The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich: A review

Any time that I learn that Louise Erdrich has published a new book, I jump on it just as quickly as I can so when I heard about The Mighty Red I made sure to get access to it as soon as possible. It did not disappoint and was, in fact, everything one could wish for in an Erdrich book.

The novel is set in the town of Argus, North Dakota, alongside the Red River that flows north through Minnesota and into Canada following the border between Minnesota and North Dakota. It is an agricultural area and the main crop is sugar beets. 

Sugar beets are the basis of the economy. Most of the families of this area are involved in some way with their production - growing them, harvesting them, transporting them, and processing them. They depend upon sugar beets and their fortunes rise or fall based on the outcome of the year's crop. 

It is 2008/2009 but the author takes us back through the beginnings of sugar beet farming along the Red River. She shows us how the use of fertilizers and pesticides and growing the same crop over and over on the land has depleted the soil. By this point, only the use of genetically modified seeds and toxic chemicals keeps the fields producing. It is a time of recession and the economic downturn has hit the already struggling community hard. 

We experience the story mostly through the character of Crystal Frechette who is a hauler of sugar beets. She works twelve-hour shifts on the highway during which she has plenty of time to worry about her 18-year-old daughter Kismet. When Crystal's husband, Martin, absconds with the town's church renovation fund, she and Kismet are left to live with the consequences of his action.

Kismet has transformed from a goth who had endured the derision of her peers and is now marrying Gary Geist who is set to inherit not one but two farms. Gary suffers from the trauma and fear resulting from a tragic accident and is ruled by his own need for redemption, while Kismet just yearns for escape. Their marriage forms the centerpiece of the novel.

Along with these characters, we also meet: Hugo, a homeschooled boy who is infatuated with Kismet; Eric, Gary's loyal friend; Winnie and Diz, Gary's parents who have their own marital struggles as well as the tension of trying to keep the farm going; and Jeniver, Crystal's lawyer, who possesses a sharp tongue to go with her brilliance. Each of these characters' stories help to fill out the portrait of a community going through changes and facing challenges.

As with so much of Erdrich's writing, the land itself is another character. The harsh climate and fertile soil of the Red River Valley helps to shape the lives of those who live there. The valley's cycle of flood and drought and of planting and harvest are metaphors for the challenges faced by its residents.

Erdrich employs multiple narrators to tell the story of people living through interwoven timelines that are a reflection of the meandering path of the river itself. By the end, she has given us a masterful story that reveals the tapestry of those lives and their environmental impact on the land they occupy. 

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

 
 

Midnight and Blue by Ian Rankin: A review

One of my favorite writers of mysteries for many years has been Ian Rankin. By now, his main character, Inspector John Rebus, feels like an old friend. A rather disreputable but never dull old friend. This is the twenty-fifth Rebus mystery and I've read them all. I'm happy to say that the quality of the writing has not flagged.

Midnight and Blue finds the now former Inspector Rebus in prison, HMP Saughton in Edinburgh. He is serving his sentence alongside gang leader Daryl Christie, who "runs" Trinity Hall where Rebus is housed. Christie has vowed to protect Rebus because he is grateful for his role in the death of Morris Gerald ("Big Ger") Cafferty who long-time readers of the series remember as Rebus' nemesis.

When we meet Rebus this time, he has already spent three months mingling with the general prison population at Saughton and getting to know them. Then, one of his fellow prisoners, a minor thief named Jackie Simpson, is murdered in his cell and the former DCI has a new mystery to solve.

DS Christine Esson and her new partner DI Jason Mulgrew are assigned to investigate the murder, but, for some reason, DI Malcolm Fox, formerly part of the Professional Standards unit but now in Organized Crime, also seems quite interested in the case. We learn that Simpson was one of Fox's snitches, although he doesn't inform the investigating team of that fact. 

While Rebus has been in prison, his former partner DI Siobhan Clarke has visited him regularly. She's now partnered with DS Cameron Colson, a particularly gloomy and irritating character who must be a trial to Clarke's patience. The two of them are currently charged with investigating the disappearance of 14-year-old Jasmine Andrews who left school one day and never made it home. When Fox discovers information that is relevant to the case of the missing girl, in typical Fox fashion, he fails to share it with Clarke or Colson. 

This is a story with many twists and turns, a trademark of the Rebus mystery series.  Even after all these years, Ian Rankin still manages to make the plot of each novel feel fresh and entertaining. And surprising. Every time I thought I had things figured out, some new detail threw me for a loop. It is the mark of this very good writer of mysteries to keep astonishing us with the creativity of his storylines. Long may he continue!

My rating: 4 of 5 stars 

 
 

Playground by Richard Powers: A review

I must confess up front that I had a very hard time with this book. I read it during and just after this month's election and I was distracted, finding it hard to think about anything other than the election and the enormous blunder that the voters in this country have just made. So, I can't say I really gave the book the attention that it deserved and now find it hard to comment on what I read. But I'll give a try.

The setting of the book is the French Polynesian island of Makatea. It is a tiny atoll in the middle of the Pacific and at the time that the book's action takes place its people are considering a life-changing proposal for their island home. We experience the story through the eyes of four people on the island.

First is Evie Beaulieu who, as a twelve-year-old, tested one of the world's first aqualungs under the eyes of her father in their backyard swimming pool. It was the start of her love affair with the ocean and she now spends her life submerging herself into the depths of that ocean to study the ecology and the creatures there.

Second are friends Rafi Young and Todd Keane. As teenagers the two attended an elite Chicago high school where they bonded over playing board games. Rafi went on to be mesmerized by the world of literature while Todd became an entrepreneur whose work will lead to a major breakthrough in artificial intelligence.  

Finally, there is Ina Aroita who grew up on naval bases across the Pacific and for whom art was her way of seeing and dealing with the world.

Makatea was once a main source of phosphorous which helped to fertilize crops and feed the world. Now it has been chosen for a new project that will send floating, autonomous cities out onto the open sea. But before that can happen, the island's citizens must vote on whether they will allow their home to used in this way. If they refuse to greenlight the project then the seasteaders will have to come up with another plan.

Richard Powers' descriptions of Makatea and its people are awe-inducing and made it really hard to put the book down. The result was that I zipped right through the 389 page tome. His writing is beautiful as he explores themes of technology and its impact on the environment and how it all influences humanity. After reading The Overstory, a rare five-star read for me, and Bewilderment, a four-star read, I was expecting quite a lot from Powers' latest book. I was not disappointed.

Guide Me Home by Attica Locke: A review

This is the third and apparently final entry in Attica Locke's "Highway 59" series. The action takes place in East Texas (Lufkin) and Houston, areas that I'm somewhat familiar with, having lived here for many years. Locke obviously knows the area well also and her descriptions of places and people are right on.

The main character in the novels is Texas Ranger Darren Mathews. In this instance, Darren is facing early retirement and a potential indictment for actions he has taken. On the plus side, he has finally met a woman that he loves and is planning on remaking his life with her in his beloved farmhouse. But then his peace is shattered by a visit from his estranged mother.

His mother is a cleaner at a sorority house at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches. She tells Darren that one of the members of the sorority - the only Black member - is missing. Darren is not sure he can trust his mother's story but he feels compelled to investigate. However, when he talks to the sorority members they all insist that the Black member, Sera, is not missing at all.

As Darren investigates and learns more about Sera's family and her hometown, things do not add up. Even though he gets no backup from local law enforcement or the Rangers, he is convinced that his mother, whom he has never trusted, may in fact be on to something and that an innocent young woman's life may depend on him getting this right. All he wants is finally to live in peace but he'll find no peace if it turns out that Sera is actually in danger and he did nothing.

Locke skillfully weaves East Texas history and politics into her story and it all rings true. She also gives us the fuller story of Darren's background and his years of growing up with the uncles who raised him which more fully explains his fraught relationship with his mother. 

While this book could potentially be read as a standalone, I don't recommend it. To get the full effect you really need to read the series from the beginning: Bluebird, Bluebird and Heaven, My Home. You'll be glad you did. 
 

Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver: A review

In 2022, I read Barbara Kingsolver's book The Bean Trees and I loved it, awarding it four out of five stars. When I heard realized that Kingsolver had written a new another book featuring some of the Bean Tree characters, I wasted no time getting hold of it. I'm happy to say that it did not disappoint. This one, too, is certainly worthy of four stars.

Once again we meet Taylor and her (maybe not legally) adopted daughter, Turtle. They are happily living in Tucson. Taylor is White with perhaps a drop of Cherokee blood from a great-grandparent. Turtle is a Cherokee child who had been "given" to Taylor in Oklahoma by the child's aunt who was trying to rescue her from an abusive situation. 

The events of this novel take place three years later. When Turtle is witness to an accident and a Cherokee lawyer named Annawake, who has a personal stake in the Indian Child Welfare Act, becomes involved and learns of Turtle's story, the lawyer realizes that things with Taylor's and Turtle's relationship don't quite add up.  She visits Taylor to discuss it but that causes Taylor to panic and she takes Turtle and runs. She knows that she needs to make her relationship with Turtle legal and she returns with her to Oklahoma to try to adopt her but without letting the tribe know.

Meanwhile, Taylor's mother, Alice, who has just emerged from a brief marriage, goes to stay with a relative on tribal lands and tries to get to know the family that Turtle came from in an attempt to resolve the sticky situation.  

Taylor is prone to making unwise decisions that prove unhelpful to her and Turtle's situation, but her motivation is always her love for Turtle and her fear of having her taken away from her. The reader feels for her (at least this reader does). Haven't we all been guilty of sometimes making unwise decisions, especially when our judgment is clouded by emotion? 

Kingsolver imbues her characters, even the less likable ones, with believable humanity. We care about them and their story and we want things to turn out for the best. I found Pigs in Heaven hard to put down for that reason. I couldn't wait to find out how things were going to be resolved and how the problems presented were going to be sorted out. It takes a rare writing talent to so thoroughly engage the reader's sympathies. Kingsolver is such a talent.

We Solve Murders by Richard Osman: A review

 Having previously read and enjoyed two Richard Osman mysteries - The Thursday Murder Club and The Last Devil to Die - I couldn't resist when I saw he had a new one out. So, once again, I abandoned my planned reading list and jumped right on it.

In We Solve Murders, Osman introduces us to some new characters:

Amy Wheeler is a private security guard who works at protecting VIPs. She is married to Adam, a man who she almost never sees. At the time that we meet them, they are on opposite side sides of the world. Strangely enough, it is a very happy marriage. (Or maybe that isn't so strange.) Her closest relationship seems to be with her father-in-law, Steve Wheeler.

Steve is a widower who is still grieving for his beloved wife and still talks to her every day, telling her about the events of that day. He is a retired cop and presently a private investigator. He is known at his local pub as a quiz and puzzle expert. He is a lover of cats, especially his own, named Trouble, and he can't resist a stray. And, of course, he is devoted to Amy.

Rosie D'Antonio is the VIP that Amy is presently charged with protecting. She is probably in her 80s, although her actual age is unknown, but she lives like a much younger person. Rosie is a successful and very famous writer. In her latest book, she has a character who seems a bit too close in description to a Russian oligarch named Vasiliy Karpin. That has earned her the unwanted attention of said oligarch and is the reason she needs protection.

Amy and Rosie, along with a former Navy Seal named Kevin who is now a chef, take refuge on a private South Carolina island. When an "influencer" named Andrew Fairbanks is found murdered on a yacht near the island, Amy realizes it is time to move on. She enlists Steve's help and together they drag Rosie with them as they embark on a heart-stopping adventure always just one step ahead of the hitmen who have been sent to eliminate Rosie. 

And who is the person sending those hitmen? His name is François Loubet. He is a powerful money smuggler whose modus operandi is sending influencers on fake jobs and using them to move his money around the world. Will Amy and Steve be able to outsmart Loubet and elude his hitmen long enough to ensure Rosie's safety? You can probably guess the answer to that question.

Osman is adept at drawing each of these characters. We feel that we know them all very well and we certainly know who to root for and who to boo! The plot itself is carefully explicated with nothing left to guess at. And there is plenty of action to keep us turning the pages, making for a very enjoyable and quick read. 

This, apparently, was the first in what Osman plans as a series. I'll be keeping an eye out for the next adventure featuring Amy and Steve.

Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout: A review

A new book by one of my favorite authors will definitely cause me to cast aside my planned reading list and jump right on it! So it was with Elizabeth Strout's latest, Tell Me Everything. I regret nothing.

Strout takes us back to Crosby, Maine, to check on some of the wonderful characters we have met in her other books. There's the iconic Olive Kitteridge, now in her nineties and living in a retirement community at the edge of town. There's Lucy Barton who now lives with her ex-husband, William, in a house by the sea. And there is Bob Burgess who has developed an abiding friendship with Lucy. The two of them go on walks where they talk about their fears and regrets and how they came to be who they are. 

The first lines of the book introduce Bob: "This is the story of Bob Burgess, a tall, heavyset man who lives in the town of Crosby, Maine, and he is sixty-five years old at the time that we are speaking of him. Bob has a big heart but he does not know that about himself; like many of us he does not know himself as well as he assumes to and he would never believe he had anything worthy in his life to document. But he does; we all do." 

Bob is the town lawyer and he has the unenviable task of defending a lonely man who is accused of murdering his mother. It was a crime that shocked the community of Crosby, a community that seems to have already made up its mind that the man is guilty. 

Meanwhile, Lucy has come to know Olive and she visits her each afternoon. The two of them tell each other stories about their lives and the "unrecorded lives" of people they have known. In the process, those people and their lives are given the respect and meaning that they deserve.

Elizabeth Strout writes about people who live ordinary lives, unremarkable in any way, and yet she shows us that those lives are indeed interesting. Each of us, no matter how ordinary, has a story to tell and has an impact for good or bad on the people and the world around us. 

Thus, Strout has written a character-driven novel for which the plot (such as one exists) is secondary. Her theme seems to be that it is important to notice the little things in life, because it is those little things that, in the end, create the big picture of our lives. And that, I think, is an important message for all of us to take to heart. Perhaps it takes a brilliant writer like Strout to make that clear to us.  

 

Weyward by Emilia Hart: A review

Weyward tells the stories of three women from three different centuries, women who are tied together by blood and by the common sanctuary that each of them found in a place called Weyward Cottage. We meet and get to know Kate from 2019, Violet from 1942, and Altha from 1619. Perhaps most importantly we get to know the cottage that is worlds away from the unhappiness and abuse that those three women experienced in their lives.

Kate had inherited the cottage in 2019 from a great-aunt whom she barely knew. The inheritance came at a fortuitous time as she needed to escape from an abusive relationship. As things became unbearable for her, she fled under cover of darkness to the cottage where she had never really spent any time previously. It felt to her like coming home.

In 1619, Altha was charged with witchcraft. She was accused of having murdered a local farmer by causing a stampede of his cattle that had trampled and killed him. Her mother had taught her knowledge of the natural world and such knowledge was considered dangerous by her neighbors who didn't possess or understand it. They could not appreciate that they, too, were a part of Nature.  

We meet Violet in 1942 as World War II is raging. Violet wants to seek an education like her brother is receiving but social convention at the time forbids it and she is trapped on her family's estate. Violet owns a mysterious locket that came from her mother and is engraved with the letter "W." Moreover, on a baseboard in her bedroom, she finds the word "weyward" scratched. What does it all mean?

Emilia Hart weaves together the stories of these three women and of their sanctuary cottage. Their stories give testament to the resilience of women and to the power of the natural world to transform and heal. 

The stories also make clear that not enough has changed regarding the status of women over more than four centuries. Even in the twenty-first century, women must often struggle to be considered equal to men in the rights they have and in their place in society. 

Hart's first book was a remarkable accomplishment that won her the Goodreads Best Historical Fiction and Best Debut Novel awards in 2023. It is so well-written that it is actually difficult to believe that this was her first novel, although it should be noted that she had previously published considerable short fiction. I think she likely has a bright future as a novelist.

Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson: A review

When I read that Kate Atkinson had released another book featuring former police detective and now private detective Jackson Brodie, I put my reading list aside and picked it up. I never miss a chance to spend time in the company of Brodie.

This entry is, it seems to me, an homage to Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None which I read long, long ago and which, along with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd engendered and confirmed my love of mysteries. 

Atkinson takes us to Rook Hall, the east wing of one of England's stately homes called Burton Makepeace where a "Murder Mystery Weekend" is being hosted by the cash-strapped owners of the home as a way of raising money. For only £1250 per person, the guests which include a vicar who has lost his faith and his ability to speak, an army major who lost a leg and his interest in life, a countess, and the Dowager Lady Milton as hostess will have the opportunity to solve a murder mystery. 

But then a real mystery intervenes when a convicted murderer on the run is thought to be hiding somewhere in Burton Makepeace's surrounding moors.

To further complicate matters, Jackson Brodie shows up along with DC Reggie Chase. They are there because of the theft of some paintings including a rather valuable one by J.M.W. Turner. The suspect is the housekeeper, Sophie, who has now gone missing. 

Moreover, there was another recent art theft from the home of a recently deceased widow, a Renaissance painting titled "The Woman with the Weasel." The suspect there was the widow's caregiver named Melanie. Are Melanie and Sophie actually the same person?

So all the plot elements are set for a typical Christie-like mystery, but wait! There's more! There's humor and quite a lot of it, actually. Much of the humor comes from Brodie's internal dialogs and philosophical musings with himself.

The plot was fairly intricate and engaged the little gray cells (as Poirot would say) in trying to sort it out. The result was a highly entertaining read that made me a bit sad to turn that last page.

 
 

The Dark Wives by Ann Cleeves: A review

So, I had my reading list all set, and then I heard that there was a new Vera Stanhope mystery out. Reading list tossed aside, I jumped right into that new book. I regret nothing. I will always drop everything for a new Vera mystery for she is probably my favorite of all the fictional detectives of my acquaintance. I strongly identify with the middle-aged, frumpy, overweight Vera. (I wonder why that is?)

The Dark Wives of the title refers to a stone monument in the Northumberland countryside. But the story itself revolves around Rosebank, a care home for troubled teens in the coastal village of Longwater. 

The mystery begins when a dog walker discovers a man's murdered body outside Rosebank one early morning. The victim turns out to be a Rosebank staff member named Josh. He had been scheduled to work the previous night but he never showed up. 

At the same time, one of the home's residents, fourteen-year-old Chloe Spence has disappeared. Is it possible that this child committed the murder? Or perhaps that she saw something that caused her to run away?

DI Vera Stanhope and her team are called in to investigate. Her team now consists of the stalwart DS Joe Ashworth and a new member DC Rosie Bell, replacing DC Holly Clarke who died in the previous book in the series, The Rising Tide.

The team has hardly begun the investigation when a second murder occurs. This time the body is discovered near the Dark Wives monument. Vera believes that the key to solving the mysteries will be finding Chloe because she is sure that she must know something that relates to the killings.

Watching Vera work is an unadulterated pleasure. What she lacks in tact she makes up for in an unerring instinct for ferreting out the truth and recognizing it when she finds it. That instinct and her no-nonsense pursuit of the truth have served her well and have earned her the respect of her community.  She is a brilliant investigator.

And now I am left to wonder if we will ever get another television adaptation of the books in the series. I don't know if Brenda Blethyn who played the character of Vera so well is still available to play her again. It would be a shame if she isn't. Still, no doubt there is another actress out there somewhere who would be a good fit. Make it so, television producers! 

 

Camino Ghosts by John Grisham: A review

In the 1700s, there was a thriving slave trade of people stolen from their homes in Africa and brought to the Americas. On one of those ships bound for America was an ancestor of Lovely Jackson. Her ancestor survived the wreck of that ship off the coast of Florida and managed to swim, with other survivors, to a small island where they were able to live, free and undisturbed.

Descendants of those first residents continuously inhabited the island until 1955 when Lovely Jackson, the last resident, left what was then known as Dark Isle. She was fifteen years old. 

Now Dark Isle has attracted the attention of a predatory land developer. He wants to build a bridge to the island from the mainland and furnish it with high-priced condos and casinos.

This story, however, begins with a current-day wedding. Writer Mercer Mann marries her long-time beau, Thomas. Mercer mentions to some attendees at the wedding that she is searching for a subject for her next book and her friend, Bruce Cable, owner of Bay Books, suggests the story of Dark Isle.

Lovely Jackson is now in her eighties and lives on Camino Island. Lovely had once written and self-published a book about Dark Isle and some were sold at Bay Books. Bruce arranges a meeting between Lovely and Mercer and both of them eventually accept Bruce's proposal of a nonfiction book about Dark Isle.

Mercer begins her research, hoping to find information that might bolster Lovely's claim to the island. Meantime, Lovely and her legal team of retired lawyer Steven Mahon and his paralegal, Diane Krug, prepare for the legal battle.

This book is actually the third in a series, but it is not necessary to have read the first two to "get" this story. I had not read them, although I might now do so because I found this tale quite intriguing. It is no accident that John Grisham's books sell millions of copies. He is a master storyteller.