Thicker Than Water by Maggie Shayne

In the prologue to Thicker Than Water (2003) by Maggie Shayne it is 1982 and 17 year old Jewel is running away from a Branch Davidian type compound: The Young Believers.  The cult leader is Mordecai Young and most of the members within the compound are teenage girls, runaways, fleeing troubled homes.  But Mordecai is no savior and the armed guards he has stationed around the compound prevent any of the young believers from leaving.

But Jewel and her friend Lizzie decide to make a break for it taking with them Lizzie's baby daughter Sunshine, fathered by Mordecai.  But before they can escape there is an FBI raid.  Gunfire is exchanged and then an explosion causing the compound to go up in flames.  Lizzie is shot during the raid and her dying wish is that her friend Jewel take care of her daughter.

Chapter one fast forwards us to 2003 and Jewel is now Julie Jones, a successful TV news anchor in Syracuse raising her 16 year old daughter Dawn (Sunshine).  Life should be good but Julie is being blackmailed by someone who has found out about her past. Julie goes to the hotel room to pay the blackmailer because she has never told her daughter the truth about her life at the compound or that she is not Dawn's biological mother and that Dawn's father is the infamous Mordecai Young.  But when Julie arrives at the hotel she discovers that her blackmailer has been murdered and she is now a suspect.  

I decided to give Thicker Than Water 3.5 stars.  Initially I was going to go with 4 stars because Maggie Shayne is an author I have read in the past and I really enjoy her writing.  And two thirds of the way through Thicker Than Water I was finding this novel a page turner.  But the last third of the book involved twists that to me didn't seem plausible.  But the novel ends on a cliffhanger and there are 5 more books in this series and so I see myself eventually going on to book 2, Colder Than Ice

Writers And Their Notebooks by Diana Raab (Editor), Philip Lopate (Forward)

Philip Lopate is a very fine writer and essayist and so when I saw that he had written the forward to Writers And Their Notebooks edited by Diana M Raab (2010) I decided this was a book worth checking out.  I am also someone who loves journals and notebooks.

Writers and Their Notebooks is divided into five parts:  The Journal As Tool,  The Journal As Survival, The Journal For Travel, The Journal As Muse and The Journal For Life.  And with the exception of Sue Grafton most of the writers in this volume are not well known.  Here are passages by some of the essayists I recommend:

Kathleen Gerard in her essay Clearing The Deck writes about going through cancer treatments and not feeling like continuing with her daily journal:  

"So I made a bargain with myself: Do your twenty minutes, then the rest of the day is yours. At least you’ll keep your writing muscles from atrophy. With that in mind, I decided that because I was so emotional and unsettled, I’d use my journal simply to document factual events as they were happening—whether medical consultations or where I met friends for lunch. Deep down, I trusted the process, believing that the sense of disciplined constancy—however modified—could anchor me through the arising challenges"  

And my favorite essay Forgetting to Remember—Why I Keep a Journal by  Kyoko Mori.  She had a very difficult childhood and journaling got her through the hard times.  But at the beginning of her essay is this very nice passage about her grandfather who also kept a diary:

"My grandfather, Takeo Nagai, was the first person I knew who was serious about writing. In the summers when my mother, brother, and I visited his house in the Japanese countryside, every afternoon Takeo sat down at his desk with his diary—a small notebook with a cover, a different color for every year—and composed his entries with a fountain pen... He described the flowers blooming and the tomatoes ripening in the garden, the walks he took with my brother and me, the books he was reading and the neighbors who came to visit. Each day—no matter how eventful or quiet—was made to fit precisely in the allotted space. For my grandfather, writing was about discipline".

What I found interesting is that not every essayist in Writer's And Their Notebooks felt that keeping a notebook was such a great idea.  Peter Selgin in his humorous essay Keeping Up With The Days writes about how his journaling became an addiction where he was writing all the time.  He was even taking his notebook out on dates and at dinner with friends so he could jot a few things down.  And in Journaling Without The Journal Michelle Wildgen eventually gave up keeping a notebook because she felt it was interfering with the novels and stories she wanted to write.

For me, Writers And Their Notebooks is a 3 star read.  Some of the essays in this book really spoke to me but quite a few others I didn't connect with but other readers might feel differently.   I  closed the book wanting to read more from Kyoko Mori and Philip Lopate's essays are always worth reading.

The Road To Dalton by Shannon Bowring

"Neither of them ever looks forward to the Fraziers’ New Year’s Eve party. Trudy resents leaving the house after dark, especially in winter, and Richard hates the pretentious food Annette serves each year—salmon puffs, pâté. The woman can’t seem to take a hint that most of her partygoers would rather eat pigs-in-a-blanket or chips and dip. It’s not as if the people of Dalton need another reminder of the divide between them and the Fraziers, whose family has owned the lumber mill for three generations" - Shannon Bowring, The Road To Dalton

Thank you to Susan at Cue Card for recommending The Road To Dalton by Shannon Bowring.  And please check out Susan's website under blogs I follow for her excellent review of this novel.  And I agree with Susan.  The Road To Dalton (2023) is definitely 4.2 stars, if not more.  And this is Shannon Bowring's debut novel with a sequel coming in September which I plan to read.  

The book cover is deceptive though.  Dalton is not a sunny tranquil place but rather a small depressed town in Northern Maine.  It's the 1990's and the major industry is the lumber mill.  And when the book begins Richard the town doctor and his wife Trudy who runs the library are getting ready for a party they don't want to attend.  Their marriage is not going well either. 

And it will be at this party that we meet some of the major characters in the book.  Each of the subsequent chapters will focus on a different character letting us know who they are and where they are at in their lives.  There is Richard and Trudy, Trudy's best friend Bev, Bev's son Nate who works as a police officer.  Nate's wife Bridget suffering from postpartum depression.  There is Rose a waitress at the diner and her abusive husband Tommy.  And we meet three teenagers Greg, Henry and Angela involved in a separate storyline of their own.  

And then a tragic event happens halfway through The Road To Dalton that affects to a different degree all of the characters in this novel.  And the book ends one year later at another party around the Christmas season and we see how everyone has faired during the course of a tough year. 

The characters in The Road To Dalton are so well drawn.  Some I liked, particularly Richard Haskell, and others not so much.   But even the characters I didn't care for kept my interest.  The Road To Dalton is not a very long book and I read it straight through.  It never dragged for me.  And so I think if you liked Beartown and the novels of Richard Russo (who has praised this book), the Road To Dalton is worth checking, out.

The Friday Afternoon Club by Griffin Dunne

Griffin Dunne was a favorite actor of mine in the 1980’s. If he was starring in a movie I would have to go see it and I particularly liked him in Almost You and After Hours. And so when I heard he had written a book The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir (2024) I immediately placed my order through Libby. The book is a NYT bestseller and so I have been on hold for weeks but the book finally arrived a few days ago and it was worth the wait.

The Friday Afternoon Club is really two books and to be honest part one which deals with Griffin Dunne’s early years growing up in Hollywood I wasn’t too interested in. Griffin’s father Dominick Dunne was a successful TV executive at the time who threw fabulous parties.  Griffin’s aunt is the brilliant writer Joan Didion and so Griffin and his siblings Alex and Dominique got to meet these famous movie stars, musicians and writers at an age too young to really appreciate who they were. Although Griffin retains fond memories of Sean Connery who rescued him from drowning at one of his family’s pool parties.

There are alot of stories like that in the first part of the Friday Afternoon Club. Griffin is not name dropping to impress the reader this was simply his childhood and he wanted to get these stories down on paper. Still, I am not that interested in the world of celebrities, parties, drugs, the children of celebrities etc and so I didn’t connect with part one.

But part two the second half of the book deals with the murder in 1982 of Griffin Dunne's sister Dominique Dunne and it is gripping.  As Griffin says it changed his family forever. Dominique was a talented actress, a caring person, and she was only 22 when she was strangled to death by her former boyfriend. The murder trial was a travesty. The killer only served two and a half years in prison.

Griffin goes into detail about the trial and its aftermath and how his family coped. His family became closer which is so admirable because this isn’t always the case with families who experience tragedy or illness.  In an interview for the book Griffin said that his family went through a dark season but that they pulled through “not by chance but by aggressively trying to pull through”

Griffin’s father, Dominick Dunne, became a bestselling author covering criminal trials for Vanity Fair and always standing up for the victims in his books.  Griffin’s mother Ellen Dunne who suffered from MS, went on and founded Justice For Homicide Victims in California, an organization that has helped people fight for justice and deal with grief. Griffin Dunne’s parents are gone now but he remains close with his brother Alex and the book is dedicated to his brother.

Finally I liked the fact that with the exception of the defense attorney and the judge at Dominique’s trial, who Griffin is understandably still angry with, he deals kindly with the people in his life. And that is particularly true of his parents, his sister Dominique and his brother Alex. The Friday Afternoon Club is a loving tribute to his family and a book that will help others deal with grief and how to pull through.

The Complete Idiot's Guide To The Middle Ages by Timothy C. Hall M.A.

Thank you Marg at the Intrepid Reader and Baker for hosting the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge and allowing nonfiction books to be included.  The Complete's Idiot's Guide To The Middle Ages (2009) by Timothy C. Hall M.A. is the non-fiction book I decided to go with.  

It's a relatively short book packed with information and Timothy Hall divides his book into three sections:  Early Middle Ages (550 to 1000 A.D.),  High Middle Ages (1000 to 1300 A.D.) and Late Middle Ages (1300 to 1500 A.D).  

The Middle Ages begins after the fall of the western Roman Empire in 476 A.D. and ends in 1500 A.D. with the start of the Renaissance Era.  And between 550 to 1500 A.D alot of history happens which the Idiot's Guide goes into detail about. 

I learned about The Viking invasions of the 8th through 10th centuries and the development of the feudal system in Europe as a defense against those invasions. 

I was interested to read about the eleventh century falling out between King Henry II and Thomas Beckett which ended with Beckett's assassination.  Timothy Hall writes about the crusades a dark period in history.  On a more positive note the Middle Ages saw the introduction of new farming techniques, the invention of the spinning wheel which revolutionized clothing production and the compass which made sea travel safer.

One thing is for sure.  If you lived during the Middle Ages you did not want to be living during the 14th century. The Great Famine (1315-1317), the Hundred Year War (1337-1453) and of course the The Black Death (1346-1353) in which some historians estimate that 20 million may have died in Europe alone.  The respect and reverence people had for the Catholic Church and its leaders also began to fracture during the late Middle Ages.  It was partly due to the plague but also the corruption within the clergy.  The book ends with the beginning of the Renaissance and explorers travelling to the New World. 

I have only recorded a fraction of the information contained in The Idiot's Guide To The Middle Ages most of which I am never going to remember.  But I did come away with key events and interesting historical figures that I might want to read more about.  And so if like me you know very little about the Midfle Ages and would like to know more, The Idiot's Guide is not a bad place to begin.

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

"They met by the cotton after the village quieted down. Caesar made a quizzical expression at her bulging sack of yams but didn’t speak. They moved through the tall plants, so knotted up inside that they forgot to run until they were halfway through. Their speed made them giddy. The impossibility of it. Their fear called after them even if no one else did. They had six hours until their disappearance was discovered and another one or two before the posses reached where they were now. But fear was already in pursuit, as it had been every day on the plantation, and it matched their pace"  - Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad

We have contemporary writers who are writing the classics of tomorrow and one such writer is Colson Whitehead. He has won multiple literary awards for many of his books and his historical novel The Underground Railroad was awarded The National Book Award in 2016 and The Pulitzer Prize in 2017.   I can see why.  The Underground Railroad is a wonderfully written novel that tells an important story about a dark period in American history.

The protagonist of The Underground Railroad is Cora, a young slave girl working on the Randall plantation in Georgia.  Cora never knew her father and when Cora was ten she woke up to find her mother Mabel had escaped from the plantation and was never seen again.  The Randall plantation is hell on earth run by two brothers one of whom is a sadist.  

When Cora reaches 17 she decides to escape the Randall plantation with a fellow slave named Caesar.  Escaping is an incredibly dangerous thing to do.  You will be tortured and killed if you are caught so that others on the plantation know the repercussions for trying to escape.  But Cora and Caesar decide to take the risk anyway.  Caesar's story is particularly heartbreaking.  He wasn't born on the Randall plantation.  He and his parents lived in Virgina and the mistress they worked for was an elderly lady who treated them decently and when she died she promised they would be free but she never left a will:  

"Her only relative was a niece in Boston, who arranged for a local lawyer to liquidate Mrs. Garner’s property. It was a terrible day when he arrived with constables and informed Caesar and his parents that they were to be sold.  Worse—sold south, with its fearsome legends of cruelty and abomination. Caesar and his family joined the march of coffles, his father going one way, his mother another, and Caesar to his own destiny".

Caesar and Cora decide to head north via the Underground Railroad and to quote Amazon "the railroad is no mere metaphor: "engineers and conductors operate a secret network of actual tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil."   Prior to reading The Underground Railroad I had my doubts about historical fiction being mixed with magical realism.  But I shouldn't have worried.  This is a very grounded and powerfully written novel about a terrible time in our nation's history the legacy of which we are still grappling with today.  

Killer Triggers by Joe Kenda

"In this exceptional memoir, Kenda chronicles the highlights of his twenty-one years as a Colorado Springs, Colo., homicide detective. Kenda investigated or oversaw 387 cases, and here uses them to offer insights into why killers kill...His Colorado cowboy cop humor and compassionate voice help make the dark stories he tells easier to bear. This is must reading for true crime fans." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

I totally agree with Publisher's Weekly.  If you are a true crime fan, and I am, Killer Triggers (2021) by Joe Kenda is not to be missed.  But you must read the book in audio because Joe Kenda does the narration and as anyone who watched his hit TV crime series Homocide Hunter will tell you Joe Kenda's dry humor and seen it all before voice is a real plus for this book.

As Joe Kenda sees it murders happen due to the the following triggers: fear, rage, revenge, money, lust, greed and in some cases insanity.  And in Killer Triggers each chapter is devoted to a different murder case  that Kenda worked on during his career.  These are the cases that stood out for him.  Kenda tells us about the victim, the crime, how he and his team caught the killer and the trigger that led to the murder. 

The book can at times make for grim reading but it's also fascinating because Joe Kenda has a great deal of insight based on his years of experience as a homicide detective.  Killer Triggers is also funny.  For example a retired K-9 police dog named Henry who escaped from the Kenda home and Kenda's wife Kathy frantically looking for Henry along with a police car that was equally alarmed when they heard the news that a K-9 was loose.  These dogs are trained to attack on command and should never be running around the neighborhood.  But it ended well. They found Henry in a park surrounded by little kids who were throwing him a ball and jumping on Henry and as Joe Kenda tells us "Henry was loving it".  

Homicide Hunter the series ended in 2020.   But for fans of the show and for anyone who is curious I recommend Killer Triggers and be sure and get the audio version!