"Long Story Short: American Literary Fiction"

Kathi ("Snookles") Hiatt writes me that she is a "CSUC retiree and editor of the POA's Nugget in Magalia." She's received Butte Literacy Council awards and the Jack London Award in 2019 while serving as the President of the North State Writers.

In her collection of short stories, some newly published, some the basis of Blue Room Theatre performances, the focus is on narrators making it through the miseries and screw-ups of life, many self-inflicted, including, as one character puts it, "my losing battle with underarm jello-jiggle that helped me decide on the piece of equipment designed to strengthen triceps." Of course, one must be careful not to get one's top caught in said equipment. Especially if one is not wearing a bra.

"Long Story Short: American Literary Fiction" ($12.95 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle) by Kathleen T. Hiatt, with sketches by Steve Ferchaud, offers a mélange of two dozen tasty morsels, including poetry, some poignant, some horrific, some laugh-out-loud funny, some O. Henry surprising. 

Hiatt carefully notes that "to protect reputations and not have to explain myself before a judge, there may be certain scenes, characters, names, and locations that have been exaggerated, changed, fictionalized, or just plain lied about."

Some of the stories take place in the "bygone era" of the 1950s and 60s, so Hiatt provides parenthetical notes for those not up on their ancient history. "Calling Ma Bell" mixes talkative teenagers with the household phone, a "bulky black device (color wasn't an option)" with "a rotary dial on the front with a handheld receiver holstered on top." Fun fact: When someone is on the phone, a stern dad stranded in a thunderstorm would only get a busy signal when calling home.

There's "Sex in the 60's" (there was?) and green M&Ms; "Potty Mouth" at a Catholic School; the horror of "Wireless Caller 666" (Stephen King creepy); "Two Whacks With A Wooden Spoon" (how young Luke lost his middle finger); and "Why Boys Need Mothers" (smug dad home with Lickers the cat and a whirlwind near-four-year-old son Andy).

So what about "The Power of Inappropriate Cleavage"? It is, as a columnist might write, a revelation.

"Reflections: 100 Hundred-Word Stories"

The Sacramento River drew Bob Madgic and his wife Diane to Shasta county after Madgic's career in public education. He published "The Sacramento: A Transcendent River," books on fly fishing, Half Dome, and the couple's rescue dog Ebby.

His Amherst College career began in 1956 and after his 60th reunion he decided to take up a classmate's challenge to write a memoir with each chapter clocking in at exactly 100 words. Come to think of it, why not exactly 100 chapters?

"Reflections: 100 Hundred-Word Stories" ($10 in paperback from River Bend Books, 6412 Clear View Drive, Anderson, CA 96007) is, as Madgic says in the preface, an opportunity to "dish out praise, admit errors, settle old scores, recast one's image, expose cultural idiosyncrasies, and perhaps, prompt a chuckle."

The author met the famous and infamous. "It was no privilege to greet scumbags Roy Cohn and Joe McCarthy. But to meet Eleanor Roosevelt was a rare honor…. She was the strongest voice of her time for the civil rights of Blacks and against the wartime internment of Japanese-Americans." He connected, if briefly, with Richard Nixon, Ted Kennedy, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. 

Donald Trump's visit to Redding gets thumbs down, as does most religion, as does camping in the Rocky Mountains with their kids Kirk, Doug, and Jen during a thunderstorm. "It's better to camp when it is sunny." Noted.

In the Sixties he attended Stanford and "helped park cars at Stanford home football games for $1 an hour and free admission." One Saturday, to his chagrin, a yellow Cadillac convertible pulled into the lot but then sped away, only to park illegally close to the entrance. As Madgic observes, "Long after the game ended, the owner and car were still there, waiting for service to come and inflate the Cadillac's four flat tires."

Back in 1958 a friend suggested Bob meet Diane, the new waitress at a local cafe. "I was in no hurry because I have always been quite discerning about women and didn't expect much in this case." Ahem. When she finally did wait on him Bob found her "Especially singular. I was smitten, and have remained so for all of my life."

"The Cruelty Of Swallows: A Novel Of Life, Loss And Love"

Former Butte County resident Nancy Weston, now living in Idaho, had a long career in professional management, including in the medical device field. Her new, meditative novel is set within the context of the burgeoning semiconductor chip industry in the late 1960s and beyond.

Narrator McKenzie Bell Jamison ("Kenzie"), who works first at Bell Labs and then Midland Semiconductor (later becoming a key player in a medical device company), has everything going for her. Especially after meeting Thomas ("Tommy") Brier, "a whiz at fiberglass fabrication"; the two move in together after his divorce.

"Neither of us were interested in church or religion," Kenzie tells us. "Neither of us were eager for children. He never went to college. In fact, he couldn’t read, hardly at all. He was highly intuitive. Very intelligent … His personal unspoken creed gave him his glorious demeanor, his patience and love of life and every living thing. I began my own spiritual journey."

With the rise of Silicon Valley, the two dream of building a business together, or working for George Lucas' Industrial Light And Magic, but it is not to be. Kenzie must face "The Cruelty Of Swallows" ($14.95 in paperback from Weston Writes; also for Amazon Kindle) when Tommy is taken from her in the midst of lovemaking. 

Subtitled "A Novel Of Life, Loss And Love," the story is a confessional about "flirting with self-destruction" as one of her therapists says.

Eventually, in San Juan Capistrano, Kenzie must come to terms with what anger can do to a person. The swallows have a lesson: "They say a pair can support two chicks. If a third egg is hatched, one egg will be ejected from the roost and smash to the ground. Nature favors its own fortitude. It is not kind. It is beautiful in its entirety, yet the breadth of life includes cold brutality and intolerance along with its symmetry, grace and diversity."

There is more loss as well among family and friends; in the end, Weston's story is about "embracing loss with the same openness as the love, seeing it as a gift, the most costly gift of all…."

"Hunting: A Cultural History"

"In California," write Jan E. Dizard and Mary Zeiss Stange, "there were 700,000 hunting licenses sold in 1970. Forty-nine years later, after the population had roughly doubled, only 225,000 licenses were purchased." Though women are now 10% of the country's hunters, overall interest is waning. While critics might welcome the news, the authors argue conservation-minded hunters could be allies even to modern-day environmentalists.

Stange, an authority on women and hunting, is Professor Emerita of Women's Studies and Religion at Skidmore College. Dizard, who now lives in Chico, is Charles Hamilton Houston Professor of American Culture Emeritus at Amherst College, and has written widely on race relations, environmentalism, and hunting ethics. 

Their book, "Hunting: A Cultural History" ($16.95 in paperback from The MIT Press; also for Amazon Kindle), part of the Essential Knowledge series, may well change your mind about the importance of hunting. 

From prehistoric times, Dizard and Stange note, "the killing of animals, especially large, warm-blooded ones, triggered a volatile mix of emotions that yielded normative practices that absolved the hunter of guilt or remorse"; there have always been "rich myth and lore" around hunting, "elements which persist, albeit in more secular garb, down to the present."

The authors acknowledge that "the fact that hunters, then and now, take pleasure in hunting and find satisfaction in a successful kill has been, and continues to be, the basis for a critique of hunters and hunting more generally." 

Sport hunting generates images today of wanton killing; but a century ago, being a "'sportsman/woman' then meant that you hunted by a code of rules that were meant to honor wild game and emphasized the thrill of a fair chase…" which meant "utilizing the kill—including where possible the hide/fur as well as the meat."

Today's environmental efforts have increased the animal population even as wildlands have faced encroachment by humans. "Living with wildlife sounds great," the authors write, "yet it's not a solution to goose-polluted parks and beaches, and it's not a solution to deer densities that exceed the capacity of the environment…."

The danger today? If hunting is increasingly confined to a small group of the affluent, wildlife management will be left to—exterminators.

"Cleopatra's Vendetta: A Stryker Thriller"

Grass Valley novelist Avanti Centrae (avanticentrae.com) is back with a world-spanning tale, full of ancient secrets, only now revealed, with deadly consequences. What is unfolded is nothing less than "Cleopatra's Vendetta" ($17.99 in paperback from Thunder Creek Press; also for Amazon Kindle and in audiobook format).

Subtitled "A Stryker Thriller," it's a reference to one Timothy Stryker, an officer in "the field arm of one of the Army's cutting-edge think tanks, the US Futures Command." Looking for brains more than brawn—intel became vital after 9/11—"the military created a special unit of recruits that previously wouldn't have made it through psych testing."

Stryker, extraordinary linguist, expert in disguises, and "brutally honest," lost his sister and mother when he was seven as his father murdered them. Jerónimo Guerrero Reyes—Rey—"held dual degrees in mechanical engineering and information technology" but his "sensitivity to smells and noise" is worsened by his PTSD. 

The team also includes Stryker's sister-in-law Samantha Coin—Sam—a compulsive gambler but empathetic, single with "trouble committing—to men or women…." She is in Bari, Italy on holiday with her sister, Angie, Stryker's wife, while Stryker is in Saudi Arabia investigating a tip that a high Saudi official will be assassinated. 

Angie is CEO of a biofuels company, CIA operative, and heavy drinker, trying to drown her sorrows after losing a child. She's brought their four-year-old daughter, Harper, to Italy, after Tim and Angie argue over her boozing.

Then, to Sam's horror, both Angie and Harper are kidnaped, and the team must race to find them. At the same time world leaders are being killed, and the US President and President-elect are also targeted. Tied up in it all is a shadowy group calling itself the Sons of Adam, still active after thousands of years when, earlier, members of the Sons of Adam helped lead to Cleopatra's demise.

But the Queen will exact her revenge, even if it has to wait until the present day, hiding her own intel on the group's secret, millennia-long propaganda effort that has changed the course of history. 

Through cliff-hangers and twisty turns, readers will be propelled to an explosive ending—both literally and psychologically.

"Contracting For Services In State And Local Government Agencies: Best Practices For Public Procurement, Third Edition"

Those rebuilding after wildfires need services, but how to choose providers? Homeowners may hire contractors based on word of mouth, friendship, the first name in a printed phone directory, simple availability, or a bidding process--but a brand new company with a super-low bid may not be the best pick.

The difficulty is compounded if you're a government agency in need of services or equipment and it's taxpayer money that's being spent. Such agencies need to develop a transparent and ethical system of evaluating bids and making fair choices.

Enter William Sims Curry, Principal Consultant of WSC Consulting in Chico, whose award-winning handbooks help agencies avoid acquisition pitfalls. His newest is "Contracting For Services In State And Local Government Agencies: Best Practices For Public Procurement, Third Edition" ($74.95 in hardcover from Routledge; also for Amazon Kindle).

Updated with new terminology and software procurement examples, the book focuses on 48 (18 more than in the previous edition) "best public procurement practices" gleaned from a 2021 survey of agencies and educational institutions around the country and analysis of the forms they require. 

Some practices are simple, like requiring contractors to use four-digit years, and some complex, like monitoring contractor progress. While Federal processes have "centralized codification," "state and local public procurement … has a dearth of national regulation" which has led to the development of "diverse procurement practices that range from enlightened to foolhardy."

Curry is a Certified Professional Contracts Manager and "was on the Board of Directors for the Industry Council for Small Business Development, a not-for-profit corporation established to assist small, small-disadvantaged, and women-owned small businesses." His chapters take the reader through competitive procurement, contract negotiations, "terms and conditions," and final review. Central is Curry's concern for ethical processes.

He offers the account of a novice "public procurement specialist" on his first job where "he was exposed to an outrageous offer from a prospective contractor on his first business trip," little perks that were a "blatant attempt to gain his loyalty." That made a big impact on the author. 

Bottom line: Those who curry favor by favoring Curry had better not.

"Sleeping With Strangers: An Airbnb Host's Life In Lake Tahoe And Mexico"

When journalist (and certified massage therapist) Kathryn Reed moved to Chico in 2021, the former publisher of the Lake Tahoe News had a tale to tell. Actually, quite a few tales. 

"Needing to find a way to pay the entire mortgage after ending a twelve-year relationship," she writes, "led me to become an Airbnb host," primarily at her home in South Lake Tahoe and two winters at her sister and brother-in-law's house in Todos Santos, Mexico.

Since Airbnb handles bookings and money, all the host has to do is invite guests in, put up with them for a few days, have scintillating conversations with them during their stay, and fatten up one's bank account. Easy, simple, and more fantasy than reality.

If you want reality, "Sleeping With Strangers: An Airbnb Host's Life In Lake Tahoe And Mexico" ($19.99 in paperback, self-published, also for Amazon Kindle; more information at kathrynreed.com) is a delightfully frank tale of tales (with guest names suitably changed).

These are not stories of sordid escapades but of quotidian life scrunched up in her guest bedroom in Tahoe (with her dog AJ) while guests took the main bedroom and used the common kitchen and hot tub. Reed uses her journalistic skills to report on herself and the struggle to accommodate strangers while staying within her heating and cleaning budgets. Some guests were creepy, some very kind, and some made certain noises in the bedroom just a wall away from the host, some were, uh, a bit frightened when a bear got into the garage. 

Central to Airbnb's operation is the review system. Hosts review guests, and guests review hosts. As a designated "superhost," Reed had a reputation (and house rules) to maintain, though it wasn't always easy adjusting. "Friends and family," she observes, "told me I was unreasonable to expect people to use one towel for a nine-day stay." OK, whatever: "Admittedly, I was a bit obsessed with wanting good reviews."

Reed's account is an eyes-now-wide-open guide to the pluses and minuses of Airbnb (and the money one makes) and why people who don't like dogs would book a place—with a dog.

The Camp Fire In Books

Journalists, poets, photographers, artists and ordinary citizens have chronicled the profound and lasting impact of the Camp Fire. Here are the books we've covered in the Biblio File, with excerpts from my reviews.

THE CAMP FIRE 2018: LIVING ON THE RIDGE by Paula Link

• "Link summarizes some of the harrowing accounts of escape found on YouTube and there are dozens of full-color photographs."

PARADISE: ONE TOWN'S STRUGGLE TO SURVIVE CAN AMERICAN WILDFIRE by Lizzie Johnson

• "Johnson's story, the fruit of 500 interviews, is unrivaled in its gripping emotional intensity, taking readers deeply into the lives of mostly working-class Ridge residents that fateful Thursday."

AFTER/ASHES: A CAMP FIRE ANTHOLOGY edited by John LaPine

• "As the editors write in a new anthology of prose, poetry, and images--a creative response to the Camp Fire--it took seventeen days to completely contain it."

THE CAMP FIRE: DREAMS, NIGHTMARES, HOPES by J.R. Henson

• "His escape on the day of the fire is more harrowing because his truck is low on gas. … He traces his emotional journey through poems and essays…."

I ESCAPED THE CALIFORNIA CAMP FIRE by Scott Peters and S.D. Brown

• "The story is a fictionalized account of the fire which draws on published reports."

FIRE IN PARADISE: AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY by Alastair Gee and Dani Anguiano

• "Together, drawing on hundreds of interviews, they tell the story of the Camp Fire with skill and even-handedness."

PEOPLE, PLACES & PIECES OF PARADISE by Douglas Keister

• "Keister has created stunning images that capture the soul of Paradise…."

PARADISE ISN'T LOST: EMBRACING RESILIENCE IN THE FACE OF LOSS by Kari Carter

• "There are losses, from family members to precious possessions, even her marriage. Yet she finds resilience."

MY NAME IS HALEY AND I LIVE IN PARADISE…" written and illustrated by Steve Ferchaud

• "Paradise memories in a children's book for all ages."

THE CALIFORNIA CAMP FIRE: REFLECTIONS AND REMNANTS by photographer Ron Schwager

• "… a masterpiece that will cause readers to pause and reflect with every turn of the page."

CALIFORNIA BURNING: THE FALL OF PACIFIC GAS AND ELECTRIC—AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR AMERICAN'S POWER GRID by Katherine Blunt

• "… a measured, and yet devastating, history of PG&E."

BURNT OFFERINGS by illustrator Steve Ferchaud

• "After the fire he decided to compile all 62 sketches into a book, the proceeds of which would go to helping Camp Fire survivors."

BURN SCAR: A CONTEMPORARY DISASTER THRILLER by T.J. Tao (Michael J. Orr)

• After the surviving the fire, the author offers a fictionalized version set in Idaho.

PARADISE FOUND: A HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL TEAM'S RISE FROM THE ASHES by Bill Plaschke

• "Reporting on the Bobcats' first football season after the Camp Fire."

FIRE ON THE RIDGE: A COLLECTION OF POEMS by Bill Hartley

• The destruction of Joy Lyn's Candies, and poems to release sorrow.

OUT OF THE ASHES: ONE SURVIVOR'S STORY IN THE AFTERMATH OF TWO HISTORIC WILD FIRES by Antoinette Peppler

• The Saddle Fire in 2016, then the Camp Fire.

WHERE TO NEXT? By Joan Goodreau

• From evacuations to a pandemic, the Chico poet asks a profound question.

THE SOUND OF THE SNOW GEESE: A TRUE STORY OF SURVIVING CALIFORNIA'S DEADLIEST WILDFIRE by Dax Meredith

• "… caught in the Camp Fire as she and one of her young sons fled toward Paradise from Magalia."

"A Stone Bled Dry"

"It’s a ten-minute ride into downtown Alturas. Half-an-hour if there’s black ice. And that word, downtown, it’s a bit of a stretch, a joke shared by the natives. Some places, they try to be something special. Alturas, it just is. Doing what it needs to do and not one iota more." 

For "old coot" Jack Jenkins, a man, as they say, with a past, Alturas suits just fine. He's been pretty much anonymous for a decade now. Odd jobs. A few hookups with Liz, one of the older clerks at the local grocery store. Mostly keeping to himself at home, "your standard double-wide, laid up on cinderblocks, with worn cedar steps leading to the front door and an illegal stove in the den."

A ringing cellphone at three in the morning will change everything. Ridge-area novelist Brian T. Marshall (briantmarshallauthor.com) is there and brings the reader deep into the heart of a man who seeks to escape history but who will find his future depends on it.

"A Stone Bled Dry" ($12 in paperback from misspelled press; also for Amazon Kindle) is a deeply moving exploration of the sometimes violent cost of love. Jack had hooked up with Lenora back in their using days and had a child. Lenora is on the phone with news that (once again) she's entering a program to get clean. Oh, and 14-year-old Jewell is on a Greyhound from LA headed his way.

Jewell? "A granddaughter," Jack tells Phil, a widower retired from Chico State. "Her mom, our daughter, died when she was still just a baby. We got stuck raising her." Yet when Jewell arrives, a beauty blossoming into womanhood, Jack realizes she is "a version of himself. Another chance to get things right. Because if Jack and Lenora had both faced a test, it was one they'd clearly failed, and the only way to redeem the loss was to help Jewell triumph. For this is the way that spirit works."

When Jewell gets twisted up in a struggle among generations on the Reservation, what will Jack do to protect her life? Stony hearts bleed, they do, and readers will hold on tight until the very end.

"Matthew 25 Christianity: Redeeming Church And Society"

Donald Heinz, Lutheran minister and Chico State emeritus Professor of Religious Studies, offers in his new book what he calls a field guide to a new Christian movement, one based on the words of Jesus in Matthew 25.

"You've heard the story," Heinz writes; "it is the end of the age and all people are lined up, like sheep and goats, before Jesus as the cosmic judge. A series of questions ensues and judgments are made. Did you see me among them, Jesus as King asks, when there were homeless to be sheltered, naked to be clothed, hungry to be fed, thirsty to be given a drink, strangers to be welcomed, the imprisoned to be visited? If you did these things for the least of these, you were serving me. Now you will inherit the kingdom prepared for you since the foundation of the world."

For Heinz, "Matthew 25 Christianity: Redeeming Church And Society" ($29 in paperback from Cascade Books; also for Amazon Kindle) has both an inner and outer expression. Within the Christian tradition "new movers and movements came to take Christianity seriously, and were gripped by it, and made the concern with 'the least of these' the cause of their religious life" (think Francis of Assisi, Martin Luther King Jr.).

But today "we have isolated or distanced the poor, or insulated our social imagination" until "it is nearly impossible to see them." He proposes churches identify as "Matthew 25" congregations--but there must be more.

If his book seeks to take the likely original reference in Matthew 25 (to Jesus' itinerant disciples, often poor) and bring it into "new social contexts" and a care for "all the people of the world who are in need," he also advocates for the institutionalization of such a social gospel framework within governmental structures. It's not a theocracy, Heinz writes, but a call for the voice of Matthew 25 to become part of public discourse. 

In the end Heinz invites readers to "sell all and sign on": "The apostle Paul took a world-friending God public, rendering the Jesus movement a light to the world. What are we going to do with this?"

"Chico's Chapmans: The California Years 1861-1899"

"Augustus Hartley Chapman's name," writes historian Michele Shover, "hovers like the wisp of a phantom in Chico…." Gus Chapman died in 1899, when Chico had fewer than 4000 residents, and though he had a remarkable part to play, except for "Chapmantown" his name has mostly been lost to history. Until now.

"Chico's Chapmans: The California Years 1861-1899" ($35 in paperback from Stansbury Publishing) is Shover at her indispensable finest. The fruit of forty years of research, her book is a compelling narrative of daily life in Chico focused on the man from Michigan who worked for John Bidwell and then turned into a longtime rival. 

In more than four hundred pages, including dozens of historical images, Shover captures a community beset by economic downturns, fires, political squabbles, controversy over whether to split Butte County (take that, Oroville!), failing wooden water pipes, family tragedies, anti-Chinese sentiment, murders. 

It was Chapman who in 1877 "formed a private vigilante committee of business leaders—the Citizens' Executive Committee on Anti-Chinese Crimes—to circumvent Chico government's refusal to act"; it was "the only vigilante committee in Chico history" and burnished his reputation "as a man of principle, courage and leadership."

Gus was also very much a man of his times. 

In 1865 he "left with Bidwell's partner George Wood to open a competing store." Five years later, with both Bidwell and Chapman selling lots on their respective subdivisions, Chapman, elected as a school trustee, voted to put the new Oakdale school near his own property. That despite Bidwell's offer to sell property for the school "on the east side of Orient Street ('Old Chinatown')" for a dollar.

As Shover notes, "A schoolboard member today who did what Chapman had done would be indicted. However, nineteenth-century government, in general, enforced no business standards or public ethics."

Chapman and his wife Sarah celebrated "their shared birthday and their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary" in 1883. Sarah kept the family together (and Shover pays due regard to her work). 

When Gus died, despite his many failures, "only his creditors were aware of one point central to his honor: he had paid off every debt in full. He died owing no man."

"Generation Dread: Finding Purpose In An Age Of Climate Crisis"

Whether she and her husband Sebastian should have a child is a question that suffuses Britt Wray's deeply researched report on the effects of "eco-distress" felt by many young people today. In an era of climate extremes thirty-something Wray, born in Toronto and later a Human and Planetary Health Postdoctoral Fellow at the Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health, traces the effects of what is called "global dread." 

It's defined by author Glenn Albrecht as "the anticipation of an apocalyptic future state of the world that produces a mixture of terror and sadness in the sufferer for those who will exist in such a state." Should one bring a child into such an uncertain world?

Wray's analysis focuses on those who feel pain as wildfires, droughts, floods and hurricanes ravage the globe. The overwhelming problems, exacerbated by racism that makes the most vulnerable even more vulnerable as the climate changes, can produce either a depressed apathy or ill-directed energy from culturally privileged eco-warriors. 

There is a better way, she writes. "Generation Dread: Finding Purpose In An Age Of Climate Crisis" ($24 in hardcover from Knopf Canada; also for Amazon Kindle) proposes "a way of transforming fear into radical hope." 

Wray is scheduled to give a talk on "teaching climate change and resilience" Thursday, October 13 at Chico State's ARTS 150 Recital Hall at 6:00 p.m. The public event is free and will be available on Zoom (details at bit.ly/3rKsG3g).

"If you're resigned to the idea," Wray writes, "that everything before us spells out a very particular vision of mass suffering, bring that thought into your arms and legs with a big inhale, and be present in the moment. Then feel that you actually don't know what exactly is going to happen. No one does! … There's an excitement about the future that can arise in that dark place." 

For Wray, it's not about grasping expectations, but rather exerting one's agency in the moment, and building a community-based model of mental health care. We feel the pain—and "invest in the future anyway." 

So what about having a child? That, dear reader, is Wray's story to tell.

"Don't Mess With Me Texas"

Chicoan Nancy Good, writing as Skye Ryter, has published a harrowing account of abuse and "comeuppance" which she calls a "memoir/novel based upon actual and fictitious events…. The author is offering her personal perspective on the subject of protecting children from their abuser(s)."

"Don't Mess With Me Texas: Based On The Satanic Panic, Child And Domestic Abuse And The Children's Underground Network In The 1980's" ($7.99 in paperback, self-published; also for Amazon Kindle), contains graphic descriptions of what the author calls "sexual child abuse," "satanic ritual abuse," and spousal abuse. It is not for the squeamish.

Narrator Kiftin O'Tool, after a college stint in Redding, finds pool parties and popping pills for back pain not quite the career she planned. At 26, promised a cush job in Hawaii by an Army recruiter, she enlists as a motor-pool driver. That's where she meets troubled Scott McConnell.

"I'm ashamed to admit it," the narrator tells readers, "but I was obsessed with him. Everything inside of me was telling me to help him. To love him into decency. It could be my purpose in life to show him how to behave responsibly." She adds: "I have since learned that when a child is abused by a parent, they will unconsciously seek out a mate who produces similar high anxiety. Having an overwhelming desire to 'fix' the mate is really a deep desire to fix the relationship with the abusive parent."

She can't quit Scott. They marry and later, with new daughter Kali, move to Texas where Scott's bizarre parents reside (his mom is stone cold, his dad a spider-keeper) and it becomes clear Kali is being sexually abused in satanic rituals that revel in human dismemberment and death.

And so the narrator goes into hiding with Kali. Mind-bending custody battles ensue over many years, and there's another marriage, but it's clear in the late 80s that police don't believe her abuse reports and the Texas judicial system is stacked in favor of the father (and the handsome Scott can talk his way out of almost any situation). 

Sadly, the eventual comeuppance fails to wash away images of the immense cruelty humans inflict on one another.

"Ernest Hemingway And Tony Oliva: A Tale Of How The Great Writer Helped The Great Ballplayer"

Curt DeBerg, originally from Rock Rapids, Iowa, retired from Chico State as a business professor in 2020 and moved to Hendaye, France. Smitten with the travels and travails of Ernest Hemingway (who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954), he published "Traveling The World With Hemingway." But DeBerg is also a lifelong fan of the Minnesota Twins, a totally unrelated preoccupation, right? Maybe not.

Let's go back to the late 1950s, and zoom in on Cuba. A man named Joe Cambria (known as "Papa Joe") scouted for the Washington Senators there "and he liked to have a drink or two in Havana's Floridita bar" (no stranger to Hemingway). In 1961 the Senators moved from Washington and became the Minnesota Twins.

Papa Joe had his eye on a young slugger named Pedro and wanted the Twins to take him on. The trouble was that the young man wasn't so young; in 1960 he would be 22, too old for Twins owner Calvin Griffith to consider. 

Around the same time Hemingway (known of course as "Papa Hemingway"), a baseball fan himself, "was sixty years old and in failing health. He and his fourth wife, Mary, were forced to leave their bucolic estate in Havana. For nearly twenty-two years, the Hemingways had made Cuba their home base."

Could Papa Hemingway have met Papa Joe? DeBerg imagines it happening in his short tale, "Ernest Hemingway And Tony Oliva: A Tale Of How The Great Writer Helped The Great Ballplayer" by Curtis L. DeBerg ($9.95 in paper, self-published; also for Amazon Kindle). For Pedro was Tony Pedro Oliva, inducted on July 24, 2022 into baseball's Hall of Fame.

DeBerg imagines that with Papa Hemingway's help, Pedro was able to use his younger brother Antonio's "birth certificate to fabricate his age in order to obtain a travel visa to the United States." So Pedro became "Tony" Oliva, three years younger than he really was, signing with the Twins as a nineteen-year-old.

Did any of that really happen? Even Tony Oliva's biographer doesn't know for sure. DeBerg's earnest yarn invites readers to think that it could have.

"Resurgam (Rise Again)"

Long-time Chicoan David Dirks, now Brentwood-based, draws on childhood memories for a series of books about the fictional Janzen family. David Janzen tells the story of growing up in the Central California farming town of Del Rio Vista in a Walton-sized family, including his mom and dad (an elementary school science teacher), two brothers and three sisters (including smart-aleck nemesis Kathleen).

Two earlier novels ("The Art of Stretching" and "A Fickle Wind") detail David's balloon experiments; now, in "Resurgam (Rise Again)" ($8.99 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle) David enters Del Rio Vista High School and sets his sights on rockets.

The author and I are about the same age, and old friends (I'm a friend and he's old), and he generously thanks me in the acknowledgements. These books evoke a nostalgic charm, a less frantic time when even one's rival-in-rocketry could lend a hand. 

Janzen and his experimenter pal Jack Johnson (fully recovered after a car accident) set out to build a rocket a few feet long, with a nose cone, and to mix their own rocket fuel, all in the name of science. This isn't a fireworks project; it's serious business on the nearby alkali flats complete with spotters and measurements of the flight path.

Not only is there neighborhood competition in rocketry, but rivalry at the upcoming school science fair. As with his balloon experiments, David's rocket launches rarely go off without a hitch but eventually, through some providential meetings with others, David and Jack manage to send something into the skies and into the notebooks for the science fair. Will they beat the others (including a team with attractive Mandy Sandy and her "beatific smile")?

Rocketry has its up and downs (literally), and David faces the deaths of the older town bully, JFK, and his beloved Aunt Martha, who tells him near the end that David must "promise you will not stop being the person God made you be." She teaches him "one Latin word—resurgam. It means I will rise again. On that day, I will rise."

Despite sadness, setbacks, and sputterings, young Janzen's hope burns bright as he faces uncertain years ahead. As do we all.

North State Writers

"I've just rotten a book!" "Uh, it's 'written,' not 'rotten.'" "You haven't read it yet!" An old joke, but if you've ever yearned for non-family feedback on the book you've just composed, or wanted to know how to publish it, or needed encouragement, or just wanted to meet local writers, this column is for you.

A writers group based in Chico has been nurturing authors (and would-be authors) since it was chartered in 2015. North State Writers (northstatewriters.com; also on Facebook under North State Writers Authors Group) is a chapter of the non-profit California Writers Club.

In recent email correspondence, NSW membership chair Gwen Willadsen (gwilladsen@csuchico.edu) noted that general meetings, free and open to the public, are held the third Monday of each month on Zoom and at the Chico Veterans Hall, 554 Rio Lindo, beginning at 6:00 p.m. 

The speaker for the September 19 meeting, Willadsen writes, "will be (novelist) Erin Lindsay McCabe, author of 'I Shall Be Near To You,' a USA Today Bestseller and a Goodreads Choice Awards semi-finalist. … (It's) the story of a strong-willed woman who disguises herself as a man to fight beside her husband in the Civil War. Erin will speak on writing a complete novel in first person, present tense."

Monthly programs "are designed to serve the needs of both published and aspiring writers. Speakers address writing craft, publishing, marketing, and other relevant topics."

There are now about three dozen NSW members; the group is "rebuilding our membership after the effects of the Paradise fire and pandemic and welcomes anyone who loves writing or even just reading books and would find it interesting to learn more about their creation."

If you have a manuscript that needs some attention, Vice President and editor Lynn Tosello has the goods "on what editors can do for writers and how to find and work with one. Our authors have used various methods of publication including print, eBooks, and internet sites." 

NSW leadership includes President Jim Henson and Secretary Susan St. Germaine; members include naval historian (and tracker of Chico running) Cmdr. David Bruhn, YA fantasy author Nick Hanson, and writer/illustrator/muralist Steve Ferchaud.

What better way to get the word out?

"Ice In The Guise Of Fire"

Logan Malloy, ruthless owner of a local gossip rag in a frigid, hoity-toity resort area of Plumas County, will never sip martinis again. "She sees a gun pointed at her heart, and awareness instantly reduces to the dark width of the barrel…. She feels a painless thud in her chest, a seizing sensation, followed by a white-hot deep burn…. The last image her brain records is the indifferent face of her murderer as she grapples, vacillates between gasps of incredulity and the terror of drifting, helpless, fading, and dying."

No one mourns her passing in the resort town of Moluku Lake, "nestled in the Sierra Nevada." Manipulative, conspiring, Malloy can make or break a person, and has lately become a partisan in the battle between owners of the exclusive Eagle's Nest resort and the insurgent Maidu who want to build a casino (which would cut the Eagle's Nest business in half). At least that's the view of the Nest's owner/operators, Atticus Flynn and Eli Lucas.

The problem for Moluku Lake's police chief, Howard Billings, is that pretty much everyone in town is on the suspect list. These are people with money and with lots to hide (good-hearted Billings himself is having an affair). So he calls in Butte County sheriff Jason Noble and two deputies, Kevin Rodriguez and Lt. Lauren Riley (for whom the divorced sheriff has a deep but hidden desire). Butte County has a morgue. And Billings himself may be implicated.

Thus begins "Ice In The Guise Of Fire" ($11.95 in paperback from Weston Writes; also for Amazon Kindle) by novelist Nancy Weston, who has fashioned a deliciously scandalous police procedural. Everyone is having some kind of affair; even sheriff Noble must overcome his longing for Lt. Riley, half European and half Maidu. Does Riley's Maidu mother, who lives in the area, know more than she's telling?

Throw in a mayor-on-the-take, trophy wives with things to hide, secret rooms, security cameras, a Logan Malloy understudy who wants to be the new king-maker, the sinister meaning of a flower, and, oh yes, a couple of other deaths--and readers are in for a wild romp in more ways than one.

"California Burning: The Fall Of Pacific Gas And Electric—And What It Means For America's Power Grid"

"The Camp Fire started just three days after I joined The Wall Street Journal," writes energy reporter Katherine Blunt. Her award-winning articles form the basis of a measured, and yet devastating, history of PG&E. 

"California Burning: The Fall Of Pacific Gas And Electric—And What It Means For America's Power Grid" ($29 in hardcover from Portfolio; also for Amazon Kindle) begins that fateful morning of November 8, 2018 and ends in Butte County Superior Court on June 16, 2020, with CEO Bill Johnson saying "Guilty, your honor" to each of 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter. (And, in an Epilogue, the Dixie Fire.)

In between, drawing on more than 200 interviews and thousands of pages of court and historical documents, Blunt pieces together not just the utility's origin story, but how its executives came to focus more on developing clean energy sources than on carefully inspecting and fixing gas pipelines and transmission towers deteriorating by the day.

The San Bruno pipeline explosion in 2010 revealed that PG&E had used the cheapest and least accurate safety testing of its gas lines. As Blunt notes, calling on the point made by San Bruno PD detective James Haggarty, "this was not a crime in which one person pulled the trigger. It was a crime committed slowly, over the course of decades, as corporate strategy shifted to prioritize shareholders, forcing middle-level employees to respond accordingly."

And so it was with the Caribou-Palermo transmission towers in the Feather River Canyon, constructed around 1907. In the investigation, Butte County DA Mike Ramsey and Deputy DA Marc Noel determined the hook that failed, leading to the spark that started the Camp Fire, "had been purchased for 56 cents in 1919."

The final part of the book details the maneuvering over the victims' compensation fund, and why so little has gone to those who were actually victims. In the midst of PG&E's second bankruptcy, the judged charged with approving the fund heard from victims. "They all agreed: $13.5 billion wasn't nearly enough if half of it depended on the company's share price."

A reporter tells the story of a "slow crime," dispassionately. And, somewhere, a reviewer weeps.

"Barefoot In Hells Canyon"

Bryan Gould lives with his wife in San Rafael; their vacation home in Rich Bar, in Plumas County, was destroyed in the Dixie fire. But the memoir he's published focuses on an extraordinary adventure many years earlier, in Idaho.

The subtitle of "Barefoot In Hells Canyon" ($23.95 in paperback from Backeddy Books, backeddybooks.com) says it: "Reflections from two men in a frail raft on a voyage down the Snake River in 1958." It's a gorgeously written account of true friendship and a death-defying you-are-there journey down the Snake's rapids. It's perfect summer reading.

In July 1958 two friends, Bryan Gould and Glen Burns, both 19, get their parents' reluctant permission to depart their homes in the Bay Area, hop a freight train or two and then hitchhike the rest of the way to Idaho with only about $20 to their names. (An inflatable war-surplus rubber raft is sent on ahead.) The goal is to "ride our own raft down the Snake River all the way through Southern Idaho. That accomplished, we'd finish out the summer working in a logging camp" in McCloud. 

Bryan is a copyboy for the San Francisco News (several of his columns are reprinted in the book). Many chapters begin with the two old friends, now in their late 70s, trying to remember details of their adventure sixty years ago, joshing each other. (Glen passed away in 2021.)

Undaunted by danger, into the Snake they go. At Whiskey Springs: "The rapid engulfed us, seizing us with a disconcerting violence. Despite Glen's attempt to keep our nose straight, a crosscurrent caught us and bulled us sideways, lifted us high, and for a moment we teetered on the brink, buoyed by a tremendous thrust that threatened to flip us. We stayed upright, miraculously. We glided over the top, and largely out of control, veered into a series of stone teeth that gnashed at us as we twisted from one jaw into another and still another."

Add the loss of their shoes, the kindness of strangers, unexpected cabins, sleeping in a dump, worried parents, and the fact Bryan doesn't know how to swim, it's clear that surviving Whiskey Springs isn't the only miracle.

"The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir"

"We had arrived in summer," writes Thi Bui, "so there was time to prepare for school in the fall." But as immigrants from Vietnam, her family needed time to adjust. You mean you choose classes? They don't just hand you your schedule?

Bui, a graphic artist now based in the Bay Area, as a youngster escaped with her family after the fall of South Vietnam, landing on American soil on June 28, 1978.

Later, as a graduate student, she wanted to capture her family's history. "My parents have been separated since I was nineteen," she writes, though they "remain friends." But what happened? Words were not enough, so in 2005 she learned "how to do comics." Pages of drawings accumulated.

Later, she and her husband and son moved from New York to California, where she taught at "an alternative public high school for immigrants in Oakland." Her book took shape as a graphic memoir, and in 2017 it was published as "The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir" ($19.99 in paperback from Abrams ComicArts; also for Amazon Kindle, with a helpful pronunciation guide at thebestwecoulddo.abrams.link).

It is fitting, at the start of a new school year, that Bui's own explorations of her past become part of the reader's experience as well. "The Best We Could Do" is the "Book In Common" for 2022-2023 for Butte College (butte.edu/bic) and Chico State (www.csuc.edu/bic) and other community groups.

Bui's parents and their growing family knew the ravages of war. In 1975 South Vietnam's president Duong Van Minh surrendered to the north. Bui's father, in talks with his daughter years later, wants to correct "the American version of this story … about a country not worth saving…. Communist forces entered Saigon without a fight, and no blood was shed. Perhaps Duong Van Minh's surrender saved my life."

But the Communist regime ushered in a propaganda campaign and confession sessions with neighbor spying on neighbor. "My parents," Bui writes, "began to talk of escape."

Filled with emotion, the book's images and dialog convey the complexity of the past--and the realization that one's very-flawed parents were trying to do the best they could.

"Toe The Mark"

"My competitive running," naval historian David D. Bruhn writes, "ended in late autumn 1976" when, "running on a muddy trail along the American River early one morning, I slipped and slid into the river." He had run for Butte College; later, after enlisting in the Navy, he graduated from Chico State and "earned a commission via Officers Candidate School." He met his future wife, Nancy, a Navy nurse, at a base in Colorado.

His cross-country coach, Al Baeta, emphasized the importance of holding on to energizing memories. "Running in Chico in the 1970s is one of those memories." And so, drawing on Enterprise-Record archives and interviews with runners and coaches, Bruhn tells the story of the running programs not only at Chico State, but Chico High and PV High, in the 70s. "Toe The Mark" ($29 in paperback from heritagebooks.com) features a foreword by Walt Schafer--no stranger to running himself--and 114 historical photographs.

Tracing the running programs year by year with plenty of stats, the book also weaves personal stories into the narrative, making it not only an extraordinary reference but one that captures the story of legendary track and cross-country coaches (such as Bill Gregg, Chuck Sheley, Jack Yerman, Dale Edson, Cherrie Sherrard, and more) who got the best out of their runners.

In an email, Bruhn notes that "The two individuals pictured on the front cover are Wildcat All-American and 4:01 miler Kim Ellison, and Wildcat All-American and Olympic Swim Trials participant (as a 16-year old Panther) Jill Symons. Symons is (little argument) the greatest multi-sport female endurance athlete Chico has produced to date."

In 1977 Symons, along with Girls Cross Country teammates Suzanne Richter (All-American at Cal, "still number six on the all-time 5,000 meters list"), marathoner Luanne Park, Julie Selchau, and Darcy Burleson, were known as "Charlie's Angels" (after coach Chuck and a certain TV series), arguably, Bruhn writes me, "the greatest high school prep team of any sport in the North Section."

"Toe The Mark" is the ultimate runner's high.

Bruhn is hosting a "1970s Runners Reunion Weekend," August 27-28 in Chico, with more than fifty participants; for information on signed copies of his book write commanderbruhn@gmail.com.

"Trek Tales: A Woman's Journey Of Self-Discovery Packing Llamas In The California Wilderness"

Former longtime Paradise resident Donna Dolinar now lives, with husband Bill, "in Baja, Mexico in a small fishing village," for eight months of the year, and "four months in Tahoe National Forest" in an old Forest Service cabin near the Pacific Crest Trail. How she got from here to there is quite a story, and involves llamas.

Her 1990 marriage to Bill meant becoming a stepmom and welcoming a new daughter into the world. Donna yearned to go on Bill's backpacking trips with friends but how to transport little Liz? 

Cargo-carrying llamas, of course. 

Talking with a friend put the idea in her mind, and a visit to "a small llama ranch called RMC's Stonybrook Pond" nearby began a llama love affair.

Eventually Dolinar took other women on backpacking trips; "through the years there were seven llamas involved in Paradise Llama Treks. My good friend Gibby and I ran our little business with the help of our four-legged friends Peludo, Montana, Tyrol, Kenney, Buck, Shasta, and Gabriel … on most of our trips we had four of them with us."

These three-day trips took place "every year for eighteen years. The coed llama treks were four-day backpacking trips held annually for eleven years." For Dolinar "it was a personal growth story too." That meant facing challenging times, like having to call a helicopter for Bill, dealing with stinky llama spit, or having to admit she had guided her group on the wrong path.

The stories abound in "Trek Tales: A Woman's Journey Of Self-Discovery Packing Llamas In The California Wilderness" ($17.99 in paperback from Balboa Press; also for Amazon Kindle) which includes maps and a picture section. Dolinar's welcoming and humble account of trekking wilderness areas like Caribou, Trinity Alps, and Thousand Lakes draws the reader into life on the trail.

After losing their home in the Camp Fire, there were more adventures to come. Montana and Peludo, owned by "mama llama" Dolinar, play an immense part in the awakening of something deep within the nurse from Paradise. "When I listened to my inner voice and trusted it," she writes, "I found my path."

"The Tenderness Of Stone: A Memoir"

Longtime Chico resident Ira Heinrich worked as a KHSL-TV anchor and long ago founded the Middle Mountain Foundation (now Middle Mountain Interpretive Hikes). "Over more than a decade," he writes in an email, he "directed an interpretive and preservation program in the Sutter Buttes (Esto-Yamani/Onolai)."

His interest in the "Buttes" is no mere whimsey. As a boy of ten they captured his heart when his parents moved into the area. If Mt. Shasta is a spiritual haven for some, so, too, was (and is) the "world's smallest mountain range" for Heinrich. In 2008 he published an account of his growing-up years (available from used book sellers) which is now in Amazon Kindle format. 

"The Tenderness Of Stone: A Memoir" (from Giri Marga Press) is stunningly beautiful prose. Its descriptions of the Middle Mountain penetrate the soul. "It is a time for telling secrets," Heinrich writes of his1960s life (and beyond), taking the reader "into a region of deep and tender intimacy and private tragedy."

"The Place in its totality," he remembers, "was imprinted on some hidden surface of my subconscious, so that I never ceased to feel the Buttes as part of my own body…. From that time on, with every step I took there, with every warm cave and wet, green canyon and serrated ridge or peak I explored, a sense of inexplicable mystery grew in me, even as the Mountain's voice endlessly whispered, 'Although your path is a mystery indeed, still the beginning and the ending of everything for you, is here.'"

One day in church he meets Avalee, her name "hauntingly beautiful to me still." She was 18, and "the two of us, tender, incredibly naïve and hardly more than children, were seduced by this enchanted mountain and its aura of fantasy and dream, into an utterly unlikely image of permanence, marriage and even babies."

She would chide Ira about his Mountain dreams. What's important is what's real, she'd say. But she loved the mountain, too, and was its gift--though not a permanent one. 

Reality? In the midst of a tragedy one day in Marysville, the Mountain still presided over Heinrich's life, unutterably powerful yet unspeakably tender.

"I'm Not Ready For This (Everybody Just Calm Down And Give Me A Minute)"

"We drove together," Anna and her mom, "from Omaha, Nebraska, to Chico, California, in my cute little Volkswagen Passat. … I was hired at Chico State University as an assistant residence coordinator" and there Anna would be completing her MA in Communication Studies. 

Her first date with Rob, her future husband, was at Chico's Olive Garden. Time passes, the couple returns to Nebraska to raise two daughters, and Anna becomes humor writer and personal essayist Anna Lind Thomas (AnnaLindThomas.com).

Skilled in making mountains out of molehills, and then realizing she's been sweating the small stuff, Thomas' first collection, "We'll Laugh About This (Someday): Essays On Taking Life A Smidge Too Seriously," is now joined by a companion volume. 

"I'm Not Ready For This (Everybody Just Calm Down And Give Me A Minute)" ($18.99 in paperback from Thomas Nelson; also for Amazon Kindle and in audiobook format read by the author) reflects on life's challenges.

That includes Rob's vasectomy (and his use of frozen vegetables as ice packs); oversleeping on the first day of sixth grade (and "our Indy 500-style ride to school"); and running a 10K (no runner's euphoria; "instead, my subconscious mind conjures up every injustice I've experienced since birth and lets me dole out insults I'd never say in real life"). 

Training for the run "was enlightening. I learned things about myself I'd rather not know. For instance, I have incredibly poor bladder and, on occasion, sphincter control. My legs and hips jiggle, but not all at once, or in sync…."

At times outrageously honest, Thomas is at her best describing the bittersweet moments, like her friendship with Cindy, an older student in her master's program at Chico State, who rolled "her own cigarettes. She was fast and efficient, licking and rolling and smoking them down before moving on to the next thing." 

The "next thing"? Being in Chico didn't seem a good fit; Cindy breezed through the material but "didn't give a crap…. Her fierce and gritty independence drew me in. And I felt safer and less vulnerable knowing her."

In a way, that's also Thomas' gift to the reader.

"The Lost Boys Of Happy Valley College: A Novel"

In the summer of 2016, eight still perpendicular 70-year-old men meet in Chico to reaffirm their friendship. All students at Chico State in the Sixties, they had last been together on October 12, 1969 at Candlestick Park. They were "watching a fellow Happy Valley College football teammate … playing for the Baltimore Colts against the hometown San Francisco Forty Niners."

Wait—"Happy Valley College"? That's the school's name given in Dick Carlsen's memoir-disguised-as-a-novel, "The Lost Boys Of Happy Valley College" ($15.99 in paperback from AuthorHouse; also for Amazon Kindle).

The group includes "Dave" and his twin, "Dan," and six other brothers-in-mischief. (In the acknowledgements page, Carlsen gives a shout-out to "my twin brother" Don "for sharing his notes on his Super Bowl officiating experience…." In light of the shenanigans all eight engaged in at Chico State, the reader understands why names have been changed.)

Yet Carlsen's tale is more than pranks at nearby Sutter Park ("named after General John Sutter, the founder of Happy Valley") or keggers with "The Raiders" ("a 'jock' organization on campus"). It's really about how each of the eight friends find themselves living out J.M. Barrie's original Peter Pan story. 

"Nostalgia had its grip on them, their common trait. It was in their DNA, from childhoods. Their Happy Valley experiences together offered up a bucket load of nostalgic reflections, which is probably why the other thing they had in common was their reluctance to leave Happy Valley. It was their Shangri La, their comfort zone, their happy place…."

Brought before "Dean Steen" after the "dance episode," the eight prepare to be punished for their "bad form," but Steen recognizes good character in each of their immature selves. He dubs them the "Lost Boys," those who "enjoyed a carefree life in Neverland. They were also mischief-makers," he adds.

By 2016, each had had a successful career but as they try to recreate the good old days (staying in a dorm on campus, frolicking at "Trout Hole") they come to realize how gripped they had been by Peter Pan Syndrome. 

The reunion is transformative, a coming-of-old-age story, as one by one there's "one less Lost Boy."

"Particle Beam (For Such A Time)"

Long-time Chicoan David Dirks, now Brentwood-based, is no stranger to government work as an audio and video engineer. His new novel brings his grade school hero, David Janzen, into adulthood and onto a team at a secret government lab "in the prairies of middle Indiana." Their mission is to develop a particle beam weapon called Teleforce. It's the Cold War 80s, the decade of the Iran-Contra Affair.

In two previous novels, "The Art Of Stretching" and "A Fickle Wind," Dirks detailed young Janzen's fascination with big balloons, "rat astronauts" and pictures taken high up from those very balloons. Now, years later, as an audio engineer, he is charged with bringing Nikola Tesla's invention to reality.

"Tesla," Dirks writes in the Prologue, "was arguably the most talented inventor of the twentieth century. Some say his genius rivaled Einstein's." Hidden away by the FBI, Tesla's Teleforce idea languishes "until someone, the right someone, at the right time, with proper understanding and authority opened the vault."

"Particle Beam (For Such A Time)" ($10.99 in paperback, self-published; also for Amazon Kindle) is the story of what happens at the (fictional) Hans M. Mark National Laboratory which houses the super-secret Teleforce Defense Weapon Administration and the "commanding, overbearing presence of its leader, Horatio Glen Knightsen."

"As my Marine Sergeant used to say as we prepared for action in the Mekong Delta," Knightsen tells his team, "you have been assembled for such a time as this." That translates into long hours and time away from family. 

Janzen and a small group of compatriots frequently meet at a local watering hole and at Senior Engineer Joe Carson's place, where he is often in the company of his next door neighbors, Bunny and Sunny, mysterious and extraordinarily beautiful twins from Mexico.

The first part of the novel explores Teleforce's development and testing, but then things begin to go wrong. Janzen's friends find evidence that the project's secrets are being sold and, in the first chapter's flash-forward, Joe is arrested for the murder of Horatio Knightsen. 

What is the truth? Is Joe a murderer? Has Providence assembled Janzen's friends "for such a time as this"? The compelling answer: Oh, yes.

"Ellie And Her Elephant"

Wayne Edmiston, now living on the Central Coast, has deep Chico roots. He graduated from Chico State College in 1971. An endowment fund to support developing the Meriam Library Special Collections and University Archives was created in the 70s by his great-aunt Ellen Deering. Ellsworth Deering, his great-uncle, was inducted into Chico State's Sports Hall of Fame in the 80s.

An ordained New Thought minister with Centers for Spiritual Living, the long-time teacher has published a whimsical short story for children about the creation of music, the meaning of love, and the world's curious interconnections.

"Ellie And Her Elephant" ($7.99 in paperback from Wedmiston Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle) emphasizes interactivity, pausing frequently to ask readers a question.

The story begins with the Easley family in small-town Halcyon, California, as news comes that the small zoo's elephant is about to give birth. Nine-year-old Ellie Easley's submitted name is drawn in the subsequent name-the-baby contest. The name had to begin with "El," and wouldn't you know it—Ellie won for "Ellie."

Ellie's father wows local children with piano playing, telling them a tale of music's origin. Uncounted years ago, the animals in the African forest started making noises. That woke a big lion. 

"'I was purring and happy, now you've made me so angry I could cuss you out. I'd rather be purring than cussing because of the noise you're making!' This roaring became known throughout the jungle as a 're-purr-cussion' (repercussion)." 

An elephant named Ellie learns to trumpet. When Ellie dies, she becomes "part of the symphony of life in another time and place." Is her earthly music gone? No; the ivory humans find much later comes to reside in the very piano Ellie's father is playing. Ellie moves her wheelchair to the keyboard and it is "like an electric current—warm and comforting to the touch."

As the years pass, Ellie becomes a skilled musician and, with help from her physical therapist, prepares an extraordinary surprise for her father when she plays at the big concert. And Ellie the elephant becomes a mother.

"What did Ellie the elephant give to the world?" Edmiston asks; "what do we have that we can give?"

"Westbound"

Chico State grad K. Patrick Conner was a journalistic voice in Chico before joining the San Francisco Chronicle in 1987 where he worked for more than two decades. He is also a novelist; his latest is a stunning evocation of the pioneering spirit that drew many to California, which can even transform a dull old man living in the twenty-first century.

It's 2005, and Elliott Madison, 78, long retired as a newspaper editor, is completing a historical account of how his great-grandparents met and married in the California goldfields in the 1850s. 

William Madison's journal begins with his horrendous voyage from South Carolina around Cape Horn; he settles in the Anderson Valley near Boonville.

Amelia Snyder, 18, his great-grandmother, journeys overland from Iowa with her brother and father (her mother died of cholera in 1849). Her letters to cousin Emily are heartbreaking as they recount the tragic trek (including the loss of her father) and its aftermath.

Elliott himself is a quotidian contrast. Long since divorced, his granddaughter Alissa, 23, lives with him in the Bay Area and practices drums for "a heavy metal power trio" named The Sores. She's estranged from her mother, Elliott's daughter, and Elliott spends much of his time researching in the library. Until one day a letter he receives will change his life forever.

"Westbound" ($39.95 in hardcover from NaCl Press; also for Amazon Kindle) seamlessly mingles Elliott's present life with the dramatic accounts of his great-grandparents in a way that makes them present as well. 

Amelia writes her cousin: "Father told us we would reach the Platte River today, but we were not prepared for what we saw. It is a river of shallow channels and sandbars, the color of gold as it spreads across the vast plain…. For the first time, I began to understand that even with Father's description of the trail that lies ahead, it is a land that cannot be imagined before it is seen."

Neither can Elliott's own future. That mysterious letter brings a woman named Phoebe into his life, and the house William built for Amelia, and the telling is so poignant I neglected to take notes on the book and just read, entranced.

"The Trial Of Juan De La Cruz"

Back when the Beatles made their first cultural splash on the international stage, a linguistic anthropologist named John Stirling journeys to "the wild mountains of southern Oaxaca" (WAH HA kah) in Mexico. In the tiny village of Santa Carmen, where perhaps eighty people live, he is to meet nonagenarian Juan de la Cruz, the last person on earth who can speak Xocatec.

Stirling wants to know how Xocatec is structured, but it's soon clear more is required for someone to "get" a language. And when Juan is accused of murder by a mentally ill woman in the village, and Mexican authorities step in, John and his friends learn firsthand the sometimes deadly effects of a dominant culture.

"The Trial Of Juan De La Cruz" ($2.99 in Amazon Kindle edition, self-published) by Chicoan Mike Findlay, retired Butte College and Chico State anthropology instructor, is one of three novels "Through An Anthropologist's Looking Glass," including "The Tribe In The Red Brick House" and "The Trail To Tlaxiaco" (Tlah HEE ah Ko).

Most of the first half of "Trial" delves deeply into the Stirling's work as a linguistic anthropologist (there's a helpful glossary), but it threatens to overwhelm him as he spends more and more time with his tape recorder. "John often talked well into the night—endless streams of discourse with a mechanical device. He began to shut the world around him out, keeping his thoughts to himself in his little cottage up in" Santa Carmen.

John is shaken out of the "cult of grammar" as Juan tells the story of hunting with his brother many years before, coming to a place "empty and dead and brown like coffee. We knew we had entered the area of the ancient battles—the wars." In frustration, Juan kills a great horned owl, a sacred animal, and the fruits of his desecration are with him still. 

Juan's trial shows the stark contrast between justice in Santa Carmen and the Oaxacan "guilty if we say you're guilty" system. 

This somber tale of how cultures mix (or don't) raises a question: Which way will the owl turn in our own day--toward healthy community, or widening chaos?

"Alvin Coffey: The True Story Of An African American Forty-Niner"

Retired librarian Nancy Leek of Chico has long been drawn to pioneer history. Her new book, illustrated by Steve Ferchaud, is about a man who "did not come to California of his own free will. That decision was made for him by the man who claimed to own him. But he came with hope. Hope for freedom. Hope for a better life for himself and his family."

"Alvin Coffey: The True Story Of An African American Forty-Niner" ($16.95 in paperback from Goldfields Books, goldfieldsbooks.com) is available locally at Made in Chico, ABC Books, Bidwell Supply Company, the Chico History Museum, and the Bidwell Mansion gift shop. 

Coffey was born into slavery in Kentucky 200 years ago. "In 1846, when he was 24 years old, Alvin was sold to Dr. William Bassett for $600." Married to Mahala, with a growing family, Alvin's life was not his own. "At that time," Leek writes, "the law said he did not even own himself."

With help from "Alvin and Mahala Coffey's great-great-granddaughter, Jeannette Molson," Leek sets out the story of an enslaved man who finds not riches but something far more precious.

"When Dr. Bassett heard about gold in California, he was eager to go. He took Alvin along to do the hard work for him." The wagon train arrived in California in October, 1849. "I worked the claims," Alvin said in interviews years later. "After dark and on Sunday I used to do odd jobs for other people and work at my shoemaker's trade."

That side money was enough to buy his freedom, but instead Bassett took it all. Back in Missouri, Bassett sold Alvin for $1000 "to Mary Tindall, the owner of Mahala." Alvin got permission to return to Shasta County and, as he said later, "toiled away for years" and succeeded in buying their freedom.

Returning to Missouri, he took his family to California. "We stood at last under God's clear sky," he said, "free at last, thank Him."

The story, Leek writes on her website, "needs to be better known." She is keeping alive the memory of slavery's terrible legacy--and the life of a courageous man.

"The Corporate Weenie Almanac"

Humor writer C.L. Smith's father died on Memorial Day in 2021 at the age of 99. In Smith's new book, a sequel of sorts to "Tongue In Chico," the Chico State grad pictures his dad, proud in his military uniform, and acknowledges that he didn't like the first book and wouldn't have liked the second. "But," he writes, "I will still always love and miss him anyway. Semper fi."

As for the new book, it's "a satirical look at current pop culture and the modern workplace, gleaned from my 30 years as a marketing executive in the fast-food and telecommunications industries." Think lousy puns (but I repeat myself), politically incorrect observations, naughty innuendo. And that's just page 1.

"The Corporate Weenie Almanac" ($7.45 in paperback from Tenderfoot Books; also for Amazon Kindle), designed and illustrated by Randy Nowell, is like Mad Magazine with a bit more leering.

A corporate weenie is "a humanoid denizen of the managerial class, known primarily for kissing up to superiors while lording their presumed authority over resentful subordinates in the modern workplace." If you've ever had an office job, you know one, but, of course, you've never been one. So take heart: this book isn't written for you.

The food section features "recipes for disaster," including "The Bad Hire." "Ingredients: (1) urgent need to fill a key position, (1) imminent hiring freeze, (1) Yay! The perfect candidate. Instructions: Skip background check. Ignore 1-3 sketchy references. Why? The freeze is coming! Marinate and simmer. Newbie skips new-hire orientation. Calls in sick the next day. Files long-term disability claim. Bring to boil. Sues company for emotional distress. The resumé was fake. It's HR's fault! Update your own fake resumé ASAP."

Mix in corporate cliches, like "Let's Circle Back on That" (a way to forget something); pandemic mask-wearing as pop art; politically correct classic rock ("I Saw Her Standing There by The Beatles. Pronoun problem. Change the title and lyrics to 'I Saw Her/Him/Them Standing/Sitting/Lying/Chilling/Twerking There'"); Tongue in Chico advice; and cosmic weenie astrology—and you have a recipe for a wonderful backyard BBQ. 

To get the conversation going, the pages make great starter material, if you know what I mean.

"Inspired To Be..."

Sacramento-based Crystel Patterson (crystelpatterson.com), one of the featured authors at the recent Chocolate Festival in Paradise, was drawn by the story of rebuilding and resilience.

That same spirit is evident in her three self-published children's books, each beautifully illustrated by Briana Young and available in Amazon Kindle format, "inspired by the culture, experiences, and dreams of Black people with the goal of inspiring all children." 

The first in the "Inspired To Be..." series, "One Flip, Two Flip, Three Flip, Four" ($9.01 in paperback) tells the story of Ruby, inspired, Patterson writes, "by Gabby Douglas, a gymnast who became the first African American to win the individual all-around event at the 2012 Summer Olympics when she was 16 years old."

Ruby's energy leads to "flipping all around the house/ landing light as a mouse." Gymnastics lessons bring "cartwheels, handstands, tucks and pikes" and eventually a gold medal. "She knew it in her heart./ Her dreams would true true.../ Now, what about you?"

The second book, "I Am Different" ($13.58 paperback), is "dedicated to all the children who look and feel different. I hope you already love or will learn to love everything that makes you stand out ... despite the mixed reactions." The story is about Malachi, Nia, and Ekon, three children who endure stinging words about their skin color, name, or hair. 

"My hair is different, this I know. My hair is different, and it shows./ So mixed reactions I receive, I wonder who I should believe." The answer? "I believe those who matter to me/ My family and friends who uplift me./ They always see the best in me/ Which is what I see when I look at me!" (A glossary of the some of the key words used in the book are intended to spur family discussion about race.)

In "Superheroes Here And There" ($8.25 in paperback), inspired by the late actor Chadwick Boseman, young James asks his parents if superheroes are real. Well, "they can't walk through solid walls, that's for sure." But they "remove obstacles to help us soar.... Like your mom or dad, a teacher or friend.../ Whose powers aren't super, but human instead."

We could use more humanity.