“Box One Of Two”

Chico, 1984. Gorgeous Heather Fields, 22, works at Serenity Falls, “apartments for seniors who just want a community and an easier life.” One of those she cares for is the aging and quirky Violet Merryweather, who in the 1930s and beyond appeared as an extra in dozens of well-known films, like “Casablanca.” Only don’t call her “Violet.” The V is silent; she is “Iolet.” See? Quirky.

When Iolet dies, Heather, who has not been much out of Chico and has never seen the ocean, will find herself caught up in a bonkers murder mystery in Hollywood and will meet an incredibly handsome young man there, Vince DeLuca, 24, who works Hugh’s Auto Body, named after his now ailing father. Vince mowed Iolet’s lawn back when he was a teenager.

An attorney contacts Vince to say that Iolet has willed him a mysterious, taped-up box, labeled “Box Two of Two.” Guess who’s been willed the other one? “Box One Of Two” ($14.99 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle) is by Chicoan Pamela Dean, set in the same universe as her first novel, “And I Love Her Still,” but otherwise unrelated.

Heather and Vince tell the story in alternating chapters, with plenty of  good-natured f-bombs, and it’s clear from the start, when Heather flies to Southern California with Box One and first meets Vince, that hot sex will eventually break out. Dean keeps things smoldering throughout the novel’s first half. 

As the duo finds out more about Iolet’s time in New York and Hollywood, it’s clear that she’s convinced a certain someone murdered her beau, Albert, decades ago. The stuff inside the two boxes leads them to movie props, a cold-case agent, Frank Sinatra, a chicken foot’s meaning, a 1940 Buick, family revelations by both Heather and Vince--and to love.

Vince despairs that his dream of playing baseball for the majors is gone forever, the wound made worse by his pal Gio who went to Chico State and “got picked up by the Dodgers.” Heather realizes “there really isn’t anything for me in Chico” with her dysfunctional family.

But readers can be consoled that that is not the end of the story.

“A Place For Weakness: Preparing Yourself For Suffering”

Near as I can tell, Paradise High School student Mike Horton, born in 1964, found himself embracing the Christianity of the Protestant Reformation, which emphasizes God’s sovereignty. Many years later, as Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics, he taught at Westminster Seminary in California and has published or edited more than forty books. 

In 2006 he wrote a Bible study called “Too Good To Be True: Finding Hope In A World Of Hype.” It was not a theoretical treatise, but included deeply personal accounts of pain and grief, and so the publisher renamed it. “A Place For Weakness: Preparing Yourself For Suffering” ($22.99 in paperback from Zondervan; also for Amazon Kindle), by Michael S. Horton, is a thoughtful companion for the Christian church’s experience of Eastertide.

As Wikipedia puts it, “Traditionally lasting 40 days to commemorate the time the resurrected Jesus remained on earth before his Ascension, in some western churches Eastertide lasts 50 days to conclude on the day of Pentecost….” For Christians, Eastertide is a paradoxical celebration of the “already” and the “not yet.” The book is divided into two sections, exploring the “God of the cross” and the “God of the empty tomb.”

Horton warns against  a “theology of glory” which “presumes to ascend self-confidently to God by means of experience, rational speculation, and merit.” Instead, believers are called to a “theology of the cross” that “sees God only where God has revealed himself, particularly in the weakness and mercy of the suffering.” The proper theology, he writes, is really a “theology for losers.”

In pastoral ministry Horton has dealt often with suffering. He recounts the story of a pastor friend who took his own life, and, closer to home, his wife’s multiple miscarriages, subsequent difficult births (“premature triplets”) and “hormone-induced depression.” His aging father suffers a brain tumor which causes unimaginable anguish.

“We cannot climb up to God,” he writes, “but he has descended to us. This is the gospel in a nutshell, and it sustains us in suffering.” Bottom line: “It is death’s victory, not its reality, which is overcome in Christ’s resurrection.” 

One day all will be made whole. But not just yet.

“Self Less: Lessons Learned From A Life Devoted To Servant Leadership, In Five Acts”

“My best friend … was headed to Cal State Chico and wanted me to join him,” writes Len Jessup. “My dad, however, strongly advised me to think about getting a good civil service job like he had….” Not quite confident enough, Jessup first attended a community college near their home in Fort Jones. But eventually he graduated with an MBA from Chico State in 1985, and over the years an extraordinary series of leadership opportunities opened up for him.

He retired in 2024, having been “a two-time business school dean and a two-time university president…. On the other hand, in many ways, I’m still that quirky Italian squirt, the son of a fireman, the grandson of Italian immigrants, still unsure, still working on my confidence, continuing to want to learn and grow and to be in service to others.”

“Self Less: Lessons Learned From A Life Devoted To Servant Leadership, In Five Acts” ($24.99 in hardcover from Forbes Books; also for Amazon Kindle) asks readers to think of “self” as a verb. Over time “I was starting to ‘self less,’ to act less in my own self-interests and proactively do more for others.”

Pithy chapters chart not just Jessup’s many teamwork successes, but also the low points in his life, like the breakup of his first marriage. Yet becoming a single dad forced him to “self less.” 

The first act, “Origins,” is self-reflective, acknowledging family influence, especially from his father; “Beliefs,” is about forming a team which believes in the dream; “Adversity” deals with often subtle resistance to a project; “Impact” focuses on what can be done, not who gets credit; “Legacy” is about philanthropy, about a vision that will outlast an individual.

Jessup embodies his life purpose: “When I get to the end of my path, I want to be able to look back in that moment and know that I did everything I possibly could, to positively impact as many people as I possibly could, and that I never shied away from an opportunity to do so.” 

The young man lacking self-confidence became a wiser man who developed confidence in others.

“Beasts Of The Border”

The border wall between Arizona and Mexico rises thirty feet, with pillars sunk in concrete ten feet down. In 2023 the wall becomes a flashpoint for the fate of a migrant family fleeing Nicaragua, drug smugglers, Arizona ranchers, a jaguar named Solitario, and two biologists hoping to see a jag. 

“Beasts Of The Border” ($10 in paperback from Long Creek Dutch Publishing), by former Chico City Council member Scott Huber, is a page-turner that grows in intensity, deeply compassionate and horrifyingly violent. 

Solitario is moving north from southern Sonora, Mexico, in search of a mate. In Nicaragua, Pedro Lopez and his family must leave after he is threatened because his brother criticized the government. His wife had birthed three children and they had also taken on two young nephews. “Now at 24 years of age, winsome Concepción was mothering five children under the age of 10.”

Their harrowing attempt to reach the United States, thousands of miles away, including jumping on a freight train called “the beast,” brings terrible loss. 

The novel also tells of two Arizona ranchers on the border. Marvin Estep “truly believed that brown-skinned people were an inferior race.” Meredith Gregg, contrariwise, “spoke fluent Spanish and was empathetic to the plight of many of the border-crossers.” It is unclear what the new border wall will mean for those fleeing from the south.

For the biologists, Ripley West and Tony Ramirez, the wall would seem to make it very difficult for wildlife to move across borders in one of the richest habitats in North America. More specifically, the two set up a series of cameras in an effort to capture images of that rarest of species, the jaguar. When Marvin mistakes Tony for a migrant, and shoots his face with birdshot, it is unclear just who the beasts are.

Huber brings nuance to the story. Border Patrol agent Sergio Jiménez, one of the “good guys,” recognizes the need for a wall “to keep my country safe from drug traffickers and terrorists and smugglers. But I see way more needy people and families crossing than criminals.”

All the storylines merge at the end in a way shaken readers will not soon forget.

“A Catalog Of Burnt Objects”

Shana Youngdahl writes that “my hometown of Paradise, California, was obliterated in a matter of hours by the Camp Fire…. I wanted to honor my town. I also wanted to raise awareness about the realities of climate change.” Her new YA novel, told by Caprice (Cappi) Alexander, on the cusp of turning 18, does that, and more, in a story not just about a fire, but one of “family, community, and first love.”

“A Catalog Of Burnt Objects” ($19.99 in hardcover from Dial Books; also for Amazon Kindle) imagines Sierra, a kind of “twin town” to Paradise, “one whose disaster I witnessed from afar, and one whose disaster I lived through, navigating alongside my characters.” Youngdahl (shanayoungdahl.com) was in Maine at the time, and now lives with her family in Missouri where she teaches in the MFA in Writing Program at Lindenwood University.

Cappi and her family welcome back brother Beckett from a four-month stint in rehab. Beck is a kind of “agent of chaos” for Cappi. Yet she sees his loneliness: “Twenty-one, his own best friend unable to even blink a hello.” (Beck had escaped from a truck accident; Mason was on months-long life support at UC Davis Medical.)

Caprice knows loneliness, too; only her Gramps really understands her. He’s living alone, his wife in a care facility in town.

Caprice is working on coding an app to attract folks to Sierra. Her bestie, Alicia, is helping. Enter a young man named River, and Beck is not the only one to see the sparks. “Cappi’s full-on love-zombied, and she just met him,” says Alicia.

The chapters count down, 8 weeks before, 5 weeks before, four hours before. Smoke. Then the conflagration which comes midway in the story. In desperate efforts to escape, Cappi and Beck make a fateful life-and-death decision that haunts the novel. For Cappi, it’s all “if, then.” If, if, if something had been different.

Youngdahl’s description of the aftermath—with “cards” detailing burned remains from the various characters, like a Talking Heads LP, house plants or a piano—are searingly real. So much uncertainty in the days after. 

Can there be a better future? Can one imagine “maybe”?

“Katharine: Annals Of An Immigrant Family 1866-1964”

Chicoan Dave Schlichting traces the lives of his maternal great grandparents, Katharine Deininger and Gottlieb Hinderer, in a compelling narrative that is a model of historical retrieval. Replete with period photographs, genealogical charts, census documents, timelines, maps and meticulous references (with GPS locations), the research never overshadows the stories. 

“Katharine: Annals Of An Immigrant Family 1866-1964” ($25 in large-size paperback from Chico’s Memoir Books) has two parts. The first is dedicated to family beginnings in the “old country” (southwestern Germany), the passage to America aboard the steamer Havel, time in Michigan and Iowa, and their Minnesota arrival in 1898.

The historical account in Part I gives way to family stories in Part II, drawing on interviews with family over five years beginning in 2000. Presentation of the stories is not haphazard; various family units each receive a carefully researched chapter. 

Though readers may not know this family, the historical background throughout the book, giving context to how one group of families lived in bygone times, brings to life Katharine’s legacy. Katharine and Gottlieb were married in Iowa early in 1862 and had seven children. 

In a tribute to Katharine, Schlichting writes that she “found employment working as a domestic for the Hinderer family in Brend, Germany. She soon began a relationship with the Hinderer’s oldest son Gottlieb. In time, their relationship resulted in Katharine’s pregnancy. By itself, this was not uncommon. The norm for couples was to live with either of their parents, have children, and then formally marry once the young man was earning a sufficient income to support his young family.”

Katharine was no wallflower. “When action was required, she took the lead. She tolerated neither fools nor villains.” Through two World Wars and a Great Depression she and her family survived through “resilience” and hard work (especially on the Hinderers’ farm in Minnesota) and the “strength of character” she instilled.

They faced many challenges but there were also lighter moments; the book concludes with an Appendix of family recipes, including Katharine’s Wax Bean Pickles, Spaetzle, and Pfeffer Nuesse (Pepper Nut) Cookies.

The book is a window into the lives of “ordinary” people--who are far from ordinary.

“The Last Commando”

Retired Butte College administrator, West Point grad and retired Army officer Les Jauron writes his novels, he says, “to make people think.” The Chicoan’s latest, “The Last Commando” ($15.99 in paperback from Books.by, tinyurl.com/35f4xxer, also available in e-book format) is alternative history ripped from today’s headlines.

The time is close to the present in our own world. Populist U.S. President and land developer Ronald Richland (known as Ron Rich) yearns to be a dictator. Narcissistic and corrupt, the catch phrase that wins him election is “America Up, Government Down, Jesus In, and Illegals Out.”

Demonstrations rise around the country; Rich waits for an excuse to order martial law. He is easily manipulated in an extraordinary plot by a contingent of moneyed Nazis sequestered in a bunker, “established at the direction of Heinrich Himmler at the end of World War II,” located in Nueva Germania “in a remote part of rural Paraguay.”

It's about to happen: An audacious plot to strike violently at the heart of America and to mount a “false flag” operation to convince Americans that a resurgent leftist Antifa is to blame. With Ron Rich’s complicity, the Fourth Reich would be established.

Enter Chris Cadwalader, a Duke University history professor, and his fourth wife, Stephanie Lee, a novelist with a doctorate in Religion (though not very religious herself). During research in Israel, the two learn of the bunker’s existence. A man named Wolfgang Becker has declared himself the new Führer; his acolyte, someone calling himself Herr Adolph. An unsavory bunch with vast wealth enabling them to buy just about any weapon, or person.

Chris, Stephanie and a small group of friends recognize that the bunker must be infiltrated. So Chris and an associate, the gorgeous and gay Gabriella Stern, are chosen as faux husband and wife (with Stephanie’s consent) and supplied with comprehensive backstories.

As the frightful Nazi plan unreels, Jauron’s description of the machinations are chillingly real, a deadly combination of sex, religion, politics, money. An author’s note warns readers “how current technology can be used to manipulate public opinion”--and politicos. “Character matters,” he writes. Near the end, the unimaginable seems inevitable. Can America survive “modern technologies and self-serving politicians”?