"Intercept: The U.S. Navy's Intelligence-Gathering Ships ('Cold War Spy Fleet') 1961-1969, 1985-1989"

In the early 1960s an "obscure entity" called the National Security Agency wanted to broaden its collection of signals intelligence (SIGINT). In addition to using land-based cryptologists, it worked with higher ups in the Navy to take some of the old World War II ships out of mothballs and convert them into "floating collection sites."

The work of the spy ships, with the first of eleven, the USS Oxford, commissioned in 1961, would end in 1969 after violent and deadly encounters (with the exception of the USS Sphinx monitoring Sandinista government communications off Nicaragua in the late 1980s). 

The ships were virtually defenseless. In 1967, during the Six-Day War, "Israeli forces surprisingly attacked the USS Liberty off the Sinai Peninsula … killing 34 Americans and wounding 171 others." In 1968, the USS Pueblo "was forcibly captured by North Korean forces … in international waters. Eighty-two officers and men were taken as prisoners. The crew was tortured and beaten … and spent eleven months in captivity until finally released on 23 December 1968."

The stories of all the spy ships are told with care and precision by Chico writer Cdr. David Bruhn, U.S. Navy (Retired), using publicly available sources. 

"Intercept: The U.S. Navy's Intelligence-Gathering Ships ('Cold War Spy Fleet') 1961-1969, 1985-1989" ($30 in paperback from Heritage Books, heritagebooks.com), with a foreword by former Acting Under Secretary of Defense Charles L. Cragin, and a cover painting by Richard DeRosset depicting the Korean attack on the Pueblo, also contains 138 historical photographs (including one of John Wayne) along with maps and diagrams.

The Israeli attack on the USS Liberty remains controversial to this day. The evidence points to deadly misidentification, misinformation and miscommunication. The Israelis apparently believed the vessel was a warship; when aircraft attacked "tragically they either shot away the American flag or the halyards burned. The flag was gone by the second and third passes…." The USS Liberty had just four .50 caliber machine guns and some small arms, no match for the air attack and subsequent torpedoes.

Bruhn celebrates the heroism of those who served aboard the spy ships, and "Intercept" is a fitting memorial.

"Breaking Night: A Memoir Of Forgiveness, Survival, And My Journey From Homeless To Harvard"

"I envision my mother," Liz Murray writes. "The symmetry of our lives has become clearer to me lately. She was homeless at sixteen too. Ma also dropped out of school. Like me, Ma made daily decisions between hallway or park, subway or rooftop. The Bronx, for Ma, also meant wandering through dangerous streets, through neighborhoods with lampposts littered with flyers of police sketches and sirens blaring at all hours of the night."

Born in 1980 to drug addicted parents, Murray found herself on the streets after her mother died of AIDS and her father, HIV positive, moved to a men's shelter. Her harrowing childhood, the subject of a Lifetime movie, is told in the chilling and challenging "Breaking Night: A Memoir Of Forgiveness, Survival, And My Journey From Homeless To Harvard" ($26 in hardcover from Hyperion; also in paperback and ebook editions).

Murray was the scheduled keynote speaker for the Jesus Center's spring luncheon at the California Park Lakeside Pavilion, on Saturday, March 25.

As a homeless teen she bounced from friend to friend. "Sometimes we would stay out until the dark sky grew light again—what we in the Bronx called 'breaking night.'" Drugs and booze were plentiful, though, she writes, "I was repulsed by drugs and alcohol and didn't go near either of them." She remembers something her mother said as she was coming down after shooting up: "Lizzy, don't ever get high, baby. It ruined by life. You'd break my heart if you ever got high."

Something inside made her imagine other possibilities; she completed alternative high school, received a New York Times scholarship, got into Harvard after being waitlisted, and graduated in 2009. 

She realized that just as her "homeless friends were once certain that there was simply 'no way out' … homeless person or business person, doctor or teacher, whatever your background may be, the same holds true for each of us: life takes on the meaning you give it … the only time to embrace life fully is now."

"The Wisdom Of Hobbits: Unearthing Our Humanity At 3 Bagshot Row"

"What is needed in life is balance," writes Chico author Matthew Distefano, "between an adventure and a home, between a quest to The Lonely Mountain or even Mordor, and a cozy hole in the ground at the end of Bagshot Row; a home where we can tend to our flower and vegetable gardens, smoke our pipe-weed, tell our tales over pints of ale, and enjoy the company of the very fine and extraordinary Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves, Men, and wizards we have in our own lives."

While Distefano doesn't supply pipe-weed or pints of ale, he does provide "The Wisdom Of Hobbits: Unearthing Our Humanity At 3 Bagshot Row" ($19.99 in paperback from Chico publisher Quoir, quoir.com; also for Amazon Kindle). It's a deep dive into J.R.R. Tolkien's legendarium with an emphasis on the halflings--who prove to be far more nuanced than portrayed in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies.

The book fleshes out life in the Shire (and other Hobbit habitats) and the nurturing of Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam who find themselves unlikely heroes. (Helpful footnotes orient readers; appendices display the author's sketches of the Shire, maps, a listing of three dozen plants grown or farmed in the Shire, and historical Hobbits.) 

"Western culture," Distefano notes, "has, by and large, fallen out of love with the simple life." The foreword, from best friend and writing collaborator Michael Machuga, puts it this way: "It seems more correct to say we work in order to make our relaxation rewarding, than to say we relax to be more productive at work."

Hobbits are tillers of the soil and spinners of tales and though they are not perfect (they are wary of strangers and even of other Hobbits), they can teach Big Folk much about the value of friendship—especially when an "adventure" awaits and, with trembling resolve, they embark on the Road. Distefano opens to readers philosophical/theological questions about free will and providence, sacrifice and loss, and living in the now.

The book is a fitting homage to Tolkien, "the greatest mythologist," and, like a Hobbit, a friendly companion for the daily messiness of life. 

"Help! What Is My Purpose?: Understanding Life Purpose And How To Discover Yours"

A chance encounter with an author in Chico led a reporter to pass along news of a book about finding one's purpose. Writer Ada Anisiobi, with a pharmacology degree, found herself taking a good job that didn't match her passions. "I was a pharmacist working in the telecoms industry," well paid but bored.

Then the breakthrough. "It was only when I stood up as an instructor, training my colleagues, that I experienced some joy. I knew then, without any doubt, that I was created to impart knowledge." And that knowledge is focused on helping others find their purpose. On social media, "I heard young people crying for help, guidance and direction. One girl wrote, 'Please help me, I don't know what to do with my life.'"

"Help! What Is My Purpose?: Understanding Life Purpose And How To Discover Yours" ($13.99 in paperback from 50dot7; also for Amazon Kindle) is Anisiobi's answer. Geared for teens, the book defines life purpose and then helps readers discern their own.

For Anisiobi, "life purpose can be defined as the reason for the existence of an individual human being … the result you're expected to produce during your life." It's "pre-determined, so you don't choose it; rather, you discover what it is." Fulfilling one's purpose is "your contribution to justify the free oxygen the Earth gives you. Purpose is that chore, task, or assignment you were created to fulfill."

Work is crucial. "You ought to pursue a career that's connected to your purpose. You should select one that stirs your passion … and fills your heart with joy." Too much emphasis on prestige careers stifles one's purpose. "Within the Nigerian context," for example, "this pattern is quite common. Many parents expect their children to choose professions for financial and status reasons. They ignore their children's potential…."

Identifying one's purpose means answering a series of probing questions about what one loves or hates, one's strengths and temperament (sanguine, choleric, melancholy, phlegmatic), one's uniqueness. Education is key, and so is hard work.

In the end, she writes, "How about you discovering your purpose and letting the world pay you for it?"

"Heart-Land: Growing Up In The Middle Of Everything (Expanded Edition)"

Chico writer/photographer Doug Keister chronicled his kid years growing up in Lincoln, Nebraska, "the middle kid, born in the middle of the country, in the middle of the century" (1948), in a fittingly titled book called "Heart-Land: Growing Up In The Middle Of Everything." 

That book came out in 2013 but there is more to tell, and so Keister's forty-sixth book is born with the all-new title of "Heart-Land: Growing Up In The Middle Of Everything (Expanded Edition)" ($12.99 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle).

The new book brings in the chapters from the earlier tome, adds a few to round out the kid years, and then takes Keister into an emerging adulthood with little interest in academics but very great interest in dark rooms; well, photography darkrooms. What develops is funny, wry, poignant.

That section concludes with his "death-defying road trip" to California in 1968, but the book itself ends with ten short pieces: "addendums, anecdotes and associated aggrievements." 

That includes the incredible story of what happened when, in 1965, "I acquired close to three hundred 5"x7" glass negatives" from a friend, which turned out to have hundreds of images of Lincoln residents from the early twentieth century, mostly of the city's Black population. But who was the photographer? That took decades to determine, but in 2012, after an exhibition sponsored by Chico State, the Smithsonian's new National Museum of African American History and Culture took notice.

Keister calls himself a "word-miner," starting with teenage fascination about any "colorful word or phrase," including euphemisms, dagnabbit. Speaking of which, in the "Real Sex!!!" chapter he writes of his "first standard-issue embarrassing sex" at 21 in Berkeley. "Intoxicants were involved. In brief (and I can assure you that is precisely what it was) my experience was akin to shaking up a warm can of Coca-Cola for, let's say, about four years, and popping the top."

Now, even though he's technically a "senior citizen," "people often call me Dougie, and most days I wake up with a child-like sense of wonder…. I chalk it up to my great fortune of growing up in the middle of everything."

"Hermosa"

Yesika Salgado "is a Los Angeles based Salvadoran poet who writes about her family, her culture, her city, and her fat body. Salgado is a two-time National Poetry Slam finalist and the recipient of the 2020 International Latino Book Award in Poetry." 

In a presentation entitled "To The Bloom—An Evening of Poetry and Conversation," sponsored by the Butte College Diversity Committee, she will be reading from her work Thursday, February 23 from 7:00-9:00 pm at the Chico Women's Club. It's free and open to the public.

In "Hermosa" ($16.95 in paperback from Not a Cult; also for Amazon Kindle), Salgado completes a trilogy of transformational meditations begun in "Corazón" and "Tesoro." She uses free verse (with few capital letters) to chart the course, through many shoals, of becoming "hermosa" (gorgeous, with a kind of seductive flair).

In "The Trick" the poet confesses: "today I am not a writer. I am my halted Spanish and insecurities. I am fingers that know letters but not grammar. my only degree is my library card. I read someone else's words and shrink. turn into a speck of envy. … can't stop feeling like I am a cheap magician’s trick. if I move too quickly I’ll give myself away. you'll learn, I am only stacking these words together to pull myself out. I don't know how you got here. I wasn't trying to save you. all I have been doing is staying alive."

Staying alive is not always easy. In "The Almost Death," the poet writes: "did I tell you / about the time / I was dying? / about my uterus / that couldn't stop bleeding / the doctors blaming my fatness / and me agreeing / did I tell you / about the time / I couldn't get dressed / because I was more crime scene / than anything…."

There are childhood traumas and times when "love goes sour." Laments, yes, but also a self-discovery that is sometimes sexually explicit. 

In a word addressed to "my love" (the reader?), Salgado writes "I hope within these pages you are also able to find your own beauty, what calls you home, what sets you free. … in full bloom, Yesika."

"The Cat And The King"

Meghan Irene, co-host of the Writing On Air program on KZFR (kzfr.org) and a Camp Fire survivor living in Chico, posted on Facebook (poetmirene) about a story she wrote in 7th grade.

When the fire consumed it, she rewrote "The Cat And The King" ($22 in paperback, independently published) "with the intention of capturing the magic and meaning that I had when I was eleven years old." The story was "brought to life with original watercolor on tea-stained paper" by Steve Ferchaud, illustrator extraordinaire (who sneaked her beloved Mt. Shasta into the background).

"Long, long ago," we're told, "in the Kingdom of Starrybourne, lived a princess named Isabel Wilde. Isabel's father was the infamous King Henry Wilde III … a very greedy man. As a child, Henry longed for attention, friendship, and love. Yet, once Henry was given reign as King of Starrybourne, he cared not for empathy and goodwill."

Trees are chopped down to build castle walls, roads are cut through villages, and where "songbirds once chanted, now only the caw of a lonely raven could be heard."

Isabel, isolated in her castle, dreams of exploring "the emerald forests and cobblestone streets." Later, walking the hallways, she sees "a small cat with a tawny star on his forehead." She calls him Louie, because, why not? When Louie pounces on a strange, glowing emerald, something begins to change in her.

Louie gives her courage to venture outside the castle into the bleak countryside. "If only I could save this land," she tells Louie, "and give back to the people what my father has taken away." That's her desire, and suddenly Isabel remembers the story "about the magical wishstone of the Starrybourne forest … a mysterious gem that could make a single wish come true for whomever held the stone."

Her wish? "I wish you could be King, Louie. I know you would show me how to make this world a better place, and you would use your power to do something wonderful."

And just like that, Louie is King and the King is Louie. What happens next is the stuff of dreams, a valentine to the hope deep within each of us.

"Science And Religions In America: A New Look"

"I'm fascinated," writes Greg Cootsona, "by the way in which cultural forces we call 'scientific' and others we name 'religious' interact (in) a stunning variety." That variety is displayed in "Science And Religions In America: A New Look" ($24.95 in paperback from Routledge; also for Amazon Kindle), written for his undergraduate classes at Chico State, where he is Lecturer in Comparative Religion and Humanities, but immensely accessible to the general reader.

If the mention of "science and religion" evokes the supposed conflict between science and a more literalist Christianity, Cootsona shows things are not so simple. 

His goal, admirably achieved, is to broaden the reader's understanding of how the sciences (think Big Bang or human evolution) interact with multiple religious traditions in the United States (not just Christianity but Buddhism, nature and indigenous religions, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and those who identify as "spiritual but not religious").

Though Cootsona presents historical context, the focus is on our current "age of technology" (an ambiguous "gift" of science) which raises questions: Can genuine Hindu worship take place electronically? What is the impact of what Cootsona calls "streaming spirituality" in his research on emerging adults who no longer identify with a particular religious tradition? 

Each central chapter begins with a "lightning round" Q&A about the tradition's core commitments, followed by a thoughtful engagement on questions of science and technology with experts in the field (including Chico State colleagues Sarah Pike on nature religions, Daniel Veidlinger on Buddhism, and Kate McCarthy on religious pluralism). 

The relationship between the given tradition and science is sometimes tense, sometimes independent, sometimes collaborative. Cootsona resists efforts to reduce every tradition to an ethics of love, noting that one's religious experience is shaped by the surrounding culture and needs to be addressed on its own terms. 

The bottom line is that "religions retain their vitality as they engage contemporary culture and that science is a key cultural player."

"Shadowman"

"Welcome to Vietnam."

Drafted in 1966, nineteen-year-old Phillip I. Elkins (better known today as Señor Felipe, host of "LA Sounds with Sr. Felipe" on Chico's KZFR.org) little knew what awaited him. Years later, living in Chico, flashbacks would haunt his life and become a relationship wrecking-ball.

Elkins is writing a series of autobiographies that capture the eras (and errors) of his life. In "Shadowman" ($20 in paperback from Sr. Felipe Press, srfelipe.weebly.com; also for Amazon Kindle), Elkins tells the story of his life in Chico.

This time he writes in the third person, using his best friend's name as the central character, mixing in excerpts from earlier books, memories from childhood (where Elkins was known as "Cookie") and his year in Vietnam. 

Elkins notes that "Shadowman" was written "when I was having a pretty rough time with things. I was going through my second divorce, and I was letting go of a successful business that I had for several years, and I couldn't seem to find a suitable job."

PTSD leaves him with a "terrible short-term memory, I was explosively angry, and I was constantly exhausted. I felt confused and disorganized…." So the story of "Eddie Pacheco" and his disintegrating marriage to Peaches is dark indeed, especially after Peaches is sexually assaulted by a stranger.

Eddie's anger is palpable. But who to be angry with—an unknown assailant, some higher ups who promoted a purposeless war? After Vietnam he is physically whole but mentally wounded. In one horrific incident, "Eddie throws up again and again. He wanders off, seeing fire burning, smelling oil, gas, flesh, clothing, and bone all burning together. He retches some more. He feels dizzy and weak, and he falls to the ground and lays there, grateful that he's still alive but somehow wishing he wasn't."

Depressed in Chico, thinking of jumping off a cliff in Upper Park, he meets a woman who is about to do the same thing. The two are saved by a ranger with a surprising childhood connection to Eddie. Something begins to change in him; "the shadows are fading," he realizes. 

And there's an old childhood memory, pushing back against the void: "Lookie, lookie, lookie—Here comes Cookie!"

"Horsemanship And Life: A True Story"

For Chico State grad Michelle Scully, taking her horse Wish for an outing in 2011 would end up changing her life forever. Not sensing (or ignoring) the horse's hesitancy, Scully pushes Wish to lope. When a rabbit darts through Wish's legs the horse bolts; Scully is thrown down hard and her back broken. The story is told in "Broken: Tales Of A Titanium Cowgirl."

Eleven years later, in the midst of pandemic and the loss of many of her beloved animals, Scully takes stock in "Horsemanship And Life: A True Story" ($21.95 in paperback at barnesandnoble.com, published by Spinning Sevens Press). 

In 73 short chapters, each with a key quote and photograph, Scully has written a realistic and yet stubbornly optimistic book that will find a treasured place in a reader's heart.

She and husband Pat live on a multigenerational farm in Northern California. Scully notes that 11 is "77 in dog years … when people ask how long Pat and I've been married … it's been 196." 

"I would never have imagined the journey before me," she writes; "a journey of wreck, wonder, and recovery, filled with lessons learned from horses, dogs, birds, and even cats." In getting a second chance at life, she has "learned the beauty of brokenness; of how letting go of my expectations and in embracing vulnerability, I'd find a new way to live…."

Interspersed throughout the book is the tale of Scully's new horse, True. "His head looks like it was dipped in warm milk chocolate, and his body explodes into roan and white and blue…." But True has a mind of his own. 

"One of the most transformative horsemanship lessons I've (slowly) learned is work with the horse before you. Not the horse of your expectations, the horse of your imagination, not the horse in your story, but the actual one you're with, in real-time."

And when the world seems too overwhelming, Scully offers words that came to her while doing chores: "Fire drought politics hate/ They're beyond my purview and beyond anything I can change, but I can water this tree./ I can save crickets./ I can dust around spiders./ I can pray."

"Camp Fire: Day One – 'Rescue People And Don't Get Killed'"

In floods or fires, those charged with protection of the public are the ones moving toward the disaster, often at the risk of their own lives. William "Bill" Sager, former Butte County Fire Chief, now retired from CAL FIRE and living in Redding with his wife, Karen, a volunteer at the information call center during the Camp Fire, tells the story of the tragic fire through the eyes of those CAL FIRE personnel who were in the midst.

"Camp Fire: Day One – 'Rescue People And Don't Get Killed'" ($25 in paperback, published independently through Citygate Associates, available at Barnes & Noble) draws on more than fifty interviews.

In a letter to me, Sager notes that he wrote his book after talking with Incident Commander John Messina on the second day of the fire. Getting the interviews was an emotional process. Firefighters rescued others even as their own homes were burning. "Yet they persevered." Four years later, he says, "many are retired, some on physical disability, some on psychological disability."

Several of the fifty-plus chapters provide overviews of the fire and the Butte College staging area, but most focus on first-hand accounts beginning with Beth Bowersox, dispatcher and "call taker" at the Emergency Command Center, whose responsibility was to name the fire. 

As the severity of the fire became apparent, engines, strike teams, dozers, and air support were all activated. Battalion Chief Tony Brownell was there that first day. As Sager writes, Clark Road "was packed with people trying to escape the fire … he proceeded north to Wagstaff to check on the Kmart parking lot situation. Between two and three hundred cars were jammed in there. … It was a TRA" (temporary refuge area).

Chapters, many containing maps and photographs, detail dramatic rescues as well as tragic losses and the extraordinary interconnection of the stories. What emerges is how often those on the scene had to make split-second decisions to save lives, part of their CAL FIRE training. 

Some who evacuated that day can read, perhaps for the first time, what was going on in their own neighborhood immediately after leaving. 

Sager's work here is simply indispensable.

"The Oosik"

Chicoan Scott Nitzel writes me that his true calling is as an "Earth Explorer who has now journeyed throughout 83 countries, including 17 new ones since Covid first arrived." His experiences provide background to a phantasmagoric novel about "a commonly known relic not only to the Inuits but also the general population." It met with success at Barnes & Noble book signings in Alaska, where the story begins.

The relic resembles a thick walking stick, a little over three feet long, "sleek and smooth with a creamy eggshell color base with swirls of caramelized deep orange … a shiny relic of desire." Specifically, it's a "penis bone from the gigantic, and long ago extinct Arctic Walrus." Inuits call it "The Oosik" ($19.95 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle).

Framed as a historical investigation for the Journal of American Rare Objects, the story traces how the Oosik becomes a "spiritual relic" once artisans etch various images, including a "female face with antlers, which to them was Pukimna, the mother and goddess overseeing the reincarnation of revered walrus and caribou."

The first known trade of the Oosik comes in Western Alaska in 1870 and its perceived value excites thieves and charlatans and even pricks the conscience of a few, before making its winding way back home in 2017. It changes hands again and again, and Nitzel's account of coincidence, comeuppance and weaponization as the Oosik travels the world is enticingly bizarre.

Take laborer Sanford Tinius who brings the Oosik to Mount Rushmore in 1934 where he is assigned jackhammer work on the back of the monument. He imagines the Oosik along with America's "most important paperwork" would reside in a secret chamber "for a future society to discover."

Years later Seoras Surratt, high on peyote in northwest New Mexico, decides to become a cult leader and appropriates the unattended Oosik; but soon it's "placed into the trunk of a mint condition Corvette and quickly driven away" to Arizona where it remains for almost 43 years.

After that, as a group of five friends travel the world exploring religious relics, with astonishing developments, the Oosik eventually arrives home in Alaska--a notable expression of authorial prestidigitation.

"Spending The Winter: A Poetry Collection"

Time to think about time. Joseph ("Jody") Bottum, poet, essayist, and Director of Dakota State University's Classics Institute out of Madison, South Dakota, points to time more than six dozen times in "Spending the Winter: A Poetry Collection" ($13 in paperback from St. Augustine's Press; also for Amazon Kindle).

Bottum's book appears in a 2022 list of most memorable books of the year by former Paradise resident John Wilson, editor of the journal Books and Culture: A Christian Review for all of its 21 years of storied history. 

The poem which gives the book its title observes that "Time's in arrears/ Crankier each frozen morning,/ The water heater groans in warning/ That it will soon give up the ghost./ Nothing lasts in a winter post." Still, the silent snow is worth listening to:

"The mind in winter may find a cleanness,/ A keening wind to clear the meanness/ Of skinflint soul and the chronic day,/ A wind to tear vain thoughts away./ Self-concern, self-esteem,/ Numbed and muted—till we seem/ Nothing but a snow-capped field:/ Draped in winter, smoothed and healed."

Bottum's accessible poems rejoice in form, rhyme, wordplay. In "Reading by Osmosis," the poet can hardly hide the sarcasm: "Percy B. Shelley and Machiavelli/ And Norman Vincent Peale--/ We've never tried opening one of their books./ We know them by their feel.// Does reading seem boring? Does reading seem hard?/ Does reading seem too precocious?/ Just pick up a book and give it a twirl./ You'll learn it by osmosis." … "We bobble, bounce, and throw them./ We never even look./ Osmosis means we know them without opening a book."

For Bottum, winter is not about being snowbound in time, unable to move, but a recognition that even though the world is shrouded in division and death, "Easter Morning" has come, will come, and has overcome:

"Time," the poet writes, "Reaches forward, hungry for winter,/ And what will save my daughter when even/ Hope is caught in the ancient snare?/ A cold fear waits—till all that had fallen,/ All that was lost, rudely broken,/ Crossed in love, comes rising, rising,/ On the breath of the new spring air."

"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.