Wednesday, February 7, 2024

More Than One Road to Get There



I've been writing "segments" of my life, most of them taking place in northeastern Vermont, for more than three years now on the platform Medium.com. A gap in my usual copyediting labors in January gave me "bandwidth" to begin a second set of strands there, on Code Like A Girl. It probes how I've related to and worked from my STEM background -- I'm a chemist by training, as well as a writer.

What I'm discovering as I lay out this second pathway through my life is that "telling the story" from any chosen direction is very different. It's like taking the interstate from one end of Vermont to the other, or relaxing on old Route 5, or (most time-consuming of course) taking detours when they appeal. Obviously, the journey takes different amounts of time. But it also seems to glow in different colors, maybe different wavelengths. 

I'm enjoying discovering that the telling of a life is a rainbow of words. Or, on my best days, fireworks.


Saturday, January 27, 2024

Deepening Sherlock Holmes: New from Laurie R. King, THE LANTERN'S DANCE


When seeking entertainment, it's not entirely fair, I know, to have to consider a literary definition first -- but if you haven't yet fallen for the Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series by Laurie R. King, which marks 30 years in 2024, you'll benefit from the definition of pastiche: "A pastiche is a work of visual art, literature, theatre, music, or architecture that imitates the style or character of the work of one or more other artists. Unlike parody, pastiche pays homage to the work it imitates, rather than mocking it."

There are many books that wear the pastiche label with pride. Perhaps the largest group of them is made up of books that take Sherlock Holmes into new cases (and there are some now that work from the original minor character of his landlady, too, which I find fascinating). A Holmes aficionado may decline to read such books — they're not written by the long-dead A. Conan Doyle, and even the best of them can't entirely match Doyle's style and tongue.

But New York City's The Mysterious Bookshop, which described itself as the oldest mystery bookshop in the world, devotes almost as much shelf space to Holmes pastiche and parodies as it gives to the original works. I share this photo from the shop's Facebook feed (thank you, Otto Penzler and team) to make the point:

Relevant bookshelves at The Mysterious Bookshop.

So I'm far from alone in treasuring Laurie R. King's lively series. This year King brings us THE LANTERN'S DANCE, and expands the art of pastiche into new Holmesian terrain: the childhood of the great sleuth, and its harsh conflicts and puzzles.

For the most part, King's series has reflected mostly the point of view of Mary Russell, who meets Holmes when she's in her teens and he is old enough to retire—but, as Holmes readers know, such idleness (even leavened by his hobby of beekeeping) won't suit the sleuth, and in fact would plunge him into the dangerous waters of drug use, his shelter when he's bored.

So in King's hands, Holmes and Russell find each other's deepest needs met by first a mentoring relationship, then friendship, and finally marriage. The most recent books of the series have revealed the surprise that Holmes has a son, Damian Adler. Holmes hadn't realized that his "one woman" from the original work, Irene Adler, became pregnant in their affaire. The simple reason is, Irene didn't allow him to know! In adulthood, Damian needed Holmes's assistance and broke through the secrecy that had separated them ... but didn't, of course, reveal all.

As THE LANTERN'S DANCE opens, Holmes and a slightly handicapped Russell (sprained ankle) arrive at Damian's home in France, where they expect to spend time with him, his daughter, and the petite and intelligent Scottish doctor he's soon to marry. Alas, the housekeeper and her husband inform the arriving couple that the Adler "family" has decamped. The reason is quickly clear: Someone broke into their home while they were asleep, and the level of threat shocked them. 

Challenges multiply: Holmes, of course, must protect his newly established family from the threat -- but is this a threat due to something in Damian's past, or an enemy of Holmes himself, or an effort to pressure his brother Mycroft? As he races off to apply his considerable skills of disguise and investigation, Russell is left behind at the Adler home and discovers a coded manuscript that calls on all of her linguistic and scholarly background to determine what it says and, most importantly, what it means, for Holmes, Damian, and herself.

As a pastiche, the book is cleverly done and probes the birth family of the mythical sleuth; language and customs are well matched to the historical period, and King has reached a superb level of narrative. The familial mysteries that unfold (including in India!) fit well with the original Holmes, and are intriguing and quirky. As a novel, its biggest challenge is the author's decision to use three narrators: Russell, Holmes, and the woman who penned the discovered manuscript. Although they are clearly delineated, this device keeps the action mostly at the surface because there just isn't enough time within the "speech" any of the three voices to dip into the emotional quandaries that King has explored in some earlier books.

Nonetheless, for any reader of the series, this is a must-have addition. Those just starting an acquaintance with Mary Russell should probably go back a few titles—maybe not all the way to The Beekeeper's Apprentice, but at least to the closely knit titles The Language of Bees and The God of the Hive, to make best sense of the importance of the events in this new volume.

My personal favorites of the series are The Moor, O Jerusalem, and Justice Hall, and I recommend those to anyone dabbling in King's river of pastiche and her insight into how a young woman might best partner such a difficult yet rewarding spouse as the great Sherlock Holmes. Each of these also brings me much pleasure and education as I continue to work at the writer's craft myself.

THE LANTERN'S DANCE has a February 13, 2024, release date. Don't judge it by the simple cover, or by the cryptic title. There's a very enjoyable read, within.

Friday, January 12, 2024

"Ekphrastic Challenge" and the Moon Shot

Dave and I went to Littleton in January 2016 to hear Chris Christie in person—Dave's way of listening and inquiring.

The literary journal Rattle offers a monthly "ekphrastic" challenge, where poets write from what the presented artwork suggests. The challenge was on my to-do list today. I shocked myself by writing a political campaign poem, nothing I'd ever considered doing.

But the roots of this action were clear: Earlier today, to provide support for a very ill teen, I looked up some of the memorable quotes from John F. Kennedy, whose years as US President marked my life. Well, I was young and naive! It hurt, years later, to learn some of his flaws, see the shadowy nature of his "feet of clay." 

Yet many of his words (yes, co-written by Ted Sorenson) still inspire me:



So here's a relevant (and now "vintage") postcard image, showing how JFK's moon program continued, after his assassination:



Wednesday, January 10, 2024

A Little Kanell History: From Russia, With Love


I spent a while working on my husband Dave's side of the family tree today. It's almost five years now since Dave's death, and I'm rusty on details, so it took half an hour of document diving to confirm what I thought I remembered: that Dave's grandfather Joe Kanell had been a grocer in New Haven, Connecticut, in the 1930s. I didn't want to accidentally pass along a mistaken detail ... and I had a poem in mind.

This photo of Joe Kanell, at age 47, shows him on board a ship in 1935, circling the globe, going to see his relatives in Vilna, also called Vilnius. The city was part of Lithuania, which at the time was governed by Russia -- when Joe immigrated to the United States in 1905 he declared himself "Russian," and later Census documents show that both Joe and his wife Yetta considered themselves to have been Russian before they became American. They described their parents as Russian, too.

In addition to being Russian, they were Jews, and knew the risk of pogroms, organized massacres that targeted people who identified with this religion. Yet in 1935, when Joe came from America to visit the rest of the family, they must have felt "safe enough," because none of them kept Joe company on his return to New Haven. The photo here shows Joe on his way to Vilna, Dave wrote.

In 1941, German forces occupied Vilna and liquidated -- that is, murdered -- its Jewish population. Imagine murdering a quarter of a city ... despite fierce resistance from the Jews of Vilna, that's what took place. (Read more here.)

When I met Dave in 2001, his grandfather was long gone -- died in 1969 -- and in Dave's mind, just a few Kanells were slaughtered in Vilna during the Second World War. A few years after we married, one of his cousins from outside New Haven, someone he hadn't known well, showed him a photo taken in Vilna of grandfather Joe and the Kanell family there: more than 30 people. Dave's concept of what had happened needed to be completely shifted, and I'm not sure he ever stopped reeling at the new knowledge of how many of his family had been killed.

So here is a poem for Joe and his family. I hope I have most of the pertinent details right. And I hope this wondering is of use to others along the way.

 

Unasked Questions

 

He leans on the ship railing, white collar buttoned,

tie and a cardigan, gives a wide smile—

no clue now to who took the picture, and Joe,

forty-seven then, gone such a while.

 

Nine decades later, wondering who

watched his grocery— wife Yetta, still well?

What did it cost to sail around the world?

The ship fare, the store losses—no way to tell.

 

But this is the story passed down for years:

His family lived in a Russian city

and he tried to persuade them to leave, to come

to America’s freedoms—alas, what a pity

 

that nobody wanted to follow him back.

For decades we thought there were two or three lost

then saw an old photo of Joe and the crowd

who vanished soon after, and found out the cost:

 

Two dozen or more of the Russian Kanells

were gone in a decade of war and disaster.

How did he bear it? How did he go on?

Yet we know he delighted in grandchildren after—

 

tossing a baseball, applauding their skills,

launching them upward, helping them grow.

We who are wondering how we’ll survive

try to live with our losses, like grandfather Joe.

[What Dave wrote when he posted the photo on his Facebook feed:

This post is in honor of my Grandfather Joseph Kanell (July 4, 1888 to Oct 18, 1969) who chose his birthday to be on July 4th because the United States was a land of opportunity & freedoms. From Vilna, Lithuania to New York City & then New Haven, Ct area. Have a great 4th today. I should also note that my grandmother Kanell also chose the 4th of July for her birthday. My grandparents always had the American Flag flying at every holiday.
This is a photograph of my grandfather aboard a ship on the way to visit his relatives in Vilna, Lithuania in 1935. This was the last time that he had any contact with his family from the Vilna area and in all probability they all perished in the Holocaust.]

Monday, January 8, 2024

What Could Happen Next? Are You Ready?

Dave, being a good sport at our niece decorates him at my birthday lunch.

"Hope for the best and prepare for the worst." The phrase dates back to the eighteenth century, according to one online source. It could easily be a New England expression, from the folks who brought you the following interaction: "Lived here all your life?" "Not yet!"

Another version of the saying comes from author Maya Angelou: "Hoping for the best, prepared for the worst, and unsurprised by anything in between." 

My mother Joan would have turned that around completely: Although life came with challenges (you try raising five kids, on a budget, and cutting your own hair), she prepared for good things to happen. That is, she prepared those good things ... trips in the old VW bus that rambled back roads and arrived at a store that sold thousands upon thousands of buttons, for instance; a cooler full of sandwich fixings and apples; exploring a Revolutionary War battlefield on the day of the week when the historic house was closed, so the only people running around the green fields and clambering onto the massive cannons were, you guessed it, her five kids.

Vermont winters can lure a person into constant preparation for the worst, of course. Your vehicle should include jumper cables, flashlight with good batteries, jack and its handle, wrenches, screwdriver, shovel, and optionally (for getting out of snowbanks or off ice) a bag of sand or unused kitty litter, a scrap of old carpeting, even a purpose-made length of metal grating to tuck under a tire. Keep adding to that, and you can lose a full seating location. Or if the gear is on the floor, everyone will learn to watch their feet.

Another situation that bends the arc of preparation toward risk and danger is a family member with a long-term illness. I used to have a basic first-aid kit in the glovebox and would note those friends who needed to add an "epi-pen" (for severe allergies) or asthma inhaler to their preparations. Traveling with kids means any prep involving bottles of beverages or packets of food will need endless replacement, though.

What I'm thinking of today, inside at the desk, a foot of fresh snow outdoors, a small patch of blue sky poking through to signal noon, is that almost none of the "prepare for the worst" strategies I implemented for life with a terminally ill husband turned out important. Some weren't even useful. Dave couldn't face writing a will, so I wrote my own as an example that he resolutely ignored, and then it turned out that by "letting him do things his own way," I ended up financially crippled. Unpredictable, really. Nor did my efforts to stay on top of CPR pay off; I was almost sure he'd die of his enormous, caring, and blood-starved heart quietly failing in his sleep. I was wrong on that one. The long list of emergency phone numbers also went unused, because his final days involved only one number, that for the hospice nursing coordinator, who calmly sent trained personnel as needed.

On the other hand, preparing for the best really paid off. We visited San Francisco three years in a row, buying books that thrilled us. I bought and planted trees with all my birthday money, and even though I had to sell the house after Dave's death, those trees are thriving and I rejoice when I drive past the "old place." Dave invested in creative designs (his own!) of birthday and Valentine's Day cards for me, and each one of them delights me. I keep them in a handy place, for joy.

"Know trouble will come, but prepare for happiness." I think that's closer to what I'm finding useful now. "Widow world," as I call it, has a share of loss and endlessly missing someone -- but it also confirms such delights, each time I find Dave's handwriting on a sticky-tag in some research, or consult his address book to connect with old friends.

Hold onto the love. Make room for smiles and full tummies and the colors of the sky, the trees, the birds ... and the bright cards in the drawer.


Saturday, December 30, 2023

"Crossing Over the Moose": A Finalist in the Northwind Treasury (Mooselook Diner!)

 Crossing Over the Moose 

 by Beth Kanell, 2023


It’s a funny name for a diner. Newcomers

stare around: the sign says Mooselook,

and maybe the back table will show them one.

Antlers! Long legs! Maybe they even cook

 

wild harvests here. If deer meat is venison

and pigs become pork, what do you call—

they scan the menu, but there’s no sign

of butchered moose at all.

 

Tentative, uncertain, they work their way

through blue-plate names, special dishes.

The waitress, bright smile, sparkling stud

at the side of her nose, collects wishes

 

for eggs over easy, a turkey plate with just

a little gravy. Home fries on the side, much

ordered, always piping hot. Pickled beets.

Vermont homestyle with a chef’s touch.

 

Me, I take my usual table, watch the door,

see who’s coming in—I have a hunch

that my two friends may be running late

but they’re on time for noon lunch.

 

With a nod to the window, satisfied,

they note the water view, smile:

It’s the Moose River out there, wide

as the day’s options. Framed in style.

 

Going home after, I cross the bridge

while at the water’s edge a man stands

patient with a fishing rod. I pass; he reels

his line back in, casts, capable hands.

 

People who haven’t lost don’t guess

the way old passions stir and swirl below.

There was a man who kept my heart. He died.

I find him in each new crossing. I think he’d know.

 

View of the Moose, from the Mooselook Diner.
 


Mooselook Diner's Kevin Fontecha, with the published poem.

 

 

AND: If you'd like to get a copy of the book, it's on Amazon here!

Wednesday, December 20, 2023

Combining Vermont, Love, Loss, and Literary -- It's Been a Big Poetry Month

My short haircut from Dec. 2017, when I didn't know whether breast cancer surgery and treatment might make it too hard to wash and brush my longer (and increasingly silvered) curls.

 

As a person with decades in recovery from alcohol abuse (it's a long time ago now, but I have no intention of picking up a "first drink" even though time has passed), I'm especially impressed with the online literary magazine Anti-Heroin Chic. It's an "anti-drug addiction safe space" where writers can express pain ... and of course, relief. So I'm touched and honored that the winter issue features two of my poems: "From Nails to Screws" reflects part of the journey I've made to set aside my Dad's well-meant but very dangerous instructions for life as a woman. And "In the Very Air" brings you first to Harvey's Lake in Barnet, Vermont, where I finished raising my sons, and then to my front porch "now" -- the place where I can see both the land's beauty and the tragedy of climate change. 

Here's the link to those two poems.

Another online magazine that's become a favorite of mine is Persimmon Tree, which offers space especially to older women writers. You can find my poem "Breast Cancer, 5 Years After," which is pretty fierce -- click here and scroll down quite a ways, browsing other intriguing work along the way.

The winter issue of Persimmon Tree also includes a "likes/dislikes" list of mine, in the fashion launched by Susan Sontag. Because there are a lot of those, they are being rotated day by day, so if you don't see my list when you first click here, take a look at some other time. Or, if you don't have time to visit twice ... here you go, without the attractive graphics of the magazine:

Things I like: hard rain on the roof, new snow, bonfires, fresh cinnamon, pillowcases, signed books, watercolors, chipmunks, Star Wars music, double rainbows, nickels, dark chocolate, globes, rowboats, comb honey, toast.
 
Things I dislike: an empty mailbox, stale mushrooms, herbicides, crumbs in bed, pigs, cheap cheesecake, splinters, garlic before breakfast, collapsed barns, diesel fumes, hammers, nylon petticoats, socks that slide down, malice.
 
**
 
This month also includes publication of "Crossing Over the Moose," as an honorable mention by Raw Earth Ink and therefore included in The 2023 Northwind Treasury, an anthology coming from Alaska. I'll post a photo when my copy arrives!
 
I've also settled into writing about one segment per week for my "story of my life" (aka memoir), on the platform Medium. You should be able to see a few of these chapters when you first visit; after a bit, Medium will ask you to subscribe to the platform. That will give you access to thousands of authors, and you'll recognize many of their names right away -- as well as getting acquainted with rising stars of the literary world.
 
Now I've got to get back to some holiday baking. May your browsing give you a break from your own stresses, and maybe some hope and pleasure as you go. 
 



Sunday, November 26, 2023

Cute and Sweet "Cozy" Mystery: SPOON TO BE DEAD by Dana Mentink


I review (and savor) a lot of dark mysteries. Well, the darkness often comes with the nature of crime! But not always ...

Suppose you owned a darling little ice cream shop in, let's say, Oregon -- and winter was around the corner. Would you be worried? Trinidad Jones surely is, as she anticipates a drop in the sales of her very creative specialties. So to make sure the Shimmy and Shake stays in business and her unusual but sweet employees get paid, she'll compete for a catering slot: a holiday party on a steamboat owned by Leonard Pinkerton, who can certainly afford her prices.

In this third in her delicious "Shake Shop Mystery" series, Dana Mentink offers a set-up that's far more complex than just the sugary side of an ice cream business, though. Trinidad is one of three former wives of the charming but cheating Gabe Bigley, who's currently in jail, since his fraudulent dealings extend to more than just these women. Against the odds, the three of them have become friends and all live in the same town. (That's the only thing you really need to know from the two earlier books in the series.)

So when Gabe, apparently paroled, stumbles through the door of the ice cream shop with blood on his clothing and says something about having killed someone—then passes out—the immediate disruption hits a lot of lives all at once. Moments later, the victim turns out to be Trinidad's friend and ally, Oscar.

The day had started out with such promise. Now Oscar had been run down, her ex-husband was involved, and there was an orphaned parrot nesting above her rib cage. Oh my giddy aunt indeed, Trinidad thought as they returned to the Shimmy and Shake Shop.

Mentink offers a network of friendships, sleuthing, and potentially thwarted romance as the small-town mystery leaps toward a dramatic finale. This is a classic "cozy" mystery, packed with as many flavors of sweetness as a banana split. Add it to a stack of books for light and often giggling distraction on a winter afternoon.

Friday, November 24, 2023

Most Unusual Serial Killer Novel Yet: DAUGHTER OF ASHES by Ilaria Tuti


November is almost done; today's unexpected glimpses opf blazing blue skies hint at the brighter, coler weather ahead here in Vermont. Winter is a time to be selective, to pick up only the best mysteries and crime fiction, ones that will pin us into snug reading rooms and give us heartfelt potential growth.

Serial killer crime fiction often settles into one of two categories: either bloody and horrific and terrifying (those Hannibal Lecter types), or hard-pressed beahvioral analysis against a ticking clock (some Jeffery Deaver books, and every episode of Criminal Minds).

Italian author Ilaria Tuti, in a powerful and flowing translation from Ekin Oklap, concludes a remarkable crime fiction / police procedural trilogy with DAUGHTER OF ASHES. Her protagonist is police superintendent Teresa Battaglia, who battled her way to a Northern Italy superintendent slot despite her gender, holding a firm grip on a department of mostly men and using her personal losses as added incentives to break open cases.

As Teresa arrives at a maximum security prison, her staunch ally Inspector Massimo Marini awaits her. The pair haven't seen each other in two weeks, since they broke the case featured in book 2 of the series, The Sleeping Nymph. Their presence at the prison is because serial murderer Giacomo Mainardi wants Teresa's help and has called for her to come see him. After all, he'll never be out of prison—where she helped confine him 27 years earlier.

The narrative alternates between "Today" and "Twenty-seven years ago." Tuti maintains fierce suspense in both timelines, and each offers a poignant sense of loss: Discovering how much Teresa lost in the past won't happen until there's a workable explanation of what Giacomo is up to now, however. And Marini isn't just there to back up his superintendent—Teresa wants him to learn how the brilliantly insightful Giacomo can assess and attack emotionally. It is, after all, the core of how he's chosen his victims and what the coded clues he lays out indicate.

And Teresa wants very much to both teach and protect Marini, who's become part of her "family of choice" (or maybe of necessity) in her later years:

Now that they were finally face to face again, they took a moment to study each other. It had scarcely been twenty days since they'd closed the case of the Sleeping Nymph, and they both still bore its scars: a bout of sciatica for her, a few burns and bruises for Inspector Marini. But how his eyes blazed. Teresa saw in him the young officer she had once been, sleep-deprived and desperately eager to prove herself. He was already primed to dive into a fresh case, and he wanted Teresa to go with him—unaware that she had already fallen into this particular vortex before, nearly thirty years ago.

Although Teresa will struggle throughout this new case with her own ailments, physical, mental, and emotional (doing her best only to reveal the physical), instructing and protecting Marini drives her to keep taking risks. What Marini can't understand or accept, however, is her apparent bond with the killer. Is this what it takes to analyze a serial murderer? He's repulsed by the notion that his policing mentor might think she has something in common with the monster behind bars.

It's increasingly clear that this is likely to be Teresa's final effort on the police force, although how she'll convey the reasons to Marini is still unclear. When Giacomo sends them chasing evidence at an archaeologically significant crypt, she learns how serious her disabilities have already become. But still, she needs Marini to understand Giacomo the way she already does:

"Most people think of Giacomo as a sadist, but I never got that impression." She hadn't spoken at all for the last two hours, not since her blunder at the crypt—a moment which, like all decisive acts, had proven to be revelatory. Her voice sounded hoarse, and guilty. She cleared her throat. "The amputations always occurred after the victim's death; the aim was never to cause suffering, but to take the life of those who were deemed—symbolically—not to deserve life at all."

Not only are readers walking into dark places with this investigator, but she will have to draw Marini along into how she approaches criminal analysis. In the process, she may be forced to reveal her private losses and damage, because they may be part of what drives Giacomo Mainardi. And it seems he has the capacity to keep on killing.

Immaculately plotted and intricate, DAUGHTER OF ASHES sets a new bar for fictional investigations of  murder. Whether Teresa can convince Marini, or us, that empathy for Giacomo is both humane and important to solving his crimes acts as an added strand of powerful suspense, in a book that also probes the most painful and enduring of our losses.

From Soho Crime, an imprint of Soho Press, releasing on December 5.

Sunday, November 19, 2023

How Bad Could Things Get? Chris McKinney's WATER CITY Trilogy Tests the Answers


Climate collapse, floods and fires, political divisions, wars and devastation—in America, it's not uncommon for people to feel like it's going to take a great leader to get us safely out of these very hard times.

But that's not where Chris McKinney heads in his WATER CITY trilogy. After the earlier Midnight, Water City and then Eventide, Water City, where a synesthetic former detective's been tackling the crushing issues around him in an effort to save his too-talented daughter from being coopted, McKinney and Soho Press collaborate to move rapidly into the last volume: SUNSET, WATER CITY. 

In a radical switch from the nameless not-quite-hero of the first two books, the third one (set in the year 2160) spins from the point of view of that talented daughter, Ascalon, whose experience at age 19 includes both armed resistance and a lot of forms of tech destruction. Battling both her US neighbors in the toxic lands of the Great Leachate, and the overwhelming technological dominance of the near-deity Akira Kimura, Ascalon's courage and defiance take root in her anger at her father, as well as her love for her vanishing family.

As I read SUNSET, WATER CITY a second time, I thought a lot about trilogies. The one I grew up with was The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien); then there's the Hunger Games trilogy. But also there's a trilogy at the start of Ursula Leguin's Wizard of Earthsea books: A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), The Tombs of Atuan (1970), and The Farthest Shore (1972). And I'm one volume into reading Cixin Xiu's formidable Chinese space trilogy right now.

On reflection, I wonder whether world-building requires a bigger canvas than a single book. Building the pressure points needs to extend beyond that first volume, and the most intriguing and memorable characters, whether heroic (Frodo, Katniss) or antiheroic (Ascalon's father and Akira Kimura herself), need years to mature and deepen, in order to provide a meaningful resolution to another world's issues. And maybe that's especially true when, as with McKinney's trilogy, the issues are so clearly unsolved in our own present time: environment, antagonism, excessive power.

So my second reading of SUNSET, WATER CITY looked for how McKinney (who by the way is a native Hawai'ian with ethnic threads that are Korean, Chinese, and Scottish) asserted the solutions to the trilogy, not just to one book. What I found is that this third volume is as much a statement of human value as it is an adventure. Ascalon asks herself, "It this what it always is to be with other people? To not understand each other? To harbor trauma? To bottle anxiety, probe, and flinch before another even responds? I feel lost." When she decides to tackle the bigger issues of her world, she's aware that it's also an escape from this inner lack of certainty; "I will try to bury my grief and rage for now. I will try to fix this. I will take my father and Jon6J to Ascalon Lee. It's time to return to Water City."

A return to Water City demands unusual physical capacities, and many will feel especially strange to "mainlanders" reading the series -- but less so to those who live with islands and oceans. Over time, the presence of this trilogy and the inevitable film versions to follow may bring Ascalon's adaptations to some level of expected adaptation, like Frodo's interaction with the Ring. But expect a first reading to feel uncomfortable; expect to utilize your capacity to "listen" and to "suspend disbelief." Ascalon's discoveries, at first framed in her perceptions of her father, are worth reaching: "He should've known that it's impossible to sleep to the future to change the future. One needs to be awake to change that."

Without spoiling the plot, I can say that Ascalon clarifies her own motives as she battles for what she feels is right. Unlike the three leaders around her -- her father, her mentor Ascalon Lee, and the overwhelming Akira Kimura -- this young woman intends to protect her world, if she can just figure out which elements of it merit that protection.

In a time of chaos and pain, it may seem counterproductive to dip into a trilogy that proposes that Earth's issues are so extreme that only interplanetary settlement and technological unity will pull us through. But McKinney's narrative is so compelling that it's well worth entering his speculative world and his painfully maturing protagonists. Besides ... isn't it time, after so many decades, to step beyond Frodo and Gandalf's solution for Middle Earth?

[For some extra insight from the author, look here: https://www.watercitytrilogy.com/building-water-city.]

Detroit Crime Novel Sees "the Church" at Fault, in Stephen Mack Jones's 4th August Snow, DEUS X


For me, part of the point of working hard (and creatively) is the pleasure I can take later, collapsing into a fictional world that's totally apart and full of eventual triumph. So a well-plotted crime novel with characters I can care about, well, that can be quite a gift. And it's a thrill to let people know about the award-winning fiction coming from a "Michigander" like Stephen  Mack Jones.

You haven't read his August Snow series yet? Wow, you've got a big treat in store! This ex-cop in Detroit lives at the edge of multiple ethnicities — especially Hispanic and Black — in the Mexicantown neighborhood he and his friends have been steadily rehabbing.

When the local Franciscan priest, Father Michael Grabowski, suddenly retires and appears to be dying, August is convinced there's more at stake than physical illness. Father Grabowski's abrupt withdrawal from friendships and his 40 years of community care signal a spiritual collapse that's got to be related to another nearby priest's suspicious death. 

When August starts probing, he meets his match in a fierce (and armed) investigator from the Vatican who wants the local priest to take all the blame for a string of other abuse and deaths. And that's where the crimesolving rips into action.

Still, the deep pleasure of DEUS X is in Jones's rich descriptions of the neighborhood and of August and his allies, like Tomás: "Tomás handed me a mug. Like me, it was dangerously dark, slightly bitter, yet oh so satisfying." Yes, there's a woman in August's life, Tatina, who feels that way about him, but in this adventure, she's mostly off scene ("Somali and German, living in Norway").

Which is just as well for Tatina's sake, considering what August and Tomás are up against. The Vatican has its own enforcement team? Who knew? Is there a rational explanation for how some of the related menacing men seem to vanish when cornered? Although August tries to reassure himself that real deaths involve physical results, even he is worried about whether there's a scientific or technological explanation: "If not, I'd have to seriously reassess my position as an agnostic Mexican-American Catholic with African-American Baptist metaphysical leanings."

Jones takes this fast-paced crime novel across several boundaries of old magic and traditional healing, as well as Catholic priesthood abuse issues. So it's a compelling page-turner, excellent for a winter weekend of escape and questions, framed in sturdy friendships with plenty of firearms and other defenses. You don't need to read the other three books in the series first, although if you do, this one will resonate more—but you can pick them up afterward, because chances are, August Snow's fierce urban loyalties will leave you wanting more of his adventures.

More Than One Road to Get There

I've been writing "segments" of my life, most of them taking place in northeastern Vermont, for more than three years now on t...