The Lighthouse Road by Peter Geye

Peter Geye presents a compelling story set up north (think Grand Marais and Grand Portage) along the north shore of Lake Superior set in a town named Gunflint.  It is a story of a rugged landscape that challenges the people who have migrated here from their Scandinavian homelands or other countries where opportunity was too limited for the growing population.  In the town of Gunflint the cultures come together - it would be wrong to say that they collided because the act of surviving did not leave time for petty arguments.

The central figure is named Odd Einar Eide an orphan raised by Hosea - chemist, doctor, dentist, store keeper, and liquor smuggler.  Hosea is thoughtful and we can see that he really cares for the orphan, but we are kept in the dark until the end about his relationship with the mother - no he is not the real father.  Hosea has traveled to Chicago to bring home another young orphan - someone who is 14 years older than Einar and much more experienced with the world.

He gets her from a whorehouse where she was working the hat check and brings her to Gunflint to pose as his daughter while also posing for pornographic post cards.  Hosea for all his faults does not have sexual relationships with Rebekah, but he is a mysterious force for both her and Einar whom he employs to run his illegal liquor and to catch fish.

We learn about Einar's mother, a Norwegian who lands in Gunflint to find that the aunt that she was supposed to stay with has hung herself in the barn and the uncle is mad.  No language, no resources, not much future so she ends up working as a cook in the local lumber camp where she earns some money and suffers a rape that results in Einar.

This is a group of quiet people - stoic and reserved - emotions inside, but not allowed out. Frustrations brew, deceptions are hidden, and Rebekah and Einar find solace in their relationship.  A relationship that leads to Duluth, a child and the thought of moving forward, but this is not the kind of people who dream big - they become anchored to a place and life and it is hard to leave.  

So the romance must make it through this filter and whether it succeeds or fails is for you to discover when you read the book.  For me it was a good portrait of a time, place, and people. 

The Art of Fielding, Chad Harback

Why does baseball make such a great metaphor for life?  Is so unique among all sports - no time limit, each player is part of a team, but each play is based on an individual or a few individuals within the team.  It is a sport that records your errors on a big score board while you stand in front of the audience waiting for the next play.  It is the part we play in our jobs, our families, our nation.  The individual part of a bigger whole.

People say that you do not need to be a baseball fan to read this excellent novel, but it sure helps.  Set at a college in WI rather than the professionals the author is able to deal with more of the eccentricities of the individual and their life before college.  The insecurities, the lack of experience, the dream, and the coming together of so many different stories to begin anew.

A skinny shortstop who is destined for greatness until something in his mind prevents his throws from getting where they are supposed to go, a young man who focuses all his energies on the other players to push them and make them better because he knows he is as good as he will ever go.  The young gay male who attracts the sixty year old college president who has never had a gay moment before.  Those are the stars, or rather the elements that combine in this brew.  With other players adding spice at times and finally the one female character, the daughter of the college president who manages to have sex with both the primary characters and yet serves as the ultimate balance between them.

She brings a female honesty that the all male cast cannot serve themselves and it creates tensions and diversions.  Relations appear, connectors to a past that does not really matter within the confines of the college and each person must face their personal demons - alone while maintaining their college roles - like the player on the baseball team.

I could not put it down.  The conversations, the situation, and the resolutions seemed so right for the story and the individuals became real personas as I read and anxiously waited for the chance to read the next portion of the novel.

Westward I Go Free, by Corrine Hosfeld Smith

In 1861 with the civil war in its infancy, Henry David Thoreau, an ardent abolitionist who gave the eulogy for John Brown, left the east with young companion - Horace Mann, and began the last and longest journey of his life.  From Concord to Minneapolis and back.  Thoreau took this journey for health - he was suffering from Tuberculosis and would succumb shortly after returning and his companion from the family known for education reform would also die of the dreaded disease at a very young age.

Thoreau had written his classic works - Walden and Civil Disobedience and was well known as a lecturer in the region.  At this time, no movies, no TV's no professional sports teams, and limited theater made good lecturers a form of entertainment and good thought provoking speakers like Emerson and Thoreau were in demand.

We have all the exploits of Thoreau - Maine, Cape Cod, and the Concord and Merrimac Rivers in book form so we can combine them with Walden and his essays and we have a thorough look at this historic icon.  But the final journey was not so documented until Corrine Hosfeld Smith took on the task and all Thoreauvians and environmental historians should be grateful, but the readers should not be limited to this audience.

This is a travelogue both historic and modern as Corrine investigated each location and shared the history of the towns, the people, the railroad, and the land that could have met Thoreau and adds her own travel narrative as she sought to find the Thoreau images.

Corrine is a good writer and her combination of efforts to bring Thoreau alive is enjoyable reading.  It is also a detective work as she works from minimum resources in the journals of the two men and combines that with the historians and events of the day.

We learn who lived in the towns - not just those we know that Thoreau met and those he did meet are given biographic treatment to fill in their historic presence.  We know for example that Walden had been sold out by 1859 and the publisher delayed the second printing until 1862, by which Thoreau was dead, and the book has never been out of print since.

The journey was by train until the Mississippi River at Dunleith - now East Dubuque and then a steamboat took Henry up the mighty Mississippi to the Twin Cities.  Imagine how much this active observer must have seen - his notes from botanizing helps us in the Niagara Canyon and in Minneapolis (St Anthony), but there is so much more we wish he could have shared if another book could have been written or a lecture presented.

We owe a debt of gratitude to Ms Smith for pulling together the resources that were compiled in this book and the insights that make the travel and terrain of Thoreau and Mann come alive in our 21st century minds.

American Canopy by Eric Rutkow

This book could not be better suited to me - a lover of trees and the instructor for Environmental History at Hamline University.  I bought the book in Bozeman with great anticipation and I am so pleased that I did.

Eric's bio says he graduated from Harvard Law School and worked as a lawyer on environmental issues and now is pursuing a doctorate in American History.  Through this combination he has found the tie between American History and the forests that cover our continent.  Both histories have both inspiration and devastation.  We love our trees, but we have consumed them without pause during the first two centuries that Europeans lived on the North American Continent.  Then we found a way to turn our actions around and began to protect trees like the Redwoods in Yosemite and other National Parks and we created national forests to harvest the lumber while including old tree preserves.

The consumption of trees for building railroads and bridges, even for the construction of old model T's was part of our greatest resource wealth and it made us a wealthy nation.  But the trees were being consumed quicker than they could grow and the history in this book looks at the people, places and events along the timeline of the American nation to see where and how those changes came to be.

The names that appear are a wonderful who's who of environmental history from the unappreciated Bartons - the first commercial botanist during the colonial period and Catesby the artist and explorer to Lewis and Clark and Daniel Boone, John Muir, Theodore and Franklin D Roosevelt, Pinchot, JFK, Gaylord Nelson and on and on.  If those names are not familiar with you - you definitely need to read this enjoyable and well written history.

From the time when the White Pines were designated for the King's trees to Johnny Appleseed and on to the giant forests of the Pacific Northwest where Weyerhaeuser established the last pieces of his gigantic footprint of his forest legacy we encounter the industry, the trees, and the people who make up this vivid story.

It makes me think of the marvelous trees that have marked my life - the Sacred Little Cedar on Lake Superior at Grand Portage and the old growth that surrounded us in the Porcupine Mountain Wilderness of Michigan during our walk around Lake Superior, the Ancient White Pines I lived beneath for 38 years at the Audubon Center, the redwoods of CA, the Sitka Spruce and Douglas Fir on the NW, the ancient Bristlecone Pines of NV/UT, the short and spreading willows of the arctic, and the magnificent giant Kauri of New Zealand.  Each tree an inspiration, each a part of the story of the planet, and most threatened at one time by the voracious consumption of humans.

Lighting Out For the Territory by Roy Morris

Perhaps you thought you read this book before – there was a book called Roughing It by Mark Twain that covers the same time period, but that was only one version and as one of the buddies of Sam Clemens on the Virginia City newspaper liked to say – “Get the facts first, then you can distort them as much as you like.”  It was advice that Clemens took as he chose his new name – Mark Twain while writing at the paper.

We begin with Twain in Missouri and Iowa towns at the beginning of the war, his attachment to a futile little militia that road around looking busy, but staying out of conflict and then his journey west when his brother Orion took a job as secretary to the Governor of Nevada.  Carson City awaited, the war was behind him, and he was ready for new adventures.

Of course he loved the piloting of the steamboats, but the war made the Mississippi a war zone and when they tried to recruit him to take troops by steamboat up the Missouri, his desire to travel elsewhere took roots.

The book contains the humor that was Twain – even the humor that backfires and sorts out some of the imaginary characters he invented to make his tale more enjoyable for the reader.  Yes he distorted his own life. 

He tried mining, but did not like to work; he did a variety of odd jobs, moved around and finally got an offer to write in the booming Virginia City. “ Virginia City was a town of 10,000 people, mostly men, with 51 saloons, two opera houses and numerous brothels, where women Twain called ‘soiled doves’ worked. And, he said, ‘there was some talk of building a church.’”  Here he began to develop his humor and might have stayed, but some of his humor backfired and he chose to travel to San Francisco to avoid the conflicts.

Traveling to San Francisco he stayed with two miners who were also great story tellers and he heard the story that would start his career as an internationally famous author – The Celebrated Frog of Calaveras County.

Boredom came quickly if there was not enough new stimulus and thus his trip west did not stop until Hawaii where he became a travel writer and correspondent. Always alert to the truth and knowing what a scam really is his comments were not just about the scenery.  He described "swarms of Christian missionaries" whose purpose, Twain wrote, seemed to be "to make the natives permanently miserable by telling them how blissful a place heaven is, and how nearly impossible it is to get there." 

Twain spent a few months here and came back to be a lecturer, then he wrote his Frog Story and his writing career would never be the same.  He returned from the West and Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer would rise from his prolific pen to carry him to fame.

The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny

This is number 8 in the Chief Inspector Gamache of the Surete du Quebec series, but the first I have read.  It attracted me because of the setting and symbolism.  A monastery set in the wilderness of Quebec with a set of monks who have been forgotten by the church and world until they record their chants and become a sensation.  Their symbol is two wolves, their devotion is to the chants which are explained in wonderful images by the author.

Growing vegetables, picking blueberries to dip in chocolate, raising chickens and singing are the occupations of the holy men and they are cloistered for a life of song, but murder happens in many places and the surroundings do not mask the violence, only the motives and in this case the murderer among the robes.

Visitors do not come to the Monastery, but when murder happens the rules have no option, but to bend and the visitors are the chief inspector and his aid who come in to try and grasp this separate world and the communications that have been perfected with in a society of silence.  It is a challenge and the clues revolve around a piece of paper with ancient notes of chants, but nonsense modern wording and the ancient history of the chants themselves.  It is a complex detection that is complicated when Armand’s own boss and rival appears on the scene, more intent on using the remote situation to try and get revenge for Armand’s work in putting fellow officers behind bars, than in solving the current mystery.

It is obvious that the connection between the second story and the current mystery came in early parts of the series so it might be advisable to read earlier books first if you are a completest who likes to read in sequence, but for me, the issues of the previous mysteries are clear enough that I did not feel like I was really missing something.  In fact, this was a perfect place for the convergence of the two story lines as the holy aspects of the monastery and the conscience of the police also come in play.

In fact, I could hardly go away from this mystery and all its quiet twists.

L A Noir - John Buntin

LA Noir, John Buntin

If you like police based stories, this is a keeper.  If you like true crime, this is filled with stories and characters.  What is so fascinating is the long history of Police Chief Parker and hoodlum – racket king Mickey Cohen and how long they could both operate their empires while hating one another. 

The book connects with the popular Dragnet TV and Radio series that helped publicize and strengthen Parker’s paranoid police empire while it also brings together Bugsy Siegel with ex-boxer (not a great one) Mickey Cohen who in the end leaves Bugsy behind and takes over the “White City” and the pleasure palaces of the growing metropolis.  

Thugs and cops, murders and extortions, corrupt politicians, power broking newspapers – you name it and it was part of the true story of the city of angels.  Robert Mitchum, Sammy Davis Jr, Frank Sinatra, and other prominent Hollywood royalty have roles in the story as does Billy Graham the evangelist who befriends Cohen and uses his “conversion” of the mobster to propel himself to greatest.   Newsman Mike Wallace appears in a prominent story where his ethics were impeccable, but the pressures on the network (like the Bush destruction of Dan Rather) forced him off the national airways for a while. 

Like a Louis L’Amour western, the anti-gangster William Parker comes from Deadwood, S. D. (its true) and rides in to the sunset.  Now this is straight laced character starts out like the novelist would want, but power does corrupt and Parker succumbs to weakness in drink and racism.  Unable to change with the time his death comes almost as a relief to many.  Raymond Chandler’s mysteries capture the mystique of this era as does Chinatown and L. A Confidential.

But the story is not just the Cohen/Parker conflict.  It is the relationship between Bobby Kennedy and Parker, the conflict with J. Edgar Hoover, the Bobby Kennedy assassination, the Watt’s riots, and all the tensions that required a new way to police a modern and racially diverse city.  It is both fascinating and exhausting.

James Madison by Richard Brookhiser

The life of our founding fathers is fascinating, not because they were perfect, not because they were exceptional, but because they were real people with conflicts in their own lives, they were occasionally inconsistent and even contradicted themselves.  They argued, they developed the same dirty politics we all complain about today and they failed in as many ways as they succeeded.

As we argue about the constitution and the bill of rights today we sometimes think of them in terms of a sacred document, but they came about in ways that were sometimes difficult to learn about.  James Madison is the person who authored the bill of rights and - yes, he did think of the number 10 and the ten commandments as he wrote it - thinking 10 would get it a higher recognition (which it did).

Madison was the right hand man to President Washington, but lost favor in the end when he began to plot with Thomas Jefferson.  He was in conflict with John Adams, he worked around Aaron Burr and Patrick Henry and he would come in conflict with some of his own statements when he was president.

This complexity does not make him a bad person or a bad president, but one that we can see in a three dimensional view through the authors extensive research and well written narrative.  We see the man who wrote of freedom along with Jefferson holding slaves - like Jefferson.  For me and others this diminishes many of the founding fathers.

He was a peace candidate like Jefferson and was also the only president to actually be on the battlefield.  Since he was in the wrong place and could have been captured by the English in the war of 1812, he also gives us good reason to keep the presidents off the field of war.

Slavery would follow him and frustrate him, just as it did all the presidents up through Lincoln.  His compromises would later lead to frustrations rather than solutions and eventually war had to happen, but Madison was much more than a person embroiled in war and slavery.  He and Jefferson were the first to create a party - the Republican party (which would eventually become the Democratic party). And who was this leader?

NYT review picks this description from the book = "No one would ever have mistaken James Madison for George Washington. Short, scrawny and sickly, he suffered from a hypochondria that convinced him he would lead neither a long nor a healthy life. He was a miserable public speaker who tended to lapse into inaudible mumbling, and well into his career as a politician, he continued to shrink back in horror at the idea of going out on the stump and putting on “an electioneering appearance.”

NYT reveiw also pulls these facts from the book, "Brookhiser attempts to cover all of the major events of Madison’s public career.
This is no small feat, for Madison was involved in nearly every political controversy and decision of his age: he was Thomas Jefferson’s indispensable ally in the struggle for religious liberty in revolutionary Virginia; he served tirelessly as a delegate to the Continental Congress during the most trying years of the Revolutionary War; he is deservedly remembered as “the Father of the Constitution”; he was the principal, albeit reluctant, author of what would become our federal Bill of Rights; as the prime organizer of the Jeffersonian Republican Party, he was in many ways the inventor of the very idea of a modern party system; he served as President Jefferson’s secretary of state and most trusted adviser; finally, as a wartime president, Madison had to endure not only the burning of Washington, but also conflict and intrigue within his own party and beyond."

This well researched book depends on the continual research of historians and is an excellent example of how we can bring the past to life in a way that is meaningful for today.