Home by Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison reminds us that home has no physical boundary nor any physical location but is always about love. We find home wherever “our people” be.


Morrison reads the novel for Random House Audio and she reads it slowly, like poetry, like she means every word and every word has a meaning. She sets the scene in the late fifties, early sixties, in a time we may have forgotten. The Korean War has ended but Blacks still do not have the right to vote. A young soldier comes ‘home’, his mind disarranged, and finds himself imprisoned with no explanation. But the army had been “good to him” and told him not to worry about those episodes he has…

His sister has managed without him, but misses him. She has just gotten a job with a doctor who treats mostly poor patients, some of whom die from his treatments…and then shes gets sick, too, because that doctor is trying to create a new series of drugs or instruments and, well, he used her as a subject.

But there is nothing that can be done, because this is just the way it is…was…and home has so many meanings. Home is where we are, no matter we like it or not.

Toni Morrison makes rainbows from rainy days and does what writers might aspire to: to tell the god-awful truth in language so clear and so bald and so beautiful that we read it to know…to know what home really is, what our world really is, what we really are.


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Pinkerton's Great Detective by Beau Riffenburgh

For folks who imagine themselves interested in working for the Secret Service, Homeland Security, the FBI, or as a spy, this book can tell you what it was like in the way back in America. You may find you don’t have the constitution for it after all.


This book is subtitled “The Amazing Life and Times of James McParland,” if that really was his name. McParland began his undercover career in the anthracite mines of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania reporting on the murderous Molly Maguires in 1875. Remarkably, he was so intent upon keeping himself alive amidst the mayhem, he didn’t get to reporting on killings until after the deeds were done. Such was the violence of the crimes that first-hand observer McParland got physically ill…the stress of undercover work gave him severe intestinal problems and his hair fell out in handfuls.

Years of trials and testimony regarding events in Pennsylvania followed and then McParland went West, presumably to get away from those that knew his face. He pursued Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and worked to bring down strikers working with the Western Federation of Miners. Almost from the start, I admit I found myself disliking this “devout Catholic” who came to be “powerful, successful, and respected…Even decades later the hierarchy of the Catholic Church was still honoring him for his work…as well as for his devotion to the [Denver] parish and his many contributions to the building of Denver’s Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.” My reservations about the man and my conflicted feelings about law enforcement in the early days of the West undoubtedly tell more about me than McParland. Perhaps popular movies about the period influence me still.

This dogged and detailed history is a must read for those interested in the Molly Maguires, The Wild Bunch, or the beginnings of Pinkerton’s undercover investigations and expansion out West. For those with a more cursory interest, flipping through will yield nuggets that stay with you on your journey to understand our historical underpinnings.


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GIVEAWAY -- Foreign Gods, Inc. by Okey Ndibe -- ends 12/17/13

Soho Press is publishing Okey Ndibe's second novel Foreign Gods, Inc in early January 2014. I was fortunate enough to get two Advance Reader copies of this novel and would be happy to share one of my copies with an interested reader of my blog. You will certainly receive it in time for Christmas.

Ikechukwu Uzondu, though a recent magna cum laude graduate of Amherst College, is driving a cab in New York City. He has a thick Nigerian accent, a gambling habit, and a manipulative ex-wife. When Ike hears that an art boutique in New York is looking for authentic foreign deities, he hatches a scheme to return to his native village to steal the effigy of Ngene, the god of war. While this might sound like a bad idea even to those of us who don't believe in "the gods," Ike seems to think it will solve his problems. It may, but perhaps not in the way he is hoping.

I haven't had the chance to read this title myself, but I thought I'd share my extra copy now in case someone out there wants to read it with me, and possibly post a review in this blog. We can do a conversational question-and-answer review, or just each write our own thinking.

Sign up below with the secure form below. We only have seven days for this giveaway so don't delay!

12/17/13: We have a winner! Thank you everyone!

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Edisto by Padgett Powell

For years I’d heard about folks interested to get a first edition copy of this novel, so I’d assumed it was a classic. Written in the time before Goodreads, it does not have a long history of reviews there, but I trust many members have read this classic since it first came out in 1985. Republished now as an ebook under the aegis of Open Road Media, this little gem gets a new airing.

A young boy grows up in his single mother’s beachside home in South Carolina. She works all day as a professor so often leaves him to his own devices. He makes friends among the locals, his maid’s friends, and chums at the local public school. Thinking that a little encouragement from birth might make a difference in his development into a writer of repute, his mother surrounds his crib with classic literature. He is given a notebook in which to record his adventures.

Our boy, Simons (pronounced Simmons) Everson Manigault, is twelve. He has a vocabulary that belies his chronological age, but there is much about the world he still needs to learn. The mysteries of adulthood top his list.

Written in dialect and in the sketchy way of a journal, this may be a little hard to follow at first, but rewards the reader in the end. I recommend plowing through, for by the end you have entered into the language, the time, the place, and the ethos. Circling back to the start once again, you will realize how much you understood, and how much you would still like to glean from this marvelous harvest. We understand, deep in our bones, what has happened here, and how the world, truly a mystery to an adolescent who has no grasp of larger issues, appears to unfurl in all its tattered glory.

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Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday

Where was I when this came out in 2007? When I discovered this title recently in someone else’s TBR list, I immediately added to my own. The novel is an absurdist romp with a heart of gold (and romance). I belly-laughed through the first bits, looked askance at the portion where the Prime Minister’s aide imagines a quiz show in Pakistan, and couldn’t wait to find out the result of the ridiculous, bound-to-fail salmon fishery in Yemen. I wanted to believe, as the sheik says.

This worthy novel has already been made into a Golden Globe-nominated film starring Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt which was released in 2011. I look forward to seeing what Director Lasse Hallström has done with the absurdist concepts, poking fun at government spending on dubious projects which serve only to keep current officials election-worthy. Torday captures the dueling-memo mentality of government bureaucracies competing for limited funds, and the stilted, unsexy email correspondences of working spouses.

And yet, there is more than mere farce in the developing faith our fisheries expert has in the doomed project, and in his blossoming love for his “estate agent” colleague. I listened to the 2007 Orion production of the audiobook supported by a full cast including Downton Abbey star Samantha Bond (you’ll recognize her voice immediately) along with John Sessions, Andrew Sachs, Andrew Marr and many more. The audiobook is a brilliant success as each character is enunciated by actors with great skills. This audiobook production ranks among the best I have heard in recent years and is well worth seeking out.

I look forward also to seeking out more of Torday’s titles. And I adore the covers for his books. I note the publisher remains an imprint of George Weidenfeld & Nicholson throughout his list. These exceptionally fine covers could be done in-house at the publishers, but more likely they are created by a friend. What a great gift to the author, and to us, to see two artistic talents melded. Kudos Torday, et al!


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The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín

Those of us who grew up listening to Bible stories may enjoy this chance to reimagine the life and crucifixion of Jesus Christ. As we listen to the clear and (should I say?) bitter tones of Meryl Streep reading Tóibín’s words, we realize that not much had been said of Mary in the Bible, as though she had been an unimportant part of the life of Jesus. Or perhaps, using a modern-day sensibility, she shunned the limelight, and others sought to protect her anonymity and her right to privacy by nearly erasing her from the proceedings. Rethinking the story suddenly makes the whole series of events leading to the death of Jesus fresh again, completely vital, and filled with horror.

I was awakened to this performance by a review by Charles Isherwood in the 11/24/13 NYT book review section. Isherwood tells us that this story was conceived as a dramatic monologue performed by the Irish actress Marie Mullen in Dublin in 2011, and was later expanded into a book, which was then shortlisted for the prestigious Man Booker Prize.

The audio of this short novella is a mere three hours, but it is filled with new slants on old miracles like the death and resurrection of Lazarus, the changing of water into wine, walking on water, among others. It tells of the crucifixion and the rising again. But what it did specifically for me at this time of year was to remind me again of the reason for Christmas, something we all need to be reminded of every year.

As literature, this short novella churned the creative juices and made me realize we all came away from those stories with ideas about how it could have played out, though I was too young at the time to imagine the pain a mother would experience watching her son be broken. There is a historical basis for much of what is written in the Bible though perhaps the interpretations are embellished and imagined. It behooves us to take the opportunity to reexamine these stories and ideas once again, whenever we can, to see if it sheds new light on our understanding of the underpinnings of our beliefs.

I also relish the opportunity to challenge my own knowledge of and understanding of “the facts of the case” and see how those facts fit with what Tóibín has shared with us. I am reminded once again how surprised I am when I discover my own sentiments in the mouth of another, one who lived hundreds (and this case, thousands) of years before me. When we hear of the governance and trials taking place, do we imagine that these people had no sense of justice? How else could a system of courts and hearings and trials, no matter how flawed, have come into being? I loved being reminded of these things, and I encourage you to have a look, no matter your religious background. These stories are part of the underpinnings of much of the political structures in the Western world, like it or not, and it is fruitful to be reminded.


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The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer

George Packer returned from several years overseas writing about problems of the United States in the world, never imagining that the United States would become his next subject. But he was appalled with the condition of America when he returned and wondered what had happened to our forward momentum. In reading this book, you may feel the perplexity I had in the beginning, for his stories are wide-ranging and diverse and seem to bear no relation to one another. But slowly the accretion of pages, stories, and facts begin to take their toll and we begin to glimpse the outlines of our recent past and possible reasons for it. And something akin to a slow-burning rage may take hold in your breast.

Packer might be flint to dry tinder—many of us know what we think might be wrong with governance, banks, farming, energy policy, education—Packer hits all the hot, dry, sore spots in his round-the-country assessment in the form of interviews. He does not paint a flattering picture of anyone, really, (which one of us is perfect?) but neither is he completely negative except for the portrait of Newt Gingrich. Newt looks and sounds like a megalomaniac on the level of Ron Hubbard and according to Packer may have been the beginning of Washington’s political dysfunction and discourtesy. If Newt had left Washington when he was thrown out of office, we may have been saved, but he stayed around tinkering with political leadership using money and words. But Newt is not single-handedly responsible. We have ourselves to thank.

Packer allows us to imagine our own choices, had we other people’s lives. He is explanatory rather than judgmental. He shows us the curve of the earth and allows us to use our experience and observation to draw our own conclusions. And he is radicalizing me. I realize my own collection of facts, tempered by my education and experience, have caused within me a slow-burning anger over the widening inequality and waste of our vast resources, both human and soil-based. I do not admire the men and women of our Congress and I do not admire the echelons of wealthy bankers and corporate executives. I do not aspire to, nor do I wish my children to aspire to, their ranks. I want them to realize they are us, albeit with money they frankly do not deserve.

Packer is not prescriptive so the answers must come from within ourselves. But he does point out that the 99% have already staged a mass action in Occupy Wall Street. Deep feelings of injustice already roil through our cities and countryside. Now is the time to learn the skills you will need should your house be lost in a tornado, an earthquake, a flood, or a firestorm. Now is the time to be the leaders you wish your Congresspeople were. Now is the time to think for ourselves. Think. Soon, it will be time to short Wall Street.


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