The Barrowfields by Phillip Lewis

I am a sucker for a book about books, authors, and libraries. Throw in a hauntingly eerie home perched on the side of a mountain, a modern structure made of iron and glass that sits above a hard-scrabble town in the Appalachians and I am hooked. The Barrowfields was that and more. A beautifully written story of a man who leaves his home in the Appalachian Mountains to attend college and write the great American novel only to return with a pregnant wife and his unfinished tome. He moves his family into the magnificent house on the hill where he continues to work on his obsession in the extensive library that Phillip Lewis writes as a supporting character in The Barrowfields. This family saga is told to us by his son Henry, who along with his sister Threnody, grows up in this rambling home in awe of their brilliant father and cared for by their beautiful and carefree mother until a family tragedy occurs that changes the trajectory of all their lives. Son Henry leaves home, as his father did, only to return after earning a law degree, as his father did, to solve the mystery of the family and to return to the home and sister he abandoned. This was a beautifully lyrical debut that will leave you wanting more from Phillip Lewis.

DODGERS by Bill Beverly - East LA gang meets Middle America on a caper that goes awry.

On a previous job I had the employees participated in a team building exercise, much like the Myers-Briggs system. This exercise identified what the employee would bring to a team; an organizer, a leader, the member that would get the project off the ground, the mediator, etc.  The object of this exercise is to build teams that would include at least one of each of these strengths, and bring the project to a successful end. Bill Beverly has done something similar in a LA gang setting in DODGERS, published by Penguin Random House.

This is an ensemble piece with characters that represent the best and worst parts of a team. There is East a 15-year-old who has never experienced a childhood, raised in the drug world of East LA. East is the loyal one. He can always be relied upon to follow the rules and do what is expected of him and get the job done. He is the order keeper. Ty, 13, Easts psycho, younger half-brother with the gun. He doesn’t think beyond aiming and pulling the trigger. The trigger-man. The brains of the outfit is Walter, intelligent, always thinking ahead, knowing how to get things done. He is the strategist. Rounding out the crew is Michael Wilson the older college boy from the hood who is to be in-charge. He is a chance taker and never follows the rules. He is the fuck-up.

The story begins in an LA ghetto at The Boxes, the hood where the boys live and work for Fin, the boss, the main supplier of drugs and East’s uncle. Due to a momentary lack of focus, the drug house that East is responsible for is raided by the police. Holding East responsible, Fin sends East with this crew of boys to Wisconsin to take out a murder witness before he has the opportunity to testify against Fin’s organization. Piling into a van the boys head in the compass direction E. “Only once did East turn and look back. Everything he recognized was already past: The Boxes. His gang. His mother.” The further east the boys go the more the mission goes awry. The boys begin to rely on their own selves to get through this task as they become estranged from the comfort of their gang life. East is the one who becomes more independent, realizing there may be something more than the gang life at home even as he finds himself friendless and alone in America’s white Midwest. 

This book has won awards as best crime novel and best debut for a reason. The prose is poetic, many times I jotted down quotes and passages I want to remember. "It took a moment for East's eyes to read the scene. He could see the valley's depth, feel the real wind dipping down it. But he could not convince himself that is was real. Space both vast and unattainable, opening up between the blue walls of stone. The air below was cold, he could feel it, a reservoir, and he could sense something about the chasm, all the time piled up there. Close to forever. More time than he had in a hundred lives like his."It also evokes a sense of place from the LA ghetto The Boxes where the boys live, to a stop on the way east at Las Vegas Casino, to a rest stop in Utah where big-rig truckers and families in SUV’s mingle to take a break from white-line-fever, to the white American Midwest."The farther east they got, the dirtier the toilets. Like every toilet in the country has been cleaned the moment they left LA, and none of them since." Bill Beverly shows us this country can be strange, scary, and unfriendly once we leave the comforts of what we know. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It is the best book I read in 2016, and that is really saying something.

Hunters In The Dark - Lawrence Osborne is a noir tale that unfolds like Russian Matryoshka dolls

It all begins when a Robert, an aimless school teacher from Sussex, wins $2,000 at a casino in Cambodia. An introvert, Robert takes his annual school vacations in exotic places but never immerses himself in the local or the people, and always looks at them as someone peering through a telescope from the opposite end. His big win in Cambodia, however, sets off a chain of events that forces him to become involved with his surroundings and others who inhabit it.  Unhappy with this mundane life as a teacher he decides to extend his vacation for at least as long as the $2,000 will last him. However, there are others that have other plans for his winnings.  As the story unfolds like Russian nesting dolls; open one and another is there time after time, the $2,000 winning becomes the main character as the story twists when each Matryoshka doll is revealed. I loved this book and will look forward to reading Lawrence Osborne’s back list.

THE SUNLIGHT PILGRIMS by Jenni Fagin is one that you hate to see end

The moment I began this book I just wanted to sit and read. This is the book you hate to see end. I absolutely loved this book. Takes place in 2020 in a small caravan park in Scotland where the residents are expecting the worst winter in history. Not quite a dystopian novel but definitely one on the effects of the gulf stream slowing down as affected by global warming. However the story is really about the characters; a man who has left his London home, which was a small independent movie theater, after the deaths of his grandmother and mother, the young girl he meets when arriving at the caravan park and her bohemian mother. There are other characters that are pertinent to the story that provide insight and conflict. I've read where some reviewers are calling this a YA novel, perhaps because the young girl, Stella, is the central character with the most important story to tell. However I highly recommend this novel whether you like or dislike YA novels, the characters are likable, interesting and there are many morals in this simple tale.

GROWNUP by Gillian Flynn

Flynn writes characters that tend to make questionable decisions; think Nick Dunn in GONE GIRL. Why the hell did he not retain an attorney once it was discovered Amy was missing or dead. The spouse is always the primary suspect. And why did Amy sell their townhome in New York, a city she loved and loathed leaving, to move to a podunk town to nurse her mother-in-law till she died.  Why did she give Nick the money to open a bar in a Podunk town of all things? Or how about Libby Day from DARK PLACES who went through money like water through a sieve, without any means of support. She made one bad decision after another. And in GROWNUP the unnamed narrator struggles through life making ends meet as a psychic, until she meets a young woman, Susan, who believes she sees ghosts in the eerie Victorian home she lives with her teenage son. Once the narrator entangles herself in Susan’s life, believing to finally found a cash-cow she begins to wonder what she has gotten herself into. And again, before the book has found its conclusion she makes a decision that leave us all wondering what the hell was she thinking.  GROWNUP is a short story repackaged as a novella, and if you are a Gillian Flynn fan you will find it has the twists that you would expect from a Gillian Flynn book.  I am wondering when she will write another novel instead of re-warming previous works.  

Dead Wake: The last Crossing of the Lusitania or Dead Wake: Germany's Agggressive Submarine Program During World War I

Erik Larson is one of the masters of narrative non-fiction, and he again proves it in Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania. The book is about the fatal last crossing of the Lusitania the largest passenger steamship of its time, and its sinking off the coast of Ireland. It gives us a look into the wealthy class that could afford a luxury cruise during war time. Tells us stories of the passengers,  some famous and some not, and lets us sail on the Lusitania with them without the seasickness. The most interesting story being told is the German submarine campaign of the first world war and of  the captain of Unterseeboot-20 that sunk the Lusitania, Captain Walther Schweiger. Captain Schweiger, as were the captains of the U-boat fleet, was directed to sink as much tonnage as possible, whether military or civilian. Civilian lives were of no consequence. The previous restrictions of warfare that protected civilian ships no longer applied to the war zone that Germany placed around Great Britain, Germany was intent on sinking any vessel that was not German. Tracking Captain Schweiger was a clandestine British intelligence unit, Room 40, a group that came into possession of the German code book, and monitored radio transmissions of U-20 and those U-boats within range. Room 40 had been tracking Schweiger's U-20 and knew when it entered the waters off the coast of Ireland, and knew the Lusitania would be sailing through the same channel and would be in jeopardy of attack. America was not involved in the War at this time and to attack a passenger steamship that was on route from American to London that carried many American citizens, many of which were children and babies, was thought to be an invitation to join the war. Perhaps British intelligence were hoping such an attack would persuade President Woodrow Wilson to declare war, or perhaps it was an egregious oversight, but the Lusitania's Captain Turner was never notified of an enemy submarine in its path nor was he given directions on evading such an attack. This story is a sad tale, one that could have been avoided but for the lack of the flow of information and oversight. The information was there, the jeopardy of attack was known, but the Lusitania was sunk and lives were lost, many lives were lost. Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania was an intriguing read, one I recommend.

Q&A A Day: A 5 Year Journal

If you keep a journal or if you have always wanted to keep a journal but did not know how to start this is the perfect book for you. This is a different type of journal, each day has a question for you to ponder and write about, you can answer the question or let it take you in a different direction. Also, it is a 5 year journal so that each day has 5 spaces for your thoughts over the years, and allows you to see what you were thinking each previous year.  I love it and look forward the next day to write something and to the next year of the first day I wrote in this journal. It makes a perfect gift, I have already purchased one for my friends birthday.