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.

"A Cruel Oblivion: A Tess Alexander Mystery"

It begins with Bay Area investigative journalist Tess Alexander reading a puzzling news report about a rich family. Rennie Matlock, just 13, used a letter opener to kill her mother, Cliona, an Irish model. Her developer stepfather, Simon Matlock, holds plenty of political sway and eventually becomes a State Senator. Rennie had everything. The murder doesn't make sense.

Thereby hangs a tale in Nevada County writer Joan Merriam's new novel "A Cruel Oblivion: A Tess Alexander Mystery" ($10.99 in paperback, self-published; also for Amazon Kindle). Merriam (facebook.com/JoanMerriamAuthor) writes the Casey's Corner column for this newspaper about the care and feeding of dogs, and wouldn't you know that Tess' sidekick is Cooper, "from Homeward Bound Golden Retriever Rescue."

When Tess, a Pulitzer Prize winner, moves to "the small community of Deer Valley, about seventy miles northeast of Sacramento," Cooper becomes her "Velcro" dog, always sticking close. 

Then, when Rennie herself is found dead, police call it a suicide. Tess is convinced it's murder.

Merriam's novel, she notes on Facebook, "was just awarded the Eric Hoffer Book Award in the E-Book category" and was a finalist for the grand award. Hers is a worthy win. Compellingly written, with smooth-as-silk prose, the story draws readers into Tess' world as she conducts her own investigation.

Family mysteries multiply and so do revelations, and Tess is put in mortal danger. "Truth crept in on languid cat's feet," Merriam writes in one of the book's epigraphs, "in no rush to reveal itself." Doggedly probing behind the scenes, Tess is no one's lapdog. "Much as she loved her work, she hated being associated with the packs of media hyenas that passed for reporters these days...." But looking beyond official press releases could get you killed.

Tess sometimes senses when things aren't right; her skin crawls; visions swirl around her, but they are often cryptic even as they propel her deeper into deadly secrets. When the truth finally makes its way onstage, and there's a reordering of Tess' own troubled past, readers may feel like Cooper, "an amber tornado, racing from one end of the house to the other, dancing circles around Tess." 

Now it all makes sense.

"She's Missing"

"Follow the money." For Chico novelist, retired dentist and licensed pilot Mike Paull, Deep Throat's advice needs a corollary: "Doing so could get you killed." Especially in a spy thriller.

Stakes are high in "She's Missing" ($14.95 in paperback from Wings ePress, Inc.; also for Amazon Kindle), a follow-up to "Missing." In that earlier book a team of Americans from "the Agency," including fifty-something Craig Cooper ("Coop") and forty-something Zoe Fields, track down rumors of a hoard of gold just after Saddam Hussein's death in late 2006.

Now it's late 2010 and desk-bound Coop fields an urgent call from Zoe's domestic partner, Lara Graf, calling from Cyprus. The two are "on holiday" and now Zoe has disappeared from their hotel. It's a gut-punch to Coop. "The last time he talked to his fellow agent and best friend was before she saved his life and disappeared to Zurich with the nine million dollars the two of them had recovered...."

Coop cares little about the money; but now that Zoe is in trouble he must break his promise to his wife, Fran, and their young teenage son, Josh, not to go back to the field.

Then a memo from the Director of National Intelligence reports Israeli Mossad agents are on the trail of a suspected Iranian spy--Zoe. She had supposedly wired the money to a source that would send it to the Mossad Director. Instead it ended up in Iran.

Soon Coop, tapping resources for a Gulfstream G550 and its crack pilot, is winging his way to Cyprus only to encounter Mossad agent Lev Cohen with whom he partners (at least for a while). Lev works for Rachel Kagan and both are answerable to the Mossad Director. Everyone wants to find Zoe. Let's play together!

Coop knows better. Soon Zoe makes contact, the Mossad Director is murdered (Zoe is blamed), and the two must exonerate Zoe by finding out where the money went--and who killed the Director.

Paull's twisty tale and propulsive action unwind a cagey deception as Coop and friends "follow the money." From spycraft to aircraft, and a nail-biting trip into Iran, the novel keeps readers in suspense until the last, bittersweet page.

"We'll Laugh About This (Someday): Essays On Taking Life A Smidge Too Seriously"

Anna Lind Thomas (AnnaLindThomas.com), now living in Omaha with husband Rob and their two daughters, graduated with an MA in Communication Studies from Chico State. While there she met Rob through Match.com and they agreed to an in-person date at Olive Garden. 

That date would change her personal and professional life and result in a fart heard around the country. 

When Anna and Rob first locked eyes, "I don't know how to explain it," she writes, "other than to say when I saw him, I saw my husband." It was love at first sight for him as well, and it's a good thing. They drove over to the mall to do some shopping. And then it hit.

"Gas strikes in two different ways--uncontrollable toots or sharp, shooting pains that feel a lot like dying. I thought I was dying." She made some kind of excuse about not feeling well, but as Rob was driving her home it happened. "A horrific fart cloud. Not in an 'Am I smelling something?' sort of way. More like an 'Is someone dead and rotting in your trunk, and am I in hell?' sort of way."

The tale went viral and Thomas left Chico to take up humor writing fulltime. Her first book is full of common scents, so to speak, as she takes up raising two daughters who want to know about mommy parts, body image ("I'm almost forty now and the chubby girl is still there") and coming to terms with overlarge fears. Does that late night thump mean there's a murderer in the house? Rob, go see!

"We'll Laugh About This (Someday): Essays On Taking Life A Smidge Too Seriously" ($18.99 in paperback from Nelson Books/HarperCollins Christian Publishing and for Amazon Kindle) also comes in an author-narrated audiobook. (Thomas hosts the "It's Not That Serious" podcast.)

Thomas faces multiple miscarriages and a falling out with a business partner. But God gave her a dream even "as a little girl.... I wanted to make people laugh, see themselves in my words, and have hope."

She's not tooting her own horn. The dream really did come true.

"Human Harvest"

The place: San Francisco, near Civic Center, in the midst of the pandemic. There's a village of tents housing the unhoused, set up by the city with daily management outsourced to a nonprofit called Archemy, short for "Architectural Alchemy." The city, we are told in the new novel by Chico State grad Phil Semler, "wanted to get out of the business."

Those who run the village are ex-cons, chief among them Jack Roderick ("Rod"), out of prison "after serving twenty years for second-degree murder." Armed with a sociology degree earned during his stay he soon finds work overseeing the village with its yearly budget of $15 million.

Enter the shady operation called The Harvester Network dealing in the buying and selling of organs, preying on those in tents, enticing them to "donate" a kidney in return for money. 

The organization brokers organs for customers rich enough to pay the extravagant prices. A "doctor" performs the transplant in a room somewhere, and if the donor doesn't survive, the doctor chops them up and sends the parts to a landfill. Or so it happens in "Human Harvest" ($4.99 in paperback, self-published; also for Amazon Kindle).

Semler, a San Francisco resident for some forty years, majored in Philosophy at Chico State back in the 70s. His novel raises ethical questions, certainly, but in some sense it's about the mystery of time. 

For Rod, in prison, "the days go on, they roll out, flatten, and in their heap, you finally get used to the poison of time by taking lesser amounts to get used to the poison of time. This was called many things. Resilience, mutability, getting used to not getting used, becoming a prisoner, lying in bed on a warm summer evening, unable to sleep, listening to the guttural rumble of long-haulers on Highway 50 fixated on time's flow."

Lyricism gives way to love, found and lost (mostly lost), and gross violence. As one character observes, the story is about "forgers, money launderers, murderers, unlicensed physicians, loan sharks, smugglers, cleaners, pimps, fraudsters, drug dealers, organ traffickers, arms dealers, disposers of corpses, assassins, and god knows what."

By the end, readers will be ready for a long, hot shower.

"English Composition: Writing For An Audience (20th Anniversary Edition)"

Longtime Shasta College English instructor Peter Berkow, who two decades ago developed an innovative PBS television series on writing, is now making those episodes available through an ebook.

As Berkow told me in a recent Zoom conversation, ebooks lacked the capacity to stream video but his project changed all that, most notably for the millions of libraries worldwide that subscribe to the popular EBSCO ebooks database. Librarians can easily license the book for patrons, or interested readers can purchase it directly from Amazon.

"English Composition: Writing For An Audience (20th Anniversary Edition)" ($40 in Amazon Kindle format from Peter Berkow Productions) offers twenty chapters, each streaming a half-hour video Berkow created for PBS. 

The book-and-video package covers all the expected topics of an English comp course (narrative writing, comparison-and-contrast, research, editing, and even "writing under pressure"). What sets this book apart is that it's downright fun (and funny) to view (and read). 

Berkow emphasizes writing "in the real world"; each video features interviews not only with Butte College, Chico State, and Shasta College instructors, but locals in a variety of occupations, from police work to engineering--not to mention NFL football coach Bill Walsh, rock icon Joe Satriani, or Academy Award winning writer-director Peter Farrelly emphasizing written expression. 

Chapters introduce the video topic and then consider themes in detail, drawing on interviews with writers including Frank McCourt, Sue Grafton, Charles Johnson and Chitra Divakaruni. Of special note are interviews with Rush Limbaugh and Michael Moore (in their twenty-year-younger selves), each defining "welfare" in starkly different terms and thus opening up a persuasive writing discussion.

Berkow, former editor of this newspaper's "Off the Record" supplement, admits that the book "takes a rather mischievous approach to learning grammar, spelling, and punctuation rules." He finds special resonance with humorist Dave Barry, and warns students not to take Barry too seriously when Barry says of the comma, "wherever you just take a breath, you put a comma in. So, people who are in good aerobic shape hardly ever use commas."

This is the most uniquest book on English comp you'll ever view (just don't ever let Professor Pete hear you say that).

"Running From The Fire"

"My parents emigrated from Ukraine and wound up in East LA, where I grew up in the '40s and '50s." Little Phillip I. Elkins, "a skinny Jewish kid who needed glasses," learned to "pass" as Latino in order to survive in an area "rapidly becoming the largest Latino community outside of Mexico City."

He did so by "becoming a 'cholo' (or a 'pachuco,' or a low rider or street tough).... I dressed like a cholo and talked with a Mexican accent; I stopped hanging out with the white kids and all my friends were Mexican." His nickname was (and still is) Señor Felipe, who these days hosts "LA Sounds with Sr. Felipe" on Chico's KZFR.org. (Earlier he managed Chico Natural Foods and produced a line of organic salsas.)

How Elkins got from there to here is the subject of a series of autobiographies. The latest is "Running From The Fire" ($16 in paperback, published by Señor Felipe Press, P.O. Box 364, Forest Ranch, 95942; djsrfelipe@aol.com) taking Elkins from his early years through high school and some community college, and then, in 1966, being drafted into the Army at nineteen. As the book ends, he is preparing for Vietnam.

It's a raw yet oddly wistful tale of friendships, fistfights, girlfriends, making out, pregnancies, marriages, screwups and mishaps, seasoned with enough barnyard cussing to fill an oversized duffel bag. "Ahh, the joys of becoming an adult," Elkins writes. "What a long, difficult, complicated, and confusing road that seems to be."

Outside his circle he wasn't much accepted by the Mexican community, but he also didn't "know much about being Jewish" (apart from rampant anti-Semitism). His parents were a presence in his life (mostly his mom) but he leaned to fend for himself, more or less. At times, mostly less.

"All I really got out of basic training," Elkins writes, "was experiencing what it was like to be constantly tormented and threatened with 'going over to the jungles of Vietnam where many of you will die, hopefully as quickly and as painlessly as possible.'" His sadistic drill sergeant did not have a way with words.

But Elkins does. Saucy and savory, they tell an amazing story.

"Your Faithful Brain: Designed For So Much More!"

"Joy," writes Christian counselor Leonard Matheson, "is the designated state of a faithful brain, fully integrated with God, within itself and with others. Joy erupts as we're fully engaged in the moment."

After retiring from Washington University in St. Louis, and teaching graduate students in counseling at Covenant Theological Seminary, Matheson and his wife Mary moved to Chico where he is now in private practice, the founding director of Chico-based EPIC Neurorehabilitation & Psychology Services.

Drawing on his work in occupational therapy and neurology, Matheson views Christian spirituality through the lens of brain science. Published in 2014, "Your Faithful Brain: Designed For So Much More!" ($19.95 in paperback from WestBowPress; also for Amazon Kindle), by Leonard Matheson, PhD, is a popular (and very personal) exploration of his findings.

Chapters explore characteristics of the faithful brain (grace-blessed, loving, truth-guided) and include summaries and discussion questions. 

Though Matheson had pushed faith away, he writes that "God was placing in my life people who eventually would draw me back to Jesus, including Danny Munday" whom he met in "Rancho Los Amigos Hospital on the first day of my career, February 3, 1970." 

Shrunken with spinal muscular atrophy (he would die at 15), Danny was totally dependent on others to remove the mucous from his lungs before he choked to death. Yet Danny was joyful; his goal in life was to kiss Jane Fonda (and it actually happened). Matheson learned of "the potential for joy up close to death."

Though people make decisions, not brains, a key insight into more faithful decision-making is the neuroplasticity of the brain; it can change and adapt. "As we practice following Jesus," Matheson writes, "our values begin as ideas we can consider and then test. ... As this process repeats, neuroplasticity gradually creates neural patterns of values that permeate the brain," developing "our character to gradually reflect the character of Jesus."

Such alignment is never perfect; we can't fathom all the possible neural combinations, Matheson says, since there are a "Godzillion" of them. But he is convinced that our brains can be rehabilitated and that we can live a life of joy, even up close to death.

"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.

"Unpacking The Trauma: How To Heal And Create A Life You Love"

Dax Meredith (daxmeredith.com), the pen name of a Chico area author, college instructor and counselor, wrote of her escape from the Camp Fire in "The Sound Of The Snow Geese." Now, in a new book, Meredith offers a comprehensive approach to "Unpacking The Trauma" ($11.98 in paperback, self-published; also for Amazon Kindle).

Subtitled "How To Heal And Create A Life You Love," the book is not intended as a substitute for professional mental health advice. Rather, it offers a series of techniques, in forty-two short chapters, to "take your power back from what was a hurtful or harmful situation ... and then to purposefully focus instead on something positive."

Each chapter begins with a comment made by a hurting person, such as "I can't seem to find my way out of this. When does it end?" Meredith then discusses actions to take and follows with a summary of the steps. She writes with the voice of an imperfect human who has "been there" but who has found a way "to unpack that heavy trauma that is strapped to your body." 

So, "when does it end"? "It might pass like a ginormous, gnarly kidney stone when you are least expecting it," she replies, "but it will pass. Knowing that your situation is (or was) temporary is a key component of getting through it." She recognizes, though, that "with illness, pain, and grief, it isn't taking it one day at a time. It's often getting through moments at a time."

If you can get through the next couple of minutes, or even an hour, "pass the time with healthy strategies. Some of these include ... meditation, prayer, mindfulness, music, aromatherapy, acupressure, imagery, breathing, and mantras. Have a plan in place for what you want to use...."

Meredith's goal is for readers "to begin to see each day as an opportunity to define how you want your life to feel. ... Practice positive thinking (and positive feeling) every single day, and use your energy on what you can change or accomplish, instead of dwelling on the past, fear, or negative thoughts."

Meredith is a friendly and compassionate guide.

"The Doomsday Medallion: A VanOps Thriller"

It's the present moment and the world is on the brink in the new page-turner by Grass Valley novelist Avanti Centrae (avanticentrae.com). One of the characters sums it up: "China just invaded one of Taiwan's outlying islands. And a sixteen-year-old female civilian in France predicted it."

For the teenager, Avril, it's more than a lucky guess. A student of the sixteenth-century seer Nostradamus, who some say predicted the fall of the twin towers, she "received some sort of walnut box from her father as part of her inheritance," a box originally belonging to Nostradamus himself, passed down the family line over the centuries.

Does the box contain Nostradamus' formula for his trances? If the formula falls into the wrong hands, and the invaders can then see the future, including the U.S. response to their aggression, they would be unstoppable.

Enter VanOps, short for "Vanguard Operations," a shadowy CIA organization investigating just such security-threatening "technologies." The team includes twins Will Argones and Maddy Marshall, Maddy's boyfriend "Bear" Thorenson, and Doyle, who has family in Taiwan and who, along with Maddy, belongs to "an ancient sect of royal spies."

The box, it turns out, contains not an herbal formula but a series of cryptic quatrains, a puzzle pointing to a hidden medallion on which all will be revealed. The race is on to decode the poetry and find the object even as sinister forces are bent on the same mission.

"The Doomsday Medallion: A VanOps Thriller" ($17.99 in paperback from Thunder Creek Press; also for Amazon Kindle) is the third in the series, begun with "The Lost Power" and continued with "Solstice Shadows." The new book's deft plotting, propulsive action, and revelations of long-hidden secrets, family and otherwise (who needs Dan Brown?) make for edge-of-the-seat reading.

The quest takes the team to many countries, with threats to life at every turn, but the deepening relationship between Maddy and Bear points to a sweetness in the tale which is underlined by Will, whose wife had died earlier, wondering, as he protects Avril, "what it would have been like to be a dad."

Tender touches, and world-historical implications. Get a clue, and read the book.

"Cartwheels: Finding Your Special Kind Of Smart"

When Tracy Peterson (teachertracypeterson.com) graduated from Chico State, she went on to get her Master's in Special Education. After almost four decades of teaching in California, Kansas, Nebraska, and Arkansas, she's teamed with Little Rock third grader Sloane LaFrance to write a children's book for kids with dyslexia.

"Cartwheels: Finding Your Special Kind Of Smart" ($11.95 in paperback from Et Alia Press) is narrated by Sloane and features whimsical, colorful illustrations by fine-arts major Lindsey Witting. 

"I am six years old," Sloane says. "I love to make up dances and put on shows. I play soccer and take gymnastics. I especially like to do cartwheels. I do cartwheels EVERYWHERE." But something seemed amiss. A year earlier, in kindergarten, while "the other kids were putting sounds together to make words," Sloane was having difficulty. 

One of her teachers told her to "Pay attention. Focus. You know this!" "But," she says, "no matter how hard I looked at those letters ... I never could remember which sounds were supposed to go with which letters....."

In first grade, Sloane didn't want to read; she just wanted to do cartwheels. One day she met with "a really nice lady; Mom and Dad said she was going to ask me to do some things that showed my special kind of smart. We talked and did puzzles."

Then came the diagnosis of dyslexia. How to communicate it to Sloane? Your brain is smart, her parents told her, and "it could crack this reading code ... I just had to learn it in a different way." 

Gradually she is able to make sense of letters and their sounds; now reading is sometimes actually fun. (A word to parents at the end of the book says perhaps one in five people have difficulty "decoding" sounds, letters, and words. There are many strategies since each brain is different, but "early intervention is key" to enable kids to "find their own special kind of smart.")

It was sometimes hard as Sloane worked with a special ed teacher, "and sometimes when my brain was too full, I would even get up and do cartwheels." But not, Sloane cautions, "in the classroom!"

"A Fickle Wind"

Will Russia start a nuclear war? In late October 1962, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy warned the Soviet Union of a "full retaliatory response" if it launched nuclear missiles against "any nation in the Western Hemisphere."

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.

"The Victory Lap: Jack Yerman And His Incredible Journey To The Olympics And Beyond"

"Jack Yerman," the Paradise Post noted in 1984, "is only one of 155 living Americans who earned the Olympic gold medal. Yerman's great moment in sports came in the summer of 1960 in the Rome Olympics when he helped the U.S. mile relay team beat Germany for the gold....  For the record, Yerman ran the then-fastest first leg in Olympic history, 46.2...."

There was another big race, this time in 1970 at the Gold Nugget Days' Donkey Derby. He got a "49" to win with a donkey named "Little-Jack," but that was minutes, not seconds. The next year he won with "Silver," celebrating with sons Bruce and Bryce and his beloved wife Margo, who carried month-old Blake.

Bruce Yerman (who entered the world at "9 1/2 pounds, 2 1/2 pounds bigger than predicted") has now published a warm and well-researched biography of his dad, including key family photographs. "The Victory Lap: Jack Yerman And His Incredible Journey To The Olympics And Beyond" ($14.95 in paperback from BookBaby; also for Amazon Kindle) brings the story to 2021.

Before Margo died of cancer in 2014 she encouraged Jack to buy his dream car (a red Corvette Stingray) and "she suggested he marry again." In July 2018 "he married his new sweetheart, Carol Mattern of Paradise." In November that year, while the couple was in Puerto Rico, word came that Paradise was on fire. Their home was lost, but a friend rescued Carol's dog and Jack's gold medal. The couple rebuilt and returned to Paradise in 2021.

Bruce, Director of Operations, Camp Fire Collaborative, sensitively places family history into historical context as he tells of Jack's formative years (born in 1939) with an absent father and an emotionally distant mother and a "quiet, small, comforting voice" that said "Your time will come." 

Indeed so. He played for Cal in the Rose Bowl, excelled at running, and, later, raised his family in Paradise. Brutus Hamilton, Jack's coach at Cal, and a longtime friend, reminded Jack that even though only one name goes into the record books, "his achievement should be considered a team effort." 

Jack would never forget.

"Hope And Healing: A Dialogue On Ways To Recover From Trumpism And Covid-19"

Rob Burton, Chico State Emeritus Professor of English, is sending a valentine to those who seek common ground in a contentious era. 

In his new book Burton, a baby boomer, imagines a series of conversations with a fictional guide, a millennial named Sophia Morales, humanities professor at Northern California's "Euphoria University." 

Her father is Costa Rican, raised Catholic; her mother Pakistani, brought up "in an Islamic culture"; Morales grew up in the States "in a progressive, medium-sized college town situated just a short drive away from the headquarters of the John Birch Society, an ultra conservative group with leanings towards the Ku Klux Klan."

For Morales, this diversity is a "tapestry" to be celebrated, not a "melting pot" to be boiled down into a "stew." She channels some of Burton's utopian sensibilities but offers practical suggestions for navigating a raft of hot-button topics.

"Hope And Healing: A Dialogue On Ways To Recover From Trumpism And Covid-19" ($9.99 in paperback from Stansbury Publishing) is a concerted effort to move the discussion away from a zero sum game (winners and losers) and into win-win territory. 

As the title indicates, the book is not politically neutral (for both Burton and Morales "good government" has an essential role to play) but insists on articulating a hopeful vision of the future, advocating a dynamic balance between group and individual identity.

Throughout the dialogues Burton raises objections and seeks clarifications. Though he's actually talking to himself, the model of civil discussion is refreshing. Issues include health care, gun control, and criminal justice; women's rights, inequality and poverty; climate change and technology; nationalism vs. globalism; religious tolerance; and immigration. 

"I believe that we can make immigration a win-win social and political issue," Morales says, "if all nations, particularly the United States, welcome immigrants that same way they welcome tourists or any other temporary visitors. They are welcomed with hospitality not treated suspiciously....; they still need their valid documentation."

For Morales, "the Coronavirus magnified and intensified the structural weakness and problems that were there to begin with." Can we make things better? Burton asks readers to dream a little about the possibilities.

"Watergate's Forgotten Hero: Frank Wills, Night Watchman"

Frank Wills is the only African American associated with Watergate, the political scandal that eventually led to the resignation of Richard Nixon and the jailing of those in his inner circle. Yet while Nixon and many of his henchmen found post-Watergate life financially and culturally rewarding, Wills fared far differently.

Adam Henig, who graduated from Chico State, tells Wills' story, from his life in the segregated South to his job as "the security guard who alerted police to a break-in at the Watergate Office Building," to his death from "an inoperable brain tumor" (and other complications) on September 27, 2000.

"Watergate's Forgotten Hero: Frank Wills, Night Watchman" ($29.95 in paperback from McFarland and Company; also for Amazon Kindle) is based on interviews with family and friends that "explore the fate of Frank Wills, a Black man in 1970s America caught up in a power struggle dominated solely by white men."

Henig's research shows "that Frank Wills' actions in the early morning of June 17, 1972, were not a source of heroic pride, but in the end caused him bitterness and disappointment." Wills was 24, a high-school dropout, and, as with others at the scene, hardly realized "that his phone call to the DC police had triggered what would become the first chapter in the uncovering of the biggest political scandal in American history."

In the Foreword by JaQwan J. Kelly, who portrayed Wills in the last scene of Steven Spielberg's 2017 film "The Post," the actor notes that "even heroes are not immune to racial injustice and exploitation."

Wills was born in Savannah, Georgia in 1948. That year, Henig writes, "when the traveling display of the original Constitution and Declaration of Independence came to town ... Blacks and whites had separate viewing lines." And "even the city phone directory was divided along racial lines. If you were a person of color, there was a 'C' next to your name, indicating you were 'colored.'"

Henig's fair-minded portrait notes Wills' own poor life choices along the way, but his sympathies lie with a young Black man who did the right thing at the right time--and in so doing changed the world.

"Invisible Wounds: Mental Illness And Civil War Soldiers"

An enduring mystery of the Civil War, and perhaps any armed conflict, is how two soldiers, faced with unspeakable battlefield trauma, can diverge so greatly in their ability to cope with life when hostilities end. Some do well; others descend into insanity.

Butte College history instructor Dillon Carroll probes what he calls this "hidden history": "Soldiers, doctors, and civilians all grappled with war trauma--the long collateral damage of combat--in ways previously unknown to historians." 

His newly-published book, an extraordinary scholarly study that reads like a novel, examines the coping mechanisms of soldiers (they were not merely victims), the responses of then-prevalent "insane asylums," and how families connected battlefield experience with the decaying minds of their loved ones more swiftly than the doctors.

"Invisible Wounds: Mental Illness And Civil War Soldiers" ($45 in hardcover from LSU Press; also for Amazon Kindle) draws on hundreds of sources, including letters, diaries, and medical records (especially from the Government Hospital for the Insane, known as "St. Elizabeth's"). 

What emerges is a nuanced and measured cultural history of what may well have been PTSD in an age before the advent of brain science and psychiatry (which replaced the work of "alienists" who tried to figure out the causes of a soldier's alienation from society).

Alienists explained madness, without obvious physical causes (like syphilis), as the result of immorality (including "intemperance, masturbation, overwork, domestic difficulties, excessive ambition, personal disappointment, excessive religious enthusiasm, and overweening jealousy or pride").

Not every combatant suffered ongoing mental debilitation. "Black soldiers ..., imbued with a sense of purpose and a desire to strike back at the trauma of slavery, were less susceptible to this than white soldiers."

Almost thirty years after Appomattox, Carroll writes, some "survivors of the war's battles and their aftermath were still suffering with nervousness, kept awake by insomnia, and, when they did sleep, awakened by terrifying nightmares. The boom of the cannon, the gurgle of the dying patient, and howl of the bloodhound haunted the repose of many Civil War veterans."

Carroll's analysis of first-person accounts helps readers understand "why"--and why coming to terms with the hidden wounds of war is so difficult.