“The Last Commando”

Retired Butte College administrator, West Point grad and retired Army officer Les Jauron writes his novels, he says, “to make people think.” The Chicoan’s latest, “The Last Commando” ($15.99 in paperback from Books.by, tinyurl.com/35f4xxer, also available in e-book format) is alternative history ripped from today’s headlines.

The time is close to the present in our own world. Populist U.S. President and land developer Ronald Richland (known as Ron Rich) yearns to be a dictator. Narcissistic and corrupt, the catch phrase that wins him election is “America Up, Government Down, Jesus In, and Illegals Out.”

Demonstrations rise around the country; Rich waits for an excuse to order martial law. He is easily manipulated in an extraordinary plot by a contingent of moneyed Nazis sequestered in a bunker, “established at the direction of Heinrich Himmler at the end of World War II,” located in Nueva Germania “in a remote part of rural Paraguay.”

It's about to happen: An audacious plot to strike violently at the heart of America and to mount a “false flag” operation to convince Americans that a resurgent leftist Antifa is to blame. With Ron Rich’s complicity, the Fourth Reich would be established.

Enter Chris Cadwalader, a Duke University history professor, and his fourth wife, Stephanie Lee, a novelist with a doctorate in Religion (though not very religious herself). During research in Israel, the two learn of the bunker’s existence. A man named Wolfgang Becker has declared himself the new Führer; his acolyte, someone calling himself Herr Adolph. An unsavory bunch with vast wealth enabling them to buy just about any weapon, or person.

Chris, Stephanie and a small group of friends recognize that the bunker must be infiltrated. So Chris and an associate, the gorgeous and gay Gabriella Stern, are chosen as faux husband and wife (with Stephanie’s consent) and supplied with comprehensive backstories.

As the frightful Nazi plan unreels, Jauron’s description of the machinations are chillingly real, a deadly combination of sex, religion, politics, money. An author’s note warns readers “how current technology can be used to manipulate public opinion”--and politicos. “Character matters,” he writes. Near the end, the unimaginable seems inevitable. Can America survive “modern technologies and self-serving politicians”?

“The Goddess & The Pig”

Travel writer Karen Gilden, born in Chico, attending public school in Willows, lived for a time in southern France. During “a walk in the Val de Dagne, a magical place hidden in far southwest France,” just after her granddaughter was born, a curious little story suddenly made itself known. For a writer of non-fiction, that, she writes me, was a surprise.

“The Goddess & The Pig” (in Amazon Kindle format, independently published) is the story of Boris the Boar, “not a boring bore—not one who talks and talks without saying anything….” Boris “lived in a pen in back of monsieur and madame’s house, in a quiet little village beside a stream.”

That hadn’t always been his home. “He didn’t remember being found in the woods as a tiny piglet” and being “given to madame to raise and butcher (for monsieur thought boar meat tasted very, very good.)” But years pass, and madame becomes attached to Boris, pampering him until, one day, she leaves for a time to visit her sister. And monsieur can hardly wait to delight her with boar sausage when she returns.

Boris escapes and later meets up with a charming young girl who calls him “Pig.” “You are in my home,” she tells him. “I am Diana, goddess of the hunt and the hunted; so named by the Romans who long ago built a temple on this hill.” Her goddess-powers are much reduced, though, because few wild animals are left in the woods. Yet she promises to help Pig.

But, Boris asks, doesn’t she help people like monsieur? Yes, she says, “For hunters must eat. But the hunted must live as well. To keep everything in balance was my job. Now, there is only disarray.”

To restore order, Diana must help Boris find a proper family. With rabbits? Not a match. Badgers? No. Then monsieur appears in the woods, with a rifle, and Boris and Diana have, one might say, an arrow escape. Boris resolves to live by himself. “But everyone needs a family,” Diana tells him.

And it will be so in this charming tale of a wise goddess and a Pig who finds his true home.

“Feel, Don’t Flee: A Therapist’s Guide To Facing Your Emotions”

Hayley Kaplan graduated from Chico State with a Masters in Social Work. A licensed Clinical Social Worker practicing in North Carolina, Kaplan invites readers into a series of (fictional) client-therapist sessions that highlight “typical emotional patterns and challenges many people face,” mostly by not facing them.

“Feel, Don’t Flee: A Therapist’s Guide To Facing Your Emotions” ($14.99 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle) offers insightful chapters on “forbidden feelings” (anger, pleasure, fear); “inconvenient feelings” (grief, exhaustion, anxiety); and “unbearable feelings” (remorse, loneliness, betrayal).

“A forbidden feeling,” she writes, “refers to any emotion we suppress because we believe it’s ‘bad’ or shameful.” So “when we attempt to push anger away or bottle it up, we only intensify its impact…. Rather than viewing anger as an emotion to avoid or suppress, it is more helpful to see it as a tool for awareness and self-advocacy.”

Each chapter begins with the therapist’s conversation with a client, followed by a list of misconceptions about the emotion (like “anger emerges out of nowhere”), with examples from the conversation, key takeaways, and “actionable practices.” Since the book is not intended to offer medical advice, the recommended practices often include mindfulness and self-compassion with the caution that professional therapy may be in order.

Helpful perspectives abound. If a person feels that self-care is selfish, a “forbidden pleasure,” Kaplan notes that “Self-care isn’t about ‘me first’ but ‘me too.’ Practicing self-care allows us to recharge so that we can continue caring for others effectively.”

“A crucial aspect of managing anxiety is understanding the difference between what is within our control and what is within our influence” (where “we can take purposeful actions without needing to have everything figured out”).

Those who have been betrayed can feel that they are defined by betrayal. But, Kaplan notes, “Betrayal is an experience, not an identity…. You are not the betrayal; you are someone who has experienced hurt and is actively working to heal, grow, and reclaim your strength.”

The bottom line is that “Instead of viewing emotions as obstacles to avoid, we can see them as vital guides—temporary, instructive, and pointing us toward greater self-awareness.”

“When Sounds Collide: A Novel”

Paradise novelist M. Day Hampton wrote a fictionalized account of former Paradise Mayor Howard Johnson’s life in “Behind Picketwire.” In the early 1950s young protagonist Red Johnson meets an old man named Custis living in the Napa Valley. Custis directs Red and his mom to a safe place, a little town called Paradise.

Hampton (mdayhampton.com) was intrigued by Custis and began crafting his back story, a prequel to “Behind Picketwire.” Now, 147,000 words later, his life and longings are on full display in a magnificent, eloquent, and heart-pounding story called “When Sounds Collide: A Novel” ($23.95 in paperback from River Grove Books; also for Amazon Kindle).

Stretching from the late 1800s to 1953, the novel begins in North Carolina. It is a perilous time for a brilliant young Black boy named Custis, who angers local punks when he accidentally reveals he can read. “His mind could have belonged to a poet, a teacher, an author, or a scientist, but his heart was only ten years old.”

Beaten and left for dead in the woods, his house—and his mother—destroyed in arson, he is saved by young white girl, Sarah Tennison, living at a nearby ranch. Sarah had not spoken since her mother died from cancer, blaming her father and Doc Lyman; but now she gives voice as she seeks help, and over years an unbreakable bond forms between Sarah and Custis, “a Black man forbidden to marry outside of his race.”

Though sheltered and encouraged at the ranch, Custis, desperate to develop his idea of using sound waves to look inside the human body, heads to New York. Through the machinations of three unlikely friends, he passes as a man from Greece to enter the physics lab at Centennial University, “which still would not allow a Black man to obtain a degree.”

The book is a complex story of love and regret, and deep loss, and yet what shines in these pages are truly good and kind people, even in the midst of devastation. This goodness is a kind of “silent sound” which “has been here all this time.” 

The story will draw you in and will not let you go.

“Pacific Coast Bird Finder: Identifying Common Birds Along The Pacific Coast”

For the beginning bird-watcher, storied Chico ornithologist Roger Lederer has just the ticket. It’s a little, staple-bound 64-page booklet called “Pacific Coast Bird Finder: Identifying Common Birds Along The Pacific Coast” ($7.95 from Nature Study Guild Publishers). 

With black-and-white drawings by Jacquelyn Giuffré and Carol Burr, the guide “will help you to identify sixty-three of the most common species” in California, parts of Oregon and Washington, and Canada and Mexico.

Lederer notes that “because there are about 500 species of birds in the Pacific Coast area, bird-watching could become overwhelming. But you have to start somewhere, and a simple book like this is a good choice.” Though birds appear in “taxonomic order, beginning with grebes and ending with songbirds” (and there’s a common-name index at the end), the real joy comes in leafing through the pages to find just the right identification.

Each page features a “sketch of the bird and gives its common and scientific names; body length … and wingspread; some identifying features such as eye stripes, wing bars, tail pattern, and behavior; and icons that indicate its usual habitat.” Here and there little boxes call out items of interest, noting, for example, that “there is no biological difference between pigeons and doves” which, “unlike other birds, can drink water by sucking with their head down.”

The American Robin is “perhaps the best-known American bird.” “Young robins,” Lederer writes, “hatch in about 10 days. After another 10 days they will jump from the nest, even though they can’t fly. Parents will take care of juveniles on the ground until their feathers grow enough to allow them to fly. People mistakenly think baby robins have fallen from their nest and need help. They don’t.”

From the Black Tern to Anna’s Hummingbird, from the Ruby-crowned Kinglet to the Dark-eyed Junco, from California Quail to Steller’s Jay, familiar birds flock in the guide, letting young bird-watchers know that one good tern deserves another.

Lederer has also published a companion guide, in the same format and from the same publisher, called “Bird Finder: Identifying Common Birds Of Eastern North America,” with sketches by Roger Franke and Carl Burr.

“American Laughter, American Fury: Humor And The Making Of A White Man’s Democracy, 1750-1850”

Eran A. Zelnik, Lecturer in the History Department at Chico State, observes that “The riot at the US Capitol of January 6, 2021, was violent, but the atmosphere was curiously jubilant.” It had a “carnivalesque” atmosphere, “a celebration of a world … where there are no inhibitions and the id reigns supreme…. For many of them, they were restaging the American Revolution, and quite aptly they came in high spirits.”

This mixture of violence and cosplay did indeed have its roots in the Revolutionary period. “Many of the events leading up to the Revolutionary War, such as tarring and feathering and the Boston Tea Party, were done in the spirit of levity and play.” For the rioters, it was like “the call to arms at Lexington and Concord, the moment in American memory when common people rose up spontaneously to fend off tyranny.”

Zelnik, who grew up in Israel, finds a deeply troubling theme of racism where “being a white man in America has meant being defiantly uninhibited, even giddy, when enacting one’s manhood and nationalism.” 

“American Laughter, American Fury: Humor And The Making Of A White Man’s Democracy, 1750-1850” ($64.95 in hardcover from Johns Hopkins University Press; also for Amazon Kindle) focuses on the “spirit of laughter, mirth, and play” in tracing “how genuine commitments to democracy became wedded to violence and exclusion” (if you don’t “get” the joke).

For Zelnik, the key to understanding humor’s function in making “violence and oppression … palatable or even enticing” is the yearning of white male colonial settlers to see themselves as “indigenous.” “Blackface minstrelsy,” for example, “was part of a culture that rendered blackness an inherently comical and degraded category.”

In the “American experiment in self-rule,” Zelnik notes, humor created an “environment in which only white men could feel comfortable in their own skin.” The militia movement of “merry men” from Revolutionary times is a way for “white men to transform themselves through shared masquerade into ‘true’ natives and to claim ‘their’ land.” Think also of the violence visited by the masqueraded Ku Klux Klan.

Weaponized humor, it turns out, is no laughing matter.

“The Head Case: A Rick Rose Novel”

Heads up, dear reader. Retired dentist and Chico writer Mike Paull is back with a second Rick Rose murder mystery featuring the handsome, 37-year-old forensic odontologist working for San Francisco’s Chief Medical Examiner, beautiful Dr. Alexandra Keller. Keller has given Rose, a recovering alcoholic, a second chance after he loses his private practice.

A forensic odontologist is a “mouth mechanic” (the title of the first book in the series), “a dentist who uses clues from the corpse’s mouth to give it an identity before it’s buried and forgotten.” Rose is a detective, narrating the twists and turns of his investigation, his sarcasm tempered by humbling experience (including violent encounters).

“So, here I am in 2022,” Rose muses, “after surviving a painful divorce, professional disgrace and the Covid pandemic, making more money than I’d ever dreamed, and getting to spend a lot of time working for Alex. Except for the formaldehyde, it’s a damn good gig.”

The biggest test yet comes in “The Head Case: A Rick Rose Novel” ($15.95 in paperback from Wings ePress, Inc.; also for Amazon Kindle). “Until now,” Rose tells us, “my job had been to identify dead bodies, so I wasn’t sure where to go with this one. There was no body—just a head.” And it was burned, as through fire. Though there is nothing remarkable about the teeth, Rose discovers some unique dental surgery that starts him on a dangerous exploration all the way to the little town of Batesville, Arkansas. It’s not as sweet as one might think.

Rose’s personal life is mixed in. He is taken with Alex, though he doesn’t tell her, and instead begins dating another beautiful woman named Viv after a chance encounter. Added to the mix are homicide captain Mike Kelly (whom Alex is sort of dating) and Jim Allen, an investigator whom Alex had formerly dated (until she “saw through his narcissistic personality”). And oh, yes, Josie, Rose’s ex, who wants him to finance some hairbrained business idea.

Somehow they all contribute to heading Rose in the right direction and to a surprise revelation. It’s a fast-paced thrill for mystery fans with relationships that transcend dental medication.

“Why Do Bats Hang Upside Down?: Still More … Fantastical Questions”

Chicoan Jennifer Kuhns (facebook.com/jenniferkuhnsauthorspage) specializes in writing children’s books featuring disabled characters, helping kids “understand that being different isn’t a bad thing.” Though cerebral palsy is her physical disability, it doesn’t define her and she continues to explore the world from her wheelchair.

Taken with quirky science questions children (and adults) might ask, Kuhns wrote “Do Birds Sneeze?” which focuses on the natural world and encourages kids to ask their own investigative questions. Questions abound and that has led to a second science book, “Why Do Bats Hang Upside Down?: Still More … Fantastical Questions” ($13.95 in paperback, independently published).

Full color, full-page illustrations by Steven Kistler add whimsy to the questions, like “What makes your nose itch?”, “How high does a thermometer go?”, “Do chickens faint?”, and “What makes people stink?” (hint: bacteria mixing with sweat).

There are also more down-to-earth queries, like “Why do cats and dogs lose their hair?” “Shedding,” Kuhns writes, “is a normal part of life for animals. Shedding helps to remove dead hair and release natural oils in the skin to keep them healthy. If dead hair does not get removed, the skin can become irritated.”

“Do birds sleep?” “Yes. But have you ever heard of sleeping with one eye open? Usually that is how birds sleep, with one eye open and with half of their brain awake…. This adaptation or way of sleeping is called unihemispheric slow-wave sleep and keeps birds safe.” When it’s dark and quiet birds “can sleep deeper with both eyes closed and both halves of their brains resting.”

On to bats. “The problem with flying for bats is that they are too heavy to take off from a standing or motionless position. This is called ‘the ratio of weight to lift capacity of the wing.’ Phew … that’s a mouthful. To make up for the bat’s inability to jump up and fly like a bird, Mother Nature (evolution) decided to hang them upside-down so they could drop from a branch and just start flapping.”

A page at the end invites readers to write their own fantastical questions—and then to research and find the answers.

“Phaedra”

Can love blossom in a French cemetery? Well, perhaps, if it’s the Père-Lachaise, “the first garden cemetery in the world,” established in 1804 and the resting place of Jim Morrison, lead singer for the classic rock group The Doors.

In the sequel to “Ember,” Chico novelist-photographer and cemetery symbolism expert Doug Keister brings cemetery symbolism expert Jerry Jensen to the Père-Lachaise. He’s there with Ember Owens and Ember’s daughter (on the cusp of turning 21). Her name? “Phaedra” ($12.99 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle).

Phaedra is there with her new sculptor friend Pierre, who in a short time is becoming more significant in her life. The trip is intended to be a healing time for Jerry, Ember and Phaedra after their trauma in the States, when a psychopath named Jason Lewis kidnaps both Phaedra and Ember. (Jason murdered his ex-wife Amber after she married Jerry. Complicated? Yes.)

Ember and Phaedra both escape, but there’s a fire and Jason is horribly burned. He’s still alive and in the new novel bent on recapturing his prey.

Yet, especially in the first half, sinister doings give way to Jerry’s guided tour of some of the key monuments in the cemetery (complete with dozens of Keister photographs). An extensive appendix after the novel ends expands on many of the monuments, including those of actress Sarah Bernhardt, composer Frédéric Chopin, writer Gertrude Stein and partner Alice B. Toklas, and mime Marcel Marceau. Keister also explores catacombs, a repository of skulls and bones, which play an important part in the novel’s action.

It's really inner action that is the focus, though, as Phaedra comes to terms with having been given up for adoption by Ember (who was raped as a teenager) and needing not only to understand why, but to find herself. Responding to Jerry’s stories, she keeps asking herself “What were the dead trying to tell her?”

Keister’s novel is a monument to monuments but also raises the question, as Phaedra’s life unfolds, “What are the living trying to tell us”? 

Doug Keister is Nancy Wiegman’s guest on Nancy’s Bookshelf on Northstate Public Radio, mynspr.org, Wednesday, January 22 at 10:00 a.m., repeated Sunday, January 26 at 8:00 p.m.

“The GLP-1 Lifestyle: Transform Your Metabolism & Achieve Lasting Weight Loss With Or Without Semaglutide”

Anesthesiologist Joshua Hackett grew up in Chico, attended Chico State, and now practices in Humboldt County. He has a “passion project: increasing metabolic health for the general population.”

Hackett’s project is carefully presented in “The GLP-1 Lifestyle: Transform Your Metabolism & Achieve Lasting Weight Loss With Or Without Semaglutide” ($14.99 in paperback, independently published, see facebook.com/groups/glp1lifestyle; also for Amazon Kindle). His book is for educational purposes and is “not a substitute for professional medical advice.” 

“Semaglutide,” he writes, “is a medication initially designed to treat type 2 diabetes”; it’s also proving effective in “harnessing the power of our own biology, targeting the hormonal imbalances and physiological mechanisms that contribute to weight gain. At least that’s what the commercials want you to believe. Of course, part is true, part is false, and part is unknown.” (A lengthy bibliography points to medical journal articles as well as non-academic sources.)

Semaglutides are GLP-1 “receptor agonists” (binding to a cell receptor producing a similar effect as the body’s natural function) which are in such medications as Ozempic, Wegovy and Rybelsus. “GLP-1 influences digestion by slowing down the rate at which food leaves the stomach,” stimulates “insulin release from the pancreas,” and sends “a message to the brain that we’ve had enough to eat.”

There’s great detail about how GLP-1 works but Hackett alerts readers to side effects (some severe)--and the rebound, when weight comes right back. Instead, “the goal is to utilize semaglutide as a catalyst for change, a springboard to a healthier lifestyle that can be sustained even after the medication is discontinued.”

The second half of the book details a holistic approach to weight control, focusing on exercise and meal plans that aid one’s gut health; the gut “produces GLP-1” and “is the epicenter of the entire immune system.” Hackett also encourages sunlight exposure (for vitamin D production) and “grounding,” putting bare feet on the earth, which aids in stress reduction. And, if needed, supplements.

Hackett refrains from exaggerated claims, even for measures he advocates. His focus at the end is on healthy habits and not wonder drugs, however wonderful they may be. 

“When The Cows Lie Down: The Reason People Quit You—Their ‘Leader’”

Retired Air Force Chief Master Sergeant Dave Nordel grew up in Orland. While the Air Force “made me a medic” the cows in Orland made him wise. 

“As I grew older,” he writes in his winsome guide to leading, “and became a contributor to the daily activities it takes to run a farm or an orchard … this required a few roles to ensure I did it right. One role is a trainer and leader, one is a cheerleader, and one is a mentor.”

“Back then,” he adds, “the coffee was a must before you started the milking. … The best of all was you got your cup, went to the first cow to be milked, and squirted your cream right from the cow into the cup. It was heaven….”

Years later, on a fishing boat with friends, he noticed cows near the dock all hunkered down. That meant bad weather was on the way. So now he asks those in charge: “What are the cows doing, do you still check, do you notice the changes, or have you quit paying attention to the subtle (or not-so-subtle) signs of a pending storm, illness, or problem with our followers or processes?”

“When The Cows Lie Down: The Reason People Quit You—Their ‘Leader’” ($19.99 in paperback from Max Fab Consulting; also for Amazon Kindle) illustrates leadership principles from farm experiences; Nordel’s time as a medic in Iraq (where “we had some terrible incidents of suicide and near-death, self-inflicted injuries … And what did we quit noticing or doing?”); and as a consultant (maxfabconsulting.com) showing leaders how to maintain “Maximum Fabulous” attitudes—bringing one’s best to a war zone or an office team in danger of “lying down” or quiet quitting.

Along the way readers meet those who have been transformative in Nordel’s life, like Paul, his First Sergeant (“Shirt” for short), who later developed “severe cancer. He was scared—not scared of dying but scared of quitting. He didn’t want to quit his people, quit his family, and not answer the call.” Attitude, he told Nordel, “is everything.”

The book exemplifies vulnerable, compassionate, and effective leadership.

“Life In Transition: Essays And Diversions”

“I was born in Chico,” author Karen Gilden writes me, though she spent most of her public school career in Willows. Her dad worked for the U.S. Forest Service there and “Mom was the secretary at the grammar school in Willows for years.”

She went to Chico State for a year, but really wanted to travel. In 1970 she and her husband, Ray, moved to Eugene, Oregon and in 1977 spent six months journeying through Europe and the USSR. They lived in Turkey and southern France. She became a freelance writer, blogging (“Random Vectors” on Substack) and writing books.

After Ray passed away early in 2018, Gilden began compiling some of her and Ray’s favorite travel pieces. “Life In Transition: Essays And Diversions” ($12 in paperback; also for Amazon Kindle) is a celebration of cultures and the natural world, and a poignant account of caregiving and loss.

“The poet John Berryman once said, ‘We must travel in the direction of our fear.’ He was speaking, I think, about the fear that nibbles away at our self assurance, the fear that cramps our gut, inhibits creativity and risk-taking, and denies us the right to shine in front of strangers. And somehow I find that, unaware and without forethought, I have followed Berryman’s advice. … There is nothing better I think, than putting yourself in a difficult position and coming out of it whole, and travel is an engaging way to do that. It may even be addictive.”

In 1996 they moved to a small town in Turkey. “Nothing mechanical ever seems to be junked here, it gets rebuilt and repainted and repaired and resold and recycled and redeemed.”

Now, without Ray’s voice, Gilden must find her own way. “There is no pattern to grief,” she observes, “and that lack of pattern makes it confusing and difficult. Just when you think things are looking up, down you go.” Her heart “makes room for boundless love and seemingly endless grief.” It is a painful transition, as one year, one era, gives way to the next. But it is also a hopeful time because, she writes, “there’s still so much to see.”

“Advent: The Season Of Hope”

“Part of why we observe Advent,” writes Episcopal priest Tish Harrison Warren, “is to make Christmas weird again, to allow the shock of the incarnation to take us aback once more.” Advent (from a Latin word that means “coming”) begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas, “which through each passing week will slowly unfurl the story of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, ascension, and sending of the Holy Spirit.”

Advent closes with a focus on the coming of the Christ Child celebrated on Christmas Day. Yet, as Warren points out in “Advent: The Season Of Hope” ($20.99 in hardcover from InterVarsity Press; also for Amazon Kindle), Christians believe “not just in one coming of Christ but in three: the coming of Christ in the incarnation, the coming of Christ in what Scripture terms ‘the last days,’ and the coming of Christ in our present moment, through the Holy Spirit’s work and through Word and sacrament….”

Her book is a warm and accessible entry into Advent’s four weeks of waiting, hoping, anticipating. In five short chapters (Yearning, Longing, Crying Out, Stirring, Approaching) she melds church history with her personal story of coming to terms with Advent. By that she means what she first thought was a month-long preparation for Christmas was actually about much more. “I was surprised to discover … that Advent is uncomfortably and unavoidably apocalyptic, more concerned with a vast cosmic battle than dashing through the snow in a one-horse open sleigh.”

It's not about bad second-coming theology, which produces fear, but the yearning for the return of Christ “in glory,” where “Death will be undone. Tears will be wiped away,” where “all of our longings meet their end in Christ coming again, bringing healing, peace, joy, and an unimaginable wholeness in his wake.”

The coming of the Holy Spirt at Pentecost created the church, however imperfect, and, as she quotes theologian Michael Horton, who grew up in Paradise, it is now “the age that Jesus inaugurated … disrupting the powers and principalities that keep us from recognizing him.”

And so, she writes, “We need him to come to us, to rescue and restore us, even today, in our everyday lives.”

“Cenzontle: Poems”

Marysville author-poet Marcelo Hernandez Castillo recently spoke to Butte College students, reading from his memoir “Children Of The Land.” An immigration advocate and part of the college’s Diversity Speaker Series, Hernandez Castillo was born in Tepechitlan Zacatecas, Mexico, studied at Sacramento State, and “was the first undocumented student to graduate from the Helen Zell Writers Program at the University of Michigan.”

His award-winning book, “Cenzontle: Poems” ($17 in paperback from BOA Editions Ltd.; also for Amazon Kindle) is a kind of ever-changing song: “The song becoming the bird becoming the song.” “Cenzontle,” we are told, “means mockingbird in Spanish and comes from the Nahuatl word centzuntli, which refers to one who holds 400 voices or songs.” The voices are many in these poems, the meanings elusive. 

The young poet grasps for meaning as well. In the title poem, the mockingbird echoes something beyond words even as the poet is trying to find just those words. “Can you wash me without my body/ coming apart in your hands?/ Call it wound--/ call it beginning--/ The bird’s beak twisted/ into a small circle of awe.// You called it cutting apart,/ I called it song.” 

Behind many of the poems is Hernandez Castillo’s own story and the story of undocumented family members, deportations, a severe life in the home country and uncertainty in the States. 

And a father who beat him with a white belt he called Daisy. “And after it’s over, we know we have both become men./ Him for the beating,/ and me for taking his beating.” Yet somehow it’s an act of love: “I love you Daisy.// My father’s hands will love a man/ at the first sign of weakness./ I am weak/ therefore, I gather that he loves me.” It is a complicated relationship.

They all are: “We made love then argued,/ or, argued then made love.// It didn’t matter either way,/ everything had the aftertaste of gasoline….” Then: “I only wanted to look far enough back/ to see where I split in half.// How dumb we were/ endlessly searching/ for a definite shape/ our longing would take.// I leaned into you,/ all of you,/ as if in chorus.” 

The song lives.

“Letting All The Light In: Gracefully Surviving Illness, Injury, And Grief”

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." But she is also dealing with a years-long debilitating illness. 

“Both the illness and the fire almost killed me,” she writes in “Letting All The Light In: Gracefully Surviving Illness, Injury, And Grief” ($15.99 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle). “Twice now I have been much closer to death than I like to consider. But I am a better person because of it. … I am more patient, more grateful, more present in the moment each day because of those events.”

This is not a story of “arrival” but an ongoing journey as Meredith navigates the health care system and returns with cautionary tales. 

The book’s three parts include the harrowing memoir of her mysterious illness where, she writes, “The left side of my face was numb for almost a year. … My spine was numb. I remember constant and continual migraine headaches. The pain was excruciating. I remember endless vomiting, blurred vision or partial and temporary blindness, and on several occasions, hallucinations.” She adds: “As a general rule of thumb, hallucinations are just not a good sign.”

The second part features short interviews with two dozen sufferers, of all ages, each presenting the biggest challenge (including grief at the loss of a son and wife, amputation, addiction, miscarriages, multiple cancers, depression), resources used, the person’s belief system (some are Christian, some “spiritual,” some have no professed religious commitment), what others need to know, the roughest parts, and what wisdom has emerged. The accounts are devastating, gut-wrenching, in part because this is you or someone you know.

The final section is practical advice; Meredith covers everything to be aware of, from how to talk with one’s children to fighting the judgment from others and oneself. “I don’t believe all the bad things that occur are a punishment from God. But there are lessons in the bad things that happen to us.”

With graceful kindness, Meredith may well change how you understand your very life.

“Even Broken-Winged Divas Can Fly”

Forty-something Chicoan Jennifer Kuhns (www.jenniferkuhns.net) has published more than a dozen books. “I write children’s books,” she tells readers in her latest memoir, “most of which have a disabled protagonist with a strong and positive character and attitude. Well, maybe a little bit of a snarky attitude … What can I say? I put a little bit of me into all of my characters.”

Her own story is told in “Little Diva On Wheels: Growing Up Differently-Abled” and now “Even Broken-Winged Divas Can Fly” ($16.95 in paperback from Shalako Press) which focuses on her high school and college days. Born ten weeks early, diagnosed with spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy, Kuhns notes that while “my fine motor manual dexterity is basically non-existent,” she has “the ability to memorize like a freaking elephant.”

This “broken-winged diva” has a penchant for literary symbolism, “a strange sense of humor,” a competitive instinct, and self-advocacy.

Her cerebral palsy affects speech. “I can say the word. The problem is ‘saying’ and ‘enunciating’ a word are two absolutely, completely, different animals.” Most of her family members, friends, and those who have interacted with a disabled person understand what she calls her “CP-babblelistics.” She is “greeted, not ignored. I was spoken to, not at. I was not made to feel like I had leprosy. And I was verbally understood.”

Perhaps other adults lack the patience or are afraid, but there is no rancor in Kuhns’ description. Instead, she reveals a well-rounded life, including raising a sheep and an awkward relationship with her mother: Mom is the boss at home, but she is also hired as an aide by the Department of Rehabilitation and so Jennifer is her boss at school.

“I’ve not always been happy about my condition, my situation in life. I’ve been mad, and I’ve been sad, and I’ve hated the body I’m in.” And yet, “I know how to harp like nobody’s business to get what I need, want, or think I should have … not that it always works.” 

A color section at the end showing some of her tattoos (one for each book published), receiving her MA, and newspaper clippings, demonstrates that something very much worked.

“Welcome Back To The World: A Novella & Stories”

Rob Davidson teaches creative writing and American literature at Chico State. His new collection of stories takes readers to the precipices of life. “Welcome Back To The World: A Novella & Stories” ($24.95 in paperback from Cornerstone Press) offers deeply felt characters and a trajectory of hope.

In “Unfinished Business,” Mark, a single dad with his daughter, Claire, attending Sac State, learns that his wayward ex-wife, Solange, has been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. And now Mark will be forced to take her into their household.

“The Photograph” is about a campus budget analyst captured on film by a famous street photographer. “I like predictability and routine. I favor a closed system with known parameters.” Then he becomes the star of a prestigious gallery exhibition.

“Buxiban Blues” is set in Taiwan at one of the many buxibans or “cram schools” for learning English. Director Will is an American ex-pat who pleases the parents because he’s white; his star teacher, Margaret, California-born with Chinese ancestry, has a more difficult time. “They were two loners and outcasts, each lonesome and sad, each struggling to find new footing in the world.”

“Packing Out” is a harrowing tale of Jon’s fishing junket with his gruff father which goes tragically wrong. In “Search for Florence” actor Van Wheeler searches for legendary Michael Florence in Spain, finally relying on intuition, “an urging beyond language or reason, what could only be described as a yearning.”

In “Parallel Lines” Grant is a middle-school student who falls for classmate Melinda Díaz and must confront his pal’s racism. In “Welcome Back to the World,” the novella traces the aftermath of Dennis’ decision to leave a Buddhist monastery after seven years. He must face trauma, betrayal--and his own hollowness.

Davidson’s stories are like the Zen koans Dennis describes. “A koan doesn’t point the way directly, but works subtly via innuendo, suggestion, and ambiguity.”

Rob Davidson is Nancy Wiegman’s guest on Nancy’s Bookshelf on Northstate Public Radio, mynspr.org, Wednesday, November 27 at 10:00 a.m., repeated Sunday, December 1 at 8:00 p.m. He’ll be signing books Thursday, December 12 at Chico’s 1078 Gallery beginning at 7:30 p.m. The public is invited.

“Number Mania: A Visual Exploration Of 0 To 100”

Chico mathematician Scott Lape, aided by Madrid-based illustrator Víctor Medina, will make readers fall in love with digits. Even if you don’t like math, he has your number. Actually, 101 of them.

In “Number Mania: A Visual Exploration Of 0 To 100” ($19.99 in hardcover from Odd Dot/Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group) Lape and Medina provide a carnival of number lore on every page not just for kids ages 6 through 12 but for adults as well. 

We’re surrounded by numerals, in street signs and digital clocks, but things get really interesting when we start counting. “The number representing a group of objects only has meaning if there’s somebody looking at the objects, counting them, or wondering, ‘How many are there?’” 

Each number has its own mathematical personality and each colorful, whimsical page looks at how the number is expressed in other languages, its factors, a bit of numerical history, and a section that’s just wild about that number. There are 64 colors in many Crayon packages; Forty-Four is a small town in Arkansas; “The traditional gift for a 70th wedding anniversary is something made of platinum (element 78).” Bowling balls can’t weigh more than 16 pounds.

You’ll see 36 on a yardstick, of course, but also “there are 36 counties in Oregon. There are 36 black keys (and 52 white keys) on a piano.” In Judaism, “the commandment to be kind to strangers is found 36 times in the Torah.”

Zeroing in on nothing, Lape writes that “The idea of ‘none’ being a number took a long time to catch on…. The first known use of a small circle to represent zero was in 876 CE in India…. Now we have a bunch of words that mean 0: nada, zilch, zip, diddly, and diddly-squat! … There used to be a town called Zero in Iowa—but sadly, its population is now 0.”

You’ll have fun with this book. Count on it.

Scott Lape will have a book signing at the Chico Barnes & Noble on Saturday, November 23 at 1:00 p.m. And listen to a recent Nancy’s Bookshelf interview with the author by host Nancy Wiegman at www.mynspr.org/show/nancys-bookshelf.

“And I Love Her Still”

Chicoan Pamela Dean “was a wildland firefighter in the early 90s and worked on engine 4 out of Adin,” a small town (fewer than three hundred residents) in Modoc County. Though an injury ended her career, “she was proud to be a part of the group of women who forged the way.”

Adin in 1988 is the scene of what is billed as a “heartwarming romantic comedy,” but what Dean delivers is so much more. It’s a literary tour de force that propels the reader to the very end and takes no prisoners along the way.

“And I Love Her Still” ($19.99 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle) introduces two combustible characters in Kenny, a beautiful badass woman firefighter and EMT (who handles a chainsaw with finesse), and 32-year-old Patrick, a handsome but disillusioned Seattle mystery writer who inherits a ranch near Adin. Sparks, as they say, will fly. 

Kenny and Patrick narrate alternate chapters throughout the book, always in the present tense, and the reader listens in. They are no strangers to barnyard epithets or explicit descriptions.

“Her features,” Patrick muses to himself, “are a contradiction, sweet and innocent with a touch of sin. … She has dark-brown eyes and a bunch of freckles across her nose and cheeks. She is tanned … and damn is she fit.” “He is actually kind of adorable,” Kenny thinks. “Bumbling professor kind of cute. I mean looks-wise he is a hot professor type. Dark hair and brilliant blue eyes.”

As self-deprecating Patrick gets to know the ranch that belonged to his late great-uncle Mitchell, and read his cowboy poetry (and eventually write some of his own), he finds he’s entangled in something of a family mystery. Kenny is plagued by Ryan, a young crewmember on the prowl for women, and the love lives of both Kenny and Patrick are pretty much on the skids. Until they meet.

I couldn’t put it down.

The author will be having a book signing party November 13 at the Blue Agave Room at Tres Hombres from 6:00-8:00 pm. The cover painting is by local artist Virginia Wright who will be offering hand-painted bookmarks at the signing.

“Stand Easy: Creating A Small British Pub And Considerable Comradeship In The Corner Of A Garage”

For Chicoan David Bruhn it happened almost by chance. After weekly mountain biking with longtime friend Pat O’Connell, the two would “sit at a small bar in my garage and enjoy a beverage—he a bottle of water, and I a bottle of beer. (I attribute these choices to his having served in the U.S. Air Force and I in the U.S. Navy.)”

The bar was something like a British pub, and over seven years, with input from a group of friends, it took on real character, befitting the real characters who frequented “Stand Easy” (a military term meaning “take a break”). And now Bruhn has published an account of its construction, filling it with a hundred photographs and diagrams, stories from the friends who meet there regularly, and an assortment of British pub jokes.

“Stand Easy: Creating A Small British Pub And Considerable Comradeship In The Corner Of A Garage” ($23.50 in paperback from Heritage Books, Inc.) is not just about the artifacts that populate the pub, including a hand-made chandelier of 9 wine bottles with their bottoms cut off, but “about building friendship and espirit de corps.”

Bruhn writes that “moderation is the key” during “our weekly use…. The Stand Easy is formally open between 5:30 and 7:00 p.m. During this time everyone enjoys at most two drinks and a home cooked meal prepared by my wife Nancy or Rich Varlinsky.” (Recipes in an Appendix include Nancy’s Kickin’ Crab Corn Chowder.)

Friends’ stories add to the ambience of the book, from Deadhead Grace who dated Neil Young to Rich and Cindy’s Mexican Riviera cruise. 

In 1989 sociologist Ray Oldenburg argued that “third places,” like local bars, were democracy’s grassroots where people, putting aside the demands of work and home, could meet for lively conversation, lessening some of the division that characterizes the moment we are in. Among Stand Easy’s small group of friends, the garage pub is indeed a “great good place.”

David Bruhn is Nancy Wiegman’s guest on Nancy’s Bookshelf on Northstate Public Radio, mynspr.org, Wednesday, November 6 at 10:00 a.m., repeated Sunday, November 10 at 8:00 p.m.