Yet life went on for David Janzen, 12, at Central Elementary School in Del Rio Vista, "a small, central California farming community." The new novel by David H. Dirks, "A Fickle Wind" ($8.99 in paperback, self-published; also for Amazon Kindle), continues Janzen's balloon experiments begun in "The Art Of Stretching." (The sketches by Benjamin Pacheco perfectly capture the kid-centric fascination with engineering.)
In the earlier novel, Janzen and his friend Jack, who uses a wheelchair, inflate a homemade balloon with natural gas from the science classroom (Janzen's dad is the science teacher) in their effort to send a "rat astronaut" into the skies and back again safely. Now, in the new story, the goal is to hoist a radio-controlled camera into the Del Rio Vista sky and take pictures from high overhead.
Dirks, a long-time Chicoan, was one of the first three engineers for KCHO radio after it debuted April 22, 1969; he now lives in Brentwood with his wife, Karen. Janzen, on the cusp of high school, is infused with the same love of engineering.
Ribbed at home by his three sisters, taunted at school for being a "shrimp," and bullied by a neighbor kid who secretly envies the experiments, Janzen manages to navigate his world with equanimity, expanding in awareness and friendships, including Fernando Chavez and MBB (Molly Beth Brown, "unpretentious," with "beauty more hidden than revealed").
The camera experiment makes for a great tale, and when Janzen and friends gather they revel in all their childhood stories. But childhood is ending. When he is baptized at thirteen, afterward chomping down Aunt Martha's baptismal cake, David wonders at how "the two worlds, sacred and secular, were, as they say, miles apart... Day-to-day living was carried out with only a notional nod to the sacred."
In unpretentious prose, foreshadowing something beautiful not yet fully revealed, the novel evokes a forgotten wonder--even as it makes the reader yearn for the next installment.
