by Alicia Rudnicki, Library Mix

The Spider's Web, by Margaret Coel
Penguin Group (USA), 2010,
ISBN 978-0-425-23660-4

Coel is the author of two series, my favorite being her Wind River mysteries, which involve a Jesuit priest, Father John O’Malley, and Vicky Holden, a lawyer who specializes in representing cases involving her Arapaho tribe. Most of the stories take place in the Arapaho and Shoshone Wind River Reservation of Wyoming.

In Coel’s novels, you can taste the dust or frost in the air and feel the dry grass and hard-packed earth underfoot. Her skills at setting, characterization, plotting and interpreting culture are powerful. The Spider’s Web focuses on the puzzling death of a young man as he prepares for the rigors of a sacred celebration.

by Alicia Rudnicki, Library Mix

Faithful Place, by Tana French
Viking, 2010
ISBN 978-0-143-11949-4

French’s gritty, working-class Dublin doesn’t seem all that far away from the mean streets of blue-collar Boston in Dennis LeHane’s mysteries. It is no surprise that French chose  LeHane's Mystic River as one of her top 10 favorite mysteries in an article for the Guardian. Similar to so many of LeHane’s stories, French’s tales are driven by dark, long-buried secrets of friends and family.

So far, French has published three novels, all interconnected through related characters, but not really a series. Each is haunting in its own way. In Faithful Place, a detective learns that although you can go home, it may be more like a visit to Hell than to a safe harbor.

by Alicia Rudnicki, Library Mix

Broken, A Mystery, by Karin Fossum, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010,
ISBN 0-547-52036-0


 A line of sad-looking people lingers in the driveway of an author’s house at all hours. “There are so many of them, they are hard to count,” she reflects while preparing for bed.

After midnight, the stairs creak. One of the strangers has entered her bedroom and her life uninvited. Similar to all the others in the queue, he isn’t real. He is an unnamed man who lives in the limbo of her imagination — an unformed character who demands that she create a story for him to inhabit.

Meek, mild, and murderous
So begins Karin Fossum’s Broken, an unusual and thought-provoking mystery. Although the author character remains unnamed throughout the novel, she gives her meek anti-hero a name, Alvar Eide, and a life as a quiet art gallery salesman who can’t say no and is forever changed by the demands of a drug- addicted acquaintance.

Although it is subtitled “A Mystery,” Fossum lets readers in on whodunit without subterfuge. There is no puzzling over clues; we know what happened and why. But the book presents other riddles. For me, Broken is ultimately about the mysteries of how a novel evolves, why the author creates it, and how the characters affect both novelist and readers.

As Eide’s story grows, so does concern for him. The sleeplessness of the nameless author telegraphs her worry. Readers may find themselves troubling over her stress as well as Eide’s emotionally sterile life that proves to be fertile ground for bad decisions.

Eide reminds me of a butterfly, which can never fly properly if it doesn’t have enough room to completely stretch out its wings upon emerging from its cocoon. His childhood has made it nearly impossible for him to form the family and friendships necessary to enjoy and navigate social interaction.

Characters who come to life
It is difficult not to believe in Eide’s existence; he seems so real. Some readers might even visualize themselves grabbing his shoulders and facing Eide for a heart-to-heart bit of advice. But it is a wasted fantasy. The fictional author who is creating him lets Eide be whom he is, someone who recoils from touch and involvement let alone bravery.

I was reminded of this transference of feelings — real-life worry for a fictitious person — long after I finished Broken, said goodbye to Eide and let him disappear into the queue of characters that may linger on or fall into potholes along the driveway of my memory.

But sometimes characters step out of line and remain with me, demanding my fascination and concern. It’s difficult to say goodbye to them. Such is the case not only with Eide but also with the mysterious, unnamed author who creates his story. I wonder whether she ever reappears in the queue of characters in Karin Fossum’s imagination requesting an opportunity to tell a new story. I would like to hear from her again.

by Alicia Rudnicki, Library Mix

The Glass Castle: A Memoir, by Jeannette Walls, Scribner, 2005, ISBN0-7432-4753-1
Available at Powell's Books

Half Broke Horses: A True Life Novel, by Jeannette Walls, Scribner, 2009, ISBN 978-1-4165-8628-9
Available at Powell's Books

Jeanette Walls is the kind of author who makes it difficult to go to sleep at night. It’s hard to turn off the light and set aside the stories about her hardscrabble, far-from-everyday family.

First came The Glass Castle in 2005, a memoir about her impoverished childhood that demonstrates how parents can be dangerously negligent yet brilliantly nurturing at the same time.

Nomadic family life
Extreme resilience and inventiveness helped Walls and her siblings survive their college-educated parents’ nomadic lifestyle and erratic attempts to earn a living. Hunger, lack of indoor heating and running water, dirty clothing and homelessness were regular problems.

Walls has said it took her 20 years to work up the courage to share the story of her childhood, because she feared that friends and journalism colleagues would ostracize the girl who grew up with a garbage pit in her Appalachian backyard.

But The Glass Castle has been a runaway success with staying power on many bestseller lists, including a steady spot on USA Today’s Top-150 list since October 2009.

Readers told Walls that they were particularly fascinated and puzzled by her mother, Rose Mary Walls, who so wanted to be an artist that she wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning to go to work even if there was no food in the house.

Half Broke Horses
So Walls dug deeper into family memories, trying to write a book about her unconventional mother, with whom she has a loving, supportive relationship despite childhood difficulties. She struggled. So Rose Mary suggested writing instead about her mother, the raucous, resourceful westerner, Lily Casey Smith.

A rip-snorting ride of a memoir was born in 2009 and titled Half Broke Horses, A True Life Novel. The book isn't classified as non-fiction, because Walls told Lily’s story in first person and had to draw most of the information from family stories instead of interviews with her grandmother.

Lily died when the author was 8 years old. But in a Barnes and Noble interview, Walls says, “Lily was one of those people who, once you met her, she was seared on your brain…. Everything about Lily was loud: her voice, her clothes, her piano playing. She cussed like a sailor, danced so as to shake the rafters, and was always pulling out her gun or pulling out her false teeth.”

Southwestern adventures
Half Broke Horses begins with Lily’s youthful adventures in the Southwest, ranging from rescuing siblings during a flash flood to journeying through the desert alone on horseback for a month on the way to her first teaching job. It ends as she and her rancher husband ride out the Great Depression through creativity, severe frugality and a pre-dawn-to-dark schedule of hard work.

Along the way, Lily and Big Jim raise two rambunctious children who perfectly fit the old cowboy lyric of  “Don’t fence me in.”

By chance, I read Half Broke Horses before venturing into The Glass Castle. So Grandma Lily’s story informed my outlook on Walls’ scary yet exhilarating childhood. It also cast light on why, unlike Lily, Rose Mary — whose learning disabilities are apparent in Half Broke Horses — dealt poorly with the boundaries of work life as a teacher. It was a profession she was forced into by her pragmatic mother.

But Rosemary was a Bohemian from the get-go and nothing got in her way, especially once she met Rex Walls, an air force pilot, whose drinking and daring behavior covered up the secrets of his crippling, Appalachian childhood.

Surviving the Skedaddle
Extreme flexibility was necessary for the Walls family to survive what the bright but alcoholic Rex referred to as the “skedaddle” — abandoning one tiny town for another whenever bills or other problems piled up.

Despite deprivation, the Walls children experienced an abundance of rich experiences along the way.  When he was sober, Rex tutored them in geology, physics and inventiveness. Rose Mary taught them to view all difficulties as an “incredibly fun adventure.” She fed their imagination with piles of books from the public library. Sometimes the whole family would lounge around reading.

The Walls children inherited their parents’ ability to dream that they might someday earn a living doing something they enjoyed.

Except for the youngest, most fragile one, they also inherited the steel spine and practicality of Grandma Lily, memories of whom no doubt inspired them as teenagers when they ran like the dickens away from the poverty and mean circumstances of their childhood.

by Alicia Rudnicki, Library Mix

Children of the Waters, by Carleen Brice, One World Books, Random House, 2009,
ISBN 0-345-49907-7
Available at Powell's Books

Who are we? This review is part of a continuing focus on the issues of identity—such as struggling to fit in, having a sense of place, and practicing tolerance.

Mixed roots
When Barack Obama began his campaign for the U.S. presidency, it increased the discussion about what it means to be born into more than one culture in America. Now the topic of multi-racial heritage is no longer a tributary in the national discussion; it has rushed into the mainstream of American thought.

An example of this change is the third annual Mixed Roots Film and Literary Festival to be held June 12 to 13 in Los Angeles. It will feature writers, filmmakers, and performers who festival organizers say are “dedicated to sharing and nurturing storytelling of the Mixed experience.”

One of the authors scheduled in the festival is Colorado’s Carleen Brice, whose first novel, Orange Mint and Honey was transformed into the successful made-for-television movie “Sins of the Mother.” Her second novel, Children of the Waters concerns issues facing mixed-race families.

Brice specializes in stories that sizzle, sear, and then provide a healing ending.

Mixed marriage
In Children of the Waters, Brice focuses on two sisters—one white and the other biracial—who discover each other in adulthood. Their relationship starts out rocky, but ultimately leaves the reader feeling buoyant and hopeful for a better America.

Trish is a laid-back white woman in early middle age whose marriage to her black high school sweetheart has foundered. At the beginning of the story, she has returned home  with their son to Denver where none of the puzzling pieces of her life “seem to fit anymore.”

Priding herself on being racially color blind, Trish is blindsided when her son becomes the focus of racial profiling at the mall. The incident drives a wedge between mother and son.

This rift also makes Trish painfully aware of how alone she and her son are. The adults in her small extended family are long dead.

But Trish is accustomed to little comfort in her life, except for the dogs she brings home from her job as a vet tech. The grandparents who raised her were never particularly kind or demonstrative. And the adoring but drug addled mother, who abandoned her to their harsh care in early childhood, died in a car crash that also killed her only sibling. Or so Trish thinks.

Mixed adoption, mixed emotions
Trish’s soon-to-be-discovered sister, Billie, is an African-American earth mother who works hard at eating right and staying peaceful. A placid existence is the key to staying healthy and avoiding a flare-up of lupus, her dangerous chronic illness.

Billie is also concerned about the health of the planet and refuses to grow a lawn, because she deems it a poor ecological choice. She chooses instead to create a Zen-like yard of hard-packed swept dirt.

“She remembered hearing about how ancestors from West Africa had swept yards in Georgia, where the soil was clay, as it often is in Denver. Nothing appealed more to Billie than picking up a dying tradition of her ancestors.”

Almost nothing appeals less to Billie than ambition. She prefers teaching preschool to following in the footsteps of her financially successful parents and brother. Plus, her parents disapprove of her musician boyfriend, whose day job involves mowing lawns.

A flash flood of difficulties soon disturbs what Billie had viewed as the solid clay of her life. First, she accidentally becomes pregnant—a high-risk situation for someone with lupus— and discovers that her boyfriend is unsupportive. Then she meets Trish and learns what appeals to her least of all. Her parents never told her that she was adopted or that her birth mother was white.

Who are we?
Meanwhile, as Billie rejects Trish’s tentative reunion, Trish’s son begins to reject her as well. Then as Billie begins to grudgingly include Trish and Will in her life, Trish starts becoming uncertain about who she and her son are.

“With Will, [Trish] rarely thought of him as biracial. He was just her son. But around Billie, her white skin felt like a Klansman’s robe.”

Brice is the kind of author whose work is made for discussion. Children of the Waters makes one consider the true nature of race. Is it defined by the color of your skin or the culture in which you are raised? Brice causes us to think about who we are, what America is, and why we need our individual cultural heritage as much as we need our commonalities.

Similar to Matt de la Peña’s young adult novel Mexican Whiteboy, Brice’s book also makes us explore the dangers of hiding family history from children.

As part of Random House’s “Reader’s Circle” program, Children of the Waters contains an insightful interview with the author as well as a useful set of questions for classes and book clubs to consider. It is an ideal book for use in high school literature and social studies classes much the same as Mexican Whiteboy and the memoirs I’m Down by Mishna Wolff and Not a Genuine Black Man by Brian Copeland.

One of the great values of reading—whether fiction or nonfiction—is that it helps us to understand others and ourselves. One of the great values of public libraries is that they are good places to find all these books and to find ourselves.

by Alicia Rudnicki, Library Mix

Unafraid of the Dark, by Rosemary L. Bray, Anchor Books, 1999,
ISBN 0-385-49475-0
Available at Powell's Books

Sometimes you stumble over something important at the library, because you weren't looking for it to begin with. That is what happened when I read Unafraid of the Dark, A Memoir by Rosemary L. Bray, a former editor of the New York Times Book Review.

Bray's story illustrates the importance of public libraries in positively shaping lives and providing sanctuary for those who need respite from difficulties.

Extreme poverty and a violent, alcoholic father deviled Bray's childhood from the mid-1950s through the early 1970s.  Home was usually a place of fear for her, especially at night, when she would lie in the dark listening to her father berate and beat her mother.

Escaping home at the library
However, there were people and places that saved Bray. These included a clever, dedicated mother and the public library.

The author notes that she and her siblings would hurry up and work hard to complete household chores in order to escape home for a bit.

We all knew that when we finished doing what we had to do, we could cajole my mother into taking us to the library, with a trip to the playground afterward. The library was the part I was most interested in.

Once the house was clean, the next step in their library day ritual was for Bray's mother to make sure that all her children were clean and dressed in "decent clothes" for their walk through Hyde Park to Chicago's T.B. Blackstone Library.

But before they stepped out the door, Bray writes, Mama would  "go to the second drawer of the dresser that sat in our kitchen....In the drawer was the old black felt pocketbook....a repository for the really important records of our household." These included the family's library cards.

Libraries rescue us
It was the library that helped Bray to explore the rich worlds of fairytales, mythology, biology, and history. A lonely egghead of a child, she found her friends in fiction rather than on the playground.

This sad yet inspiring story about endurance and resilience is also a story about how libraries can help rescue us.

Reprinted from the Older Archives of Library Mix