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Book of the Day Roundup: February 7-11, 2022
From the Lighthouse
Chad Musick
Cinnabar Moth Publishing
Hardcover $24.99 (268pp)
978-1-953971-26-5
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
In Chad Musick’s novel From the Lighthouse, a mysterious nonbinary person searches for their place in the multidimensional universe.
Musick holds a PhD in mathematics and lectures on knot theory, which informs the novel’s looping structure. The narrator is called “Knot,” a name that functions as both play on words and plot point. “That’s the problem, you think you’re in charge, but you’re Knot,” says Bigman, Knot’s untrustworthy caretaker. The book’s central conflict revolves around Knot’s identity: is Knot human, animal, male, female, magical, or ordinary? Bigman keeps Knot isolated, going so far as to tie them up with a rope. When tragedy erupts in their beach community, Knot explores it beyond the limits that Bigman has set.
Knot’s world is multileveled and rich in paradoxes. Biblical images, as of babies in reed baskets, exist alongside changelings and secret doorways. The book’s vision rejects the either-or dynamic and is wide enough to accommodate diversity and change. Shifts in setting—even toward the conclusion, when those shifts become frenetic—are handled with clarity.
The contradictions posed by Knot’s vulnerability, violence, and musical, childlike voice make them sympathetic, even though their identity is uncertain. Uncertainty is the truest pathway into the book’s themes of gender fluidity and the flexibility of personalities. These important issues are handled with care and intelligence, acknowledging the variety of emotions they raise. They are framed in a fantasy world, where the path to self-knowledge travels through gorgeous, frightening places of magic and violence.
Veering into the territory of an allegory, From the Lighthouse is an exceptional and poignant novel in which a social outsider takes a fraught path toward authenticity. It’s a haunting story of the enigma of identities.
MICHELE SHARPE (December 27, 2021)
Unnatural Ends
Christopher Huang
Inkshares
Softcover $18.99 (402pp)
978-1-950301-06-5
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
In Christopher Huang’s moody mystery novel Unnatural Ends, an Englishman is murdered. In a stunning act of prescience, he stipulated in his will that his estate should belong to whomever of his three adoptees solved the case.
Alan is an archaeologist; Roger is an engineer; Caroline is a journalist. They were raised in Linwood Hall, and return to it in 1921 for Sir Lawrence’s funeral. They’re expected to investigate the death, despite a detective’s reservations, and their intertwined impressions and sharp deductions are devoted to finding out whether the crime was rooted in the past, and whether or not there was more to the will.
The Linwoods’ austere, towering estate, which is falling to ruin, is an astute parallel to the harm wrought by Sir Lawrence, whose magisterial, unyielding presence influenced his family and the village. Meanwhile, memories bolster each of the siblings’ beliefs that they were the favored one to inherit the estate, for reasons that are tailored to their personalities. Sir Lawrence’s admonitions, too, fill them with urgency.
The result is a keen examination of how family legacies are reinterpreted by their members, and a stylish adaptation of classic mysteries. The characters’ mannerisms and conversations pair with historical flourishes, including references to aviation, the first World War, and Hiram Bingham in Machu Picchu; the result is delightful and immersive.
Huang is savvy about revealing the Linwoods’ secrets in increments. Suspense builds as the investigation gathers around potential culprits, and potent notions of patriarchal sins and the past’s ongoing ripple effects enrich and complicate the siblings’ understanding of their present. The book’s surprising deflections all ravel toward a theatrical finish.
Unnatural Ends enters the spellbinding, gorse-filled Yorkshire countryside with provocative inquiries into people’s origins, and the experiences that bind them.
KAREN RIGBY (December 27, 2021)
Nothing Could Be Further from the Truth
Christopher Evans
Astoria
Softcover $17.99 (248pp)
978-1-4870-1033-1
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Spotlighting male fragility, the stories of Christopher Evans’s Nothing Could Be Further from the Truth show uncomfortable negotiations with the truth of feelings and circumstances.
A jealous man wears sneakers belonging to his girlfriend’s lover to feel desired by her. After his girlfriend leaves, a man hangs with a pack of coyotes to feel less lonely. In “Burrowing,” a man’s desperate efforts to relieve his girlfriend’s depression with burrow owls descend into spectacular chaos. This inability to confront the truth may evidence self-delusion.
In, “The Truthteller,” a student’s misunderstanding of his teacher’s physical response to him is creepy and menacing. In “Registry,” a customer service representative makes an inappropriate sexual advance towards an affianced woman, deluding himself that they are bonding over knives. In “Do The Donna,” a woman is hounded for years as the subject of a pop song written by a man she rejected sexually. Elsewhere, nine abandoned siblings have to raise themselves; and a son locates his mother’s severed finger in an attempt to save his parents’ marriage, but who will save him?
Dealing with humdrum people and ordinary lives, Evans’s deadpan voice renders these seventeen stories, often slight but tuned to knife-edge moments, with humor and surrealism. Occasionally, the humor drifts into bleakness. In “Dissection of Passion,” a repressive regime’s “greatest writer” is showered with mysterious gifts from a fan. And animals populate these stories in accompaniment to mental breakdowns: falling birds, fire-starting cats, and writhing silverfish underscore human inadequacy and failure to accord proper significance to emotional truths.
This is a wonderful collection from a sure-footed writer with a great ear for dialogue. Meticulously observed, the stories illustrate how ordinary life often thrums with mysterious, elusive truths just waiting to be grasped, if only we are brave enough.
ELAINE CHIEW (December 27, 2021)
Bird Brother
A Falconer’s Journey and the Healing Power of Wildlife
Rodney Stotts
Kate Pipkin, contributor
Island Press
Hardcover $26.00 (208pp)
978-1-64283-174-0
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Rodney Stotts’s heartfelt memoir reveals how he became a master falconer.
To expand his drug business, Stotts needed his own apartment. But he had to prove he could afford rent first. He began working with the Earth Conservation Corps (ECC), part of a team tasked with cleaning the Anacostia River. In 1994, he was involved in reintroducing and growing a new population of the native bald eagle around the river. Working at the ECC offered him a new sense of purpose, and he shifted away from drugs in his pursuit of becoming a falconer.
In 2017, Stotts’s son, Mike, expressed his interest in becoming a falconer, too. The memoir uses Stotts’s sessions with Mike to explain important lessons about wildlife management techniques, including information about the equipment needed and feeding and habitation requirements. Through illuminating details about the history of falconry, raptors’ habitats, and the factors that influence raptor populations, the book imparts knowledge about protecting the species and increasing their numbers.
Stotts’s passion for wildlife conservation is demonstrated in moving scenes, as when he climbs a thirty-foot fence to rescue a juvenile bald eagle, when he takes care of an injured Eurasian eagle-owl, and when he travels to educate children and adults about raptors, including how people can contribute to their conservation and engage with wildlife. His future goal is to build a wildlife sanctuary that also serves as a refuge for disadvantaged youth.
The book is embellished with impressive photographs that capture the beautiful relationships between Stotts and his bird friends. The loving relationship that can be cultivated between humans and the amazing birds is shown through charming moments between the birds and Stotts’s audience, too.
Bird Brother is a memoir that is apt in its demonstration of nature’s ability to transform people.
EDITH WAIRIMU (December 27, 2021)
Sing Her Name
Rosalyn Story
Agate Publishing
Softcover $18.00 (384pp)
978-1-57284-297-7
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Musical talent blooms in Rosalyn Story’s stirring, character-driven novel Sing Her Name, a powerful story about Black artistry, women’s dreams, and overcoming strife.
After they are displaced to New York by Hurricane Katrina, Eden becomes responsible for her brother, who is in high school and is toying with trouble. Though she’s a gifted singer, Eden has little means of supporting their family. But a scrapbook and mementos rekindle her musical dreams by introducing her the story of Celia, a nineteenth-century Black star whose acclaim abroad clashed with her struggles to have her talents recognized at home. As Celia faces racial inequity and related challenges, a mystery is ignited surrounding the burning of an opera house.
In the present, Eden faces her own hardships. She works to find a job and postpones her eviction. She also relives her family’s history: her childhood memories reveal the extent to which her ambition was pushed back. Though she’s alone and weary, she remains determined. A connection with a customer at a diner, who encourages her talent, fills her with warmth. Celia’s tale also gives her a sense of perspective: both women struggle with feelings of defeat.
The prose is sumptuous and generous. As Eden moves toward fulfillment, her fears about not belonging in the classical music world are palpable. But not everything is tough: her vibrant aunt and a friend are present as examples of composure, while return visits to New Orleans give her access to a sense of resolution, allowing her to step into a newer version of herself.
Sing Her Name is a beautiful and triumphant novel in which a talented woman works to reconcile her sense of family loyalty with her fidelity to her own considerable gifts.
KAREN RIGBY (February 7, 2022)
Barbara Hodge
