Cahokia Jazz

 

Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford 464 pages

 

I love this novel so much that I am going to claim that it will be one of the must-reads of 2024!

 

What Amazon says:  Francis Spufford’s Cahokia Jazz inhabits a different version of America, now through the lens of a subtly altered 1920s—a fully imagined world full of fog, cigarette smoke, dubious motives, danger, dark deeds. And in the main character of Joe Barrow, we have a hero of truly epic proportions, a troubled soul to fall in love with as you are swept along by a propulsive and brilliantly twisty plot.

On a snowy night at the end of winter, Barrow and his partner find a body on the roof of a skyscraper. Down below, streetcar bells ring, factory whistles blow, Americans drink in speakeasies and dance to the tempo of modern times. But this is Cahokia, the ancient indigenous city beside the Mississippi living on as a teeming industrial metropolis, filled with people of every race and creed. Among them, peace holds. Just about. But that corpse on the roof will spark a week of drama in which this altered world will spill its secrets and be brought, against a soundtrack of jazz clarinets and wailing streetcars, either to destruction or rebirth.

 

What I thought of it: This novel has it all! I was captivated by the opening scene that sets a harrowing stage of what is to come to the heartbreaking last scene. Part alternate history, part noir thriller, part mythology legends, with science, jazz, crime, mob scenes and the KKK all thrown in to make a highly readable novel.

 

Cahokia Jazz is a complicated, complex, easy to follow and fabulous novel. Therefore, it receives 6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

Long Way Home

Long Way Home by Lynn Austin 400 pages

 

This is a story of the Greatest Generation---both on the war front and the home front. Most of the men who fought never talked about their experiences. Through a dual narrative, we get to explore how two men suffered from battle fatigue, or as we know it, PTSD and one woman’s fight to stay alive and find her love.

 

Hudson Valley, New York. Jimmy Barnett is not the same person he was when he came home from the Europe theater. Before, he was outgoing, funny, handsome and had plans to be a veterinary like his father. Now, in 1946, he just sits on his bed and stares out the window. No one seems to be able to help him find his way back home. When he attempts suicide, his parents check him into the nearest VA hospital, an hours away where they can only visit him once a week.

 

Motherless Peggy Serrano lives across the road. Her father is a mechanic and doesn’t pay much attention to her, especially since he has a new live-in girlfriend, Donna. Peggy helps Mr. Bennett in his practice and has a special touch. She is so excited when Jimmy comes home, but so sad when the old Jimmy is gone.

 

All three think the arrival of an old Army buddy, Sam, will help bring Jimmy around. But the physically wounded Sam may as well be invisible. However, Sam finds comfort in the Serrano and Bennett families. He shows up, and when his own battle fatigue gets too much, he takes off on his motorcycle.

 

At the VA hospital, Jimmy goes through some awful treatments, like an insulin coma and electric shock therapy. Then Peggy gets an idea: maybe if she could find more of Jimmy’s Army pals, knowing how much Jimmy helped them (he was a medic), that might bring him around. As Peggy is rooting around in Jimmy’s duffel bag, looking for clues, she discovers a picture of a beautiful woman with only the name Gisela written on the back. Could she be the key to unlocking Jimmy’s mind?

 

Berlin, Germany, 1938. Gisela Wolff and her family know it is time to leave Germany. Her father has worked hard to obtain the visas and passports that will allow her family to flee the Nazis. They board the luxury liner, SS St. Louis, and head for Cuba. Cuba denies the 900 Jewish passengers’ entry. The ship then tries to enter America, but again they are turned away (true story) and sent back to Europe.

 

One bright light in Gisela’s light is the young man she meets about the boat, Sam Shaprio. The two quickly fall deeply in love. They are separated and Gisela must make her way through the war. She ultimately winds up in one of the concentration camps.

 

Don’t want any spoilers, so I better stop now. However, grab your hankies, ‘cause when Jimmy and Gisela’s stories converge, you’re gonna need them.

 

Long Way Home gets 6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

 

The Secret of Snow

The Secret of Snow by Viola Shipman 352 pages

There’s no better way to cool down on a hot and humid St. Louis afternoon than to read a book that takes place in northern Michigan in the dead of winter!

Sonny Dunes fled northern Michigan thirty years ago for the sunshine and warm temperatures of southern California. Palm Springs to be exact. It’s not hard to be a meteorologist when the weather is the same day after day. But what is hard is not aging or gaining a few pounds. When the station decides to replace the fifty-year-old Sonny with a virtual meteorologist, she loses it. On air. Not good for one’s career.

With no job, Sonny isn’t sure what to do. She has only one place to turn; her mother, in yes that awful, awful place in northern Michigan. It’s not that Sunny hates the wintery weather, which she does with a passion. For her, her hometown is haunted. Haunted by death of her younger sister, and the survivor’s guilt she has endured.

Her agent tries to find her a new gig, but the only person willing to take a chance on her is an old college classmate whom she despises and has been trying to ignore for years. Sonny is forced to swallow her pride and move back home, taking up residence in her childhood bedroom.

The job is as bad as she had feared. The station wants her to cover all the winter activities in the region. Did I mention that Sonny hates winter?  Yeah, the job is sheer hell. She has to put on a happy face while hating every minute and aspect of winter.

As Sonny begins to confront her past and to make friends with her new colleagues, her heart and soul begin to melt, freeing her enjoy the attention of a man named Mason and actually start enjoying her life---and dare I say it, the winter weather.

One thing that annoyed me about the book was that it starts off in December 2021 and projects through April 2022. I didn’t feel the plot warranted its futuristic timeline, but maybe I didn’t understand author Shipman’s reasoning behind it.

I liked “The Secret of Snow,” and it receives 4 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world. And yes, reading it in the depths of summer did make me less hot and cranky.

 

Heart Berries

Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot     142 pages

Heart Berries is a powerful, poetic memoir of a woman's coming of age on the Seabird Island Indian Reservation in the Pacific Northwest. Having survived a profoundly dysfunctional upbringing only to find herself hospitalized and facing a dual diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder and bipolar II disorder; Terese Marie Mailhot is given a notebook and begins to write her way out of trauma. The triumphant result is Heart Berries , a memorial for Mailhot's mother, a social worker and activist who had a thing for prisoners; a story of reconciliation with her father--an abusive drunk and a brilliant artist--who was murdered under mysterious circumstances; and an elegy on how difficult it is to love someone while dragging the long shadows of shame.

I believe this genre of writing is not my cup of tea. Mailhot's writing style reminded me a lot of Maggie Nelson's book, The Argonauts, where everything is related out of time, in a stream-of-consciousness style, and addressing a specific person ("you") throughout. The book is deeply personal, but at the same time, it is meant to be shared with everyone, her story finally being told on her terms and in the way she believes it should be shared.

I don't like reading books that are sad or depressing - and Mailhot's memoir is both. She jumps from one bleak moment of her life to the next, which in itself does not warrant me rating this book two out of five stars, but only relates to my personal feelings about reading such material. It's not something I enjoyed, I felt a lot of it went beyond my understanding - so much of it was metaphorical that I could find no anchor to ground myself with. Everything was symbolic or told in a poetic style that made it difficult to find the reality of it. I was mostly left shrugging my shoulders and thinking maybe if I read this in a classroom setting and was prompted to discuss it further, then maybe I'd get something more out of it.

I read this as a book club selection, otherwise I'm not sure I ever would have picked it up for myself as a personal interest. I am counting this book as my one-sitting book for Book Riot's Read Harder challenge. I don't know that I'd recommend this book, unless I was sure there'd be an interest in the memoir genre or I knew the person enjoyed reading from diverse authors.

The Mourning Parade

The Mourning Parade by Dawn Reno Langley   350 pages

I was lucky enough to win a copy if this heartbreaking and hopeful novel in a contest from Amberjack Publishing. I entered based on its title and cover art without knowing what it was really about.

Set in contemporary time, Natalie has thriving veterinarian clinic in North Carolina, specializing in horses. Life’s been rough. Real rough. Although it’s not a major plot point, it’s important that the reader know that her husband, Parker, walked out on her and their two sons. No more contact; only silence.

Then the crushing blow hits. Both, yes both, of Natalie’s sons are killed in a school shooting. Hats off to author Langely for not going into gory details about the event. Natalie can’t eat, can’t sleep, can barely function. Parker didn’t even bother to come to his sons’ funeral. The first-year anniversary is swiftly approaching. Natalie isn’t sure that she can handle it.

At a veterinarian conference, Natalie hears Andrew Graham talk about his work at an elephant sanctuary in Thailand. Against her parents’ advice, Natalie volunteers to spend a year at the sanctuary.

Trouble begins almost the moment she arrives. The head vet, Dr. Peter Hatcher, hates her the moment he lays eyes on her. Although she suffers from PTSD, Natalie stays strong and pushes forward. As she is learning her way around she is drawn to a large female, Sophie.

Sophie also suffers from PTSD and has a nasty, nasty leg wound that won’t seem to heal. When Sophie injures one of the compounds many dogs, Hatcher wants to put her down. But Natalie interferes, talking with Andrew about some rehab methods she has used back in the States.

Hatcher tries to sabotage her efforts, but Natalie refuses to buckle under. Instead the Natalie and Sophie become BFFs. But grab a hankie, if the ending wasn’t so hopeful, it would be too hard.

I learned a lot about elephants: their spines aren’t designed to carry a lot of weight, their foot pads are super sensitive, and their eating habits. Sophie does love to eat!

I loved The Mourning Parade, and it receives 6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

The Standard Grand

The Standard Grand  by Jay Baron Nicorvo    368 pages

I was excited when I obtained a copy of Nicorvo’s debut novel. Set in 2012, it’s the story of a halfway house for homeless veterans suffering from PTSD and located in an abandoned Catskills (NY) resort.

One of the vets, Antebellum Smith, is actually AWOL from her post in Fort Leonard Wood. She can’t face a third deployment to Iraq and is sick and tired of her deadbeat civilian husband. She makes the trek from the Missouri Ozarks to Manhattan. She’d rather sleep in the park than go back.

She meets Milton Wright, a Vietnam vet and widower. Milt’s late wife’s family once owned the derelict property.

That was as much as I could decipher in this convoluted tale. There is a huge cast of characters, but thankfully, Nicorvo provides a list of who’s who before the story even starts. Most of the book is written in military lingo that was easy to figure out what it was, but for me it slowed the story down.

This work has been getting rave reviews, but it didn’t click with me. Every book had its reader(s), but this one isn’t for me. The Standard Grand gets 1 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.

Thumbprint

Thumbprint by Jason Ciaramella, 124 pages.

Thumbprint is based off a novella by Joe Hill who is one of my favorite authors. When I first got it I was thinking that I had somehow missed one of his publications and would have to go looking for it after reading this graphic novel. But luckily the novella was included within. There is also a second half to Thumbprint that includes a graphic novel adaptation to another storyline by Hill.

Thumbprint is based off of quite recent history and follows a women who has just returned from Iraq having been discharged following the Abu Ghraib scandal. While she tries to return to the life she left behind a shadowy force has returned to haunt her life. Like everything written by Hill the story is dark and twisted with no one surviving untouched.