Any Good Thing: Adult Contemporary Fiction Review & Giveaway

Congratulations to Danielle Hammelef who won an autographed copy of SNAKES AND STONES.

Any Good Thing is Joy Rancatore's debut novel and clearly she poured herself into writing and publishing her first adult book. From the cover design through to the acknowledgments at the end, Joy's passion for her characters and topic shine through. 

REVIEW

The book dramatically opens with 15-year-old Jack Calhoun's life permanently altered: a teenage drag race ends in death and disaster. From that point onward, Jack shoulders the guilt of four deaths--compounded later by two other deaths for which he takes responsibility. 

In the first chapter the reader meets Jack's girlfriend, Rachel Burns, her father Ben, and Jack's mother, Becky; the three people who are his trinity of support as Jack wrestles with demons from his past. 

Jack's father abandoned the family when Jack was young and Ben becomes a father figure to him. Quickly after the accidents, Jack descends into alcoholism; Ben helps him to get into a rehab. There, Jack confesses his motivation to get over his addiction: "I want to be better for my mom and the people who've stuck by me...despite all I've done." (p. 43)  

Although this refrain is repeated throughout the book, Jack's fatal flaw is that he believes the only way he can help the people he loves is to remove his poisonous influence from their lives. "No more would he sit by and watch people he loved get hurt by whatever curse had claimed him as its host. The final tendrils of the sun's red hair slunk before him as he headed west." (p. 90)

With this faulty conclusion guiding him, he joins the Marines and vows to make something of his life and become a source of pride to his mother. 

Jack's internal conversation shows that he sees himself as a failure, but at the same time the author portrays him as a successful carpenter and outstanding Marine who is consistently promoted. Even when he feels responsible for his best friend, Tray's, death in Iraq, Tray's mother forgives him, but he doesn't forgive himself. 

Jack feels hopeless when he returns home after taking a bullet in his right arm. His days as a Marine Scout Sniper are over and he refuses to get help. He enters into a bleak, near-suicidal time of roaming through North Carolina. His only help for the reoccurring PTSD anxiety is a stray, shaggy hound, Scout, who provides the companionship which Jack desperately needs.  

For me, the most powerful part of this book came in the last one hundred pages. An unexpected encounter with his father helps Jack begin his journey home, eventually leading to his emotional and spiritual healing. Rachel's unconditional love is poignantly portrayed. Jack's self-absorption (which is the lie behind "I'm too bad for even God to love me") is shown in the last few pages. Although Jack's coming to faith was predictable, it provides a satisfactory resolution to Christian readers.  

Although much of what the author loves is packed into 418 pages--southern food, the Marines, small southern towns, romance, and the peace of Christ--the constant point of view shift from omniscient narrator to one of the characters, was distracting. In the author's desire to include seventeen years of Jack's life, I had to frequently remind myself what his age was; many of his thought processes make him seem older than his stated age. 

Overall, I would recommend this book for the reader who loves fiction which carries a character through the dark spots of his life to Christian victory. 

GIVEAWAY

Please leave your name and email address if you interested in entering the giveaway for an autographed copy of Any Good Thing.  Giveaway ends on January 11. 

Carver: A Life in Poems

Every once awhile I come across a book that I can't bear to give away. I'm sorry friends, but Carver by Marilyn Nelson, (Boyds Mills Press, 2001) is a book that is staying on my shelf. 

Like me, many of you probably know some of the basics about George Washington Carver's life. You may know he was born a slave in Missouri about 1864, started the agricultural department at Tuskegee Institute, and developed new uses for peanuts, cowpeas, and sweet potatoes in his desire to help poor farmers combat poverty.

Tuskegee Institute, 1916
 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=685224

But what you probably don't know is that besides being a scientist, inventor, and botanist; he loved to sew, paint, play piano, and read his Bible. Although he never married or had children, for 47 years at Tuskegee he taught multitudes of students, personally corresponded with countless farmers who sought his help, and left a legacy of information and inspiration.  

http://www.icr.org/article/science-man-god-george-washington-carver/

Award winning author Marilyn Nelson, tells Carver's story through beautiful poetry. Sometimes the poems are from Carver's point of view and his emotions and thoughts are so well portrayed that you feel as if you are inside his skin. Other poems are written from the point of view of people who interacted with him. All of them weave together well-researched details and build a narrative of Carver's life. 

Here are a few of my favorites, but please note that I had difficulty formatting the second, third and fourth poems and had to skip lines. There are no line spaces in the original. 

The Last Rose of Summer

The paper shakes so
the words are hard to read,
but what good is a singing range
from high D to three octaves below,
what good the bold step to a larger canvas
for the yucca on the easel now,
what good piano lessons paid for
with paintings, what good
a rosebud boutonniere if Jim 

        your brother  

            smallpox    (p. 24)

***************

Four a.m. in the Woods

Darkness softens, a thin

tissue of mist between trees. 

One by one the day's 

uncountable voices come out 

like twilight fireflies, like stars. 

The perceiving self sits 

with his back against bought bark, 

casting ten thousand questions into the future. 

As shadows take shape, the curtains part 

for the length of time it takes to grasp, 

and behold, the purpose of his 

life dawns on him. (p.25)

***********

Ruellia Noctiflora 

A colored man came running at me out of the woods 

last Sunday morning. 

The junior choir was going to be singing 

at Primitive Baptist over in Notasulga, 

and we were meeting early to practice. 

I remember wishing I was barefoot 

in the heavy, cool-looking dew. 

And suddenly this tall, rawbone wild man 

come puffing out of the woods, shouting 

Come see! Come see! 

Seemed like my mary janes just stuck 

to the gravel. Girl, my heart 

like to abandon ship! 

Then I saw by the long tin cylinder 

slung over his shoulder on a leather strap 

and his hoboish tweed jacket 

and the flower in his lapel 

that it was the Professor. 

He said, gesturing, 

his tan eyes a blazing, 

that last night, 

walking in the full moon light, 

he'd stumbled on  

a very rare specimen:

Ruellia noctiflora, 

the night-blooming wild petunia. 

Said he suddenly sensed a fragrance 

and a small white glistening. 

It was clearly a petunia: 

The yellow future beckoned 

from the lip of each tubular flower, 

a blaring star of frilly, tongue-like petals. 

He'd never seen this species before. 

As he tried to place it, 

its flowers gaped wider, 

catching the moonlight, 

suffusing the night with its scent. 

All night he watched it 

promise silent ecstasy to moths. 

If we hurried, I could see it 

before it closed to contemplate 

becoming seed. 

Hand in hand, we entered 

the light-spattered morning-dark woods. 

Where he pointed was only a white flower 

until I saw him seeing it. (p. 73-4)

********* 

My Beloved Friend 

Letter to Jim Hardwick, April 1924 

Your letter touched me deeply. How I wish 

I was more worthy of the things you say 

about me. I love you more dearly because 

you are of another race. God is using you 

to teach the world the brotherhood of man, 

the fatherhood of God. How sweet it is 

to let God purge our souls of ego and 

bitterness, and to have a little taste 

of heaven here on earth. I trust you will pray 

for me, that I get rid of my littleness. 

I did not have to learn to love you: You 

were chosen for me. I knew that the first 

time I saw you. It was the Christ in you, 

of course. (p. 86)

I read this book because I thought Carver could be an inspiration for Lillie, my African American character in Half-Truths. What I didn't expect, is how much Nelson's poetry and Carver's life would inspire me. 

River Music: A Review, An Interview, And a Giveaway!

Congratulations to Connie Saunders who won Liesl's Ocean Rescue in last week's giveaway. For those who didn't win, you have three more chances to win books this year, for yourself or as a holiday gift for a special young reader in your life. I'm happy to share these books with my fellow bibliophiles!

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Aptly titled River Music, this novella meanders through the lives of thirteen individuals connecting one life story with another. Set in the North Carolina mountains following the Civil War, each short chapter is written from the perspective of a different character; a well-executed feat by author Leigh Sauerwein.

The characters are diverse and deeply portrayed: white, black, Creole, and Native American; young and old; rich and destitute; slaves, soldiers, and storytellers. But they are tied together by a young girl's desire to know the truth about her self: a story that is bigger than any one of them. 

Sauerwein's use of imagery feels like poetry. In one passage Rainy, the young protagonist, is considering Will, the man who took her in as an infant. She thinks, 

…as he talks on about the comet, she hears the dark river more clearly than ever behind Will's soft, slow voice. She longs to ask him for something that he cannot define. If he answered her, if he answered her truly, she thinks it would feel like seeing the comet. Or a shining star. Tell me a true thing, she longs today. Tell me a true thing about me. tell me what you are hiding. 

Will talks on and on, soothing her. She feels his kindness flowing around her, but something else at the same time, something that leaves her frightened. Like a little animal who fears the plunging owl. Like what Will had showed her once in winter, the light traces in the snow of a predator's wingtips and the tracks of a leaping mouse. p. 83

********* 

I was intrigued with the how Ms. Sauerwein came to write the story and she graciously answered some questions about the work. 

Carol:  What was your inspiration for this story? Did your life experiences influence its' creation?

Leigh: I don’t think I could pin down just one source of inspiration. I have always been interested in history, whether it be 12th century France in my novel Song for Eloise or the South during and after the Civil War in River Music. I was interested in Reconstruction; after the fighting was over, when things were unsettled, both violent and somewhat vague, and before the rigid Jim Crow laws came into being. These are the troubled times I explored in order to write “River Music”. [A writer] is like being a hunter, a seeker, a kind of pilgrim. But you don’t always know what you are looking for until you find it. (Or it finds you.)

The writer cannot escape being influenced by the events of his/her life.  But the impulse to write comes only from within. I was born in North Carolina, my mother was from Georgia, I grew up in Europe, lived for many years in France, and now in Berlin. So these are things that got into me. Had I grown up in India and were now living in southern Spain, that would have gotten in to me. But you don’t really write out of your life experiences, the act of writing, the desire to write, comes from a deeper level and the experiences are part of the process, but not the essential part. You’re not a writer because you’ve had all these experiences. You’re a writer because you have this mysterious desire to write, tell a story, make music with words...

Carol: Why did you decide to write it in snippets from several characters points of view?

Leigh: I wanted to try and get as close as I could, not just to the characters but to those times, to the landscapes, to give a sense of place, a sense of being within that time. Whether up in the North Carolina mountains or in parts of New Orleans, or out west. I could say that I wanted to make a kind of music, a weaving of the different places and voices. Or, if you like, a series of impressions, moments, which, taken together, would paint a whole picture. 

Carol: I loved the "List of Things" at the end where you listed important objects in the story. Why did you include it?

Leigh: Thank you for saying this, it makes me very  happy. “A List of Things” was very important to me. It gives the reader a way of re-experiencing the story through the objects that appear in it. It also grounds the story, because almost all the objects are real things that I found in my research. And when I would suddenly make a find, I would know: yes, this needs to be part of the story. So when I began getting to the end, I wanted to pay homage to the objects that had found their way into the story. They were such an important part of the voyage, they were like friends who had helped me find my way forward. 

It was also something of a musical idea, a gathering together of objects like notes, pulling them out of the story a bit like archeological findings. I also had to choose because had the list been longer, it would have become tedious. (I know because I tried.) It had to be just the right length. An ending that carries you back into the river...

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Thank you Leigh, for your insights into your book and to namelos for providing a copy to give away! 

If you want to enter, please leave a comment by December 5. Share it on Facebook or the social media of your choice and I'll enter your name twice. 

Necessary Lies- A Review and a Giveaway!

Congratulations to Vida Zuljevic who won the good braider audio recording in last week's giveaway.

I met Diane Chamberlain at WNBA's Bibliofeast in 2013 and purchased her book, Necessary Lies, despite telling myself that I had enough books and wasn't going to buy one more! But when I saw it was set in North Carolina and written from two points of view--I couldn't resist. Another fortunate blog reader will be glad I did. When I confessed to Diane via Facebook that I couldn't part with my autographed copy, she indicated that her publicist would probably donate a copy as a giveaway. Thanks to Katie Bassel of St. Martin's Press, one of you will receive a free copy. Directions for entering this contest follow my review of this thought-provoking adult historical novel.

Necessary Lies documents an important story: the Eugenics Sterilization Program that sterilized over 7000 North Carolinians between 1929-1975. Set in the sixties, Diane Chamberlain does an excellent job portraying the internal and external conflicts her two protagonists face.

Jane Forrester is a 22-year-old idealistic newlywed who is eager to help people in her new job as a social worker. Her life is irrevocably changed when she meets her client Ivy Hart, a poor 15-year-old who is struggling to hold her family together. Ivy's father is dead, her mother is institutionalized; her grandmother (Nonnie) is ailing and doesn't take her diabetes medication; her 17-year-old sister (Mary Ella) is beautiful but feeble-minded; and her two-year-old nephew (William) is often neglected and shows signs of slow development.

The reality of Ivy's world shocks Jane on her first visit to the Hart's home; a shack on the tobacco farm where the girls are day laborers.  In this conversation with Charlotte, the caseworker whose caseload she will be assuming, Jane begins to assess the situation and Chamberlain foreshadows the problems she will encounter:

    "Mary Ella was kicked out of school when she became pregnant at fourteen," Charlotte said. "Once they're pregnant, that's the end of their education."
    "Fourteen!" I said.
    "Fifteen when she delivered."
    "Who's the baby's father?" I asked.
    Charlotte hesitated. "I doubt even Mary Ella knows," she said. "I have my suspicions but that's all they are. Mary Ella's blond as blond can be, but the baby's got very dark, very curly hair. His skin is fair enough, enough. He'll be able to pass."
     "Oh," I said, taking that in.
     "Don't put anything like that in your notes," she warned. "The last thing that girl needs is for people to think she's had relations with a colored boy, and a lynch mob would find out which one it was, you better believe it. Or they'd make a guess, which could be even worse. I didn't even mention my suspicions to the Eugenics Board."
    "The Eugenics Board? For her, too? Are they going to sterilize her?"
     "They already have," she said. "She's feeble-minded. IQ of seventy. But she doesn't know about the sterilization. Her grandmother and I agreed it was best to tell her she was having her appendix out."
     My mouth dropped open and Charlotte glanced over a me. "Sometimes you have to come up with creative ways of helping people, Jane," she said.
     "But it's so...dishonest," I said.
      "It's actually a kindness. You'll realize that soon enough. She can only understand so much, and she absolutely can't handle another child. She's out of control and I worry Ivy's starting to follow in her footsteps. Mary Ella's very pretty and Ivy's a little plainer and she's a big girl. Not overweight, but not lithe, like her sister."
    I instantly related to Ivy. I knew what it was like to be the "plainer" sister.
    "Ivy's still in school," Charlotte said, "and my goal--now your goal--will be to keep her there till she finishes. The main thing is to prevent her from having a baby of her own because that'll put an end to her education."
    "Is Ivy...feebleminded, too?" I asked. I'd rarely used that word.
     "Her IQ's about eighty," Charlotte said. "Low, but not feebleminded, which is a shame because it would make it easier to petition the Eugenics Board on her behalf." (p. 65-6)

Meanwhile, Ivy's world revolves around Henry Allen, the tobacco farmer's son. When they secretly rendezvous at night, they listen to the radio and look at books about California. Again, the reader sees life through Ivy's eyes and what's in store for her:

     We went through all the pages. There was trees as big around as the tobacco barns and foggy cliffs called Big Sur and rocks in the ocean covered with seals and big black birds. There was actual palm trees. How could one place have so many different beautiful parts to it? I felt that ache in my chest again as he turned the pages. I wanted to step inside the book and live that beautiful life. Henry Allen said everybody in California was rich and had swimming pools in their own yards. I wished California was right next door to Grace County and I could walk over there tomorrow.
    "Which place you want to live?" Henry Allen asked.
    "Any of 'em."
    "No, get serious. Let's pick our top place from these here pictures."
    "Someplace by the water."
    He turned the pages and I stopped him. "There, I said, pointing to a pretty little tree standing all alone, way out on a cliff above the ocean. "This place."
    "Monterey," he said. "Okay, then. That's our destination. Monterey, California."
    "What about you, though? Which place do you want to live at?"
    "Wherever you are," he said.
     My throat got tight. "What if I'm here, Henry Allen? What if I can't never leave?" Me and Henry Allen used to say we'd run off after we finished school, which meant three more years for me and two for him, but I couldn't see how I'd ever be able to leave Mary Ella or Nonnie or Baby William. Everything would fall to pieces without me. I felt sad all of a sudden. All me and Henry Allen had was the dream. So we didn't talk about the when no more. Just the where.
.........
    All day long, I worried about other people. Was Nonnie going to have to start getting shots for her sugar? Was Baby William ever going to say more words than "mama" or would he be one of them dumb goys other kids picked on? Would Mary Ella get herself in trouble again? Worry worry worry. But when I was with Henry Allen like I was right now, him slipping my nightgown over my head and pressing his body into mine, so gentle and sweet, I could forget about everything except him and me and our dreams about the future. (p. 31-32, 33)
   
Jane works hard at gaining Ivy's trust, but their tenuous relationship explodes when the Department of Public Welfare presses Jane into submitting a petition for Ivy's sterilization. When
Jane defies her employer's orders and bring Ivy into her own home, Ivy discovers Jane's secrets--thus changing Ivy's life too:

    "Yes." It was her turn  to put down a card, but she just stared at the cards in her hand like she wasn't really seeing them. She looked up at me. "I lost both my father and my sister," she said. "Just like you."
    I couldn't believe it. I thought of her as a lady with a perfect life, especially now that I seen her house.   I felt like anybody could look at me and know I lost too much. I never would of guessed she had, too....
    ......
    "I looked at the picture another minute. Mrs. Forrester and her sister was both smiling. Both of them happy girls. Maybe happier than me and Mary Ella ever was. "You and me," I said, "we both go the same kind of hurt inside us."
    She nodded, and suddenly, just like that, I knew I could trust her with my life. (p.290, 292)

Since I am writing historical fiction set in North Carolina in 1950, I was interested in how Chamberlain used vernacular to give her characters voice and make them true to the time period and setting. I work at understanding my character's core values and knowing what makes them tick. Ivy and Jane's core values ring clear throughout the book: people should be free to make choices that will effect them and their futures.

There is much that one can say about this outstanding novel. But if you are a writer and are familiar with Blake Snyder's beats from Save the Cat, you'll be impressed with the opening and final images. Like bookends, a third narrator, Brenna, brings the book full circle.  

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I could say more, but I don't want to include too many spoilers! Instead, here's your chance to win this book and read it yourself:

1. Leave me a comment. PLEASE leave your email address if you are new to this blog.
2. Become a follower to this blog and/or share the blog on your favorite social media site. Let me know what you do, and I'll add your name an additional time for each time you share it.
3. Enter by Friday night, June 6th.