“Seamus O’Leary’s Taqueria”

Chicoan and retired Butte College and Chico State anthropologist Mike Findlay wanted to “provide young readers with a cross-cultural lens, so they can foster a better, wider sense of the world’s complexities.” And so was born “Seamus O’Leary’s Taqueria” ($2.99 in Amazon Kindle format from Tlaxiaco Press). 

The novel is a kind of cultural travelog centering around Seamus O’Leary, 22, who “grew up in Northern Ireland, in a fishing town northwest of Belfast, named Ballycastle.” As the Sixties wane and violence of “The Troubles” comes ever closer to his home, Seamus is restless. 

His father, his “Da,” doesn’t understand his leaving—what is wrong with Sea? (“They call me Sea,” he tells his new southwest Irish friend Garret, whom he meets in Seattle. “It’s spelled like the ocean … but we pronounce it … like ‘hey’ with a ‘sh’ in front.”)

The story is full of fortuitous encounters, like with Elizabeth, a “food critic specializing in Mexican food,” whom he meets in a Tijuana restaurant.

Here Sea is introduced to “the little folded things.” Tacos. “This is so good,” he tells Elizabeth, “I don’t want to put it down.” Much later he tells her: “I have a theory that if people can taste the food of other people, the world will be a much better place. The first time I had tacos in Tijuana, it opened my eyes to Mexico.”

Elizabeth responds that things are more complex than that. “There are Americans who eat Mexican food, but have no idea who Mexicans really are…. If someone thinks food or any other single thing is going to make the world a more peaceful, informed place—I think that is naïve.”

But food does play a big part in the narrative as Sea grows in cultural understanding. Marrying and settling in La Paz, in the Mexican state of Baja California Sur, still feeling unmoored, Sea and his family, and many others, are hit by a devastating storm, a “Chubasco.” It will change his life forever.

As Findlay notes at the end, “For me, food, place, and people are a nexus linked to an ever expanding diverse human universe, a kind of cosmic taco if you please.”

“Land Yacht Seaward: Building A Cozy Wooden Camper For A Small Truck”

“For years,” writes Chicoan David Bruhn, “I told my older son, who had a Nissan Frontier, ‘Someday I’m going to build a “yacht in a truck” for you.’ … a wooden camper with as many amenities as possible…. Finally, this past summer, I decided to carry out this goal.”

Bruhn adds that he is “not a builder nor a master woodworker, just a retired naval officer and author who possesses a table saw, chop saw (radial arm saw), small electric and hand tools, and who has access to a friend’s drill press … designing the camper as I went along.” 

Step by step, thinking things through, sometimes getting it wrong, Bruhn worked a few days each week for almost three months, documenting each step of the way, sourcing materials from Chico and Butte County businesses where possible, finding sources farther afield as needed (especially for the key ingredient, marine-grade Philippine mahogany), finally making the successful maiden voyage to Fort Bragg with his wife, Nancy.

Details emerge chapter by chapter, with dozens of photographs and diagrams, from design considerations (the maximum “payload” for the 2015 Frontier is 1100 pounds, including the camper and people) to fitting “Seaward” on the truck and creating the interior. 

It’s all told in a literal nuts-and-bolts narrative in “Land Yacht Seaward: Building A Cozy Wooden Camper For A Small Truck” ($20 in paperback from HeritageBooks.com).

A Foreword, by Lynn Salmon, notes Bruhn kept six considerations in mind: “functionality, cost, attractiveness, strength, durability, and weight.” True to its name, of course, the “Seaward” had to have portholes on the doors. For security, Bruhn kept the locking tailgate. But when it was up and locked, the “Seaward” doors wouldn’t open. Just how Bruhn solved that challenge is part of the charm of the book, a tribute to the creative spirit.

If “glamping” is upscale, glamorous camping, Bruhn introduces readers to “glachting” (“glamour land yachting”). Interested? I can’t read the book for you; you’ll have to do-it-yourself.

David Bruhn is Nancy Wiegman’s guest on Nancy’s Bookshelf on Northstate Public Radio, mynspr.org, Wednesday, June 19 at 10:00 a.m., repeated Sunday, June 23 at 8:00 p.m.

“Wrestling with Demons: In Search of the Real Ernest Hemingway”

Retired Chico State business professor Curt DeBerg, now living in Miami and Hendaye, France, is obsessed with unraveling a mystery about Ernest Hemingway.

“Hemingway went through four wives,” he writes, “alienated his three sons, and betrayed more friends than you can count on two hands. The winner of the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature saw the killing of bulls at the corridas in Spain; he gaffed marlin and bluefin tuna off the coasts of Havana and Key West, and he slayed big-game animals in Africa and grizzly bears in Montana. He was self-absorbed, and narcissistic. He told great yarns in the bars of Paris, Pamplona and Havana.”

Hemingway was driven to be seen as a hero’s hero whose own exploits fed his novels. The truth is more complicated. As a young man, Hemingway, working for the Red Cross, was wounded when a mortar shell exploded in a frontline trench during World War I; his fellow soldier, Fedele Temperini, died next to him. 

Hemingway made much of his own (relatively minor) wounds and concocted a story of how he tried to save Temperini, when in reality Temperini, the true hero, shielded Hemingway from the blast. 

In “Wrestling with Demons: In Search of the Real Ernest Hemingway” (publication information available on DeBerg’s website, curtdeberg.com) the author identifies five “demons” that shaped Hemingway: “his parents’ disapproval, remorse, chronic pain, anguish, and a deep-seated sense of rivalry with other writers and war combatants.” Fear of being found a fake pushed him on.

The book is unique. Each section begins with a letter to Hemingway as DeBerg explores Hemingway’s favorite haunts; that’s followed by a fictional conversation with MDH (“modern day Hemingway”), a biographical essay and finally a warts-and-all memoir in which DeBerg draws out similarities with Hemingway (DeBerg survived a debilitating light plane crash; Hemingway survived two).

This is Hemingway: “Safaris, deep-sea fishing, booze, Europe, women, sex, adultery, plane crashes, betrayals, injuries, illnesses and, finally, suicide.” For DeBerg, “This book has allowed me to address, and even exorcise, some of my own demons as I refer to a famous, larger-than-life man who is, in a very personal way, my kindred spirit.”

“The Mouth Mechanic: A Rick Rose Novel”

If someone steals the crown jewels, it’s time to call in Chico novelist (and retired dentist) Mike Paull because, well, the crown in question is a gold crown, missing from a tooth in a well-dressed murder victim in the Bay Area. 

The crown has something to do with Middle East shenanigans and when a second victim is found, also with a missing crown, the stakes could not be higher for newly hired forensic odontologist Dr. Rick Rose, working for the San Francisco Medical Examiner, Dr. Alexandra (Alex) Keller and also, as Rose adds, “the most beautiful pathologist in the country.”

As Rose notes in Paull’s propulsive new mystery-thriller, “odontologists were dentists who helped in criminal investigations, especially in cases where nobody could identify who the dead guy was.” The novel’s title uses a more descriptive name: “The Mouth Mechanic: A Rick Rose Novel” ($15.95 in paperback from Wings ePress, in print or ebook format at most bookstores and at Amazon.com).

Rose, 35, tells the story. His drinking led to suspension of his dental license and time in “a diversion program—kind of an AA for people who wear white coats and latex gloves.” By the time his license is returned his practice had folded, he and wife Josie divorced, and he was Googling for work. Though he was “ninety-first out of a class of a hundred” at dental school, he’s hired by Keller who is rebuilding the department with millennials.

Things heat up very quickly as Rose tries to figure out the importance of the missing crowns on two ID-less murder victims. Some shadowy figures think he has them. “Yesterday,” he muses at one point, “I had received my third death threat in as many days. Two from a couple of thugs who were certainly doing someone else’s bidding, and the other from a spy for the Israeli Mossad. It was pretty obvious I was close to something worth killing for….”

Readers will be turning the pages as fast as they can as Rose uses every ounce of his sarcastic energy to manipulate the manipulators and find the truth. 

A flawed man, he may yet rise to his crowning achievement.