The Cue Card

Greetings, hello. There’s much to talk about as the news was just announced from the U.K. that author Barbara Kingsolver has won again for her 2022 novel Demon Copperhead. Wow this time she’s won the Women’s Prize for Fiction and earlier she won the Pulitzer Prize. She’s raking in the accolades this year. Coincidentally I just finished reading the e-book of it, which took me a month, LOL. It’s a lengthy read and reminded me slightly just in its large scope of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, perhaps because like that one it’s also about a boy’s coming of age into young adulthood. Though Copperhead is a bit more issue-oriented and inspired as a modern-day takeoff of Dickens’s novel David Copperfield set in Appalachia. I’m glad to have finally finished it and to know what all the fuss is about. I have reviewed it below. I guess I’m not totally surprised it won the Women’s Prize as I was thinking it was likely favored over the other fine nominees.

Also this week, condolences to Cormac McCarthy fans as the highly esteemed author passed away this week at the age of 89. I first read his fiction with his 1992 novel All the Pretty Horses, which won the National Book Award, and read him again in 2006 with his haunting and stunning post-apocalyptic novel The Road, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

I saw the movie too, and it’s scary … about a father and son trying to journey to the coast after some kind of cataclysm of civilization. Yikes the road is a hazardous place. For his notable writing, I am sad McCarthy has passed away and I’d like to go back and read more of his novels sometime, like Blood Meridian or his newer ones from 2022. What would you suggest?

Lastly, I see that author Elizabeth Gilbert has postponed the release date of her upcoming novel The Snow Forest because she said Ukrainian readers objected to it being set in Siberia, Russia, while the war in Ukraine is still going on. The novel was supposed to be released in February 2024 but now its release date appears delayed.

Apparently the novel, is inspired by a true story and tells the tale of a Siberian family that opposes the Soviet government and has lived in isolation for more than 40 years. Hmm if the family opposes Soviet rule then wouldn’t that be a good thing to the Ukrainian cause? Perhaps Gilbert will reconsider her postponement since many are not happy that she has delayed its publication and for the appearance of what precedence this sets. What do you think? I feel if its anti-Soviet and set in the Siberian wilderness I’d like to read it — even as a staunch Ukraine supporter.

And now I will leave you with two books I finished lately. (I will hold off on reviewing a couple others I finished for next time.) 

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver / Harper / 560 pages / 2022

I rounded this novel up from a 4 to a 5 rating — for its big scope of issues about life and for the way the boy, Damon, know by his nickname Demon, tells it. I read this novel as an ebook which took me about a month to finish. I started it in May for my book club and  put it aside once in the second half and then picked it up again to complete it.

It’s a hard, darkish journey for Demon of his younger years through poverty, Appalachia, and an addicted mom who marries a man harsh to Demon, who later gets put into foster care at age 10 where he winds up working hard labor and living in inhumane conditions. Up and down Demon’s rollercoaster life goes as he later hitchhikes a long ways to his grandmother’s house and finds some success as a football player in high school and as a talented cartoon creator and artist.

Those are the days I wish he could’ve held onto — living at his Coach’s house whose daughter Angus befriends Demon and helps him along. But no! Things later take a terrible turn and you have to stick around for a long while before finding out if Demon will be all right and be able to regain his footing in life. 

As Demon goes from adolescence to teen to young adult, I felt I aged with him through the book. He learns a lot after being put through the ringer as an orphan and later as the opioid crisis unfolds. The story of his life grew on me as it went along. There’s a pretty big cast of characters who come to interact with Demon and who become quite real by the end, some good like a neighbor named June, and Angus, and others quite awful like a guy known as U-Haul and his stepdad Stoner. Most of all there is Demon himself, a tall red-haired kid, a talented artist and football player, who becomes a young adult through all this. He is someone I felt I came to know by the end and whose long often-grueling journey I don’t think I’ll forget anytime soon.

The Churchill Sisters: The Extraordinary Lives of Winston and Clementine’s Daughters by Rachel Trethewey / St. Martin’s Press / 320 pages / 2021

I pretty much loved this nonfiction book about the four Churchill daughters. I found their lives quite fascinating, full of an era of involvement and danger (during both WWI and WWII) and adventure and changing female roles, and also rather tragic about their depression and lives cut short. I learned quite a bit about Diana, Sarah, Marigold, and Mary and their relations to their famous parents. The book mentions their son Randolph but focuses mainly on the girls. They were all different but the family seemed a close, tight-knit unit, and Winston seemed a doting father to all of them. 

Although the youngest Mary is the only one who had a long, calm, less drama-filled married life, there’s something about Sarah that appealed to me most. She was foiled in love and never had children; she was ambitious about having an acting career but never fully attained complete success. She also had trouble with alcohol later in life and wound up being arrested several times because of it. Her three close romantic partners all died, which had a sad impact on her. And she died at 67. One husband said she had an obstinate streak that made them both unhappy. Perhaps Sarah was the most interesting as she: worked in the women’s auxiliary Air Force during the war, had a career as an actress, and even maintained a secret love affair with the American ambassador during WWII, which seemed pretty shocking both then and now. 

This book clips along at a good pace skipping over years quickly — it seems at times more of an overview of their lives rather than a full picture, but still reveals some detailed and formative information. I was caught up in knowing about each of them. I both listened to the audio and read the hardback book. The book dovetails nicely with The Daughters of Yalta by Catherine Grace Katz, which details Sarah Churchill’s trip with her father to the Yalta conference and I loved it as well. If you want more, read that one too. I’m a bit curious now to read sometime Sarah Churchill’s 1981 autobiography called Keep on Dancing. That book came out just a year before she passed away and seems like it would be fascinating.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these books and what did you think?

Yay, it’s that time of year again. I’m joining Cathy’s Books of Summer challenge in which I hope to draw from the list of 15 novels below to read over the next three months from June 15 to Sept. 15 (since I’m late) and I’ll see how many I get to. 

It took me a while to choose which books I wanted to pick up — a number of them were recommended by other bloggers — and I think all of these are novels from this year that slipped by me. So now I hope to rectify that. I tried to choose novels that would make for well-paced summer reading — ones that can be read at the beach or on the back deck and can be tossed into a sandy, suntan oily bag. We will see if these hold my attention. 

So what about my list — have you read any of these and what did you think? I have listed a brief synopses of each novel below if you are curious about any that was compiled from publisher listings and other sources. The novels are in no particular order.

The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue — A college student in County Cork gets caught in the middle of a friend’s romance in this novel about friends, lovers, Ireland in chaos, and a young woman desperately trying to manage all three.

Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor — A poor boy in India joins up with a ruthless rich family in this fast-paced thriller. Equal parts crime thriller and family saga, Age of Vice transports readers from the dusty villages of Uttar Pradesh to the urban energy of New Delhi.

The Lost Americans by Christopher Bollen — A young woman finds herself in the crosshairs of powerful and very dangerous enemies when she travels to Cairo to uncover the truth about her brother’s mysterious death in this propulsive thriller.

Lone Women by Victor LaValle — A Black woman in 1915 heads to Big Sky Country with some unusual baggage in this haunting historical horror novel.  

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang — A struggling novelist passes off a manuscript left by her dead college friend as her own in this satire that grapples with questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation.

Maame by Jessica George — After a loss, a young British woman from a Ghanaian family reassesses her responsibilities. The novel captures the uncertainty, freedom, and anxiety of a mid-20s woman in London.

All That Is Mine I Carry With Me by William Landay — A woman vanishes, leaving her kids to wonder whether their father is a murderer in this tale about family secrets, vengeance, and love.

The Last Animal by Ramona Ausubel — After the death of their father, two teens accompany their scientist mom on a globe-trotting expedition and discover themselves in the process.

Go As a River by Shelley Read — Set amid Colorado’s rural beauty, this debut novel is a coming-of-age story of a resilient young woman whose life is changed forever by one chance encounter with a drifter.

Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane — Set against the tumultuous months in 1974 when the city’s desegregation of its public schools exploded in violence, the novel is a thriller, a brutal depiction of criminality and power, and an unflinching portrait of the dark heart of American racism. 

Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah — A debut novel set in a dystopian alternate U.S. where people incarcerated in an expansive private prison system have the option to fight for their freedom in gladiator-style death matches.

Symphony of Secrets by Brendan Slocumb — A music scholar discovers his favorite composer may have stolen compositions from a Black Jazz Age prodigy in this simmering thriller by the author of The Violin Conspiracy. 

The Sun Walks Down by Fiona McFarlane — The search for a missing boy in the Australian outback in 1883 casts lights on the tensions roiling beneath the surface of the English colony in this novel shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction.

The Postcard by Anne Berest — When the protagonist of this novel finds an anonymous postcard among the usual holiday cards from her maternal great-grandparents who died in Auschwitz, she sets off to discover who sent it and why. Her journey leads her through the history of her family and exposes the secrets her ancestors hid for generations.

Biography of X by Catherine Lacy — A widow sets out to uncover the truth about her late wife, a mercurial artist who adopted many personas, in this novel of an alternate America. 

Hi All. I hope everyone is well. Here we need to stay indoors this afternoon as the air quality is hazardous from all the wildfire smoke coming to us from north in the province. The trouble is the southern wind that had been pushing the smoke away from us changed direction overnight and now has pushed all the smoke into our area and beyond. It’s very grey and the visibility is low. Whoa it looks like the apocalypse outside. It’s best to stay inside and avoid the smoke and any possible zombies.

Early over the weekend it was still clear out and we took the dogs to the Bow River, where they swam like there was no tomorrow. They love swimming; unfortunately I didn’t get a good shot of it. We also put in our inaugural vegetable garden at our new home, which was fun. We planted a wide range of things including: radishes, carrots, onions, potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, peas, green beans, and corn. We plan to put in some zucchini as well. Do you plant any veggies in the summer and what do you like best? Do they grow well where you are?

And now I’ll leave you with reviews of what I finished lately.

I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai / Viking /448 pages /2023

Synopsis: This novel is about a film professor and podcaster named Bodie Kane who gets swept up in a murder case decades later that happened when she was at boarding school in New Hampshire. She had been a senior there when her roommate Thalia Keith was murdered, which she hasn’t been able to entirely put behind her. Years later when Bodie’s asked to teach a course at the school, she begins to analyze whether the man arrested for the crime was wrongly convicted and whether other suspects were overlooked.

My Thoughts: Much of the novel I liked, especially Bodie’s younger years at the high school, along with the writing, but then other times the minutiae of going over and over, analyzing the crime and all the suspects a hundred times over sort of exhausted me. Sure it was a horrific crime and an injustice that a more thorough investigation wasn’t done when it happened, and as a young teenager I’m sure it haunted so many students at the prep school forever, but man, it really turns the case inside out till I was blue. It’s a slow-burn and then some.

Granted, the author brings up many issues in the story along the way: including sexism, racism, sexual abuse, harassment violence, bullying, and adolescence that make the re-examination of the case quite worthwhile. There’s a lot to digest. And the victim Thalia seemed a promiscuous girl, which opened up the possibilities of various motives and suspects. Several people could’ve done it, which Bodie finds out in due time.

Mostly I think I liked the novel for its look back on adolescence and the school and Bodie’s time there — how she viewed things then versus what she thinks about it now, her friends there, and how Bodie was a bit of an outlier back in high school and what she was going through with her family then and now. Those personal parts interested me. Also the fact that the author made Bodie and the characters feel very real throughout the journey. So perhaps the novel was a bit of a mixed bag, but still it was worth 4 stars.

I listened to the audio read by Julia Whelan, who I thought did a terrific job.

Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You: A Memoir by Lucinda Williams /Crown / 272 pages / 2023

I have long been a fan of Lucinda Williams’s songs and music, which I first started listening to around 1992 when I was living in Seattle and her album Sweet Old World came out. I was wowed by her poetic lyrics and raw folk-country-rock sound. Her next four albums: Car Wheels on a Gravel Road (1998), Essence (2001), World Without Tears (2003) and West (2007) were especially stunning. So I jumped on her book when I heard that it was out.

I listened to Lucinda’s memoir read by the author for the audio. In it, she’s raw, she’s real, and she lays it on the line. She tells of her background, her family, where she came from (Louisiana, and Arkansas mostly), and how she got into music. She includes many great stories of her life and how she stuck to her guns about her songs and direction when the record companies didn’t know how to place her music. She was told for many years she was too rock for country and too country for rock, and she struggled at first to get a record deal.

Luckily she kept at it. She tells of playing guitar and singing from age 12 to 70. She’s an American treasure and I was thankful just to hear a bit about how she accomplished what she did and what she’s like offstage … and how she wrote the wonderful lyrics and tunes. This book is quite insightful about her life … foremost about her parents who had their problems (her mom had mental illness and her Dad moved the family around a lot for work) … and all the men she had relationships with. Holy smokes there’s a lot! She’s quite candid and just a couple times I thought maybe it was a wee bit oversharing about her sex life. But still I was glad to know where her songs came from, many were based on real relationships or people she knew.

My only qualm with the memoir is that it stops abruptly around 2007 around the time of The West album and her marriage to Tom Overby in 2009. The memoir is a bit too short. She does talk about her parents passing away around 2014 and 2015, which had a huge sad impact on her. But I wanted to know more from her recent years (she had a stroke in 2020, which she doesn’t really talk about). So perhaps that is the sign of a good memoir, hoping that she’ll write another and add the remaining years.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho / HarperOne / 208 pages / 1993 translated

This was Book One for quarterback Aaron Rodgers’ book club, so I was curious to check it out. Not that Aaron is one I really follow, but he just talked it up quite a bit. I had missed the novel or fable when the translated edition first came out in 1993. So this runaway bestseller has now been out 30 years.

And yes it’s a fable-like story about a shepherd boy (Santiago) in Spain who sells his sheep to undertake a self-discovery journey to find a treasure, which he dreams about being among the Pyramids of Egypt. He goes through various stages on the journey, following omens and trying to realize his “Personal Legend.” Along the way, he meets an old king, a crystal merchant, an Englishman, and finally an alchemist who help him and he learns from on his way. He also falls for a girl named Fatima who will wait for him while he searches for the treasure.

The fable is endearing in certain aspects of a young person being on a quest and trying to find one’s destiny and journeying around through the Sahara Desert. Though at times it was a bit like reading pop-philosophy or psychology, and I wasn’t too sure if it went deeper than: following or listening to one’s own heart, which always seems wise to pursue. I liked some of the images in the book: the places and people, the desert and sheep, though a few parts dragged: some of the pseudo-philosophy parts perhaps. But luckily it was a relatively short read and I bid adieu to Santiago the wandering shepherd who seemed to find his happiness.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these and if so, what did you think?

Hi. We had a nice visit in California and are now back home. There was a trace or so of snow last night and that’s how I know we’re back in the North, ha. But the days have been warm in the 60s, so it’ll be gone soon. It’s nice to be home and there is much to do at our new place. But first I will share a few photos from our trip. We traveled through Palm Springs where it is always great to see the San Jacinto mountains. There’s been talk of the superbloom around parts of the state and mostly I saw that the canyons are quite green and filled with yellow mustard weed flowers, which are invasive, but other places I saw in the news had pretty wildflowers. My Dad’s rose garden is sure going bonkers right now with many in bloom.

Meanwhile, I’m wondering how many of you have joined the online platform Substack? I just joined it and I’m perusing the offerings on there. I am a newbie. Do you follow writers on there, and if so, which ones? Or are you sticking with Instagram and Twitter?

It seems Substack is full of writings from bloggers, journalists, and authors, and I am sort of wondering whether it will take the place of many individual blogs in the future? Or did talking about books on Instagram and books podcasts already do that? It seems there’s still a bit of space left for each platform and doing one’s own thing, yet I wonder if individual blog sites are starting to erode away further. What do you think? Are they still viable?

And now I will leave you with a couple reviews of what I finished lately.

Silver Alert by Lee Smith / Algonquin Books / 224 pages / April 2023

Synopsis: This story has its charms and a generous heart. It stars two unlikely protagonists in Key West: one a man named Herb Atlas, age 83, who is caring for his third wife, Susan, who has Alzheimer’s, and the other, Susan’s manicurist who does wonders for her and goes by the name Renee. Renee’s real name it turns out is Dee Dee Mullins and she’s running from a dark past from where she grew up in the mountains of NC. She hopes she can turn over a new leaf in Key West working for people like the Atlases and a poet guy she meets and falls for there named William.

Meanwhile Herb is running from the future and what lies ahead as his family wants to put Susan and him in a senior care facility, which he doesn’t want. He gets a diagnosis of prostate cancer, which gives him little time to figure out what to do. Along the way, Herb and Dee Dee earn each other’s respect and take a joy ride in his Porsche towards the end, which influences what turn their personal lives take. You’ll want to see what happens to them.

My Thoughts: I liked the two different perspectives of Herb and Dee Dee: one is privileged and older with memories of his past loves, and the other is in her 20s, poor, not formally educated, and trying to restart her life with a new job and love. They might be at times a bit cliched — Herb calling women “honey” frequently and Dee Dee in her naiveté, but I saw quite a bit from their shoes and hearts. They are different, but they also share common ground with their fears and secrets that touch their lives. I found the story went by pretty quickly with wanting to know what would happen to each of them. Kudos to Southern author Lee Smith for her notable fiction these many years. I’d like to read more of her novels.

Thanks to Algonquin Books and NetGalley for an advance copy to read and review.

Suspect by Scott Turow / Grand Central Publishing / 448 pages / 2022

I hadn’t read Scott Turow since his 1987 novel Presumed Innocent, which was very good all those years ago, so I tried this one as an audiobook. I thought the lead protagonist Clarice “Pinky” Granum, a private investigator for a law firm, was all right and interesting enough — she’s an outsider-mohawk type with a pierced nose who once failed out of the police academy for substance abuse — but the case she is on turns out to be quite sordid, icky stuff and perhaps more than I bargained for.

Synopsis: The female police chief in town is accused by three cops of soliciting them for sex in exchange for promotions to higher ranks. She hires the law office Pinky works for and the more Pinky delves into the case the more sordid it gets. Whether the chief’s guilty remains unclear as she did seem to sleep around with cops in her county, so that’s a no-no. Then during the court case, one of the chief’s accusers is murdered, which opens another can of worms.

My thoughts: I liked how there were a few possible suspects for a good portion of the novel, and Pinky seems not to be the typical private investigator, yet she has the street smarts to solve the case, so that was good. But the case itself was just pretty icky and I’m not sure I cared too much by the very end. I had to push myself to finish this one, which I was not expecting with the notable author Scott Turow. Apparently this is his twelfth legal thriller in Illinois’s fictitious Kindle County, but I don’t think I’ll be picking up the next one.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these authors and if so, what did you think?

Hi all. I am away this week visiting with my parents in my hometown in lovely Southern California, so I’m taking a short blogging break. I plan to be back next week to talk about all things books and to see what everyone is reading.

In the meantime, I will leave you with these photos of the A.K. Smiley Public Library, where I grew up in Redlands, California. This beauty of a building was built in 1898 and paid for by philanthropist Albert Smiley, whose twin brother Alfred brought plans for the library to his attention. The Smileys did a lot for this town during its founding at the turn of the century. And the library has been designated a California Historical Landmark. 

And now – what I’m reading: After finishing a novel for Publishers Weekly, I’m about to start Lee Smith’s novel Silver Alert due out April 18. I’m also listening to the audiobook of Rebecca Makkai’s latest novel I Have Some Questions for You, which I’m enjoying so far. It’s a bit of a prep school murder-mystery at a slow-burn pace, looking back on it many years later.

Also unfortunately I will miss the Los Angeles Times’ Festival of Books this coming weekend, which looks to be really good and I’ve always wanted to go to, but we plan to visit the beach and enjoy the warm weather and sunshine. So I’ll check in with you soon. Happy reading and Earth Day!  

Hi. How is everyone doing? Happy April. This past week I was busy officiating a national U12 tennis tournament with a team of refs. We had as many as 300 matches in three days so it was long days but a good competition. I’m glad it’s over now and I can rest up from a head cold I picked up there, argh. I hope to catch up on visiting blogs this week and to see what all of you are reading.

Meanwhile we are closing on the sale of our prior city house on Monday, so we are done with that, which is a big relief, and we can move on with country living, yay. The only trouble is that with the new address I lose access to the city public library system and they don’t allow non-residents to check out ebooks and audiobooks, argh. The city inventory is far larger than rural libraries have. So my question is: what sources do you use to get ebooks and audiobooks? Is Audible worth getting or something else? I appreciate your suggestions, and now I will leave you with a couple reviews of what I finished lately. 

This Bird Has Flown by Susanna Hoffs / Little Brown / 368 pages / 2023

I thought this novel was good fun and ripe for springtime reading. I wasn’t going to miss out on Susanna Hoffs’s debut novel. I remember her days as a rocker with the group the Bangles back in the 1980s, yay. This story — about singer, Jane Start, age 33, who scored a hit song ten years ago and is left trying to find her way musically and after a bad breakup — has plenty of charm, romance, and musical atmosphere that makes the reading go down as quickly as maple syrup. Along the way, there’s many song references and literary ones too that make it feel like cultural catnip for those with youths in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s.

As it starts out, Jane is a washed-up singer, having once had the one-hit wonder back in the day, but now is left to sing at a bachelor’s party in Vegas to earn money, when her manager offers Jane her place in London to stay and try to work on some new songs. Along the way, Jane meets an Oxford professor, Tom, who gives her heart a whirl and she gets back on the musical radar when an iconic star asks her to play the old hit song onstage with him for an upcoming concert at the Royal Albert Hall. She must contend with her inner stage fright demons as well as hidden baggage about Tom that she finds out about long after she moves in with him. Will she fall apart onstage and hit the skids in her love life offstage? You will have to check it out to see.  

It’s an entertaining story that blends romance with musical creativity and ambitions. There’s also various side characters that keep it lively from Pippa Jane’s manager to a heartthrob pop singer named Alfie. I’m sure parts of it and a couple characters might seem familiar or cliched, but there was enough for me with its turns and heart that kept the story appealing. It slightly reminded me of the movie Notting Hill with its U.K. relationship … mashed up in a blender with a bit of the musical angst of Daisy Jones but with the undertone fun of Tom Perrotta’s The Wishbones. Kudos to Hoffs for adding an entertaining one to the musical genre mix. I always love these rock-‘n-roll stories, and apparently Hoffs recently discovered she loved writing fiction, which she talks about in the Acknowledgments, so perhaps we’ll see more.  

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Little Brown for giving me an advance copy to read and review. This novel comes out Tuesday April 4. 

The Sleeping Car Porter by Suzette Mayr / Coach House / 224 pages / 2022

I was impressed by the telling of this story about a Black closeted-gay porter (RT Baxter), who is working on a train trip across Canada in 1929. All the details of his job — how he must serve the array of needy passengers and has little moments for himself or to sleep — play out and make this feel authentic.

Baxter, originally from the Caribbean, is trying to save enough money working as a porter to be able to go to dentistry school, but he must pay his employer for the meals onboard and calculate any demerits he might get while on the train, such as three missing towels will be marked against him. He’s trying to keep his job, but it’s not easy. 

The cast of other porters is colorful; they kid him and have his back, while the passengers are an assortment of people, looking for all kinds of help. Baxter puts up with a lot from them, along with the everyday racism from people of those calling him George — and to get this and do that. A few though take to him and tip him, which helps his chances to go to dentistry school. 

Baxter is a gay man who remembers fondly relations he had with Edwin Drew, a porter instructor he knew, while he also has two other gay encounters while on the trip (just a slight warning). It is an interesting character study, but sometimes it seemed a little episodic and like glimpses of Baxter more than a full tale. Still what I liked most perhaps was the details of the trip, the historical aspects, and the authenticity with which the author makes us feel this character’s life at this moment on the train as an overworked Black porter. Kudos to the author for winning Canada’s Giller Prize in 2022 for this novel. We are proud that Suzette Mayr lives and works and grew up in our home province of Alberta. 

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these and if so, what did you think?

Hi. How is everyone doing? March is going by quickly. It’s officially spring now, Yay! Over the weekend we went to a large restored wetland area called Frank Lake, which is a protected habitat in southwestern Alberta to hundreds of species of birds (mostly waterfowl) about a half hour from our house. Most of the lake is covered over with snow right now and the area is flat for miles out on the prairie. 

I should have taken a picture (next time!), but there was not much to see at this point except a large flat area covered with snow. Most of the birds will arrive and nest in the next couple of months. So we will be back to see the trumpeter swans among other birds and the wide variety of ducks. A path runs adjacent to the lake for a mile or so out to a viewing blind, where I saw this waterfowl chart. Before April 1, you’re allowed to walk your dog on the path so our two Labs enjoyed the fresh air with us. I mention all this since I know a few of you are more serious birders and might appreciate Frank Lake. 

And now I’ll leave you with reviews of a couple novels I finished lately. 

Hang the Moon by Jeannette Walls / Scribner / 368 pages / March 28, 2023

I was expecting a lot after loving the author’s 2005 memoir The Glass Castle and I liked the main character Sally Kincaid quite a bit — along with the the plot’s historical bootlegging aspects, though the storyline got a bit over-the-top for me in places. 

Synopsis: Sally grows up in a powerful and well-to-do family at the turn of the century with her father, the Duke, who’s running the Emporium store and the town in rural Claiborne County, Virginia. Her mother has died and her stepmother doesn’t like her and thinks she’s too adventurous and dangerous for their young son Eddie. So young Sally is cast out early on to live with an aunt in the mountains for nine years. When she finally returns, Sally goes through a tumultuous period with various family deaths and those power-hungry in charge running the town into the ground. 

Then her pious half-sister Mary and brother-in-law try to rid the town of its whiskey-making in adherence to Prohibition, but that only makes matters worse. Violence breaks out and people and the town hit hard times. Finally through happenstance, Sally becomes in charge of the family empire and starts to lead the town back through bootlegging. She becomes “the Queen of the Rumrunners” with a posse by her side, but she must battle the rival Bond Brothers who are at odds with her family over long-ago lost land. 

My Thoughts: I liked how in the Acknowledgments author Jeannette Walls mentions that the novel was inspired by a female bootlegger in Virginia who piloted liquor caravans down from the mountains. It’s a fascinating, fractious era, which the novel bears out and evokes in good measure. And Sally Kincaid is a strong, independent likable character in the novel — who tries to right wrongs within her family and the town and find romantic love with the good-looking Lieutenant Rawley, but all her family relations almost derail her. Her father’s marriages include four wives and secret liaisons and kids. And it seems there’s enough cheating, inbreeding, and secrets to go around in the family to last a lifetime. It’s a bit of a soap opera that would make J.R. Ewing of the show Dallas proud. This plot distills whiskey and a whole lot more. 

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Simon & Schuster Canada for giving me an advance copy to read and review. 

Memphis by Tara M. Stringfellow / Dial Press / 272 pages / 2022

I was taken with the storytelling of this novel set in Memphis about multiple generations of a Black family. The perseverance of the women in this family after each suffers trauma and tragedy is quite moving and alluring. There’s grandma Hazel’s story (in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s) and her husband Myron’s building of their home in Memphis; and later their daughters August, who lives in their home in the 1990s with her son Derek, and Miriam, who flees her violent husband and comes to live with August and Derek with her two young daughters Joan and Mya. 

But there’s something disturbing that once happened between August’s son Derek and Miriam’s daughter Joan that is revealed early on. Much more about each of their lives becomes revealed as the narrative goes back and forth in time over decades among Hazel, Miriam, August, and young Joan. I found Joan’s narrative to be particularly enticing as she begins to find her way out of what happened through her portrait paintings, which show promise of taking her to a notable art school.

Sometimes it gets a bit confusing listening to the audiobook switching often between the different time periods and narrators, though they are clearly labeled at the start of each chapter. And while the plot lines might have a hole or two, the storytelling I found as enticing as the butter pecan ice cream they enjoy eating. The story entails some violence in the city of Memphis over the years, but it also sings the city’s Southern beauty and praises. This is a notable debut novel and I will look for whatever Tara Stringfellow puts out next. 

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these and what did you think?