“There’s a lot of heartache in these mountains, that’s what my grandma Alice always says.”

Book Review:

Review by Jana L. Perskie (MAR 12, 2014)

The setting for Redemption Mountain is located in Red Bone, West Virginia, in the Appalachian region of the Southern United States. Ranked by median income, it is the poorest state in the union except for Mississippi. The major resource in West Virginia’s economy is coal and the state is a top coal-producer in this country, second only to Wyoming.

From the beginning, in 1863, the state of West Virginia mined coal. While it has been blessed with a vast assortment of natural resources, coal is found in 53 of 55 counties, it is a mixed blessing. The downside of this blessing is about the the environment, the land, the people who mine it, and the unfortunate miners’ families who watch their loved ones leave for work never to see them again.

Why the statistics? This novel’s storyline, is based on the poverty of West Virginia miners and state residents as related to coal mining. West Virginia has been treated like a colony by big business. Mining disasters have rocked the state many times over. The controversial practice of Mountain Top Removal or Strip Mining plagues West Virginia, ripping off the tops of mountains to uncover the buried coal seams, leaving behind worthless acres of land. Advocates of mountaintop removal point out that once the areas are reclaimed, the technique provides premium flat land suitable for many uses in an extremely mountainous region. They also maintain that the new growth on reclaimed mountaintop mined areas is better able to support populations of game animals. And, of course, mining coal provides jobs. On the other hand, critics contend that mountaintop removal is a disastrous practice that benefits a small number of corporations at the expense of local communities and the environment.

Natty Oakes, a woman in her late twenties, lives in Redbone, McDowell County, West Virginia. Her grandfather, her mother and her uncle live on their farm at the top of Oak’s Hollow on “Redemption Mountain.” Natty is the mother of two children, 12-year-old Boyd, “The Pie Man,” who was born with Down Syndrome, and his younger sister Cat. Natty is married to Buck Oakes, a former high school football hero who got her pregnant in their senior year, a pregnancy which resulted in marriage and the birth of “The Pie Man.” Buck, perpetually unemployed for lack of jobs, is an angry, abusive man who takes out his failures in life on those around him, especially his wife, who works, (sometimes for no fee), as a home health aide to retired miners. She also runs the children’s library and coaches the local soccer team.

Charlie Burden, an attractive man in his late 40’s, is a partner in a New York City engineering firm, Dietrich Delahunt & Mackey, that has designed and is supervising the construction of a gigantic state-of-the art, clean coal-burning electricity generating plant in McDowell County, West Virginia. Charlie lives in a posh Westchester community, (think Bill & Hillary Clinton), with his wife Ellen, who spends much of her time involved in the activities of their country club. The couple have a son, a successful stockbroker, and a daughter who is attending university. The marriage is strained, primarily because Charlie and Ellen have developed different values over the years. She wants to move into a larger, 5 bedroom, pricier property even though the children are gone from home. Charlie is tired of his work with the firm. He resigns from the country club, it no longer suits him to spend time there. He longs to return to the field and do some hands-on engineering. “Why does my job get more and more boring and my career feel so unfulfilling as I get wealthier and more successful?” When the opportunity presents itself, Charlie grabs it…although it is not the job in China, supervising a huge construction project, that he wants. He thinks that if he takes on the generating plant project in West Virginia and is successful, he will eventually be assigned to China where Ellen has refused to go, nor does she plan to visit him in West Virginia.

Burden is uncomfortable after spending a night in the sterile company-owned condo in Bluefield, WV, just outside of Red Bone. When he decides to move to the town he has the opportunity to acquaint himself with the Red Bone locals. He meets Natty and her son “Pie Man,” his first friend. Natty is a runner like him and coach of “The Bones,” an under-14 soccer team. His next door neighbor is Pullman (Hank) Hankinson, a retired teacher and the man who plays cribbage with him. Hank also educates Charlie in the ways of Corporate America and how it has effected West Virginia. “The big companies come here, they make a deal in Charleston, and they take the coal, the timber and the gas, and they get rich. And the people get poorer and the land gets tore up, and the water gets fouled, and it’s OK, ’cause there ain’t hardly anybody left in the coal counties, and besides, they’re all just old and poor and uneducated and don’t matter to no one.”

Charlie finds himself happier and, oddly, more at home here than he is back in New York. His decision to leave the Bluefield condo for the tiny apartment in Red Bone impacts many lives, including his own.

This is a novel of the turmoil Big Business can bring as various elements opposed to Burden and his mentor, senior partner Lucien Mackey, try to take over the firm. It is a novel of political corruption and powerful Charleston law firms run by bogus “good ole boys” who know how to make things happen – like obtaining a permit for a mountaintop removal coal mine to fuel the new electrical plant and buying farms of local residents who are in the way of “progress.” And it is a novel of poor but resilient people, good people, whose lives can be shattered in an instant if Big Business has its way.

I am fascinated by the historical aspects of Redemption Mountain. The sad story of the Appalachian miners, their families, the environment, dirty politicians and Big Business is, unfortunately, a black mark on our country’s past and present.

Apart from the seriousness of greed and Corporate America in this poorest of regions in the United States, Redemption Mountain has its moments of humor and humanity. The characters, who make their homes in Red Bone, are extremely likable, just as the characters from Corporate America are detestable. This simplicity in character development is a weakness in the novel. There are the “good guys,” and the “bad guys,” with few shades of gray. The storyline is somewhat predictable…although there are a few big surprises….surprises which make the novel more complex and interesting.

Overall, I enjoyed Redemption Mountain and find it to be a good and interesting read. I learned a lot about coal mining, Strip Mining, and how destructive it can be to the land and the people who dwell there.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 41 readers
PUBLISHER:	Henry Holt and Co.; First Edition edition (June 25, 2013)
REVIEWER:	Jana L. Perskie
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Gerry FitzGerald
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: LONG MAN by Amy Greene

Bibliography:

• Redemption Mountain (June 2013)

“When someone hurts a member of your family, no matter what the reason, he’s hurt you by proxy. You go after him and get revenge. People need to know there are consequences for their actions, especially when it comes to our loved ones. That’s the only way to keep some kind of order in the world….”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  (MAY 08, 2011)

C. J. Box’s Cold Wind is set in a part of Wyoming that is beautifully scenic and, in some ways, untamed. When an enemy threatens one of Box’s characters, the prospective victim does not automatically dial 911. He is more likely to take matters into his own hands. The hero, Joe Pickett, is a game warden and devoted family man who values harmony over conflict. Much to Joe’s displeasure, he is caught up in a web of deceit and violence when his wife’s latest stepfather, “multi-millionaire developer and media mogul, Earl Alden,” is shot dead and found hanging from one of his own windmill turbines. Joe’s mother-in-law, Missy Alden is charged with the crime, and although he has no jurisdiction, Joe undertakes his own unofficial investigation out of obligation to his wife and daughters.

“Joe, I don’t want her found innocent because Marcus Hand ran rings around Lisa in court. I want her found innocent because she didn’t do it. Don’t you understand?  I don’t want this hanging over our girls.  I don’t want it hanging over my head.”

In a parallel plot, Nate Romanowski, a former member of a “rogue branch” of Special Forces, is lying low, since he has bitter enemies who would like his head on a platter. One of them has picked up his trail and is bent on vengeance.

This is an earthy, dryly humorous, and action-packed novel that captures the spirit of the mountainous west. Jumping into the 11th book in the series, the characters sometimes seem like thinly drawn stereotypes.   Missy Alden has been married five times and is a selfish, manipulative, and overbearing harridan; Nate’s lover, Alisha, and Joe’s wife, Marybeth, are sweet and altruistic; two shiftless low-lives, Johnny and Drennen, are overly fond of liquor, meth, and loose women; and Sheriff Kyle McLanahan is less interested in fair play than in getting reelected. Although Joe occasionally bends the rules to achieve his goals, at least he feels guilty about it.

Yet the backstory of the main characters is revealed enough for us to follow their lives and I’m sure for those you have stuck with this series from the beginning, they will welcome learning more about Joe Pickett and his current situation with his mother-in-law. They will also be hoping that Joe and Nate, who have had a falling out from something that happened in the previous novel, can get over it and help each other out with each other’s troubles.

An intriguing theme (hence the title), is the huge amount of money to be made in renewable energy by private entrepreneurs — and how that money is funded by the government.  As the author says in an interview, the face of the west is changing with hundreds of gleaming 250-foot wind turbines is part of the landscape.  He says, “There are those who look at miles of wind towers and see the energy source of the future. Others look at the same sight and see an abomination. Me, I wondered if it was possible to hang a body off one of the blades and what that body would look like after rotating at a hundred miles per hour.” Which is where Joe Pickett finds Earl Alden in the opening chapter of this book. Before his death, Earl Alden invested a small fortune in turbines (“each tower was a hundred feet higher than the Statue of Liberty”) to generate wind power. When Joe and Marybeth look into Alden’s business dealings, they make some surprising discoveries. Like Michael Crichton’s State of Fear, in which the debate on global warming is given an ugly marketing twist; Box’s characters also find a negative side to the wind energy business, and although it may or may not be a motive for murder, it is an interesting look at the whole business.

Cold Wind will appeal to readers who like clearly delineated good guys and bad guys. In Box territory, folks do not pussyfoot around. They settle their differences the old-fashioned way–using knives, guns, or whatever weapon is needed to get the job done. In a politically correct world, there is something bracing about individuals who take a direct approach. If you prefer works of fiction filled with ambiguity, sentiment, and indecisiveness, Box may not be your cup of tea. On the other hand, those who enjoy morality tales with tough-talking hombres will likely find Cold Wind as refreshing as an ice-cold beer on a hot summer’s day.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 78 readers
PUBLISHER:	Putnam Adult; First Edition edition (March 22, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	C.J. Box
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Back of Beyond Others set in the “wild west:” L.A. Outlaws by T. Jefferson Parker Killer Summer by Ridley Pearson

Bibliography:

Joe Pickett Series:

• Open Season (2001)
• Savage Run (2002)
• Winterkill (2003)
• Trophy Hunt (2004)
• Out of Range (2005)
• In Plain Sight (2006)
• Free Fire (2007)
• Blood Trail (2008)
• Below Zero (2009)
• Nowhere to Run (2010)
• Cold Wind (2011)
• Force of Nature (March 2012)

Stand-alone:

• Blue Heaven (2008) /  / / 
• Three Weeks to Say Goodbye (2009)
• Back of Beyond (August 2011)

“How can you talk about being civil when innocent animals are being tortured to death? Civil? I’ll be civil when the killing’s done and not a minute before.”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn  (FEB 23, 2011)

Never one to shy away from sacred cow territory or the ruthless ways in which humans stampede it, T.C. Boyle’s latest wise epic puts ecologists on a restless collision course with agitated animal rights activists. In his vintage style of tackling issues with snarling drama and incendiary humor, Boyle plots a political novel without sending the reader a preachy message, although he comes right up under it.

Boyle turns eco controversy on its head, turning back to the theme that man’s desire to keep a clean footprint on the earth is a messy and dirty job, often with dire consequences. This is Boyle; bully pulpits are bent with irony, and righteousness is fraught with disobedience. Endangerment of the species brings on reckless endangerment of lives. Who has the right to dominate, to possess this planet? Humans, creatures, natural inhabitants, invasive species–several are examined, many left wanting–especially humans.

Restoration ecologist/ biologist and PhD Alma Boyd Takesue spearheads a program with the National Parks Service to exterminate invasive species on the Channel Islands of California. She argues that the infestation of rats and feral pigs are killing off the endemic Channel Island Foxes and disrupting the natural ecosystem.

Her dreadlocked redheaded nemesis, businessman Dave LaJoy, knows all about disruption. He protests every one of Alma’s presentations to declare war on her efforts, and is opposed to the idea that extirpation leads to preservation. No public presentation by Alma is without LaJoy’s outcry.

LaJoy is the contentious head of FPA (For the Protection of Animals), a small organization viewed by ecologists as fanatical. His folksinger girlfriend, Anise Reed, is at his side on this issue, contrary to–or a result of–her childhood on a sheep farm on one of the Northern Channel Islands, Santa Cruz, which ended with a bloodlust tragedy.

Alma has the law of the federal government, if not always nature, on her side, as well as her Park Service employee boyfriend, Tim Sickafoose. LaJoy is the underdog, dependent on citizen donations and ruled by his unbridled rage. He is primed to fight with subversive acts designed to undermine Alma’s program. No ecologists will keep LaJoy from his battle to save the animals. Boyle, in his typical rogue tenor, demonstrates that both sides of the fence are imbued with truth and riddled with internal contradictions.

Boyle shifts time periods to illustrate the recent history of the islands and dramatize the inextricable links between past and present, from the introduction of non-native species, to the family connections of Alma and Anise. Alma’s grandmother survived a shipwreck near Anacapa while she was pregnant with Alma’s mother. Boyle’s portrayal of this disaster was stunning, a pinpoint event of woman overcoming the storm of nature’s catastrophes with some tragic and triumphant results.

Years later, on Santa Cruz Island, Anise’s mother suffered a chilling invasion of corporate corruption and a hideous attack on the sheep farm where she lived and toiled. She had worked hard to keep the hungry ravens from the ewes, their carrion cries now reverberating through the years.

The historical segments were superbly vivid and requisite to the central story, but interspersed throughout were florid narrative ambushes and excursions that slowed the central movement to a crawl. The cadence was generally barky and rough, as choppy as the Channel Island waters, as emphatic and forceful as a winter storm. I never felt that Boyd hit a rhythmic stride; it was loud and strident, with a manic refrain. But there were jewel-cut, Boyle-cut passages within that often lifted off and flew from the turgid overflow.

Although he dodged from sermonizing, it periodically read like an almanac or lecture. His voice tapped in the background, then ceded to the ripe moments of story. It was page-turning terror until the advent of excess fluctuations, like waves crashing against the wily outcroppings of jagged rock. The symmetry was lost at sea, and the climax was drowned in the fury.

However, despite these complaints, I was mentally fastened and stimulated, although the emotional resonance faded by the last hundred pages. It’s a visionary story, but it lacks visual constancy except for some eye-popping flourishes.

Also, some of the characters drift off or stagnate, or are trammeled by the themes. It was their “purpose” that overrode their other characteristics. There was something missing emotionally, and I lost interest in them as individuals. But, alas, their absolute certainties are left for the reader to ponder. I am tempted to just say: Boyle was being Boyle, only more so. He is one-of-a-kind, an island of Boyle, and who am I to cross it?

The inclusion of pigs, whether capitalist or feral; the onslaught of rats, both animal and human; a nest of snakes, poisonous or colloquial; and the carrion birds circling the sky are just a few of the metaphorical joists that furnish the narrative and add dimension to the interlocking sequences. As a conservation story, the prose isn’t too thrifty, but in the end, you will be glad you read it. I hesitate to say it is significant, but there you go. Boyle is a rare species. It is topical and arch, Boyle and boiling, trenchant and tough.

End note—there’s an intrepid video trailer of this book, directed by Jamieson Fry. It rocks!

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 58 readers
PUBLISHER:	Viking Adult (February 22, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	T.C. Boyle
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide andExcerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Drop City The Inner Circle Tooth and Claw: Other Stories Talk Talk The Women

Bibliography:

• Descent of Man (1979)
• Water Music (1982)
• Budding Prospects (1984)
• Greasy Lake and Other Stories (1985)
• World’s End (1987)
• If the River Was Whiskey: Stories (1989)
• East Is East (1990)
• The Road to Wellville (1993)
• Without A Hero and Other Stories (1994)
• The Tortilla Curtain (1995)
• Riven Rock (1998)
• T.C. Boyle Stories (1998)
• A Friend of the Earth (2000)
• After the Plague (2001)
• Drop City (2003)
• The Inner Circle (2004)
• Tooth and Claw and Other Stories (2005)
• Talk Talk (2006)
• The Women (2009)
• Wild Child and Other Stories (2010)
• When the Killing’s Done (2011)
• San Miguel (September 2012)

Young Adult:

• The Human Fly and Other Stories (2005)

“We are haunted by otherness, by the path not taken, by the life unlived. We are haunted by the changing winds and the ebbing tides of history. ”

Book Review:

Review by Poornima Apte  (FEB 16, 2011)

Visit the website for the National Park Service and you will find that the Elwha River Restoration project is a key one for the Olympic National Park in Washington state. “Elwha River Restoration will restore the river to its natural free-flowing state, allowing all five species of Pacific salmon and other anadromous fish to once again reach habitat and spawning grounds,” the project literature explains.

It is with this kernel of truth that writer Jonathan Evison spins a grand tale in his new novel, West of Here. The novel essentially looks at environmental decisions made during the late 1800s, when the American frontier moved rapidly west, and land grabs were in full swing—and the consequences of those same decisions more than a hundred years on.

Arguably the central protagonist in the novel—one populated by dozens of characters—is Ethan Thornburgh who envisions a dam across the mighty Elwha to harness its energy. “We’ll transform this place, for a hundred miles in every direction. Our dam will be a force of nature.” Thornburgh predicts.

In a twisted way, Thornburgh’s prediction comes true—the dam certainly “transforms” Port Bonita, the fictional town on the river’s banks, but not in the way that Thornburgh intended.

Fast forward to 2006, and Port Bonitans are struggling. Fishing, once a thriving business in town, is no longer a viable industry—the dam has seen to that. The town’s commercial fish processing plants serially shut down and only one lonely one is left to go on. Nevertheless Port Bonitans remain hopeful as they celebrate their heritage and look forward to the dam becoming a thing of the past soon. A poster around town perhaps says it best:

“Dam Days, September 2-3
Come celebrate over 100 years of Port Bonita history!
Featuring Live Music, Logging Competition, Chainsaw Carving Contest, and World-Famous Salmon Bake
Proudly presented in part by your neighbors at Wal-Mart.

It is at this “Dam Days” event that Jared Thornburgh, the manager of the fish processing plant, is expected to give the keynote speech. Jared, a descendant of the ambitious Ethan Thornburgh, has none of his predecessor’s fire. Instead his life is in mid-life stasis, consumed wholly by everyday trivialities. Forever bogged down by the weight of history, Jared worries he never quite measures up to the family name. “He forever lived in the shadow of this obsolete dam, his fortune linked inextricably to its hulking existence, its legacy of ecological menace,” Evison writes.

The novel moves back and forth between two times—the relatively recent present set in 2006 and the past set in 1890. A whole assorted set of characters populates each time period. Evison tries hard—sometimes too hard—to create characters in 2006 that are analogous to ones in the past. So it is that there’s an ex-convict Timmon Tillman who traces the same treacherous path along the Olympic National Park, that James Mather, an adventurous pioneer once did.

Native Americans, especially members of the Klallam tribe, also populate these pages as they too try to adapt to a changing landscape.

Evison traverses a lot of ground in this hefty novel and given its length it is remarkably well edited. The problem with West of Here is that it ultimately can’t move beyond its cast of characters to look at the wider picture and explore complexities. Evison loses the forest for the trees. As the book winds down, the “happily ever after” ending seems pat especially given the interesting complexities each of the characters started out with. It’s almost as if Evison finally ran out of steam and decided to wrap it all up with a neat bow. Notwithstanding this, West of Here truly transports the reader and lovers of a meaty story will really take to the novel.

In his “Dam Days” address, Jared Thornburgh echoes the words of his predecessor when he describes Port Bonita as “not an address, after all, not even a place, but a spirit, an essence, a pulse—a future still unfolding.”   For all the pep talk, Jared Thornburgh might be papering over the truth. After all, one might wonder, what kind of future does it portend when the only two times that someone from Port Bonita actually managed a modicum of success, was when each broke free?

As the residents of Port Bonita learn, some essential truths remain unchanged over centuries. “Can we really be whoever we want to be, now that we’ve collected all that we are?” asks one of the characters in the novel. The answer to that essential question is “Maybe.” Which, as it turns out, is still the same answer in 2006 as it was in 1890. Nevertheless, that answer carries with it some measure of hope—and that just might be enough for the hearty Port Bonitans.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 92 readers
PUBLISHER:	Algonquin Books (February 15, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Poornima Apte
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Jonathan Evison
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More novels set in the Pacific Northwest: The Wilding by Benjamin Percy The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch

Bibliography:

• All About Lulu (2008)
• West Of Here (2011)
• The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving (August 2012)

“Thrown off course by a sudden shift of the wind, a butterfly will never reach its intended destination. It will die in flight, without mating, and the exquisite possibilities it carries in its cells and in the thrall of its migration will simply never come to pass.”

Book Review:

Review by Roger Brunyate  (OCT 4, 2010)

Consider memory. At any time, a person’s mind potentially holds the sum total of all her experience, though she may not be able to access all of it. She may have forgotten details, until reminded by revisiting a place or picking up a keepsake. There may be memories too hurtful to recall, until the recounting of simpler things clears a pathway to them. There may be things that she cannot understand until the light of maturity suddenly reveals their meaning. Unlike a tale told chronologically, a novel based on memory contains its entire story in outline from the first pages on — although it remains unclear in detail, emotion, and significance until we have lived long enough in the narrator’s mind to explore her past from within. And Jane Urquhart, in the gradual unspooling of memory that is the essence of her latest novel, allows us to inhabit the mind of Liz Crane, her protagonist and narrator, as though it were our own. This is a novel about memory, nostalgic, partial, sometimes painful, but always intriguing.

Liz is an entomologist, working at a sanctuary situated on a promontory of the Canadian shore of Lake Erie. She studies the Monarch butterfly, which migrates annually from Canada to Mexico and back again, the task being spread between several generations, dying so that others may live. Urquhart makes this a metaphor for the theme of human migration over successive generations that threads through this book. As a child, Liz would spend her summers at her uncle’s orchard farm, worked each year by families flown in from Mexico, whose children she would get to know. Her own family, the Butlers, emigrated from Ireland a century before, settling on both the American and Canadian sides of the lake; the novel is full of their stories of risk-taking and loss. Her uncle himself was given to unexplained disappearances, and one year he simply walked out of their lives for good. More recently, her cousin Mandy, a senior officer in the Canadian army, spent several years in Afghanistan, dying there shortly before the book opens. There are other deaths also that will emerge as the memories come into focus, but there is also life, love, and friendship, and golden echoes of those endless summer evenings of childhood in the country.

The three novels by Jane Urquhart that precede this — Away (1993), The Stone Carvers (2001), and A Map of Glass (2005) — have all been panoramic stories told chronologically. Sanctuary Line is different in being intimate, personal, and reflective, the same events coming back again and again, growing in meaning with each telling. Urquhart has always been a poet, even in her prose, and this book has the structure of poetry itself — a quality that is found also in Changing Heaven (1990), though its atmosphere is altogether wilder than the relative quietness here. Poetry, which was Mandy’s passion, actually plays a large part in it, with well-placed quotations from Robert Louis Stevenson (whose greatness I cannot see) and Emily Dickinson (whom Urquhart makes me appreciate as never before). This is distinctly an older person’s vision. Its prevailing poetic moods are pastoral and elegy: Urquhart’s love of the country and her lament for its disappearance. In this, she echoes the
message from her earlier novels, especially A Map of Glass. All her books draw strength from their local roots.

It seems that she very much needs those roots. When Mandy goes to Afghanistan, she is in an utterly different environment that Urquhart does not entirely manage to connect to her own; she is absent from this world, but never convincingly present in that one. This matters most in the final section, when Urquhart attempts to close the circle and does not quite succeed. Which is a pity since this epilogue is intended to balance the opening book-end, showing Mandy’s hearse being driven along Canadian highways as policemen, firemen, and members of the public gather on overpasses. It is a hero’s return, a poignant image of loss and homecoming, the themes of this entire book. But the most hopeful symbol is that of the Monarchs, flying to and fro between Mexico and Canada, and converting the trees on which they land into tongues of living flame.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 2 readers
PUBLISHER:	MacAdam/Cage Publishers (October 4, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Roger Brunyate
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Jane Urquhart
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Changing Heaven

Bibliography:

• The Whirlpool (1986)
• Storm Glass: Stories (1987)
• Changing Heaven (1990)
• Away (1993)
• The Underpainter (1997)
• The Stone Carvers (2001)
• A Map of Glass (2005)
• Sanctuary Line (October 2010)

“He hears a sudden rumble and flinches before glancing up. There, in a patch of blue sky, he sees a jet with a long white contrail following it. He imagines himself inside the jet, among all the passengers, reading their magazines and eating from their single-serving pretzel bags, all of them heading someplace civilized, safe, contained by fences and lit with bright lights.”

Book Review:

Review by Poornima Apte  (SEP 28, 2010)

Although Justin Caves is a grown man now, one incident from his childhood in Oregon regularly returns to haunt him: he once comes face-to-face with a wounded bear in the woods outside his house. Worse, his father encourages him not to be a “pantywaist” but to aim his rifle carefully and shoot it. The all-consuming terror and helplessness he felt then, has never gone away.

Years later, Justin is what his wife describes perfectly as “tame.” His marriage to Karen, a school dietitian, is shaky after the stillbirth of their second child. And while the town of Bend in Oregon has changed irrevocably since his boyhood days, Justin isn’t so sure if it was all for the worse. He “prefers Billy Joel to Skynrd—and Starbucks to Folgers—and finds himself identifying more with what Bend is becoming than what it once was,” author Benjamin Percy writes. Justin’s relationship with his outdoorsy brute of a father is as fractured as it always was.

Now it turns out that Echo Canyon—the one last remaining beautiful wooded place that holds precious memories for the Caves—is about to get paved over and converted into a putting green anchored by an iron and timber lodge. So when Justin’s father, Paul, suggests a weekend camping trip in the woods, Justin takes up the offer. At his father’s insistence, Justin brings along his sixth-grader son, Graham—Paul is convinced he’ll make a man out of Graham yet. So Colombia camping gear all packed, the men set out on what they hope will be a fun bonding trip in the woods.

They leave Karen behind at home—she has nothing much planned for the weekend apart from her usual long runs and exercise. Lately she has been warming up to Bobby Freemont, the real estate developer who is now focusing his energies on Echo Canyon. But she knows she is not truly interested. She’s more flattered by his attraction to her and, towards the end, made uncomfortable by it.

Also attracted to Karen is an Iraq war vet called Brian. He is a locksmith by trade (having inherited the family business) and when Karen calls him once to help when she accidentally locks herself out of her own house, Brian can’t help but hold on to a duplicate. At various points in the novel, he lets himself in to the house or hovers just beyond it in the darkness, silently spying on her and adding to the already creepy narrative of the novel.

Benjamin Percy, who has won much literary acclaim for his collections of short stories, does an outstanding job with his debut novel. He was evaluated the concept of “wildness” from every possible angle. Metaphors abound here—Percy sees wildness not just in the most obvious of places but even in everyday situations. For example, Justin notices how Karen has her “teeth bared in a snarl” when she goes on her daily jogs. Karen, for her part, wonders “why so many men go through life thinking of themselves as predator and women as prey.”

It is also interesting how the characters almost seem to want an elemental wildness about them. Justin, Karen, Brian—are all affected by a mid-life stasis. So the simplicity and call of the wild at a time when their own lives are lacking in much substance is understandably very alluring. At one point in the story, Justin delights in being able to connect to the land through sheer physical labor. After all, it had been “long since he has spent a full day under the sun, sweating, relying on his muscles as much as his mind,” Percy writes.

Also complicated are the grey areas of environmental conservation versus development. Percy shows how difficult it is to differentiate between the good and bad guys in such situations and how compromises that might not be the most obvious solutions, are often struck. The Wilding makes subtle yet pointed jabs at the urban (and often, liberal) views about what the wild truly means. Justin’s son, Graham, for example, totes along a wildlife field guide on the trip. His wide-eyed romanticism at the prospect of being able to catalog everything he comes across in the wild, into neat little compartments through the use of his digital camera, is not much different from his own father’s views.

One of the most absorbing moments in the book comes when Justin is in the middle of the woods, terrified as hell, looks up to see a jet moving along in the sky. He imagines himself inside the plane, in some place civilized. Civilization—you don’t know how much you miss it till the wild completely envelops you.

Interestingly enough, The Wilding also shines a light on the markedly different parenting styles between our generation’s and our parents’. Justin often (sadly) treats his son as an equal partner on their adventure while the distance between Justin and his dad is too pronounced to be ignored. In fact Justin’s father, Paul, is the one weak link in the book. He comes across as so boorish—always telling the guys around him to act like real men etc.—that eventually he becomes a flat one-dimensional character on the page.

Above all else though, The Wilding is a pitch-perfect capture of the essence of the wild. As Benjamin Percy shows us, the concept of nature isn’t always warm and fuzzy as represented by cute and cuddly dolphins. It is often raw, ferocious and feral and the stuff of nightmares. As darkness sets in every evening at Echo Canyon, it’s hard not to break out in goosebumps. After all, when it comes down to the survival of the fittest, one can’t quite gauge how a Starbucks-loving, REI-wearing, “tame” man will hold his own against the “wilding.”

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 13 readers
PUBLISHER:	Graywolf Press (September 28, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Poornima Apte
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Benjamin Percy
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another one set in Bend, Oregon: Going to Bend by Diane Hammond Another small town, getting bigger: Bone Fire by Mark Spragg

Bibliography:

• The Language of the Elk: Stories (2006)
• Refresh, Refresh: Stories (2007)
• The Wilding (September 2010)
• Red Moon (Fall 2012)

“Humanity. The greatest plague the planet has ever known…too many people…If a man must choose between wealth and conservation, wealth will always win. We will always overexploit, we will never be cured.”

Book Review:

Review by Mary Whipple (OCT 3, 2009)

Setting his novels in contemporary South Africa, Deon Meyer raises the bar for thrillers by infusing each of his novels with the national political tensions—historical, racial, and economic—and the urban and rural disparities which make the country so complex and so difficult to govern. His “heroes” have traditionally been far from “heroic” in the traditional sense, always people at odds with society, especially in the case of Lemmer, main character (and hired bodyguard) in Blood Safari, a man who has allowed his passions to dominate him to the extent that he served time for his assault on four men and gained pleasure in killing the ringleader—“I felt at one with the world, whole and complete, good and right. It’s a terrible thing. It intoxicates. It’s addictive. And so terribly sweet.”

Lemmer, working for Body Armor, the premier bodyguard service in the country, has been hired to watch over Emma le Roux, a wealthy young woman who, after seeing a news story on TV, believes that her brother Jacobus le Roux, thought dead for twenty years, is, in fact alive after being a suspect in a mass murder in Kruger National Park—the death of a sangoma (a traditional healer) and three elephant poachers. Emma herself has recently been targeted by unknown assassins and has barely escaped from her house after a violent attempt on her life. She has no idea whether her suspicions about her brother are correct, nor does she have any idea what motive might inspire evil-doers to attack her so viciously.

Her brother Jacobus, four years older, was always interested in conservation, especially the conservation of the animal life in South Africa, and he worked at the Kruger Park, where he disappeared twenty years ago. A man calling himself Jacobus de Villiers has worked at the Moholololo Rehabilitation Center, which nurses ill and wounded vultures, and at a private reserve, run by a multimillionaire, which tries to keep large areas of the veld free of development for a natural animal habitat.

As Lemmer and his client, Emma le Roux, try to find out if the Jacobus de Villiers whom she saw on TV is, in fact, her brother, they are exposed the life-or-death infighting among the various conservation groups, their relationships with conservation police and local law enforcement, and the relationships and conflicts of these groups with developers and local tribes who want a piece of the tourist game-park action. Violence is a way of life for these people, and Lemmer is often in the cross-hairs of his and Emma’s unknown enemies.

Meyer is careful to include all the players in the game here, allowing him to present all the facets of the big picture regarding the wildlife bounty of the country and the lures of development, the commitment to a lawful country under unified rule and the every-man-for-himself attitudes which have undermined every aspect of the country over the years. No one knows whom to trust, if anyone, and no one knows what secret arrangements any of the players may have made with sleazy operators or money-mad groups which exist outside the mainstream. As the characters develop more fully, and as the author reveals more and more information about their backgrounds, the reader’s stake in the outcome becomes more and more powerful. The action comes fast and furious, and the suspense builds.

Meyer creates vibrant scenes, describing the environment, the local settings, the animals, and the racial interactions of South Africa’s citizens in vivid detail. The people who oppose Lemmer’s investigation are understandable in their reluctance to go along with him, and their points of view are broad and not tritely black or white. Irony abounds, and the political and social repercussions of the action become understandable even if they do not always draw the reader’s sympathy. This is a terrific and unusual thriller, the fifth of Meyer’s novels, all of which are written in Afrikaans and translated, and each of which has been better than the last.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 37 readers
PUBLISHER:	Atlantic Monthly Press (August 25, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Mary Whipple
AMAZON PAGE:	Blood Safari
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Deon Meyer
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our reviews of: Dead at Daybreak Heart of a Hunter

Bibliography:

• Dead Before Dying (1999;May 2006 in US)
• Dead at Daybreak (2000; August 2005 in US)
• Heart of the Hunter (2003; July 2004 in US)
• Devil’s Peak (March 2008 in US)
• Blood Safari (August 2009 in US)
• Thirteen Hours (September 2010 in US)

“The two women and four men lifted scarves over their nostrils and breathed through their mouths as they steered their Zodiac ponderously between the mammoth corpses bloated with air. The heat from the dead whales released tiny red geysers of blood. More oozed from open harpoon wounds. Still more flooded from their bellies laid open by grenades. The rich, wet, fatty stench wafted up in a visible, nauseating pink mist. Jan stopped alongside the loosely flapping jaw of a cow. Her small teats dragged in a dense red sea. The explosion from a grenade-tipped harpoon had ripped a tunnel through her blubber, flesh and organs, all the way to an unborn calf. The fetus was horribly burned and the cow’s long vagina oozed a river of blood.”

Book Review:

Reviewed by Kirstin Merrihew (MAY 08, 2009)

Jan Everett is First Lady of the United States. She is also a fiercely dedicated Save the Whales activist. But she doesn’t safely limit herself to office fundraising and the rubber chicken speech circuit. She brings the same total commitment to testifying before the International Whaling Commission on behalf of a total ban on whale hunts as she does to personally sailing with and even leading crews that confront, harry, and seek to sink the pelagic whaling fleets.

In Washington, the husband from whom Jan is gradually being distanced emotionally as well as geographically, President Carsten Everett, contends with an uphill reelection bid, the controlling schemes of his ruthless chief of staff, a fifteen trillion dollar U.S. debt to other countries that could tank the economy, and the consequences of his wife’s radical daring-do sea exploits (which spread fallout far and wide).

Meanwhile, re-energized powerhouse Japan, which holds a large percentage of outstanding U.S. Treasury bonds and is also an unrepentant whaling nation, has plans for both the Everetts. And a Norwegian whaling tycoon concocts his own means of neutralizing Jan….

Oh, and in the swirl of battling the bad guys, Jan encounters hardened captain Arlov Vesprhein, and these two tough, extreme people posture and clash, bound by somewhat stereotyped sexual tension as Save the Whales Please launches an amazing, techno-herded leviathan drive. 

Save the Whales Please mixes high-stakes whaling drama with quite sophisticated international plotting by players in Tokyo, Washington, the North Pacific, and Europe. The novel takes us into boardrooms and back rooms, onto ship bridges and bloody slaughter platforms, and into the midst of maneuvering politicians and vicious pirates (ripped from the headlines, no?). In fact, a number of events that have either already happened or could very possibly occur in the not too distant real world also sharpen this novel’s suspenseful edge. The difference between our reality and the novel’s though is that nearly everything in Save the Whales Please links to novel’s centerpieces: whaling…and its uncompromising opponents.

The novel whisks cinematically from one short scene to another like the action blockbuster prose “movie” it is. Its nail biting opening scenes make one wonder if the authors haven’t shot their biggest wad very prematurely. But not to worry. Konrad Karl Gatien and Sreescanda (who also write for the big and little screens) skillfully pepper the story with limited victories on the various sides, only to then pose new obstacles and dangers. The culmination crescendos, pulling numerous plot threads together and piling peril upon peril to surprise even the jaded reader with its audacity. 

Of course, no real First Lady would have the latitude Jan Everett does. Her handlers and protection detail would preempt the suicidal chances Jan takes, no matter how urgent the crusade. But one can adapt agreeably to this creative license. 

The novel’s myriad facts about whales (blue, Orca, minke, etc.)  –, their pods, their songs, their intelligence, their sonar, and their migration habits — enrich the reader’s knowledge. There is also an abundance of statistical, historical, and practical information about the nuts and bolts of whaling. Did you know, for instance, that underwater sonar blasts are suspected for causing deafness, brain bleeding, and beaching in whales and dolphins? Or that whales shed their skins much as lizards do? Did you know a whale is hunted and killed every ninety minutes? Does it stun you that grenades were and apparently continue to tear whales apart? Did you know whale meat is intensely prized in some cultures? Save the Whales Please acutely reminds us that these majestic and still mysterious creatures could still be hunted (or otherwise mortally wounded) to extinction. 

Save the Whales Please is formulaic, but in a brash, exhilarating, Clive Cusslerian manner. Especially for those who are intrigued by whales and the human struggle over them, this is an opportunity to be both educated and breathlessly entertained. 
 

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 5 readers
PUBLISHER:	Kunati Inc. (April 1, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Kirstin Merrihew
AMAZON PAGE:	Save the Whales Please
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Konrad Karl Gatien & Sreescanda
EXTRAS:	Kunati feature review
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More whale stories:      Fluke, Or I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings by Christopher Moore People of the Whale by Linda Hogan Ahab’s Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund

Bibliography:

• Save the Whales Please (April 2009)

“As the ragged cavity [caused by the on-going removal of the temple at Abu Simbel] expanded, as the gaping absence in the cliff grew deeper, so grew Avery’s feeling they were tampering with an intangible force, undoing something that could never be produced or reproduced again.  The Great Temple had been carved out of the very light of the river, carved out of a profound belief in eternity.  Each labourer had believed.  This simple fact roused him—he could not imagine any building in his lifetime or in the future erected with such faith.”

Book Review:

Reviewed by Mary Whipple (APR 21, 2009)

Eleven years after the publication of Fugitive Pieces, her only other novel (and winner of the Orange Prize), Anne Michaels has published a monumental philosophical novel which is also exciting to read for its characters and their conflicts.  Complex and fully integrated themes form the superstructure of the novel in which seemingly ordinary people deal with issues of life and death, love and death, the primacy of memory, the search for spiritual solace, and the integrity of man’s relationships, with the earth and the water that makes the earth habitable—huge themes and huge scope, reflecting huge literary goals.  And Michaels is successful, not just in dealing with the big issues and themes affecting mankind itself, but in bringing them to life through individuals who muddle along, seeking some level of personal connection with the world while trying to appreciate life’s mysteries.

Avery Escher is a young engineer in 1964 when he and his wife Jean travel to Abu Simbel, where he is charged with the task of helping to remove the Great Temple of Abu Simbel and reconstruct it in the cliff sixty feet higher.  Gushing water, which will be released when the Aswan Dam is finished, will flood the area where the temple lies, and the new Lake Nasser will cover all the land downstream.  The reconstruction is planned to be so seamless that no one will be able to tell that the temple and its ancient monuments have been taken apart, block by block, and put back together again.  Yet, as he works on the site, slowly and meticulously, Avery feels ashamed, feeling that “Holiness was escaping under the [workers’] drills,” and he wonders “Can you move what was consecrated?”   Surprised at his own response, because he had expected that the salvage would be an “antidote” to the “despair of dam-building,” he comes to believe, instead, that “the reconstruction was a further desecration, as false as redemption without repentance.”

All the Nubian people who have lived in the area below the dam for tens of generations have been relocated (or more accurately, dislocated) to a site a thousand miles away, along with their animals and all their possessions, but they are bereft.  They have not been able to take with them the places where their dead are buried, where they have loved and worked the land, where they have worshipped, and where their memories and their very souls reside.  The new cement-block village, erected in a dry, treeless plain, bears no resemblance to the home where they have always had their roots.  All of Nubia has been displaced by the damming of the Nile and the building of a lake, named for a modern political leader, which has destroyed their own ancient history.

This is not the first time Avery has been exposed to the dislocation of long-time residents through the building of dams and lakes.  His father, William Escher, was an engineer on the Canadian project to build the St. Lawrence Seaway from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, which involved the flooding of ten Canadian villages through the building of Lake St. Lawrence.  Stories about the Eschers’ displaced family friends are touching and bring the thematic development—and the sadness—down to a more intimate personal level.

A third thread involving man’s desire to honor and preserve the past, though the present has changed it irrevocably, takes place in Warsaw, following World War II, after the departure of the German and Russian occupiers. The city decided to rebuild its central historical core to look exactly the way it did before the war, using plans hidden and preserved by polytechnic students during the war and historical artifacts scavenged from the rubble.  The reconstructed city, thought “successful” by its builders, never felt real to many of the people who lived there, however—its heart was missing, as were its memories—along with almost all its Jewish people.  As one Polish character mourns, “I do not know if we belong to the place where we are born or the place where we are buried.”

Within this fully developed thematic framework, filled with symbols, Anne Michaels creates a passionate love story between Avery Escher and his wife Jean, and a generational saga about Avery Escher and his family and friends, alternating their personal stories and their personal relationships to earth and water with the grand stories from Egypt, the St. Lawrence Valley, and Poland.  Avery and his family have lived along the St. Lawrence River and its subsequent Seaway, empathizing with those displaced, though Avery’s father actively contributed to it.  Jean has faced personal displacement following the deaths of her parents.  A botanist, Jean collects seeds and seedlings, transplants the garden that once belonged to her mother, grafts trees to preserve them, and, during a particularly difficult time in her relationship with Avery, plants flowers at night in public places where they will surprise visitors who have not expected them.

While Avery is dealing with technology and man’s desire to improve nature and reconstruct the past artificially, Jean is preserving and growing new life in the land which nurtures it.   Not surprisingly, their love is tested to the limits by their different understanding of man’s relationship with nature and the interconnections of land and water to memory, the past, and ultimately the present and future.  “I think,” Avery says early in the novel, “we each have only one or two philosophical or political ideas in our life, one or two organizing principles during our whole life, and all the rest falls from there.”  Fortunately, mankind—and individuals—are capable of learning and changing.  “Regret is not the end of the story,” we learn.  “It is the middle of the story.”

Michaels’s talent as a poet is obvious in her gorgeous ruminations about the meaning of love and life, and in her evocative, unique imagery, but the beauty of the language is matched by the richness of the novel’s underlying concepts, which give depth and significance to this challenging and satisfying novel.  Raising fascinating questions, Michaels piques the imagination and guides the reader into new realms of thought.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 12 reviewers
PUBLISHER:	Knopf (April 21, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Mary Whipple
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Anne Michaels
EXTRAS:	Read excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More on Egypt:Cairo Modern by Naguib Mahfouz

Bibliography:

• Fugitive Pieces (1998)
• The Winter Vault (April 2009)