Roots

Ron RashOn both sides of my family, my roots are in Appalachia. On my mother's side, things are a bit hazy, though there's a Zachariah Russell in Kentucky, and his daughter Blanche Delaware(!) who was my mother's grandmother. On my father's side, it's Tennessee, North Carolina And West Virginia, and before that, Virginia. There are names like Cabin Run and Scotch Creek, Kingsport, Blountville. There are words and phrases that belong to that heritage. When I read Sharyn McCrumb and Margaret Maron, they resonate. Now I've found another writer who takes me there: Ron Rash. His novels are The World Made Straight, Saints at the River and Serena. In addition he has books of poetry and short stories. His three books all cover some sort of environmental theme as part of the back story: a valley flooded by a power company, the search for a drowned girl's body leading to the destruction of a wild and scenic river, clearcutting of the southern mountains. Rash's poetry shows through in each of the novels, as does his love of the land he knows well. But it is the people who stayed in my mind long after I finished reading the books: an environmentalist who has claimed a river as his own; a farmer and his wife whose love for each other leads to murder; a woman whose greed destroys forests.
Some of the words used in the characters' conversations take me back to my childhood in Texas, words that traveled with my family from Appalachia.
"Don't sull up," my mother used to say, when I pouted. I read that in one of Rash's books. Even the rhythm of his words reminds me of aunts and uncles repeating stories and songs they had heard from their parents and grandparents.
Sometimes I think the best writers are also poets, and regional writers carry their past with them.

All Nighter

When a book is so good I can't put it down, stay up till all hours reading it, I know I've found a treasure. At 2am I finished Elizabeth Kostova's The Swan Thieves and still couldn't sleep. The ending pages were so gripping that I lay awake thinking about it.

It starts with a man in the National Museum in Washinton trying to attack a painting with a pocket knife. Come to find out, he's a famous artist in his own right. When he's institutionalized a psychiatrist who is also an artist tries to find out why the man attacked the specific painting. The man refuses to talk, except for an occasional cryptic statement.

When the psychiatrist finds letters in the artist's room written in France in the late 19th Century he becomes obsessed with the case. The story is told from several parts of view as the psychiatrist finds clues about the woman the artist paints over and over again. His wife ? His mistress?

The clues are throughout the book, and I kept thinking, "Aha! THAT'S the mystery!" But I found there was always more to discover. This is a brilliant book from a woman whose first book, The Historian, was a best seller.

Let me know what you think

New Books! Oh, Joy!

After stumbling over weighty tomes, I struck gold recently-not once but three books in a row.


After reading The Highest Tide, Jim Lynch's first book, and enjoying the setting, the characters and the story arc, I knew that I would want to read his next one. First: I bought Border Songs, set in the dairy country around Lynden and Sumas, Washington, where there is very little indication about which country-Canada or the US- you happen to be standing in. The hero (of sorts) is a six foot eight dyslexic bird watching Border Patrol newbie who is supposed to be the barrier to stop narcotics and aliens out of the country. As a writer, I want to read about fullblown, rounded characters who drive a story. You get that in Jim Lynch's novels.

Next, I read Jane Hardam's Old Filth, about a retired judge looking back on his life. This is a really shallow description, though. Have you ever heard of the orphans of the Raj? The most famous, I suppose, was Rudyard Kipling. They were children whose parents lived in the farflung British Empire. They were sent "home", that is back to England to be raised by relatives or people who were paid to look after them.The judge is a product of the sort of brutality that many of these children endured. He comes home with his wife and bit by bit we're told about his past.
I'm on the waiting list for the next book, told from his wife's poiny of view.

The Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver's latest, tells of another man's life, the son of a man who wants nothing to do with him (shades of the poor judge in Old Filth!) and a mother who is always looking for the next rich man to support her. Harrison Shepherd, mostly raised in Mexico, becomes part of the ent ourage of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, and at the ppoint I'm reading now, works of Trotsky. I plan to spend as good part of my Sunday finishing it, because....
Waiting in the Wings:
Elizabeth Kostova's The Swan Thieves and Alison Weir's new book about Ann Bolyn.

Book Club
Next Friday we discuss Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. I've read it once, a couple of years ago. There was an awful movie made from the book, but it left out a lot. The book is a great look at the role of women in the late 18th Century, and a well written biography.

I Love a History

Doesn't matter whether it's fiction or non fiction. Pat Barker's trilogy about WW1absorbed me from beginning to end, and I wished I could talk about it to my father, who had fought in France.
My love affair with historical novels stretches over decades, and looking back, they began with what we call bodice rippers now. I remember on called The Border Lord. Of course it wasn't nearly as graphic as most are now, but it did have a studly guy & a bosomy gal in costume on the front.
When I discovered Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond series, I found a whole other kind of historical novel, full of richly described characters, real and fictional, and so much historical detail I was enthralled. When I first went to Edinburgh, I had t o go to St Giles Cathedral, just to see where Lymond and bad guy Gabriel fought their duel. Gabriel was indeed a villain unsurpassed.Her stand alone novel, about the real MacBeth, was an eye opener. Much as I love Shakespeare, he did a real hatchet job on a king who served Scotland well and is buried among the kings of Scotland in the Iona graveyard.
Cecelia Holland, Phillipa Gregory, Edith Pargeter are historical writers par excellence. Right now I'm waiting for William Dietrich's newest about Ethan Gage. Dietrich also wrote a fine book about Roman Britain : Hadrian's Wall. Bernard Cornwell has several series. I don't know how he does it.
History: the real thing: the list
Anything by Antonia Fraser, Carolly Erickson or Alison Weir
Simon Winchester's Krakatoa the Day the World Exploded
A Dance Called America by James Hunter
Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire.

and so on...

I Love a Mystery Oart One

So this post will be about mysteries. Right now I'm reading Nightlife by Thomas Perry. He has written a lot of books, and The Butcher's Boy was outstanding. Nightlife has an unforgettable villain: a small, beautiful woman. Warning! This is not a cozy. The protagonist is a Portland police officer who finds herself turning in to prey. Perry writes tight, well written books. Nothing improbable happens. (It always bothers me when plots aren't believable.)
Other writers I follow: Dana Stabenow, Kate Wilhelm, Charles Todd, Ian Rankin, Sharyn
MacCrumb, Earl Emerson, Cara Black. I like mysteries with a sense of place. All of the above fit that. Stabenow's Alaska, Emerson's Seattle, Rankin's Edinburgh, Black's Paris are places that are very real. Sharyn McCrumb's east Tennessee gives a great feeling about the beauty of Appalachia, and lays over that an otherworldliness that haunts me.
Lindsay Davis gives us a funny look at early Rome in the character of Marcus Didius Falco. Charles Todd's post WWI mysteries have protagonist Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge haunted by his dead sergeant.

Heavy Books

I mean this in both ways. Ones that are slooow reads, and the kind that can do harm to you if they fall on you.
Right now I'm reading The Vikings by Robert Ferguson. It has 451 pages, including notes and index. While I've been reading this I've taken breaks and read a few light books.
First the heavy one. I'm now about halfway through it, and it's definitely a worthwhile read, though I must admit I've had to look up some words in my big dictionary. Ferguson writes with humor and precision, and though I've read other books on the subject, this is the best. The chapters, in a way, are stand alone. Some totally captured me. Others, such as Across the Baltic, were a struggle. Though there are maps in the book, I had to get out my atlas to figure things out. For a largely illiterate people, they left some fascinating traces. I remember standing in Maes Howe on Mainland, Orkney, staring at the runes left behind by Vikings. Our guide said most of them were pretty much what you'd find on the walls of a men's room. One tells us "Ingegerth is most beautiful..." This is a great, exciting read...though heavy.
On the lighter side....
I just finished Michael Crichton's last book, Pirate Latitudes. We're told the finished manuscript was found after his death. I doubt he had really finished it, unless he was really under the influence of Pirates of the Caribbean. I was with him until he introduced the giant squid.

Beach Reads

A funny time, perhaps, to write about them. But I just returned from Belize and the unusually cool, windy weather wiped out plans for snorkeling, so I read a lot,walked the beach, read, checked the clouds, read some more. I read Bob Mayer & Jennifer Cruisie's Agnes and the Hit Man which was a couple of steps off the chicklit beaten path. It was hilarious, laugh and read out loud funny. The place we stayed, Maya Dream in Placencia, is right on the beach north of the village, with a bookcase stocked with light reads, so next I read two of Karl Hiaasen's-more laughter. I've read all of his, but I have no problem rereading them. Then I found an early Sara Peretsky which got into grimmer stuff, and Elizabeth Peters' Seeing a Large Cat. (Her Amelia Peabody mysteries are favorites of mine, especially the early ones.)
Anyway, home again, where the sun sets early & rises late, I just finished reading an exceptional first novel, miss harper can do it by Jane Berentson. A third grade teacher in Tacoma Washington deals with a new class and a lover who is in the army in Iraq, as well as a best friend named Gus, a 93 year old woman and a pet chicken named Helen. Funny and poignant, though I do hate to use that word.
I have eight requests in at the library, including the new books by Ian Rankin and Dana Stabenow, one on crows and one on vikings. I am also number 201 on the waiting list for Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna. Jeez-I'll probably be able to get the paperback sooner.