The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing by Joseph Fasano

A father and his nine-year-old son trek into the high mountains to hunt a mountain lion. Generations have hunted the lion and failed. The father had sworn to bring one home. 

They depart in late in autumn when the snow shows the lion's tracks. The father patiently teaches the child. At night the boy still dreams of his mother who died in an accident several years before.

Fasano creates a world that can be experienced with all the senses, the iron smell of blood and woodsmoke ingrained in a child's glove, the abrasiveness of dancing on asphalt, the sound of the silent forest and the hound's sharp snarl, the pain of brokenness in soul and body. 

Granite and scree, chickweed and bracken, the velvet of antlers caught on branches, snow and iced-over water---and the snow-hushed pad of a predator's footfall. 

There is beauty there. 

And danger and suffering and pain. 

But isn't life dangerous and painful? A bird flies into the room and a woman intuits a premonition. A pony splits its hoof and we end its suffering.  We lose our most dearly beloved.

When tragedy strikes, the father seeks revenge, like Ahab hunting the white whale. But the father is also hunted. 

Can revenge end our pain? Or is grace found in forgiveness?

I came across Joseph Fasano on Twitter. He was reading a poem a day during lockdown. Sometimes he read other poets, and I enjoyed his choices. He also read his own poetry, which I found very moving. Learning of his first novel, The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing, I was eager to read it.

Fasano's brilliant use of language, unflinching exploration of suffering bodily and psychic, and the passions of grief and vengeance make this a memorable read. The startling resolution is one of hope that in the dark heart of every wild thing one can also find grace. 

I was given a free ebook by the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing

by Joseph Fasano

Platypus Press

September 2020

ISBN: 978-1-913007-07-2

Pre-order $16.60; $20 paperback

Read an excerpt from the book at

https://platypuspress.co.uk/pdfs/Dark_Heart-Joseph_Fasano-excerpt.pdf

Hear the author read an excerpt on Instagram at

https://www.instagram.com/p/CAAma_OFYSv/

from the publisher:

Deep in the mountains of British Columbia, a father-son hunting trip suddenly becomes a struggle for survival. Across an unforgiving landscape, and in pursuit of a fabled mountain lion, one man must confront both the wilderness around him and the wildness that resides within. Through wind, snow, and the depths of grief, he asks what price he is willing to exact on a world that ravages what we love, and whether redemption awaits those who can forgive.

Joseph Fasano is the author of four books of poetry. He was born in New York state’s Hudson River Valley and received degrees from Harvard University and Columbia University. His writing has appeared in The Times Literary Supplement, The Yale Review, and American Poets, among other publications.

Advance praise

Joseph Fasano has the heart and the ear and he puts them to magnificent use in The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing. By turns mournful and thrilling, this story, told in precise and glorious prose, traverses the wild heights of grief, vengeance, tenderness, and love. It pierces. — Sam Lipsyte

A father, a boy, and a mountain lion. If it sounds like the start of a parable, that’s because The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing has wisdom to share. But that wisdom is complicated, surprising, and at times even vicious. What seems at first like a quiet book is actually quite fierce, not unlike the big cat at the center of its story. This elegiac novel is a moving meditation on grief, love, and obsession. — Erica Wright

Joseph Fasano is a wonderfully gifted writer. He writes evocatively, lyrically, and never fails to surprise us with his revelations and illuminations. His insights are deep, his delineation of character and place immensely satisfying. He gives us a story that keeps resonating long after we have finished reading. — Nicholas Christopher

His Truth is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope by Jon Meacham

The day of John Lewis' death I began reading the egalley for His Truth is Marching On: John Lewis and The Power of Hope by Jon Meacham.

It was a hard book to read, and heartbreaking, for Lewis was willing to lay down his life to achieve a just society, and he faced the most vicious violence. 

Lewis has left behind a country still divided and angry, the dream of a Beloved Community unfulfilled. The struggle for the promise of America continues.

Meacham writes, "John Robert Lewis embodied the traits of a saint in the classical Christian sense of the term," a man who answered the call to do the Lord's work in the world. A man who faced tribulation and persecution for seeking the justice we are called to enact as our faith responsibility. A man who sought redemption for his country. A man whose faith never flagged, not in the face of hate and blows, not when the movement shifted away from non-violence. He was faithful to his Gospel call of peace and the establishment of The Beloved Community.

"The tragedy of man," the twentieth-century Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr observed, "is that he can conceive self-perfection but cannot achieve it," Meacham quotes, adding, "And the tragedy of America is that we can imagine justice but cannot finally realize it."

I was only twenty when I married a seminary student. Professors and the school Dean had worked to integrate churches in the South. (see NYT article here.) I audited classes taught by these men. One wrote a seminal work on White Privilege, Segregation and the Bible. Another taught Niebuhr Moral Man in Immoral Society. It was an atmosphere that believed in faith in action, changing society to bring the Gospel to fulfillment.

The world has changed, including the church. Personal salvation and sanctity replaced social justice. Church as entertainment and community evolved. Separation from general society was the norm, with Christian music and businesses arising. We hardly recognize contemporary Christianity, especially it's alignment with Trump's divisive and racist actions.

We are at a decisive moment in history. What future will American choose?

Meacham is an inspirational and eloquent writer. His portrait of Lewis begins in his childhood through the Civil Rights movement and the Voting Rights act, ending with the rise of  Black Power.

Meacham calls for us to be inspired by the life of John Lewis as we decide on our future in America. Will we remain divided and filled with hate? Or will we embrace love and faith in the value of every being? "God's truth is marching on," he reminds us, "We can do it...I believe we can do it."

Meacham ends his book with hope that America will yet achieve a just society.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope
by Jon Meacham
Random House Publishing Group - Random House
Pub Date  August 25, 2020
ISBN: 9781984855022
hard cover $30.00 (USD)

from the publisher

An intimate and revealing portrait of civil rights icon and longtime U.S. congressman John Lewis, linking his life to the painful quest for justice in America from the 1950s to the present—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Soul of America 

 John Lewis, who at age twenty-five marched in Selma, Alabama, and was beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, was a visionary and a man of faith. Drawing on decades of wide-ranging interviews with Lewis, Jon Meacham writes of how this great-grandson of a slave and son of an Alabama tenant farmer was inspired by the Bible and his teachers in nonviolence, Reverend James Lawson and Martin Luther King, Jr., to put his life on the line in the service of what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.” 

From an early age, Lewis learned that nonviolence was not only a tactic but a philosophy, a biblical imperative, and a transforming reality. At the age of four, Lewis, ambitious to become a minister, practiced by preaching to his family’s chickens. When his mother cooked one of the chickens, the boy refused to eat it—his first act, he wryly recalled, of nonviolent protest. Integral to Lewis’s commitment to bettering the nation was his faith in humanity and in God—and an unshakable belief in the power of hope. 

Meacham calls Lewis “as important to the founding of a modern and multiethnic twentieth- and twenty-first-century America as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and Samuel Adams were to the initial creation of the Republic itself in the eighteenth century.” A believer in the injunction that one should love one's neighbor as oneself, Lewis was arguably a saint in our time, risking limb and life to bear witness for the powerless in the face of the powerful. In many ways he brought a still-evolving nation closer to realizing its ideals, and his story offers inspiration and illumination for Americans today who are working for social and political change.

Lila by Marilynne Robinson

I have been listening to audiobooks to cram in more 'reading', using them when I am working on quilts.

After reading the galley of Marilynne Robinson's new book Jack, I borrowed Lila from Overdrive.

Robinson's Gilead novels began with Gilead, an extended letter by an aging and ailing John Ames to his young son. Home, Lila, and Jack continued the stories from the viewpoints of other characters in Gilead.

It is a beautifully presented audiobook, the text flowing and the narrator Maggie Hoffman giving the characters individual voices.

The story of Lila is heartbreaking. She was a neglected child stolen from her family by a woman who shows her the only love and care she experiences before meeting John Ames, the narrator of Robinson's novel Gilead. Lila grew up a migrant, outside of society and untutored in religion. But her native intelligence brings her to struggle with the Big Questions of life.

Lila is a survivor who relies only on herself after losing her surrogate mother, Doll. On her own, she works in a St. Louis brothel, becoming the maid when the men don't want her.

She goes on the road again, stopping in Gilead, a town she despises. She wanders into church one day to escape the rain. The minister notes her and pursues her, showing her consideration and Christian love, with patience and acceptance she has never experienced before.

The 'beautiful old man,' the Rev. John Ames, wants to help her. She asks Ames to marry her.

Ames had lost his wife and child as a young man, and assumed his golden years would be as lonely and cold as they had been ever since. He loves Lila, but understands she may flit away back into her accustomed life on the road where she does not have to rely on anyone else. She struggles to trust even Ames.

Lila's struggle to understand baptism, the Bible and the mystery of life, takes up a great deal of the book.

Lila's life as a migrant worker, the utter poverty, was relieved by a spunky friend and Doll's love. Lila worries about what happened to them, and puzzles over the fate of their unbaptized souls.

When Lila becomes pregnant, Ames feels blessed at this second chance. Even in the womb, Lila talks to her child, vowing to protect it and care for it. She thinks about stealing off with her baby, still uncertain about human love's immutability.

This is a novel that offers a great deal to contemplate. I do not feel adequate to delve into its deeper meanings after only one reading.

I prefer reading books to listening, but have found audiobooks useful for getting in more reading. I am a quick reader, so spending eight hours listening to a book I could read in four means the story felt dragged out, the introspection endless. Also, I can't note places I want to return to or quote!

I was surprised to hear John Ames voice as quivering. It was not how I have heard it in my head over my three readings of Gilead.

This may not have been the best book for me to listen to. But I am glad to have finally encountered Lila.

Read a fantastic review in the New Yorker Magazine here.

Last to read, I have Home on by TBR shelf.

Exploring Art Quilts

The Studio Art Quilt Associates new book Exploring Art Quilts, Volume 1: New Directions showcases sixteen contemporary quilt artists and offers themed galleries that illustrate how contemporary fiber art is breaking new boundaries.

The Introduction asks, "What is an Art Quilt?" In the next section Art quilts from France, Japan, and the United Kingdom are showcased. The judied galleries are based on themes from portraits to surface design to text messages.

The artists interviews are fascinating, offering insights into their development and techniques.

Many of the artists I am familiar with; I have seen their quilts or heard them speak or have their books or follow them on social media such as Julia Graber whose quilt is shown below.

But I have also discovered a multitude of new artists! I love that their websites are included with the quilt information and I intend to visit them.

With 350 illustrations on extra large pages, this volume will offer hours of study. It is quite overwhelming!

I received a free book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

from the publisher

This high-powered mix for all who make and appreciate contemporary art quilting begins the creativity-inspiring series Exploring Art Quilts with SAQA. Its book-and-journal-blend format with 350 photos reveals today’s latest work and designs and also serves as a long-term creative reference. Be inspired by interviews, gorgeous art quilt photos, and current creations by members of Studio Art Quilt Associates, Inc. (SAQA), the renowned international organization dedicated to promoting the art quilt. Meet 16 artists living around the world, including stories on their beginnings as art quilters. Peer at every detail in photos from four of SAQA’s recent exhibitions, showing the range of content being produced today. A series of articles examine art being made in various locales; France, Japan, and the United Kingdom are included in this volume. Finally, learn from the work of SAQA’s Juried Artist members in 10 themed image galleries highlighting the range and complexity of their art.

New Directions: Exploring Art Quilts with SAQA
SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates, Inc.)
Schiffer Publishing
$22 soft cover
ISBN 13: 9780764359989

Superman's Not Coming: Our National Water Crisis and What We the People Can Do About It by Erin Brockovich

Erin Brockovich warns us that we the people are the only ones who can save us. Grass roots efforts by moms have stood up to power to save their children. Lois Gibbs, the Love Canal mom, and Leeann Walters of Flint, Michigan are two of the most recognized citizens who have stood up to power in defence of families. For change to happen, more ordinary people need to become involved.

Superman's Not Coming describes the problem of providing clean water under a dysfunctional EPA and climate change. Brockovich offers resources to empower Water Warrior wannabes.

I have spent a good deal of my life a few hours drive (or less) from one of the Great Lakes, the largest freshwater source in the world. I grew up boating on the Niagara River, and later vacationed at Lake Michigan, Lake Superior, and Lake Huron.

I also remember in the 1970s seeing yellow foam at the base of Niagara Falls. I remember algae blooms poisoning Toledo's water, Love Canal, and the Flint Water Crisis. I have lived near lakes made toxic by industrial waste. My state is dealing with PFAS contamination.

Across the country, Americans--today--discover their water isn't safe to drink. And they endure limits on water use because it is in short supply.

It's only going to get worse as temperatures rise.

Brockovich presents her information and argument with passion. The book is upsetting but it is also empowering. If we have the will, we can create change. It starts with people like us.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

from the publisher

From environmental activist, consumer advocate, renowned crusader, champion fighter-maverick, whose courageous case against Pacific Gas and Electric was dramatized in the Oscar-winning film--a book to inspire change that looks at our present situation with water and reveals the imminent threats to our most precious, essential element, and shows us how we can each take action to make changes in our cities, our towns, our villages, before it is too late.

In Erin Brockovich's long-awaited book--her first to reckon with conditions on our planet--she makes clear why we are in the trouble we're in, and how, in large and practical ways, we each can take actions to bring about change.

She shows us what's at stake, and writes of the fraudulent science that disguises these issues, along with cancer clusters not being reported. She writes of the saga of PG&E that continues to this day, and of the communities and people she has worked with who have helped to make an impact. She writes of the water operator in Poughkeepsie, New York, who responded to his customers' concerns and changed his system to create some of the safest water in the country; of the moms in Hannibal, Missouri, who became the first citizens in the nation to file an ordinance prohibiting the use of ammonia in their public drinking water; and about how we can protect our right to clean water by fighting for better enforcement of the laws, new legislation, and better regulations. She cannot fight all battles for all people and gives us the tools to take actions ourselves, have our voices be heard, and know that steps are being taken to make sure our water is safe to drink and use.

Superman's Not Coming: Our National Water Crisis and What We the People Can Do About It
by Erin Brockovich
Pantheon/Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Pub Date: August 25, 2020
ISBN: 9781524746964
hardcover $28.95 (USD)

The Truth About Baked Beans: An Edible History of New England by Meg Muckenhoupt

The history of food has interested me for a long time. I wrote a paper at Temple University on the roots of American cooking, how the first Europeans adapted their traditions to the foods available in the New World.

Meg Muckenhoupt's The Truth About Baked Beans: An Edible History of New England caught my eye a looked like a fun read. I expected it to cover regional and social history and regional foods and cooking.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the author goes further--considering the wide variety of immigrants whose contributions to American cooking have been overlooked and eclipsed.

The first European settlers did not have sweeteners available. They imported honey bees! Later, maple syrup and molasses were added to the kitchen basics, and plain recipes using cornmeal and baked beans became sweetened--and sweetened!

Corn, squash, and beans are considered essential New England foods...and they all came from Central America.

Mythic idealizations of historical New England cooking arose during the Centennial and 'scientific' movements promoted non-ethnic foods in favor of white, bland foods.

Readers learn of the real first Thanksgiving foods and how the traditional eating holiday developed over time. And, finally, settled the question of what are 'real' New England foods; would you believe it includes Marshmallow Fluff and Whoopie Pies?

The book includes recipes for those mentioned in the book, including historic, updated, regional favorites, and restaurant favorites.

I found the book to be as enjoyable to read as I had hoped.

I was given a free egalley by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Truth about Baked Beans: An Edible New England History
by Meg Muckenhoupt
NYU Press
Pub Date August 25, 2020 
ISBN: 9781479882762
hardcover $29.95 (USD)

Meg Muckenhoupt begins with a simple question: When did Bostonians start making Boston Baked Beans? Storekeepers in Faneuil Hall and Duck Tour guides may tell you that the Pilgrims learned a recipe for beans with maple syrup and bear fat from Native Americans, but in fact, the recipe for Boston Baked Beans is the result of a conscious effort in the late nineteenth century to create New England foods. 

New England foods were selected and resourcefully reinvented from fanciful stories about what English colonists cooked prior to the American revolution—while pointedly ignoring the foods cooked by contemporary New Englanders, especially the large immigrant populations who were powering industry and taking over farms around the region.

The Truth about Baked Beans explores New England’s culinary myths and reality through some of the region’s most famous foods: baked beans, brown bread, clams, cod and lobster, maple syrup, pies, and Yankee pot roast. 

From 1870 to 1920, the idea of New England food was carefully constructed in magazines, newspapers, and cookbooks, often through fictitious and sometimes bizarre origin stories touted as time-honored American legends. 

This toothsome volume reveals the effort that went into the creation of these foods, and lets us begin to reclaim the culinary heritage of immigrant New England—the French Canadians, Irish, Italians, Portuguese, Polish, indigenous people, African-Americans, and other New Englanders whose culinary contributions were erased from this version of New England food. 

Complete with historic and contemporary recipes, The Truth about Baked Beans delves into the surprising history of this curious cuisine, explaining why and how “New England food” actually came to be.

Book Club Reads: Dream When You're Feeling Blue by Elizabeth Berg and The Bear by Andrew Krivak

The local library book clubs are meeting using Zoom during the pandemic. Turnout is greatly reduced, from 12-14 members to five.

Our August read with the Clawson library book club was Elizabeth Berg's Dream When You're Feeling Blue, historical fiction about the home front during WWII.

My husband said it reminded him of Little Women, Louise May Alcott's novel about the March sisters during the Civil War.

Three sisters from a large Catholic Irish Boston family are at the heart of the story. The men they love go to war.

Berg embellishes the novel with details of the girl's lives, bringing alive the deprivations and challenges of the home front. One sister takes work at a factory to earn more money where the women are subjected to harassment. Their patriotic duty extends to writing letters to a dozen or more soldiers and attending dances so the soldiers have happy memories before they are shipped abroad. Tough work, dancing the night away. But it is, since these girls spent all day on their feet working!

Berg's story includes a 'dear John' letter and losing a fiance, an underage boy trying to enlist, and a child who makes a bargain with God to protect the boys.

The readers found this to be a light, quick, enjoyable read. All were confused by the added final section set in near the end of the character's lives.

from Berg's website

What's it About?The time is 1943; the place is Chicago, Illinois. Three Irish-Catholic sisters, the Heaney girls, spend part of every evening sitting at the kitchen table in their pincurls, writing to their boyfriends and to other men fighting in World War 2. Observing the daily life of these girls as well as their parents and three brothers, we get a glimpse of what life was like on the homefront; in the letters the women receive from the men, we get an idea of it was like "over there." This novel is an evocation of a time gone by, a purposefully nostalgic and sentimental — and fun!-- look at the forties: the clothes, the music, the language, the meals, the sentiments. It is a dramatic example of how a certain period in time can shape a person. Most of all, it demonstrates how much we are willing to give in the name of love.

What was the inspiration?There are a lot of books written about World War 2, but not so many about the home front. I'm always interested in the details of ordinary life, and particularly the lives of women leading those ordinary lives. I wanted to write about the women who did so much to support the soldiers. I wanted to write about rationing and USO dances and drawing seams on the back of your legs with eyebrow pencil because silk stockings were no longer available. A bigger reason for writing this book, though, was to pay tribute to a generation of people who are slowly leaving us. There is so much to learn from and admire about them. On a more personal note, this is one I wanted to "give" to my Dad. You can see a photo of him and my Mom in the front of the book. My Dad's wearing his Army uniform; my Mom’s wearing the yellow dress she was married in.

When I heard that another local library book club was reading The Bear by Andrew Krivak, which I reviewed earlier this year, I signed up to be included.

Two of my Clawson book clubbers are also members of the Royal Oak Library book club. While they were tepid about Berg's novel, everyone raved about The Bear. They found it moving, profound, and deep.

 One reader said she read it in one sitting. Beautiful nature writing was a plus. We discussed the magical realism in the second half when the bear helps the girl survive after her father's death. Although it ends with the death of the last human, it was not found to be a sad book.

from the publisher

In an Edenic future, a girl and her father live close to the land in the shadow of a lone mountain. They possess a few remnants of civilization: some books, a pane of glass, a set of flint and steel, a comb. The father teaches the girl how to fish and hunt, the secrets of the seasons and the stars. He is preparing her for an adulthood in harmony with nature, for they are the last of humankind. But when the girl finds herself alone in an unknown landscape, it is a bear that will lead her back home through a vast wilderness that offers the greatest lessons of all, if she can only learn to listen.

A cautionary tale of human fragility, of love and loss, The Bear is a stunning tribute to the beauty of nature’s dominion.

What was the inspiration for The Bear

What if, in the twilight of human experience, one were to see that what we lay claim to and cling to as quintessentially human is actually quite limited compared to a wider, more transcendental experience of Nature itself? What if, in fact, an entire world of activity — an entire story, if you will — has always been present in Nature, but we (most of us, at least) have not been attuned to it? What if human consciousness has crowded out the understanding of an entire natural consciousness waiting, in all of its ancientness, to return not to a past but to a present wherein it lives out its own struggle of beginning, middle, and end? And if so, would the last human actors, by virtue of their aloneness, be initiated into this mystery, not a loss to be mourned but a passing to be revered? What would that story be like, and who or what would tell it? I pulled in my line, rowed to shore, and went up to the house where I sat down and wrote the first line of the novel that would become The Bear: “The last two were a girl and her father who lived along the old eastern range on the side of a mountain they called the mountain that stands alone.” 

read more at https://www.powells.com/post/original-essays/if-nature-told-the-story-andrew-krivak-on-writing-the-bear

It was decided that even during a pandemic and contentious election, we did not want escapism, but books that made us think.

What are other book clubs doing during Covid-19? Are you looking for books with depth, or summer beach reads? Books that affirm, escapism, thrillers, romance, or literary fiction that offers something to 'sink your teeth into'?