bookpagedev

by Angela Leeper

In Clair-de-Lune, author Cassandra Golds crafts a fairy-tale world with a city much like Paris, in which a young girl inhabits an odd but enchanting building, full of artistes. When the novel’s namesake was just a baby, her mother, La Lune, one of the greatest dancers ever, passed away while performing her signature role as The Dying Swan. Her cause of death: a broken heart. Since that infamous night, Clair-de-Lune never spoke again.

On the brink of poverty, yet too proud to ask for assistance, Clair-de-Lune’s grandmother, Madame Nuit, controls every aspect of the girl’s life. Realizing that La Lune put love before the Dance, Madame Nuit is not about to let the same thing happen to her granddaughter. With the help of a fortune teller, she steals Clair-de-Lune’s ability to love and shapes her into a selfless ballerina.

Although Clair-de-Lune cannot speak, she befriends Bonaventure, a mouse who does. This spirited mouse, with dreams of starting his own dance company, leads Clair-de-Lune down countless steps to a secret part of the building, a breathtaking monastery, and to Brother Inchmahome. The insightful monk immediately senses the girl’s pain and agrees to help her learn to speak.

When tragedy comes to the building, the young dancer finds herself on the brink of death. For the girl to live and love again, Madame Nuit must intervene, Clair-de-Lune must listen to what her mother was trying to say before she died, and Bonaventure must reveal the secret of Brother Inchmahome. Clair-de-Lune ultimately discovers that perhaps she does not even need her voice to express her love.

Reminiscent of The Tale of Despereaux, this magical novel speaks directly to readers at times; pays homage to literary greats, such as in mouse publishers Leonard and Virginia; and delivers an allegorical message that love is the most important part of life. What will capture the reader’s imagination the most are the story’s exquisite language and beautiful, dreamlike sequences. Angela Leeper is an educational consultant and writer in Wake Forest, North Carolina.

Cookbooks

Cookbooks

What love’s got to do with it

Review by bookpagedev

by Julie Hale

What love’s got to do with it You might fight like cats and dogs, but where would you be without dear old mom? Without her attention and affection? And endless advice? Sure, her helpful hints are often unasked-for (and sometimes shrilly delivered), but they’re sent with unconditional love the kind only mothers can provide. So take a tip from BookPage and remember mom this month with one of the terrific titles listed below.

Motivational speaker Cherie Carter-Scott, Ph.

D., commemorates the maternal role in <!–BPLINK=–>0767904281The Gift of Motherhood: 10 Truths for Every Mother<!–ENDBPLINK–>. Author of the best-selling advice book, f Life is a Game, These are the Rules, Scott, who has worked with Fortune 500 companies like American Express and IBM, offers 10 insights about motherhood that she has gleaned from personal experience and from years of coaching women all over the world. The universals she presents in the book Remembering to care for yourself is essential and Love shows up in many different forms are examined in-depth and illustrated by inspiring anecdotes from real-life moms. The Gift of Motherhood also functions as a how-to guide to parenting, proposing practical strategies for dealing with mother-daughter conflicts, for envisioning the type of mother you want to become and achieving that vision for being both friend and authority figure to your child. Each of Scott’s truths serves to demystify the role of mother, providing support for the struggling parent. Transcending race, religion and nationality, her words of wisdom and humor will energize future and seasoned mothers alike. With Busy Woman’s Cookbook, authors Sharon and Gene McFall share more than 500 recipes that are sure to ease a mother’s greatest domestic burden. For those without the time or inclination to experiment in the kitchen, this back-to-the-basics book offers three- and four-element recipes, composed of easily accessible ingredients, that take the complexity out of cooking. From Old Time Meat Loaf to Skinny Minny Pork Chops, from Cinnamon Coffee Cake to Sopaipillas, creative ideas for appetizers, entrees, salads and desserts are simply and briefly presented. Downhome or exotic, old-fashioned or new-fangled, there’s a dish for every food preference. Amusing anecdotes and fascinating facts (200 to be exact) about famous women enliven the text. A sturdy cover and spiral binding make the book easy to handle in the kitchen. Busy Woman lets the overwhelmed mother put meal planning where it belongs on the back burner.

For moms who are coming-of-age, consider <!–BPLINK=–>0696213907Fifty Celebrate Fifty: Fifty Extraordinary Women Talk About Facing, Turning and Being Fifty<!–ENDBPLINK–>, a book of sparkling photos and fabulous interviews from the editors of More magazine. The volume features candid talks with women who are better than ever at mid-life, including Diane Sawyer, Amy Tan, Susan Sarandon and Phylicia Rashad. The book includes a broad range of voices women from various cultures and career arenas who testify with pride about hitting their stride at 50. AIDS activist Beverly Mosley talks about living with HIV. Newscaster Judy Woodruff discusses coping with her son’s brain injury. These honest accounts of juggling family and career, of overcoming obstacles and achieving inner peace will inspire females of any age. Experience is sexy, says Susan Sarandon. And today, women can be sexy and 50. Indeed, the future has never looked brighter for these confident, accomplished women, each of whom combines the poise of youth with the wisdom that only age can bring. A tribute to diversity, beauty and individuality, Fifty Celebrate Fifty is a great way to remind mom that the best really is yet to come. The job of mother most often plays itself out not on the lofty levels of Hallmark splendor but rather in the trenches of day-to-day life. Cherie Carter-Scott The Gift of Motherhood

What love's got to do with it You might fight like cats and dogs, but where would you be without dear old mom? Without her attention and affection? And endless advice? Sure, her helpful hints are often unasked-for (and sometimes shrilly delivered), but they're sent…

Memoir

Memoir

On the beat with the NYPD

Review by bookpagedev

by Edward Morris

It is difficult to imagine a more thorough immersion into the world of everyday copdom—with all its sudden excitements and excruciating procedural minutiae—than readers will find in Blue Blood. Of course, this isn’t just any cop who’s writing the script and painting the scenery. Edward Conlon is a Harvard-educated police detective who first drew attention to his Job (he always capitalizes that word) with his "Cop’s Diary" in The New Yorker, which he wrote under the pseudonym Marcus Laffey. And it isn’t just any police department he works for—it’s the New York Police Department, where a local clash can mushroom into world news overnight. Remember Abner Louima and the toilet plunger or the 41 bullets expended on Amadou Diallo?

Conlon, who was born in the Bronx, had cops in the family (including a larcenous great-grandfather and a flashy uncle) and an FBI agent for a father. He joined the NYPD in 1995 and soon found immense satisfaction in walking his tough beat, where humanity came in every emotional shade and degree of cunning. He developed an almost scientific detachment in gauging the effects his presence made on these people’s lives. But for every stimulation of the street, every small victory, there was the corollary boredom of filing reports and dealing with self-serving superiors.

Neither power-hungry nor bleeding-heart, Conlon lets his observations lead him where they will. Looking around the poor neighborhood he patrols, he notes, "You saw what happened when people got used to not paying for things: though the hospital was a block away, people called for ambulances constantly when they had 99-degree temperatures or mild diarrhea; or worse, they claimed to have chest pains or difficulty breathing because they needed prescription refills, and didn’t want to walk to the pharmacy or wait in line."

Conlon presents an array of colorful characters—resourceful cops, wily informants and elusive drug dealers—not so much for the color itself as to illustrate the tapestry of personalities a cop has to deal with. "[T]he NYPD," he notes, "offered entry into a drama as rich as Shakespeare. And I didn’t want to hear the story as much as I wanted to tell it, and I didn’t want to tell the story as much as I wanted to join it." When it comes time for his partners to give him a nickname, they settle on "Poe," which Conlon finds satisfying since Poe once lived in the Bronx and "wrote the first mystery story ever."

From the vantage points of time and his insider status, Conlon retells the stories of NYPD alums Eddie "Popeye" Egan and Sonny Grosso of The French Connection fame and Frank Serpico, whose last name would become synonymous with police probity. Conlon has no patience for those who use cops for their own political advantage, whether it’s Louis Farrakhan and Al Sharpton seeking gains by crying racism or former mayors John Lindsay and David Dinkins undermining cops to show their "evenhandedness." And while he laments what the cops did to Louima and Diallo, Conlon is contemptuous of the media’s rush to judgment and the politicians’ cynical exploitation of the incidents.

These 500-plus pages sometimes run heavy with abbreviation, jargon and elliptical references; and Conlon is far more open with his head than his heart. Still, he admits us into a fascinating and frightening world that is never far from our own doorstep.

Edward Morris lives and works in Nashville.

Fiction, Short Stories

Fiction Short Stories

Stories that conjure imagined worlds

Review by bookpagedev

by Lacey Galbraith

Fiction has always benefited from experimentation, and several recent short story collections show just how well a new generation of writers has taken to the challenge. Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits is the debut short story collection by Laila Lalami. Born in Rabat, Morocco, she is the creator of the literary blog Moorishgirl.com, and she opens this series of linked stories with an illegal nighttime voyage. A group of Moroccan immigrants have their hopes set on Spain and the trip across the Strait of Gibraltar is the only way there. In the stories that follow, Lalami focuses on a chosen four: a young mechanic with a young wife, a woman and her three small children, a university student who has recently taken to wearing the hijab, and a young man who, like the others, has dreams bigger than his means.

Lalami aims to fill a reader’s senses. Throughout the book there is the aroma of the mint tea served at every meal, the joyful cries of children playing soccer, the sound of the muezzin’s call to prayer. Chief among them, though, is the pull of her characters’ hope. As determined as her characters, Lalami sets out to prove the strength of the human spirit.

Lifestyles, Self-Help

Self-Help Lifestyles

What love’s got to do with it

Review by bookpagedev

by Julie Hale

Motivational speaker Cherie Carter-Scott, Ph.

D., commemorates the maternal role in <!–BPLINK=–>0767904281The Gift of Motherhood: 10 Truths for Every Mother<!–ENDBPLINK–>. Author of the best-selling advice book, f Life is a Game, These are the Rules, Scott, who has worked with Fortune 500 companies like American Express and IBM, offers 10 insights about motherhood that she has gleaned from personal experience and from years of coaching women all over the world. The universals she presents in the book Remembering to care for yourself is essential and Love shows up in many different forms are examined in-depth and illustrated by inspiring anecdotes from real-life moms. The Gift of Motherhood also functions as a how-to guide to parenting, proposing practical strategies for dealing with mother-daughter conflicts, for envisioning the type of mother you want to become and achieving that vision for being both friend and authority figure to your child. Each of Scott’s truths serves to demystify the role of mother, providing support for the struggling parent. Transcending race, religion and nationality, her words of wisdom and humor will energize future and seasoned mothers alike. With <!–BPLINK=–>1930170025Busy Woman’s Cookbook<!–ENDBPLINK–>, authors Sharon and Gene McFall share more than 500 recipes that are sure to ease a mother’s greatest domestic burden. For those without the time or inclination to experiment in the kitchen, this back-to-the-basics book offers three- and four-element recipes, composed of easily accessible ingredients, that take the complexity out of cooking. From Old Time Meat Loaf to Skinny Minny Pork Chops, from Cinnamon Coffee Cake to Sopaipillas, creative ideas for appetizers, entrees, salads and desserts are simply and briefly presented. Downhome or exotic, old-fashioned or new-fangled, there’s a dish for every food preference. Amusing anecdotes and fascinating facts (200 to be exact) about famous women enliven the text. A sturdy cover and spiral binding make the book easy to handle in the kitchen. Busy Woman lets the overwhelmed mother put meal planning where it belongs on the back burner.

For moms who are coming-of-age, consider Fifty Celebrate Fifty: Fifty Extraordinary Women Talk About Facing, Turning and Being Fifty, a book of sparkling photos and fabulous interviews from the editors of More magazine. The volume features candid talks with women who are better than ever at mid-life, including Diane Sawyer, Amy Tan, Susan Sarandon and Phylicia Rashad. The book includes a broad range of voices women from various cultures and career arenas who testify with pride about hitting their stride at 50. AIDS activist Beverly Mosley talks about living with HIV. Newscaster Judy Woodruff discusses coping with her son’s brain injury. These honest accounts of juggling family and career, of overcoming obstacles and achieving inner peace will inspire females of any age. Experience is sexy, says Susan Sarandon. And today, women can be sexy and 50. Indeed, the future has never looked brighter for these confident, accomplished women, each of whom combines the poise of youth with the wisdom that only age can bring. A tribute to diversity, beauty and individuality, Fifty Celebrate Fifty is a great way to remind mom that the best really is yet to come. The job of mother most often plays itself out not on the lofty levels of Hallmark splendor but rather in the trenches of day-to-day life. Cherie Carter-Scott The Gift of Motherhood

Biography

Biography

Separating the man from the moon

Review by bookpagedev

by MiChelle Jones

Journalist Leon Wagener faced the daunting task of chronicling a subject famously shy of the limelight when he took on One Giant Leap: Neil Armstrong’s Stellar American Journey. The book discusses Armstrong’s formative years, his career first as a naval and then test pilot and even includes information about his family life, yet he remains elusive, just beyond reach.

The first man to walk on the moon clearly never intended to spend a lifetime reliving the 21 hours he spent there. Wagener writes: “Each anniversary would inevitably be an opportunity for the world to compare the man he presently was to the man he had been that glorious July of 1969.” Armstrong generally limits his stints in NASA’s so-called publicity “barrel” to appearances at major commemorative events.

After leaving NASA, Armstrong became an engineering professor at the University of Cincinnati, where he co-founded the Institute of Engineering and Medicine. The group, which included Dr. Henry J. Heimlich (of maneuver fame) and Dr. George Rieveschl (discoverer of the first antihistamine), contributed several improvements to heart transplant technology based on space engineering. Armstrong also continued his lifelong interest in aviation, breaking records and narrating a television series documenting aviation firsts for which he flew or rode in significant aircraft.

Obviously, the moon landing must feature into any account of Neil Armstrong’s life. Wagener does an admirable job of covering Apollo 11, describing the carnival atmosphere surrounding the Cape and giving a brief rundown of the world of 1969. His detailed transcript-based passages about things like in-flight meals and the astronauts’ musical preferences put the reader in the capsule.

One has to wonder whether anyone but the most devoted techie or Mars fan will be reading about the twin rovers 35 years from now. The human presence has always made space voyages more compelling. For Armstrong and his fellow Apollo astronauts, part of their mission will always be to keep the moment alive not so much for those who remember, but for those who do not.

Journalist Leon Wagener faced the daunting task of chronicling a subject famously shy of the limelight when he took on One Giant Leap: Neil Armstrong's Stellar American Journey. The book discusses Armstrong's formative years, his career first as a naval and then test pilot…

Animals

Animals

Joining the rat race

Review by bookpagedev

by Michael Sims

Robert Sullivan is a naturalist renowned for two previous books, The Meadowlands and A Whale Hunt, both of which received many accolades. One day he realized that to ignore rats (the most common mammal in the world) in his beloved New York City would be to ignore one of America’s great immigrant success stories. Therefore, he began to study the rats about him. At night he hung out in an alley near garbage cans, watching rats through night-vision goggles; by day he researched the history of rats in New York and elsewhere. The resulting book, Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants, is clever, literate, insightful, funny and sometimes even lyrical.

“To begin with,” the author explains, “Edens Alley is L-shaped, a cobblestone strip that is surrounded by brick walls a walled-in lane that was like my Walden, though I’m not so nuts as to want to actually sleep there or anything.” This sentence tells you a lot about Sullivan’s style: it’s colloquial, levelheaded and funny. His research habitat is halfway between Wall Street and New York Harbor, an overlooked “nowhere in the center of everything.” Sullivan shares Thoreau’s conviction that wherever you may be is the place to begin a deeper relationship with the universe.

The Norway rat, with the cartoonish scientific name of Rattus norvegicus, is one of the most adaptable creatures on our verminous planet. “Rats live in the world precisely where man lives,” Sullivan remarks. “I think of rats as our mirror species.” He observes but does not emphasize that, for example, rats are argumentative overeaters who seem to obsess on sex.

You would not expect to get to know a number of characters in a book of this sort. However, it teems with lively figures going about their lives. Not least among them, of course, is the author himself, who comes across as modest, ironic, sometimes courageous and endlessly curious about the great city in which he lives. But you will also meet many other New Yorkers, including an exterminator who has become something of a celebrity, intrepid health department medicos and numerous historical figures from New York’s past. Readers may share Sullivan’s surprise when suddenly, for the first time, he recognizes a particular rat and realizes that he has been at this curious nocturnal hobby for a very long time. Michael Sims’ most recent book is Adam’s Navel, chosen as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a Library Journal Best Science Book of 2003.

Astronaut evolved

Review by bookpagedev

by Chris Scott

In Sky Walking, Thomas D. Jones picks up where Mullane leaves off, telling the story of an apparently mature, post-Challenger shuttle program that still managed to ignore warnings that could have prevented the loss of the shuttle Columbia in 2003. Jones is also ex-Air Force, but a more businesslike bomber pilot and engineer. His memoir is less edgy, more sanitized and focuses on the scientific more than the scatological. Still, even straight prose can’t mask the excitement of a countdown, liftoff and entry into Earth’s orbit. Jones takes the reader along four times as he recounts his shuttle missions, the last of which was to the International Space Station where he logged more than 19 hours of spacewalking. Jones presents an in-depth view of the life of a modern astronaut. Whether boning up on system operations manuals, jetting around the world in their personal fleet of supersonic jets, or spending hour after hour in the giant swimming-pool space-walk training facility, it is a very busy and often hazardous existence. It also puts tremendous strains on astronaut families, whose attendance at shuttle launches is mandatory (NASA publicity doesn’t allow no-shows). Jones’ wife had to watch each time her husband was shot into orbit strapped to rockets that can either deliver a million pounds of barely controlled thrust or an explosion that would vaporize the ship and crew instantly. Jones expresses deep gratitude for his wife’s tolerance of this torture, and for the encouragement that she gave while he pursued his dream of space flight.

Ultimately, both Riding Rockets and Sky Walking are testaments to human- kind’s fierce desire to explore and are timely reminders that space flight remains a dangerous, but worthy adventure. Chris Scott fondly remembers watching the Apollo 11 moon landing on his grandparents’ color TV.

Arts & Culture, Music

Music Arts & Culture

Who could ask for anything more?

Review by bookpagedev

by Edward Morris

Songs are the bookmarks in our memory that were either crafted painstakingly over a long period of time or dashed off in inspirational or deadline-imposed frenzy. But the circumstances of their creation, as Will Friedwald demonstrates in Stardust Melodies, is seldom as fascinating as tracing the routes by which they have insinuated themselves into our consciousness.

The songs Friedwald chronicles in his book are Star Dust, The St. Louis Blues, Mack the Knife, Ol’ Man River, Body and Soul, I Got Rhythm, As Time Goes By, Night and Day, Stormy Weather, Summertime, My Funny Valentine and Lush Life. Each of these classics was composed between 1914 and 1938. Making no claim that these are the finest, most popular or best-selling tunes of their genre, Friedwald proposes that each has triumphantly survived decades of changing tastes on its own intrinsic power. And yes, he does offer a plausible excuse for not including any Irving Berlin songs.

For each of his choices, Friedwald provides the historical context of the composition, an analysis of its musical structure and an account of how the song gained popular momentum. He ends each biography with Bonus Tracks, a brief discussion of noteworthy recordings of the song. For example, he cites his candidate for the zaniest version of As Time Goes By (Louis Prima’s on The Prima Generation album) and speculates as to who could have sung the best versions of Stormy Weather but didn’t (Jimmy Rushing, Helen Humes and Joe Williams). Much of the pleasure of reading this book is seeing the fun Friedwald has with his subject. Although he quotes fragments of lyrics from the songs he anatomizes, Friedwald doesn’t include the entire lyrics for any of the selections. This failure may stem from the cost of acquiring reprint permission. But aside from this omission, Stardust Melodies provides a penetrating and exhaustive introduction to 12 timeless tunes.

Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy

Science Fiction & Fantasy Science Fiction

The life of a 23rd-century cop

Review by bookpagedev

by Gavin Grant

British author Karen Traviss’ debut novel City of Pearl is the first entry in a fast-moving science fiction trilogy. In the intriguing near-future world that Traviss creates, Shan Frankland is a 23rd-century English beat cop who has moved up the police force to lead an Environmental Hazard group. Just before she retires she is asked to go on a mission to the second planet of Cavanagh’s Star (CS2), which is 75 light-years from home. Frankland takes the mission, but she doesn’t know why. She is given a “Suppressed Briefing” so that her orders will only come to mind when she is in an appropriate situation. Traviss builds her societies and characters slowly. Frankland is very tough and very proud of it. She has scars from the police front line and she prefers open arguments or fights to unspoken concerns. She meets her match in Aras, a wess’har, warrior and environmental defender, blessed (or cursed) by a parasite with the ability to live forever. The wess’har are extreme environmentalists and will do anything to maintain biodiversity and balance. They don’t understand that humans eat other “people” (animals) and they are determined to protect the sea-going inhabitants of CS2, the Bezer’ej.

A third alien race, the isenj, is in some ways the most human of the three. Having overpopulated their own planet, they want to make CS2 accessible to their people. This led to war 500 years before, and if the humans are not careful, they might find themselves caught up in a new struggle. City of Pearl is a strong first installment and marks the debut of a writer to watch. Traviss takes what could have been a rote collection of characters (marines, cops, religious extremists) and slowly adds depth, complexity and color, so that by the end, even Frankland has a new appreciation for the shades between black and white. Gavin J. Grant is the co-editor of The Year’s Best Science Fantasy ∧ Horror, to be published this summer by St. Martin’s.

British author Karen Traviss' debut novel City of Pearl is the first entry in a fast-moving science fiction trilogy. In the intriguing near-future world that Traviss creates, Shan Frankland is a 23rd-century English beat cop who has moved up the police force to lead an…

Biography

Biography

Wunderkind

Review by bookpagedev

by Michael Alec Rose

The late Stanley Sadie, the most distinguished musicologist of his generation, completed the first of a projected two-volume biography of Mozart not long before he died. With his comprehensive even startling command of every detail from Mozart’s life and every phrase from his music, Professor Sadie provides a blessed antidote to the accumulation of rank myth and imprudent speculation generally surrounding the early years of Mozart. Such irresponsible biography is not hard to account for, in light of the mystique of the boy prodigy. In Mozart: The Early Years, Sadie deftly shows how needless that sort of tale-spinning is, by uncovering instead the limitless interest of the facts themselves. It is a sad loss that he could not finish his second volume, on Mozart’s final decade in Vienna.

Michael Alec Rose is a composer and professor at Vanderbilt University, where he teaches a course on Mozart.

Memoir

Memoir

A maverick’s take on the news

Review by bookpagedev

A maverick’s take on the news Jim Bellows, one of the most respected editors in journalism, made his name working for the smaller newspaper in town. And that was by design. While moving from daily to daily over the course of a career that spanned more than half a century, Bellows had a penchant for taking the smaller of a city’s two competing papers and revamping it to give the bigger one a run for its money.

In his colorfully written new autobiography, The Last Editor, Bellows tells the story of his maverick career at such publications as The Miami News, The New York Herald Tribune and The Washington Star, all of which are credited with revitalizing their cross-town counterparts: The Miami Herald, The New York Times and The Washington Post. By sparking vibrancy in declining, defeated newsrooms and fostering the talents of up-and-coming writers such as Tom Wolfe and Jimmy Breslin, Bellows brought new life to dying dailies.

His philosophy was simple: We’ve got to get the other paper to jump in our pond. We’ve got to make waves. We’ve got to liven things up.

Structuring his book like a long newspaper story (the important stuff is placed up high, he tells us), Bellows recounts such memorable periods of his career as his stint with The Washington Star, a paper that had been overshadowed by the venerable Washington Post, which was guided by legendary editor Ben Bradlee and basked in the fame of the Watergate stories by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. In a way, Bellows made his mark as the anti-Bradlee, tweaking the nose of the big daily by playing up stories the Post missed and incorporating new sections such as The Ear, an infamous gossip column. Never complacent, Bellows went on to infuse his vitality and philosophy into The Los Angeles Herald Examiner and then a series of broadcast and Internet media projects. The Last Editor is an enjoyable, lively account of his impressive career, written with all the verve and whirlwind energy that made the author’s life so memorable. Dave Bryan writes from Montgomery, Alabama.

A maverick's take on the news Jim Bellows, one of the most respected editors in journalism, made his name working for the smaller newspaper in town. And that was by design. While moving from daily to daily over the course of a career that spanned…

Fiction

Fiction

From the mouths of dogs and others

Review by bookpagedev

by Becky Ohlsen

It may sound pretty outrageous–kidnapping, pedophilia, skeletons in outhouses, fornication with ghosts, narration by hound dogs and bobcats–but Donald Harington’s 12th novel, With, will surprise and delight you. Harington hails from the Ozarks and, in the tradition of William Faulkner and his invented Yoknapatawpha County, writes about a fictional backwater town called Stay More, Arkansas.

With begins from the point of view of Hreapha, a faithful dog who has had all she can take from her master, Sog Alan. She decides to run away, but before she can get very far, she finds herself drawn back to the long-abandoned mountain homestead to which Sog Alan seems to be moving all of his things. What Hreapha doesn’t expect is that Sog is bringing a companion, albeit an unwilling one: a 7-year-old girl called Robin. The novel unfolds from varying perspectives Sog’s, the dog’s, Robin’s and later that of a bunch of other animals, the funniest being one sly bobcat forever on the make. There’s also the spirit–not quite a ghost, because the body it belongs to isn’t dead–of a 12-year-old boy who once lived on the homestead and couldn’t bear to leave entirely. He and Robin become playmates, and more, which is utterly believable in the context of the novel.

The bulk of the novel follows Robin as she matures from a frightened child snatched away from her mother into a self-sufficient, wild mountain woman surrounded by her animal friends and her invisible boyfriend. Harington’s writing is at once playful and serious, tender, sexy, tragic, brutal and redemptive. In a tricky maneuver, he prevents the story from ever ending and makes it feel absolutely real by switching each narrative toward the end of the book from the past tense to the present, and then, when the time is right, to the future. Such a conceit might not work for every writer, but Harington does it with the same surefootedness he displays throughout the rest of the novel. He never falters, and you never doubt him for a second.

Becky Ohlsen writes infatuatedly from Portland, Oregon.

It may sound pretty outrageous--kidnapping, pedophilia, skeletons in outhouses, fornication with ghosts, narration by hound dogs and bobcats--but Donald Harington's 12th novel, With, will surprise and delight you. Harington hails from the Ozarks and, in the tradition of William Faulkner and his invented Yoknapatawpha…

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The sounds of silence

What love’s got to do with it

On the beat with the NYPD

Stories that conjure imagined worlds

What love’s got to do with it

Separating the man from the moon

Joining the rat race

Astronaut evolved

Who could ask for anything more?

The life of a 23rd-century cop

Wunderkind

A maverick’s take on the news

From the mouths of dogs and others

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