By Eastern Windows

A 15-year-old Scottish tenant farmer form the Isle of Mull leaves his mentally deficient older brother and widowed mother to join the British Army to support his family. From that humble beginning he would go on to serve with distinction in the West Indies, India, ending up as the governor of New South Wales and father of Australia. Along the way he meets his first wife Jane who dies in South-East Asia; acquires an Indian major-domo Bapoo; his wife's maid Marianne; and a slave boy whom he steals at gunpoint in a slave market where he is being whipped. The boy was adored on sight by Lachlan's wife and given the name George and his wife's maiden name Jarvis. Stationed back in England he brings the boy with him and sends him off to private school. Confronted with his choices for the future an ethnic if not practicing Indian Moslem pulls a copy of the Christian Bible foisted upon him at school and quotes the book of Ruth:

"Entreat me not to leave you, Or to turn back from following after you; For wherever you go, I will go; And wherever you lodge, I will lodge; Your people shall be my people, And your God, my God. 17 Where you die, I will die, And there will I be buried. The Lord do so to me, and more also, If anything but death parts you and me."

in answer to a suggestion he return to India to avoid discrimination.

In the hands of a skilled writer such as this dry historical facts come to life and the characters jump off the page, or tablet as in my case. Book one of this trilogy by Gretta Curran Browne was offered free--I read it in one day; book two--The Far Horizon I bought and began reading last night; book three--Jarvisfield is yet to be published.

Dark Seraphine

Being the first in a trilogy by KaSonndra Leigh.

Seventeen-year-old Callum is a hunky, sexy looking jock with a distant father and a distracted mother. What's the point of academic success or sports prowess if the people you love most can't be bothered to notice or be supportive. Although he can seemingly have any girl he wants and has the long-term companionship of his best friend Kyle, there's an emptiness in his life. So far he sounds very much like your typical teen until you learn that he can see 'Walkers', creatures that only he can see. Turns out these creatures from a parallel universe are divided into two warring camps.

Told from Callum's point of view the storyline is as feckless as person who relates it, at times getting bogged down in teenage angst and lengthy petting scenes. The action only truly picks up in the last few chapters. Better than your average young adult novel the para-normal aspects are handled in a manner that makes them almost believable. You decide whether you want to read volumes 2 & 3.

High,Wide and Lonesome

Had I internet access right now I'd check to see if this was made into a movie. Because I went on the road reading this book took nearly 3 weeks.

Told from the point of view of a nine-year-old who is taken out of school and carted across half a continent to homestead half a section in the Colorado High Country so that his parents could prove a claim and gain title to the land. Drama is provided by range wars betweencattlemen, sheep herders, and homesteaders and the latter's barbed wire fences. The dangers and threats provided by lack of rain, prairie fires, rattlesnakes, poisonous plants, blinding blizzards, illness, and broken bones. The challenges of drought, starvation, biting cold, marauding cattle, debt, privation, solitude....

The book is filled with the characters attracted to this pioneering spirit way of life. Told with a naiveté and sense of humour and discovery only a child could bring to such a situation. Privation and danger are approached not so much as challenges but with a sense of adventure and newness. The land is his teacher and his books the prairie dog town and the ant hills. And every boy deserves a dog as his companion.

The story ends when the family proves up their claim and moves to a town where the boy returns to school and father returns to his trade as the printer of a country newspaper. In those times a newspaperman manually set his own type and printed his own papers.

The Cowboy and the Cossack

Clair Huffaker's book was published in 1973 so it's been around for a while. After just a few chapters I'm ready to say that I believe it deserves a wider audience. I've met long-horn cattle, herding 500 requires a sense of humour, managing that many on ship-board....? Taking them to Russia.... When the harbourmaster in Vladavostok decides to stall their boat's docking privileges the cowboys decide to swim their herd ashore. Persuading cowboys and their rides to jump into that cold sea water is one thing, getting the herd to is quite another. Once ashore drying out and feeding the cattle grain laced with wodka quite another tale. Now factor in a squad of fanatical Cossacks sent to guard the cattle and their not so enthusiastic minders. Throw in a morning spent having a funeral for a horse. Add names unpronounceable on both sides, the cultural and language barriers and you probably get the picture. And this all happens in just the opening chapters, the plot thickens as the story goes on.

One final note. Since I've read an electronic edition I didn't have the opportunity to find and read the dust cover notes until I'd finished. In spite of the way he spells his name the writer is male, moreover, he was a script writer for the likes of John Wayne. Knowing that little detail serves to stir up a lot of Siberian Dust.

The Farthest Shore

Book three of the Earthsea Series. Since book two at least 20 years have passed and Ged is Arch Mage of Roke. No explanation is supplied as to what transpired in the intervening period. A young princeling named Arran comes to Roke to meet with the Arch Mage Ged reporting disturbing developments. In an unprecedented move a non-magical person is invited to meet with Roke's inner circle in secret conclave in the inner sanctum. Even more remarkably the school's head master leaves Roke in his boat Lookfar accompanied only by this youthful non-magical prince against his peer's advice seeking he knows not what, he knows not where. Only knowing that witches are forgetting their spells and magicians are losing their powers. The ancient tongue which holds the real names of things is being lost by those who once spoke it and a malaise is strickening the islands of Earthsea. In an island archipelago journeys by sea are a given but the odyssey these two go on takes them beyond the edge of the known world.

Tehanu

Book Four of Earthsea.

As volume 4 begins Ged is no longer part of the picture. We meet the priestess of Atuan now an old woman who foreswore the practice of magic to be a plain farmer's housewife and raise a family. She saves a gypsy child beaten and left to burn in a fire and the two live a solitary life on the now widowed housewife's farm. Called to minister to the Mage of Gont, Ged's former mentor, she eases his way to the great beyond. When a dragon glides in she discovers an unconscious Ged riding at his neck.

Having spent himself saving the world of Earthsea in Book 3 Ged is faced with continuing to live without the abilities that formerly defined him. The story continues losing none of its appeal as the young prince who 7accompanied Ged into the underworld is crowned King of Earthsea and sets out to restore order in his Kingdom.

The Tombs of Atuan

As this book begins there is no mention of our friend Ged, the wizard. The storyline tends to drag somewhat especially since everyone here is new to us. All the characters in this storyline are female save for the Male Eunuch Slaves that serve them. In the last third of the book Ged finally makes a clandestine appearance and with his departure with the child high priestess in tow the Temple of the Tombs implodes and sinks into oblivion.

Dust

Arthur Slade grew up in rural Saskatchewan and lives and writes in Saskatoon. His novel Dust is one part historical memoir of the Dust Bowl years of the depression and one part fantasy. An albino drives into town and a twelve-year-old's younger brother disappears without a trace on a walk into town with 10¢ in his pocket to buy candy. In short order it's as if the child had never existed as no mention is made of him and the brother is avoided as an uncomfortable reminder. In a household where the Bible and Pilgrims Progress are the only acceptable reading his uncle, his mother's roguish brother slips him Jules Verne Novels and Comic Books hidden under his mattress. No one but his Uncle will listen to a twelve-year-old or give his suspicions of a butterfly raising albino any credence.

The aspects of growing up in the dust bowl years are aptly written, buying the fantasy as a metaphor for sexual abuse is quite another. It does serve to keep the novel "G-rated".

A Wizard of Earthsea

The first in Ursula K. Le Guin's 5-book Earthsea Series made into a TV mini-series of the same name the books are more character driven with less emphasis on adventure, fantasy and magic. Set in an imaginary island archipelago somewhere in the Irish Sea a great deal of sailing goes on in both books and movies. The principle characters are the orphaned goatherd Ged, son of a blacksmith and Vetch, an over-weight wizard in training from a remote island village. Ged is outdone by his own curiosity, pride, and an excitable nature. His friend Vetch is more level-headed and calm though no less lacking in ability. Written long before Harry Potter appeared on the scene these books are no less  

deserving of our attention.

Any Other Night

Any Other Night
By
Anne Pfefffer

This young adult novel is set among 16-year-olds in Malibu a satellite community of Los Angeles noted for residents associated with the movie industry. The contrast in lifestyle with that I experienced growing up could not be more stark. These kids live in mansions with bedrooms bigger than most third-world homes that have ensuite bathrooms. They get sports cars for their sixteenth birthdays. But they also get nannies and housekeepers who raise them in the absence of their pre-occupied parents.

I grew up in a small cape cod style 2-storey with outhouse in rural Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia. We had hand-pumped running water but no telephone until I was 10. We didn't have a gym but we did get to shovel up to 5-ft of snow from our quarter-mile-long driveway in winter and split firewood in summer. If you wanted mail delivery you had to make sure the rural mail driver, a cousin, could get to your box. Travel for me was by bicycle on dirt roads and I regularly made the 1.2 mile trip, a mile of it uphill to visit my grandfather's home. One winter I got storm-stayed there by a blizzard and didn't make it home until my Father came to get me with the horse and sleigh. I bought my first car with my own money when I was thirty, a Datsun B-210.

The lifestyle these poor little rich kids take for granted involves parents who feel an equal sense of entitlement. Their offspring are showered with every possible indulgence but their parent’s time and affection. Raising their own kids is not allowed to interfere with their own pursuit of happiness. Given parents who are rarely home and often divorced and separated their offspring feel a sense of detachment and resentment. This lack of communication leaves both with hurt feelings and a sense of helplessness and ingratitude. Where did I go wrong, what didn’t I give them? Add private schools, peer pressure, teenage angst, growing up, and sex to the mix and you have the recipe for this book.

Told from the point of view of Ryan a rather self-aware 16-year-old with adoring younger identical twin sisters we see this world though his eyes. The central tragedy of his young life is the death of his best friend whose parents couldn’t be bothered to return from Cannes on the occasion of their son’s earlier nearly fatal drug overdose. When he has ‘that’ talk with his father the concern is not about the fact that he’s sexually active but that he’s playing safe. When the inevitable confrontation comes it is the child that raises the parents though to his credit the father makes time to listen. Once more the author doesn’t seem to know how to bring her book to a conclusion leaving us with a typical happily after impression of things to come.

The Hunger Games Trilogy

I've now completed reading the entire trilogy. Book one tells the story of Katniss and Peeta's experience in their initial Hunger Games. Book two has them returning for the 75th annual event. Book three chronicles the revolt of the 13 districts after discovery of the clandestine underground bunkered District 13 and their nuclear weapons. Katniss having been rescued from the arena in book three is exploited as the face and symbol of the rebellion as the Mockingjay. The author reserves a few more surprises for the reader but the ending regrettably seems to just peter out.

The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games

by

Suzanne Collins

Made into a movie starring Liam Hemsworth better known for his sometime association with Miley Cyrus. The other ‘man’ is Josh Hutcherson who has a much larger acting experience and the girl at the centre of it all is played by Jennifer Lawrence. Picked up a copy of the DVD but decided to read the book first so back to it. By the way the individual books are a better buy in E-Book Format than the trilogy as a whole.

To stick with movie terminology for a moment this is  a high-concept novel written for young adults. Bucking the trend toward paranormal romance involving werewolves, vampires, and other magical creatures the people here are real but the reality they inhabit is a distopian society of an imaginary future. Genre bending it plays like a Reality TV Show the action playing out in the present with constant flashbacks to the past. Whether this be intended as a parody in the manner of Orwell’s 1984 is unclear.

The gender neutral names given the teens leaves their sex in doubt for several chapters however it soon becomes apparent that basic survival is nore important than romance here. Despite the hype surrounding Liam Hemsworth his part in the movie is played down even more than the character Gale in the book. As Jennifer Lawrence says in an interview in the supplements disk movie scripts tend to ruin the book. The reality TV Show analogy is apt, the action being to a large degree scripted, in this case totally so.

The book and the movie are so intertwined I’ll do a single blog entry regarding both. Whereas a book tells  you how it happened, a movie shows you; therefore a scene that may take several pages to set up in text passes in seconds on screen. On the other hand before CGI things the imagination can do are damn near impossible sometimes on screen. Holllywood loves young romance so it could not resist playing up the relationship between Peeta and Katniss.

Whether or not Suzanne Collins is aware of it the short story The Lottery by Shirley Jackson published in the June 26, 1948 edition of The New Yorker bears a striking resemblence to this plot line, or should I put it the other way round. The other parallel is The Most Dangerous Game based on a short story by Richard Connell that dates back to 1924 proving that there isn’t very much new under the sun.

Prince William: The Man Who Will Be King

Prince William: The Man Who Will Be King
By
Penny Junor

There is a certain irony to the fact that in reading this book I make myself an accessory to those who would invade the privacy of a man who, barring calamity, I am unlikely to ever see crowned King as his father, first in line, is only one year my elder. I cannot forget the date of his parent's wedding as they did it on my birthday. When that marriage began to fail I distinctly remember the advice attributed to the ghost of Prince Charles progenitor Henry VIII, "Off with her 'ead". His Royal Highness' uneasy relationship with the press was dramatically illustrated in the recent movie, The Queen, which dramatizes the circumstances of his mother's death. Both Charles and Diana were complicit in the publicity war that preceded her death.

The Royal Family have a love-hate relationship with the press. William's grandfather once famously turned a garden hose on a photographer. The Royals seek publicity as a means of communicating with their subjects and welcome coverage of their many civic duties. The Queen's Christmas Message is broadcast to millions. At the same time the tabloid press' obsession with celebrity makes any photo captured by the paparazzi especially if it is compromising worth tens of thousands. As any sports figure will tell you it's unsafe to adjust an athletic support or scratch an itch anywhere that a cell-phone or camera can capture it and the event can be on you-Tube today before the act has attained the desired relief.

Modern technology places our heroes right in our living rooms and the advertising that accompanies sporting events makes possible 8 figure salaries. TV and internet coverage makes these celebrities feel like part of the family and fuel our curiosity about their private lives. Where does a movie star or rock musician's desire for publicity end and the invasion of privacy begin. What limits should be placed on Fleet Street's desire to know. Where does our ownership of the Royal Family as the embodiment of our Nation end and their right to a private life begin. Modern technology has blurred that line and made them accessible as never before.

As is highlighted in this book the present Queen has lived a closeted life and was raised in an age in which a hands off mentality existed. Little is known of her personal preferences and private desires. Her grandson lives a more public life and finds privacy much more difficult to attain. Part of the allure of sovereignty has always been the mystery that has traditionally surrounded it. The degree to which familiarity can breed contempt endangers that allure. In an age when a determined terrorist who is not afraid to die in attaining his goals is almost impossible to stop a sovereign's Personal Protection Officers face a daunting task. It is an age when even the Pope feels obliged to ride in a bullet-proof 'popemobile'.

All this said I am as guilty as any in soaking up the juicy tidbits. I recently read the 60-page spread in MacLean's detailing the life of Canadian Royalty--Justin Trudeau. I was amused to read that the future head of the Church of England had to ask Mummy, what denomination am I? One can understand the reticence both William and Harry have in accepting new friends always wondering if there are ulterior motives. As is related in this tome many of their indiscretions are stories fabricated by associates in need of extra pocket money. Even their own press secretaries are not above using spin to make 'The Firm' look good. The discussion of the relevance of the monarchy in these modern times is the provenance of another discourse.

Interestingly enough I note that this book had come down in price since I bought it at a supposedly bargain price but has since been bumped up to $11.99. Whether you'd want to read it depends on your interest in the Monarchy. It adds little to what has not already been available to a follower of the Royals in the public record. At times in detailing the minutia of his life the book drags dreadfully, becomes tedious.

He has been so absent from the scene I'd forgotten Spencer's Eulogy in which he promised that his family would be active in the princes lives, that absence proves his oration was simply an attempt to embarrass the Royal Family before hundreds of millions.

The Royal Family no longer rule as such and are now considered to be above politics but they have discovered that through Royal Patronage they can have a positive influence upon the charities of their choice. Endeavours they support can be bolstered simply by their lending their names as Royal Patron and fund raising boosted if they make a carefully planned appearance as little as once a year. A Friend has met Prince Phillip several times because of his mentoring of Outward Bound. Princes Harry and William and now William's wife Kate have taken Patronage several steps further by sponsoring forums in which the charities they support meet in round table to share ideas and even participate in joint ventures. Their next step was to form a Foundation whose purpose is to provide seed money to fund the start-up of charities in areas of concern to the princes: disadvantaged youth, veterans, and conservation.

Twould have been a kindness if the series of pictures at the end of the book had been adapted to full page views for the electronic version, as it is they become very small on a tablet. The index forms fully 20% of the book.

Flame of Resistance

Flame of Resistance
by
Tracy Groot

The book begins in the cockpit of a fighter plane as the pilot is being shot down over German occupied Vichy France in 1944. The pilot is rescued and recruited by the French Resistance. The story continues with members of the French Underground and the brothel where intelligence gathering is carried on. The background highlights the privations suffered under the German occupation and the things those who live under it have to do to survive.

If this sounds like dry material blame this writer. The author makes it all sound compelling and leads the reader along as the tension builds in the lead up to an expected Allied Invasion and the operatives stress levels increase with fear of detection and torture.

This book has movie script written all over it. Can’t say who would play the very tall handsome blue-eyed, very blonde American Airman of Dutch Ancestry but the part has movie star written all over it.

Muscular Verse

The Root of Lightning
by
Michael Spring

This is muscular verse written by a man who works with his hands and trains others in the martial arts. It is so much easier to see other’s inconsistencies and incongruities. A builder turns concept into the concrete, a fighter attacks from stealth and surprise, a poet bares his soul making himself vulnerable. The lines in this book reveal all three qualities at once. Michael makes you sense the satisfaction a boxer feels when he trains and lands those blows on the heavy bag, the oneness with his own body and strength. The love and pride a father feels in seeing his son grow. The power of nature when a storm strikes. The empathy of a caring soul who sees pain and would ease it. This is verse to be experienced, not dissected. It benefits from being read aloud. Enjoy it as I have.

I’d Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had: My Year as a Rookie Teacher at Northeast High

by Tony Danza, yes, that Tony Danza

If the lad suffered from Attention Deficit Disorder maybe that explains that rambling title.

The school is a multi-level colossus that even boasts its own police station. Everyone entering the building passes through metal detectors. The teachers are required to sign in each day with an amazon who acts as the gorgan at the gate. I realize that I last entered a Nova Scotia High School in the 60ies but it’s sad to think that it’s come to this. Really haven’t thought about the possibility that such measures prevail at Halifax’s new High School. I know for a fact that such conditions do not apply to the high school I visited in St. John’s NFLD or to schools in Austin Texas and certainly not to schools in Oakville.

The book is enimently readable though the final afterwords do become somewhat pedantic and preachy.

AWOL on the Appalachian Trail

As one who spent his working life walking 10 miles a day 5 days a week I find it hard to credit the number of blisters, bunions, and other foot problems this hiker talks about having. Now I realize we’re talking about a 42-year-old computer programmer but even so I can’t believe the amount of trouble he describes having with blisters, bunions, and infection. A picture I saw the other day reminds me of the hazards of having narrow hips and legs that chaff between the thighs literally creating friction that wears holes in the pant legs. Not a personal problem. After 70,000 miles of walking a mail route I can count only a few blisters, on my toes, not my heels. Mind you I know well enough to never start walking 10-miles a day with brand new boots. No matter what shoe stores may claim there is no such thing as a shoe that doesn’t require breaking in. One would have thought someone about to embark on a 2000-mile-hike would have started with a set of well-broken in boots he felt comfortable wearing. I can’t believe that someone started out on such a trek without having sorted out his footwear before he started. Walking a treadmill in runners hardly equates with hiking in the woods.

I have had mild cases of shin splints when I got on a route with a great number of steps up to each house. Certain neighbourhoods are notorious for this. It doesn’t take long in bad weather before one stops attempting to climb icy steps. In one neighbourhood ignoramuses compound the problem by tying their dogs up on gated doorsteps. Approaching a strange dog in a confined space is always a hazard. If someone in a car asks for their mail with a dog inside one must always ask them to reach out the window toward you, never the opposite. Believe I got side-tracked there. When there are ice storms Canada Post has had so many fall related injuries that Workman’s Comp threatens to refuse coverage due to the employee recklessly endangering himself.

The one issue I do have and one that continues is the build up of callus on my heels and along the edges of my soles. My soul probably has calluses as well but that’s another matter. Where some people have sweaty feet mine are dry and the build up of dry callus leads to cracking and even bleeding. When I’m on the road I miss the opportunity to soak my feet and scruff off excess skin.

There is a chapter or so devoted to the issue of defecating along the trail. No mention is made of avoiding poison ivy. Hikers carry a plastic trowel and a roll of tissue for the purpose. At least male hikers have the advantage of voiding liquid in an upright position. The writer describes the proces in the rudest of terms. All water consumed must be pumped through a filter or treated with purification tablets.

The Bruce Trail is 500 miles and at some time or other I have hiked most of it. End-to-enders have recorded hiking the entire stretch but most do not set out to do it in one season or as a through hike. The idea of completing a 2000-mile hike from start to finish is rather daunting. When one is backpacking everything one needs every ounce counts. An entire industry surrounds the provision of high tech light weight sleeping bags, tents, cooking utensils, stoves, water bottles and clothing. Food is freeze-dried and reconstituted by adding boiling water. If this sounds expensive you have the right idea. Backpacks even come with built-in solar panels. One of the writer’s fellow travelers had a cat that sat atop his pack and fed on the mice that infested the shelters along the trail. Combine crowded shelters and people eating in a confined area and vermin are bound to follow. Litter is quite another issue.

It may seem counter-intuitive but walking downhill causes more stress to the lower extremities than climbing up, the steeper the incline the more this is so. I am waiting for a chapter on the costs attached to hiking this trail. His pack, tent, tarp, clothing, rain gear, boots, dried food, cooking gear, restaurant food, lodging, car rentals, pay phone bills. I would expect a modern hiker to have a GPS enabled smartphone these days.

In his afterword the author talks about the practicalities of the trip. Aside from lost wages the trip cost him approximately $5000 plus about $1000 worth of gear he purchased in preparation for the trip. His most telling regret is not taking more pictures and allowing for more serendipity. In the end the journey’s the thing, not getting there. ..http://theatguide.com/NewGear.html

Beyond Band of Brothers

Were Richard Winters around to take my advice I’d try to tell him to get himself a better ghost writer--Sebastian Junger, for example. This one makes a lot of grammatical mistakes the editor seems to have been little better at catching and writes like a newspaper reporter. In the second place this present memoir adds little to what has already been published in Ambrose’ Band of Brothers and David Kenyon’s even better Parachute Infantry upon which the former seems largely based. Ironic that Kenyon’s book was unpublishable until Tom Hanks and Company made the mini-series. The present tome was written 60 years too late in reaction to the previously noted publications.

Somehow I managed to miss the fact that the same production team did a similar project on the war in the Pacific. Must check that out.

One thing an 80-something vet does feel free to write about is the number of friendly-fire deaths that occurred even during WW#2. Modern weapons and targeting technology makes hand to hand combat less frequent. Snipers can shoot miles, artillery hundreds, cruise missiles frightening distances, bombs can be dropped from 5 miles up, lasers can target from space. When you consider that NASA mis-programmed to miss Mars by 500,000 miles with a 10-billion dollar rocket the fact that unplanned targets get hit is not surprising.

If Winters wrote this memoir to ‘set the record straight’ then the one thing he does do is show how the writing of a good movie script serves to conflate characters, alter the order of events, and make selective use of the facts. A book tells you what happened, a movie shows you what happened. In the end, of course, as Winters points out the facts of the matter are those seen by the writer from his vantage point and each individual will have a different version of any one engagement.

Ysabel

Ysabel by Guy Gabriel Kay is a reality meets fantasy kind of tale. Reality is 15-year-old Ned from Westmount in Provence with his father  who is on a photo-shoot with three assistants. Intersecting is a two-thousand five hundred year old feud between two men over a woman. When the kid gets in over his head his Aunt and Uncle from England show up and he invokes a child’s prerogative and decides, “I want my Mommy”. Mommy was in Darfur with Doctors Without Borders and he’s glad for a valid excuse to remove her from harm’s way. Throw in a girl Ned’s age. On the fantasy side meet Celtic invaders and Romans, Druidic rituals, and an ancient massacre of 200,000 Celts. Throw in French Cafés, ancient ruins, wild boars, enchanted wolves, and shape-shifting owls. If you can buy into all that then you have at base a story of a young man’s coming of age.

The Viceroy of Ouidah

The Viceroy of Ouidah

 

                    by Bruce Chatwin

 

Little seems to have changed in Africa or Brazil in 200 years.

 

Two lines in this 100-page tome stand out:

 

“War is for taking heads, not selling them attached to bodies.”

 

“But Blacks believe the Devil is White.”

 

Chatwin writes his own ‘Heart of Darkness’.

Clay's Way

Clay’s Way by Blair Mastbaum is set in Hawaii. Guide books would have you believe that Hawaiians are a racially tolerant society. These would be written by the same demographers who once termed Oakville the richest community in Canada ignoring majority who live at or below the poverty line. Just last week I was reminded of how much this has become the case when someone panhandled me in the parking lot of an upper class suburban mall. A thing that is common place on the streets of Toronto but unknown until recent years on the streets of Oakville.

 

To Native Hawaiians there can never be forgiveness for the Haoles who invaded their islands and destroyed their culture and way of life deposing their king. Knowing your place is important and enclaves tend to be uni-racial in nature. Attempting to crash a surfing break will make you quickly learn that surfers jealously guard their bits of ocean.

 

As in 1941 today the military is a major presence in the Hawaiian Islands. Their bases are everywhere as must be men in uniform throughout the islands. The dollars and jobs they bring may be welcome but competition for the attention of island females cannot be.

 

Sixteen-year-old Sam is a pain in the ass to his parents and his friends alike. He is not a kid I’d want to meet or have dealings with. He smokes, drinks, tokes and will do whatever drugs he can get his hands on. He skate boards but by his own admittance will never do it well. He does not surf but he dabbles in martial arts and otherwise spends his time hanging with his buddies and beating off. Did I mention he’s gay and he writes Haikus.

 

Much of the book is devoted to his infatuation, nay obsession with nineteen-year-old Clay who embodies the ideals he aspires to. Where Sam’s parents are white Clay’s are Portuguese. Sam possesses an aura, a swagger, a persona Sam would love to emulate. However Sam lacks the body, the years, the self-possession, the machismo, the skills to pull any of it off. Clay is somehow flattered by Sam’s devotion and allows him to play along until the point where Sam becomes a nuisance and an utter embarrassment. There’s being a free spirit and being aware of when to play it cool; Sam never knows when to stop. The end comes with Clay giving Sam a black eye in front of his surfing buddies to recoup his rep.

 

 

Fire

Giving this book the title, “Fire”, is an advertising ploy on the part of its publishers. Only the first two essays of this series, all published first elsewhere, are about Wildfire; the remaining 168 of its 224 pages deal with wide-ranging topics around the world, mainly involving war in all its gory manifestations. The term ‘adrenalin junkie’ seems to have been coined to describe Junger. His book-cover photos reveal an ultra fit wiry frame and a square-jawed face with piercing eyes. Another term once used to describe the author of Source of the Nile, Christopher Ondaatje, would be alpha male. The term fits.

 

Whether the average reader is interested in the science of fire is debatable but it’s sprinkled liberally in these 56 pages. No one could accuse Sebastian Junger of being simply a voyeur though his assignments manage to take him to the world’s least desirable vacation spots. One has to be just a little bit suicidal to jump out of a perfectly good aircraft but to do so into a potentially life-threatening wildfire would seem doubly so. Having read Junger’s War one would come to the conclusion that the man lives for danger. To willingly go to the places he has been and get so close to the action one must either be crazy or value life so little that throwing it away for the sake of a story makes sense. His photographic partner Chris Etherington died reporting on the situation in Libya making Restrepo his final opus.

Alone in the Wilderness

Alone in the Wilderness

                    By Hap Gilliland

 

is set to begin with in Billings, Montana. I’m happy to say that I spent several days in Billings camped beside the Yellowstone River. Flint Red Coyote is a Native American Cheyenne fresh off the Rez attempting to cope with the cultural and social dislocation caused by the move to a big city school. He is fortunate in the friends he picks; Jose, a Mexican-American lad he knew in past years and Tobey a brilliant girl with a mix of Native American and Finnish in her background. His third friend is Roger, a local boy whose grudging respect he wins.

 

The decision to spend three months roughing it alone in the Beartooth Wilderness is occasioned by the rough and tumble of classroom life but challenges Flint in ways he couldn’t originally conceive. Whereas Flint is concerned with learning survival skills that will keep him housed, warmed, and fed in the wilderness his Grandfather Wolf Runner is more concerned with his spiritual and mental preparedness. If  you’ve met the average teen who gets antsy if separated from their i-Pod and texting device you know what I mean. Grown men have been driven mad by solitary confinement, three months alone in the wilderness for a teenager is a life sentence.

 

While Flint collects clothing, a Tipi, dried food, bow and arrows, a sled and builds his stamina by jogging and stair-running Grandfather prescribes prayer and spiritual preparation to teach Flint determination/courage/fortitude, self-confidence. Just before his departure Grandfather sets up a sweat lodge ceremony and recommends that when Flint is ready he should go on a Vision Quest, an “Indian” rite of passage that involves fasting, hallucinatory plants, leading to a dream state in which one is visited by an animal guiding spirit.

 

Flint spends his three months in the wilderness, climbs Montana’s highest peak, finds his totem during a vision quest: a night hawk, survives a blizzard without food, successfully hunts deer with bow and arrow, and after all that ends up rescuing one of his friends who gets turned around coming to bring him home.

Looking For It

Looking For It

                    Michael Thomas Ford

 

This being an author I admire I’m going to examine the mechanics of writing. The fact that he writes gay literary fiction is unimportant, good writing is good writing.

 

How does one introduce the principal characters. Does one jump into the story and introduce them on the fly or take time to describe each in detail. What is important for the reader to know—their physical appearance, their professions, their living arrangements, and in gay lit their sexual preferences, are they out or still closeted. When dialogue is involved do you use he said/she said, “quotation marks”, —dashes, none at all. Whose point of view is the story told from.

 

In the present case a brief chapter is devoted to each main character or character grouping.

 

Mike Monaghan—is bartender at the Engine Room, one of three gay bars in the Cold Falls area.

 

John Ellison is a high school chemistry teacher. Russell Harding is his live-in lover and manages a Department Store.

 

Pete Thayer is a closeted, (to himself), mechanic who likes head without any foreplay, the rougher the better.

 

Simon Bird is a senior who recently lost his life’s partner.

 

Father Thomas Dunn is an Anglican Priest who chose the church over his childhood gay crush. Joseph died of aids but Thomas still cherishes his memory and keeps his picture blaming himself for his friend’s death.

 

Stephen Darby is an accountant who works from his home next door to his parents and his married brother beside them. He engages in online fantasies as bringing someone home is impossible and being out for the night would involve painful explanations.

 

Sometimes it doesn’t pay to look too closely at a text. In Chapter 5 the pot roast is nearly done and pie turned out well but a few pages later the host carries a cake into the dining room.

 

This book involves more gay sex than any of the others I’ve read and it shows up early on in the story. Ford is among a group of gay authors who write literary fiction. This is not bad writing to stimulate someone’s sexual fantasies. However I believe it time he moved beyond writing boy meets girl, or in this case boy meets boy, novels and found themes involving mature lasting relationships. Surely there is more to life than the struggle to come out to oneself and the world. The gay community needs literary role models that involve more than one-night-stands leading to happily ever after scenarios. Life is not a fairy tale—pun not intended.

back Roads

back roads by Tawni O’Dell

Eighteen-year-old Harley got a crash course in adult responsibilities. His best friend went off to university without saying goodbye bringing him to the conclusion that their friendship had been based on propinquity and convenience. His Mother goes to jail for shooting his abusive Father and overnight he becomes a Legal Adult with three dependants--all girls, a social worker, and a state-provided therapist. Working two dead-end jobs is one thing but being the object of constant attention because your dirty laundry is being aired on the National News at 11 is quite another. Dealing with a pubescent female is any parent’s nightmare but how does a teenage ‘father’ cope? What can he say when his 12-year-old sister announces she thinks she just got her first period?

Where most teens wouldn’t think twice about replacing the toilet paper Harley has to figure out where Mum stored the supplies. Where is the cupcake pan to bake for his little sister’s school? Where are the spare lightbulbs stored? As role model Harley had a father who expressed all emotions with violence, even happiness occasioned backslapping and arm punching, an excuse to get drunk and destructive. If as his Mother’s eldest and only son he had an Oedipal complex Harley now can’t bear the thought of visiting her in prison though he has to drive his sisters there and wait. Opening the door to his parent’s room is akin to visiting his Father’s grave. Out of necessity he does drive his Father’s truck and wear his Father’s camo jacket. It is quite another matter to deal with the loss of Satellite TV which like so many other things in their reduced circumstance they can no longer afford. Since they aren’t on welfare they lack medical coverage.

Women are a mystery to most men, Harley has four to deal with three of whom are his responsibility. What should a father do when he discovers his 16-year-old daughter making out on the living room couch at 2:30 AM in the morning? Harley incinerates the couch, given his choices the least destructive means of dealing with his anger. Harley is not immediately a likeable character--it takes some time to warm up to him, but a young man deprived of his youth by circumstance deserves our sympathy, our pity would be rightly thrown back in our faces.

There are three parties to any family history of child abuse: the abusing parent, the abused child or children, and the parent and/or other adults in their lives that were aware of the situation and took no measures to put a stop to it. Add America’s gun culture and the potential for violence is obvious and it Harley who reaps the whirlwind. The horror of the trauma that completes this story will haunt my dreams for some time to come--this is not a book for young people or anyone with a delicate constitution.

The Wildfire Season

Andrew Pyper’s Wildfire Season interweaves 5 distinct storylines. There is the college-aged Miles whose job as a forest fire fighter blows up in his face killing a younger co-worker and scarring him physically and emotionally so that he runs away from his girlfriend of some years without even leaving a note behind. Six years later Miles is fire boss in a remote Yukon community and his girlfriend shows up with the daughter he wasn’t aware existed. His neighbour Margot is out hunting a grizzly as guide to a 70-year-old millionaire executive who wants to bag a ‘Boone and Crockett Grizzly’. There is the story of the Mother Grizzly and her two yearling cubs. And finally the wildfire--was it set by a firestarter? Miles and his four-man crew are sent out to extinguish that fire but it explodes overnight from a 5 acre smoker to a 500 acre firestorm that has already claimed at least one life and threatens an entire town.

The opening chapters seem awkward but once the stories gain momentum the reader is carried along like the fire that erupts at its core. A book with so many changes in point of view and timelines, real and imagined, demands a lot of its reader. There is no time to stop and daydream when a fire is racing toward you like the ‘Kid’ in this story. Whether it’s a grizzly that is tracking you or a firestorm there is no motive or emotion involved, just a force of nature. The overarching story here is that of the central character, the fire but Miles is the genuine hero. After leading the surviving members of the hunting party to safety through the middle of the fire and learning that his girlfriend and daughter are trapped in its path he charges back through the middle of that fire and leads them back out against all odds--the firestorm, a maniac with a rifle, and a marauding grizzly. To climb a mountain range and walk twenty miles through fire may seem foolhardy, to do so twice more super-human.

Kit's Law

Newfoundland has produced a parcel of young writers. The move from storyteller to written page seemingly a short distance. Alas most of them seem to need to leave home to embark on their trade. Nostalgia it seems is best engaged in from a distance. Donna Morrisey cunningly evokes the claustrophobia of outport life where outside males are brought in to keep bloodlines clean. There are few secrets in a small closed community, the sense of being under constant scrutiny can become oppressive. And it’s the secrets kept from one that can serve to cause the greatest heartache.

“It ain’t fair.
“No it isn’t. And the fault is ours for expecting it to be so.

“No! I’m done listenin’. I’ve been listenin’ to others all m life. And fightin’! Fightin’ to hold onto what’s mine. And thankin’ everybody for lettin’ me do so. Well, I’m tired of smilin’ for your blessin’s, all the time smilin’, feelin’ grateful but never proud. I want to live my own life, as I see fit.”

Charity may be good for the soul of the giver but exacts a burden upon the needy. Outport life is primal and complicated in its simplicity.

The Naming of the Dead

Murder mysteries are not normally a genre I embrace and I’m not normally a follower of the best-seller list but I’ve always been willing to read anything that’s well-written. The Scottish writer Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus Series broke onto the literary scene three decades ago and has since stretched to nearly 20 volumes and a few spin-offs. Not only well-written and unabashedly set in the Edinburgh section of Scotland but also redolent of local colour, locations, language, and most particularly its smoky back-room bars; its protagonist, John Rebus, is a heavy-smoking, alcoholic detective so obsessed with his work he has no life outside it. His lifestyle and diet would lead one to believe that most Scots do not live long enough to burden society with supporting their retirement years. In his memoir Rebus’s Scotland, Rankin admits that in the flesh he would probably not get along well with his fictional creation, a sentiment I would share. Working with him would be trying and being his boss, a nightmare. John Hannah portrayed him in a TV Movie version of some of the books and I found him so insufferable I couldn’t watch.

 

Stuck in Oakville I have beguiled my time with my library which I’ve found to contain all the volumes I have yet to read and the one named above is the pen-ultimate opus. Regrettably I have read these books as they became available this side of the pond which is unfortunate because although each book is self-contained, the principal characters age with the story in chronological order. The trade-paperback version I am reading has been given the first-class treatment accorded only best-selling authors: pages of glowing reviews up front, chapter headings given the full-page treatment with slip sheets following, page breaks after each chapter, a large eminently readable font, and heavy quality vellum.

 

Last summer Toronto was held hostage by the circus that is a G-8/G-20 summit and the present novel sees Edinburgh gripped by a similar fate. I said at the time that a remote Arctic Lodge or island seemed a better venue and note that one wag in the novel suggested using a decommissioned oil platform out in the middle of the North Sea. Rebus’ diet tends to fatty takeaway, Chinese, and Indian Curry washed down with copious pints of IPA and Scotch Whisky. His choice in pop music figures strongly throughout the series. Six foot two, over-weight, and bristling at incoming laws against public smoking; a loner who has never been part of any team; the man antagonises his superiors but gets results in spite of or because of his unorthodox methods.

 

Rankin’s style is to have the reader follow the clues along with his detectives. The reader is given no insights that are not available to the people in his storyline. As in real life not every plot is given a satisfying ending and often the reader is left at the end of the tale wondering what just happened to him. Rarely are plotlines tied up in neat bundles for us. Not all crimes are solved. People commit crime and those who would enforce the law are as fallible and those they hunt. Crime sells media and its dissemination makes the public uneasy; police services exist to give people a sense of security, or so writes Rankin. As Scott Turow would have it justice is what can be proven in a court of law. The investigation of crime it would seem is no less arbitrary. When it comes to law, government, and those in power and authority the lines between morality, right and wrong, and justice seem to become blurred. As Rebus approaches retirement his level of cynicism and sarcasm grow, however ever a bull in the china cabinet he is not to be deterred once a mystery strikes his fancy and will worry it like a dog its bone even when saner minds would back down.

 

Success comes with its costs. When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle tired of coming up with new challenges for Sherlock Holmes he finally attempted the ruse of having him killed off to discourage his public. In Exit Music Rankin has Rebus retire. All the same having DS Clarke bring young street cop Todd Goodyear into the fold adds new zest to the mix, he’s even given a tasty back story; leaving the door open for a new round of adventures should the author so wish. Never trust a mystery writer until the last twist on the last page, so much for my insights.

Breaking Clean

Judy Blunt’s Breaking Clean begins with the neighbour boy squatting over a bottle of whiskey with her Father on the front porch while they negotiate for her hand in marriage. With land and cattle at his disposal he is accounted a good catch despite being 12 years her senior. Her side of the bargain would be to birth and rear his sons, keep house, tend the home garden, and attend to his needs. The fact that she might have had other aspirations like a college education did not enter the negotiations. When the marriage started falling apart 12 years later the husband when asked how often he’d told his wife he loved her stated on the day he married her, he never took it back. Clearly the two had differing expectations. It is instructive that all three of her children chose to remain with their Mother.

What follows is an all-too-familiar story of her Montana Prairie Homesteading childhood. Large families in cramped shacks with outdoor plumbing, one-room schools, howling winter blizzards, spring prairie grass fires, mud in spring and fall, summer droughts, hoppers and the privations of mind, body, and spirit. Told from the perspective of a woman capable of breaking a horse, riding the range, and slinging bales of hay with the best of them she balks at the inequity of being consigned to the sole preserve of women’s work.

A world where women’s names occupied equal status on ranch deeds but all important decisions were made by husbands. The lesson is learned early when younger brothers get to do men’s work and older sisters women’s. Biology plays girls an ugly trick and this one spends an entire year attempting to conceal her budding breasts even attempting to lance them like the cow’s cankers she helped her father treat.

Once the book leaves the ranch and descends into feminist manifesto it loses some of its appeal. Barely into her teens the author learns that no matter what her contribution to the family farm it will be her brothers who get to take it over, daughters have no rights. When, at 18, she marries a man nearly twice her age she discovers that although the farm and ranch house have been turned over to her husband, her father-in-law still expects to manage the day-to-day operation of the family business. Her contribution is the management of the home, the house garden, the children, and the preparation of daily meals for her family, the hired hands who live in the bunkhouse, and even her father-in-law. She is expected to keep her nose out of the running of the farm--the hired hands do not take orders from her, and she cannot write cheques on the family business account. Worse, her mother-in-law arrives daily to rearrange the dishes and pots and pans in her cupboards and oversees her grocery bills with disdain.

Dealing with a critically ill child and managing a home when roads can be impassable for months at a time due to mud and snow drifts further isolates a woman beyond the reality of living 50 miles from the nearest small town and 30 from the nearest community, almost as far from the nearest neighbour. If you had any notions of the romantic nature of homesteading on the prairies this book will take the micky out of them.

The Land of the Painted Caves

Being Jean Auel’s sixth in the Children of Earth Series it finds our heroine heavily involved in her training as a medicine women and preoccupied with raising her infant child. Who knew that prehistoric society was so matriarchal or at least egalitarian. We repeated read stanzas from the Great Earth Mother Creation Myth. Seems it was a woman who gave birth to the world and created a mate for herself that appears to be the sun. When she got around to creating people it was a woman who was first created and a man came later to provide her with a mate. As much as the Biblical account of creation shows a chauvinistic bias that has served to put women in their place this account acknowledges women’s role as nurturers and caregivers seeing a female as the agent of creation.

A large part of the novel is taken up with visits to caves and descriptions of the cave paintings in them. The action jumps 4 years in the second section of the book. Ayla is still supported by her six-foot-six-inch blonde companion with the brilliant blue eyes and charismatic appearance. She gets her call as a medicine women and the remainder of the book is taken up with her initiation into the fold at a summer meeting. Somehow this opus lacks the appeal of some of the earlier novels, certain sections seeming to drag on and on.

Breaking Clean

Judy Blunt’s Breaking Clean begins with the neighbour boy squatting over a bottle of whisky with her Father on the front porch while they negotiate for her hand in marriage. With land and cattle at his disposal he is accounted a good catch despite being 12 years her senior. Her side of the bargain would be to birth and rear his sons, keep house, tend the home garden, and attend to his needs. The fact that she might have had other aspirations like a college education did not enter the negotiations. When the marriage started falling apart 12 years later the husband when asked how often he’d told his wife he loved her stated on the day he married her, he never took it back. Clearly the two had differing expectations.

What follows is an all-too-familiar story of her Montana Prairie Homesteading childhood. Large families in cramped shacks with outdoor plumbing, one-room schools, howling winter blizzards, spring prairie grass fires, mud in spring and fall, summer droughts, hoppers and the privations of mind, body, and spirit. Told from the perspective of a woman capable of breaking a horse, riding the range, and slinging bales of hay with the best of them she balks at the inequity of being consigned to the sole preserve of women’s work.

A world where women’s names occupied equal status on ranch deeds but all important decisions were made by husbands. The lesson is learned early when younger brothers get to do men’s work and older sisters women’s. Biology plays girls an ugly trick and this one spends an entire year attempting to conceal her budding breasts even attempting to lance them like the cow’s cankers she helped her father treat.

Once the book leaves the ranch and descends into feminist manifesto it loses some of its appeal. Barely into her teens the author learns that no matter what her contribution to the family farm it will be her brothers who get to take it over, daughters have no rights. When, at 18, she marries a man nearly twice her age she discovers that although the farm and ranch house have been turned over to her husband, her father-in-law still expects to manage the day-to-day operation of the family business. Her contribution is the management of the home, the house garden, the children, and the preparation of daily meals for her family, the hired hands who live in the bunkhouse, and even her father-in-law. She is expected to keep her nose out of the running of the farm--the hired hands do not take orders from her, and she cannot write cheques on the family business account. Worse, her mother-in-law arrives daily to rearrange the dishes and pots and pans in her cupboards and oversees her grocery bills with disdain.

Dealing with a critically ill child and managing a home when roads can be impassable for months at a time due to mud and snow drifts further isolates a woman beyond the reality of living 50 miles from the nearest small town and 30 from the nearest community, almost as far from the nearest neighbour. If you had any notions of the romantic nature of homesteading on the prairies this book will take the micky out of them.

Big Stone Gap

The first in Adriana Trigiani’s trilogy, Big Stone Gap like its mates runs to 305 pages in paperback. Aspiring authors are told to write what they know, well guess what, there really is a place named Big Stone Gap and there really was a book entitled Trail of the Lone Pine by John Fox which became a movie and is enacted each summer on an outdoor stage in town by amateurs. If the characters she writes about are as real as everything else in this book one can only hope she’s still welcome around town. And in an insular small town no one keeps secrets anyway.

Trigiani captures the language and spirit of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and echoes its turns of phrase and world outlook. Of an exceptionally good-looking man it is said, he makes Levi’s sing. A malevolent gossip’s lips are like two tightly packed firecrackers waiting for a match. The local gospel preacher plays snake charmer at revival meetings picking up rattlers.

As book one closes the story enters the present century rather dramatically. The narrator discovers her best buddy won’t marry her because he’s gay. She ends her spinsterhood at 36 by marrying a mountain coal miner with whom she went to school. What ensues is about what one would expect from an independent business woman whose values collide with a traditional male ego. Where book one was chatty Big Cherry Holler is gossipy. The storyline descends into soap opera, but then the author does write for TV.

Two thirds of the way through book 2 I lost interest as the book became a full-fledged romance dime novel.

The Hungry Ocean

The Hungry Ocean
by Linda Greenlaw

For anyone who doesn’t know Greenlaw was the female swordboat captain played by Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio in the movie The Perfect Storm who made the impassioned plea by radio-phone to Billy Tyne to get out of the region just south of Sable Island because he was sailing into hell. She has been in the news most recently due to her court appearance in St John’s Newfoundland because, as she explained it, her 40-mile long-line was pulled into Canada’s 200-mile limit by a boat that crossed it and dragged it there. She was found guilty and heavily fined; an experience she’d obviously like to put behind her. It was in the wake of the publicity that followed upon the movie and the novelty attached to her being a female captain and a successful one that she wrote and published this book in 1999.

Fishing is not an exact science else, as Greenlaw writes, it would be called catching. In my native Nova Scotia it has been said that a good sea captain could “smell” his way into harbour even in fog so dense he couldn’t see past his nose. In the days of sail good fishing boat captains had a sense of where the fish were, in much the same way a water-witcher finds an underground spring on dry land. Certainly their knowledge of the sea and their observation of bait fish and seabird activity gave them clues but they possessed an instinctual ability to find the best plot of ocean to set their long lines. Today nylon mono-filament has replaced twisted hemp fibre and navigational beacons have made finding that line again easier but the principle of bait attracting fish to a hook hasn’t changed. You can’t fish if the fish aren’t there and the sea remains a harsh mistress.

Anyone who has ridiculed the weatherman in the Maritimes can understand the limitations of modern science when it comes to ocean currents, hurricanes, and weather. Superstitions tend to attach themselves to that which is unknowable and uncontrollable. When it comes to the sea and fishing few endeavours in life attract more superstitions. Therefore a woman aboard a fishing boat, forget that she’s captain, goes way beyond novelty.

Fishing by lunar cycle reminds me of neighbours at home in Lunenburg County who planted their potatoes by the full of the moon. Modern fishing boats may be marvels of technology and science but successful boat captains still use their instincts and intuition alongside all that fancy equipment. Greenlaw attempts, without overwhelming her reader with too much detail, to explain both sides of her trade. In an appendix she outlines the costs involved in one voyage along with the crew dispensations. But she does not own the boat she commands hence the capital costs involved are not explained; her figures do not include value of the boat, depreciation, and maintenance.

Parachute Infantry

That an artist was before his time has become cliché. A young reporter volunteered for the parachute infantry in 1941 so that he might write a book about the experience. Although he survived the war he did not survive the book editors who deemed his account of the daily grind of infantry life too boring to interest their readers. When he died under mysterious circumstances in 1965 his book remained unpublished. Thirty years later the producers of the mini-series Band of Brothers found his memoir filled with the perfect kind of minutia needed to flesh out their episodes. If you’ve read Ambrose' book or watched the movies when you read this book you will see where whole plot lines and scripts were lifted directly. Unfortunately the author was no longer around to collect his royalties.

When Supreme commander Eisenhower invaded Fortress Europe on D-Day he had so many troops he had to figure out how to deploy them so that they wouldn’t get in one another’s way. The Allies won by sheer dint of numbers, not necessarily by superior strategy. Just how true this was Webster makes clear. Differences in battle strategy, the chain of command, and latitude for independent action in the field made for frustrations when various groups needed to co-ordinate their actions. He matter of factly describes instances of friendly fire and forced marches in aid of troops that didn’t need it. He spares no ones feelings including his own in describing the foibles and failings of leaders and men alike. He frankly admits that self-preservation inspired his policy of always doing what was expected of him but never volunteering under any circumstances.

One way or another through wounds and recovery he manages to miss most of his unit’s major battles. He remains an observer and at all times an unwilling participant; freely admitting to never being on time and always looking for ways to be absent when it hit the fan. He even manages to get out on points before the rest of his company win their reprieve on the War in Asia being ended at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the end he does best what he set out to do in the first place; document the reality of being a ‘grunt’ in the American Army. To receive orders you know will get you killed, to perform useless tasks, to have your life saved due to an officer’s incompetence, to spend hours and days in tedious boredom waiting, to do make-work projects.... Throughout he manages to make it all sound interesting.

Hondo

Hondo by Louis L’Amour is a Historical, Western Romance set in the 1800’s in the desert region of the Colorado Rockies. Like so many of L’Amour’s books it was made into a movie in 1953 starring John Wayne filmed in Utah. I was moved to download and read this Bantam Book after finding about twenty of his novels on display at the Travel Bureau in Mancos just east of the author’s ranch in Hesperus. If I’d known I’d forgotten that these novels generally contain a love interest.

L’Amour vividly evokes the desert landscape through which I’ve been driving for the past few weeks. He is also familiar with horses, their anatomy, their health issues, and their quirks. He understands desert survival skills, tracking, hunting, fishing, and living off the land. He has also researched Ute, Apache, and Anasazi oral traditions, lifestyles, and warfare. His attention to detail rings true and gives a sense of authenticity to his writing. Calling it great literature may be a stretch but it makes an easy read and evokes a sense of pioneer life and at nearly 100 books one has much to enjoy.

As Hondo has been employed by the military fun is made of West Point graduates sent out to command platoons in Indian Country. Little has changed over the centuries as Sebastian Junger makes similar comments about West Point Lieutenants in Afghanistan. If you’ve seen the movie you know that there much is made of the bond that develops between the 6-year-old son of the abandoned ranch wife and the gruff despatch rider who happens upon their isolated valley; in the book this relationship is only implied and much more attention is paid to life at the fort and on patrol for the cavalrymen who attempt to put down an Indian uprising.

The Morcyth Saga

The Morcyth Saga by Brian S. Pratt is essentially a single book in seven instalments the first of which was offered free on Barnes and Noble's Nook System, the concept of getting one hooked so the remaining books in the series be bought having worked in my case though I went to another source for the remaining 6. The books are essentially one long Dungeons and Dragons role-playing session that runs for several years in the life of it's central character James, a youthful mage. Whereas the first two books begin well by the third it starts to stretch belief that one person could possibly get himself involved in that many scrapes and escape each essentially unscathed. The characterizations and interpersonal relationships are well-taken and the books certainly don't lack for action-adventure.

Though I realize not everyone is as fanatical about grammar as I one would expect that someone who reached his twenties in the nineties uses a word processor to write. Why then would even a simple word-processor not have caught the spelling errors, the incomplete sentences, and dangling participles and run-on sentences. It seems obvious that editors no longer do much editing.

Full Circle

Full Circle by Michael Thomas Ford is the story of two childhood friends who grow up experimenting with gay sex before they can even give their exploration of each other’s bodies a name. While one has a predeliction to play the field the other, who narrates the tale, tends toward more monogamous relationships and feels betrayed when others stray. In telling the story of these lives Ford lays out the history of the gay movement, the Vietnam War, and the scourge that AIDS becomes in the gay community.

With its insights into the dynamics of family life, boyhood relationships, the high school and college experience, growing maturity and self-awareness, military life, this book rises above the level of most gay literature to become in part a sociological and psychological examination of modern society. Beginning with a phone call in the middle of the night in the present day, the narrator takes us back to the story of his grandparents and parents, his birth, and his life to the point where the phone rings. As impressed as I was with the first two-thirds of the book I began to get incredulous at the idea that one person could have been involved in the lives of so many important historic personages and as struck as I was with the aptness of the first half of the book the author seems to have run out of steam at some point along the line and the eventual closing chapters seem truncated and incomplete.