of characters to the next, and then back again.

My thanks go to Net Galley and Random House Ballantine for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

I have been reading Allende’s work for decades. To read her stories is to be transported. In this case, the protagonists include two small people designed to possess the human heart. Samuel is a Jewish violin prodigy, still quite small as this story unfolds; his parents send him to safety when the Nazi occupation of Vienna takes hold, thinking that they will square things away and join him later. Of course, they are never able to do that. Our present-day protagonist is Anita, a Guatemalan immigrant child that is nearly blind. She is separated from her family at the U.S. border, and does her best to stave off loneliness by talking to her sister, Claudia, who is dead.

On the one hand, Allende is, to my way of thinking, on the side of the angels here politically. She always is. But if this feels a bit lecture-like to me, a diehard fan, it seems unlikely that she will reach a lot of newer readers. Usually I bond with her characters and carry them around with me for some time after I have turned the last page, but this time I find I am watching the page numbers go by. The person I feel most affinity for is Samuel, the tiny child clinging to his precious violin, but he disappears quickly and when he returns, he is an old man. Another reviewer commented that too much is told here, and too little shown, and that sounds right to me. And as much as I love Samuel, I also am burned out on historical fiction set during World War II. I hope in her next project, the author will turn in another direction.

To Allende’s many devoted readers, this book is recommended with the above caveats.

No Mistaking Death, by Shelley Costa*****

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I love a wry mystery series, especially when it features a wry female sleuth. Kinsey Millhone is done and there’s nothing I can do about it, but Marian Warner is here, and this series is just getting off the ground. My thanks go to Net Galley, Level Best Books, and Shelley Costa for the review copy.  This book is for sale now.

Marian is a private eye, mostly; when there isn’t enough custom to pay the landlord, she does other things on the side. But now, her sister Joan is sending her to investigate whether a former Jesuit Mission house in Carthage, Ohio qualifies for National Landmark status. Carthage is a tiny little hamlet in the middle of nowhere, but it contains Marian’s old flame, Charlie. She goes.

The first book of a mystery series poses extra challenges to its author, who must simultaneously spin out the mystery itself while also introducing and developing its protagonist and any repeating secondary characters, all without slowing the pace. Costa does both splendidly.

By the time Marian hits town, things have grown more complicated; you see, the possibly-historical mission house now sports its own murdered corpse. From here, the story builds in a way that is undeniable, and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny. In particular, there is quirky figurative language sprinkled throughout, and it jumps at the reader unexpectedly.

By the story’s conclusion, I feel as if I’ve just stuffed myself with something delicious. Nothing here is predictable, and I can’t wait to see more of Marian Warner. Highly recommended to those that like a cozy mystery with a bit of an edge.  

The Forgotten Girls, by Monica Potts***

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My thanks go to Net Galley and Random House for inviting me to read and review The Forgotten Girls, by Monica Potts. I generally enjoy reading books that focus on the working class, and so I thought this would be a good fit. And it might have been, had it been better written.

In broad contours, it’s a memoir that examines the lives of Potts and her best friend, Darci, both of whom grow up in a tiny, isolated town in the Ozark Mountains. The community is long on religion and red hats, and short on jobs, opportunity, ambition, and encouragement for girls to make something of themselves. Nevertheless, Monica, whose mother has raised her with the expectation that she complete her high school education, go to college, and then live somewhere else where there are more possibilities, has done all of those things, while Darci, who is every bit as talented and has just as much potential, is raised by a dithering mother that lets her do whatever she chooses because she dislikes conflict, and who has no expectation that her daughter will make a better life for herself, since she herself did not.

Okay.

Potts wonders why she made it out of there and Darci didn’t, and yet I’m not seeing the mystery, nor anything that’s all that different from what’s happening all over the country. And indeed, part of the time, Potts discusses this fact, that it is happening in many places that lack resources and that don’t prioritize education. And so, sometimes the story seems to be a sociological study that uses Monica and Darci as examples, and at other times there is so much anguished self-flagellation that I find myself wondering why she thinks the public needs to hear about her friend’s failure to thrive, and whether this isn’t mostly therapeutic writing for the author’s own benefit.

In other words, the book seems like a lengthy treatise in search of a thesis. We wander in and out of both girls’ lives, with a good deal of attention paid to the death of Potts’s sister, but there’s no real direction or clear purpose that I can find.

In the back of my mind, I can hear choruses of other readers asking whether this situation is considered special because it’s about white girls. Nobody makes a fuss when girls in rural areas that are Black or of Latinx heritage fall through the cracks; hell, it’s been happening for more than a hundred years.

Many other reviewers seem to find merit here, but I confess I don’t see much. If you choose to read this one, I suggest getting it free or cheap.

Liberation Day, by George Saunders*****

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Liberation Day is a collection of the best short stories you will ever encounter. I had never read George Saunders before, but when I received an invitation from Random House and Net Galley to read and review this book, I remembered him by reputation and jumped at the chance. This book is for sale now.

Sometimes I feel conflicted when I see words like “Booker prize winner” and “exquisite” I feel torn. The book may be brilliant, but it also may be a whole lot of work to read. I am happy to report that is not the case here. Every one of these nine stories could serve as the cornerstone of a collection; the title selection is first, but I suspect that is more about length than anything, as it approaches novella length. It’s science fiction but also vaguely political; a group of people have had their brains scrubbed to near emptiness, and they are mounted on a “speaking wall.” Their sole purpose is to provide entertainment as a sort of scripted Greek chorus. They may only speak upon command; they assume this is a good arrangement, because they have no memories of their prior lives. But then the home (and Speaking Wall) owners are visited by their adult son, who concocts a scheme to liberate the speakers.

Many of these stories have stylized prose and invented words that might be difficult for a reader whose first language isn’t English.  “Mother’s Day,” which is one of my favorites, begins:

“This distinguished-looking gentleman would appear at your door somewhat sloshed and ask, Were your trees slaggard? Were they gublagging behind the other trees? Did they need to be prodderated? And hold up the little device. In this way they had nearly lost the house.”

Happily, for underconfident readers, there is an audio version available. I used it part of the time because I was running behind. There’s a different narrator for each story; actor Tina Fey does one of them! My notes are full of praise for these performers, who make a brilliant book even more so.

I especially enjoyed “The Mom of Bold Action,” which features the ultimate unreliable narrator, and my absolute favorite, “Ghoul”. Imagine, if you will, landing in Hell, or its amusement park equivalent, but there are still rules of etiquette to be observed; in particular, you are expected to be positive, and constantly encourage the other ghouls as they commit the ultimate misdeeds assigned to them. I laughed so hard at this one that it made my family a little cranky, and I had to go off by myself to hear the rest. Worth it.

The stories are a mixed bag in terms of genre, and all are outstanding.

Highly recommended in whatever format makes your heart happy.

Bad Mormon, by Heather Gay***

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I was in the mood for a celebrity wallow and that’s what I got. I have never watched Gay on any reality TV program, but was drawn by the book’s sassy title. I checked out the audio version of this memoir from Seattle Bibliocommons and listened to it in the evenings when I was watering my plants.

I had a bit of an anti-Mormon bias going into this thing, having spent a somewhat traumatic freshman semester at BYU, the Mormon’s flagship college, several decades ago. I was a squeaky clean kid with several Mormon friends, and I thought I’d fit right in. I didn’t, and the system reeked of superficiality, rewarded passivity for the girls, and I saw hypocrisy and double standards; it grated on me. I couldn’t wait to get out of there, even though I had initially been desperate to live anywhere in the world other than home. So I smiled when I saw this memoir, and thought okaaay! Let’s hear it.

By the time Gay was finished, I was a little less anti-Mormon than when she began. What can I say? Perhaps I was born contrary. But to kick over the traces of the faith and culture in which you have been raised, there should be a good reason, right? Maybe you’ve found disparities and contradictions within the doctrine, or decided that a system that endorsed racism and sexism was not okay, or as a woman, you longed for a professional career that required brains and didn’t involve staying home all day. A good reason.

But for Gay, she changed, and yet she didn’t. She wanted more control of her own life, and there, I sympathize. But ultimately what she really wanted to do was develop a business in which she sold women booty-shot photographs of themselves and peddled a product that allowed women to do their own Botox injections; because, she asks, what could possibly be more important than your physical appearance? And I said, Yup. Sounds plenty Mormon to me.

Other things rubbed me the wrong way, too. Here’s one: while she is being filmed for the Real Housewives TV program, she realizes that she has to formally break with the Church, which in turn means pulling the rug out from under her three daughters. Telling them about this is something to be done privately, with sensitivity and care, right? Well, no. She does it while she’s being filmed, so it will turn up in a zillion living rooms all over America, including those of their extended family and the girls’ classmates. She peppers her narrative with quotes from the Book of Mormon–which she doesn’t cite; is she being ironic, or running on automatic pilot?

I just can’t.

On the other hand, what does one expect from a book like this? There are a few good laughs, and lots of cliches. And I learned what goes on in a temple ceremony; spoiler alert, it’s dull.

For those that are interested, I advocate for getting this book free or cheap. Don’t pony up the full cover price.