Dead of Winter

 "Dead of Winter" by Darcy Coates   384 pp.

Christa's boyfriend Kiernan invites her to go on a trip to an exclusive lodge high in the Rocky Mountains.  The tour company suggests that everyone leave their electronics at home so they can enjoy getting away from it all.  A downed tree on the road means it needs to be moved.  While the other men in the tour group work on getting rid of it, Kiernan takes Christa on a walk.  She loses him in the snow and stumbles upon an abandoned hunting cabin.  By the time she arrives, the other members of the tour group are there, as well.  Christa has some bad frostbite and she hears someone else in the group say they might have to cut off her arm.  Kiernan is not there.  Christa wants to go out looking for him (and does a few times), but does not find him at first.  Then during the night, the tour guide disappears and other tour members soon follow.

"The Dead of Winter" by Darcy Coates was described as similar to "And Then There Were None" by Agatha Christie.  This is true in that all the people on this trip to a remote lodge have secrets and the characters die one by one.  This story, however, is far more graphic in its violence.  The story was gripping and fast-paced.  I figured out who the bad guy was before the end, however.

Winter's Tale

Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin, 673 pages

Winter's Tale is a strange story strangely told.  In a New York that never was, surrounded by a hurricane-like cloud wall that partially insulates it from the outside world, there lives a white horse able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.  After the horse rescues a thief named Peter Lake from the vengeful gang leader Pearly Soames, the two form an instant bond.  To finance his escape from the city, Lake attempts to burgle the mansion of a wealthy newspaper publisher, only to unexpectedly encounter the publisher's lovely, dying daughter Beverly.  The two fall instantly, deliriously, magically in love, a love which transcends death and reaches beyond the stars.

The narrative is broken into pieces by numerous flashbacks, subplots, digressions, and mysteries.  Some of these pieces fit together better than others.  Oddly, the novel Winter's Tale most resembles may be Gravity's Rainbow, only where Pynchon's work is suffused with paranoid pessimism, Helprin's sparkles with enchanted delight.

The Second Winter

The Second Winter by Craig Larsen    416 pages

I have read a lot of World War II novels, but Craig Larsen’s is one of the most realistically brutal that I have encountered. It’s a great read with a lot going on. Larsen has adapted wonderfully Guy de Maupassant's 1884 short story, “The Necklace.”

The story opens in East Berlin in August 1969. Angela Schmidt is a violinist, who, along with other members of an un-named orchestra, are returning to West Berlin. Their bus is searched. It’s an intense scene that sets up this powerful novel. Angela’s nerves are testd as she is smuggling a diamond necklace that bears the Romanov crest along with some photographs that had belonged to her father. Angela’s story comes up now and again throughout the story, but in all honesty, that part could have been left out.

Then the story moves to Poland where a teenage girl, Polina, is taken by the Nazi’s and forced into prostitution. The story shifts again to the main protagonist, Fredrik Gregersen. It’s now the second winter, a harsh winter with brutally cold temperatures, heavy snows and howling winds of the Nazi’s occupation of Denmark. I swear sometimes I could feel how cold it was.

Fredrik is a farmer who is barely getting by. He lives on a farm with his son and daughter. Life is brutal, made even more so by the Nazis. In addition to eeking out survival on her farm, Fredrik is involved in transporting Jewish refugees out of country. During one such event, an Old Jewish man is forced to leave a bag filled with jewels.

This is as far as I’m going to go with the plot as I’m afraid I might give it away if I haven’t already. I enjoyed this novel a lot. I wish there had been a list of characters as there were many and sometimes I had to refer back to previous chapters in order to keep them all straight.  But Polina, the young girl who appears in the beginning and the end, offers a searing portrait of what life was like under the Nazi occupation.

The Second Winter receives 4 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

Sled Dog School

Sled Dog School by Terry Lynn Johnson    208 pages

Aimed at kids in middle school, I think young readers will enjoy the problems eleven-year-old Matt is having in math. I know I can relate; I struggled with math from word problems in the third grade all the way through college algebra.

Matt has a chance to redeem his failing grade. He can start a business and keep the books. At first he wasn’t sure what to do. He hated his life: parents who had gone off the grid (really off as in no electricity) on a dead-end road and facing bullies at school was just the beginning.  But one thing he loved to was drive his dog sled.  Suddenly, that’s what he knew he could do, and Matt’s Dog Sled School was born.

Matt puts up posters at school and soon he has his first client. The only problem is, he needs three. But Tubbs will do although he is less than enthused about learning how to run a dog team.

Things go awry in a number of ways, but Matt stays the course.

A quick and easy read, the story flowed smoothly. The descriptions were vivid and the tension ran high. Johnson does a good job in creating lessons for the young ones to learn without being preachy.

Sled Dog School gets 5 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.