NEW BOOKS FOR APRIL

 NONFICTION

 MIDNIGHT IN CHERNOBYL by Adam Higginbotham, 2019

The full story of the events that started that night in the control room of Reactor No.4 of the V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Plant has never been told—until now. Through two decades of reporting, new archival information, and firsthand interviews with witnesses, journalist Adam Higginbotham tells the full dramatic story, including Alexander Akimov and Anatoli Dyatlov, who represented the best and worst of Soviet life; denizens of a vanished world of secret policemen, internal passports, food lines, and heroic self-sacrifice for the Motherland. Midnight in Chernobyl, award-worthy nonfiction that reads like sci-fi, shows not only the final epic struggle of a dying empire but also the story of individual heroism and desperate, ingenious technical improvisation joining forces against a new kind of enemy.

FICTION

 Two local writers

THE ORACLE FILES : ESCAPE by Masheri Chapelle, 2017

 The Oracle Files: Escape presents a new insight into an old world from the psychic perspective of Elizabeth Beeson Chase. Cursed by her mother at age six, Elizabeth is forced to battle Malachai, an angry West African ghost, as she rises from slave to Quaker, to "Blue Vein" Socialite, in the harsh Black and White world of 1850 New York. With the help of her Quaker father and her spirit guide, she creates a shelter of love wherever she goes. However, the raging storm of racism, the looming threat of slavery, and Malachai's relentless hauntings pelt her life with indomitable fear. After a painful betrayal sends her running into New York's dangerous FIVE POINTS, she emerges with a gypsy's secret to battle Malachai and racism. Freed from Malachai's ghostly grip, and ready to embrace her secret "Blue Vein" world, she quickly discovers her freedom will cost more than she is willing to pay.

This is the first of a proposed trilogy that is set, at least in this first volume in 1850 and the New York/Philadelphia corridor. The author, Masheri Chapelle, is chair of the New Hampshire Writers’ Project Board of Trustees. She is a Data Analyst by day and a novelist, playwright, and intuitive consultant by night. She utilizes her profound spiritual experiences in the telling of her stories and plays. 

BEAUTIFUL, FRIGHTENING AND SILENT by Jennifer Ann Gordon, 2020

 Adam, a young alcoholic, slowly descends into madness while dealing with the psychological scars of childhood trauma which are reawakened when his son and wife die in a car accident that he feels he is responsible for. After a failed suicide attempt, and more group meetings that he can mention. Adam hears a rumor of a Haunted Island off the Coast of Maine, where “if someone wants it bad enough” they could be reunited with a lost loved one. In his desperate attempt to connect with the ghost of his four-and-a half year old son, he decides to go there, to Dagger Island, desperate to apologize to, or be condemned by, his young son. Adam is not sure what he deserves or even which of these he wants more. While staying in a crumbling old boarding house, he becomes involved with a beautiful and manipulative ghost who has spent 60 years tormenting the now elderly man who was her lover, and ultimately her murderer. The three of them create a “Menage-a-Guilt" as they all come to terms with what it is that ties them so emotionally to their memories and their very “existence”.

Beautiful, Frightening, and Silent is a poetic fever dream of grief, love, and the terrifying ways that obsession can change who we are.

Trigger warnings: suicide attempt, alcoholism, some f bombs, a murder, child abuse, psychological manipulation, etc.

Jennifer Gordon is resident of Concor.  Beautiful, Frightening and Silent is her debut novel.

 OTHER FICTION  

THE NIGHT WATCHMAN by Louise Erdrich, 2020.

Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel bearing plant, the first factory located near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a Chippewa Council member who is trying to understand the consequences of a new “emancipation” bill on its way to the floor of the United States Congress. It is 1953 and he and the other council members know the bill isn’t about freedom; Congress is fed up with Indians. The bill is a “termination” that threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land and their very identity. How can the government abandon treaties made in good faith with Native Americans “for as long as the grasses shall grow, and the rivers run”?

Since graduating high school, Pixie Paranteau has insisted that everyone call her Patrice. Unlike most of the girls on the reservation, Patrice, the class valedictorian, has no desire to wear herself down with a husband and kids. She makes jewel bearings at the plant, a job that barely pays her enough to support her mother and brother. Patrice’s shameful alcoholic father returns home sporadically to terrorize his wife and children and bully her for money. But Patrice needs every penny to follow her beloved older sister, Vera, who moved to the big city of Minneapolis. Vera may have disappeared; she hasn’t been in touch in months, and is rumored to have had a baby. Determined to find Vera and her child, Patrice makes a fateful trip to Minnesota that introduces her to unexpected forms of exploitation and violence, and endangers her life.

Thomas and Patrice live in this impoverished reservation community along with young Chippewa boxer Wood Mountain and his mother Juggie Blue, her niece and Patrice’s best friend Valentine, and Stack Barnes, the white high school math teacher and boxing coach who is hopelessly in love with Patrice.

In the Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich creates a fictional world populated with memorable characters who are forced to grapple with the worst and best impulses of human nature. Illuminating the loves and lives, the desires and ambitions of these characters with compassion, wit, and intelligence, The Night Watchman is a majestic work of fiction from this revered cultural treasure.

 REDEPLOYENT by Phil Klay, 2014

I would not normally have picket up this book, but it was highly recommended by a respected friend who I would not have predicted to have read the book. We have been at war so very long now and a whole part of our population of young -- and not not so young -- have been deployed. Their reality of life in a combat zone is far, far different from mine. Maybe worse, their reality of returning to what is called 'home,' but which may actually be 'away' and 'home' is in the zone. The book is fascinating, extremely written, poignant and all those adjectives. Those of us who have not experienced War, should read this in an effort to try to understand and appreciate the changes -- horrific and sublime -- that these warriors undergo from their deployments.

Here is the publisher's blurb

Phil Klay's Redeployment takes readers to the frontlines of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, asking us to understand what happened there, and what happened to the soldiers who returned. Interwoven with themes of brutality and faith, guilt and fear, helplessness and survival, the characters in these stories struggle to make meaning out of chaos.

In "Redeployment", a soldier who has had to shoot dogs because they were eating human corpses must learn what it is like to return to domestic life in suburbia, surrounded by people "who have no idea where Fallujah is, where three members of your platoon died." In "After Action Report", a Lance Corporal seeks expiation for a killing he didn't commit, in order that his best friend will be unburdened. A Morturary Affairs Marine tells about his experiences collecting remains - of U.S. and Iraqi soldiers both. A chaplain sees his understanding of Christianity, and his ability to provide solace through religion, tested by the actions of a ferocious Colonel. And in the darkly comic "Money as a Weapons System", a young Foreign Service Officer is given the absurd task of helping Iraqis improve their lives by teaching them to play baseball. These stories reveal the intricate combination of monotony, bureaucracy, comradeship and violence that make up a soldier's daily life at war, and the isolation, remorse, and despair that can accompany a soldier's homecoming.

Redeployment is poised to become a classic in the tradition of war writing. Across nations and continents, Klay sets in devastating relief the two worlds a soldier inhabits: one of extremes and one of loss. Written with a hard-eyed realism and stunning emotional depth, this work marks Phil Klay as one of the most talented new voices of his generation.

 

 TWO BOOKS FROM 'THE IMMIGRANT EXPERIENCE'

AMERICAN DIRT by Jeanine Cummins, 2020

 Lydia Quixano Pérez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while there are cracks beginning to show in Acapulco because of the drug cartels, her life is, by and large, fairly comfortable.

Even though she knows they’ll never sell, Lydia stocks some of her all-time favorite books in her store. And then one day a man enters the shop to browse and comes up to the register with a few books he would like to buy—two of them her favorites. Javier is erudite. He is charming. And, unbeknownst to Lydia, he is the jefe of the newest drug cartel that has gruesomely taken over the city. When Lydia’s husband’s tell-all profile of Javier is published, none of their lives will ever be the same.

Forced to flee, Lydia and eight-year-old Luca soon find themselves miles and worlds away from their comfortable middle-class existence. Instantly transformed into migrants, Lydia and Luca ride la bestia—trains that make their way north toward the United States, which is the only place Javier’s reach doesn’t extend. As they join the countless people trying to reach el norte, Lydia soon sees that everyone is running from something. But what exactly are they running to?
  
American Dirt has become very controversial.  Its writing has been highly praised by reviwers and the book was chosen for Oprah's Book Club. It is an important story about Latinx immigrants. However, because American Dirt was written by an 'Anglo' author. The main criticism of the book has been one of cultural appropriation: how can a white American possibly write about the experience of a Mexican mother who is running from the cartel?

One fact has been highlighted by the book. The book, the experience of a Mexican mother entering the USA illegally and written by a white American author was immediately picked up by reviewers such as Oprah Winfrey. On the other hand Latinx authors  are poorly represented in mainstream literature. We can hope that this furor will lead to the recognition of more Latinx literature.

THE HOUSE OF BROKEN ANGELS by Luis Alberto Urrea, 2018

Prizewinning and bestselling writer Luis Urrea has written his Mexican coming-to-America story and his masterpiece. Destined to sit alongside other classic immigrant novels, The House of Broken Angels is a sprawling and epic family saga helmed by patriarch Big Angel. The novel gathers together the entire De La Cruz clan, as they meet for the final birthday party Big Angel is throwing for himself, at home in San Diego, as he nears the end of his struggle with cancer and reflects on his long and full life.

But when Big Angel's mother, Mama America, approaching one hundred, dies herself as the party nears, he must plan her funeral as well. There will be two family affairs in one weekend: a farewell double-header. Among the attendants is his half-brother and namesake, Little Angel, who comes face to face with the siblings with whom he shared a father but not, as the weekend proceeds to remind him, a life.

This story of the De La Cruzes is the story of what it means to be a Mexican in America, to have lived two lives across one border. It is a tale of the ravaging power of death to shore up the bits of life you have forgotten, whether by choice or not. Above all, this finely wrought portrait of a deeply complex family and the America they have come to call home is Urrea at his purest and best. Teeming with brilliance and humor, authentic at every turn, The House of Broken Angels cements his reputation as a storyteller of the first rank.

 

When Ii picked up AMERICAN DIRT from Toadstool in Peterborough, Willard directed me to HOUSE OF BROKEN ANGELS which he had just finished reading. If AMERICAN DIRT was reviled because of  'cultural appropriation  'HOUSE OF BROKEN ANGELS was the 'real' thing. This is an incredible book. This is one book I am saving to reread.