About Squirrels and Napping

I walk on a bright, crackling Fall afternoon with two of my little dogs because the sun is so alive its rays virtually bounce off the vivid leaves of sugar maples, linden and box elder trees. Even the Oaks, so often dressed in drab taupes and greys this time of year, are decked in crimson and gold for this year-end party. The purple and white asters, too, are dancing with life as though summer were just beginning to make its appearance. This is a visual score that gifts my eyes with a most melodic symphony. Playing right along are the bumblebees, with their yellow and black shrugs, and the squirrels whose tails flick frantically as they gather and bury while Nature inMichigan still permits such activiy.

It won't be long now before Nature takes its well-deserved nap. It knows far better than most of us that all work and no rest is bad for the spirit, not to mention the body.

My own tendencies are to let this time of year weigh too heavily on me. I don't like winter. I don't like the restrictions it puts on my walks and bike rides. But, as I age, I have come to appreciate the luxury of rest. Nights of uninterrupted rest are hard to come by. I think part of my problem is that, in looking ahead to Winter --the season of white death and silence--I get impatient. Spring, the time of joyous rebirth, is way too far away to offer me any comfort.

When my daughters were young, bedtime always presented a series of challenges. None of them ever wanted to end the day. It was as if morning was so far away it could never be counted on arriving at all. To ask them to put a book down or a game away of to turn off the television was a request cloaked in meanness. Like many mothers I would bargain to bring the night on more gently with a bedtime story.

Many aspects of life can be improved with just a little rest. Relationships, careers, mealtime to name a few. Even exercise is more effective, I've heard, if we let our muscles rest between vigorous workouts.

So, instead of looking into the future and becoming depressed because it is too far off, I need to remind myself to enjoy the present for the good things it offers. I need to be more like a squirrel. Pack up some nourishment to carry my soul through the dark months...I have shelves loaded with good stuff I've yet to read; and, when Spring does finally arrive, know that enjoying it will be that much more refreshing and wonderful.

A Fitting Finish to Summer

Yes, four months since my last post. A very long span of time in some respects but really just a flash. Time comes and goes in flashes now and if I've learned anything over the years it is that the period between the flashes is what is important. So I meandered around the pond on a stellar Fall afternoon and allowed what I could see, smell and hear to take over the moment. To comfort me as my thoughts could not.

A maple tree as majestic as any at its most glorious moment. A gilded robe that it would soon let go. The flash at sunset.

A Red Squrrek and an Eastern Fox Squirrel are more worried about us than each other.

Ah! The beauty of a long camera lens. Neither the painted turtles nor the Wood Duck had any concerns about our presence.

I love these ducks!

How could this setting not bring comfort to a soul?

A box elder (I believe) on fire!

Can you spot the pair of female wood ducks in this lily pad flotsam?

So majestic.

And so proud...he's literally beating his chest! I don't think the turtles give a hoot.

Taking a regal bath.

These guys really do blend in with their backgrounds.

Our resident Blue Heron on the lookout from his favorite perch

A Grey Squirrel...yes grey...the result of melanistic genes. He's certain my dogs and I are going to steal his nut.

Female Wood Duck with her pretty white eyes.

Lily pads in the clouds.

And he's still bathing!

Bird Nests and other Spring Musings

Spring arrived here in March. Then, with a vengeance, Winter came back as if admonishing Spring for daring to tread on its sacred ground. My apple tree never blossomed this spring. It's quite probable my cherry never will again. My plum, it appears, is just patiently waiting for next year. And, my wisteria nearly gave up but is nosing its way through the tangle of my arbor with fragile, grey-green leaves. On the other hand, my peach tree blessed me with so many baby peaches it couldn't hold on to them all. Go figure.

But, beyond these discoveries of new life thwarted are two that have warmed my heart for the past month. A pair of cardinals built a nest in the vine that shades my dog run--before the vine even sprouted leaves which meant their little home was in full view of anyone with even minimal vision. I chuckled as I watched the mother sit on her eggs, face into the corner of our chimney, and wondered whether she felt safe because she couldn't see me even though I could see her.

Two weeks ago a fledgling appeared at the top of the trellis that supports this vine.  All afternoon both parents would stop by with food for the baby and in between visits he (or her) would sit patiently waiting. Trusting that they were not far away.

We have cats in our neighborhood. Lots of cats. And a hawk. I wanted to move the fledgeling to a safer place. One not quite so visible. But had to trust that nature has its own way of doing these things. Then, for a week I did not see the fledgeling again. Ach! I forced myself not to consider what might have happened. Then, sitting at my writing desk which faces the dog run I saw a brown bird perched on its picket fence. It was the baby, again taking food from its parents. Happy day for me! He's big enough now and strong enough to dodge those pesky cats and possibly even the hawk.

The other discovery came yesterday. I noticed a robin pecking away at the debris in our gutter. I thought maybe it was foraging for a tasty tidbit but actually it was finding just the perfect twig or two for a nest. The nest, I soon discovered, is wedged in the revitalized tendrils of my wisteria.

Spring and Winter can fight amongst themselves for supremacy of the seasons but guess what? The cycle of life is stronger then them both.

Unfinished Desires by Gail Godwin

There is a lot to absorb, even in the first few pages, of Unfinished Desires by Gail Godwin. Set ultimately in 2007, it tells the story of several women whose lives first connect at Mount St. Gabriel's, a Catholic boarding school for Girls in the mountains of South Carolina.

The novel opens with some women who graduated from the school in the 1960's as they surround their beloved (and now nearly blind) headmistress, Mother Suzanne Ravenal The women have convinced Mother to write her memoir about the school which closed in 1972 and which was Mother's home for over sixty years.  This is the last we hear of those women, which confused me, as the story then twists around a series of unfortunate memories of 1952 that preclude Mother Ravenal's one-year leave of absence from the school. Memories which creep towards, then retreat from, this year of the so-called disaster.

When Mother Ravenal is finally able to bring herself to face the pain of that year, she comes to a kind of peace with herself and with a much earlier pain that, like some festering thorn under her skin, she'd never fully understood.

I grew up in the Catholic "school system." I attended a private Catholic high school for girls run by nuns, so I get that part of the story. Of course I was a teenager as well so I get that. And I get a passionate attraction to a best friend. I just don't think these elements were put together in the most efficient manner. Too many side trips and side characters to step over along the way.

The story is well-written and does a sensitive and insightful treatment of adolescence--its clumsiness, its passions and its cruelties--as well as the origins of these frailities. But it requires so much focus to keep tabs of the dozens of characters, the multiple points of views and the revolving time frames. It ends, not with Mother Ravenal but with the three ninth grade students who were at the eye of the storm that led to Mother's abrupt leave from the school. I can't say the ending totally satisfied me. Not that I think a novel necessarily must adhere to a single character's story but that it needs to leave me with a sense that the characters have all reached a point of closure with each other. Too many of them did not.

Defending Jacob :A Review

Defending Jacob by William Landay is a real page turner! Faced with one of the worst possible scenarios...that their only child, Jacob, has been accused of murdering his bullying classmate...Andy and Laurie Barber struggle with losing not just all their friends but his career as district prosecuting attorney and hers as the ultimate suburban mom.

While Jacob is the titled character it is Andy whose story Landay tells. A man who, on the surface is a brilliant and successful prosecutor, is revealed to be quite vulnerable underneath. He struggles, not only with his son's guilt but also his own guilt over having possibly passed on to his son the "murder gene." The incident forces to the forefront a not-so-wonderful past that Andy has managed to conceal; a past which, in combination with Jacob's trial, threatens Andy's storybook marriage.

Defending Jacob is a crime thriller written with lyrical language not normally found in such fast-paced novels. It gives sensitive treatment to a close family not accustomed to being looked at under the microscopes of their upscale neighbors and friends. It gives a wrenching look inside a man who has lived a lie and been tortured by it. And, it gives an almost unbelievable and certainly horrific solution to the problem.

What Defending Jacob does not give us is much of a view inside the minds and hearts of Jacob or Laurie. It's a difficult task given the first person point of view which makes me think third person might have been more effective. My only other nit is that much of the narrative is repeated at one time or another throughout the story because of the frequent interjection of transcripts from the actual trial.

On the whole, however, it was a well-written, gripping story. I look forward to reading Landay's next work.

Learning To Swim by Sara J. Henry : A Review

     Since Sara J. Henry just won this years Mary Higgins Clark award at the Edgars for her debut novel, Learning To Swim, I thought I better turn in my review. This story plunges you into the icy waters of Lake Champlain right along with its heroine, Troy Chance, who is quite certain she sees a young child being tossed overboard from a ferry and jumps from the boat she's in to rescue this victim.
     Not only did she see a child but the child was tied so tightly into a sweatshirt that he had no chance of survival had Troy not made the daring leap.
     I liked the character, Troy Chance; the way Henry portrays her. Troy is more comfortable with guys (good since all the tenants in her boarding house are guys), loves a good meal and is skeptical of authority...all traits I can relate to! She is brave but also naive, she is physically strong but weak when it comes to abandoned children.
     Yes, there are parts of the story that are a bit far-fetched but they are definitely not impossible; and yes the ending is a bit contrived but it is a mystery written in an era where both belief and skepticism are routinely suspended.
     Most importantly this was a well-written novel with a great plot and a boatload of interesting characters. And, judging from how the story ended I would suspect there might be a few more mysteries for Troy Chance to solve before she is finished. I hope so, anyway!

The Truth About Delilah Blue : A Review

The truth about Delilah Blue is that it changes. It changes because even Delilah doesn’t know who she is. Her divorced and estranged parents have used Delilah to create their own identities because even these adults in Tish Cohen’s latest novel have no clue who they are.

A story loaded with identity issues, The Truth About Delilah Blue, weaves back and forth between the points of view of Delilah (renamed Lila Mack for most of the novel), and her father, Victor, who is Lila's caretaker and who is slipping into early onset Alzheimer's.

Lila believes Elizabeth, Victor's ex-wife and Lila's mother, abandoned her. Midway through the novel Lila learns the truth. That Victor actually kidnapped her to save Lila from an irresponsible mother. That he took her from Toronto to Los Angeles and changed their names to hide Lila from the authorities. So Lila's father isn't who she thought he was either.

I liked this story because of the issues it presents. Neither parent is portrayed as perfect. Far from it. But neither is portrayed as evil either. Instead Lila learns that both parents loved her very much and did what they thought was best. In the end Lila learns that she is not the unwanted daughter of her artist mother nor the victim of her law-breaking and eccentric father but Delilah Blue, a young girl struggling to grow beyond the hurts of her past to find who she really is.

I also liked the easy going style of Tish Cohen's writing as well as her descriptions of the settings and the characters. Only two things actually bothered me. The ending, which I thought was confusing and abrupt. And the art professor of the class where Lila worked as a model who I thought was a bit inconsistent. Or maybe it was just that he was the one character I didn't like!

Finally, I liked Slash, the ever present, urbanized coyote that seemed to relate to Lila better than any human. As a passionate lover of animals I found this thread weaving through Cohen's novel a warm and significant element.

Night Swim by Jessica Keener: a Review

Scanning the shelves of a library or a bookstore one might think coming of age is only a male experience. Of course it is not and in Night Swim Jessica Keener sensitively tells the story of a young girl unable to live with or without her mother. It is a beautiful story that I plan to recommend to my new book club.

Born into a wealthy Jewish family in the suburbs of Boston, Sarah Kunitz struggles in high school with a mother who solves most of her troubles with alcohol and pills and a father who is more obsessed with his students at a local university than his daughter and three sons.

Set in the 1970s, the novel uses music as the force that ties Sarah with her older brother, Peter. When her beautiful voice is discovered by her music teacher, music also becomes a force that gives Sarah a much needed sense of worth.

It is not enough, however, to bring her closer to her mother, something Sarah wants desperately; something she continues to attempt even after her mother is gone by caring for her precious rose garden.

I have a friend who has suffered chronic bouts of depression for decades and I know, first hand, how debilitating it is for both the adult and their children. Keener does a masterful job of portraying this terrible condition in all its sadness and ugliness.

It is long after her mother's death in a car accident and long after several broken relationships, one resulting in an abortion, that Sarah comes to a place where she can stand on her own.

A poignant portrayal of a time and place that focuses, not on the notorious issues of the day--the Vietnam War, drugs, hippies and peace marches--, but on the more mundane issues within the walls of suburban households that is forced to move forward despite their personal problems. Keener's portrayal of  how Sarah, as well as her three brothers, each deal with their pain is both beautiful and sensitive.

The Daffodils Waited

Ach! It's spring. Goldfinches are the color of the forsythia...a sure sign. The bumble bees are making me guilty. They don't like 50 degree weather any more than I but they are out there buzzing through the quince blossoms, soaking in the glorious nectar. The sun shines. That is the draw and, though the season arrived early this year--nearly two weeks early--the blooms have remained hearty due to the cool nights.

Already I am planning ahead to the picket fence I'll put up for the puppies, the landscape additions to the side yard where our privacy has been compromised. Not a hedge of arborvitae as is so often the case in this suburban neighborhood, but a medley of pines and berry bushes for the birds to nibble all winter.

The cardinals are seeking their nesting places, the chickadees and goldfinch are scratching at the feeders which are in desperate need of re-filling and the robins are busy listening at the earth for signs of plump earthworms to pluck out.

I love it!

Pelicans in the Fast Food Line

There must have been several large schools of fish off the Florida Gulf Coast at the Delnor-Wiggins State Park this morning because there were several dozen brown pelicans getting breakfast there. I also saw two snowy egrets tiptoeing through the shallows seeking smaller fish and high above an osprey was on the lookout for her mate who had evidently promised her a prized morsel or two.

It occurred to me how much time animals and fowl spend each day just seeking nourishment. How far we have come from the need to put most of our energy into hunting, farming, fishing or milking cows.What a mistake that has been. Such healthy entertainment we have denied ourselves.

The Mighty Osprey

       The ospreys, still endangered but not nearly as rare as they once were, are coming back. They are majestic fisher birds with wingspans just 10 inches shorter than the bald eagle and bodies not quite as bulky. They build massive nests from sticks that they return to each year and put on additions so that they might comfortably cushion a child if that child so desired.

There is a pair that have nested at Delnor-Wiggins State Park in Naples, FL for several years. Three years ago their nest, complete with fledglings, was blown apart in a violent storm. Such are the
ways of nature. Everyone hoped they would rebuild but they did not. the next year a new nest appeared at the top of a tree whose canopy might have been destroyed in a similar storm leaving the perfect, almost flat, platform in a wide open space that these marvelous raptors prefer. Ospreys are amazing in their ability to soar, spot and dive for
the fish they hunt.  Because they are not as adept at turns as other raptors, they need these wide open areas. You won't normally find their nests deep within the limbs of trees as you might a hawk's or an eagle's. And, because their most common enemies (after man and the automobile) are scavengers such as raccoons who might climb and raid their nests, they like to be up high.

For the few weeks I've walked this part of the park the ospreys have taken turns sitting on the eggs and hunting for fish--the only food they eat. Today, one of them was sitting high on the edge of the nest. Of course I did not have my camera with me. But it appears the eggs have hatched which means mama and papa will be busier than ever keeping the fledgelings fed.

Many ospreys are terrific travellers. During migration they can log up to 160,000 miles in a lifetime. One osprey strapped with a tracking transmitter traveled from Martha's Vineyards to French Guiana, South America, in less than two weeks!


As mighty as these birds appear, they are actually quite fragile. The DDT years nearly wiped them out. A conservation success story, the ospreys' numbers began to climb back as soon as the DDT ban was initiated. Now, unfortunately, because ospreys often pick up fishing line and soda-can straps as well as twigs to add to their nests, this beach trash has become a deadly hazard for fledglings that get caught up in them.

Like many raptors, osprey eggs do not hatch all at once but over a period of several days. That means the first born is much stronger than the last and, when food is scarce, have a much better chance of surviving.

When I think about all the other threats our natural world has been subjected to...our lust for an easier, faster, asphalt-laden and chemical-driven life...I wonder if we will learn in time which "improvements" might eradicate other species...and if we do, will we be as lucky as we were with the osprey to enjoy their rebound.

Elmore Leonard and Peter on Raylan, Justified and Voices of the Dead

   I had the privilege of hearing a talk recently given by Peter and Elmore Leonard at our local library. Elmore is the best selling author of a gazillion western and thriller novels...many on the New York Times bestseller list. He is also a screenwriter and many of his works are box office hits with starring roles by actors like Paul Newman, George Clooney, Charles Bronson and Burt Reynolds to name just a few. Elmore's latest endeavor is as executive producer of the FX Network's latest hit series, JUSTIFIED.

       Peter Leonard, Elmore's son, has now broken from a successful advertising career (like father, like son) to try his hand at writing. His fourth work, VOICES OF THE DEAD, is coming out this month and he says it is, finally, his own voice speaking as opposed to a "knock-off" of his father's. I am certain Elmore is a difficult act to follow but Peter seems quite capable of holding his own. 

What I enjoyed about the evening was watching Elmore (even his son calls him Elmore). He is as interesting and demonstrative as many of his memorable characters. When Elmore speaks, he uses his hands to make his points...not unlike the cock of a dog's ears. I also liked the casual, conversational tone of the evening...as if we in the audience were all sitting around a large  table in the Leonards' home. They had no script, no index cards and no platform. Peter had some questions jotted on a piece of paper and  he referred to them when conversation slowed but , for the most part father and son discussed their craft.  

What I enjoyed about the evening was watching Elmore (even his son calls him Elmore). He is as interesting and demonstrative as many of his memorable characters. When Elmore speaks, he uses his hands to make his points...not unlike the cock of a dog's ears. I also liked the casual, conversational tone of the evening...as if we in the audience were all sitting around a large  table in the Leonards' home. They had no script, no index cards and no platform. Peter had some questions jotted on a piece of paper and  he referred to them when conversation slowed but , for the most part father and son discussed their craft. 

Elmore was born in New Orleans but  his father, who was a site locator for General motors, moved his family to Detroit in 1934. Elmore has been here ever since.  Peter, of course, was born and raised in our fair city. Both men have been good to our beleaguered town. Not only casting Detroit as the setting for most of his stories but also giving their time to our little community just north of Detroit. This talk was one of just three Elmore is giving to promote his latest and 46th work, RAYLAN. He really does not need to promote his books--they are now grabbed up by his hungry fans as soon as they hit the shelves. And Peter is well on his way to being just as loved and admired.

So, they talked about writing. About how disciplined a writer must be. Both writers honed their crafts while working day jobs with advertising agencies. This meant they adopted a routine of waking at dawn and writing for two or three hours before leaving for work. Then they would come home and be the family men they both were. (Interesting side note: in my other life as a professional florist, I designed the bridal flowers for Elmore's daughter. So my first encounter with the famous author was at the front door to his home when I dropped off the bouquets. I doubt he remembers! )  

Peter pointed out that Elmore said he was not a fan of recurring characters but, with Raylan, that has changed. This is Elmore's third title starring the lawman.
"It's kind of nice," Peter said. "You know the guy now."
"And," Elmore said. "I can get him to talk without much trouble. That's so important."
He said he even likes his bad guys because he can get them to talk. One of Elmore's outstanding successes is the dialogue he interjects into his stories. With little else in the way of describing a character, Elmore's readers have a crystal clear image of every person in his stories...all because of the dialogue.

They also talked about the names they give their characters and how important that is to the success of the story. That they find their names in any number of unexpected places. Raylan, for instance, was the same name as a man introduced to Elmore at a luncheon in Arizona. Peter talked about what it was like to be an author whose father was a famous writer. The good part, he said, was that he could always get the best advice on writing issues at the dinner table. The hardest part was developing his own voice.

The pair touched briefly on Elmore's treatise, THE 10 RULES OF WRITING. I've read it. It's skinny and as sparsely written as Elmore's fiction but packs more heat than many larger texts on the topic.

Out of curiosity I watched Justified last night. I am actually recording the series. I'm not much of a TV viewer. Never seem to find shows that hold my attention for their duration but Justified is good.
When it was over I went to bed and pulled out the book I'm currently reading. Reading, I have found, is a much better way to go to sleep.

 You can hear this entire program on our library's website: http://vimeo.com/35425452

         

Oath of Office : A Review

        It did not take me long to read Michael Palmer's latest medical thriller, OATH OF OFFICE, which will be released February 14, 2012. In this story that borders on the environmental thriller genre (read Karen Dionne's Freezing Point and Boiling Point), Dr. Lou Welcome is challenged with proving that the shooting spree his favorite patient, Dr. John Meacham, went on could not have been predicted. To the police and Lou's co-workers it appears he could have prevented the massacre if he were competent in his judgement of Meacham's shortcomings. These suspicions also cast a dark light on Welcome's recovery from alcoholism.

          Like Meacham, Lou has had his own substance abuse issues that led to losing his medical license, a divorce he did not want and a separation from his 11-year-old daughter, Emily, that tears at his heart every day. Recovered for five years now, Lou works part-time at the PWO (Physicians Wellness Office). His client's rampage, however, puts that position in serious jeopardy.

          Meanwhile the reader is quickly ushered from Lou's problems to those of the First Lady of the United States, Darlene Mallory. She is trying desperately to revive her marriage, which seems destined to collapse almost as quickly as her husband's re-election hopes. Darlene and President Mallory's secretary, Kim Hajjar, meet for cocktails after a particularly stressful day and run into the former Secretary of Agriculture, Russell Evans. He and Darlene grew up together but the friendship could not prevent Evan's resignation over a fabricated rendezvous with a teenage prostitute.

           A series of other bizarre and often gruesome incidents lead Lou to question the practices of a local corporate farm that specializes in genetically modified corn while Darlene's attempt to restore Russell Evans' reputation leads her to the same enterprise which, she learns, contributed heavily to her husband's campaign.

            While Lou's life is threatened and several of his cohorts are either murdered or beaten, Darlene becomes fairly certain her husband is involved in some serious ethics violations.  When both these trails merge, Lou and Darlene find not only clues to the crimes they are investigating but also a friendship that seems to fill voids in both their personal lives.

              OATH OF OFFICE is written primarily from two points of view--that of Dr. Lou Welcome and Dr. Darlene Mallory. It carries a crisp, fast-paced style by an author who clearly knows both the medical world and that of Washington DC. This is Michael Palmer's 17th thriller. Several have been on the New York Times bestseller list and have been translated into 35 languages. His website bio says, "He trained in internal medicine at Boston City and Massachusetts General Hospitals, spent twenty years as a full-time practitioner of internal and emergency medicine, and is now an associate director of the Massachusetts Medical Society’s physician health program."


I have no doubt persons who read this novel will be encouraged to read Palmer's other works as well.


If you would like the opportunity to win an autographed copy of OATH OF OFFICE, simply leave a comment at the end of this post and you will be automatically entered in a drawing  held February 14, 2012. This contest is only open to residents of the continental U.S.

OATH OF OFFICE will be available in hardcover as well as on audiobook. For a clip from the audiobook, click on the image below.

Jane Eyre, Scarlett O'Hara and Edna Pontellier

My three favorite heroines! Women who set their sites early on and stuck to them despite overwhelming physical, historical, cultural and political difficulties. Honestly, I think I could read The Awakening,  Jane Eyre and Gone With the Wind alternatively the rest of my life and never be bored.

Two Journeys: David Guterson and Charles Frazier

Over the past couple weeks I finished two excellent novels, Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier (also wrote Cold Mountain) and East of the Mountains by David Guterson (also wrote Snow Falling on Cedars).

The stories these authors tell are soft and lonesome. Not sad, really, but meditative. Frazier writes of a man, Col. William Cooper, who loses his parents at a young age and is handed over to an aunt and uncle. They subsequently bind him over to the owner of a western trading post. It is a story of a boy who never stops longing for his parents; who is taken in by Bear, an Indian chief; who falls in love with a woman married to a despicable Indian; who befriends a horse named Waverly; and who winds up as the legal spokesperson for an entire Indian nation. Though Will (his shortened name) does a fine job as lawyer, real estate investor and Washington lobbyist, his success becomes his undoing. Worse, he is never able to entice the elusive Claire to marry him, even after her husband dies.  In the end, Will loses all but the home he built.

 

Guterson’s story is told by a heart surgeon in his seventies who is dying from colon cancer. Dr. Ben Givens lost Rachel, his dear wife, six months before the story opens and cannot get past it. He determines that, rather than burden his two children with the care of a dying old man, he will take his two hunting dogs into the Washington plateaus to hunt chukkas. He chooses a place east of the mountains where he now lives. It is where he was raised…full of apple orchards carved out of the desert and nourished by giant irrigation machines.  His plan is to feign an accident that takes his life.

Constantly, Ben is fighting his illness…his pain often unbearable. In one of his hallucinatory states brought on by marijuana he remembers The War. It was his experiences there, in the trenches, that convinced him to become a heart surgeon.

Ben does have an accident but not the one he planned. He then spends several days attempting to return to his original plan. During that time he loses one dog to a pack of wolfhounds and his other is critically injured. Ben encounters several strangers who become instrumental in helping him not only get over Rachel’s death but to find answers to life’s mysteries that he didn’t know he was seeking.

Both authors have a very lyrical command of language. Words that flow like silken water over smooth river rocks. Their stories are passionate. They are loaded with characters you will not forget. And they portray personal journeys laced with a morality that is both moving and inspirational.

Here are some quotes that I loved.

From East of the Mountains:

“The drifts (driftwood) burned white and smokeless enough that they could sit close behind them in a bright womb of heat.  The world beyond disappeared. Darkness lay behond the firelight. The stars appeared awasy in pale ether.” 101

“His mind raced, his thoughts were rich, his memories vivid, graphic. He felt he could touch the past.” 60

“He had manipulated the hearts of human beings, and he thought he understood that when we speak of love, we speak of something transitory, something gone when we go. The heart, for Ben, was tangible--and nothing tangible remains.” 203

“He recalled reading once that the Hindus saw life in four progressive stages: twenty years a youth, twenty years a fighter--one needed nothing martial to pursue this phase--twenty years as head of a household and twenty in the cultivation of the spirit.” 138

“How long (had he been) afraid of its (death) coming? Outwardly he’d been stalwart and stoic, but privately he’d quaked like a child, trembled in apprehension, lived with a constant, quiet fear below the surface of everything.” 254

“It was not life of the spirit at all, in which mortality inspires a course of right action and humility. It had been instead a willful turning from the true conditions of existence. But now he found--he’d known it since Rachel’s death--that this forgetting couldn’t sustain him to the grave. The interludes of ignorance had grown shorter. And now there were none, there was only knowledge, and he wasn’t ready for it.” 255

In the next chapter Ben saves the life of a migrant girl and the baby she cannot deliver. It is stuck in her birth canal. Soon after he meets up with an old neighbor who tells him a dying father is not a burden to his children, that suicide is unimaginable. “It is good,” Bea insisted. “’Seeing you die, it’ll make them compassionate. It’ll help them be more compassionate.’” 273

From Thirteen Moons:

“I asked him one time how he knew to suse the law in his favor. He said that the law is an axe. It cuts whatever it falls on. The man that wins knows how to aim the sharp edge away from himself.” 14

“Bear believed writing dulled the spirit, stilled some holy breath. Smothered it. Words, when they’ve been captured and imprisoned on paper, become a barrier against the world, one best left unerected. Everything that happens is fluid, changeable. After they’ve passed, events are only as your memory makes them, and they shift shapes over time.” 20

“There are many who can make new selves at a moment’s notice. Slough a skin, dismiss memory, move on. But that is not a skill I ever acquired.” 202

“It was my Lancelot moment. Hesitate to get in the cart, and you are lost. Maybe every life has one moment where everything could have been different if you’d climbed on the cart.” 218

“There was no justice in the world anymore. All you could do was try to go on living as a form of vengeance, to keep your memory alive as long as possible.” 258

“He (Bear) talked a great deal about several new opinions he had developed in my absence, one of which was that we come to value the fall of the year more and more as we age and decline. It is easy in youth to become emotional at the overwhelming symbolic autumnalness of withered peaches and reddened honey-locust pods. Later in life, though, the season becomes more actual to us, not sentimental, just sadly true.” 320

“Alarming, really, how all the wheels of the world--the days and nights, the thirteen moons, the four seasons, and the great singular round of the year itself--begin spinning faster and faster the closer we get to the Nightland. We’re called to it and it pulls us. And the weaker we become, the harder and faster it pulls” 321

Towards the end of the novel Bear relates a hunting story. He had regretted, in his old age, how the animals of the forest had been systematically eliminated by gun toting fur traders and persons like him who needed to survive. He said he once came upon a buck badly wounded by three bullets and was too weak to move. Bear looked into the buck’s eye as it watched him coming to cut its throat and sell its skin for a dollar. --“There’s not a prayer for that, he would say.”

Turns out Random House lost a huge amount of money on their publication of Thirteen Moons, recovering a fraction of the $8 million they advanced to Charles Frazier. I cannot say why the book did not sell better. I thought it was fantastic.