The Utter Catastrophe

The Utter Catastrophe by Sandra Hutchison (Book 3 in the Lawson Trilogy) 400 pages

Hutchison has done it again; she has written a book that sweeps the reader into its fictional world!

In the third and final book (much to my dismay) of the Lawson Trilogy, the topics are much, much heavier—the opioid crisis, drug addiction and recovery—yet it is tempered by a romance.

It’s the summer of 2016. Winslow Jennings is now Lawson’s Chief of Police. He and the other chiefs in the nearby small towns are overwhelmed with drug-related deaths. Winslow doesn’t realize it, but the crisis is about to hit home.

Everyone in Lawson has noted that Winslow’s cousin, Dave Cantwell, and Dave’s wife, Peggy, have been acting strange. They seldom leave the house anymore, don’t interact with their old friends or their extended family. It’s been a bad year for them with Dave hurting his back at work. But they still manage to make it work. Or so they thought.

The Cantwell’s have three children: Megan, Mike and Zach. Megan, twenty-one and just home from college, has noticed that her parents were acting stranger than usual, but she shrugged it off as to her being away. When they overdose in a nearby town after making a buy, it is up to Megan to become the adult. Mike is in Afghanistan and Zach is a middle-schooler.

As Megan tries to sort out her parents’ financial affairs and save their farm, there is another problem looming on the horizon. Seems her first, and only so far, love, Noah, is back in Lawson. He has recently been discharged from a rehab center and is home to bury his wife and raise his daughter. But can Noah say clean? Megan still has feelings for him, but it would not be smart to get involved with a drug addict.

At times, “The Utter Catastrophe” was a tough book to read, but Hutchison managed it with compassion. I really liked that Hutchison focused on those left behind to clean up the mess(es) and muddle their way through life instead on the addicts themselves, and how they could not get off that road.

I also like that Winslow and Mary did not take center stage in this chapter, but they were strong supporting characters. The Somali refugee family (whose names I can no longer recall) are also supporting characters who help to frame the story of a small town in big trouble,

“The Utter Catastrophe” is another 5-star read in Julie’s world!

 

A World Lost

A World Lost by Wendell Berry, 151 pages

Andy Catlett was nine years old when his favorite uncle and namesake was shot and killed.  The murder left a void in little Andy's life, family, and community, a powerful absence strongly felt but unspoken.  As the decades pass and Andy becomes a man, he explores this loss in many dimensions, even as he gradually comes to recognize that he will never really know why his uncle died.

A World Lost is short, powerful, and mysterious.  Mysterious not because it is a whodunnit - the identity of Uncle Andrew's killer is never in doubt - but because it touches on deeper mysteries, mysteries involving the human person and the nature of sin.  Berry does not try to solve these mysteries, he tries to understand them, and that begins with accepting that they cannot be solved.  Who Uncle Andrew was is ultimately a question just as unanswerable - and infinitely more wonderful - as the questions surrounding his murder.

Life for a Life

Life for a Life by Lynda McDaniel    339 pages

 

In this first book in the Appalachian Mountain mystery series, readers are introduced to Della Kincaid and Abit.

 

Della has left Washington, D.C., looking for a new start. She spotted a for sale sign on a boarded up store as she took the long way back to D.C. after a week’s vacation in the Black Mountains. A former investigative reporter and newly divorced, Della was looking for a quiet, more predictable life.

 

At first, the local townspeople weren’t too keen on the new arrival, with the exception of Abit, a fifteen-year-old boy with an unspecified mental deficiency. His dad had taken him out of school because he was “a bit slow.” Now he just hangs around the house.

 

But when Della reopens the small grocery store, Abit begins to hang around, sitting in a rickety chair on the porch. Slowly, Della and Abit become friends. Della begins to offer him odd jobs around the store.

 

One afternoon, Della and her dog, Jake, go on a picnic where they discover a dead girl. Enter the sheriff who is stereotypical of all small town sheriffs. When a suicide note is found in the girl’s purse, the sheriff considers it an open-and-closed case of suicide.

 

Della’s reporter’s instinct kicks in, and she begins her own investigation. She calls on old friends back in D. C. and even enlists the help of her now-unemployed ex-husband.

 

The story takes place in the late 1980s, making it a combination historical mystery and cozy-bordering-on procedural mystery. Della and Abit take turns narrating the story. At first, I didn’t think I was going to like the story. The cover isn’t appealing; I would not have picked it up if I saw it on a bookstore shelf. (The author invited me to review the book, in case you’re wondering.) It took a while to get into Abit’s dialect, but McDaniel pulls it off. Still it got old fluctuating between Della’s correct grammar and Abit’s vocabulary and punctuation. That is the main reason  “Life for a Life” receives 4 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

 

The Myth of Perpetual Summer

The Myth of Perpetual Summer by Susan Crandall  368 pages

Not long ago I wrote a review for Joanne Bischof’s Sons of Blackbird Mountain. I call it the first “must read” of 2018. Well, I just found the second “must read” of the year, The Myth of Perpetual Summer, and probably the best beach read I’ve ever come across. To quote the back cover, “A struggling girl uncovers her family’s history and sees how the lies of the past echo throughout their dysfunctional lives today.”

It sounds cliché to say that this novel about family and the secrets they harbor is haunting, powerful and beautifully writer, but those are the best words to describe this story. It’s Southern gothic at it’s finest.

The story starts in August 1972 in San Francisco. Tallulah James has just learned that her brother, Walden, had been arrested for murder in New Orleans. Readers may think this is going to be about Walden, but it’s really about Tallulah. All she knows is that she must get home to him, a home that she left nine years ago and has not been in contact with her family since.

The story revolves around Tallaluah’s growing up in Lamoyne, Mississippi with her two brothers, sister, parents, and grandmother. Chapter Two shifts back to 1958 Lamoyne. Her parents are largely absent, and she feels the weight of raising her twin younger siblings, not to mention making sure the family’s reputation doesn’t get any more smeared than it already is. Her dad is a professor at the local college, and her mother is more interested in “causes” than in child-rearing. Their explosive relationship plays havoc on the entire family. The matriarch of the family, is the Southern-to-the-bone grandmother, who does her best to guard the family’s secrets and.

There is some beautiful writing in this novel, and here are a few lines that I just adored:

            “…everyone knows that is brains were leather, Grayson wouldn’t have enough to saddle a June bug.)”

            “He knows more hiding places in this town than a stray cat.”

            “I will the storm to take is time as the grumbling sky argues for a faster arrival.”

            “The anew quickly spread to Margo, a forest fire hopping from tree to tree.”

But then betrayal and death shake Tallaluah to the core.

I have never read Crandall before, but I’m sure gonna get some of her books. The Myth of Perpetual Summer receives 6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

Empire Falls

Empire Falls by Richard Russo, 483 pages

Empire Falls is the name of the town that this novel is set in. The prologue gives some history of the town, especially the Whiting family who owns a lot of real estate, a mill and a factory. The novel is set around 2000 and by this time the mill and factory have been shut down and the town is not what it once was.

Miles Roby is the manager of the Empire Grille (owned by Mrs. Whiting). Much of the novel involves him and his family, including his parents, brother and mother-in-law. There are a dozen or so characters but not enough for it to be confusing or hard to separate them. Miles has been promised that he will be left the Grille when Mrs. Whiting passes away but her family is long lived and in the meantime he is not doing much better than making it by. His wife Janine is in the process of divorcing him and is already seeing another man. Miles is at a crossroads in his life and has make some choices or just continue in the middle ground. As the novel unfolds, some secrets are revealed and characters have revelations.

This novel is mostly driven by the characters but there are some  exciting plot points that occur in about the last third of the book.

I can see why it won a Pulitzer prize. The characters are complex and evolve as people. I appreciated the irony and situational humor. I liked it a lot but I did have a few quibbles. I wasn't sure about the logic of a plot point or the necessity of another. Also, I felt that one of the characters did something that was out of character. Despite those quibbles I would highly recommend it to people who like character driven stories.

Noelle

Noelle by Greg Kincaid    288 pages

It’s been a long time, five years, since readers have gotten to take a peek inside the McCray family’s lives. With this fourth installment in the series, it’s the holiday season. Of course.

When we last saw Todd and Laura, their friendship had taken a romantic turn.  Both have returned to Crossing Trails to run an animal shelter, whose funding has been donated by Doc Pelot. It’s an ideal situation. As they move back, the decision on where to live is a pressing issue. Do they each return to their parents’ homes, or do they make the leap and move in together?

Todd returns with a dog, Noelle, who gets her name in a humorous fashion. She is a mixed breed---the head of a golden retriever and the body of a wiener dog. She is the happiest dog on the planet, energetic, with the cutest smile that will melt the heart of even the most cynical of people.

That’s just two of the threads that run through this touching holiday tale. The other threads include matriarch Mary Ann McCray’s decision to be the first woman Santa Claus in Crossing Trails. Ol’ Hank is just too old to do it any longer...at ninety-something he’s on oxygen and in a wheel chair. Mary Ann even shakes up the notion of children asking Santa for their hearts’ desire, a notion that immediately captures the attention of the entire state of Kansas.

The other thread is the breakup of the Robinson household. Parents Abbey and Link are doing their best, but Keenan and Emily are struggling as their world collapses around them. It’s the McCrays and Noelle to the rescue.

I always like reading a Greg Kincaid holiday story. It put me in the mood and always makes me smile. There are also several laughs. Noelle gets 4 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world. Why, since I seem to write glowing about the story?  The first four-five chapters set up the threads, but they seem so disconnected---at first---that it slowed down my ability to care for the characters, and I wanted to see more of Noelle in those early pages.

I received this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for this review.

Gone on Sunday

Gone On Sunday by Tower Lowe   294  pages

Everyone has some kind of secret. When you live in a small town, secrets are even harder to keep. Secrets, a cold murder case and a new murder are the essences behind Tower Lowe’s first book in the Cotton Lee Penn Historical Mystery series.

Set in Virginia in the years 1932 and 1972, Lowe provides readers with a taste of Southern Gothic—both from the Old South and the New South. It is sad that those tastes hadn’t changed in those forty years.

The book opens with lawyer Max Mayfield hiring the novel’s protagonist, Cotton Lee Penn, to help him investigate the beating death of Little Mary in 1972. The case is quite disturbing in that it bears many, many similarities to the unsolved 1932 beating death of Bead Baker (I found it both odd an interesting that each time Bead is mentioned, it’s always with her full name: Bead Baker.). Even more fascinating is that Little Mary is Bead Baker’s granddaughter.

Many in the town wonder why Max turned to Cotton Lee. After all, she is a cripple thanks to polio and walks with a limp. But as far as Max is concerned, Cotton Lee is the “smartest white person Sussex County.” (That was uttered in 1972!)

The novel jumps back and forth between 1932 and 1972, as Cotton Lee is certain that the two murders are connected. The hard part about this novel is that the possible suspects all have ties to Bead Baker’s murder. Keeping the character straight was often difficult at times. It would have been nice to have a character list in the front or back. Still, that doesn’t hinder the fast pace of the novel, or this reader’s inability to put it down.

But, quickly, here are the suspects: Did Sharp Dorn, the local, philandering and abusing minister kill Bead Baker for putting ideas in his wife Verdie’s head? Did Dorn’s son, Ron, kill Little Mary? Or was it the hired help Zed Omen in 1932 and his grandson, Doug, in 1972? I’m not sure how Lowe kept them all straight.

Another thing that bothered me, is the way that flashbacks are told in italics. It’s jarring and as I first began to read, it took me out to of the story. However, once I got into the book’s rhythm, well, it was fascinating.  

When Cotton Lee discovers some of the town’s (current and past) secrets, readers are led to the shocking conclusion.

Although I have the two problem areas, Gone on Sunday, receives 6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world. I highly recommend it.

The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend

The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katarina Bivald.  384 pages.

Broken Wheel, Iowa, isn't the kind of place most people go for a vacation.  But Sara comes all the way from Sweden to see her friend Amy, a woman she's corresponded with about books for years.  However, the day she gets there, Sara discovers it's the day of Amy's funeral.   While the residents of the town are happy to look after Sara, they don't quite understand her love of books.  And when Sara opens a bookstore on Main Street, things in town really begin to change.

This is a quick read, focusing on friendship, quirky characters, and the route to happy endings.  I thought it was a charming story, and I liked that there was a focus on books.  Some of the storyline was predictable, but I didn't mind that.  This was a good book for a cold day; it's one of those stories where you can settle in to a chair with a cup of tea and just enjoy getting to know the town and the characters.   The author does a good job of making the town and the people easy to envision and the story has a steady pace.

This book has been compared to other books:  The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin, and the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Shaffer.   I think that if you enjoy those books, you'll find this an enjoyable read, as well.

The Awful Mess: A Love Story

The Awful Mess: A Love Story by Sandra Hutchison  410 pages

When Mary and Roger Bellamy’s marriage falls apart, Mary seeks solace in the small community of Lawson, New Hampshire. Lawson is typical of a very, very small town. “Everyone in town knows about the young divorcee from Boston who bought Miss Lacey’s house.”  And she’s hardly unpacked!

Mary isn’t a religious person, but she has made her first new friend in Arthur Tennant, the rector of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church. She looks forward to their meetings on the Main Street Bridge. She enjoys Arthur’s company. She knows he’s in an unhappy marriage and can both sympathize and empathize his position. Before long, each falls into a serious case of like.

Arthur is also helping Mary and introducing her to some of the other locals…in particular the town cop, Winslow. Each feels the attraction. Winslow is single and extremely handsome.

Mary is enjoying settling down into her new life. She was able to keep her job as an editor thanks to telecommuting. Now she’s gotten word that the company is getting ready for a big layoff.  She is hopefully that she’ll get lucky and survive. After all, there isn’t any publishing industry job sin Lawson.

There’s a lot going on in Mary’s life: Arthur, whom she had a one-night stand; Winslow, whom she’s unsure of her feelings; and the potential of having to pack up and move when she’s just settled in. And oh yeah, she’s pregnant. After years and years of being told she was incapable of having children, it looks like a miracle has happened! Then Roger reappears to wreak havoc on her life. His interference is shocking.

Mary is a no-nonsense kind of gal. She picks herself up and dusts herself off when the going gets tough. And boy, oh boy, are things getting tough.

I’m a new fan of author Hutchison. I thoroughly enjoyed her other novel, The Rib and Thigh Bones of Desire. Her characters are down to earth and believable, the story lines realistic, the pacing is superb. I was pulled in immediately with the first sentence. Hutchison creates vivid worlds and characters.

I highly recommend The Awful Mess; A Love Story. It’s the perfect book to curl up on the couch with…I wasn’t able to put it down.

 I give it 5 out of 5 stars.

Jesus Cow

The Jesus Cow by Michael Perry
304 Pages

Harley Jackson's cow gives birth to a calf, in a manger, on Christmas Eve, whose hide has the face of Jesus Christ on it.  In the opening paragraph Harley says "Well, that's trouble".

Harley is a low key individual who is suddenly swept up in the hype of the Jesus cow while trying to fight off a developer, find true love.  Perry catches the spirit of small town America, fighting off decay with people who just want to get along.