brazil - a cook's tour by christopher idone

Beyond the fact that they do not like capital letters in the title the book is a winner.  Written in 1995, this is a travel book, cook book, and photographic tour of a country that Kate and I found colorful and exotic with wonderful fruits and foods and great people.

Christopher Idone travels to a variety of Brazilian landscapes to sample the foods.  People often forget or never learn that Brazil is the size of the "48" states of America and that means no trip can do justice to the entire country.

But I found his writing bringing me back to the places and the beautiful warm people who shared so much with us.  We can feel the people in this "cookbook" even though it is the food that is supposed to be the stars.  But the foods reflect the differing regions - the resources and the origins of the people who live there which makes the food of Brazil some of the greatest and most diverse in the world.

To top it off - the color photos really do justice to the subject matter and enhance the readers experience.  I do not usually review cookbooks, but this was more of cookbook within a photographic book within a travel book.

Now I am committed to making Pudim de Leite da Augusta - a Flan because that is Kate's ultimate desert, but there are many fish dishes, some unusual items like chopped beef in pumpkin, the recipe for the classic Brazilian drink - Caipirinha (I know this from experience) and the basic Feijoada.

The Dog Who Knew too Much, Spencer Quinn

The Dog Who Knew too Much, Spencer Quinn

This is the fourth in the Little Detective Agency run by Bernie Little and his Ace sidekick, Chet the Jet, the four legged and brainier of the two.  I have loved this series, but keep wondering when the premise will grow old, when Chet will have used up his bag of tricks .  The answer is – not yet.

This is a kidnapping case with a wonderful group of loony characters for our heroes to interact with, get beaten up by, and ultimately outsmart.  Like Chet, the women in Bernie’s life are also smarter than him, but he is persistent and in the end it is his dog and his doggedness that saves the day.

Lost in the woods or snatched,  murders in a gold mine, hippies, bad sheriffs and judges, moron deputies, a self-absorbed camp counselor and a bad guy who is overwhelmed by the other bad ones makes this a maze of characters and in the end you know all the ones that need to pay a price – will.

So as usual, Chet has to handle a part of the case on his own while Bernie is out of commission and despite the fact that he doesn’t really know what he is doing, he does the right thing and saves the day with smiles, human, and satisfaction.

So is this the end?  Have we run the gamut of dog detective stories?  All I know is that like Chet, there is a little black puppy running around with one black and one white ear.  Could there be more to the partnership?

“Featuring canine narrator Chet and his human companion Bernie—“the coolest human/pooch duo this side of Wallace and Gromit” (Kirkus Reviews).

Elizabeth Street, Laurie Fabiano

Elizabeth Street, Laurie Fabiano

How do you categorize this book – is it historical fiction, historical memoir or fiction enriched history?  The author has taken her own history, the story of her Italian immigrant family that traveled to the New World from Scilla, Italy at the beginning of the twentieth century and fleshed it out with historical research on the people, place, and times.  Then she married the facts of research with the stories of family that were painfully extracted over a long time of listening and probing and added some fictional details that give the individuals and events more three dimensional form.

It is well written and flows so well that I was a hundred pages in quicker than I expected and totally waiting for the next chance to sit down and read.  What this does is not just represent her family, but the struggle of all immigrants in a nation that pretends to have open arms, that is built by immigrants who first resented the native population and then represented the newest people to follow their path.

We have to see this in the craziness that is the U.S.  The African Americans that are still so resented by many white populations were brought here by the ancestors of many of those who are filled with bias and if we remember back to reconstruction, many wanted to ship them back to Africa.  The Chinese were brought in to finish the transcontinental Railroads that were the pride of the 19^th century, then they were resented.  In the past economic boom we brought Hispanics in to do what the dominant groups did not want to do, but when the economy tanked, as it is wont to do, the nation went to building a wall.

But the issues of bias is not just along clear color lines.  The Irish were imported because we needed workers and then the Micks were denigrated.  The Italians flowed in to meet the labor shortages of building New York and they became the Dagos.  The repetition of the story is repulsive, but does not seem to be ended – think about the U.S. allies in Vietnam – the Hmong.

This book follows the Italians.  One family seeking to get better and their connection with the Old Country – a country that was in the South of Italy, a country that had just formed and did not even feel like the home country until they were forced to accept the single status in response to the pressures they encountered as they became lumped together.

Within the crowded streets and tenements of Elizabeth street there was massive poverty, death among the workers who were expendable assets to the larger companies, births, celebrations and terror and all of these were visited upon the family that is profiled in this “true” story.

I find myself fascinated with the fact that the people were victimized by the capitalists who owned the city and by the criminals who flowed across the seas with them.  Italy allowed criminals in numbers almost as great as immigrants to cross the borders – a purging that they might have liked in Italy, but one that created a parasitic existence in New York where the powerful Black Hand became the organized crime of the city.  And the people did not trust the police even though Joseph Petrosino was an amazing person - a policeman who organized the Italian squad and fought a battle to clear the streets and make people safe.  He was assassinated and the result was a confirmation that the police force would become untrustworthy and in fact people learned not to trust anyone not in their family. 

And as we read and think about what happens we see that power likes power.  The money likes the muscle and the money that flows from the muscle and ultimately the strongest of the criminals because part of society while the tenement families rally together and in this book face a bombing, a kidnapping, and threats that no one should have to have in their personal story.

Death Along the Spirit Road, C. M. Wendelboe

Death Along the Spirit Road, C. M. Wendelboe

A Lakota FBI man, not the most popular man on Pine Ridge, but Manny has returned to his place of origin to solve a murder.  He is one of the most proficient FBI agents, but destined to be sent to every crime on a reservation because he is Indian.

In this case he must confront his own family – a brother who was now free after serving time for a murder that was committed when Manny was only 8, his former sister-in-law, his niece, and the memory of his Uncle who raised him and planted the basics of Lakota traditionalism in Manny’s mind.

He must take on a rookie reservation cop, Willie, as his partner because the man in charge – Lumpy – is an old rival of Manny who is not happy to have him back in town.  Lumpy’s ex-wife, however, is very happy to have Manny there and Manny spends as much time avoiding her as solving the crime.  It is Willie, ever eager to learn, who enters Manny’s personal realm when he says, “Once I wanted to be an FBI agent.  So I went to college in Vermillion right out of high school.  Belted out my criminal justice requirements.  I even filled out a federal application.  But whenever I’d come back during break, I’d always hear dead elders calling me, like they wanted me to stick around. You ever get that feeling, that some lost soul was tugging at your arm, forcing you to return?”

Although he becomes the victim of more crimes than the one he is solving which is a result of both his reputation as an FBI hotshot and his habit of stirring up old memories.  There are many characters that people the novel, but as much as the characters that are in the mystery it is the presence of the traditional Lakota Spirit Road that challenges Manny and his life. He is confronted by the reservation and its hopelessness as well as the memories and connections to AIM that had drawn in his brother, his ex-sister-in-law, and the murdered victim.

“The FBI had hired him, trained him, made him one of the nation’s premier investigators. He had given back far more than he had received, however, and had forsaken his heritage for his position.  Duty wasn’t one of the four Lakota virtues.  Even before he thought of excuses not to maintain his loyalty to the bureau, he had his answer:  Uncle Marion.  Duty, Unc told him, was as important at the traditional virtues.  Duty is what kept a man walking when he should be crawling, crawling when he should be lying on his deathbed.  Generosity, fortitude, bravery and wisdom were the four Lakota virtues.  Duty was Manny’s virtue.”

I found this to be a real page turner.  My familiarity with the SD reservations might be one reason, but I think the personalities and interactions in the context of the reservation is strong.

Bayou Farewell, Mike Tidwell

Bayou Farewell, Mike Tidwell

At a time when we are caught in the struggle to pass the Restore Act in congress and working to stabilize and recover the coast of Louisiana – this book is essential reading.  The author, a travel writer for the Washington Post, wanted to find the most isolated culture in the country and chose to explore (hitchhike from boat to boat) the Louisiana coastline – the Cajun country and the bayous, marshlands and off shore barrier islands.  http://www.restorethegulf.gov/ 

What he found was a wonderful mix of Cajun, Vietnamese, and Huoma Indians, three distinct cultures living side by side, not blending, but each creating a living in the organic richness of one of the continent’s most important biological banks.  The Huoma and the Cajun have a family tree that dates back so many generations that the landscape is part of who they are while the Vietnamese are displaced to this equivalent to the Mekong Delta and they are seeking a way to climb the economic ladder and have less connection to the place.

Tidwell spends time on the boats and staying in the homes of these swamp people.  He eats with them, listens to their stories, learns some of their personalities and takes the reader on one of the most unique cultural tours you can find in a book. 

While doing this he is shocked almost daily by the disappearing land – the equivalent of 1 ½ Manhattan Islands per year and the land submerges beneath the gulf – the result of erosion from canals dug by the oil industry and the caging of the Mississippi with its load of sediments that should be replenishing the landscape annually.  Instead we have a unique situation where we are losing the rich topsoils of Iowa and other agricultural lands in to the waters because of our system of industrial farming and disregard for winds, rains, and runoff.  That soil, enriched with chemical additives and nitrogen fertilizers flows south in a river that is thick in sediment and it dumps at the end of the Mississippi into the gulf where the freshwater, fertilizers, and other components create a deadzone and at the same time, the Louisiana coast is not getting this rich runoff to stabilize and replenish its rich coastal land and life.  So we will lose land, homes, cemeteries, towns, birds, shrimp, culture, and natural beauty – unless we do the practical and RESTORE the gulf, divert waters and sediment from the Mississippi and cure two problems at once – the shore loss and the deadzone growth.  It makes sense, but it does not mean that our nation will commit to it.

The book was written in 2001 and in the text Tidwell warns that this loss of land will lead to severe damage from future hurricanes.  It was before Katrina and Rita moved in to prove his premonition right.

He also visits the giant oil rigs that dot the coast – Wikipedia describes these structures - An oil platform, also referred to as an offshore platform or, somewhat incorrectly, oil rig, is a large structure with facilities to drill wells, to extract and process oil and natural gas, and to temporarily store product until it can be brought to shore for refining and marketing. In many cases, the platform contains facilities to house the workforce as well.

Depending on the circumstances, the platform may be fixed to the ocean floor, may consist of an artificial island, or may float.  There are 4000 of these in the gulf!

Tidwell in his epilogue writes, “We could just as easily use our love of big tools and grand engineering schemes to repair what is broken along the Louisiana coast and so show the rest of the world how to care for an ailing planet.  We could do that – or we could stay the course, building more and more contraptions like the oil platforms around me now, insisting that everything heel before our ambitions, following the same old story, defiling larger and larger realms of the only planet we have to live on.”  This book was written before the BP oil spill.

The writer is passionate about the landscape and the people and provides the kind of human background that is essential to support the efforts to get support for protecting the landscape.

Read the Mother Jones interview and book summary:  http://motherjones.com/environment/2005/10/bayou-farewell 

The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb, Melanie Benjamin

The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb, Melanie Benjamin

A fascinating biographical, historical fiction.  Melanie Benjamin has gathered the information that is available about General Tom Thumb’s wife – Lavinnia Warren and the author has done a wonderful job of capturing the historical context of this true story and filled it in with an imaginative combination of personality and texture.

We enjoyed the story and the threads of reality that traced the “miniature people” in relationship to P T Barnum.  Imagine what it must be like to be a “perfect person” in miniature.  Would you feel miniature or would you feel like everyone else?  Inside your miniature body is a full sized mine, a creative person who is only able to earn a living by exhibiting themselves as a curiosity. 

She does not come out very lovable, but would we be pleasant under this conditions?  In fact the strength of the person – a real attribute – makes her famous and a member of elite society.  She meets presidents, queens, the super-rich, and the famous people of her day.  Tom Thumb was the ulta famous miniature – a creation of both biology and P T Barnum’s fertile imagination, yet Tom was content and close friend of Barnum.

Vinnie was not so content, but she was pragmatic and she married Tom because it made good financial sense.  However, this did not mean happiness.  The Tom Thumb marriage became the sensation of the nation with children dressed as the four miniatures – a site so ridiculous I had to research and find out it is true.

And yes they were in the Hull fire, on one of the first trains to the Pacific Northwest and in many other famous locations and events.  There was  a time in the narrative that I thought the author really went overboard to get T R and Bill Cody and other celebrities in the text, but once again research said that this was the truth.  In many ways they crossed some of the most important aspects of American History and their story was not of a miniature set of lives, but of a grand life lived by people who were described as miniatures.

There is death and birth, dramatic events, personal conflicts and sub texts enough to fill many books.  The story can drag at times and feel too dense at others, but the pace of life is like that.  I recommend the book, but historical fiction hardly seems an adequate category.