”Australia 3 Vatican 0”
By Jon Court (Jon Court, $9.68)
Not much escapes the satirist’s skewer in this latest novel by Jon Court: not the Catholic Church, not Mormons, not Protestants or Jews; not Americans, Russians, Chinese, Brits (or their public schoolboys, “that’s private school, to you”), or Australians, on whose hallowed, sheep-rich ground this raunchy, phallocentric romp takes place.
“Takes place,” however, might throw the plot into too clear a light. Rather, schemes to 1) find a misplaced American atomic bomb, 2) justify canonizing a saint, 3) sell more sheep meat, 4) colonize Australia, 5) sell more sheep meat, 6) turn black people white, 7) generally get into one another’s pants, and 8) sell more sheep meat, and sort of roam around and collide with each other in a place called Stinkwells.
Reading like an X-rated SNL, some of Court’s dialogue is funny; some of it groan-worthy. His characters are caricatures: Including Chinese twins bent on defrauding Stinkwells who try to pass as Israeli Jews by dressing like 19th century Chinese. I know. They don’t fool anyone else either. Court does land some valid points, though, about racism, international greed, and institutional religion.
”Balancing Act”
By Robert Longoni and Bernardo Cristiani Taiz (Moon Pony Press, $15)
”I promise Bernardo that if he dies first/ I’ll write him a poem. ...” So opens “Two Old Men on a Bench,” the first poem in this collection by two long-time University of Arizona and Pima Community College English and creative writing instructors. “He says the same/ for me,” Robert Longoni continues, “joking it will never happen that way.” As it turns out, Bernardo Cristiani Taiz did die first — in June — but he and Longoni here leave a thoughtful and touching testimonial to grace in living and art. Longoni gets this first word, but Taiz, the last.
In many ways a reflection on aging, “Balancing Act” is a dialogue, alternating the poets’ points of view and styles. It reminisces on the poets as children (“I learned to hate cursive/ in Miss Cromie’s second grade class,” BCT); it chronicles change, loss, and current events; it sets the poet’s eye in nature, and addresses health issues and practical realities of growing older.
The voices are nicely balanced: Longoni’s is serious and reflective; Taiz’s, more playful, even in tragedy. “The closer I get to dying,” he writes, “…/ the more I think about being here now,/ this moment the gift....” (“Prostates and Papayas.” You get the image.)
”Curing Incurability: A Journey to Wellness Curing Autoimmune Disease and Hepatitis C”
By Pamela J. Buchanan (First Edition Design Publishing, $12.95)
Writing this book to share her autoimmune and infectious disease experience with other sufferers, Pamela J. Buchanan presents the combination of alternative and conventional medical treatments that she found effective.
The retired executive assistant was already suffering from lupus and rheumatoid arthritis when she was diagnosed with Hepatitis C. Introduced to a dietary approach called The Gerson Therapy (an organic, plant-based diet, with juices, coffee enemas, and supplements), she followed it religiously. When, after nearly two years, tests showed her lupus and arthritis — but not the hepatitis — abated, she opted for the new, FTA-approved drug, Harvoni, and says she is now cured.
”Diphtheria Festival”
By Jefferson Carter (Main Street Rag Publishing, $11)
The title poem in this collection by Tucson poet Jefferson Carter is emblematic about what’s particularly appealing about the work: Having gone online to research the black-and white and golden-winged moth that bears the name “Dipthera festiva,” the speaker is amused and then distracted by Google’s reply — “Did you mean Diphtheria Festival?” He then conjures up images of ...” diphtheria victims/ enjoying themselves among ... party lanterns/ & tents ... while my Facebook friends/ hand out lemons and instructions for making lemonade ...” After a dig at himself for attitude issues, the speaker returns to “what’s cool” about the moth — with scientific fact and fond appreciation.
The 30 poems in “Diphtheria Festival” are accessible — conversational, peppered with Facebook and old Rock and jazz allusions; they’re witty and at times pointed but not overly acerbic. They’re domestic (what’s in today’s mail; role of the cat), personal (“us old guys”), visual (“…a hummingbird at the feeder,/ his gorget like dirty, torn velvet…”) and both iconoclastic (...”don’t/ google biblicalmoneyshots.com”) and at times disarmingly non-ironic (“I love my wife.”)
And then there’s “what cool” about Dipthera festiva: Due to a protective auditory peculiarity, “The moth survives, like all nature’s darlings, involuntarily.”
“He Restoreth My Soul”
By Barry S. Hirsch (JSE Books, $14.95)
Weaving in references to the 23rd Psalm and six Hebrew songs, Barry S. Hirsch here presents a murder mystery with Biblical overtones.
When former Saguaro High School Homecoming Queen Natalie Levine is murdered, her collection of dismissed high school admirers become suspect. When one decides to exact retribution (“an eye for an eye”), his psychological state is called into question and his soul needs “restoring.”
Barry S. Hirsch is a retired high school English department chair who lives in Tucson.
”Stripped Bare”
By Shannon Baker (Forge, $24.99)
Shannon Baker has a promising vein to mine in this first book for a suspense series: the Sandhills of Nebraska, with ranches and small-town life, folks who’ve known each other all their lives, yet harbor dirty secrets; folks who nurse childhood resentments or (unfortunately for our central character) never get over high school romance.
Kate Fox is living her ideal life, married to the handsome county sheriff and raising cattle on his share of his family ranch, when she gets word that there’s been a double shooting: the grandfather of her teenage ward Carly is dead; Kate’s husband, Ted, is in a coma, possibly paralyzed. Add to that, Carly disappears. For reasons she can’t phantom, both Ted and Carly turn out to be suspects in the crime. With Ted out of commission, Kate takes it upon herself to investigate the shootings, and — in the course of that — discovers about her own life what everyone else has been gossiping about.
Baker, the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers 2014 Writer of the Year, paints a full setting in “Stripped Bare.” She keeps action and suspense alive, and she has a wide range of characters (Kate’s quirky artist mom and her eight free-range-raised siblings, not least) that provide subplots of their own. She’s off to an lively start.
”The Dark Winter
of
War”
By Aaron Hewings (Aaron Hewings, $9.99 paperback; $3.99 Ebook)
It’s 1943. In Germany, an SS officer spying for the Allies is “made,” and high-ranking Nazis are competing for Hitler’s favor. In London, British intelligence fears a years-long Allied spy ring is now jeopardized. And a disheveled, young American military linguist without any combat experience gets jailed after a bar brawl.
To protect its agents in Occupied Europe, British intelligence cobbles together a plan to drop two agents behind enemy lines to capture or kill the German tasked with breaking the Allies’ spy ring. One agent is a hardened British colonel, experienced in covert operations. The other is the inexperienced American.
“The Dark Winter of War” has the qualities of effective spy thrillers — a credible historic setting with period-appropriate machinery and equipment, and alternating points of view so you can watch the action tightening. There’s also an underlying question about the morality of shooting from the hip.
Tucson historian Aaron Hewings has created a complex relationship between the two agents. He’s developed a tight, suspenseful plot; and a twist this reader never saw coming. A page-turner, this is a praise-worthy debut novel.
“Mythical River: Chasing the Mirage of New Water in the American Southwest”
By Melissa L. Sevigny. (University of Iowa Press, $27.50)
Consider a world where a river’s needs were as important as the communities it supported. With the eye of a scientist and heart of a poet, Tucson native Sevigny champions this theory in a beautifully written and exhaustively researched part-scientific journal and part-memoir, interweaving the story of greed and ignorance (and the paradigm that natural resources and human ingenuity are inexhaustible) with her place on the land and its ability to support her deep-desert roots.
It started with the Spaniards’ exploration of the West and a river they concocted that ran from the Colorado River west through the Great Basin, Sierra Madres to the Pacific Ocean.
Despite the incongruity, that mythical river — the Buenaventura — became as solid as concrete and remained on U.S. maps for close to a century. The belief of “new water” continues as we build dams and desalination and recharge plants; seed the clouds and wage war against the invasive and insatiable salt cedar, and rely on the Colorado River, which has been litigated, dammed and drained almost to death.
But Sevigny suggests adjoining strategies. Supported by recommendations from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, she promotes conservation, rain harvesting and reuse, and change and investment at the local level; realizing we are members of our ecosystem, and what can’t be fixed by politics can by love.
This is our call to action. Sevigny quotes Jackie King, a South African scientist, who stated, “Not knowing everything is not an excuse for not getting started.” Start with Mythical River — the most important book you will read all year.
“One Last Haircut: A Journey with Incurable Illness”
By Don A. Chillstrom (Huff Publishing Associates, $15)
Green Valley resident Don Chillstrom offers a touching chronicle of his wife Dorothy’s battle with a virulent and rare lung cancer that claimed her life in less than a year.
Chillstrom inserts emails that he sent to family and friends during Dorothy’s illness lending a sense of immediacy and intimacy as she suffers through a short stint of chemotherapy before making the liberating decision to cease trying to prolong her life and relish the time remaining.
Always positive and courageous, Dorothy enjoyed a period of relative good health, hiking and gardening, entertaining friends and traveling with family until cancer overtook her.
This is a story of death but also life, time and memories, which Chillstrom addressed in his eulogy for his beloved wife. “We have left many things undone but we have left nothing unsaid.”
