"Joe And Me: A Love Story Of A Guitar And Her Boy"

In 1933 Victor Marcini, master luthier (a maker of stringed instruments) crafts a special guitar for his soon-to-be born son. Young Joe begins calling her "Wose" and, later, Rose, since she's partially made of rosewood. Readers get the whole story not from Joe, but from Rose.

Rose is a magic guitar. "Joe And Me: A Love Story Of A Guitar And Her Boy" ($13.99 in paperback from Stansbury Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle) is lovingly crafted by Chicoan Carolyn Ayres, combining her own love of the guitar with a deep insight into how the world looks through Rose-colored glasses.

"Although I had no eyes or ears," Rose tells readers, "I could see and hear. Victor had inadvertently activated the tree consciousness that was ingrained in my wood."

Though Rose doesn't talk, she expresses herself in more subtle ways. As Joe's guitar instructor says in wonderment, "I've never seen or heard another like it. When you play it, the guitar seems to be trying to please you by resonating with a tone I can't get from it." That's what love will do. 

Rose's narration is studded with puns (and Ayers provides a short glossary of music terms so those not familiar can join the fun). Yet--and this is hard to explain--the wordplays are not jokey but rather part of Rose's stream of consciousness. 

When Victor's wife, Collette, takes ill, Rose begins to fret. With Collette's death, and then Victor's, Joe flees the area so creditors will not claim Rose for themselves.

Joe, now a teenager, hooks up with a musical group and is soon packing them in with his playing. But Rose's magical sounds attract the attention of thieves, and Rose tells the extraordinary story of what happens over the next decades as she is separated from Joe, yearning to return. 

Rose, it turns out, is not only magically beautiful, but knows it all too well. Events will take her down a peg but that's part of the symphony of her life, a symphony constructed by Ayers with a kind of whimsical clarity that will surely pluck the heartstrings of those who listen carefully.

"The Leon Lewis Band"

According to an author's note, L.M. Levin (lmlevin.com) "is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, in private practice" in Chico. Now retired from working almost a decade-and-a-half in adoption services, Levin has completed his first novel. "The Leon Lewis Band" ($28.99 in paperback, self-published through iUniverse; also for Amazon Kindle) is a novelistic memoir told by Jackie Klein about his talented musical friend Leon (Lee) Lewis.

In the 1950s in Brooklyn, Jackie says, "we were a couple of the few Jewish kids in a predominantly Italian, working class neighborhood. I was a quiet, shy boy. Lee, three years my senior, was outgoing and actively engaged in the struggle to gain respect from the other kids on the block."

Anti-Semitism is rampant. Tough-guy Johnny Emilio rules the streets; his lieutenant, Tony Carpissi, is Lee's bête noire who "went out of his way to run up to him, push, shove, and whisper antagonistic things to him." After Emilio is killed in a robbery attempt Tony disappears. He returns later in Lee's life is a most disquieting way.

Lee, Jackie, and others begin playing music together. Then "Lee went off to college that September of 1964. His college was the streets and highways of America, the bars and clubs where he met new musicians and new friends." Two years later he returns to his old stomping grounds, Café Flo in Greenwich Village, eventually forming a touring band attracting more and more attention, including from the authorities because of the outspoken opposition to the War in Vietnam.

The band includes, as Levin's website notes, "a flamboyant country boy, a hippie manager, a smooth café manager, an eccentric concert promotor and recording engineer." Much of the novel recounts the group's travels out West, to Europe, and south of the border. Lee meets progressive journalist Catalina Blake, whose Guatemalan parents managed to escape the political troubles in their home country by coming to the US. Or did they?

Political intrigue mixes with counter-cultural sensibilities in this "good times" memoir. But always there is the music: "Music is the only thing we know," Lee says. "Music is our lives. We do it because we must. That's just the way it is."