“I then realized that the cathedral is a monument to our grief. It is a shrine for all our dead, constructed of the wreckage of the lives that have fallen down around us.”

Book Review:

Review by Jana L. Perksie  (FEB 14, 2014)

Swan Gondola literally starts off with a bang! Two elderly sisters, Emmaline and Hester, known by most in their small county, as the “Old Sisters Egan,” are sitting in their Nebraska farm kitchen drinking coffee. The day has been a peaceful one. Suddenly the house begins to shiver and shake and they are enveloped in noise, a loud BANG!! Books fall from their shelves, china dishes and cups fall to the floor, breaking, chimney bricks drop into the hearth, their caged canaries stop singing and the two sisters are left stunned, shocked. Hester, the tough one, lifts her rifle and opens the door, not knowing what to expect. She and petite, romantic Emmaline, are immediately enveloped in silk. Silk is everywhere. They have witnessed so much in their lives on the farm that nothing really surprises them anymore. The silk comes from a ruined hot air balloon which has apparently crashed into their roof. “Escaped the circus?” Hester wonders. The two immediately search for the pilot, who could be hurt or, even worse, dead. They do find the man alive, flat on his back on the ground, his left leg in a terrible bend. Emmaline’s and Hester’s discovery of the balloon’s pilot will change their lives forever as he relates his strange, mesmerizing and sorry tale.

Obviously in pain, the man snaps his fingers weakly and a card slips from his sleeve which reads, “B. ‘Ferret’ Skerritt, Omaha, Nebraska.” And on the back “This slight of hand you just witnessed is only a hint of my wizardry.” From his inside pocket a postcard falls. Written by Ferret, it gives the reader an example of his unrequited love for his beloved, Mrs. Cecily Wakefield of Omaha. Their’s is a star-crossed love…dramatic, romantic and heartbreaking.

Thus we meet our protagonist whose name is really Bartholomew Skerritt. He is an orphan, (now 25 years-old), left at the door of a Catholic orphanage when he was an infant. Sister Patience told him, “All orphans are born of whores.” There was a note that his mother had tucked into his little suit. “She had addressed the baby as Mr. Bartholomew Skerritt and written: ‘Your last name is your daddy’s last name, (I’m damned sure of it, don’t let anybody tell you different), and your first name was the longest first name I’ve ever seen written down. I can’t give you nothing much but I can give you a name with lots of letters in it. Sincerely, the mother you never knew.'” Reflecting back on his childhood, Ferret says: “Childhood is too awful a thing to make happen to somebody.”

When he was a boy he met librarian, Mr. Crowe. Crowe’s real vocation is that of a ventriloquist. He took a shine to Bartholomew and taught him about the world of books, and more importantly to the boy’s future, how to excel as a ventriloquist.

Ferret has become a petty thief and con-man who currently works as a ventriloquist and a magician at a vaudeville theater, (before the Fair). He usually follows the carny circuit with his unique dummy, Oscar. It is at the Empress Opera House where he meets and immediately falls in love with the mysterious Cecily, an actress with an unknown history. “I heard her name before I saw her, backstage.”

The narrative takes place in the Sisters Egan’s farmhouse while he is recovering. The ever practical Hester, who acts as the community’s amateur veterinarian, has patched him up and put his leg in a cast. It is at the farmhouse where he relates his tale. The author effectively uses letters from Ferret to Cecily, and from Cecily to him, to further the storyline, which weaves back and forth in time from Autumn 1898 to the winter of 1899.

This story-within-a-story begins in the spring of 1898, at the opening of the Omaha World’s Fair. Omaha, Nebraska, is still a noisy, dirty frontier city whose nickname was the “Gateway to the West.” The author writes, “The Omaha World’s Fair, as depicted in  The Swan Gondola,  is a fictional approximation of the “Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition.” The author’s version of the Omaha World’s Fair was held from June 1 to November 1 of 1898. Its goal was to showcase the development of the entire West, stretching from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Coast. Over 2.6 million people came to Omaha to view the 4,062 exhibits during the four months of the Fair. President William McKinley was among the dignitaries who attended. McKinley, in a cameo role here, is immersed in the Spanish-American War, yet still makes time to attend.

Already known as the “New White City,” this fair tries to one-up the fair at Chicago, originally called the “White CIty.” Chicago’s fair took place in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the New World in 1492. The Omaha Fair is much different from Chicago’s, as there is very little “white” about it. Behind the scenes at the Fair, another story takes place, a sleazier story: that of the “rousties,” those workers who put the fair together and take it down; ZigZag the clown, Rosie the anarchist and friend to Ferriet as well as August, another close friend of our protagonist. August is an eccentric Native American homosexual who has a crush on Ferrit. Also among the fair’s “players” are the ragtime player, the nervous lion tamer, the waltzing dwarves, can-can dancers, hootchy kootchy showgirls, etc. They are all looking to make a buck from the “gillies,” (civilians), legally or illegally. This “carny-like” background really enriches The Swan Gondola.  The author has said in an interview, “As for the genre of carnival fiction – perhaps its appeal rests in the hodgepodge of it all. Our concept of an American carnival brings to mind childhood delights, but also an element of the seedy, the deceptive, and the decidedly adult. A carnival is a bit of a fever dream – it’s all cotton candy and sex, on a dirt lot.”

“The Swan Gondola” is situated on a lagoon on the midway. It is at the gondola that Ferret and Cecily meet and conduct their romance, at least initially. Ferret is obsessed with Cecily from the first moment he sees her. His obsession drives the narrative.

The Swan Gondola is a novel that grabbed me from page one until the very end. The characters are well fleshed-out and complex and the writing is tight – no unnecessary filler. Readers will be ensnared by the offbeat personalities and carried along by the unexpected plot developments. Timothy Schaffert clearly did a tremendous amount of research for this book. It seems that the author is a huge fan of L. Frank Baum’s “Wizard of Oz,” as demonstrated in this tale. A riveting piece of historical fiction from page one to the very end. I highly recommend this novel. It is original and entertaining and gives one a good look at the goings-on at a fair, a carny show or a circus.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 26 readers
PUBLISHER:	Riverhead Hardcover (February 6, 2014)
REVIEWER:	Jana L. Perksie
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Timothy Schaffert
EXTRAS:	Swan Gondola Nostalgia
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Coffins of Little Hope

Bibliography:

• The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters (2002)
• The Singing and Dancing Daughters of God (2005)
• Devils in the Sugar Shop (2007)
• The Coffins of Little Hope (2011)
• The Swan Gondola (February 2014)

“Nearly pointed out that we are the wetbacks, having swum our horses across the Nueces a century after the Garcias first settled here. But of course I said nothing. He clapped me on the back— his butcher’s hands— and went in to eat more free beef.

People continued to arrive at the house, bringing cakes, roasts, and regrets that they had not been able to reach us in time to help— how brave we were to assault the Mexicans with such a small force.  By that they mean seventy-three against ten. Fifteen if you count the women. Nineteen if you count the children.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shultman  (DEC 23, 2013)

There is nothing small about the state of Texas nor is there anything small about this epic masterpiece of a novel, which will surely catapult Philipp Meyer into the ranks of the finest American novelists.

What he has accomplished is sheer magic: he has turned the American dream on its ear and revealed it for what it really is: “soil to sand, fertile to barren, fruit to thorns.” The most astounding thing is, you don’t know how good it really is until you close the last page and step back and absorb what you have just experienced.

There are three key characters in this book: Colonel Eli McCullough, kidnapped by the Comanche tribe at an early age and forced to navigate the shaky ground between his life as a white settler and his life as a respected adoptee-turned-Comanche warrior…his son, Peter, the moral compass of the story who resorts to self-hatred after the massacre of his Mexican neighbors…and Peter’s granddaughter Jeanne, a savvy oil woman who has profited mightily from the land.

In ways, the three represent a wholeness of the Texas story: the id, the ego, and the superego of history. Philipp Meyer weaves back and forth among their stories and each one is compelling in its own way. Eli’s is sheer adrenalin, a boy-man who is only slightly bothered by the constraints of society or conscience. Jeanne is a girl-woman with a head for the family business in a time and place where women are considered secondary to men.

And Peter, ah, Peter. He is “The Son,” the diarist who sees the moral shadings, who realizes that not all life is a matter of economics, that the strong should not be encouraged while the weak perish, and that we do have choices in our actions. He notes “that the entire history of humanity is marked by a single inexorable movement – from animal instinct toward rational thought, from inbred behavior toward learned behavior and acquired knowledge.” He is the heart and soul of Texas.

This American epic focuses on many themes. One is generational change and the progression from an agrarian and cattle-based economy to an oil-based economy. Take these lines:

“Of course there is no doubt that the Indian lives closer to the earth and the natural gods…Unfortunately, there is no more room or that kind of living, Eli. You and my ancestors departed from it the moment they buried a seed in the ground and ceased to wander like other creatures.”

Another is man’s inhumanity to man: the brutal land grab and the dehumanization of those who are considered “not belonging” by every single segment: the Comanches, the Mexicans, and above all, the whites who fight tooth and nail to take more of what’s theirs.

And lastly, and most importantly, it is about the blood that runs through human history with Texas as a microcosm. Mr. Meyer writes, “The land was thirsty. Something primitive still in it, the land and people both; the only place like it she’d ever seen was Africa: savannah, perpetual heat and sun, thorns and blinding heat. A place without mercy. The birthplace of humanity.”  This book should be widely-read and talked-about.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 718 readers
PUBLISHER:	Ecco (May 28, 2013)
REVIEWER:	Jill I. Shultman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Philipp Meyer
EXTRAS:	Interview and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: American Rust More Texas: No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy All the Land to Hold Us by Rick Bass The Crossers by Phillip Caputo

Bibliography:

• American Rust (2009)
• The Son (May 2013)

“From the folds of her skirt she brought out a dull green change purse.  How much?

He told her. She pinched out the correct change and handed it to him.

As he filled the sack with fruit, the woman turned and gazed behind her.  Said: Look what the cat drug in.  Those two looking over here like that, you aren’t careful, they’ll come rob you.  Hooligan-looking. She sniffed.

After a moment he looked where she nodded.  Down the street, under the awning of the hardware store, two girls— raggedy, smudge-faced— stood conspiratorially, half turned toward each other.  When they saw Talmadge and the woman observing them, they turned their backs to them.  He handed the burlap sack to the woman, the bottom heavy and misshapen with fruit.”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn  (DEC 22, 2013)

In this understated and emotionally raw novel of a family born as much from choice as from blood, debut novelist Amanda Coplin explores themes of love, loyalty, courage, compassion, revenge, and honor, as well as the lifelong, traumatic impact of both childhood abuse and loss.

The novel opens with orchardist William Talmadge, a tall, broad-shouldered and solitary man who is composed of the most steadfast moral fiber and potent vulnerability of almost any protagonist that I can recall in recent (new/contemporary) literature. After his father died in the silver mines of the Oregon Territory when Talmadge was nine, he came to this fertile valley at the foothills of the Cascade Mountains (Washington State) in 1857 with his mother and sister. Within the next eight years, he suffered from smallpox, his mother died of illness, and his sister later disappeared in the forest, never to return. This is Talmadge’s story, and the saga of his chosen family, borne from the blood of loss and abuse.

Two young pregnant teenagers, Della and Jane, enter Talmadge’s life in his middle-aged years. They steal fruit from him at market, where he sells the apricots, apples, and plums from his sweeping acreage of crops. A bit of a touch and go, cat and mouse game ensues, as they follow him home, hide, and emerge when they are hungry, only to scamper and scatter away again, staying close to the edges of his property. Talmadge gradually gains, if not Della and Jane’s trust (they have a harrowing history of ritual abuse), then a tentative acceptance, and they become inhabitants of the orchard, living alongside Talmadge. He becomes their loyal benefactor.

If I give any more of the plot progression, it will proceed into spoiler territory. The story bears its fruit gradually, almost meditatively, during the first two sections (135 or so pages). There are eight sections in all, but some are long and pensive, and some short, at times just a few pages. The middle sections compress the years into thumbnail sketches without losing its stirring effect on the reader. The story is told in a quiet and nearly oblique manner, yet without being detached. The overall effect is powerful, and it rumbles fiercely, and menacingly, at intervals, without open sentimentality. The characters evolve delicately, with contemplative subtlety.

“Through glances she had caught various features—his nose, the set of his shoulders, the striking color of his eyes. But he had one of those complicated faces that one had to consider at length to understand how emotion lay on it, to understand it at all. It was like a landscape: that wide and complicated, many-layered expanse.”

The land is essential to the story—the planting of seeds, the cultivation, and the harvest. The orchard is Talmadge’s lifeblood, and a ripe motif for the burgeoning love he has for the family that has germinated from the edges of his vast plantation. Nature and nurture merge, and the repository of grief yokes to the deep basin of humanity and from there, the kernels of love grow and reproduce.

At times, as I reflect on the ending, I am troubled by the author’s choices, but so goes the cycle of life in its order and perplexity.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 675 readers
PUBLISHER:	Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (March 5, 2013)
REVIEWER:	Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Amanda Coplin
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another orchard book … The Orchard by Larry Watson

Bibliography:

• The Orchardist (2012)

“And his girl was sleeping beside him, her wonderful blue-and-white flowered nightgown twisted up around her bare, freckled waist. Soft belly rising a little with each breath, her warm damp head resting on Lamb’s outstretched arm, sweat shining at her temples, her mouth open, her little lips open – Christ, she was small – and he was swearing mutely into the space above him that this was good for her. That as long as he was honest and approached this thing from every possible angle, everything would line up and fall into place of its own accord, like atoms helixed and pleated tight within the seeds of cheatgrass needling the hems of her tiny blue jeans: fragile, inevitable, life-giving, and bigger than he.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (OCT 12, 2011)

David Lamb has the emotional life of a Rubik’s Cube. All the pieces are there but it seems impossible at times to get his emotional life organized, put together, and working well. He’s like a chess game played by one person, every piece under his dominion, tutelage and control. Only he can checkmate his own self. Damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t.

Lamb’s father just died, he is recently divorced and his boss wants him to take a leave of absence because his affair with a co-worker is detrimental to the functional dynamics of the office-place. Lamb is fifty-four years old going on seventeen, graying in the hair, thickening in the middle, and skin loose in places where it once was tight and firm. He lives with adolescent angst in a world of one where his ego is as big as the universe, a narcissist of the first order.

Lamb lives in Chicago and one day is approached by a pubescent eleven year-old girl named Tommie who asks him for a cigarette. Lamb realizes that Tommie is the brunt of her friends’ joke and he decides to get to know her, to make something of her and to teach her about the real world. If this sounds like shades of Pygmalion, it is.

Lamb meets up with Tommie on several occasions and proposes to her that she go on a five-day trip with him to see the true west. He tells her they will go as equals and only if she acquiesces. Tommie agrees and they head out in Lamb’s car to a west that exists only in Lamb’s head; for where they go, there is not much more to see than some domesticated cows, deer, birds, and flora mixed in with strip malls and cheap motels. No matter that Tommie has a mother that will most likely report her missing. Lamb concocts a story that he and Tommie will share so that no one will know the truth about what they are doing together.

Lamb tells Tommie that his name is Gary and he begins to call her Em. Their relationship crosses many distinct and indistinct boundaries with Lamb’s narcissism its guiding light. He believes that Tommie needs him in order to know what possibilities exist in life, to learn what real love is and how it is possible. Is Lamb a pedophile? Is he grooming Tommie in a predatory way? These are questions that arise throughout the novel.

Together, Tommie and Lamb plot out a plan so that Tommie sees herself as a willing accomplice on this trip. She will be gone for only a short time – away from her mother, her friends, her school, her home – and in these few days Lamb will teach her to become worldly and wise, in his eyes positively impacting the path of her future.

Lamb’s hubris knows no bounds. The relationship between him and Tommie, at first restrained and non-physical, becomes more laden with inappropriate intimacies initiated by Lamb. He sees himself as Tommie’s savior. Tommie is at the cusp of adolescence and she is hungry for unconditional love and acceptance.

The author inserts herself into the book in an effort to garner empathy for Lamb and Tommie’s situation. She refers to them as “our Lamb” or “our man” and “our Tommie” or “our girl.” If they are of us, how can they be bad, repulsive, disgusting? At times, these authorial insertions felt manipulative.

Nadzam understands predation and coercion. Lamb, a man who lies, has a grandiosity to the extreme and a pedophilic streak, manages to be rendered by the author as a lost and misguided soul. Tommie’s emptiness needs to be filled and she is the perfect vessel for Lamb.

Lamb is a book to be read in doses. It is as heavy as a pocketful of bricks. Bonnie Nadzam speaks to the universal need and search for love. Lamb has never outgrown his adolescence and Tommie is eager to begin hers. They magnetize towards one another and get sucked deeper and deeper into a plan that goes more and more awry. This is not a gentle book nor is it meant for the faint of heart. It is, however, a thrilling book, a psychological feast and feat. Nadzam manages to make both Lamb and Tommie sympathetic characters at the same time that the reader cringes with disgust.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 29 readers
PUBLISHER:	Other Press (September 13, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Bonnie Nadzam
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Lost Memory of Skin by Russell Banks

Bibliography:

• Lamb (September 2011)

“The snow was already creating ridges around me, the high points of my profile forming sculpted edges, but it seemed different, as if the snow was not only changing colors but texture, too. Sand; it was like sand, and as I watched, the wind began to winnow the dunes — and then me along with them. First the shoulder that I’d damaged in Vietnam folded into itself and blew away, my ear, then a leg, a hand, quickly followed by a wrist, a foot. It was all very strange, as if I were watching myself disintegrate into the wind.”

Book Review:

Review by Kirstin Merrihew  (JUN 30, 2011)

William Walk Sacred describes the Native American vision quest experience as a time when, “You are presenting yourself before the Great Spirit and saying, ‘Here I am. I am pitiful. I am naked.” “You’re down to the nitty gritty of who you are.” He adds, “You cannot go off the path at that point because you are now owned by the spirits. They watch you continuously. There is no hiding.” This quest to gain spiritual insights and to, in effect, travel to God, can be compared to the allegorical journey taken in Dante’s The Divine Comedy in which a soul moves through hell, purgatory, and heaven. Of course, hell (Inferno) is the most gripping. The ninth circle of Dante’s hell holds those guilty of treachery in an icy prison, with Satan encased waist-high in the center. How fitting then that Sheriff Walt Longmire of Absaroka County, Wyoming should find himself in a mountain snow storm with a beat-up copy of Dante’s Inferno, battling the elements, violent men, his own limits of endurance, and mysteries of the mind and spirit — in effect, undergoing his own involuntary vision quest.

Walt begins this arduous journey sitting in a restaurant with four convicts he and Deputy Saizarbitoria (the Basquo) intend to deliver to the feds. Three of the cons are confirmed murderers already, and some black humor serves as table talk as the lawmen keep count of how many times Marcel Popp threatens to kill them. Tension crackles even this early as one wonders whether there will be an escape attempt before they even finish their meal. The suspense builds about when it will happen (the escape) because of course it must for the novel to proceed, yet the reader is still surprised when and how it occurs.

Searching for these desperate escapees who have taken hostages with them onto higher ground, Walt has a head start on other law enforcement and refuses to slow down to let them catch up, fearing that to do so could cost more innocent lives than have already been taken. As he doggedly tracks the men and is able to somewhat winnow down the human odds against him, he faces other (weather-driven) obstacles. He finds himself pinned under a snow vehicle at one point. A ferocious wildfire bears down on him at another. Exhaustion and injuries test the sheriff to the max, and he isn’t sure he is going to survive this search for the most dangerous of the convicts: Shade (yes, Inferno reveals its shades too…). Fortunately, Virgil, a seven-foot Native American who wears a bear skin complete with head, comes to Walt’s aid, providing him with shelter and challenging him to a makeshift game of chess while waiting for the dead of night to pass. Virgil is more than a passing character though. Walt isn’t sure how to tell him that one of Shade’s murders is both the spur for this escape from custody and directly connected to Virgil. During one of the sheriff’s direst intervals, Walt implores Virgil, “…I’m not going to make it — and I need to tell you something.”

Shade is a man driven by his past and the commands of the disembodied. Voices (spirits?) speak to Shade and early on at the restaurant, he tells Walt: “I didn’t have to go to the bathroom but wanted to speak to you alone about the snow and the voices.” He believes the lawman may experience the spirits too and doesn’t want to be the only one who goes through a private, hellish spiritual quest. Indeed, Walt and Virgil seem to flicker in and out of “normal” existence as they unrelentingly tramp on in pursuit of Shade, trading dialogue on their uncertainty about where the line is between life and death. One says to the other, “Well, whichever one of us is dead, we’d better get going. I’d hate to think that the Old Ones went to all the trouble of bringing us back and that we couldn’t get the job done.” Getting the job done will only be possible if Walt can brave everything in his path and hold true to himself when his mind is stripped naked before nature and Reality.

Hell is Empty is described by author Craig Johnson as “the most challenging novel I’ve attempted so far and, like Dante, I would’ve found it difficult to make such an effort without my own guides into the nether regions.” Although this is the seventh Walt Longmire novel, I’ve only had the opportunity to read one other:  Junkyard Dogs, the book published before this one. So, I cannot gauge whether Hell outshines all predecessors. I did think it was the superior read in relation to Dogs. However, the two novels arguably satisfy different literary appetites. While this novel is a meaty existential thriller about a man down to the barest threads of his own consciousness, Dogs is a tale of a group of misfits whose walk on the wrong side of the law causes them to come to bad ends. There is a sense of justice by mishap imposed on dumb but not so malicious meddling. However, intentional criminality creeps in as the catalyst for what goes down. Although this is primarily a review of Hell, I’d like to go into a little detail about Dogs:

The opening has Walt investigating an improbable “accident” revolving around a young woman, Gina Steward, who drove off from home in her car. A car to which her husband, Duane, had tied an old man for “safety” while the old guy was working on the family roof. Naturally, the senior citizen, the “Grampus” of the Stewart clan, went for an unexpected open-air ride, and it was a while before Gina, who didn’t notice her bouncing baggage, could be stopped. Fortunately, Grampus Geo Stewart survived this rough road excursion.

The Stewarts run a junkyard, complete with menacing junkyard dogs, adjacent to a relatively new development of expensive homes, and Ozzie Dobbs Jr. frets about what that does to his inherited investment in the development. On the other hand, Ozzie’s mother and Geo are a cozy, if clandestine, couple (ala Hatfields and McCoys or Romeo and Juliet, take your pick). Pretty soon Walt and his loyal department have two suspicious deaths on their hands and have to tease out the clues. Will Walt and his people find that that the junkyard guard dogs’ ferocity can’t match that of their human masters? Or are the people more victims of society or circumstance than anything else? No especially big revelations about human nature rise to the top, but the plot moves quickly and ends cleverly. It’s a sharp, sometimes laugh-out-loud mystery honing a dark edge to a group of seeming bumblers. It’s tone and subject matter stride along most entertainingly. However its tale is, as mentioned, less weighty than that of Hell is Empty.

Walt Longmire reminds me of Walt Fleming, the Idaho sheriff who stars in a series by Ridley Pierson. Then too, bookshelves abound with crime series in scenic, untamed geographic locations with a main hero, a beloved crew of trusty sidekicks, and, usually, a love interest who is somehow connected to law enforcement too. Craig Johnson is obviously practiced at delivering plots that make putting down the book very undesirable. His protagonist is someone a reader can feel good to be around — which adds a reading comfort level since the stories are told in the first person. Even though they are part of a busy niche, the Walt Longmire mysteries belong toward the front of the queue.

Hell is Empty is Craig Johnson’s effort to stretch his writing abilities. No slouch before, he has done an admirable job. His taut mixture of action and character development is nearly flawless, and his literary dollops enrich the novel. Man versus mountain, man versus man, man versus mind, man versus The Beyond. What could be better?

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 53 readers
PUBLISHER:	Viking Adult (June 2, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Kirstin Merrihew
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Craig Johnson
EXTRAS:	Hell is Empty: Reading Guide Junkyard Dogs: Reading Guide
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Killer Summer by Ridley Pearson Cold Wind by C.J. Box

Bibliography:

Walt Longmire novels:

• The Cold Dish (2005)
• Death Without Company (2006)
• Kindness Goes Unpublished (2007)
• Another Man’s Moccasins (2008)
• The Dark Horse (2009)
• Junkyard Dogs (2010)
• Hell is Empty (2011)
• As the Crow Flies (May 2012)

“If I could have ceased what pendulums swung, or wheels turned, or water clocks emptied, then, in order to keep the Fates from marching in time, I would have, for though it is what a boy naturally wishes when he fears change will come upon what he loves and take it away, a man remembers it, too, and in his heart wishes the same when all around him he feels only loss, loss that has been his companion for some time, and promises to remain at his side.”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn  (MAY 25, 2011)

World War I was the deadliest conflict in Western history, but contemporary portrayals of war in literature and cinema primarily focus on examples of combat from the past fifty or sixty years. At a time when the Great War is receding into the annals of distant history, this elegiac and edifying novel has been released–a small, slim but powerful story of a young soldier, Josef Vinich, who hails from a disenfranchised and impoverished family in rural Austria-Hungary.

Josef was born in the rural mining town of Pueblo, Colorado, in 1899, to immigrant parents from Austria-Hungary who dreamed of a better life in the United States. The opening eleven-page prologue, a stunning and deeply felt family tragedy, is subsequently followed by a move back to the Empire, to his father’s village of Pastvina (which is now part of the Czech Republic). Josef’s father then marries a cruel woman with two young sons. They live the hardscrabble existence of shepherds, barely able to put food on the table, in the cold and brutal climate of the region. Josef and his father live for part of the year in a cabin in the Carpathian Mountains and ply their trade of husbandry in order to survive.

At the age of ten, Josef is introduced to his father’s Krag rifle, and is instructed in the art of hiding and hunting their prey. A distant cousin, Marian Pes–nicknamed Zlee–who was one year older than Josef, is sent to live with them. Zlee has an instinct for shepherding, and together they form a brotherly bond of love and respect. Josef’s sleep is haunted by dreams of loss and he gradually becomes distant from his father.

In 1916, when Zlee turns eighteen, both boys go to the conscription office to join up. Josef alters the age on his identity card so that he can go, too. During artillery training, they are recognized for their skill of aiming and shooting, and are sent to train as snipers, or “sharpshooters,” which in German is called Scharfschützen. What follows is a coming of age story set in the harsh climate and geography in the trenches of war–to Austria to train as Scharfschützen, and eventually to the sub-zero temperature of the Italian Alps.

Krivak writes with the precision and beauty of a finely cut gem and with the meticulous pace and purpose of a classical conductor. Every word is necessary and neatly positioned. His prose is evocative, poetic, and distilled. There is a place between the breath of the living and the faces of the dead, and that is where Josef’s soul resides. When the author takes the reader to the abyss of loss and the ghosts of Time, it is riveting. However, the emotional resonance was primarily potent in the prologue and only periodically in the body of the story, and was otherwise low-timbred and somewhat distancing. The narrative is so deliberately controlled that at times it felt antiseptic and dispassionate.

Krivak’s first novel is highly recommended as an addition to a library of World War I literature. This is an admirable debut, and it is evident from the prologue that Krivak is capable of crafting an emotionally satisfying story.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 13 readers
PUBLISHER:	Bellevue Literary Press (April 19, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Publisher page on Andrew Krivak
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Work Song by Ivan Doig A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin

Bibliography:

• The Sojourn (April 2011)

Nonfiction:

• A Long Retreat: In Search of a Religious Life (2008)

“Things happened. He reacted. Sometimes he took a rebellious pride in the cold-blooded courage of certain unconsidered deeds; just as often, he repented of his rashness afterward. There is, for example, nothing quite like lying in a widening pool of your own blood to make you reconsider the wisdom of challenging bad-tempered men with easy access to firearms.”

Book Review:

Review by Kirsten Merrihew  (MAY 24, 2011)

Doc relates how it might have been during 1878-79 when Dr. John Henry Holliday lived in Dodge City, Kansas. “The Deadly Dentist” who later gained fame or infamy, depending on perspective, for “pistoleering” along with the surviving Earp brothers at the O.K. Corral, saved Wyatt Earp’s life in Dodge first. Earp is said to have credited Holliday with saving him, but apparently didn’t share details, so history isn’t sure of the facts. But this novel presents its own story of how it might have happened.

While in Dodge, Holliday also met “Big Nose Kate,” who would become his common law wife. As for earning a living, his ability to practice his profession was limited by the chronic, wracking cough of his consumption (tuberculosis) — few wanted their faces so close to his, but Doc imagines scenes in which Holliday gets Wyatt into his chair and fixes the other man’s supposedly marred smile for him. To afford his fancy clothes, a long residence in the best rooms of the local hotel, and additional high-spending habits, Doc (as he told folks to call him) dealt faro and took part in other high-stakes card games at night. He’d come West from his native Georgia in hopes that the drier air would improve his lungs, but the dust irritated them further and he drank bourbon in large quantities to “calm” his coughing, often imbibing to drunken unpredictability. A cultured Southern gentleman by upbringing, Doc allowed the coarseness of the West to shape his habits to a degree, developing even before he arrived in Dodge, a shady reputation. But he also retained an appreciation for literature and music, and this novel portrays him as a man concerned with justice for all, even a Chinese…and young black man whose suspicious death Doc was determined to lay on someone’s moral account.

Author Mary Doria Russell, best known so far for her philosophical science fiction hit, The Sparrow, uses her prodigious talents for clear and sometimes very beautiful prose to speculate on a very different subject, but just as she brought readers into Father Emilio Sandoz’s reality, she now brings us into Doc Holliday’s happenstance. Clearly, Russell would like to dispel some of Doc’s outlaw reputation, for she writes on the first page of the first chapter,

“At thirty, he would be famous for his part in the gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. A year later, he would become infamous when he rode at Wyatt Earp’s side to avenge the murder of Wyatt’s younger brother Morgan. To sell newspapers, the journalists of his day embellished thin facts with fat rumor and rank fiction; it was they who invented the iconic frontier gambler and gunman Doc Holliday. (Thin. Mustachioed. A cold and casual killer. Doomed and always dressed in black as though for his own funeral).”

As though to balance the scales, Russell’s story quotes a hotel bellhop in Glenwood Springs where Doc Holliday died in November, 1887 at age 36: “We all liked him. He bore his illness with fortitude, and he was grateful for the slightest kindness. Doc was a very fine gentleman, and he was generous when he tipped.”

In her concluding Author’s Note, Russell takes on the obvious question: “Arriving at the end of historical fiction today, the modern reader is likely to wonder, ‘How much of that was real?’ In this case, the answer is not all of it but a lot more than you might think.” That sounds reassuring. However, the fact is that Doc begins Holliday’s life by proposing an historically questioned premise, namely that he was born with a cleft palate and that his physician uncle repaired the outer damage when John Henry was only two months old. Some historians insist that such an operation successfully concluded at such a tender age would have made medical journals. However, no record can be found, so they doubt the veracity of the claim. Some even doubt that Doc ever had a cleft palate at all because pictures of him as an adult, sans moustache, don’t reveal an upper lip scar. So, one can wonder whether Russell decided to use disputed biographical “facts” in order to create more sympathy for the man or to at least portray him with one more strike against him than he actually overcame when she writes he learned to speak properly despite the unrepaired split palate inside his mouth.

For its own reasons, Doc also may have misrepresented Holliday’s long-term but intermittent lover, Mary Katherine Harony ( aka “Kate Elder” or “Big Nose Kate”) as a prostitute. According to some historians, there is no real proof that Harony was. Perhaps, she might have been mistaken for another hooker Kate in town. Or, she could have been cat house madam without herself servicing the customers. Or, she may have been a working girl for a time and then given it up. No one seems certain. Perhaps Russell chooses to make her an “independent” prostitute even during her up/down relationship with Doc to, in part, illustrate further the egalitarian side of Holliday that the author also brings out in other ways. Regardless, this novel seeks to portray the “seedy” sex trade of the West in a softer light, expressing a sense of empathy for the women who made their way in life by selling their bodies (after all, few other opportunities were open to unmarried women out West). The reader gets to understand Russell’s version of Kate and see why she vacillated between Doc and other men. One reason is that Doc couldn’t hold onto his earnings, and Kate felt the need to have her own stream of income. Whatever the truth, Russell shows a Kate who kept coming back to Doc:

“…She knew how to calm him after the dream, how to steady him while he coughed until his throat was raw and his chest burned. She knew how much bourbon was enough to help him catch his breath, and she knew how to make him forget, for a time, his mother’s illness and his own.

“Afterward, she always asked, ‘I’m a good woman to you, ain’t I, Doc?’ He always agreed. When he fell asleep again, she felt the satisfaction of a job well done.”

Doc isn’t just about Holliday and Kate (who, it must be included, like Holliday, was educated in the classics and languages, and that may have been her greatest attraction for the dentist/gambler/gunfighter — she could stimulate his mind too). The novel provides an overview of many of the residents of Dodge: the lawmen, the politicians, the men of commerce, the non-whites, a few Jesuits, the women, the toll gate family, the horses, etc., giving the reader a peek into this rough-and-tumble western town. This fictive recreation is a strong point of the book as we see the complex social, economic, and political pressures that made law and order elusive and justice raw and hard.

The other strength is the novel’s humanizing of Doc Holliday. Although, as mentioned, history can’t provide us with material to back up all of Russell’s contentions, still it is fascinating to see the seemingly contradictory character she presents: a man who stubbornly struggled against his lung disease for 15 years before finally being overcome, a man who didn’t usually start gun fights but would finish them, a man who played heavenly music on pianos when they were tuned correctly, a thoughtful man concerned with justice, a man who was fast with a gun.

However, the novel’s concentration on Doc’s time in Dodge also has its downside. The reader should not expect any in-depth retelling of the Tombstone confrontation or Doc’s subsequent ride by Wyatt Earp’s side. Russell deals with the early and later parts of Holliday’s life in quick packages at the beginning and end of the book, and the bulk of the narrative tends to get a little repetitive as Doc went about his gambling, coughing, a dab of dentistry, fighting with Kate, etc. There is some plot, but arguably there could have been more had Russell permitted herself to begin in earnest in Dodge and then move on to Tombstone and beyond.

Doc is a novel I’ll remember because it describes the Wild West and its survivalist mentality while also illuminating the civilized, decent motivations and actions that those who came to live there brought with them and did not surrender. Violence by nature and man was a fact of life, but human kindness, honor, and sacrifice shone through too. Doc Holliday was a suffering man who adapted somewhat awkwardly to the West, but he did retain some of the gentlemanly, cultural roots his mother had instilled in him. Russell’s Doc is a product of her imagination, but the author may have come closer to his true self than others — biographers, filmmakers, novelists — have.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 285 readers
PUBLISHER:	Random House; First Edition edition (May 3, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Kirstin Merrihew
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Mary Doria Russell
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Dreamers of the Day And another Western character reimagined in fiction: Etta by Gerald Kolpan

Bibliography:

Sci-Fi:

• The Sparrow (1996)
• Children of God (1998)

Historial:

• A Thread of Grace (2005)
• Dreamers of the Day (2008)
• Doc (2011)

“Chin took three steps backward into the alley as Ames stepped through the doorway. Scanning the alley and eyeing the box Chin was carrying, Ames said, ‘First time, last time, Chin. I don’t know how I ever let you talk me into this deal in the first place. Now let’s get the hell back in the store. You can never be too careful. Besides—’

“A single shot from a semiautomatic handgun cut Ames’s response short. Collapsing to his knees, he fell face forward into a pothole near the alley’s edge. The jagged asphalt edge cut a three-inch-long gash in his forehead as blood oozed from the pencil-eraser-sized entry wound in his neck and his lower jaw twitched. Eight seconds later both of his eyes rolled back in his head, and Wiley Ames gasped a final truncated breath.”

Book Review:

Review by Chuck Barksdale  (OCT 24, 2010)

In First of State, Robert Greer goes back in time to the early career of his main character, C.J. Floyd. The series started in the 1990s, but this book begins in the fall of 1971 when 20 year old Calvin Jefferson Floyd returns to Denver, Colorado to live with his bail bondsman uncle Ike Floyd, after serving two years in the Navy in Viet Nam. This very enjoyable book not only provides details about how Floyd became a successful bail bondsman and part-time private investigator, but also provides a great mix of characters and mystery as Floyd searches for several years to find the murder of pawnshop worker and collector Wiley Ames.

One of the first places C.J. Floyd visits after returning to Denver is to GI Joes, a lower downtown Denver pawnshop. He had hidden some antique license plates that he had stolen from the store just before leaving for Viet Nam and hoped to get them back to add to his prized collection. Unfortunately, during his absence, the store has been remodeled and his hiding spot is no longer there. However, he does meet and befriend 46-year old recovering alcoholic World War II veteran and avid collector, Wiley Ames. Because of their similar interests and backgrounds, despite their difference in ages, Wiley is able to understand C.J. Floyd’s difficulty in adjusting to his return from war. C.J. enjoys his conversations with Wiley and after only a short time feels they could be friends.

However, shortly thereafter, C.J. Floyd finds out that Ames is murdered outside the store. Because of the quick friendship that developed between Ames and Floyd, C.J. feels obligated to solve the murder, especially since he still has not adjusted to life back in Denver. He spends weeks gathering information with the help of his friends and his uncle. Unfortunately, despite his dedication, he is forced to put the investigation aside and work with his uncle.

C.J.’s interest in the murder returns in 1976 when he finds a license plate that he believes was part of Wiley Ames’ collection that Wiley showed him in 1971. C.J suspects the seller of the license plate may be guilty or at least know something of the murder so he starts there in hopes of gathering the information to finally solve the murder. This leads C.J. to Wiley Ames niece who inherited much from Wiley Ames and others that hold the clues to the murder.

Much of the book surrounds C.J.’s relationship with his uncle Ike Floyd. Ike, who raised C.J. since he was two years old, takes C.J. into his bail bondman and bounty hunter business and encourages him to learn the business as he thinks this will help C.J. Although he keeps it to himself, Ike also knows he needs help in the business because his deteriorating health is keeping him from doing the job that has led to be as successful as he has been. Ike has struggled for years with alcohol addiction but despite that has run a very good bail bondsman business and the only one run by an African-American. The interactions and relationship between C.J. and Ike is the best part of the book and goes a long way to providing a better understanding of why C.J. is the way he is.

Although I’ve read one previous book by Robert Greer (Heat Shock (2003)), this is the first book in the C.J. Floyd series that I have read. Since this is a prequel, I felt this would not be a bad place to start. I certainly enjoyed the book, especially reading about C.J. Floyd’s early days learning his trade and his relationship with his uncle. However, I did miss out on what I should be looking for as new characters were introduced in the book. I could not appreciate the “that’s how they met” moment or appreciate why or how a relationship exists in the present day. I’m not saying that to discourage new readers but to suggest that fans of the series will get more out of the book and encourage them to read it. Of course, a few key characters in First of State, are not in future books and new readers will be more surprised (and disappointed) when they don’t survive this book.

After reading First of State, I read a few chapters of The Devil’s Hatband, the first book in the C.J. Floyd series. Although written fourteen years prior to First of State, much of the same style and approach are present. In both books, Greer spends much time introducing the reader to what appears to be a main character, only to have that person murdered. This is an interesting approach that Greer uses that makes the reader really want C.J. Floyd to solve the murder and find the murderer. I’m certainly looking forward to finishing this book and many others in this enjoyable series.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 2 readers
PUBLISHER:	North Atlantic Books (October 19, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Chuck Barksdale
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Robert Greer
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Heat Shock

Bibliography:

C.J. Floyd Mystery Series

• The Devil’s Hatband (1996; 2004)
• The Devil’s Red Nickel (1997; 2005)
• The Devil’s Backbone (1998; 2006)
• Resurrecting Langston Blue (2005)
• The Fourth Perspective (2006)
• The Mongoose Deception (2007)
• Blackbird Farewell (October 2008)
• First of State (October 2010)

Stand-alone:

• Limited Time (2000)
• Heat Shock (2003)
• Spoon (October 2009)

Short Stories:

• Isolation and Other Stories (June 2001)

“Reacher was spending no time on regret or recrimination. No time at all. The time for ruing mistakes and learning from them came later. As always he was focused in the present and the immediate future. People who wasted time and energy cursing recent errors were certain losers.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  (OCT 24, 2010)

Those who enjoyed Lee Child’s 61 Hours were prepared for a breathtaking follow-up. How sad that Worth Dying For is a throwback to a more one-dimensional Jack Reacher, a far less interesting protagonist than the one in 61 Hours. In the previous installment, it was thrilling to see a new version of Reacher—a man with flaws who made mistakes and was not able to win every battle. He also revealed a bit more of his background during telephone conversations with a woman named Susan whom he never meets. Since 61 Hours ended in a cliffhanger, many of us expected that Child would pick up where he left off, perhaps heading in even more new directions.

Unfortunately, that does not happen. Almost all of the threads left dangling at the end of 61 Hours are referred to only in passing. This time around, an injured but still functional Reacher finds himself in a motel in Nebraska. He overhears a drunken physician blowing off a patient named Eleanor Duncan, who has a severe nosebleed. Relying on his sixth sense and experience as a military policeman, Reacher infers that Mrs. Duncan is a victim of domestic violence. Since the doctor is too inebriated to drive, Jack insists on chauffeuring him to the Duncan residence. This turns out to be a huge mistake, since Eleanor Duncan’s husband is a brute whose repulsive family runs the town as if it were their personal fiefdom. When someone has the temerity to cross the Duncans, a team of goons—hulking but not terribly bright former football players—rough them up. The malevolent Duncans have the citizenry in an economic stranglehold, and they have succeeded in covering up their sordid and illegal activities for decades.

Most readers will find the plot rather predictable. Reacher, operating more or less on autopilot, takes on the Duncans, the football players, and three pairs of thugs (two Lebanese, two Iranians, and two Italians, a veritable United Nations without the peacekeeping force). Jack uses semi-mystical powers to predict what his opponents will do and then tries to outmaneuver them. There is enough violence in these pages to satisfy even the most bloodthirsty thriller fan. In fact, there are so many scenes of torture and mayhem that the gore quickly loses its shock value. There is no character development, the dialogue is stilted, the staccato prose quickly becomes tedious, and the story breaks no new ground in a genre that is already filled with tough guys who act as judge, jury, and executioner. If you liked Death Wish with Charles Bronson (a cult classic about an urban vigilante) then you will probably love Worth Dying For. One only hopes that Child takes a breather and puts a great deal more thought into his next installment.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 579 readers
PUBLISHER:	Delacorte Press; First Edition edition (October 19, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Lee Child (and Jack Reacher!)
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Affair 61 Hours Gone Tomorrow Nothing to Lose Bad Luck and Trouble The Hard Way The Enemy

Bibliography:

• Killing Floor (1997) /
• Die Trying (1998)
• Tripwire (1999)
• Running Blind (2000)
• Echo Burning (2001)
• Without Fail (2002)
• Persuader (2003)
• The Enemy (2004)
• One Shot (2005)
• The Hard Way (2006)
• Bad Luck and Trouble (2007)
• Nothing to Lose (2008)
• Gone Tomorrow (2009)
• 61 Hours (2010)
• A Wanted Man (2012)
• Never Go Back (September 2013)

Movies:

• Jack Reacher (May 2013)

“The fifth of July, they went down to the river, RL and June, sat on the rocks with a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red and talked about Taylor. The fifth of July was Taylor’s birthday and they did this every year. He would have been fifty. RL had been his boyhood friend and June was married to him. He’d been dead eleven years.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (JUL 6, 2010)

Kevin Canty writes with a spare beauty. The book is designed so that there is a lot of white space on the pages and this space carries meaning. Everything is about people who are lost, looking for love, recovering from poor choices and yet have a resiliency that carries them through their damaged lives with strength and a certain dignity. Canty’s characters are able to tell us as much about themselves in their silences as when they speak.

The characters that comprise this novel overlap, and each chapter is primarily about one or two of the characters. There is RL, owner of a bait, tackle and guiding shop who has not had a loving relationship in years. He is a big man – in girth, spirit and appetites. He likes his booze and he wishes desperately for a woman. He was married for a while to a Dead Head who followed the Grateful Dead for years, leaving him to raise their daughter, Layla, on his own. Layla gives meaning to his life. She is nineteen years old and a college student. When not at school, she spends her summers in the Montana wilderness with RL where most of this novel takes place. Layla is recovering from a love affair gone amiss. RL realizes that Layla is not likely to be with him for much longer. He is trying to learn how to let her go.

RL decides to take in an old lover of his who is having chemotherapy for melanoma. In the back of his mind he hopes to resurrect some sort of relationship with her despite the fact that she is married. Betsy helps give some meaning to RL’s life because, with Layla in college, he faces the empty nest syndrome. With his big heart, he needs to give. However, with his huge appetites, he also expects a lot from others.

June is a close friend of RL’s. She was married to RL’s best friend who died eleven years ago. As the book begins, June decides to give up her widowhood. Her husband, Taylor, was her great love but now she wants another love. Eleven years of grieving is a long time. On top of that, she is a hospice worker, spending her days with the nearly dead.

Edgar is RL’s employee, an artist and lover of fishing. He knows fish and feels at one with the trout that inhabit the rivers of Montana. He is married with one child and another on the way. He is trying to make some difficult decisions in his life.

Canty has an inimitable sense of place. The reader feels like the Montana mountains are looming. I felt the lushness of the land, along with the hard life the inhabitants face. This is not a land for the weak but it can be a land for the lost – an end of the road place where people depend on one another. There is a lot of alcohol consumption in the book but there is rarely a mention of television or movies. Despite the loneliness of all the characters, they depend on one another for sustenance.

The characters speak to us in what they don’t say as much as what they tell us. This is a book about everything that makes us human – love, work, life, money, pain, joy, loneliness and connection. Canty gets it. His characters run the gamut of the soul. They are not sweet, nor are they urbanized. I pictured them in Carrhartts and jeans, rubber boots and down parkas. I felt their hands get cold and traveled with them on the dirt roads that were slick with mud or snow. I felt their pain and I soared with them in those rare moments of joy. It takes a fine author to take me to the depths of despair and soar the height of joy with his characters.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 6 readers
PUBLISHER:	Nan A. Talese (July 6, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Kevin Canty
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of:  Where the Money Went

Bibliography:

• Below Zero (1999)
• A Stranger in the World: Stories (1994)
• Honeymoon and Other Stories (2001)
• Into the Great Wide Open (1996)
• Winslow in Love (2005)
• Where the Money Went: Stories (July 2009)
• Everything (July 2010)