Ace Deuce: National Security is Not a Crime
- By Freida Goodman Fail (Freida Goodman Fail, $13.28)
Retired real estate agent and Rio Rico resident Frieda Goodman Fail brings her experience as a naval aviator’s wife and expat to this debut novel.
A romance-thriller set in North Africa and Europe, Ace Deuce opens with a comatose American found by a French ambassador on a road in Niger.
When the man comes to, he has amnesia, and the ambassador takes him in until he can recover.
Through a series of coincidences, clues to his background arise, and the woman who might be his twin sister — the chief counsel of the world’s largest defense contractor — hatches a plot to confirm his identity and restore his memory. Romance ensues, as do threats to national security.
The American Heretic’s Dictionary
- By Chaz Bufe (See Sharp Press, $14.95)
After an introduction situating his work in the time-honored tradition of social-commentary-by-ridicule, Chaz Bufe opens a revision of his 1992 American Heretic’s Dictionary. Organized from “A” (“American, adj. 1) Shoddy; 2) Impoverished; 3) Obsolescent; 4) Unemployed [as in ‘American workers’]”) to “Z” (“Zeus, n. … 2”), Bufe engages in subjective, comprehensive, all-comers satirical skewering.
He hits — among other things — religion, politics, government, advertising, education, marriage, political correctness, the obesity epidemic and general human frailty.
Inspired by Ambrose Bierce’s “The Devil’s Dictionary” (parts of which Bufe includes in the text), “The American Heretic’s Dictionary” is smart, funny and best consumed in small doses. (Doable, actually; you can open it anywhere.)
The Mensa Bulletin praises the book’s “bitterness … negativity … unbridled humor, wit and sarcasm.” (Bufe calls Mensa “an organization in which the leading cause of death is the acutely swollen ego”).
It also offers visual humor — illustrations by J.R. Swanson and a cover design mimicking that of a recognizable American dictionary.
The Dark Side of Enlightenment and The Perils of Watching
- By Bruce E. Weber (Bruce E. Weber, $14.95)
There’s a familiar ease in reading these two collections of short stories by Tucsonan Bruce E. Weber.
He writes that his strongest literary influence is a noir novelist, and we can see the effects: The stories are plot-driven; the central characters flawed but tough, principled men; the women who cross their paths are long-haired, lithe and beautiful.
The stories are not stuck in the 20th century, however; they’re not all cop tales, and they’re not all set in dark, old American cities.
The first story in “The Dark Side of Enlightenment,” for example, takes place at the McDonald’s in Nogales, at its annual Christmas give-away.
Another has a Southern Arizona roofer take pity on a group of undocumented immigrants caught in a storm, load them into the back of his pickup and then try to evade the Border Patrol.
There’s an element of grace in the collection’s stories and a slightly more fatalistic element in the Perils of Watching pieces: Just what is the responsibility, for example, of the photographer in the title story who’s set up his camera at a remote water hole to capture the act of a mountain lion killing a deer, when a woman walks into the lion’s territory instead?
Does he disrupt the natural order of things by making himself known, or does he let nature take its course and record it, as he’d planned?
Weber lets us draw our own conclusions, but he does use that disturbing “peril” word in the title.
A Debt Repaid: Love and Intrigue in Europe
- By Jean Prugh (Jean Prugh, $12.95)
Jean Prugh, who is English but mostly lives in the U.S. (currently Tucson) has set this novel on the other side of the pond. It’s also told, to some degree, from the other side of the veil.
The central character, Sarah, is abandoned when she is small and raised in a convent in France.
A talented artist, Sarah is encouraged and mentored by her art teacher, Jennifer. It’s Jennifer, unfortunately lost in a car crash, who tells Sarah’s story of introduction into — and abuse by — posh art-gallery London society.
It’s also Jennifer who continues to guide Sarah toward love and happiness, from the other side.
The Most Wanted Man in China
- By Fang Lizhi. Translated by Perry Link (Henry Holt and Co., $32)
With Disneyland opening in Shanghai, and Chinese capitalists buying up condos in the U.S., it’s hard to conceive that the huge social, political, economic and cultural upheavals of China have occurred easily within one human lifetime.
They did, over the life of Chinese astrophysicist Fang Lizhi (1936–2012).
His memoir, “The Most Wanted Man in China,” is an account of his life from the 1930s Japanese occupation to Deng Xiaoping’s 1980s Nixon and Kissinger relations.
He recounts how his devotion to science persisted just as his early devotion to Marxist ideals withered under the increasingly narrow, dogmatic, anti-intellectual, party-serving realities of The People’s Republic of China.
Even though he was tapped from university to work on Mao Zedong’s atomic bomb project, became a member of China’s Academy of Sciences and rose to be vice president of the acclaimed University of Science and Technology of China, Fang was repeatedly sent out into the country for “re-education”—as a farm-worker, a coal miner, a brick-maker.
He and his physicist wife, Li Shuxian, spent years living apart. They suffered the waves of suppression — the Anti-Rightest Movement, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
His support for the 1980s democracy movement proved his undoing: Knowing that government had targeted them after the Tiananmen Square massacre (he was blamed for inciting student demonstrations), Fang and Li fled to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. They sheltered there for 13 months before they were able to leave the country.
They came to the U.S., and Fang spent the last 20 years of his professional life researching and teaching at the University of Arizona.
“The Most Wanted Man in China” is an unforgettable story of a remarkable man, translated in warm, witty, thoughtful prose.
A postscript: This reviewer sincerely regrets never having met Fang — neither here at the University of Arizona, nor in 1987 in China, where at the same time she was blithely enjoying academic hospitality from the state, the state was denouncing academic Fang as a traitor.
Snake Shot
- By J. Dale Wood (Black Rose Writing, $14.95)
His 17 years in emergency medical services have provided J. Dale Wood with plenty of material, and he capitalizes on that in this novel.
“Snake Shot” concerns a team of paramedics. It’s about their personal challenges and demons, and their work together, which impinges on their home lives.
The wife of one character — fed up with his irregular hours and dedication to his job — has just left him and moved in with another man.
Another character has self-medicated for back pain into an opioid addiction, and he’s formed some dangerous alliances.
A third team member, an idealistic young woman, will suffer the consequences of those alliances. Wood’s EMS knowledge lends credible detail to the book.
Clawback
- By J.A. Jance, (Touchstone, $25.99)
In the 13th Ali Reynolds mystery, J.A. Jance writes Ali’s parents into the action.
Having discovered that his entire retirement investment has been lost in a Ponzi scheme, Ali’s dad, Bob, goes to the Sedona home of his investment adviser for an explanation, only to find the adviser and his wife dying from a knife attack.
Somehow, Bob ends up the prime suspect.
Ali and her husband, B., bring their high-tech private investigation firm into play to exonerate Bob and determine what happened to the funds.
Their staff works the technology angle, but it’s Ali’s Luddite parents who unravel the mystery of the missing money and reveal the perpetrator of not two, but four, murders.
Christine Wald-Hopkins
Californio Lancers: The 1st Battalion of Native Cavalry in the Far West 1863-1866
- By Tom Prezelski (University of Oklahoma Press, $32.95)
In 1863, determined to maintain the Union in California, politicians and elite members of society recruited “Californios” to join the ranks of the California Volunteers.
Dashing and renowned horseman, the Hispanic vaqueros carried lances — complete with red linen pennons — as they rode through the state restoring order before departing for Southern Arizona to assist in quelling the Apache uprising.
En route, the soldiers despaired at the conditions they encountered, including “shade 113–116, wind none, scorpions as thick as molasses.”
Malaria proved deadlier than the Apaches and, in addition to guarding against Apache and Mexican raids, the soldiers tracked deserters and horse thieves (some from their unit) before disbanding at the end of their three-year enlistment.
An independent historian and former Arizona state representative, Prezelski spent a decade researching the Native California Calvary and includes illustrations, maps, appendices and notes in a fascinating and accessible chronicle of this obscure slice of history.
The Boy Without a Face: a Novel
- By Starr Sanders (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, $12.99)
With his diminutive build and artistic nature, 15-year-old Michael is used to bullies.
But nothing prepares him for Lionel’s rage and his metal-tipped cowboy boots or getting dragged into the woods, beaten and left for dead.
After spending two years in a facility receiving extensive rehabilitation and reconstructive surgery, Michael is released with a new face and a vendetta.
But he doesn’t use boots, he uses bars. He gets a law degree, is appointed as a judge and moves back to the small town that abandoned him all those years before. A retired teacher, Starr Sanders explores scars that surgeries can’t heal and the high cost of revenge.
Grassland Plant ID for Everyone: Except Folks that take Boring Stuff too Seriously
- By Jim Koweek; photos by Dale Armstrong (Rafter Lazy K Publishing, $25)
Reading this field guide is like walking through the grasslands with a weathered sage — complete with a cowboy hat and drawl.
Jim Koweek is a committed advocate of native grasses, be it on the range or in urban landscaping.
Drawing from his background in rangeland management, he lists almost 300 species of grasses, trees, shrubs, succulents and forbs (a herbaceous flowering plant other than a grass) including the common name, description, size category and whether the plant is native or introduced.
Accompanied by Dale Armstrong’s outstanding photographs, the guide is an invaluable companion for any Southern Arizona trek, but, as Koweek suggests, when identifying plants sometimes it’s best “to get down on your hands and knees and look at them closely.”
You can’t read this book without longing to grab your hiking boots.
Koweek resides in Elgin, where he owns and operates a revegetation company.
