The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff

"She had chosen to flee, and in so choosing, she had left behind her everything she had, her roof, her home, her country, her language, the only family she had ever known, the child Bess, who had been born into her care when she was herself a small child of four years or so, her innocence, her understanding of who she was, her dreams of who she might one day be if only she could survive this starving time. Think not of it, girl, she told herself, think not of it, else you shall die of grief". - Lauren Groff, The Vaster Wilds

I was wondering what to read next and so I went to Libby clicked audiobooks and began to scroll through the choices.  I came upon Lauren Groff, a writer I have been meaning to read for some time.  Her latest novel The Vaster Wilds (2023) was available right away.  I clicked borrow and I am so glad I did.

The Vaster Wilds is a beautifully written haunting and atmospheric novel that includes powerful scenes of nature and the elements.  And Lauren Groff has a fascinating story to tell about a teenage servant girl (we never learn her name) who arrives in Colonial America with her mistress, her mistress' husband, and their four year old daughter.

The time is the 1600's and the servant girl and the family she works for are living in a  settlement in Jamestown, VA and the situation there is grim.  The settlers are starving and then something happens which requires the servant girl to flee.  We learn at the end of the book why she needed to run away and the reason is shocking.

As to where the young girl is headed she doesn't really know.  But she has heard about another settlement run by the French.  Maybe she could meet a young man there and they could eventually move to France where their lives would be much easier and happier.  That is her dream at the beginning of the book.

But the deeper into the wilderness she goes the more The Vaster Wilds becomes a story about survival, finding shelter, searching for food and hiding from dangerous animals and people.  And as the girl makes her way through the wilderness she reflects on her short life which has not been easy.  She has a deep puritan faith when her journey begins but she starts to question what she has been taught as she experiences the terror but also the wonder of the natural world.  

The Vaster Wilds is one of the best books I have read this year and Lauren Groff is an excellent writer.  She has expertly woven a young girl surviving the elements into a marvelous coming of age story.  And in terms of a lone character confronting nature this novel reminded me a bit of Jack London's The Call of The Wild or To Build A Fire.  I highly recommend The Vaster Wilds and please check out the audio version narrated wonderfully by January LaVoy which definitely adds to this brilliant book.

A Ticket To The Boneyard by Lawrence Block

A Ticket To The Boneyard by Lawrence Block is book eight in his Matthew Scudder series of crime novels.  I have been reading this series somewhat in order and for me A Ticket To The Boneyard is the best Scudder novel I've read so far.  

But it's also the darkest.  A sadistic serial killer that Matthew Scudder sent to prison twelve years ago is back on the streets and is determined to kill the women in Matthew Scudder's life.  And in this book Scudder's sobriety is tested like never before.  The violence and to be blunt sexual violence in this novel is intense.  It didn't bother me that much because I knew Matthew Scudder would do everything in his power to bring the bad guy to justice.  But the violence might bother others and so that's something to  consider.

And I would say that if you are new to Lawrence Block's Scudder series it's best to begin with the first book Sins Of The Father (1976).  All seventeen novels are set in NYC and as Scudder's life changes through the 1970's, 1980's, 1990's up to A Time To Scatter Stones (2019) we see NYC changing as well which is an added bonus.  I was born and raised in NYC and lived there until 2011.  The detailed way Lawrence Block describes NYC rings so true.  I am rating A Ticket To The Boneyard four stars and will be going on to book nine.  It's a great series.

The Lady And The Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier

The Lady And The Unicorn (2004) by Tracy  Chevalier is the fifth book I have read for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge hosted by Marg at The Intrepid Reader And Baker.  Thank you Marg for hosting this challenge and thank you JaneGS for recommending Tracy Chevalier.  I plan to read more from this novelist going forward.  And please check out Jane's excellent book blog Reading, Writing, Working, Playing linked under blogs I follow.

The Lady And The Unicorn is a novel dealing with a real historical event, the creation in the late 15th century of six beautiful tapestries titled The Lady And The Unicorn.  But to this day these tapestries remain a mystery as to who created them.  Art historians believe it was a collaborative effort involving a team of artists and weavers.  But who were the ladies depicted and what does the unicorn symbolize?  In her novel The Lady And The Unicorn Tracy Chevalier does a fine job of imagining how and why these six tapestries came into being

It is 1490 in Paris when The Lady And The Unicorn begins and Jean LeViste a French nobleman commissions the handsome and very talented artist Nicholas des Innocents to create a series of paintings involving battle scenes and his famiy's coat of arms.  These paintings will be turned into tapestries that Jean Le Viste will be able to hang on his walls and impress his fellow noblemen and the King.  

Nicholas is unsure.  He is an expert painter of miniature portraits of ladies but he has never depicted battle scenes.  Fortunately Jean Le Vistes' wife Genevieve wants the tapestries to depict unicorns and she convines her husband that their guests are not going to want to dine in a room where they are surrounded by war and blood. 

 

Meanwhile Nicholas while he is visiting Jean Le Viste's home is doing what he always does, trying to seduce another young woman who he believes is one of the ladies in waiting at the Le Viste home.  Instead he discovers she is Claude Le Vista:  

Nicholas has a way of causing trouble wherever he goes and later when he meets the De La Chapelle family in Brussells who will be weaving his paintings into tapestries the father of the family Georges De La Chapelle does not like what he sees in Nicholas:

"I had never heard an artist so keen on his own work. He should know better—first designs always change when cartoonists make them into the large paintings on cloth or papers that weavers follow as they make the tapestries. It is the nature of the thing that what looks fine small doesn’t when made large. There are gaps to be filled—figures must be added, or trees or animals or flowers ... I did not address him as Monsieur. He might be a Parisian artist, but I ran a good workshop in Brussels. I had no reason to grovel".

And true to form Nicholas while at the De La Chapelle home supervising the weaving is also making advances on Georges De La  Chapelle's daugter Alienor.  

To my knowledge Nicholas and all of the characters in The Lady And The Unicorn are fictional but they are well drawn and Tracy Chevalier has done her research about this time period and also the process of turning a painting into a tapestry.  And here are three of the actual Lady of the Unicorn masterpieces which are now hanging at the Cluny Museum in Paris:

I am probably not going to be able to read 15 medieval historical books by the end of this year but I might be able to squeeze in five more and Tracy Chevalier has helped me achieve this goal.  The Lady And The Unicorn is an enjoyable and informative novel that taught me about a 15th century masterpiece I never knew existed.

The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes

The Library of America chose five books for their 1961- 1964 volume of classic crime novels and the Expendable Man (1963) by Dorothy B. Hughes made the list.  I am not surprised.  Having read In A Lonely Place many years ago I know what a talented writer Dorothy Hughes is and The Expendable Man is every bit as good if not better.  

The setting for this novel is the early 1960's and Dr. Hugh Densmore a young intern at UCLA Medical Center is driving from California to Phoenix to attend a family wedding. His niece is getting married.  But on the way to Phoenix Dr. Densmore spots a teenage hitchhiker out in the middle of nowhere.  He is unsure about whether to stop and give her a ride:  

"Even as he slowed his car, he was against doing it. But her possible peril if left here alone forced his hand. He simply could not in conscience go on, leaving her abandoned, with twilight fallen and night quick to come. He had sisters as young as this. It chilled him to think what might happen if one of them were abandoned on the lonesome highway, the type of man with whom, in desperation, she might accept a lift. The car was stopped. He shifted to reverse and began backing up".

Once in the car the hitchhiker tells Dr. Densmore that her name is Iris Croom and she is 18.  But the doctor begins to suspect that nothing Iris tells him about herself is true.  He. becomes increasingly anxious to get this young woman to the bus stop so that she can be on her way.   They reach the next town and Iris and the doctor part company.  But later when Dr. Densmore is in his hotel room in Phoenix resting before the wedding festivities there is a knock on the door and it's Iris.  

Dr. Densmore is stunned and shaken.  What is she doing here? Iris explains that she is in trouble and needs help.  Dr. Densmore wisely suggests other places she can go for help and does not let her into his hotel room and Iris leaves.  But a day later Dr. Densmore picks up the local newspaper and there is a story about a 15 year old teenager named Bonnie Lee Crumb found dead in a canal and the accompanying photo shows that this girl is Iris and Dr. Densmore becomes a prime suspect.

What makes The Expendable Man so riveting is first and foremost the writing.  Dorothy B Hughes was one of the few women who wrote crime novels in the noir style during the 1940's, 1950's and early 1960's and she really knew her craft.   And the Expendable Man is not only a crime novel.  This book touches on important issues involving race. 

We are not told for example at the beginning of the novel that Dr. Hugh Densmore is black.  But once we know it explains the tension we feel from the very first page when Dr. Densmore wants to leave the drive-in where he is eating lunch when a rowdy bunch of teens pull up next to him in their car.  Why the police later on ask Dr. Densmore to pull over so they can search his car for no reason.  And why he was hesitant to give Iris, a young white girl, a ride.

Other characters appear in this novel.  Dr. Densmore's family, his attorney, the detectives investigating the murder. And there is Ellen Hamilton a beautiful and supportive young woman who stands by him.  But make no mistake this is Dr. Densmore's story.  We see everything through his perspective.  He is afraid but he is also determined as he tries to find the real killer and end this nightmare which began when he tried to be a good samaritan.

Dorothy B Hughes needs to be better known and now with The Library of America including her in their list of classic crime novelists I hope she will be. And if you are interested in very well written noir crime fiction with alot to say about America in the early 1960's I heartily recommend The Expendable Man.

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.