#21-- 2021 into 2022: Seven Months of Really Good Reading

So, besides hiking, biking, tennis and racquetball, I've enjoyed a good seven months of reading and wanted to share what's really Stuff to Read. Kicking off the list is an old mystery that I've had for about 20 years and re-discovered when I bought the author's latest from 2017, the fifth in a series that began with River of Darkness:: A Novel of Suspense in the Shadow of World War l (1999). This book introduced Inspector John Madden who is a very damaged person after his experiences in the trenches in France during WW l and the deaths of his wife and daughter to the flu epidemic that followed. Madden's 1924-based superiors at Scotland Yard assign him to a multiple murders case in Surrey that appears to be a gang burglary of a country house gone wrong. But Madden doesn't agree after seeing the wounds on the bodies during the autopsy. They appear to be caused by one person using a wartime bayonet. While Madden pursues the killer with the help of the local doctor, a beautiful woman, we are given alternating chapters as the actual murderer prepares his next venture. We are given his history and insight into why he's following the River of Darkness very much in the style of Harris' Silence of the Lambs..

Next in line is Naomi Hirahara's latest, Clark & Division.  Set in 1944 in Chicago's northside, the novel introduces 20 year old Aki Ito and her family who have been released from California's Manzanar camp following Pearl Harbor to live in a Japanese-American community in Chicago with her older sister, Rose. But just as the Ito family is traveling to Chicago, they get word that Rose died when she fell onto the subway tracks .Furthermore, Rose was pregnant and Aki doesn't buy the accident story. The novel carefully presents life in the very segregated community as WW 2 rages and tempers run hot.

Thomas Perry, author of the Butcher's Boy an EDGAR awardwinner in 1983, has a knack for exploring the workings of prison escapes, hired killers and now, The Burglar(2019).Elle Stowell is a young woman with an unconventional profession: burglary. But Elle is no petty thief―with just the right combination of smarts, looks, and skills, she can easily stroll through ritzy Bel Air neighborhoods and pick out the perfect home for plucking the most valuable items. This is how Elle has always gotten by―she is good at it, and she thrives on the thrill. But after stumbling upon a grisly triple homicide while stealing from the home of a wealthy art dealer, Elle discovers that she is no longer the only one sneaking around. Somebody is searching for her. As Elle realizes that her knowledge of the high-profile murder has made her a target, she races to solve the case before becoming the next casualty, using her breaking-and-entering skills to uncover the truth about exactly who the victims were and why someone might have wanted them dead.

Colson Whitehead, author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys authored another great novel last year with The Harlem Shuffle. Ray Carney, a Black man and furniture store owner in 1959-1964 Harlem strives to support his growing family, maybe raise himself in his father-in-laws eyes, and try to turn his crime inclined cousin around. But Ray also is known to take the occasional piece of jewelry, tv, or fancy houseware in "trade" and move it along to a local fence. All is going reasonably well in Ray's life until his cousin joins a gang wanting to knock over the Hotel Theresa-- the Waldorf of Harlem-- and the wrong stuff gets stolen. Ray must use all his skills to avoid the real mafia and corrupt cops as the story moves along. 

Wm. Kent Krueger's 18th novel in his Cork O'Connor series is almost a stand alone as Krueger works the territory he so successfully opened in his novels Ordinary Grace (a 2014 EDGAR award winner) and This Tender Land (2019), another award winning bestseller. Lightning Strike is the prequel to the Cork O'Connor series as Cork, a 12 year old in 1963 Aurora MN, finds the body of one of his heroes hanging from a tree in the deep forest near Iron Lake. Cork's father, the sheriff, is expected to agree with the view that the death of the Ojibwe leader was suicide. But Cork and his dad aren't easily led so they work independently and together to get to the truth. BTW-- Krueger will finally be coming to Loveland on Monday, April 11 for a Loveland Loves 2 Read program on the three mentioned books and his career in writing.

Silvia Garcia-Moreno, best selling author of Mexican Gothic, has produced a novel viewing the 1970s student protests and government crushing of revolt in Velvet was the Night. Maite, a 30 something secretary in a Mexico City law firm, lives lonely and carless in an apartment with her mother's constant criticism and only the latest issue of Secret Romance magazine to give her any relief. El Elvis is a 20 something escapee from rural poverty working as a thug for El Mago and his Hawks who are a government supported group sent to break up demonstrations and deliver bodily damage to the student demonstrators. Their paths move in parallel as Leonora, a neighbor of Maite, leaves her cat and a key to her apartment and disappears. Leonora, has a roll of undeveloped film of the Hawks and police beating students and many parties would like access to it. Elvis follows Maite and discovers that they have a lot in common, hence the title.

Finally, for my post-holiday, non-fiction reading, my daughter gifted me a copy of the 1619 Project, edited by Nikole Hannah-Jones. Like last year's Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, this book is big, 624 pages and it deals with the painful  discussion of slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Jim Crow era and life into the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The 1619 book is eighteen chapters, each researched, footnoted and written by a different scholar on subjects like politics, music, sugar industry, diet, traffic, and citizenship to capitalism, religion, and our democracy itself. The book is a clear, connected review of US History in the many chapters, stories, poems and photos that reveal the past and present pain that originated in this country when that first ship carrying slaves from Africa landed in Virginia.

#20  Winter into Summer 2021--Vaccinated and Reading Like Crazy

So, it's been six months or so since I updated the waiting world on what has been worthwhile  to read. Christmas brought a gift from my daughter of Barak Obama's first volume of biography, A Promised Land, which weighed in at 700 pages and basically covered his first two years in office. There are returns to his boyhood on Hawaii and his education as he gradually moved into local then state and national politics. The book is very conversational as he talks about his family and especially his wife Michelle and his daughters. He maintains the tone which is highly readable when talking about politicians and world leaders, but he really gets into the detail of the BIG issues of his first two years, namely the worldwide financial collapse of 2008-9 and the Affordable Care Act-Obamacare. If you were not a poli sci major in college you might wish for some serious editorial oversight on topics like these but his writing about foreign policy,especially the hunt for Osama Bin Laden are edge of seat reading. I'd recommend it regardless of political leanings as the writing of a very smart man.

Another earlier gift from my daughter got read as I racked up miles all winter on the recumbent bicycle downstairs. The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson was truly a transformational book for me as she pursued in vast historical scope (she interviewed more than 1,000 people) of the Great Migration of Black Americans from the Jim Crow South of the 1920s to the 1970s, focusing on three people--  Ida Mae Gladney, who in 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago, where she achieved quiet blue-collar success and, in old age, voted for Barack Obama when he ran for an Illinois Senate seat ; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida orange groves and potential lynching for Harlem and work as a Pullman porter on the NYC to Florida train, saw his family fall, and finally found peace in God ; and Robert Foster, who left Louisiana in 1953 to pursue a medical career in the military and in Los Angeles, the personal physician to Ray Charles as part of a glitteringly successful medical career, which allowed him to purchase a grand home but exposed him to Vegas gambling and the horses. This book helped me better understand my years growing up in the Calumet Region and news from Chicago on red-lining, race riots and the protests.

A third book by a Black author that I enjoyed immensely was J. Drew Lanham's  The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature which is set in the southwestern corner of South Carolina near Augusta GA. It is the story of his boyhood and family as seen through the lenses of history and nature as he presents the history of the Lanham name originating with a great, great grandfather , a slave in the late 1790s working on the Lanham plantation, tracing down to his grandmother and father living in the Jim Crow south. But equally important are the lessons he learned observing nature on the family's wild lands that led him to college and a Wildlife Ecology professorship at Clemson University. Now retired Lanham still revels in ornithology but he's very aware of his surroundings.

And speaking of the South, we made our first trip of the Covid years to North and South Carolina in late April, May and toured the Kings Mountain National Military Park on the NC/SC border. The Park Ranger strongly recommended  a the book to read to understand the Revolutionary War fought in the South, specifically the Carolinas. and he was right though the 400 pages were somewhat daunting.  The Road to Guilford Courthouse: The American Revolution in the Carolinas opens with the 1776 Battle of Sullivan’s Island where Patriot forces successfully defended the Charleston Harbor and concludes with the British victory at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in 1781. While these two events bookend this military history, the meat of the work is a battle-by-battle march through the skirmishes and battles of the Southern Campaign, culminating at Guilford Courthouse. The author, John Buchanan, examines not only the battlefield strategy and tactical decisions made in the Carolina back country, but also the personalities and military careers of the major characters of Daniel Morgan, Nathanael Greene, Francis Marion, Sir Henry Clinton, Lord Cornwallis, Banastre Tarleton and Scotsman hero of the Kings Mountain battle, Patrick Ferguson

The final book I wanted to focus on is guitarist extraordinaire Richard Thompson's  brand new book Beeswing: Losing My Way and Finding My Voice 1967-1975. This presents the early years career of Fairport Convention, a super group of folk and rock musicians who scuffled along Great Britain but made exceptional music. And Thompson can write!

 

#19-- A Covid Fall's Reading

 So, what's been worth my reading time during the past 6 months? Some old and some stunningly new. The 2014 debut novel in British author Mick Herron's self-titled Slow Horses series introduces the inhabitants of MI5's castoffs into London's Slough House. These men and women are the failures within the government intelligence service who screwed up an operation, crossed up an ambitious superior, became too dependent on alcohol or drugs and are now sent to quit the service or be bored into quitting with unending menial tasks. But a video of a young man being threatened with beheading on social media fire the Slow Horses into action utilizing their various, underappreciated skills. This series won the CWA Gold Dagger and is best read in order.

Studs Terkel (1912-2008) was best known for his radio show on Chicago's WFMT.   Talking to Myself: a Memoir of My Times, is great introduction to this late, lamented treasure. Terkel is laconic, wry, sometimes baffling. He needs his tape machinery, his Sony and his Uher.  He will reveal himself only as refracted through interviews with others, only in anecdotal banter. We learn in this memoir, a raggle-taggle patchwork, that Terkel was raised in his mother's Chicago hotel for transient men; where he learned to listen and to wait for the unforeseen moments when people reveal themselves. He worked as a poll watcher for some of Chicago's more entertaining and crooked politicians and knew Al Capone. His memoir is a lot like his radio shows, a wealth of interesting sidelights hidden in plain view of his story.

John Harvey 1938- is the prolific British author who introduced Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick of the Nottingham Police in Lonely Hearts in 1989. Resnick, a divorced loner with four cats named for his beloved jazz musician heros , is assigned a case involving a murdered woman whose last boyfriend was just released from prison and was heard to threaten her. Open and shut!  Not so as other, similar murders are happening as the suspect is held in jail. This debut was judged one of the 100 best mysteries of the 20th century.

So, What's New?    Among the new books I've enjoyed recently is Scott Phillips That Left Turn at Albuquerque which has zero to do with New Mexico, but a lot to do with corrupt people. Douglas Rigby, a lawyer in  LA has his back to the wall when he steals $200,000 from his last remaining client to do a cocaine deal that goes very wrong. Rigby cheats on his wife,a realtor who cheats on him, and who is poised to exercise her pre-nup that will bankrupt them both. Rigby concocts a scheme involving the last client, art forgery and subrosa sale to Russians of a painting but all ends in chaos and murder. Phillips, author of the classic The Ice Harvest, is one of the best noir authors, doesn't do heros, and apparently hates lawyers. What's not to like?

On the face of it, Blacktop Wasteland by S. A. Cosby is one in a long list of books riffing on a popular theme: the career criminal who wants just one last bite at the cherry, one last job to set him up for peaceful, affluent retirement. Beauregard “Bug” Montage however, is an African American man in the rural south, which leaves him a few steps behind the starting line when it comes to getting ahead. Bug  lives in the hills of North Carolina,is a responsible family man with a wife who brooks very little silliness from him, 2 sons, and is a small business owner of an auto repair shop with an employee who relies on him.Bug also owns and drives a Plymouth Duster 340 ci. that he inherited from his father and that he drag races along the Piedmont and never loses. An associate brings an opportunity to drive a stolen car from a jewelry store stickup but the action turns very wrong and puts Bug into a very evil crime syndicate revenge theft involving platinum. The book is stunningly well-written with a plot that hums on all 8 cylinders.

My final book under scrutiny is The Chain by Adrian McKinty which needs a little introduction. McKinty, born in Northern Ireland in 1968 during The Troubles, has been writing mystery novels for more than a decade, winning many awards including an EDGAR, a Ned Kelly in Australia, a McCavity, but making no money from his writing. He and his wife and child were about to be evicted from their home in Australia when word got to several big time American authors about his situation. He was contacted and connected with an editor/agent who asked if he had anything written with a US setting. McKinty replied he had a short story written almost a decade before called The Chain, and when sent to and read by the editor/agent who was stunned by it, the publishing wheels turned and the novel was released in 2019. 

The story presents a parent's worst nightmare, a phone call saying that a daughter is kidnapped from her school bus stop and will be murdered unless the mother can send an enormous Bitcoin ransom to an anonymous address and then identify a target child she has to kidnap, hold for ransom, and keep the Chain going. Rachel Klein is the Boston area mother, a single parent, cancer survivor who gets the call and must pull it together to get her daughter back. To say the book is "compelling" is a gross understatement as Rachel has to deal with a totally evil situation that police help isn't an option and all of her phone calls, computer activity, activities are monitored by The Chain. OK, so maybe the characterizations are a little thin and the book's conclusion is way past stunning, the concept is perfectly carried out by McKinty and if you want to give up control for 4 or 5 hours, read The Chain.

#18 More Covid-19 Reading

#18 More Covid-19 Reading

So, what's been good stuff to read since the last time I checked, about 6 weeks ago. Goodness knows we all have time and apparently some money to spend on reading. Longs Peak Book Company, my used book business, has sold about 50 books in the past 10 weeks since this started. The four books I want present begin with the latest from novelist Don Winslow, Broken, his collection of 6 novella length stories that cover the western US with a stop in New Orleans in the book title story for a revenge fest involving an obsessive cop, his brother and mother and a very bad small-time drug dealer. The other stories capture the LA to San Diego cop culture, two characters in Hawaii and a return to El Paso. The stories are dedicated to and written in the style of Steve McQueen, Elmore Leonard and Raymond Chandler and there's not a loser in the 6 pack.

I have begun reading The Overstory by novelist Richard Powers and can't recommend it too highly. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2019 and finalist for many other awards, the novel introduces its characters through separate short stories that tie the characters to a love of trees. This plays out in the body of the novel as these characters meet, fight deforestation, and develop their individual, extraordinary skills. The book is long, over 500 pages, but spectacular.

A new book that I got as an Advanced Review Copy (ARC) that will be published June 2 is Martha McPhee's novel, An Elegant Woman.Taken from her family history and recollections of neighbors and friends, McPhee presents her great-grand-mother and two daughters leaving a central Ohio town, her philandering husband in the early years of the 20th century to travel by train west to Montana and stake their claim. It's never easy for Glenna, the great-grandmother and her daughters, Katherine, the beautiful one and Thelma/Tommie/Katherine, the hard working one as Glenna basically abandons the girls for long periods as she works for suffrage and teaches at a string of one-room schools across the west. The girls make a decision on their futures that sends one to Hollywood, the other to nursing school back east and what will become a life as An Elegant Woman.

What with no authors doing signings, speaking tours, bookstores are working hard to stay afloat as are most every other small business.The Mysterious Bookshop in NYC solicited recommendations for weekly columns of a Who's Who of mystery writers-- DeMille, Connelly, Patterson, Perry, Sallis, etc. They individually listed the 5 books that most influenced them in writing and it was a lot of the expected-- Christie, Highsmith, Chandler, etc. But occasionally someone posted an author and title I'd never heard of. But the good old Loveland Public Library came through. Maybe they still have a few books that I recommended buying over the past 30 years. One that was new to me was Gene Kerrigan's "The Rage", set in Dublin of the 2010 period when the Irish Golden Dragon deflated. Garda Inspector Tidey connects an old, unsolved murder of a low level gangster with the current murder of a wealthy banker. A recently released prison convict is working with his brother and several others to pull a faultless armored car robbery. The cases coincide making Tidey's life hell and displaying excellent writing. Kerrigan is for those readers of Bruen, Rankin, Declan Burke, Malcolm Mackay and Adrian McGinty. Read and Enjoy!

#17 COVID-19 and Reading

#17     Covid-19 and Reading

So what's a YOLD guy ( Young Old--between the ages of 65-75) gonna do when in shut-down, confinement, stay-at-home going into a fourth week? Well, he can exercise so it's a 1-3 hour hike each day, he can do chores like spraying under the deck to kill carpenter ants, and he can digitize the last 5,000 35mm color slides dating back to 1977. And he can read, even if the library is closed. I mean I have 1880 books that are not converting into sales, so why not read some. What's been good as a Covid-19 read?

Four books for enjoyable reading begin with an ARC(Advanced Review Copy) of a book that will be published 04/14/2020." The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power" by Deirdre Mask is her debut and it presents a deeply researched history of the power of street names, location, as well as how street layout was determined. She reviews the Roman and early English developments on grid layout and ad hoc arrangement that is totally confusing and then looks at the power of naming and numbering streets and buildings in Vienna, Philadelphia and South Korea. Particularly interesting is her view of power following the Nazi rise in street naming in Berlin and what followed the defeat to those names. She explores this same issue in post-revolutionary Tehran , post Civil War Florida, St. Louis and South Africa following the end of apartheid. The book ends with a look at the effect of street names on homeless people. This book is all a reader would want to know on an obscure subject.

"Sports Illustrated Fifty Years of Great Writing" is exactly as billed collecting the best of 1954 to 2004 for a Fiftieth Anniversary Big Book. This is not for reading cover to cover but more for dipping in and reading an essay or two. And it's not presumptuous to say every reading will expose a great writer like Frank Deford, Roy Blount Jr., Robert Creamer, Dan Jenkins, Roger Kahn, Budd Schulberg, Thomas McGuane and George Plimpton. But who would have expected authors like John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, Wallace Stegner, and Jim Harrison contributed to SI? This is a book to cherish for the long haul especially with no live sports on the horizon.

A third book was a re-read especially after attending a February Loveland Symphony Orchestra 250th birthday salute concert to Ludwig Beethoven. I re-opened Edward Dusinberre's "Beethoven for a Later Age: Living With the String Quartets" and enjoyed the book all over again. Dusinberre, the first violinist since 1993 of the world-class Takacz Quartet , now based in Boulder at the University of Colorado, blends his story from audition to the quartet to working with three other fantastic musicians, originally from Hungary, as they learn and perform Beethoven's string quartets, deal with a brutal travel and performance schedule, illness and death. This real life view of an elite musical operation is matched with Dusinberre's vivid re-telling the drama in Beethoven's life as deafness took over, Napoleon's armies repeatedly entered Vienna, and no one would pay Beethoven the agreed upon money for his compositions and concerts.This book is really special if you enjoy classical music.

The fourth book is a new classic and a most timely book, "Station Eleven" by Emily St. John Mandel. This book , a Finalist for the 2014 National Book Award, is a time-shifting tale that begins with the death by heart attack of a famous film actor on the Toronto stage of King Lear as witnessed by a child actor, nine year old Kirsten and Jeevan, a paramedic who tries unsuccessfully to resuscitate the actor. Their three stories intertwine as a worldwide pandemic begins that night from a Georgian Flu and The Collapse of civilization follows. Fifteen years later Kristen is travelling what's left of the coastal areas of the Great Lakes in Michigan with a troupe of musicians and Shakespearean actors in their horse-drawn caravan as their stories again intertwine in very surprising ways.In some ways this is a difficult book to read right now, but the author is a terrific storyteller.

#16---Late 2019, Early 2020 Stuff to Read

So the last few months have been very conducive to some serious reading and you might be wondering, what's worth the effort? "Backstage Past" by entrepreneur and promoter Barry Fey fills the bill. Fey (1938-2013) lived a much bigger than life, fighting constantly with SOBs like Bill Graham while introducing acts like Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix' last US concert, U2's Under a Blood Red Sky at Red Rocks, etc.This book captures that rock history from 1965 to 2000. Fey was no stranger to controversy and he tells his side vociferously, profanely and usually humorously. He provides lists of musicians, politicians, and business people he hated and loved as well as hundreds of photos of the rock legends that played his concerts, ate his barbeque and steaks and made him a legend.

JP Gritton's debut "Wyoming" is equal parts Daniel Woodrell, Annie Proulx, and Frank Bill and that's very good. It’s 1988 and Shelley Cooper is in trouble. He’s broke, he’s been fired from his construction job, and his ex-wife has left him for their next door neighbor and a new life in Kansas City. The only opportunity on his horizon is fifty pounds of his brother’s high-grade marijuana, which needs to be driven from Colorado to Houston and exchanged for a lockbox full of cash. The delivery goes off without a hitch, but getting home with the money proves to be a different challenge altogether. Fueled by a grab bag of resentments and self punishment, Shelley becomes a case study in the question of whether it’s possible to live without accepting yourself, and the dope money is the key to a lock he might never find.

Timothy Egan's latest "A Pilgrimage to Eternity" is equal parts travelog and philosophical, theological and psychological study as he walks, buses, car rides but never flies on the Via Francigena, a 1,000 mile journey from Canterbury Cathedral, England through France and Switzerland to Vatican City. Pilgrimaging by himself except for short stints with his son, daughter and wife, Egan faces his difficult history with the Roman Catholic church while he faces death in his family. The book is a fascinating trip through history and current headlines as Egan faces mortality, splendor, fellow pilgrims and a possible visit with the Pope.

The final book under consideration is one with some current controversy. "American Dirt" by Jeanine Cummins was read as an Advanced Review Copy several months before publication. I would recommend it unreservedly as a novel of great writing and current impact. Lydia Quixano Perez owns a small bookstore in Acapulco, has an 8 year old son Luca and is happily married to journalist Sebastian. The opening pages of the book are absolutely stunning as her life changes forever and she must escape with her son, walking and riding The Beast, railway boxcar roofs from Acapulco to Denver while their lives could end instantly. This is one book that demands non-stop reading! 

So to the controversy-- author Cummins was to be in Denver a week ago for a reading at the Tattered Cover bookstore and I was ready to drive down. She had received an Oprah's book club choice and many other accolades pre-publication, a big forward payment, etc. but the week before her publisher had cancelled the balance of her national tour because of fear for her safety. She was criticized for writing this book-- a research and writing project that took 4 years of her life-- as she wrote , not as a Mexican national, but as a white woman(with a Puerto Rican grandmother) and had received all the adulation. My sense of this is just as Shakespeare wrote about women-Juliet,the daughters of King Lear, Portia and Jessica in the Merchant of Venice,etc., Cummins had every right to research and write her book and if political correctness enters 2020 and her safety and the publication of her book are jeopardized, it's one more bad thing.   (I step down from my Soapbox). Enjoy!

#15--Second Half Wrap-up for 2019- new Sallis, Krueger and other really good stuff to read

In addition to selling, moving from our house of 26 years into another Loveland patio home this summer which involved a lot of recycling, selling stuff, and getting rid of unnecessaries as well as packing Longs Peak Book Company into 105 banker's boxes weighing 40 to 60 pounds each and moving all of that up 10 steps and down 16 into the new house, I've been reading. And what's worthy of your and my time and effort?

As I've said before, any year that brings a new book from James Sallis is, by definition, a good year. Sallis, author of the cult novel Drive and many other books of mystery, translation, poetry and essay brought two into 2019. Difficult Lives, originally published in 1993 and now republished with Hitching Rides are Sallis' seminal essays celebrating and explaining the earlier giants of noir fiction Chester Himes, David Goodis and Jim Thompson who,it could be said were Sallis' creative "fathers." These giants of fiction are joined with contemporary noir writers,some well-known, some unknown in the second half of the book, Hitching Rides. Sallis wrote introductory essays for novels by James Lee Burke, Patricia Highsmith, Paco Taibo, George Pelecanos, Charles Willeford and Shirley Jackson as well as Gerald Kersh, Boris Vian, and Jean-Patrick Manchette. Read this and better understand Noir.

Sallis' new novel for 2019 Sarah Jane is a tour-de-force as told through the eyes and voice of a young woman who lives in the rural South, had a tough childhood and made some bad choices that led to a court-ordered military stint. Then she's back waitressing, recovering from a bad marriage, and learning about law enforcement when she's thrust into the role of sheriff when her boss disappears. As she goes through her daily business she investigates the mystery of this and the impact on the community and her.

An Advanced Review Copy(ARC) I received and read will be published 02/04/2020 and is entitled A Good Neighborhood by best-selling novelist Therese Anne Fowler. An ecology professor at a North Carolina university lives with her bi-racial son in the title neighborhood and all is good as her son finishes his high school career and prepares to go as a scholarship student to California to continue his study as a classical guitarist. New neighbors move in to a scrape-off, mcmansion next door with a in-ground swimming pool that threatens the roots and life of the professor's beloved, historic oak tree. Then the teenage daughter of the new neighbors begins a relationship with the boy next door and modern life and culture intercede.

William Kent Krueger offers another winning stand-alone novel apart from his Cork O'Connell police-procedural series and his previous award winner, Ordinary Grace. This Tender Land is set in 1932 south-central Minnesota as two white brothers, 8 year old Odie, the book's narrator, and 12 year old Albert are orphaned and sent to the Lincoln Indian Training School, which is equal parts concentration and labor camp for area farmers. Their horrible experience with the woman who runs the school and a sadistic teacher forces the boys to escape with a Sioux boy and a 4 year old girl whose mother was killed in a tornado. The plan is to take a stolen canoe down the Gilead and Minnesota Rivers into the Mississippi and get to St. Louis where the brothers have a relative who might care for them. If this sounds like Huck Finn, it is intentional but carried off brilliantly by Krueger who peoples the book with fascinating characters and detail about life during the Depression.

My final book under consideration is The Push:A Climber's Journey of Endurance, Risk, and Going Beyond Limits written by world-class mountain climber, Tommy Caldwell. Having seen the multi-award winning movie Dawn Wall several times and met the climber-author Caldwell, I felt compelled to read his memoir about his life before, during preparation and the actual climb and afterwards.And I'm very glad I did! This book goes so much beyond the film to explore his life, psyche, training, challenges, triumphs and failures. Actually, the movie, first and the book,second make a great package as Caldwell and some assistant writers and editors really lay out the challenge of attacking something no one ever thought was possible and working for 7 long years to plan, attempt, fail and eventually succeed. This book is THE REAL DEAL!!!