Don't Come Back

“Don’t Come Back” (Book 2 of 2 in the Molly Donovan series) by Tower Lower   255 pages  

I didn’t read Book 1 in this series, and that’s okay, as this is a complete standalone. I have read both book of author Lowe’s Cotton Lee Penn historical mysteries and really enjoyed them. This novel suffers the same problem as those two though. Lowe needs to invest in a good editor; there are so many typos it is almost embarrassing. 

Now that I have that out of my system, let me tell you about what I like the most about all of Lowe’s mysteries. Her protagonists are non-ablest, but that doesn’t stop them. Their disability is like hair or eye color. Important to the reader experience, but not a game-changer. They aren’t written with pity. 

In this novel, the prologue sets up the mystery and creates that “gotta keep reading to find out what happens” feeling.  In the prologue, an elderly Navajo woman is kidnapped. The book’s characters believe she has taken off for a few days with her friend, Eduardo. When Alicia misses her dialysis appointment, which she needs to survive, her daughter calls the sheriff who brings in the FBI. 

The FBI agent, Ray Yazee, is a native of the area with a Navajo father and a white mother. His mother took him away from the area when he was a small child. Ray is curious about his Navajo heritage. He takes the case in the hopes of reconnecting to his roots and to learn the identity of his father. As he gets closer to Santa Fe, New Mexico, Ray begins to hear voices and chanting; he is sure it is the mountains calling him to come home. In one of his dreams, he is told to “find the one-armed Irish woman.” 

Maggie, on the other hand, has problems of her own. Her boyfriend, Miguel, took a three-week trip to Spain to help his cousin battle a drug addiction. But now he’s been gone for three months, and when he does, he brings his “cousin,” Isabella with him.  Cousin, yeah right. 

Ray and Maggie team up to find Alicia and get her to a life-saving dialysis treatment. The suspense is excellent and had me staying up past my bedtime to find out what would happen next.  

Although I complained about the errors earlier, this is really a top-notch suspense thriller. Lots happens in the six days over which the novel is set. Therefore, I’m going to give “Don’t Come Back,” 4 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world. 

Follow the River Home

Follow the River Home  by Corran Harrington  220 pages

At the heart of the beautifully, beautifully written novel, set along the Rio Grande River in New Mexico, is the sandhill crane. When Daniel Arroyo is eight year old, his neighbor, Helen Sedillo, teaches him about the sandhill cranes: “They’re heading to their winter home, Daniel, The river is like their road, only it’s called a flyway….If you save a place in the sky between April and November, they’ll come back again in the springtime.”

From the time he is eight, Daniel is searching for that road back home. It’s when he is eight that  his little sister, Carmen, dies. He suffers a form of PTSD from her death and believes it to be his fault.  As his family falls apart following her death, Daniel dabbles a bit with homosexuality with his best friend and neighbor across the street, Jeff.

Both boys are drafted and are sent to Vietnam. Daniel comes home, suffering from the most common form of PTSD, but Jeff does not. Daniel tries to live a normal life. He marries his high school sweetheart. Laura, and has a family. He still wrestles with unresolved homosexual tendencies. However, the one thing that gives him peace and helps him home is his work on the Rio Grande.

The river flowed in the irrigation ditch in front of his childhood home, and now he works collecting the water samples. It brings him peace and contentment that he cannot seem to find otherwise.

The book is broken into two parts. The first part, “The River Reader,” is a novella encompassing the events above. The second part, “The River Flyway” is an abrupt change. It’s mostly short stories which focus on other characters, like Jeff’s kid sister, Emily, and her battles with mental illness. I didn’t know who all the characters were and it was weird when the furniture in Daniels childhood home spoke. Still, the stories are beautifully written. Daniel is part of most of them and it’s near the end when readers learn what happened to cause Carmen’s death.

This book is so lyrical, moving and skillfully written I would give it 6 out of 5 stars, But because of the brusque change in voice, Follow the River Home gets 5 stars in Julie’s world.

American Ghost

American Ghost by Hannah Nordhaus
320 Pages

"The award-winning journalist and author of The Beekeeper's Lament attempts to uncover the truth about her great-great-grandmother, Julia--whose ghost is said to haunt an elegant hotel in Santa Fe--in this spellbinding exploration of myth, family history, and the American West. The dark-eyed woman in the long black gown was first seen in the 1970s, standing near a fireplace. She was sad and translucent, present and absent at once. Strange things began to happen in the Santa Fe hotel where she was seen. Gas fireplaces turned off and on without anyone touching a switch. Vases of flowers appeared in new locations. Glasses flew off shelves. And in one second-floor suite with a canopy bed and arched windows looking out to the mountains, guests reported alarming events: blankets ripped off while they slept, the room temperature plummeting, disembodied breathing, dancing balls of light. La Posada--"place of rest"--had been a grand Santa Fe home before it was converted to a hotel. The room with the canopy bed had belonged to Julia Schuster Staab, the wife of the home's original owner. She died in 1896, nearly a century before the hauntings were first reported. In American Ghost, Hannah Nordhaus traces the life, death, and unsettled afterlife of her great-great-grandmother Julia, from her childhood in Germany to her years in the American West with her Jewish merchant husband. American Ghost is a story of pioneer women and immigrants, ghost hunters and psychics, frontier fortitude and mental illness, imagination and lore. As she traces the strands of Julia's life, Nordhaus uncovers a larger tale of how a true-life story becomes a ghost story--and how difficult it can sometimes be to separate history and myth."

This isn't really a ghost story.  Instead I would label as a genealogical trek to the past as the author tries to flesh out family myths and assumptions.  The author also made several visits to various mediums and psychics which I felt weakened the book.  

Tantric Coconuts

Tantric Coconuts by Greg Kincaid     70 of 304 pages       

I’ve enjoyed Greg Kincaid’s previous three novels (A Dog Named Christmas, Christmas with Tucker, and A Christmas Home) so I was excited to see that he had a new book coming out.

In rural Kansas, Ted Day is a divorced, workaholic lawyer. One of his grandfather’s last wishes was that he take a vacation. One of the things that Grandpa left him was an old silver and black Winnebago 32RQ Chieftain. After Grandpa’s funeral, he packs with the RV and his dog, Argo, and sets out.

At the same time on the Lakota Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, free spirit Angel Two Sparrow is trying to figure out what to do next. She wants to become a Native-American Spiritual Consultant. Exactly how she’s going to do this is shady, but she has a business plan.  Her aunt Lilly gave her Bertha the Bookmobile, equally as decrepit as Ted’s Winnebago that she had converted into her home. Now that Aunt Lilly was in Pierre at the South Dakota Women’s Prison and no longer needs Bertha, Angel decides that she will go in search of clients for her new business. She paints her business card on one side and on the other side, her logo.  She loads up with supplies and Aunt Lilly’s half-wolf/half-dog, No Barks, and sets out.

Somewhere in New Mexico in front of the Perfect Prairie RV Park, the two vehicles collide. Literally.

Cute, huh?  The back cover copy promises a “quirky spiritual journey.” I like spiritual journeys; I was thinking Joan Brady’s God on a Harley and its sequel Joyride. But that’s as far as it goes.

By the time I got to page 70, where I gave up, the Ted and Angel were caricatures of a thousand characters before them. I felt like I was being preached at after Ted decided he want to give Angel’s way a try, and I was bored. To me there was no reason to turn the page; no compelling plot line, no wondering what’s going to happen next. PLUS what really closed the book for me was the footnotes.

Sorry, Greg, you missed the boat on this one. I give this book one out of five stars.

I received this book for free from Blogging for Books for this review.