Irish Country #10
An Irish Doctor in Love and at Sea
Patrick Taylor, John Keating (narrator)
Pairs present day with Fingal's training in anaesthetics during the Blitz while he is seeking marriage to his first wife.
The story combines humour with pathos.
The Little Mermaid
Hans Christian Andersen
The story is nearing 200 years old. Disney incurred no costs in using it for their animated special.
A fairy princess with a tail falls in love with a human prince. They'd have to be handsome. Not sure how the in-laws are going to react.
How Disney gave it an HEA I cannot say but the original is a tragedy.
Irish Country #9.5
The Wily O'Reilly: Irish Country Stories
Patrick Taylor, John Keating (Narrator)
A series of vignettes most of them included in books we've already read at least at first originally published in newspapers.
The author interacts with his fictional character.
Fingal's dog Arthur Guinness and his white cat Lady Macbeth both figure.
It occurs to me to ask how anyone could consume so much alcohol and not suffer liver damage.
Smoking is bad for your health, especially when you attempt to light your briar with gunpowder.
Dawn of the Red Tomorrow: The Timeline and Lore of Mars After the Silence
Joseph Cruz
This is a rather depressing tale. Having escaped war-ravaged earth the settlers on Mars bring their martial tendencies with them and the book becomes a catalogue of their wars and the increasingly sophisticated technology they use to fight them.
Irish Country #9
An Irish Doctor in Peace and at War: An Irish Country Novel
Patrick Taylor, John Keating (Narator)
For this outing we jump back even further to Fingal's service as a medical lieutenant on board a battleship with a crew of 1200.
The book jumps back from the present to life on board the battleship and sees Fingal operating in a mass casualty theatre. Add having the deck beneath your feet roll and heave as you work. Picking through a man's intestines as if searching for leaks in a hose sounds awkward. And to a doctor a man in need is neither friend nor foe, just a patient in need whether he cries for mother or mutti.
We get a thorough description of child birth matched with an amputation onboard ship and three burials at sea.
Deefur
Deefur and the Great Mistletoe Incident
R.J. Scott
D for Dog, as Mark explained it in book one. So a little girl and a dog who weighs almost as much as its owner. In fact as a letter carrier I met a 4 something fellow out walking a St Bernard who out-weighed him by a considerable margin. If book one was kitch this outing multiplies it times three.
Jason, the gay male nannie becomes much more than employee to Cameron as he wangles Deefur, cares for Emma, cooks their meals and organizes their home. And since this is a romance they have an HEA.
Deefur
Deefur Dog
R.J. Scott
The great lummox that rules Cameron's world was Mark's dog and was named by him. Mark died and with him any discipline the Great Dane might have known. Finding a nannie for their daughter Emma involves getting Deefur's approval. Took a trip to an animal rescue centre to find Jason, a 6 5 giant of a lad who Deefur adored at first sight.
Did I say this is an M+M novel. You can figure the rest out for yourselves.
Take Me with You
Catherine Ryan Hyde
Some books just speak to one's soul. First off this book includes a tour of National Parks I have also visited.
And then there's the heart tug. A single father, the mother does not enter the picture, is faced with jail time and confronts the danger of his two sons entering the child welfare system while he's incarcerated if he can't find an alternate solution. August is headed out for a summer in his motor home with his son's ashes and his little dog when his engine breaks down. He and his mechanic strike a deal that sees the two boys taken into the care of a stranger while they cross multiple state borders. August is a high school teacher so he has some skills and raised a nineteen year old again as a single father. The miracle here is the fact that the trio bond and even more remarkable in this age we live in that the boys respond in gratitude as August ages.
The themes explored here include childhood trauma, (Henry stops talking), Alcoholism, Raison D'Etre, respect, love, Woody--the Dog.
My fourth read through.
Woods Ranch #1
His Fresh Start Cowboy
A.M. Arthur
Still having trouble with the concept of female authors writing about gay cowboys. Also getting my mind around the idea of calling the relationship between a gay couple marriage. Some of these romances make it seem the whole world is gay but like celibate communities if no one had hetero relationships the society would die out.
After 10 years Hugo comes back to the Ranch where he spent so much time as a child as a cowboy hire. Rem was his best friend, Brand his new boss the man he crushed on before he left 10 years ago. Cole the oldest Wood was the guy Hugo worked for in California on a Dude Ranch and there are two married Wood sisters in the mix.
The author seems to get mixed up about who her characters are. Rem is Brand's brother, he would not have been a stranger to ranch. The men in this tale seem to have a lot of hangups. Brand being in the closet, essentially to himself as well complicates matters for Hugo who has issues of his own.
The pair at the centre of this M+M journey suffer many false starts and are the source of many of their own troubles. For the reader their lack of progress becomes frustrating.
Since I just finished another Cowboy Romance which was M+F that involved five brothers and very similar themes they get mixed up in my memory.
Ford AbomiNation
Linwood Barclay
A tongue in cheek diatribe describing Fat Ford's government. Related by birth to that clown prince Rob who was mayor of Toronta. Surely they could find a landfill, AKA Dump, to name after both but the proposal is for an Arena in Etobicoke. Well maybe they should be put on ice.
Give the people Buck a Beer and alcohol at the corner grocery store and pot grown in a mine in Flin Flon and maybe they'll ignore the fact their kid's schools are underfunded, they can't find a doctor, and Emergency Rooms are closed. And if they're drunk enough maybe the pot holes won't bother them. If you stop tracking the spread of Covid you don't have to take unpopular measures to stop it.
The Doughboy believes parks and green space are wasted development opportunities. Is it a coincidence his latest pet highway is 4-13. Who else could come up with a tunnel under the 401. Or turn a people's park into a playground for the rich and famous. Maybe there really is a Santa Clause.
Dangerous Secrets #1
Never Again
R.M. Alexander
Ken Shepherd is an FBI Agent in a series written by a Romance Author. AS I start this prequel not sure what to expect.
A feel good story this isn't. Witness protection is a perilous business and losing people is part of the bargain.
I hope the author didn't spend too much on editing for surely given the sloppy nature of it he got less than he paid for.
The Cowboy's Stolen Heart
Jean Oram
Childhood sweethearts meet as adults when she comes back to small town Texas Hill Country. High heeled sandals, fake nails, and eye lashes do not a cowgirl make Nor do they work well on dirt roads and sandy ditches.
Since this is a Romance Novel one can expect an HEA. Whether the two can bridge the cultural divide is another question. Sweetheart Creek is the very definition of claustrophobic small town and gossip spreads at light speed at the local diner.
Romance novels follow a distinct formula and the crisis point in Laura and Levi's relationship arrives when Laura has to return to NYC to fulfill contract obligations and leave the ranch and Levi behind.
If their rapprochement seems too facile it probably is but don't all couples have disagreements, and that make-up sex is so sweet.
Inspector Rebus #19.5
In the Nick of Time: John Rebus vs. Roy Grace
Ian Rankin, Peter James
Two master detective join forces to solve an ancient cold case that ruined two lives. One reduced to living in a wheel chair and the other haunted by guilt.
Whoever Brought Me Here
Augusta Connor
Foster brothers are storm stayed by a blizzard in a rude stone cabin and share a narrow cot with a straw mattress.
Another female author writes an M+M novel.
Irish Country #8
Fingal O'Reilly, Irish Doctor
Patrick Taylor, John Keating (Narrator)
And we're back to Fingal reminiscing about his salad days and some of these stories the author must have experienced, you just couldn't make them up.
Great advances in medicine are highlighted along with some wallpapering at Number One.
Irish Country #7
An Irish Country Wedding
Patrick Taylor, John Keating (Narrator )
The usual mix of medical emergencies and mundanities. It ends with an extended wedding ceremony and the reception at Fingal's afterwards.
Wild Ones
Justiss Alliance #1
Wild on You (Justiss Alliance #1) / Wild Hearts
Tina Wainscott
A black ops mission goes sideways due to bad intel and the Seal Team is hung out to dry, one of the six members KIA. The following 5 chapters introduce us to the survivors.
A female author ostensibly writing an action-adventure series about Navy Seals. I doubt most male authors would spend quite so much time drooling over their musclebound character's six-packs. After the action-packed prequel this turns out to be more sappy romance than adventure series. And in fact the pair do the big nasty at least twice along with a great deal of foreplay.
The narrator takes on a gig acting as an animal right's activist's bodyguard.
The point of view switches paragraph to paragraph with no warning.
The Wreck
Guy de Maupassant
La Rochelle is a Seaport on the West Coast of France made famous in WW#2 after the time of the author as the site of German U-Boat pens and used as a site for scenes in Das Boot. A shallow harbour much of which rises above water at low tide it was the site of the grounding of the Wreck in question when it ran aground in dense fog on a sand bar. Anyone who has visited Parrsboro, NS will understand how fast the tide runs at high tide. It's another issue why this boat was making such speed in dense fog.
The narrator here is an insurance adjuster who walks out to the wreck at low tide and gets marooned there when he gets captivated by English tourists and overstays slack tide. He'd been warned but isn't the first to be so trapped.
Soulbound: Spiritual Fiction of a Soul Formerly-Known-As Gay
Rick Bettencour
Further trials of a gay whose parents refuse to accept his sexual orientation. Even in the afterlife.
Irish Country #6
A Dublin Student Doctor
Patrick Taylor, John Keating (Narrator )
And once again we jump back decades in time to see young Fingal as a Dublin Medical Student.
He's hard drinking and plays rugger; finds time to study and sneak visits with his ladylove. Gets his nose broken boxing.
Afflicted
J.M. Snyder
Dealing with self-destructive people is a frustrating experience. Why do people use drugs that are known to have fatal side-effects? Or as in the case here cut themselves. Such people tend to soak up attention like a sponge and can never get enough. Trying to help them exhausts the benefactor and wears them out. This is particularly frustrating when dealing with a relative. Those you love the most you are too often unable to help.
The Portal Wars Saga #1
The Hidden Tower
James E. Wisher
Narrator
Joe Hempel
A sword and sorcery novel. Otto is the third son of a minor baron. Stephan is the heir, Axel, number two has joined the military to get away from court.
The story continues following Otto's arranged marriage to a wealthy merchant's daughter, tales of the gal's lover, and Axel's on the Northern frontier so the point of view jumps from one to another from place to place.
Otto is an apprentice wizard and the hidden tower is the location where he gets his training from the ghost of a dead mage who appears to him in a mirror. The portals provide a sort of wormhold that provides instant transport between Portals.
The tale is filled with intrigue, battles and betrayals. Six more volumes follow.
Irish Country #5
An Irish Country Courtship
Patrick Taylor, John Keating (Narrator )
And the tale continues. The courtship involved concerns O'Reilly not Barry though there's a local school marm who has sparked his interest.
We meet the usual line up of ailments, most run of the mill. People don't make appointments here, they show up at the back door for morning surgery and are seen in the order in which they arrive, not needing to pick a number.
As usual much that goes on in the doctors' lives is not strictly medical in nature. The countryside filled with characters and charlatans.
Far Enough Island
Lesley Choyce
The story of a girl and her dog Jeremiah a Labrador.
Situated on a small coastal inlet in Nova Scotia Sarah's father is an inshore fisherman in a fishery bungled and mismanaged by Ottawa and now all but dead due to the depredations of offshore International Factory Ships. Diplomacy trumps the protection of fish stocks. We wouldn't want to offend the Norwegians, Portuguese, Japanese, Russians, and their trawler and dragger fleets.
The polemic is mine, remember Cosbie's Cod clinging by its fins to the Grand Banks.
Since this is a story for Children it has a happy ending.
Lesley Choyce is that odd-ball Nova Scotian with the flyaway hair who lives and surfs at Lawrencetown Beach even in winter in a wet and dry suit. You take a point break where you can get it even when there's a hurricane raging.
Small Town Shadows: A Parker Rose Mystery - Decrypting the Clues in Watson Bay
Stella Mace
A typical mystery tale with a snapper ending.
Nineteen Minutes
Jodi Picoult
If we don't change the direction we are headed, we will end up where we are going.
What the author makes plain in this story is that disasters happen in the middle of day to day life and it goes on no matter what. Also, that nothing happens in isolation, there is always cause and effect. And one of the victims is the perpetrator. The boy who went on the shooting rampage was teased and taunted by his peers until he finally cracked.
So who is responsible here, the students who bullied him, the parents who gave him access to a weapon, the teachers who failed to intervene, the child who failed to seek help.
Without boring the reader with too much detail the scenes are brought to life with striking reality. The courtroom scenes, the prison visiting room, the classrooms.
The school in question here gave lip service to an anti-bullying policy but gave no direction as to how it was to be handled and no definition as to the discipline to be applied to offenders.
How does one mount a defence when there are 1000 potential witnesses for the prosecution and when the defendant insists on telling his side of the story. What do you think happens when a boy who just turned 18 faces life without any possibility of parole in prison. Yes, spoiler alert he was found guilty.
The Fisherman and his Soul
Oscar Wilde
A prose version taken from another book.
We've heard of musicians who sold their souls to the devil for their talent. The fisherman in this tale won't to lose his so he can make love to a mermaid. When his soul rejoins him it is a thing of evil that leads him astray. When he comes home at last we get a Romeo and Juliet ending.
Irish Country #4
An Irish Country Girl
Patrick Taylor, Terry Donnelly (Narrator )
And for this volume we jump back 40 years in time for a back-story involving Kinky Kincaid Dr. O'Reilly's redoubtable housekeeper and office manager. And to read this edition we have an Irish Female Actress whose brogue is quite noticeable.
To begin Kinkie is telling the local kinder a traditional Irish tale, the questions the children ask supplying background. Using a spider web in place of a bandaid to seal a cut finger is a folk remedy that's new to me.
A bottle of poteen falling and breaking a major tragedy. A sheep doesn't exist but believes the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.
Kinkie's tale proves to be a story from her past and leads us directly to her life as a sixteen year old.
The man with whom she falls in love proves to be a fisherman who hews to the firm belief that no wife of his should demean him as a provider by working outside the home conflicting with her ambition to become a teacher. It is his death at sea that frees her to travel and meet up with Dr. O'Reilly.
A Haunting on Cabin Lake
Lovelyn Bettison
Feels like a book I've already read.
An author rents a remote cabin to finish a book she's writing. She brings her demons with her.
And finds new ones to haunt her. Discovers she feels safer in the big city that she knows how to navigate.
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #19
The Grey Wolf
Louise Penny, Jean Brassard (Narrator)
Organized Crime got a head start from smuggling alcohol during prohibition. Beyond their criminal enterprises they have infiltrated legitimate business including unions, transportation, sports, construction, highway building, and even cheese. Given their deep pockets they have infiltrated the police and corrupted cops at the highest levels. It is not knowing whom to trust that troubles Gamache most of all.
With other reviewers I'm disappointed with this outing. I realize there's a limit to how many denizens of Three Pines that can be killed off but in losing the more personal touch the plot becomes too complicated to engage the reader. It's the same reason I find a Le Carre spy thriller not worth my time. I don't envision Gamache as an action hero.
Gently
Lynn Renard
Lady Soora's betrothed, a great lummox of a knight shocks her when he presents her with a wounded fawn he has been gently nourishing back to life.
Lady of Hearts
Lynn Renard
Lady Saria goes to a pub for lunch and a melee breaks out. There's the demon with a yard's long stinging tongue, the waif to whom she presents alms, and the knight who protects her.
What I learned was what I read was a prologue to the actual book.
The Rescue of Edhelwen: A Veardalan Story
Raymond Keith
A typical sword and sorcery short though a bow the ranger's favourite weapon. A few editing errors.
Irish Country #3
An Irish Country Christmas: A Novel
Patrick Taylor, John Keating (Reader)
Not so much a Christmas Story as the continuing trials of a country doctor in winter.
I did learn that doctors bill the state medical system for their services so paperwork but they don't have to extract payment from their patients which means for many visiting the doctor is a social call.
Doctor Barry's girlfriend took a scholarship to Cambridge and her decision not to come home for Christmas causes much strife. By waiting until the last minute to book passage she made a passive decision.
And this volume ends with the local gentry's Xmas Open House.
Welcome to Willieville
Mickey Hadick
A gang of recent high school graduates spend the summer in a drug-filled haze until one of their number gets his head bashed in. Why he was down in that drainage ditch is never explained.
This then becomes a whodunit with a rather disinterested detective and confusing answers.
Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany  Audible Audiobook – Unabridged
Donald L. Miller (Author), Joe Barrett (Narrator)
At nearly 700 pages, 25 hours in audiobook, an exhaustive read.
And if The Battle of Britain highlights the Canadian flyers who participated and Bomber highlights British efforts this book and the TV Series based upon it is Rah! Rah! American. Having sat on their assets it took the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbour to make them bestir themselves.
After the introductory section the pilot of the Memphis Belle describes their crew's first mission beginning with a tour of each position in the cramped interior of the plane.
There were prices to be paid for bombing at 25,000 ft to avoid flak in unheated and unpressurized planes. Changes in air pressure affected the ears and caused bloating. Intense cold caused frost bite and touching metal with bare skin caused instant freezing. Blockage of oxygen feeds caused unconsciousness in 30 seconds and death in 2 minutes. Medical science was not prepared to deal with these complications.
There's a long list of reporters who were permitted fly-alongs as well as movie stars all of whom received mandatory machine gun training. The director of Memphis Belle flew with the Belle.
As Americans flooded into new bases built to accommodate them little villages were overwhelmed as the local population soared. Airman descended on one village pub and buying rounds for the house drank it dry.
The success of any particular raid was a matter of perspective. One that destroyed the target and resulted in the loss of more enemy planes than their own was a win for Air Command, to the flyer who returned to find his bunk mate's bed stripped and empty not so much.
The treatment of POW's shot down over Germany is a sore topic. Measures taken to bring the war to an end after D-Day make less than glorious history. The British fire-bombing of Dresden a case in point. It is argued that Hitler's decision to bomb civilian rather than military targets was instrumental in his losing the war.
And we are treated to an extensive analysis of the effectiveness with which the campaign was waged. The butcher's bill certainly; the cost of errors in judgment a contributing factor. Politics and diplomacy no small component. Hindsight always being 20:20.
The final hours document the desperate measures taken by their enemies to prevent the encroaching enemy forces liberating American POWs. These were the enemies that had bombed their cities and killed their people. Fear of what would happen to their own POWs on Allied soil the only restraint.
To say that this all makes depressing reading would be an understatement. Finally the liberation of the death camps and the prison camps arrives with some stickiness in the Russian Sector. The final unsatisfying revenge came with the Nuremberg Trials. The Simon Wiesenthal Centre are searching out 90 yr olds to this day.
[Any of this would be spoilers only to those who haven't studied history. Of course there have been US Presidents who attacked countries they couldn't have found on a map.]
Fated Saga #3
Embrace
Rachel Humphrey - D'aigle, Humphrey Quinn
The book half completed and I haven't begun a review. I'm slipping. The twins at the centre of this fantasy are magical creatures who got spirited away to a parallel universe with their friend Jai and come to live with his family. Their adventures continue.
And somehow I finished this book without marking it finished here or completing my review. Embrace here seems to mean death. The twins engage in parallel adventures they manage to survive. The series has 3 more volumes I'll take a break from finishing.
Irish Country #2
An Irish Country Village
Patrick Taylor (Reading), John Keating (Narrator)
The parallels with James Heriot's All Creatures Great and Small are palpable. The fact that the patients here can talk is often misleading and unhelpful. The stories are presented with self-deprecating candour and folksy humour.
A doctor who does house calls.
Although mention is made of Barry's Salary of £35 a week none is made of how Dr. O'Reilly handles billing his patients.
Barry is on tenderhooks the entire novel for the results of a post mortem that would exonerate him in the death of a patient.
And since everyone loves a wedding a pair who have waited 15 years tie the not. The reception takes place outdoors and includes a donkey, 6 dogs, a whole roast pig, an open bar, and an announcement by the local Grinch that the Mucky Duck is saved.
Irish Country #1
An Irish Country Doctor
Patrick Taylor, John Keating (narator)
The village of Ballybucklebo. Dr Barry Laverty joins the practice of Dr Fingal O'Reilly run by Kirkie their houskeeper with Arthur the black lab and Lady MacBeth the white cat. Everyone in this village is an eccentric and Dr. O'Reilly has their case histories filed in his mind. His practise may not be orthodox, but it works. And in good time, time cures all.
Doctors are not infallible and a hypochondriac who cries wolf over and over risked not being taken seriously the one time there actually was something wrong. And who does the patient blame?
Hallowmas
Chad Schimke
A haunted Hallowe'en Horror Short. Kids making a horror movie enter a real horror.
Hallowmas
Chad Schimke
A haunted Hallowe'en Horror Short. Kids making a horror movie enter a real horror.
Cassandra Sato #0.5
Dead End
Kelly Brakenhoff
Upper management err on the side of complacency when a Tsunami warning is issued and students and the general public fail to acknowledge a danger they cannot see. Like the people who remained on the side of Mount St Helens before it blew. Or all those people who denied global warming before the hurricanes and tornadoes arrived.
The Colin Buxton Series #0.5
In The Stillness
C.C. Gilmartin
A series prequel. Two lads are altar boys to an alcoholic priest. Drew earns a living as a rent boy, Colin joins the London Met as a cop and so begins the career to follow.
Battle of Britain: Canadian Airmen in their Finest Hour
Ted Barris
314 pp.
Previously read his account of Canadian Involvement in the Dambusters but this time a hard cover book.
I'd not known before of Polish airmans' participation in Britain. That pilots were trained in Canada and planes built here I did know. The Gimly Glider used one of the old bases and another is in Debert, NS.
The British air force was buried in a preoccupation for bureaucracy and paperwork. A commander arrived at his new base to discover his only flyers were seagulls. Asked if his fleet was air worthy a base commander reported that he had planes and airmen but not a single spanner, spark plug or oil can in sight.
Faced with a rainy day and looming due date I sat down and read the last 100 pages in one setting. In true understated Canadian style Canadian flyers did not blow their own horns, they let their actions speak for themselves. The one sour note is the lack of recognition given the Polish flyers.
Bomber
Len Deighton, Richard Burnip (Narrator), Malcolm Gladwell (Introduction)
This book was among a list of audiobooks recommended me by Hoopla when I cast about for bedtime listening.
The Valour and the Horror was a 1992 mini-series created by the McKenna Brothers, the second 2-hr. episode: Death by Moonlight: Bomber Command featured an account that echoes the sentiments presented here. The Royal Canadian Legion was outraged and vigorously panned the presentation as defaming a Knighted hero proving that one man's villain is another's hero.
First published in 1970 when Gladwell was aged seven.
Atrocities are in the eye of the beholder, or the recorder of history. The enemy commits them, the winners did what was necessary to gain victory.
Like the line that the ground crew own the aircraft, they only loan them to the pilots. [The penalty for non-return is often death or enemy capture.]
The story line switches back and forth between the British flyers and their air bases and the towns and cities they try to defend and the German flyers and their similar bases and towns. The account is rather clinical lacking in emotional response to the devastation being reigned down upon civilians in the streets and shelters.
The author doesn't choose sides in dispassionately describing bombing and the fighter planes that attacked and defended the bombers. And in explaining the destruction, deaths, and injuries that were inflicted on the ground and the infrastructure burned or blown up.
There are no winners in war, only those whose losses are greater.
Note that the recording is 24 hours long.
The Friar's Lantern #1
The Friar's Lantern
Greg Hickey
The book is narrated in the second person by a unnamed character referred to as you. That this is a followup to the prequel novel, The Theory of Anything: A Short Intellectual Crime Novel until the person referred to as you shows up at Dr. David Solon's murder trial. What we learn is the fact not revealed in the previous book that the robber David encounters in the alley was none other than his wife's murderer.
The inference here is that the you here is the reader and throughout the book the reader is given either/or choices with shortcuts that lead to other points in the book.
As with the prequel the pace of the story is retarded by excessive detail that tends to become boring. Rather than create a sense of reality it just makes the reader wish the author would get on with it.
Once more the narrator is lost in probability theory. The subtle difference between chaos theory or randomness is lost on the average reader such as myself.
Even though the reader is given shortcuts depending on their choices I'm tempted to read both. Finally though I reached the end no wiser for my choices.
Talnarin #1
Veiled Threats
D.E. Chapman
First book in a series of five.
Malik and Abel are brothers who in the opening chapter lose their parents in an attack on their home and escape via an underground tunnel to wander through the woods climbing trees to escape ravening beasts. The brothers possess mystic powers. Not sure what to make of it all yet. They make it to their Uncles home where Malik is reminded that with the death of his mother he has become a King. He is introduced to his guard and a seer predicts his Queen. Too much too fast and there it ends.
Superior: Under the Shadow of the Gods
Barbara Chisholm (editor), Andrea Gutsche, Russell Floren
Like Michener the authors begin their discussion of Superior with a creation story involving lava flows and tectonic plates. Some of the jargon used is lost on a lay person.
It goes on to document conflicts with First Nations which continue to this very day.
The boom and bust economy repeats itself here, big shots exploit a resource until it is exhausted then pull out leaving their workers unemployed. The cycle is repeated with fish, forests, ore.
As the survey of the coastline begins in the Sault Jesuit Missionaries lay the groundwork for the European Capitalists that followed them. Those Capitalists may have had little interest in the Pagan's Souls but they recognized the value of the contacts the Jesuits provided them.
Much of the book describes shipwrecks, the Edmund Fitzgerald a prime example. And dramatic rescues and the men who performed them.
The building of Highway 17 is quite another tale. As was Van Horne and the CPR.
Agawa Canyon on the Algoma Central Railway
My trip didn't hit peak foliage. Since the mine closed the track is no longer properly maintained and the train crawled near walking speed. The allowance was not cut back so there was very little to see along the way bit bush.
Canada still retains 51 staffed lighthouses. A thousand including famed Peggys Cove were termed redundant. In flagrant disregard for the welfare of its lighthouse keepers bean counters ceased the practice of providing ships to deliver lighthouse keepers to and from remote islands. With Island lights up to 65 miles from shore this became a death sentence for many.
Not to be forgotten are the characters who inhabited this wild rocky shore. I particularly like the codger who sat his rocking chair reading and finished his chapter before looking up to say "Hello".
In prison solitary confinement is considered a cruel form of punishment but lightkeepers in bad weather were often abandoned for months at a time and fishermen, trappers, and miners often embraced a solitary existence. Making pets of beaver, groundhogs, squirrels, and even snakes provided companionship and rodent control.
The first people who came to Superior's North Shore came for its natural resources: Furs and Fish, Forests and Mines. When the asset was depleted they departed. Others came or were brought to build highways and railbeds. Today those same highways bring tourists intent on admiring the area's natural beauty.
Legend of Tal #0.5
A Fable of Blood
J.D.L. Rosell
A Sword and Sorcery Short given as a freebie to spark interest in the series that follows. Assume Tal is short for Talmage a name I know due to the Bachman family. To say that the story is violent would be an understatement.
