Which way now, Huck?

I was delighted with John Straley's Cold Storage Alaska. Even though I got a Lake Wobegon-like story instead of the mystery I expected, Straley got me interested in his characters and kept me entertained.

In the afterward to that book, I learned that there was a prequel of sorts that was published several years before Cold Storage Alaska. I found that prequel at Barnes and Noble and snapped it up. It's called The Big Both Ways.

Annabelle was the matriarch of the community in Cold Storage, Alaska that Straley wrote about. In The Big Both Ways, Annabelle is a young adolescent on the run with her aunt, Ellie Hobbs, who is involved in radical politics, the Wobblies, organized crime, and the cops. After disposing of an inconvenient body, the two of them are joined by Slippery (Slip) Wilson, a logger who quit his job after seeing his best friend die in an awful accident. All three are headed for Alaska, new starts, and ways to make a living.

The book is the story of how this unlikely trio got from the forests of central Washington to a tiny town on the inside passage of southern Alaska. And it's the story of a Seattle cop who kept trying to follow them. (But when he finds them, he only wants to know what really happened. Then he quits his cop job and becomes part of the Cold Storage community, known by Annabelle as Uncle George.)

But this novel is not really a mystery. Somebody wrote that it was a Jack London like story. I don't think so. I think it's an early 20th century, west coast version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The river isn't the Mississippi, but it's the inside passage. And it doesn't flow south all the time. It flows south and north, depending on the tides ("big both ways").

The adventurers aren't seeking freedom for Jim, but they are seeking freedom for themselves by getting lost in unfamiliar country. They're being chased by George the detective, by some union thugs who are out to capture a traitor, and by some gangsters who want money they believe Ellie Hobbs has made off with.

The little trio row their hearts out in a skiff, catch rides with questionable characters in big boats, evade Canadian customs, fight the tides, get shot at, and poach a farmer's lamb.

Like the story of Huck and Jim, it's difficult to imagine exactly how they survived and made it through the travails of travel. But I was really glad they did. I was cheering for them from the second third of the book.

Once again, I liked the characters and was entertained by their adventures. I certainly hope John Straley writes more stories like these. Mysteries would be okay too, but modeling stories after Garrison Keillor, Mark Twain, or Jack London works pretty well.

Have you read The Big Both Ways? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought of it.

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• The author's web site
• Barbara Tom's review in The Oregonian
• Reviews at GoodReads
• John Straley talks about The Big Both Ways

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Unexpected story

G'pa Rohl in my memory

Back when I was a little kid in the middle of the last century (gotta get that line in somewhere), my great grandfather was in his 90s. He loved telling stories about his experiences. Some of them might even have been true. Albert William Rohl, known to friends as Willie and to family my age as Grandpa Rohl, was a carpenter. He was born in Michigan during the U.S. Civil War. That fact alone made him an intriguing figure to a kid who'd just heard about the Civil War of ancient history. What's an 8-year-old supposed to do with a 90-year-old war?

One of the stories Grandpa Rohl told was about setting off for the great American west when he turned 21 . That would have been 1883. He went on horseback, sleeping on the ground with his horse tied to his ankle. He stopped and did farm work for settlers along the way. Went out to Yellowstone, which had been named the United States' first national park in 1872. Grandpa Rohl came back and practically never left the city of Minneapolis afterward.

Young Willie

I don't remember him describing anything about Yellowstone, but I wish now that I did. If, that is, he said anything about Yellowstone. I just don't know. I do remember him saying that when he got to Deadwood in Dakota Territory, people told him to get out of town. They didn't like strangers in town after the killing of Wild Bill Hickock. Well, that seems unlikely since Hickock had been killed in 1876. But maybe...

All that is preface to my unexpected reading pleasure. One of the free things on the Nook I got for Christmas was a book by Sinclair Lewis, Free Air.

I'd never heard of it. No wonder it was free. It was probably free of copyright restrictions too. So, what's senior citizen supposed to do with a 90-year-old story?

Somewhere in the distant past I think I read a Sinclair Lews novel. Maybe Arrowsmith or Babbit. I'm not sure, but maybe... I don't remember anything about it. In my mind, Lewis was an ancient, honored novelist that literature students had to read to be considered educated. Like David's summer session programming classes, boring but important.

I do remember reading about Lewis' reputation as a cynic and critic of people's illusions about themselves -- especially small town people. It took years (a generation?) for people in Saulk Center, Minnesota to stop hating Lewis for basing his first best seller, Main Street, on their fair "city" and some of its honorable citizens.

So I'm at the lake place called Sidetrack with my Nook and its library containing Free Air. What the heck, Zane Grey surprised me. Well, Lewis surprised me too.

The story begins in the Minneapolis of 1919. The main character is a plucky young woman who is tending to her widowed father. He was a big time banker in Brooklyn and the family was part of high society there. Then he had a breakdown, and was persuaded by his daughter to move to Minneapolis and tend to the Midwestern part of his banking empire. When he had another breakdown, she convinced him that a road trip to Seattle was just the cure for his overwork. (It seems like an early 20th century version of getting the old guy off line.)

Young Sinclair Lewis

Somewhere northwest of St. Cloud, Minnesota, in Sinclair Lewis' version of Lake Wobegon, the plucky young heroine attracts the attention of the plucky young local auto mechanic. He's so enamored with the plucky young society girl on the road to the west coast that he jumps in his little ersatz Model-T and decides to follow her. Being the plucky, young, self-sufficient girl that she is (from Brooklyn high society?), she resents his attention even though he helps her out of a huge mud hole and rescues her and her father from a highwayman.

In spite of her remonstrances, he follows her at a distance, helps her adjust her car to conquer some mountain driving, and is invited by the ailing banker to join them in a tour of Yellowstone. (See I did get back to the Yellowstone theme.) The plucky youngsters are entranced by the natural beauty of Yellowstone Canyon and falls and they share a climb down the canyon to the river. (A plucky young woman from Brooklyn high society?)

Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

About that point in the story I began wondering if this was written by the same Sinclair Lewis whose reputation was as a cynical social critic. He even had me chuckling out loud enough times that Nancy asked from the other room, "What's so funny?" Free Air is a romantic comedy. I'll bet Katherine Hepburn would have jumped at the role of the plucky young woman from high society. ("Could you make that Philadelphia high society instead of Brooklyn?" Miss Hepburn asks.) Sandra Bullock would probably love it if she was just a little younger. Maybe Jennifer Lawrence would be good. Jimmy Stewart would have been a good male lead. In current time, Daniel Radcliffe would stand in for old Jimmy. Cary Grant would have been great in the role of the self-important Brooklyn banker/suiter who shows up from Brooklyn high society several times in the story. Matt Damon might take that role today. Tom Hanks might pull off the role the father, although in real life he's a little too old. Ah, what day dreaming will lead me to.

This story was the big surprise. I was waiting, during the second half of the book for the taming of the plucky young Brooklyn society girl. It never happened. She's a pretty determined feminist. Lewis does a great job of skewering both the illusions of the high society characters and the insecurities of the small towners. His sympathies are all with the plucky young mechanic from the edge of the prairie. Well, other sympathies are with the democratic aspirations of the plucky young woman from Brooklyn, too. The story doesn't have a "happily ever after" ending, but it does have a "happy so far" ending.

Was this written by THE Sinclair Lewis? Yes, it was. It turns out that in the days before Main Street, his Nobel Prize, and the Pullitzer he turned down, Lewis paid his bar tab (and that wasn't small) by writing serialized stories for women's magazines. And that's where Free Air comes from. The title comes from the once-ubiquitous signs in front of gas stations. It's mentioned once early in the story. I'm not enough of a scholar to tease out further meaning from the phrase or the story. So what!? It was a romantic comedy. And it was fun to read.

Have you read Free Air? What did you think of it? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought of it. Or what you think of Sinclair Lews.

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• William's review at Skiing Mount Improbable
• James' review at Good Reads

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Losses and Recoveries

After struggling through Laurie R. King's latest book, I grabbed a book from a small stack left at our house by Mary, the family book pusher. I wanted to read something entertaining and, if possible, interesting. The book I picked up was J. A. Jance's Betrayal of Trust. It was entertaining and some of the characters were interesting.

There's a story in this book; actually several stories. It's what I was missing in Pirate King. Of course, maybe it was just me and "where" I was when I read it. There are events in Betrayal of Trust. One after another. Some of them seem to causally related (even when they are not). There are a couple of tragedies, some betrayals (as I would expect from the title), there's a revelation, and the beginning of a story of hope warm the hearts of Horatio Alger fans everywhere.

It's a "J. P. Beaumont novel" according to the cover. That means the main actors are Beaumont and his wife and detective partner Mel Soames. They work for the state's attorney general on special investigations. Going back at least as far as Nick and Nora Charles, they are independently wealthy and doing cop jobs because they want to.

The story begins with a snuff film found on the cell phone of the governor's step-grandson. The story expands from there to a suicide, two murders, at least three betrayals, an arson, and another murder. Luckily J.P. and Mel aren't expected to do all the investigating themselves. The AG keeps pulling more people into the case to follow up on clues.

In the midst of this complicated investigation, Beaumont gets an e-mail from an aunt he didn't know he had. He'd grown up with his mother who had been rejected by her family and the family of her lover who died before Beaumont was born. J. P.'s mother never told him who is father was and named him Beaumont after his father's home town. Suddenly there was the prospect of filling in the second half of his family tree. But first there were bullying, murder, and sex abuse cases to resolve.

I enjoyed reading this one. The story swept me along and kept pulling me back to the book as I tried to do other things. Luckily, it was cold and windy at the little cabin on the lake and I didn't really have to work at cleaning and closing during the first 24 hours we were there. I finished in time to write this before I had to tackle spider webs, dirty floors, and cupboards and a refrigerator that needed emptying.

Have you read Betrayal of Trust? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought of it.

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• The publisher's web site
  
• Christine Sedlacek's review in the Desert News
  
• Erin Andersen's review in the Lincoln Nebraska Journal Star

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Interstate escapism

Our family book supplier, Mary the banker (for awhile more), dropped another J. A. Jance novel on our shelf not long ago.

I'm in the midst of a political science writing project and I need some escapist reading now and again to maintain my sanity. This book was a great help.

The book Mary provided was Fire and Ice. Like the C. J. Box book, Below Zero, I read recently, I have little clue about the meaning of the title. Fire is a peripheral clue in one of the mysteries in the book. But ice? Well, it snowed in one scene.

Jance included two of her recurring characters in this book. J. P. Beaumont, a Seattle detective is trying to find a serial killer. Meanwhile in Cochise County, Arizona, Sheriff Joanna Brady is investigating the murder of an ATV park caretaker.

Guess what. Clues in the Seattle case connect to people involved in the Arizona case. Beaumont and Brady together again. The last time Jance put them in the same book, I may have groused about a mystery that was really a romance novel. Thankfully, not this time.

Fire and Ice is a pretty good tale of police work. Beaumont and his partner/wife in Seattle and Brady and her staff in Arizona. These are the usual interesting Jance characters in a well-told story, even if it's a bit jumbled. Sometimes it seemed like a hobo stew: Jance seems to have tossed in all the ideas for stories that were floating around in her notebooks and added some seasoning to see what happened.

What happened was good and just the kind of escape I needed once in awhile from the political culture of Iran, centralization in Putin's Russia, and corruption in Nigera. Check the library.

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See also:

• The publisher's web site for Fire and Ice
• Jim Kershner's review at The Spokesman (Spokane, WA)

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Stories about people

I read two books recently that I expected to be very different from one another. I was pleasantly surprised.

One of the problems with some mystery novels is that there's so much focus on the crime and the clues that the characters are neglected. Then there are books about people and the less deadly things in their lives in which there's too little story for me.

I thought about that some while reading One Step Behind by Henning Mankell [right]. This is a murder mystery involving a serial killer and a very involved plot. Mankell tells a good story this time. (Better than The Dogs of Riga that I read last fall.

This time too, the main character, detective Kurt Wallander, came across to me as a multi-dimensional character. I kept comparing the portrayal of Wallander to Tony Hillerman's portrayal of Joe Leaphorn. Over the course of all the books he appeared in, Leaphorn became a well-rounded, complex guy. One Step Behind is the sixth book about the Swedish detective, and Wallander is a pretty complete person. Certainly more complete than the guy I read about earlier. I may go back and read some of the in-between books.

The division of the world of literature into plot-driven books and character-driven books came into focus again when I read Mountain Time by Ivan Doig.

I had heard of Doig [right], but I had never read any of his books. He's gotten some awards and good reviews in high places. But somehow I was put off by a guy whose last name seems to be an onomatopoeia for a sound effect. Pardon my silly prejudice.

Then one of Nancy's high school friends recommended Doig's books. The endorsement was so heartfelt from someone who seems to be a thoughtful and utterly honest person, that I couldn't resist picking up one of Doig's books the next time I was in the Northfield library.

I was about a third of the way through Mountain Time when I remarked to a friend that this book was the opposite of the plot-driven mysteries. What I'd read in the beginning of the book was all about the people with practically no story.

Well, my early impression was wrong. There was a story to tell in Mountain Time. Telling it began slowly with limning the characters. And both the characters and the story telling are great in this book.

Without a series of books filled with improbable murders within which to flesh out the characters, Doig creates the sisters McCaskill and Lexa's POSSLQ, Mitch Rozier. And then he tells the story of a short period in their lives. That period involves resolution of parent-child relationships, sibling rivalries, love, distrust, jealousy, heartache, and nearly forced marches through beautiful mountain wilderness.

I really liked both of these books. And liked them for their similarities -- good story telling and interesting people. They're not perfect, but I don't think that's a reasonable expectation. There are some of those pesky improbabilities in both books. (I almost quite reading Mountain Time 30 pages from the end, but Doig earned a save.) Mankell and Doig persuaded me to read more of their books.

I recommend both One Step Behind and Mountain Time.

If you read either, write and tell this little bit of the world what you think.

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• Henning Mankell's English language web site
  
  
• A reading group guide to One Step Behind
  
  
• A review at Epinions
  
  
• A review from Bookends
  
  
• Ivan Doig's web site
  
  
• Chapter 1 of Mountain Time

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Characters and island suspense

Here's another set of comments I wrote about a Laurie R. King book. It's dated February 2004, but that can't be right. I wouldn't have been at Sidetrack in February and Kris wouldn't have been bringing guests at that time of year. Reading the entry carefully, I find I wrote this in July '03 and only got around to posting it at ReadingOnTheWeb in February.

Here's another of my favorite King books.

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I was at Sidetrack for the purpose of cleaning and preparing the place for Kris and her friends from Madison who would arrive the next week. I was also dealing with the death of a cell phone thanks to the misfeasance of somebody at Amery's Radio Shack store. Oh, and there was a free range cat that kept hanging out on the deck between hunting trips. I thought it was the neighbor's cat. But the neighbor hadn't been around for two days.

I didn't get as much cleaning done as I'd intended. I was trapped by a book: Folly by Laurie R. King.

King first came to my attention as the author of a series of books about Mary Russell, a young woman who becomes a partner of Sherlock Holmes. Those were quite enjoyable. King also wrote four mystery novels about Kate Martinelli, a San Francisco detective. She's also written a couple other novels about interesting characters.


None of them prepared me for Folly. There are portrayals here of depression and post-traumatic stress syndrome that set my teeth on edge. There's also the story of the brave and intelligent woman at the center of the book who struggles mightily with her feelings and her madness. There are enough real threats to add to the imagined ones to make the suspense palpable. Rae Newborn, the woman at the center of the stories, is living alone on one of the San Juan islands (i.e. no other island residents). The suspense in the story telling was enough to keep me from reading it after dark while I was alone at Sidetrack, even when there were neighbors here.

But it wasn't just the very well-told story that kept me reading that July afternoon when I should have been washing and vacuuming. It was the characters. King has always populated her novels with interesting people: the young woman at Oxford who seeks out a retired beekeeper as a mentor, a "retired" adventurous detective who keeps accepting commissions from highly-placed friends, a cop whose life away from the office is more important to her than the professional dedication she gives to law enforcement, and the quiet deprogrammer who infiltrated a dangerous sect for example.

Folly focuses on four generations of a family and the representatives of these generations are wonderfully drawn. The resilient main character is most complete, but the others appear as real people as well. It's not that I'd like to spend a lot of time with these people, but before I was very far into the book, I cared about them. Even the characters around the edges of the story are bright and clear.

So what makes this a wonderfully excellent book are the characterizations, the portrayals of imperfect people finding ways of coping, the carefully-told suspenseful tale, and the way it drew me into the world created by Laurie R. King. But that's just my opinion.

I finished the book only an hour ago, and I can already pick out some gimmicks and plot devices that I might criticize. But this book doesn't deserve nit picking. It deserves to be read and enjoyed.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, the Pulitizer-winning book I wrote about in the last issue was not, to my mind, a great American novel. This may not be either, but it's better. And the tensions between sanity and insanity, struggle and acceptance, and love and resentment are as profound and universal as the themes of Chabon's book. If he can win a Pulitzer, Laurie R. King deserves one too.

What do you think?