At Ease

Eisenhower, Dwight D. At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends. New York: Doubleday 1967. Print.

First Sentences:

Talking to oneself in Abilene, in the days of my youth, was common enough. Generally speaking, it was a sure sign of senility or of preoccupation with one's worries. Now, it is nationally advertised as the hallmark of the efficient executive.


Description:

I enjoy biographies and autobiographies as much as the next person. However, some can be a bit pedantic in their attention to major occurrences in the subject's life, details that paint the person as a highly important figure. Maybe not as honest a picture as I sometimes hope for.

But President (and author) Dwight D. Eisenhower took a new approach. Assuming that every event in his life as a military, political, and academic figure had already been covered by multiple biographers, Eisenhower decided to honestly and humbly tell a behind-the-scenes series of episodes in his life that truly reveal his character. 

His collection of these reminiscences, At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends, reveal his thoughts, dreams, conversations, decisions, ambitions, and failures in such an casual, often humorous manner that you feel he is talking just to you as a intimate friend, revealing himself and how occurrences that shaped his life and even the world really happened.

The book spans Eisenhower's years from birth in Kansas and childhood in Texas, training at West Point, military career, family life, and being nominated to run for president just as he was just settling in as president of Columbia University. Each episode in between is matter-of-factly unfolded as Eisenhower "talks" about situations and people that affected his life.

Early years

• As a five-year-old he finally overcame the torment dished out by a huge gander by taking a stick to defend himself, and thus admitted he learned "Never to negotiate with an adversary except from a position of strength."
• A great reader of history, he so neglected his chores that his mother locked his books in a closet ... an effective punishment until Eisenhower found the key one day and continued to read whenever his mother was not present.

West Point

• Admitted, "Where else could you get a college education without cost?" 
• Assigned to the "Awkward Squad" for his inability to march with coordination. 
• In his first weeks, just after learning how to salute every officer, he tried three times to salute a highly-decorated man he passed in uniform, only to discover he was saluting the local drum major.
• As punishment from an upperclassman, he and a friend had to report in "full dress coats," which they did, but did not put on any other clothes. 
• His disciplinary file, partially reprinted in the book, reveals him to rank 125th in discipline out of 162 cadets.

Family

• The first time he met his future wife, Mamie, she accompanied him on his Fort Sam Houston guard duty patrol.
• At Camp Colt in Gettysburg, PA, the base suffered an outbreak of Spanish Influenza that killed many men. Ike, his family, and staff were spared due to an experimental nasal spray and throat medicine given by the camp's doctor.
• He and Mamie lost their two-year-old first born son, Ikky, to Scarlet Fever, “the greatest disappointment and disaster in my life, the one I have never been able to forget completely."

Military

• He had a long-time friendship with George Patton, and constantly tried to stop his friend from making controversial statements in public.
• Learned to fly at age 46, 30 years after the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk, where he communicated with the ground by dropping paper messages tied to rocks, then flying low to buzz buildings until someone came out to see what was up and retrieve his notes.
• His WWII orders were "Land in Europe and, proceeding to Germany, destroy Hitler and all his forces." There was nothing about invading Berlin, something Eisenhower was widely criticized for not pursuing.

Columbia University

• Took over for the previous University president who had served in that office for more than 50 years. Eisenhower was not recognized as the new president and denied access by a watchman to the president's office on his first Saturday when the university offices were closed
• Eisenhower felt his greatest contribution to Columbia was that he persuaded their beloved football coach stay at Columbia rather than taking the coaching job at rival Yale.

Anecdote after story is gracefully rolled out by a master storyteller. Each insight, carefully woven into a chronological timeline of his life's events, is captivating and insightful. While there is little about the specifics of WWII battles, there is plenty about his discussions with his officers, advisors, and other military leaders as well as the results of his decisions.

The book ends as Eisenhower reluctantly gives up his position as Columbia's president to accept the nomination (which he did not desire) to run for President of the United States. 

Please give this book a try if you have interest in great storytelling, interesting people, and the life of one important figure in American history. I loved it and now feel a new respect for President Dwight Eisenhower the man as well as the military figure and academic leader. Now, I just need to look for a follow-up book by him detailing his later years.

The making of history, the shaping of human lives, is more a matter of brief incidents, quiet talks, chance encounters, sudden flashes of leadership or inspiration, and sometimes simple routine than it is of heroes, headlines, grand pronouncements, or widely heralded decisions.

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Sassoon, Sigfried. The Memoirs of an Infantry Officer: (Book Two in the The Memoirs of George Sherston trilogy) .   

A fictionalized but very realistic depiction of World War I in France as seen through the eyes and mind of an French officer./ Based on Sigfried Sassoon's real heroic life and later disillusioned memories of his military experiences during that War, including his eventual pacifism and protest to end the conflict.  

 

A Life Impossible

Gleason, Steve. A Life Impossible: Living With ALS: Finding Peace and Wisdom Within a Fragile Existence. New York: Knoff 2024. Print.

First Sentences:

I sat naked in the shower while a twenty-four-year-old man washed my armpits.  Across the bathroom, my three-year-old daughter, Gray, sat in the middle of the floor, cross-legged like the Buddha, with one difference. She was wailing hysterically and incessantly. Inconsolable. And I was incapable of helping her.


Description:

It is almost impossible to comprehend living day to day, hour to hour, a life where every voluntary muscle in your body is unable to function. You are robbed of the ability to walk, raise your arms, close your hands, speak, even breathe. Smiling and blinking are denied. 

Yet such is the ongoing existence of author Steve Gleason for the past thirteen years (and counting) since his diagnosis of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS, i.e., Lou Gehrig's Disease).

He thoughtfully, emotionally, and openly discusses his journey from his boyhood through years as a professional football player, to young married trying to understand his fatal ALS diagnosis, and on then his continuing struggles with his restricted life today in his memoir, A Life Impossible. 

To call him a survivor is too passive a label. He is a battler. Throughout his life he has deeply contemplated his life, his personal situation, his emotions, and his future. His brilliant writing in this book are transporting. Gleason allows readers into the deepest parts of his mind, from denial of the diagnosis as a 33-year-old man to a firm confidence he can beat the disease; from despair as his relationships crack under the strain of his needs for constant, intimate care, to occasional peace of mind as revelations occur to him that give him even temporary triumphs in communication or action.

I'd spent most of my life seeking the sacred and extraordinary, but [meditation] was showing me that the sacred is within us....I'm not sure how much it was improving my "real life," but for a guy who was living with ALS, to have an hour a day of peace and even bliss, it was a welcome change.

During Gleason's New Orleans Saints' football career, he played on special teams. In 2006, he blocked an opposing Atlanta Falcons' punt on their first series of downs which was quickly recovered for a Saints' touchdown. This was an incredibly gutsy play by Gleason which surprised everyone on the field, the stadium, and in the Monday Night Football audience, and led to a Saints victory. 

It was an historic play as this was the first game held in the New Orleans Superdome, a beloved landmark for the citizens, which had finally opened after the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. Gleason's block and eventual Saints' victory signaled the beginning of the city's recovery. There is now even a statue of Gleason blocking that punt residing in front of the stadium, so important was the symbolism of New Orleans' triumph.

But ALS soon robbed him of his dream to live off the grid with his new wife, Michel, in an isolated spot somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Slowly and unceasingly, he awoke each day to another loss of strength and function. "Most people awake each day from a nightmare. I awake to a nightmare," he stated. 

He also lost all his savings due to an investment with friends in an alternative real estate company which went bankrupt. He repeatedly tried for a different diagnosis, experimented with every type of possible cure from faith healers to diets to meditation. His eventual failures to walk even a few steps, swim, have sex, or swallow forced him to realize that ALS was progressing relentlessly.

But although he writes of his discouragement with his situation, he also created "Team Gleason" with friends and families to explore treatments, medical devices, and opportunities to expand horizons for other ALS patients. 

He wanted to prove to himself and others that life can still be lived, and began to travel, give speeches, fish for salmon in Alaska, and even reach the top of Machu Picchu in Peru sitting in an electronic wheelchair that had to be carried over foot-wide pathways.

Gleason proved to ALS sufferers and others that the world could still be expanded . While he still could speak, he recorded 1,500 English phrases for a company called CereProc which then created a customized voice similar to his own for oral expression of his typed words.

Team Gleason grew and donors contributed to ALS research. The highly popular ALS fund-raising Ice Bucket Challenge was started by a Team Gleason member. Other ALS patients formed discussion groups to share stories, coping techniques, and understanding hearts with each other and the world. Through Gleason, others learned they were not alone, had options, and could lead expanded lives.

Gleason received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest United State Civilian honor, in 2019. Then in 2024 he was presented with the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage given for "strength, courage and willingness to stand up for their beliefs in the face of adversity.” Upon receiving this award, Gleason delivered a brilliant speech (created before the ceremony using only his eye/laser letter-by-letter composition program) verbalized through his synthetic voice to the ESPY audience. A documentary film, Gleason, was recently finished (available on Amazon Prime). His social media site has over half a million followers today.

 

A wonderfully powerful book that spares readers no emotion, thought, or dream that enters author Gleason's mind and world throughout his journey. Highly recommended.

Now I realize this: Life gets ugly at times, so when we have the chance to do something amazing in the midst of ugly, go for it.

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Bauby, Jean-Dominique. The Diving Bell and the Butterflyh: A Memoir of Life in Death.   

One man's memoirs, painfully written using only the blinking of his one working eyelid, revealing how he experiences the "Locked-In Syndrome" where nothing on hiss body can be moved, no words can be spoken, yet his mind and awareness are still present in his seemingly lifeless body. Absolutely astonishing and powerful. (previously reviewed here)

 

The Hour I First Believed

Lamb, Wally. The Hour I First Believed. New York: HarperColliuns 2008. Print.

First Sentences:

They were both working their final shift at Blackjack Pizza that night, although nobody but the two of them realized it was that. Give them this much: they were talented secret-keepers.


Description:

This is a very difficult book for me to review and recommend. It is probably not for everyone since the backdrop is the shooting at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999. Given this violent background setting, this book probably doesn't sound like anything a sane person would want to read any more about, particularly if it's a 700-page historical novel. 

I, too, was one of those hesitant readers. But my interest in author Wally Lamb after reading his book, She's Come Undone, made me want to give The Hour I First Believed at least a fair try (you know, look at the first couple of sentences). And those words were enough to hook me.

I quickly realized that The Hour I First Believed was not simply a re-telling of that horrific incident, but rather a character study and journey towards recovery for one couple who experienced the shooting and the ensuing repercussions. The shooting itself is not completely avoided, of course. It is retold in bits and pieces, framed with some background information from the killers' actual diaries, videos, and interviews. So I kept reading and reading, becoming more and more involved in the main characters, their thoughts, fears, frustrations, and hopes.

The book centers on the fictional narrator, Caelum Quirk and his wife, Maureen, both long-time employees at Columbine High School. Caelum is a literature teacher while Maureen is the school's nurse. On the day of the shooting, Caelum was away from Colorado for a conference. But after seeing a live TV breaking news report on the shooting, he speeds homne, trying desperately to learn about the safety of this wife. He soon finds that Maureen, while safe, experienced first-hand the murderous boys words and actions, as well as saw their victims, most of whom she knew as students or as colleagues and friends. 

And after, she becomes a changed person....as does her husband.

We readers, through Caelem's stream-of-consciousness observations and interactions, follow this damaged couple as they try to address Maureen's new personality and fears, both together and singly. Each wonders whether they have done anything to have foreseen this tragedy or somehow acted to prevent even a small part of it. Questions, guilt, accusations, and self-examination fill their minds. 

In the days, week, months, and years, now, since they opened fire, I have searched wherever I could for the whys, hows, and whether-or-nots of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold's rampage. They had been my students first, but I became theirs, stalking them so that I might rescue my wife from the aftermath of what they'd done.

And the couple must deal with other issues as well. Caelum is called on to settle the Connecticut estate and home of his recently-deceased aunt who helped raise him. Along the way, Caelum discovers documents, letters, and diaries in her attic  which reveal his true family history and heritage. Maureen, meanwhile, is trying to re-connect with a troubled student who disappeared during the shooting, as well as recover enough herself to return to work nursing.

You never really forgive yourself. At least I haven't ben able to. But if you can find ways to be useful to others, you can begin to figure out how to live inside your own skin, no matter what you did.

It's not a feel good read by any means, but definitely a fascinating, compelling character study of people dealing with trauma, never an easy process. It is also a well-researched depiction in what happened at Columbine, what it was like for the people who actually experienced it, and how those incidents affected one fictional couple, one community, and many, many lives ever after.

 

Fred

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Read, Shelley. Go As a River.   

A small town girl in rural Colorado has her life changed after one chance encounter which she must face and address for the rest of her life. (Previously reviewed here.)

Go As a River

Read, Shelley. Go As a River. New York: Spiegel & Grau 2023. Print.

First Sentences:

He wasn't much to look at. Not at first, anyway.


Description:

It's an intriguing title to Shelley Read's debut novel: Go As a River. In this compelling story of a young woman's life in the tiny town of Iola, Colorado in the late 1940's and beyond, this phrase pops up to describe a way to survive and continue living:

I had tried...to go as a river, but it had taken me a long while to understand what that meant. Flowing forward against obstacle was not my whole story. For, like the river, I had also gathered along the way all the tiny pieces connecting me to everything else, and doing this had delivered me here, with two fists of forest soil in my palms and a heart still learning to be unafraid of itself.

Victoria Nash, a seventeen-year-old girl, lives with her father, uncle, and younger brother on their generational peach ranch, serving the men in her family and helping with the crops after the deaths of her mother, aunt, and older brother in a auto accident five years earlier. She has no dreams of another life or the world outside her home and nearby woods until a young stranger drifts through town...and she is smitten.

God will bring two strangers together on the corner of North Laura and Main and lead them toward love. God won't make it easy. 

The consequences of her love for this outsider drive the remainder of the story as she leaves her home and family to be with this young man. But soon the reality of life in that era intrudes on the couple's world and both young people and their lives are forever changed.

 

That's all I will reveal of the compelling plot. But please know this is a very special tale of choices, survival, love, and family as seen through the narrator's (Victoria's) eyes and senses. She is passionate about her family and the natural world that surrounds her, and works to nurture and preserve both by whatever means available to her strength and determination. Her voice is true and strong, whether describing her surroundings or contemplating her doubts and obstacles she faces in her present and future life.

The old house smelled like only old houses do, like stories, like decades of buttery skillet breakfasts and black coffee and dripping faucets, like family and life and aging wood.

This is completely Victoria's story, although other major characters are depicted with skill and honesty by author Read. It is a dreamy book in some ways, but always under laid with the reality of the challenging world surrounding this young girl and her later adult years.

I was completely caught up in Victoria and her world, her intense will to survive as well as her heartfelt doubts about whichever road she decides to take. read's prose is simple and clear as the orchard and woods Victoria inhabits, exactly setting the tone on both innocence and gritty determination.

He would teach me how true a life emptied of all but its essentials could feel and that, when you got down to it, not much mattered outside the determination to go on living. 

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

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Doig, Ivan. The Whistling Season.   

A young, mysterious woman takes on work as housekeeper to a man and his sons on a small Montana farm. Along with her brother, she ingratiates herself into the family and community with long-reaching affects. Narrated by one of the young sons, it is a highly descriptive, delightful story of the people and events in a rural town. Absolutely one of the best books I have ever read. Highest recommendation.  (previously reviewed here)

 

Our Missing Hearts

Ng, Celeste. Our Missing Hearts. New York: Penguin. 2022. Print.

First Sentences:

The letter arrives on a Friday. Slit and resealed with a sticker, of course, as all their letters are: Inspected for your safety --- PACT. It had caused confusion at the post office, the clerk unfolding the paper inside, studying it, passing it up to his supervisor, then the boss. But eventually it had been deemed harmless and sent on its way. No return address, only a New York, NY postmark, six days old. On the outside, his name -- Bird -- and because of this he knows it is from his mother.


Description:

Seems like almost every week lately I have come across a new book that makes my top 10 all time list. Such was the case with Celeste Ng's Our Missing Hearts, a story that often hints at out current fearful society today in America and its repercussions on the people who must bend their lives to accommodate restrictive rules, government, and even neighbors intolerant of anything not patriotic or accepting of their new world.

You see, 12-year-old Noah (Byrd) Gardner lives in the United States under the laws created and enforced for the past ten years by PACT (The Preserving American Cultures and Traditions Act). These patriotism laws were overwhelming enacted in response to the worldwide Crisis, an international depression with joblessness, poverty, inflation, and ensuing riots. It was determined, without evidence, to have been brought on by the Chinese government and its people.

The Three Pillars of PACT: Outlaws promotion of un-American values and behavior: Requires all citizens to report potential threats to our society. Protects children from environments espousing harmful views.

Therefore, PACT forces everyone to promise allegiance, support, and love for the American government, while ostracizing anyone not meeting these goals in action or speech. Neighborhood Watch groups are everywhere, seeking out dissident opinions of actions and, if found, intensively questioning (or removing) the suspects. 

Children can be forcibly taken from homes of parents determined to be a bad influence and relocated to more suitable couples, never to be allowed to communicate with their biological parents. There are no protests of this action by parents since any questioning would contribute to the suspected parents' anti-PACT leanings, risking the real possibility that the children might never be returned.

Bird's mother had left him and his father three years earlier, never letting him know she was leaving and never corresponding with him until this note. It was a mysterious single sheet of paper without any words, filled with multiple drawings of cats and a tiny cupboard. 

Margaret, Byrd's mother, was a noted poet who had written the line "All our missing hearts" in one of her obscure poems. With these words, she had inadvertently created a slogan, a rallying phrase, that was taken up by an underground anti-PACT network. Her words appeared scrawled on walls, on signs, and other locations as the network tried to raise awareness of the seized children.

Margaret, despite knowing nothing about this loose organization, chooses to leave her home and go into hiding, protecting her husband Ethan and son who must now disavow all ties to her, her and especially her writing to insure Byrd (now called Noah) is not taken from his father as an "unsuitable influence."

With this new note, however, Noah takes on the challenge to find out more about his mother and hopefully locate her. 

Along the way, we read of Margaret's backstory, her life with Ethan, her word-loving husband and Noah's father, and the life she chooses to pursue while in hiding. Along with other notable friends, enemies, and "citizens" looking for any misstep by neighbors, Our Missing Hearts is both a gripping and heartfelt story, one filled with seeming hopelessness against a government of fear, and yet containing  a glimmer of hope from individuals trying to survive and make a difference in a twisted world.

Yes, yes, yes, I would recommend this book. It's a mystery, a warning, a breath of hope, and a gripping tale celebrating family strength. It's a book of friendship and secrets, fanaticism and consequences. But most of all, it is a deeply personal tale of perseverance toward achieving personal goals in order to understand one's self and the world, and how those two fit together now and in the future. Highest recommendation.

  

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Orwell, George. 1984.   

The classic and still important story of a totalitarian society and one man who tries to fight back.

 

She's Come Undone

Lamb, Wally. She's Come Undone. New York: Washington Square Press 1992. Print.

First Sentences:

In one of my earliest memories, my mother and I are on the front porch of our rented Carter Avenue house watching two deliverymen carry our brand-new television set up the steps. I'm excited because I've heard about but never seen television. The two men are wearing work clothes the same color as the box they're hefting between them. Like the crabs at Fisherman's Cove, they ascend the cement stairs sideways. Here's the undependable part: my visual memory stubbornly insists that these men are President Eisenhower and Vice President Nixon.


Description:

Wally Lamb's debut novel, She's Come Undone, follows Dolores Price, a challenging narrator to say the least, from age four until early adulthood. She has more than her share of obstacles in life, including a father who deserts her to start a new life and family elsewhere; a mother who plies her with sweets and junk and eventually is admitted to a mental institution; and a strict grandmother who ends up raising her. Dolores deals with her world cynically and judgmentally from the confines of her bedroom until her depressed eating brings her weight to over 270 pounds. Although she is accepted into a college, this is her mother's dream, not hers, and she is reluctant to attend.

 

She does meet and retain several acquaintances and eventually a husband who assists her mentally and later financially. But really she meets the world alone, on her terms, and confidently chooses her own pathways.

Sounds depressing, huh? Well, it can be. But honestly, you just have to pull for Dolores amid all her troubles, both those inflicted on her by circumstances as well as those she pursues willingly to disastrous ends. You just have to stick with her and see how she can find a way to pull herself into the woman she has inside her, buried under layers of cynicism, doubt, fear, and false confidence.

 

Lamb is a captivating writer, a master of inner stream-of-consciousness narration, dialogue, and insightful depictions of characters. He keeps you reading page after page to see what new dilemma or person will come into Dolores' life that she will have to examine (often superficially), judge (usually harshly), and react to (angrily). Lamb makes readers feel the conflicts, fears, and hope of Dolores with every situation she finds herself thrown into.

I was fully invested in Dolores and this book for its honest presentation of a young girl coming of age, trying to find herself, and confronting the world and people she faces. It's a modern re-imagining of The Catcher in the Rye, but with a female lead who reveals herself and her angst much more clearly and empathically, in my mind, that Holden Caulfield ever did. 

[P.S. For another great coming of age novel, please read one of my favorites, Brewster by Mark Slouka (see below)]

 

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

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Slouka, Mike. Brewster.   

My favorite coming of age book with four remarkable, memorable characters who loosely bond together and battle against their personal struggles as teens. A fine successor to The Catcher in the Rye. (previously reviewed here)

Cold People

Smith, Tom Rob. Cold People. New York: Scribner 2023. Print.

First Sentences:

Looking up at the night sky Ui saw only unfamiliar stars. 

These weren't the constellations that guided him between the Polynesian islands of his homeland, these were stars from the sky's outer edge, the stars his people had never bothered to name since they were no use to navigate by, dismissed at the "petuu vare" - foolish stars.

Description:

When a huge number of alien spaceships suddenly appear in the morning sky, a strange message plays on every electronic device in the world, plugged in or not: "People have thirty days to reach the continent of Antarctica." Nothing else. No reason why. No consequences revealed. Just that simple ominous message.

So starts the brilliant, challenging Cold People by Tom Rob Smith. The first contact with another species leads to a hurried mass migration of the world's people to the frozen south. Military boats, planes, oil tankers, and anything else that flies or floats is re-outfitted to carry as many passengers as possible, but of course they are insufficient in capacity to transport every person on Earth.

Those who somehow do reach Antarctica must create a completely new world when their old one is destroyed. No nations, no electronics, no internet, no money, everyone equal. These early challenges are only briefly addressed as author Smith quickly takes the story twenty years into the future after the aliens' arrival. And by then things have definitely changed for the people still alive in Antarctica.

By the end of the first year, it was apparent that humankind wouldn't survive unless it unified. Old notions of sovereignty were a luxury it could no longer afford. 

Realizing that humans are frail and completely unsuited to continuing in this bitter cold environment, much less expanding their population, the scientists among them create the "Cold People" project. They begin altering genetic material to produce "ice-adapted" humans who will be able to tolerate and thrive under icy conditions far beyond what current people could ever hope to achieve.

But there are questionable outcomes to this genetic experimentation, both ethical and dangerous, and the fate of the Antarctic  communities and mankind in general rest in the mysterious creations produced in the experimental labs.

This is a story of survival to be sure. But it is also presents thoughtful scenario where families, love, relationships, and ethics all must be reexamined to face and hopefully succeed in a challenging present and highly-uncertain future. I feel the unexpected directions taken by highly unusual characters in unique situations make this a strong narrative that will capture the attention and encourage philosophical and ethical questions in the minds of most readers.

 

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

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Stephenson, Neil. Seveneves.   

When the moon explodes on the very first page of this novel, humankind must work together to construct a method to somehow preserve mankind and the knowledge of the ages before Earth eventually is destroyed. Riveting.  (previously reviewed here)

English Creek

 Doig, Ivan. English Creek. New York: Antheneum 1984. Print

First Sentences:

That month of June swam into the Two Medicine country. In my life until then I had never seen the sidehills come so green, the coulees stay so spongy with runoff. A right amount of wet evidently could sweeten the universe.


Description:

Sometimes I need a book just to curl up with and sink into like a soft, downy comforter, sitting in a comfy chair near a good light in front of the fireplace. At these times, I need a book that describes real people living in interesting locations, doing ordinary activities. But the writing and the people must be so genuinely honest and clear, like a cool zephyr breeze on a muggy summer day. With these conditions, I cannot help but sit back and relish everything about such a reading experience. It is unique, calming, and highly enjoyable, no matter how all too brief the warmth and clarity of the people, setting, and writing exist with me.

Such a book is my highly recommended novel by Ivan Doig, English Creek. It tells of life in an isolated Montana community in 1939, an area surrounded by forests, a river, and sheep ranches run by neighbors whose families have been in the area for generations. Narrated by 14-year-old Jick McCaskill, he decribes what he lives through one paticular summer: moving sheep to the high fields, a Fourth of July rodeo and dance, ice cream making, youthful friends and loves, and a frightening forest fire (his father is the local ranger). Jick shares his philosophical thoughts behind moving an outhouse which required breaking virgin sod for the first time and prying up unending amounts of rock from the stony field. He felt his outhouse-moving experience justified the county's reputation as "a toupee of grass on a cranium of rock." 

 

Has there ever been a better description of a small town July 4th celebration and its affect on those who join in the festivities as Jick's summation below:

If a sense of life, of the blood racing beneath your skin, is not with you at a Fourth of July creek picnic, then it is never going to be.

While this plot description may sound rather tepid, I prefer to call it "quiet," "immersive" and "deeply satisfying." It's not a book to breeze through. It is a pleasure to languish in Two Medicine county for as long as possible to watch Jick face challenges, understand his family better, and learn of the history of that small community. And the people he lives among each has a story to tell in their manner and actions, and in their spare, well-considered words. Here are a sampling of his neighbors:

• Ed Heaney, who "served in France during the war...[but] didn't want to squander one further minute of his life talking about it."
• Earl Zane, who was "built as if he'd been put together out of railroad ties"...with a face "as clear as the label on a maple sugar jar [that] proclaimed SAP."
  
• Velma, with her tiny pearl button earrings "as if her ears could be unbottoned to further secrets even there."
  
• Toussaint Rennie, who was "one of those chuckling men you meet rarely, able to stave off time by perpetually staying in such high humor that the years didn't want to interrupt him." 
• Perry Fox, who was "slow as the wrath of Christ, but steady."
  
• Jink's mother, of whom his father said, "I think that being married to you is worth all the risk." 
  

I simply loved this book, its attention to quiet detail and its clarity of writing. Conversations seem easy to listen to, people appear subtly complex, and the environment always presents a force that beckons to be explored and appreciated. I think everyone should indulge in this encompassing look into a world we rarely glimpse, much less easily comprehend today.

Best of all, this is the first in a trilogy of the McCaskill family life in Two Medicine, Montana: Dancing at the Rascal Fair and Ride With Me, Mariah Montana. Can't wait to indulge myself in these next two absorbing books.

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Doig, Ivan. The Whistling Season.   

A Chicago woman in 1909 answers an advertisement for a housekeeper for a widower and his three young sons living in an isolated Montana town. She writes that she "Can't cook, but doesn't bite," and gets the job sight unseen (by both of them). She brings her brother with her on the train and he reluctantly becomes a unique schoolteacher. Simply wonderful, a great read not to be missed.  (previously reviewed here)

For the Love of Cod

Dregni, Eric. For the Love of Cod: A Father and Son's Search for Norwegian Happiness. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota 2021. Print

First Sentences:

My dad took me to Scandinavia when I was sixteen. Now it was my turn to take my son. The only problem was I didn't have the money.


Description:

If you ever plan to go on a trip to Norway as my wife and I did this past spring, or if you are curious about the people, environment, and culture of this Scandinavian country, then please explore Eric Dregni's For the Love of Cod: A Father and Son's Search for Norwegian Happiness

 

This is a personal, often humorous chronicle of a journey taken by the author with his son, Eilif, to visit the country of his son's birth. Since author Dregni did not have much money for hotels, he and Eilif stayed with relatives, friends of relatives, and friends of friends of relatives. This personal living situation allowed opportunities for much discussion with natives regarding Norwegian values, lifestyles, customs, oil fund income, the Nobel Prize (awarded in Oslo), taxes, environment, tunnels, and of course, food (whale anyone?), all of which Dregni shares his readers.

These inner workings of Norway are presented in a conversational tone as Dregni observes and learns about the country where he briefly once lived and where Eilif was born. Readers really get to know and understand this Norwegian world and its people through Dregni's questions and his hosts' opinions. Under discussion are issues such as:

• Volunteering - the expected communal work, or dugnad, where "All neighbors chip in and help because you never know when you'll need the help";
• Education - no grades are given until eighth grade "to downplay competition and build up self-confidence," and barnehager or outdoor education which begins during ages 1-5;
• Happiness - lykkelig or "make your own luck and happiness." The people live by the Norwegian expression, "Happy are those who have passion."
• Hiking - "Out on a walk, never cross." Grumpy kids are given a "Norwegian rucksack" packed for adventure, containing a sweater, a swimsuit, an umbrella, sandwiches, and a Kvikk Luns ("quick lunch") candy bar, then sent outside.

I loved learning about the concern over Tunnelfeber (tunnel fever) as Norway builds more and more tunnels to shorten road trips that previously required ferries or twisty, out-of-the-way roads. These new miles-long tunnels, however, block the views and, for many citizens, ruin their connection to nature. 

From bunads (traditional dress for women) and the busybody Bunad Police who check to make sure this clothing is authentic, to the Easter Chicken ("Why would a rabbit bring around eggs?"), to the Sakte (slow) lifestyle, exemplified by the most popular Norwegian television show ever: a 134-hour video taken from a fixed camera on the prow of a boat during a six-day boat ride from Bergen to the Kirkenes on the Russian border), For the Love of Cod is a fascinating look into Norway and its culture, told by a conversational, curious, and funny narrator and the wide variety of Norwegians he interacts with. Thoroughly delightful, even if you never plan to visit this wonderful country. Highly recommended.

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

O'Reilly and Larry Habegger. Travelers' Tales: India.   

A vast collection of personal observations, reflections, experiences, and conversations from actual visitors to India. From Benaras to Mumbai to the Taj Mahal, to the Golden Temple, each traveler paints an authentic and emotional portrait of this complex country and its people.

Housekeeping

Robinson, Marilynne. Housekeeping. New York: Picador 1980. Print

First Sentences:
 

My name is Ruth. I grew up with my younger sister, Lucille, under the care of my grandmother, Mrs. Sylvia Foster, and when she died, of her sisters-in-law, Misses Lily and Nona Foster, and when they fled, of her daughter, Mrs. Sylvia Fisher.


Description:

As you probably noticed, I haven't posted any book recommendations for several months. Chalk it up to a severe case of reader's block. Nothing I tried to read during the COVID pandemic seemed to capture my attention. Fiction seemed too frivolous. Non-fiction too detailed. Humor? Forget it with everything going on politically and health-wise.

 

So what to do? I decided to pick up some old reliable favorite from past reading experience that never fails to satisfy. I have several of these that I turn to when desperate for the restorative power of great writing, characters, plot, and setting. My favorite reliables? J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Farley Mowat's Never Cry Wolf, P.G. Wodehouse's The Golf Omnibus, Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, and W. Somerset Maugham's Complete Short Stories 

 

This time I returned (after too many years away) to Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping. It's a very quiet, but unsettling novel about two young girls: narrator Ruth and younger sister Lucille, who are placed in the care of a quirky, distant aunt, Sylvia, after the suicide of their mother.

 

Sylvia is a drifter, a wanderer, living her life (by choice) riding trains, with no home, no ties, and no plans for the future. But she is coerced into settling back into her family home with these two young girls who need an adult. They live in their family home in the bone-chilling isolation of Fingerbone, Colorado on the shores of a mighty lake, the very same water that claimed the lives of their grandfather in a spectacular train wreck and their mother who drove off a cliff into it.

 

Sylvia is definitely not a homemaker, with her casual attention to orderliness, schedules, promises, food, and clothing. She is taken to wandering the neighborhoods through the night, "borrowing" a boat and rowing to secret locations. and hoarding newspapers stacked high in the house. But when her actions are questioned by authorities enough to removed the girls from her care, she proves to be fiercely protective of their small family and her role in it.

 

Eventually the girls respond to her lifestyle, each one choosing to either rebel or accept her quirks into their own lives. Their adolescent development and growth in trying to understand the mysteries of Sylvia slowly, steadily work to portray a picture of survival, family, and choices.

 

I loved this book, although, fair warning, it may not be for everyone. It paints a picture of life among people struggling to understand their place in the world, how choices affect them and others, all  set in a very cold, grey, vaguely ominous environment. But for readers interested in storytelling and writing at its best, I highly recommend Housekeeping.

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Doig, Ivan. The Whistling Season.   

A Chicago woman in 1909 answers an advertisement for a housekeeper from a widower and his three young sons living in an isolated Montana town. She writes that she "Can't cook, but doesn't bite," and gets the job sight unseen (by both of them). She brings her brother with her on the train and he reluctantly becomes a unique schoolteacher. Simply wonderful, a great read not to be missed.  (previously reviewed here)