“Why Am I Still A Christian?”

The Advent season, with its glitter and good tidings, has a dark side. The promised one who will loosen the stranglehold of death has not yet come. “In 2025,” writes Ricky Hayes in his spiritual autobiography, “the headlines have been littered with assassinations and murders. I didn’t know the victims, but I know they didn’t deserve it. That’s the sickening part about Death: it doesn’t discriminate, it doesn’t ask, it doesn’t care. All it does is take.”

Hayes, born and raised in Chico, found Death “would pop up again and again—sometimes as a shadow in the corner of my room, sometimes in hospital corridors, sometimes in the faces of people I loved.” So, he asks, why did God “let me carry this fear like an uninvited passenger for my entire life?”

Hayes explores that question (and many more) in “Why Am I Still A Christian?” ($13.99 in paperback from Publishers Brew, publishersbrew.com; also for Amazon Kindle). The story is “messy, it’s raw, it’s sometimes irreverent, but it’s real.”

The first half of the book is Hayes’ spiritual odyssey, and it’s messy indeed. “It’s about how grief, doubt, porn, legalism, cult-like religion, and plain old despair nearly convinced me to leave Christianity behind. But it’s also about how, through all that chaos, Jesus kept showing up. Not the Jesus of fire insurance, shame, and performance, but the Jesus who refuses to let go, even when you’re screaming at Him.”

The second half focuses on specific theological issues, with a biting critique of the modern American church which all too often, Hayes writes, suggests “salvation depends on our performance instead of Christ’s finished work.” In fact, “what I have learned most of my life from Christians, both Fundamentalist and Charismatic, is how not be be a Christian…. We’re supposed to influence people to be reconciled to God by loving one another, not by fighting a cultural war.”

The promise has been fulfilled: “The cross is about God revealing the greatest love one can give through the light of the world, Jesus Christ. Whatever blackness hinders our souls from seeing his beauty, God will shine through if we desire him to do so.”

“Core Samples: Poems”

“On the New Year,” writes Chico poet (and retired Butte College instructor) Phillip Hemenway, “the day/ standing sharp and clear/ in invitation to a California/ walk despite the glassy wind/ nipping hard from the north,/ we succumbed, the dog and I,/ to a basal need for motion,/ and from the road’s edge I saw,/ back among bare walnut trees,/ the swoop and slash of blue toes,/ a girl in her rope swing, flying/ barefoot in wide flashing arcs/ as she broke winter’s first law,/ her radiant joy the purest/ of all potions against the cold.”

But before the new year, the poet takes stock, looking decades back, here in “Core Samples: Poems” ($15 in hardcover, self-published, available at The Bookstore in downtown Chico and MONCA, the Museum of Northern California Art).

A trip to San Diego Zoo (seeing “the muscles flow like liquids through/ those tiger-black stripes”), a train ride across the country (“There is no snow/ this year there is/ no snow in Colorado”), a trip to Viet Nam (in Hanoi, a Brit “tells us over/ beer in the Metropole bar/ ‘Figure anyone here who ain’t/ working is watching’”). And there’s a gallimaufry of miscellaneous poems.

Death haunts many of the poems, such as in the sonnet sequence about the stuff left behind after the death of the poet’s grandfather Merle in 1985. And the Vietnam Memorial: “I must claim my war the one/ I did not choose to fight in….// I sing of Disobedience/ of Mom and Pop’s shame/ of all the dead ones you know/ that bullets gave a name// Where agent Orange and FBI/ stand cheek by jowl with CREEP/ A big black wall in Washington/ where the living go to weep.”

“All of us are fatally human,” the poet says elsewhere. “We must never rush out to prove it.” 

Does the poet’s walk foreshadow the future?

“And so at some distant New Year,/ I will walk all the dogs I’ve ever known,/ I will step out of my ancient shoes,/ I will find a rope swing and work myself/ into a spectacular blue-toed arc,/ and on the apogee of a January One,/ I will howl once and expand forever.”

“Father And Son: The Hitler Loyalist And The US Airman”

Mary Jensen, a “recovering grants writer” and Chico State Professor Emerita, told the story of her marriage in “Rudy’s Rules For Travel: Life Lessons From Around The Globe.” Her late husband had flown US Air Force bombing missions over his homeland in Germany.

In 1999, faced with difficult medical news, they became caregivers for each other, Rudy writing his long-delayed memoir and Mary acting as editor. “Rudy wrote quite unceasingly,” Mary recalls, “easily capturing the perspectives and voices of himself as toddler, adolescent, and young man, as each took his turn living with Papa.” 

The beautifully crafted story is told in “Father And Son: The Hitler Loyalist And The US Airman” ($16.95 in paperback from Astoria Books; also for Amazon Kindle) by Rudy Jensen with Mary K. Jensen. 

“Papa was 100 percent Danish but a German loyalist,” Rudy writes, “who had moved heaven and earth (and a pregnant wife) to have his son born a German citizen.” Born May 17, 1921 in Hamburg to Papa’s wife, Francisca, Rudy lost his birth mother to gallbladder disease just after turning two.

Papa (a seafarer) and Rudy settled in Washington, DC; eventually there was a new “Mutti” (“‘Mutti’ is a German endearment, much as ‘Mommy’ is in English”), Anna Weber, “a southern German whose family had been deeply scarred by World War I.” Papa became a waiter at the fancy Willard Hotel restaurant, which catered to official Washington, and there he met J. Edgar Hoover and the two became friends.

Rudy wanted to become an American citizen and Papa was adamant that the German occupation of France was “positive progress” (it took a long time for Papa to accept the truth). With American’s entry into the war in 1941, “overnight the entire Jensen family became designated ‘Enemy Aliens.’”

“War does strange things,” Rudy writes; in 1943 he began “a 27-month journey … being drafted into the American Army Air Force, not only as a German citizen, but also as an Enemy Alien.” (He soon became an American citizen.) The bombing missions he describes are deeply poignant. 

And yet Rudy survived. His subsequent decades with Mary testify to an extraordinary life.

“Rancho del Llano Seco: Northern California’s Last Rancho, Butte County, California”

“Rancho Llano Seco … is a historical 17,767-acre multi-purpose family ranch located in southwestern Butte County … ten miles southwest of Chico. The property is bounded by Ord Ferry Road to the north, 7 Mile Lane to the east, the Butte/Glenn County line to the south, and the Sacramento River to the west.”

While the physical location of the Rancho is clear, the location of documents regarding its history was not; material in “local museums and archives” proved elusive. Then the manager of the Rancho, which is private property, pointed researchers to Rancho Headquarters on Hugh Baber Drive. 

Here there were “tons of documents stored in archive boxes, in original magazine files, on wood shelves and in steel bins, along with photographs, aerial photos, communications and maps covering” (from 1874 to modern times) the almost 3000-acre “riparian and flood plain restoration project” within the Rancho started in 2019 by The Nature Conservancy.

The archeological and historical report produced for the project, now beautifully edited with dozens of digitized historical images and maps, is available through ANCHR, the Association for Northern California Historical Research (anchr.org) located in Chico. “Rancho del Llano Seco: Northern California’s Last Rancho, Butte County, California” ($19.95 in paperback) is from Gregory White (Archeology and Paleontology, Sub Terra Consulting) along with B. Arlene Ward (Mechoopda Tribe of Chico Rancheria) and Adrian Frediani (The Nature Conservancy).

Sections cover the natural environment, Native American cultures, and the history and ownership of Rancho del Llano Seco. In 1870 John Parrott completed ownership of the ranch, and his descendants “still own and continue to steward the land to this day.” 

One of the previous owners, Sebastian Keyser, who claimed the ranch in 1843, is of special interest as his path crossed the history of John Sutter and John Bidwell.

Keyser “apparently took part in the Bear Flag revolt of 1846, where he lost part of his left hand in a munitions accident.” He lost his wife in divorce and in 1847 notified newspaper readers that “he will not be accountable for any debts of her contracting….”

Readers today are in debt for this careful illumination of local history.

“Designer Science: A History Of Intelligent Design In America”

When UC Berkeley law professor Phillip Johnson converted to evangelical Christianity, he “decided to devote his life to refuting Darwinism.” His book, “Darwin On Trial,” (1981), challenged Darwinian evolution not on Biblical grounds, as creationism had done, but philosophically. I talked with Johnson when he came to Chico many years ago, and he pressed the point that evolutionary science assumes “methodological naturalism”—the contention “that nothing but nature exists.”

Such a stance rejects a rival theory called “intelligent design” (ID), which Johnson’s book helped publicize. “Design,” C.W. Howell writes in a magisterial study of the ID movement, “was not permitted in science because, as Johnson saw it, the establishment watchdogs of scientific practice would never allow it a seat at the table.” Properly done, science would recognize “that complexity found in nature implies a designing intelligence.”

Chris Howell’s doctorate in religion from Duke University has produced a compelling story of “Designer Science: A History Of Intelligent Design In America” ($35 in hardcover from NYU Press; also for Amazon Kindle). Howell (cwhowell.com), based in Durham, North Carolina, is Director of Academic Programs for the C.S. Lewis Foundation. Recently he was a Zoom guest at the Chico Triad on Philosophy, Science and Theology. 

Howell is in the “theistic evolution” camp and is “currently a practicing Eastern Orthodox Christian; but I wear my dogmas as lightly as a hat, and I have no interest in promoting a particular viewpoint on creation, design, or theism.”

“At its heart,” Howell writes, “ID was based on a radical idea … that one’s religious or nonreligious presuppositions and assumptions—about whether God exists, for example—had an inordinate and maybe even determinative effect on one’s scientific ideas.” 

In 2005, in the Dover, Pennsylvania trial to determine if ID could be taught as an “alternative theory,” it “suffered a total defeat.” In subsequent years ID morphed into a political movement. “Intelligent design both planted the seeds and nurtured the growth of extreme skepticism in the world of US conservatism, a trend that has continued to grow ever since, sprouting in contemporary antivaccine movements and climate change denialism, among other things.”

It's a balanced yet sobering account.

“The Picasso Job: A Phoenix Thriller”

It’s the present day, ten days before Yom Kippur, and in Folsom State Prison an Iranian inmate named Bijan “Renoir” Reza—known for his artful theft of valuable art—is being called into service via a coded message.

It seems a painting by a famous artist has been stolen from a Paris museum and now Reza’s work is to steal the painting from the thief and collect the $5 million reward to fund—well, therein lies the tale, called “The Picasso Job: A Phoenix Thriller” ($17.99 in paperback from Thunder Creek Press, with ebook and audiobook versions also available) by Grass Valley area novelist Avanti Centrae.

First he needs a couple of lackeys. One is his cellmate, Dakota Black. “Even after a few years inside, Black still looked like the boy next door rather than a hardened criminal. Of course, all the men in prison claimed they were innocent, but Reza was inclined to believe his cellmate’s assertion.”

The other is Cody Winters, who blames Dakota for killing his brother Austin, whose “blood-red Thunderbird” had earlier forced Black’s Ram pickup off the country road, killing his passenger, his beloved girlfriend Jenny, their marriage never to happen.

The two are kept from killing each other with promises of part of the reward money and a fresh start, though Reza knows both will be “fish food” once the heist of the heist is completed. When a mysterious plan disables the guards and releases dozens of prisoners in the midst of smoke from a wildfire, the trio escape through the pipes of an unused sewer system, landing right into the American River.

Hard on their tails is Elizabeth Everett of the FBI’s Art Crime Team. “Although her mother was Iranian, Everett felt only minor kinship with her compatriots and had zero tolerance for that government’s terrorist leanings.” She had put Reza in prison the first time, and now, with word that he is part of a grand scheme involving nuclear material and Yom Kippur, time is running out.

Told from alternating points of view, each suspenseful chapter offers surprises all the way from Sacramento to Niagara Falls. 

Readers will have a barrel of fun.

“Queenstown Bound: U.S. Navy Destroyers Combating German U-Boats In European Waters In World War I”

In World War I, writes Chicoan and naval historian David Bruhn, “German U-boats sank over 5,200 vessels and came dangerously close to choking off Britain’s critical supply of food in the spring of 1917, which could have led to the collapse of the British war effort but for the entrance of the United States into the conflict.”

Once that happened, writes Bruhn, “it quickly became apparent that destroyers and other anti-submarine vessels were the key to defeating the U-boats.” The destroyers “were the most significant U.S. Navy contribution to the war effort. … Initially, American destroyers were all based at Queenstown (since 1920, Cobh, pronounced Cove), Ireland.”

Bruhn tells their story in exacting detail in “Queenstown Bound: U.S. Navy Destroyers Combating German U-Boats In European Waters In World War I” ($35 in paperback from Heritage Books, Inc.). Encyclopedic in scope, there are 177 photographs, diagrams and maps.

“Up to March,1918, only a relatively small part of the formidable American armies that were forming had reached Europe. The Germans had mistakenly believed  that its submarines could prevent the movement of large numbers of troops across the seemingly impassible 3,000-mile watery gulf separating them from the field of battle.” They were wrong. “The U.S. Navy’s ability to get two million U.S. soldiers safely to France changed the course of the war, and of world history.”

At first the destroyers only had the “hand-thrown Mark I depth charge. There being no launchers for the 100-lb weapon, the strongest man in a ship’s crew heaved the ordnance over the vessel’s stern when attacking a suspected periscope, or oil slick.” Germany fought back. In 1918 dozens of American vessels were sunk or damaged.

“Fighting continued with prolonged great loss of life in trenches on land; in the air; and on the sea until the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, when the Great War ended.” Germany signed for peace; “an announcement of an armistice commencing at 1100 hours followed the signing.” It called for Germany to “turn over her submarines to the Allies.”

Peace had come, but at an unimaginable price.

“Happy-Go-Lucky”

David Sedaris (Amy’s brother) brings his mordant wit to life’s upheavals, both large and small, in “Happy-Go-Lucky” ($19.99 in paperback from Little, Brown; also in ebook and audiobook, read by the author), a collection of essays taking readers through the Covid era and beyond.

Inspiration often comes from quirky conversations at his book signings. Lockdowns shut that door, and took away the audiences. “Without a live audience—that unwitting congregation of fail-safe editors—I’m lost,” he writes.

“It’s not just their laughter I pay attention to but also the quality of their silence. As for noises, a groan is always good in my opinion. A cough means that if they were reading this passage on the page, they’d be skimming now, while a snore is your brother-in-law putting a gun to your head and pulling the trigger.” His partner, Hugh, is no help. “Hugh and I have vastly different senses of humor—this is to say that I have one and he doesn’t.”

Yet he considers himself “Lucky-Go-Happy,” the title of the final essay; lucky not to get Covid, and lucky audiences returned. Though one essay is full of jokes he hears at book events (most of which would not garner prudish Hugh’s approval), Sedaris is also lucky to have family cohesion in the wake of the suicide of one of his sisters and the death of his father, who had ceaselessly ridiculed his son almost until the end. 

“By the second half of his ninety-seventh year, the man was a pussycat, a delight. Unfortunately there were all those years that preceded it. … As long as my father had power, he used it to hurt me.”

Sedaris marches for Black Lives Matter, then skewers the excesses of wokeism—and social distancing. “‘Back off!’ a certain type of person would snarl if you stood only five feet and eleven inches away from them.” 

There’s a kind of wistfulness here, a yearning in his seventh decade for a time (now lost?) when we can laugh at our foibles without sending one another into exile.

Chico Performances presents “An Evening With David Sedaris,” Thursday, November 6, 7:30 p.m. at Chico State’s Laxson Auditorium. For ticket information visit tinyurl.com/bdfryuz5.

“Pumpkin Patch Surprise!”

Longtime Chicoan Lori Chergosky taught for the Chico Unified School District for thirty-four years. She writes me that in years past her teaching schedule allowed her to spend Octobers as “a farm guide for school field trips” at the Book Family Farm (facebook.com/BookFamilyFarm) in Durham or to take her classes there. She’s continues the practice in retirement and, at the request of Keith and Joy Book, created a souvenir storybook.

“Pumpkin Patch Surprise!” (independently published, with full color illustrations by Cheyenne Warthen) is available through Amazon as well as at the farm. It’s an homage to pumpkin patches everywhere.

“‘Surprise!’ says Dad. ‘Brenden, we’re going to the pumpkin patch!’ ‘Do we have to go today?’ I ask. ‘It’s our new tradition!’ says Dad. ‘But I just met Trevor, the boy next door. He’s coming over today to kick the soccer ball around. Can’t we just buy a pumpkin at the grocery store like we did when we lived in the city?’ I ask.”

But Brenden’s parents don’t want their son to miss out on “good old-fashioned farm fun.” “I whisper back, ‘What’s so fun about a stinky old farm?’ Dad says, ‘I can’t explain it. You’ll have to experience it!.’”

They see an amazing maze when they arrive, and then it’s time to feed the animals. “It tickles when baby goats eat from my hand. Watching pigs eat their favorite treat makes me laugh! They squeal and slurp as they pig out!” Behind the barn is a playground, including a hay pyramid. Is that a smile on Brenden’s face?

But now a big moment. A farmer asks Brenden if he’d like to collect an egg. Just reach under the chicken--What? “She says, ‘You’ll be surprised, it’s an amazing experience!’ I hesitate…and tell myself, don’t be a chicken!” He tries. And then, there’s the egg. “Talk about a fantastic surprise! It’s the most UNFORGETTABLE feeling ever!”

There’s another surprise when a certain visitor shows up. In the end, guess what?—it’s Brenden who wants to make it a tradition.

Chergosky reads her story at the farm this week through Friday for field trips at 9:15, 10:00 and 10:45 am. Call (530) 342-4375 for details.

“Magical Realism: Essays On Music, Memory, Fantasy, And Borders”

LA-based author Vanessa Angélica Villarreal joined a group of students at Butte College last week to present “Speculative Writing as Time-Travel to Heal the Present.” Sponsored by the Puente Project, helping “educationally under-served students enroll in four-year colleges and universities,” Villarreal used “Back to the Future” as a creative way to change the past to right the future despite the bullying Biffs of the world.

Villarreal expands on this in her “Magical Realism: Essays On Music, Memory, Fantasy, And Borders” ($29 in hardcover from Tiny Reparations Books; also in ebook and audiobook versions), longlisted for the National Book Award. 

She was born in the Rio Grande Valley to Mexican immigrants. The essays in the book trace her journey through challenging family dynamics, taking a job cleaning houses, marrying an unfaithful man, birthing a son, enduring a messy divorce, and eventually earning a doctorate at USC. 

Fantasy (which often in its world-building looks back at some golden age sullied by evil) and science fiction (which is forward-looking but tends to focus on apocalypse) helped her make sense of the abuses she endured. 

“Fantasy is a space safer than memory to process trauma and escape abuse into a world where the helpless are empowered by magic, friends are found among outcasts and survivors, and a hero will defend you with his sword until you find the hero was you all along.”

In nuanced analyses, Villarreal pulls back the curtain on the racialized and colonial stereotypes in much popular fantasy and science fiction, especially video games. And yet:

“Perhaps I am so drawn to fantasy because it is also the space of immigrant dreaming, the projection of the self into an impossible imaginary to bear the reality of the present one. Its central question: Forces larger than myself have estranged me from my home; what can displacement into new lands make capable in me?”

Readers will see the answer in this powerful memoir.

News: Brenda M. Lane, Napa author and contributor to “Chicken Soup for the Soul: Hope, Faith & Miracles,” will be signing her books at Barnes & Noble in Chico on Friday, October 24, from 11:00 am – 4:00 pm. 

“50 Ways To Enjoy Life More”

Barbara Stamps Kimball “contracted polio as an adult, which led her to a spiritual quest and personal growth.” So writes her daughter, Chico State Sociology professor emerita Gayle Kimball. In 2025 Gayle found the manuscript for a book Barbara wrote in the 1980s. “50 Ways To Enjoy Life More” ($14.99 in paperback from Chico’s Equality Press; also for Amazon Kindle) is a “memorial to her grace and inspiration.”

Each short chapter features encouraging stories, some from Barbara’s own life, that highlight aspects of a more positive view on life. In “The Magic of Praise” she writes: “Close your eyes and think of five things you can praise about your partner, your child, or your friend. Now write them down. When the time is apropos, pass on your honest positives to these individuals. Remember, ‘Now’s the time to slip it to him for he cannot read his tombstone when he’s dead.’”

The author draws on names readers of a certain age might especially be familiar with, including the “hugging professor” Leo Buscaglia; psychiatrist Gerald Jampolsky; writer Napoleon Hill (“Think and Grow Rich); est founder Werner Erhard; and Buddhism exponent Alan Watts.

Influenced by the writing of Ernest Holmes (“Science of Mind”) and Helen Schucman’s “channeled” book “A Course In Miracles,” Barbara’s source of encouragement flows from a religious/metaphysical view different than my own. 

She writes that “All the great sages, teachers, and wise ones down through the ages have told us of the importance of faith … in ourselves as part of God. … What you give out, positively or negatively, returns to you in kind, but it may not come from the same source. The law of karma (cause and effect) is as precise in its operations as the rotation of the planets….”

Yet many of her observations have a universal ring. “Each of us,” she writes, “has the choice to harbor old hates and grievances, like the famed Hatfields and McCoys, and carry them on our backs for years or we can choose to unload them and travel with a light and joyous step. The secret: love and forgiveness. Forgiveness brings new wings of freedom,” the freedom of a child.

“HIDEAWAYS: Within And Outside My Polygamist Family”

A Chico resident for almost half a century, Jerry Allred retired from a long career in education. His childhood, it turns out, was also an education—in hiding.

That’s because his father (born in 1906, murdered in 1977), was part of a fundamentalist Mormon group. “The year I was three, Daddy violated parole by moving our families to Colonia LeBaron, a ranch set in northern Mexico’s Chihuahua desert, to start a colony for Saints who were violating the laws of the land by living God’s holiest law of Celestial Plural Marriage.”

“HIDEAWAYS: Within And Outside My Polygamist Family” ($20 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle) contains nineteen “creative nonfiction” stories imagined from family recollections, journals, and research. So while individual characters are not strictly historical, the fact remains: 

“Being the family’s eighth son and fourteenth child, I am one of forty-eight children born to Dr. Rulon Clark Allred and his seven wives. My mother, Mabel Finlayson Allred, was his fourth plural wife, and her identical twin, Melba, was also her sister-wife.”

Since the LDS Church had outlawed plural marriage in 1890 (and reinterpreted the 132nd Section of the Doctrine and Covenants), family members frequently hid, devised cover stories, and moved to places where they hoped to establish sanctuaries for persecuted Saints (Mexico; Elko, Nevada; Colorado), all to escape Church officials and the FBI vice squad.

Jerry’s coming into the world was a difficult birth indeed but Rulon’s ministrations (he delivered thousands of babies in his lifetime) saved both mother and child. Allred writes with great sympathy toward his father. “Daddy was convinced that his faith should be, and eventually would be, true for every person who ever lived, or else.”

Yet in his teen years Jerry departed from his father’s convictions. He was learning about evolution and could no longer believe as his father did that God had created everything “all at once” a few thousand years ago. With compassion and deeply felt emotion, Allred takes the reader into daily life and painful separations, an inseparable part of his own journey.

An interview with Allred, conducted by Nancy Wiegman for Nancy’s Bookshelf on mynspr.org, is available at tinyurl.com/2rnd4d79.

“Too BUSY For Bed!”

The author’s dedication is “To children everywhere: We say that when you are grown, you can be anything you want. / But with every song and rhyme and game to play, you already do it, every day!”

These days, author Lester Wong, a Chico pathologist and the father of three grown children, navigates the world of an empty nester alongside the children’s mom. But he remembers an earlier time when getting the little ones ready for bed filled the transition time with joyful songs and silly rhymes. That, he writes, “morphed into a bedtime book, and as every parent knows, a good bedtime book is worth its weight in gold.”

“Too BUSY For Bed!” (independently published, $27.99 in hardcover, $16.99 in softcover from Made in Chico or from store.bookbaby.com/book/too-busy-for-bed1), by L.K. Wong, features full-color, beautifully exuberant illustrations by Taiwanese-Australian artist (and medical doctor) Amy Lee (kookychooky.com).

“Did you say ‘Bed’?” the child says. “That clock is wrong! It should say, Time for FUN!” Why? “I’m not done; I need more time! Because Sometimes I am … Just … Too … Busy…. My evening’s just begun!”

Oh, the energy. “Sometimes, I am a Teapot, / I’m dancing all about, / This arm a waving handle, / That hand, a whistling spout!” Then it rains (or is the bath water running?). “Sometimes, I’m Itsy-Bitsy / and I’m climbing / up a spout, / It rains, it pours, / an old man snores, / I’m wet! / I whoosh right out!”

Jammies on, it’s time to jump on the bed and do a little exploring. “Away I run, you can’t catch me! / My little legs are quick! / But grown-up legs are faster still, / And long arms do the trick!”

Then, “my wiggle slows…. I’m safe and snug, / A Bug inside a rug.” And now a parent’s gentle rocking: “We’re all back home, down by the bay, / No jumping anymore, / While Mama keeps her quiet watch, / Some watermelons snore!” Of course they do. Dreams come, each “will be like new,” with a parental send off of “I Love You!”

A dreamily wonderful little book that will delight the little ones.

“Letters From The Shire: On Tolkien, His World, And A Better Understanding Of Ours”

“September 22 has, for years, held a special place in my heart,” writes Chicoan Matthew Distefano. “Not only is it the birthday of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins—two of the most famous Hobbits in the history of Middle-earth—but it marks the beginning of one of the greatest adventures ever told. Fittingly, then, I chose to complete this collection of letters around that date. But rather than releasing it on the 22nd itself, I’ve opted for September 23—the day Frodo leaves the Shire.”

The collection is “Letters From The Shire: On Tolkien, His World, And A Better Understanding Of Ours” (in Amazon Kindle format, published by Quoir in Chico, quoir.com). In pastoral language Distefano responds to 22 questions sent to him in response to two previous books, “The Wisdom of Hobbits” and “Mimetic Theory & Middle-earth.” 

Included are letters from his mom and his best friend, Michael Machuga; he and Matthew and their wives have created Happy Woods Farm on property next to Michael’s house in Paradise. Flowers and fruit abound. Hobbits would be pleased. 

As Distefano notes in one of the letters, “I take in many moments throughout the week, soaking in the naked now as often as I’m able. It’s always after smoking from my pipe, which is why I continually assert that I am a Hobbit in all but size.”

Some of the letters Distefano writes are theological. “Tolkien’s world is a monotheistic one,” he writes, but his mythology is not a Christian allegory (as are C.S. Lewis’ Narnia tales). The Hobbits are secular and yet what transpires in Middle-earth is guided by something beyond the halflings, and even the elves. Everyone has a different perspective on what that something is, Distefano says. 

For him, “When we turn inward, however, to our own communal and interdividualistic selves, we start to realize that God is everything and everything is God. That includes you. That includes me.” There are endless debates, but Hobbits get it right; for them, “Life is all about getting their hands dirty and cultivating crops and community.”

This cultivation, he writes, is nothing less than “slow magic.”

“The Goolwind Tales: Book One”

“Avaleigh, a young girl of twelve, could not keep her tears from shedding. Her younger brother, Hayden, a boy no more than nine, followed her lead in sensing the fear that now overwhelmed them.” The Head Caster (a “master of sacred magical arts” and the siblings’ uncle) had just informed the two that their father, who had embarked on a secret mission a year before, was “lost.” 

No one had heard from him for nine months. Their mother had vanished four years ago, likely on the same mission—the retrieval of an ancient book of extraordinary spells.

Readers 9-18 are invited to join Avaleigh and Hayden in an enchanting sword and sorcery quest to find their parents that unfolds in “The Goolwind Tales: Book One” ($13.99 in paperback from Publisher’s Brew, publishersbrew.com; also for Amazon Kindle). 

Written by Ricky Hayes, born and raised in Chico and a consummate world-builder, the story takes place in a world called Goolwind, with “four major islands, each one divided by the treacherous tides of the seas.” Avaleigh and Hayden, descended from a bloodline that makes them no ordinary casters, must journey far from the caster monastery in the kingdom of Essend.

Along the way they are befriended by a group of Goblins as they encounter a series of monsters (pictured in the glossary). The Behemoth Toads, for example, are immense amphibians that devour Goblins; Ash Hounds are fire-breathing beasts; the Gnolls are “a war-minded race of vicious but simple-minded hyena-like humanoids.”

Battles abound (though very little blood is shown) as Avaleigh and Hayden grow in their caster abilities, controlling water and wind with Thunder Strikes and Sinister Cyclones, to fight ever-present enemies. But Hayden is a little too sure of himself, and faces his own demise, saved by a Bonecrackle Caster called Jasper, a specter “improperly laid to rest … who either died violently, foolishly by their own hand, or a curse of some kind.”

Each time Hayden overextends his powers, using up his life energy, Jasper pumps his heart back to life. But Hayden needs the curse lifted, so the journey continues with new urgency, paving the way for the next book in the series.

“Our Marriage: Sixty-Four Years And Counting: A Testament To Enduring Love”

Retired Butte County educators Jim and Nancy Barnes now live near Paradise Lake, the same home as Jim’s “Little Mouse” creation (www.LittleMouseTheMouse.com). Jim “is eighty-six years old,” Nancy writes. “I am eighty-three…. We have been married for over sixty-four years, and we love each other more now than when we courted, when we were newlyweds, and when we celebrated our twenty-fifth and fiftieth anniversaries where we renewed our vows.”

“Our Marriage: Sixty-Four Years And Counting: A Testament To Enduring Love” ($10.99 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle), by Nancy Marie Barnes, is not a guidebook for others but rather a celebration of God’s goodness. 

In over seventy prayerful reflections, Nancy writes “as a God-fearing woman, believing in holding good morals and values and desiring to be the very best person possible—who loves the Lord with all her heart, mind, and soul—and who is incredibly in love” with Jim. (The two were married at St. Thomas More Catholic Church in Paradise.)

Marriage is a sacred vow. “We knew we were both humans with faults,” Nancy writes, “and when things were going bad, we’d hang in there and work through any issues. In any disagreements we addressed the problem, not with the attitude of who was right and who was wrong but the best way to solve or address it.”

“The moment I recognize that Jim is upset, it does not matter why. I ask, ‘Do you want to be helped, heard, or hugged?’ I may not word it just that way, but I know the gist.”

Not all their dreams came true. “Although we didn’t have children (not by our choice), we scored well in … serving children and parents in the elementary school setting. Actually, both of our careers and our marriage made good our commitment to ‘spiritual good.’”

There are special moments, “sitting close, kissing, hugging, listening to soft instrumental music, or quietly listening to the crackling fire in the fireplace, just the two of us, thanking the Lord for all His gifts, this day and this lifetime, seen and unseen. We are blessed,” Nancy writes, “with ‘Taste of Heaven’ moments.”

“California Against The Sea: Visions For Our Vanishing Coastline”

“The California Coast, studied closely” writes LA Times environmental reporter Rosanna Xia, “is fractal, each part distinct, and impossible to appraise as one sweeping entity. Forcing a single big solution for the entire state would also overlook the communities that have long been neglected, and the many neighborhoods and homes that have been quietly sacrificed.”

Xia’s deep reporting brings a nuanced understanding to the battle against the rising Pacific. “California Against the Sea: Visions For Our Vanishing Coastline” ($22 in paperback from Heyday) focuses on at-risk communities, mostly in the lower half of the state. “Imperial Beach,” she writes, “stands to lose one-third of the town to sea level rise, but few residents have processed this slow-moving disaster that is already sweeping over their shore.”

The work is the Book In Common for both Butte College and Chico State (www.csuchico.edu/bic) for the 2025-2026 academic year. (Xia is scheduled to speak at Chico State on April 2, 2026.)

“Much of California’s coastal development coincided with the calmest period of an ocean-atmosphere cycle known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation…. This ‘sea level rise suppression,’ as scientists call it, kept huge storms in check and the rate of sea rise below the global average…. In the last 100 years, the sea rose less than 9 inches in California; by the end of this century, the surge could be greater than 6, possibly 7 feet.”

Part of Xia’s story involves the effect of the California Coastal Act of 1976 which established the California Coastal Commission, “one of the most powerful land use agencies in America.” There is constant political tension between preserving the beaches and expansion of development.

Communities have tried to hold back sea rise with seawalls, which are now crumbling in many places; dredging for sand; and “managed retreat”—“move back, relocate, essentially cede the land to nature.” But “many declared retreat un-American.”

Yet, Xia writes, “when we don’t understand and don’t allow for the ocean’s ways, we end up with homes perched on the crumbling cliffs of Pacifica and the seawalls still making a stand in Laguna.” It’s compelling reading showing that things are--not so pacific after all.

"Just Be"

Chicoans Josh Shelton, house builder by trade and children’s book author, and artist Sam Pullenza, continue their “I Am Adventure Books” series with “Just Be” ($19.99 in paperback from Conscious Dreams Publishing; also in e-book version).

The purpose of the whimsically illustrated series is to guide “children both big and small upon a journey through many of life's timeless questions. We intend for these books to send out ripples of joy, unity, and love, while providing subtle support to the ascension and enlightenment of our human family.”

“Just Be” features bulldogs, hamsters, and a young boy, who asks: “Have you ever seen a hamster run on its wheel? / Well, that’s how the thoughts in my mind often feel!” And more: “I’ve found myself wondering from time to time, / if my thoughts are like visitors, visiting my mind? // My thoughts create / whether or not they are said! // I must become mindful / of what hangs out in my head.”

The story is a journey toward that mindfulness, told in a way that children might understand. When the boy thinks about being “still and quiet” during restful sleep, he reasons that “perhaps in between all the learning and play, / I can ‘do’ like I sleep, / but in an awake sort of way.”

In fact, he says, “It’s totally obvious! / It’ll be easy, you’ll see. / I will take time in my day / to simply Just Be!”

In the midst of busyness one can breathe fresh air; when intruding thoughts come, “greet them / and thank them / then bid them good bye.” Be in nature, look at the clouds, sit by a tree, spend time with a friend. “I can sit by the fire / for an hour or five, / and ponder the miracle / of being alive.”

Mindfulness is a kind of “dance through my day” and though future dreams beckon and we “reflect on our past, / the moment of Now / is the moment to grasp.”

Chico’s Barnes & Noble bookstore will feature an author signing with Josh Shelton and illustrator Sam Pullenza on Saturday, August 30 at 11:00 a.m.; the public is invited.

“Dear Dotty: A Novel”

Who was Dotty Polk? For Rosie Benson, about to turn 25, her great-aunt “Dotty was the only one who could make me feel calm in the midst of my family’s chaos. She made being a misfit look easy. Fun, even. But now she was gone. Right when I needed her the most. The shoddy patchwork that was my life had ripped at the seams and I had no clue how to stitch it all back together. I needed Dotty to tell me where I’d gone wrong. She was never shy about that sort of thing.”

And so begins “Dear Dotty: A Novel” ($11 in paperback from Avon; also available in ebook format) by Chico State grad Jaclyn (Raggio) Westlake. Chosen as a summer must-read by the Gloss Book Club and First for Women magazine, “Dear Dotty” is Rosie’s personal narration, a story of loss and rediscovery. 

Rosie’s job at a tech startup is ill-fated; she’s fired by her boss, Raj, who “stood over my shoulder, watching as I boxed up the personal items in my desk—a strand of lights; a framed picture of Marcia and me from last Halloween…; a mug that read SMASH THE PATRIARCHY in big, bold letters (a gift from Dotty, of course).”

Marcia, her best friend and roommate, is little help on the consolation front (and much later when Rosie finds out Marcia has been sleeping with Raj, things turn frosty). Rosie finds out from Dotty that her parents are divorcing. And then Dotty dies.

Though Rosie had dreamed of working with animals, she lands a recruiting-agency job, and things seem to be looking up. She goes to a party with Marcia, a publicist at a big San Francisco PR firm, honoring “a young, rich, and terribly handsome entrepreneur named Donovan Ng.” Rosie falls hard. But is Donovan the Right One?

Rosie yearns for Dotty’s guidance, and as she helps prepare Dotty’s old home for sale she finds pictures and email addresses of Dotty’s friends she knows nothing about. Dotty loved martinis, other women, and nudism, and through these friends Rosie comes to know her great-aunt more deeply than before—and learns a lesson that changes her life. 

“The Outlaw From Newville: A Game Warden Henry Glance Novel”

It began quietly enough, on June 25, 1912, with the marriage of Preston Radcliff and Molly Bryer in Sacramento. Soon they drove to Orland and “headed west for twenty-two miles on a narrow dirt road. Crossing over Stony Creek, they wound through the foothills of Glenn County, and as the sun dipped below the mountains to the west, arrived in the tiny, picturesque hamlet of Newville.”

They are good people, but their son Willie, born four years later, is a bad seed. Cruel, self-centered, he loves to shoot just about any animal, especially deer out of season and big game in any season, and ignores the rules on fish catches. Years later, in the 1970s, he will cross paths with warden Henry Glance, who with wife Anne (whom he met at Chico State), lives in an old farmhouse west of Gridley.

Willie’s criminal enterprises, fueled by a big inheritance, will in the end involve destruction of a magnificent animal, one of about 150 existing on earth; an international incident involving the then-Soviet Union; and murder most foul. It’s all told in “The Outlaw From Newville: A Game Warden Henry Glance Novel” ($18.95 in paperback from Coffeetown Press; also available in ebook format) by Steven T. Callan (steventcallan.com).

Callan, a Palo Cedro resident, spent his high school days in Orland, graduated from Chico State, then in Shasta County concluded a thirty-year career as a game warden. 

Part One of the book features alternating chapters detailing Willie’s growing greed and Glance’s successful strategies as a game warden. The histories of both converge in Part Two, and the intricacies involved stretch all the way from the Butte County Jail to Far Eastern Russia. Callan presents mesmerizing procedural details of Glance’s investigations for the Department of Fish and Game (as it was named then). Glance can think like a poacher.

The wardens’ physical danger makes comeuppance all the sweeter.

Callan is Nancy Wiegman’s guest on Nancy’s Bookshelf on Northstate Public Radio, mynspr.org, Wednesday, August 13 at 10:00 a.m., repeated Sunday, August 17 at 8:00 p.m. He’ll be signing books at Chico’s Barnes & Noble on Saturday, August 23 at 11:00 a.m.