"Your Mindful Guide To Academic Success: Beat Burnout"

Gayle Kimball is Chico State Department of Sociology professor emerita. In her writing she blends "energy work" (using acupressure, meditation and visualization "to harness the power of the mind") with a deep passion for reaching students around the world who are trapped in conditions that make it a challenge to succeed.

Challenges may come from without (poverty, social discrimination) but also from within (procrastination, fear, aimlessness), and in her new book Kimball provides hundreds of resources that help students become overcomers, even activists. She also includes "the advice and experience of young people from various countries to discover how they succeed and to provide insight into the global youth culture…."

"Your Mindful Guide To Academic Success: Beat Burnout" ($9.99 in Amazon Kindle edition from Equality Press) focuses on cultivating good study skills, developing strategies for taking tests and writing essays, "clearing emotional blocks to success," using the internet to increase educational access, and joining youth movements around the world to "fight for a more just and equitable world."

Kimball draws on a wealth of  information about, for example, learning disabilities, "balancing the left and right sides of the body," positive self-talk, depression, being a student of color, and more. (The section on how to research is written by former Butte College librarian Morgan Brynnan.)

Kimball advises students to "structure regular time for exercise, socializing, quiet time, and volunteer work that you feel passionate about so you don't burn out. I'd also like you to think about the influence of sex-role socialization in your choice of major and career objectives. Try to think outside the typical, the normal. In a world that's increasingly global and unequal, my other hope is that you'll be an activist in whatever cause is most important to you."

There's a companion Facebook page called Test Success: How To Cope With Stress And Anxiety (http://bit.ly/2lzLEGR).

Kimball is scheduled to speak at a free workshop on "Mind Power To Achieve Your Goals" during the Emotional Tune-Up Seminar, sponsored by the Chico Area Recreation and Park District, Thursday, March 23 from 12:30-4:00 p.m. at Lakeside Pavilion, 2565 California Park Drive. For information contact host Gerald Darling at ymrducks@gmail.com.

"Gulf Music"

Robert Pinsky, US Poet Laureate from 1997-2000, continues to revel in poetic voices. In "Gulf Music" ($14 in paperback from Farrar, Straus and Giroux; also for Amazon Kindle) Pinsky begins with the vagaries of human remembering and ends with the poet's vision "beyond all boundaries, at memory's undoing," in an excerpt from his translation of the final Canto of Dante's Paradiso.

In between is his discovery of the original meaning of "thing." It "first meant an assembly," he writes in a note, "then the issue discussed, and then from that relatively abstract meaning came the modern sense of a concrete object. … Every artifact, every natural object, with its ghostly wrapping of associations and meanings, begotten and forgotten, is a gathering of minds or contending voices: every thing is an invisible assembly."

The poet considers a book, a glass, a jar of pens, a photograph, a door, paper currency, and--pliers ("What is the origin of this despair I feel/ When I feel/ I've lost my grip, can't manage a thing?// Thing/ That means a clutch of contending voices--/ So my voice:....").

There is an assembly gathered in the book, and the poet is not afraid to berate his own "Immature Song": "Do you disrespect Authority merely// Because it speaks so badly, because it deploys the lethal bromides/ With a clumsy conviction that offends your delicate senses?--but if// Called on to argue such matters as the refugees you mumble and/ Stammer, poor citizen, you get sullen, you sigh and you look away."

Does music have a place in such a world? Maybe, sings the poet, it is exactly the right place.

Pinsky and Grammy Award-winning jazz pianist Laurence Hobgood are scheduled to perform Sunday, February 26, at Chico State's Harlen Adams Theatre. The 7:30 p.m. production is called Poemjazz, in which jazz improvisation and the poet's words are rhythmically interconnected, as the language of jazz brings out the melodies of voice. Pinsky's funny, poignant and political words are not just set to music; they become a kind of music themselves.

Tickets are available through chicoperformances.com. Adults are $32, Seniors $30, Youth $20, and Chico State students $10. For more information call (530) 898-6333.

"Love & Other Theories"

Aubrey ("Brey") Housing, the narrator of a deeply perceptive novel by Chicoan Alexis Bass (alexisbassbooks.com), will soon be saying goodbye to Lincoln High. She'll be going to a prestigious university but now the voice of her BFF, the achingly beautiful Shelby Chesterfield, is ringing in her head: "Now that you’ve been accepted into Barron, you need to join the rest of us and get a real life. It’s your senior year, Brey, time for you to party it up."

It's also a time navigating the emotional uprisings brought on by the ever-fluid hookups with boys at the school, to sort out who is friend and who is foe among the girls, and to decide how important any of this is. "Love & Other Theories" ($9.99 in paperback from HarperTeen, recommended for ages 14 and up; also for Amazon Kindle) traces the breakdown of all that Aubrey thinks is secure within her heart.

Aubrey and her friends have part-time jobs "that produce at least enough money to pay for stuff our parents wouldn't approve of. Booze. Cigarettes. Birth control. Brazilian bikini waxes." Brey, Shelby, and Danica and Melissa, have got each other's back.

Then strangely attractive Nathan Diggs transfers to Lincoln and sits near her. "In all honesty, I'm uncomfortable. I stay perfectly still, though, because it's against everything I believe in to show how physically altered I feel just because of a boy."

Enter "the theories." Since "the only thing we needed to know about high school boys and love (was) how you couldn't have both, we could have anyone we wanted. If you want more, you have to give less. This logic seemed backward compared to the you-get-what-you-give crap we'd always heard, but it worked."

                                                        

Sex? Momentary fun, that's all (Aubrey had lost her virginity to Trip Chapman; but no commitment.) In fact, "it's only a matter of weeks (two weeks is the average dating cycle at Lincoln High) before he'll get distracted by someone else."

All theories need testing and Aubrey finds she may not be as "evolved" as she thinks. Yet the last words of this emotionally sensitive novel inspire confidence that she finally understands the real meaning of "goodbye."

"Do We Not Bleed?: A Jon Mote Mystery"

Sister Brigit is among a group of Minnesota nuns who ran a group home for cognitively disabled adults. She tells Jon Mote, the unlikely hero of Daniel Taylor's new mystery, "Do We Not Bleed?" ($25 in hardcover from Slant, wipfandstock.com; also for Amazon Kindle), about J.P.

"J.P. was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. He had serious oxygen deprivation in a tiny rural hospital not equipped to deal with it. … Physically perfect except for cell death in a square inch or two of his brain. No less valuable for that than he was fifteen minutes prior."

Mote had returned his sister Judy to Carlson Group Home on the New Directions campus. Having failed in academe (recounted in "Death Comes For The Deconstructionist," which won the Christianity Today book award for fiction), Mote takes a staff job at Carlson, responsible for six clients, including his eternally optimistic sister as well as smack-talking Bonita and J.P., in his late forties, who cannot tell time.

Mote himself is damaged; he no longer hears voices but now faces a kind of metaphysical silence, angry at God for not existing, living a life of "coagulated pointlessness."

Then J.P. is accused of the rape and murder of Abby Wagner, a more independent resident at New Directions, and is shipped off to a facility for the criminally insane. But could he have done it?

With the help of the others from Carlson, and his estranged wife, Zillah, Jon finds courage to confront the truth. But not just the truth about the murder. In characteristically sharp observations he notes that those who want to reduce life to "kilos, kilometers, angstroms, and curies" are missing what can't be measured: "compassion, sacrifice, suspicion, and honor."

"For the last few years," Jon says, "I've had too many problems to think much about God. (If God made me, I want a refund.) If pressed, I would say, out loud, 'No, I don't believe in God.' But inside a still, small voice would add, 'But I hope God believes in me.'"

The novel is a captivating meditation on the worth of human life and the meaning of suffering.

"Navy Daze: Coming Of Age In The 1960s Aboard A Navy Destroyer"

"I would not trade my Navy experience for anything," writes Michael Halldorson (now a board member of Chico's Janet Turner Print Museum). His memoir tells "the story of a young man from a small northern California town who, with no clear direction in life, joined the Navy and came of age aboard a destroyer during the Vietnam War."

The tale of Halldorson's two tours of duty aboard the USS Hopewell (which began in 1964) is written with honesty and self-deprecating good humor. "Navy Daze: Coming Of Age In The 1960s Aboard A Navy Destroyer" ($20.50 in paperback from Heritage Books, HeritageBooks.com) follows a "tin can sailor" with a little too much liberty, somewhat obsessed with "girls, cars, alcohol."

There are "vivid memories of having my nose broken in Japan and a tooth sheared off in the Philippines; both incidents took place in drinking establishments ashore." There are better memories, but also the daily routine, "hours-on-end spent inside a hot and humid five-inch gun mount while patrolling off the coast of South Vietnam."

The big guns would fire offshore to protect troops inland, but, at least during the first tour, "we did not know the effectiveness of our fire. … Our reality was the smell of gunpowder, the noise and violent shaking of the gunmount, and the acrid air inside the mount."

On leave, "one of the highlights of my visit to Chico was going out for a beer in my dress blues with a friend at a new restaurant, the Italian Cottage. The owners … furnished me a gratis pitcher of beer. I have never forgotten that act of kindness they bestowed upon me, especially with the way that the general public treated us."

And the ship's fate? "I found out my former destroyer was resting on the seafloor off San Clemente Island in southern California, sent to the bottom while serving as an unmanned target ship during a test of a new type missile."

Photographs, diagrams, and explanations of nautical terms help readers enter the life of a young sailor-artist on a journey of self-discovery (with stops at a few bars along the way).

"Tehama County"

"The first branded cattle in Tehama County belonged to William B. Ide," writes Josie Smith, "who drove 165 head of cattle to California in 1845." A year later Ide became the "civil leader of the Bear Flag Revolt" which declared California to be an independent republic. "The Bear Flag Republic lasted 25 days. It was brought to an end when US Navy lieutenant Joseph Warren Revere (Paul Revere's grandson) arrived in Sonoma and raised the Stars and Stripes on July 9, 1846."

The William B. Ide Adobe State Historic Park honors Ide, though the original adobe, built in 1852, was not his actual home ("he lived farther downriver").

While Ide was a historic figure, Smith focuses on capturing everyday life in "Tehama County" ($21.99 in paperback from Arcadia Publishing, arcadiapublishing.com; also for Amazon Kindle) by Josie Smith and the Tehama County Genealogical and Historical Society. (Though a Chico resident, Smith notes in her acknowledgments that the society "adopted a Butte County person as a board member.")

The book is part of the "Images of America" series featuring large black-and-white photographs with detailed captions. Tehama County came into existence in 1856, carved "from territory belonging to Shasta, Butte, and Colusa Counties." No one knows for sure where the name came from, though there are stories. What is certain is that the book captures the vibrant rural life in the county, from Red Bluff to Paskenta, from Corning to Jellys Ferry.

The book is divided into chapters devoted to the four corners of Tehama County interspersed with sections on transportation, agriculture, and recreation. There's a dramatic picture of the "1915 blast of Lassen Peak … from Walnut Street in Red Bluff 37 miles away," and a closer image of the eruption a year earlier.

There's a picture of a Cushman Harvester, drawn by forty mules, working in the southwestern part of the county around 1902. Elsewhere a caption notes that "by 1890, there were 700,000 gallons of brandy stored in the Internal Revenue brick bonded warehouse at (Leland) Stanford's Vina Ranch. Federal law required brandy to be aged under lock and key and then taxed when removed."

Harvested and aged, the pictures and text are a delight.

"Dark Associations"

Chico writer Marie Sutro evokes the gritty reality of police investigations in a stunning debut novel of violence, eroticism, and suspense that holds the reader in its grip until the very end. In "Dark Associations" ($9.99 in paperback from Viper Press; also for Amazon Kindle) a serial killer, a psychopath obsessed with medieval torture methods, horribly mutilates a succession of young women whose bodies each bear the brand of the ancient Norse thorn symbol.

The novel's central figure is Kate Barnes, a Special Victims Unit detective with the San Francisco Police Department, a thirty-something beauty racked by her seeming complicity in the death of her younger sister when they were kids.

She is paired with Detective Tyler Harding from Boston. He had failed to catch that city's "Tower Torturer" who killed seven young women. Harding and Barnes realize the murders have begun again, this time in San Francisco. And the new victims are all somehow connected to Kate.

Stymied, the department captain calls in FBI superstar profiler, Special Agent Ben Fraye, with whom Harding had worked in Boston in the fruitless effort to track down the "unknown subject."

Detective Barnes had not dealt with a psychopathic killer before, so Special Agent Fraye explains to her that the UNSUB "sees something in you--something he feels he can relate to." Such killers "cannot relate to others in terms of compassion and empathy" but, "oddly enough, while you can't figure them out, at least one of them seems to understand aspects of you--and you're the one accusing them of being emotionally handicapped."

Complicating matters is the growing attraction between Barnes and Fraye, Harding's own past with Kate, and a killer taking lives just because he wants to. The characters are deeply drawn and the complex plot provides surprises at every turn. The grisly details are there, but so also is a pulse-pounding story that keeps the pages turning.

Marie Sutro (mariesutro.com) will be signing copies of her book at Barnes and Noble in Chico this Saturday from 2:00-4:00 p.m. The author has also scheduled an interview with Nancy Wiegman, who hosts Nancy's Bookshelf on mynspr.org; readers can subscribe to the podcast version on iTunes at apple.co/2igUfQz.

"Lulu Meets The King Of Poo"

Chico resident Janice Condon (janicecondon.com), a retired occupational therapist, writes in an author's note in her new children's book that "the overuse of antibiotics in childhood" took its toll when she reached middle age. She joined a local group which followed nutrition principles of the Weston A. Price Foundation (westonaprice.org), emphasizing "nutrient-dense foods" (such as raw dairy). Condon found renewed energy once her digestion improved.

Helping children care for their "bio-terrain" is at the heart of "Lulu Meets The King Of Poo" ($14.95 in paperback from Austin Macauley Publishers; also for Amazon Kindle), with colorful illustrations by Paradise's Steve Ferchaud.

A glossary at the end provides key definitions. "Bifidus" refers to "friendly bacteria living mainly in the colon (large intestine)" and "acidophilus" to "friendly bacteria living mainly in the small intestine; also the bacteria added to dairy products (as yogurt and milk)."

One night young Lulu complains of a stomach ache to her mom. It might be the result of a big piece of birthday cake she ate, but maybe anxiety over a science project she had yet to begin. Once asleep, "she had an amazing dream: she climbed into her mouth--and swallowed herself!"

In her stomach she meets a new friend. "I'm Emily Enzyme, and this is my space./ How great that you've landed in just the right place./ Your science project is what you came for./ I'll give you an incredible, digestible tour!"

From the stomach to the small intestine where Lulu meets Abby Acidophilus. "We help your food digest," she says: "We hula in the villi; that's what we do best!" (Speaking of hula, the author's website features a music video called "Do The Acidophilus Hula.")

Then Lulu puts on rubber boots for the journey to meet someone who lives in the large intestine. "Big Benny Bifidus, King of Poo! At your service. How do you do?" Benny tells Lulu that "there are more Bifidi in one quarter inch of your colon, than all the people that ever lived on Earth!" And he adds: "It's our most important duty/ We make things happen in your bootie."

Bottom line (so to speak): That microbe team is pretty gutsy.

"That Ribbon Of Highway I: Highway 99 From The Oregon Border To Sacramento"

Old US99 was, according to Siskiyou County writer and publisher Jill Livingston, "the expedient way to move people and truckloads of locally grown produce up and down the state through the heartland. The Main Street of California."

The state highway system began construction in 1912; in 1925, thanks to a new Federal numbering system for US Highways, US99, "emblazoned on a white porcelain sign," came into existence. Today, with road and bridge realignments, parts of US99 are now just memories.

Livingston and her photographer sister Kathryn Golden Maloof formed a small press in 1996 to chart the history of the roadway. Now the first volume in the series has been updated and enlarged, and it's a joy to read.

"That Ribbon Of Highway I: Highway 99 From The Oregon Border To Sacramento" ($17.99 in paperback from Living Gold Press, livinggoldpress.com), sized for the glovebox, features a hundred photographs, from the past and present, and maps detailing the route. (Volume II takes the reader from Sacramento to the Mexican border; Volume III tracks Highway 99 through the Pacific Northwest.)

The first part traces the development of the California highway system, and Livingston's conversational style and endless curiosity draw the reader into an extraordinary tale of transformation. The story includes not just how public funding happened (and how much money was saved by painting dashes rather than continuous lines to separate the lanes), as well as the role of private auto clubs, but the development of roadside attractions.

Old motel signs and remnants of service stations recall a time when recreational driving was new. ("The town of Corning on Highway 99 is credited with having the first auto camp in California, opening in 1900 in an olive grove.")

Part 2 is a Northstate tour. Livingston notes that "in 1915 the Esplanade became part of the state highway, later US99. The center was paved with a fifteen foot wide strip of concrete." Part 3, the appendix, is a detailed guide to following the 99 trail.

It's a must-have book; besides, who would want to miss the art deco Shell station in Chico, on First Street in 1935?

"The Day The Revolution Began: Reconsidering The Meaning Of Jesus's Crucifixion"

The Christmas story invites readers, in the words of the carol, to "Hail th'incarnate Deity." The declaration is that God has come to earth in Jesus, that Israel's true King has arrived. But few understood the path Jesus would take, that it would involve not a triumphant military conquest but instead a shameful death on a cross.

Biblical scholar N.T. Wright contends that "the New Testament insists, in book after book, that when Jesus of Nazareth died on the cross, something happened as a result of which the world is a different place. And the early Christians insisted that when people are caught up in the meaning of the cross, they become part of this difference."

Wright explains in "The Day The Revolution Began: Reconsidering The Meaning Of Jesus's Crucifixion" ($28.99 in hardcover from HarperOne; also for Amazon Kindle). (In the book's acknowledgments he mentions a number of colleagues "who have given me the benefit of their experience and insight … even though we still disagree about many things." Among them: Reformed theologian Michael Horton, who grew up in Paradise.)

The book is a popular account of Wright's claim that the death and resurrection of Jesus was the culmination of Jesus' vocation, "the one moment in history on behalf of all others through which sins would be forgiven, the powers robbed of their power, and humans redeemed to take their place as worshippers and stewards…."

Wright insists that the crucifixion is not the story of an angry God, fed up with humans and out to kill them all, with Jesus stepping in at the last moment and taking the wrath upon himself. Instead, "for the early Christians, the revolution had happened on the first Good Friday. The 'rulers and authorities' really had been dealt their death blow."

That makes it possible for humans to "embrace the 'covenant of vocation' or, rather, be embraced by it as the Creator calls you to a genuine humanness at last, calls and equips you to bear and reflect his image" and turn away from misplaced worship of money or sex, "when the power of love overcame the love of power."

"A Short Golden Life … The Town Of Bidwell At Bidwell's Bar 1848-1860: Volume II"

"In 1998, as a volunteer for the Bidwell Bar Association at Lake Oroville Visitor Center," Chuck Smay writes, "I set up a three-ring binder titled The History of Bidwell's Bar In One Place. … That started a fifteen-year search."

Several years ago Smay published his findings as "Town Of Bidwell At Bidwell's Bar: Boom To Bust, 1848-1860," but now comes a new book, twice as long as the first, with new source material.

"A Short Golden Life … The Town Of Bidwell At Bidwell's Bar 1848-1860: Volume II" ($30 in paperback, published in association with the Butte County Historical Society) is available at the Society's Museum Store, 1749 Spencer Avenue (at Baldwin) in Oroville (buttecountyhistoricalsociety.org) or through Lulu.com (http://bit.ly/bidwellsbar). Additional materials are at bidwellthetown.com. The book contains historical photographs, 50 pages of endnotes, and a name index.

In the Foreword, Smay writes: "As you read, allow your senses to hear the distant bells on the freight wagon as it descends the hill into town, and the responding whinny of the horses milling about … sense the terror of the nighttime fire burning the town's buildings as you helplessly watch the destruction."

The book is far more than a collection of historical documents. Smay writes a narrative that weaves together the lives of business and political figures, and ordinary citizens, so that the reader senses the vibrancy of this Butte County mining town.

It was once the county seat but found itself "locked in a bitter political struggle" with Oroville; it was a community which burned twice (in 1854 and again in 1859); and a place which ultimately was inundated by the waters of the Oroville Dam project.

The final chapter details the fate of the Mother Orange Tree, a Bidwell legacy that lives on. The plaque near its protected enclosure in Oroville notes that the Mediterranean sweet orange seedling, first planted at Bidwell's Bar, is in large measure the origin of California's citrus industry.

Smay closes with a sweet confession. The fruit, he writes, tastes "like tangerine" but "more important than the taste was the feeling of being connected with the past!"

"Searching For The City Of Love"

"I woke up … in a hostel to expect nothing less than to discover the beautiful city of Barcelona. But then I met you. … Maybe the fortune teller forgot to say that if I were to fall in love with a traveler like you, we would wash away in the Mediterranean Sea along with our footprints in the sand."

"Searching For The City Of Love" ($13.99 in paperback from AuthorHouse; also for Amazon Kindle), by Anna Quimpo Maguire (facebook.com/annaquimpomaguire), presents in free verse and prose poems a quiet meditation about love's loss and memory's place. It is a journey of realization.

The eighteen-year-old Paradise author is the owner of a blog called Three States of Mind (threestatesofmind.tumblr.com), which features her poetry.

She began writing after taking a poetry workshop when she was twelve, and hasn't stopped. In an email, she observes that "free verse poetry gives people the ability to raise their voice without rules. I would wish for young writers to not be afraid to share their work."

In "Searching," the poet comes to terms with what is not to be: "You were my every wish// That I thought would be granted/ But we woke up from our dream/ And the universe pulled you away/ I thought your love was promised to me// You and I never came true."

Each poem is set off as a small chapter accompanied by an evocative image. "Maybe Barcelona should be called the city of love. I've fallen in love with this place, and you've made me love it even more."

But "You left for Morocco this morning, just like I'm leaving to go home to California in 2 weeks. … Our hearts wander just like we do. It's the price you have to pay being a traveler."

And then, in another poem: "You can find magnificence in every part of the world/ Wandering is not measured in distance/ You just have to open your eyes."

"My dreams are embedded in the sand," the poet writes, "I am the waves that collide with the shoreline/ Washing into the land/ I will float away eventually/ And drift to every coast/ To find another dream."

"The Road To Cherokee: A California Epic"

"September 23, 1880, was a gala day in Chico. … President Rutherford B. Hayes and a party … were entertained by General Bidwell at the Mansion. … The next day, the party visited Cherokee where there was … a great banquet served in the Company's blacksmith shop."

"By 1880, the Spring Valley Company had at Cherokee one of the most completely equipped and largest hydraulic mines in California. This was the giant that Sam Morris and the valley farmers were fighting, in which they spent over ten years of unremitting battle, and success was still not yet in sight."

Sam Morris is the fictional creation of Mary Ray McIntyre King, poet and "the first female attorney in Butte County," who at her death in 1949 in Oroville was working on the final draft of a novel.

"The Road To Cherokee: A California Epic" ($24.95 in paperback from ANCHR, anchr.org) is that novel. It's available at The Bookstore (Chico), My Girlfriend’s Closet (Paradise), Discount Books (Oroville), the Butte County Historical Society (Oroville), and the Gridley Museum. My advice: Get it now.

"The Road" was brought to the attention of the Association for Northern California Historical Research by Jean Whiles, King's granddaughter, and was edited, with explanatory footnotes, a biography of the author, historical introduction, and numerous photographs, by Nancy Leek, Ron Womack, Charles Copeland, and Josie Smith.

It's the first work of fiction published by ANCHR but so rooted in the historical record that it's a must-have not only for fans of historical romance but local history buffs. Why was it that, in 1884, "the whole prosperous system of hydraulic mining went broke overnight"?

The novel begins in 1857 with two intertwined families setting out for "Californy": Sam Morris (who seeks land of his own) and his bride, Becky; and Sam's brother-in-law Tom Norman (who wants gold) and his wife, Cynthia.

King writes in an Afterword that "the Road to Cherokee is now only a country road, … a forgotten road back into the past, and the saga of gold and hydraulic mining, and bitter old feuds and personal tragedies." King brings that emotional story to life. It is a triumph.

"New Beginnings"

When the late Jamison Howard built the strange stone mansion in a "small town tucked away in the mountains of northern California," the locals wondered why construction workers kept adding rooms. Word was that "the matriarch Marguerite Howard was kept prisoner here by her three grown sons since her husband's death years ago."

Readers are ushered into this "Devil's Domain" when young divorcee Holland Wallace, 28, in town to care for her aunt, visits the strange abode and is mistaken for a newly-hired nanny by Jamison's stepson, Gage Langdon, 36.

So begins a romantic suspense novel of intrigue and revenge. "New Beginnings" ($16.00 in paperback from Fireside Publications, firesidepubs.com; also for Amazon Kindle), by Olivia Claire High, unfolds the story of a dysfunctional family and the power of love to set things right. The author, an Oroville resident and prolific novelist, puts a baby at the center of a mystery.

The child is the son of Gage's younger brother, James Howard, and his wife Kim. Little Jamie seems to be sickly. Holland's heart melts for him (and it doesn't hurt that there is something about the strong-willed Gage that's mightily attractive), and it's clear that the household needs a new caregiver.

Kim lives in the house, but suffers from postpartum depression and cannot care for her child. Marguerite is there, too, but though kindly she is agoraphobic and can't bear to leave the residence (so her world gets bigger by adding more rooms). James is flaky and his twin brother, Jonathan, is something of a mystery. Money seems to be no object; Gage, James and Jonathan are the "propertied brothers," and there's a connection south of the border that complicates the family dynamic.

Holland has a past of her own ("My dad's a geography buff," she tells Gage early on; "My sister's name is France and my brother's is Scotland"), but she is determined to protect Jamie when she discovers that the previous nannies had been driven from the house by drugged nightmares, and that someone is messing with the baby's food. But why?

The novel probes the recesses of the human heart but always holds out hope that there can indeed be "new beginnings."

"Journey Into Grace: Tales Of A Psychic Paramedic"

For Sarah Grace, life was about escaping the wounds of an abusive childhood.

Growing up in Mobridge, South Dakota, she writes in her memoir, she began to experience strange visions and a sense of energies flowing around her.

Then it happened. "One night, in the wee hours of the morning, my mom sprang onto my bed and shoved a pillow over my face. Panicked, I squirmed, kicked, and clawed at her arms, fighting desperately for air until a beautiful angel with long flowing golden hair appeared just above us and told me to stop and play dead. … I had been interfacing with spirits for over a year by that time, but this was the first time one of them had rescued me in a difficult situation. I was grateful."

The Folsom resident, who often visits friends in Chico, writes of finding her true calling in "Journey Into Grace: Tales Of A Psychic Paramedic" ($12.99 in paperback, self-published, sarahkgrace.com; also for Amazon Kindle).

She continued to see "ghosts of Native American tribal members, monks, gurus, recently deceased townspeople" as well as "demons, dragons, gargoyles, and every kind of slimy, sticky sloth imaginable."

Her account takes her to Southern California and beyond. She became a stripper in college; tried marriage; got high on ephedrine and harder drugs; modeled for Playboy; developed bulimia; and became a paramedic. In that job she confronted horrendous traffic accidents and the souls of those killed hovering nearby.

Only after revisiting Mobridge is her trauma finally laid to rest. Plunging into studies of shamanism and energy medicine, she now teaches "other energetically sensitive people how to work with their gifts and apply them in their daily lives."

The bottom line? "I understood that by taking one hundred percent ownership for the state of my well-being and life, I had the power to create my own destiny. … At our core, we all just want to be loved, accepted, and validated for who we are. … Our past does not define us, unless we allow it to."

The author is scheduled to be interviewed by Nancy Wiegman on Nancy's Bookshelf this Friday at 10:00 a.m. at mynspr.org.

"Railroad Ties: Broken Hearts And Mended Lives"

Luana Lundquist-Rowland is a licensed Jungian-trained marriage and family therapist. The Burlingame resident lived in Oroville from 1949 through 1970. She's written a fictionalized autobiography of her early years that aims to recapture the spirit of her irrepressible brother--before the darkness of alcoholism sets in.

"Railroad Ties: Broken Hearts And Mended Lives" ($26.95 in paperback from Outskirts Press, outskirtspress.com; also for Amazon Kindle) presents the ups and downs of an American family, visiting relatives by rail, during World War II and on into the 1950s. The story begins with Luana, five years old, born in 1937, and Jimmy, born a year later. Jimmy is "a needy, fussy, and irritable infant," and such traits continue to manifest themselves throughout Jimmy's life. For the author, there's a kind of fate at work here.

Eventually the family moves to Oroville. Tragedy strikes on March 4, 1950 when a group of girls from the Y hike to the upper Thermalito Bridge, then down to the water. One of the girls slips and falls, and she is pulled out by Deanna. But then "Deanna is caught in an undertow; this whirling surge of water sucks her down below the surface." There is no news  until August, when Deanna's remains are discovered. "That summer, Jimmy loses faith in a God that answers prayer."

Time moves on. Luana prepares to attend Chico State College. Jimmy is popular in high school but he can't resist the alcohol provided by the older boys. His addiction would become his demise.

In an Epilogue, the author writes of Jimmy that he "is born a rascal," but he also "plays the brother and the life teacher of a sister that becomes a better person for having known him in all his multiplicities of character."

In the end, the story isn't about Jimmy's destiny "as a seemingly bottomless, hopeless and incurable alcoholic." Rather, it's about "a shared childhood and a love between a brother and sister that never falters, no matter what."

Luana Lundquist-Rowland will be at the Book and Wine Pairing, Saturday, November 19, from 2:00-6:00 p.m. at Purple Line Urban Winery, 760 Safford Street in Oroville; for details visit http://bit.ly/2e8lJqe.

"Special Delivery"

Chicoan Marcia Myers is a fan of "real" mail. "Ink from your pen touches the stationery," she writes, "your fingers touch the paper, and your saliva seals the envelope. (Sealed with a kiss!)."

In this country the agency responsible for getting those letters where they ought to go is the U.S. Postal Service, and Myers, who wrote two "My Hometown Chico" books under the name of Marcia Myers Wilhite, has produced a beautifully crafted coffee table book full of facts and stories about the storied institution.

"Special Delivery" ($59.95 in hardcover from Marcia Myers Publishing, marciamyerspublishing.com) ranges from the Pony Express, the development of postmarks, and postal vehicles, to painted mailboxes, stamps, and the first airmail delivery (in 1859, by balloon).

There's a spread devoted to what Myers describes as "the most expensive commodity in the world by weight," the British Guiana One-Cent Magenta. The "octagonal faded scrap of one-inch paper" was purchased by shoe designer Stuart Weitzman in 2014 for $7.9 million.

In the pages devoted to post office art, the author writes that in Chico "we have own own post office mural on the downtown corner of 5th and Broadway. Created by Ray Handy Crane in 1988, the Pony Express thunders across the exterior wall of our downtown post office."

Then there are famous pen pals (Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln; Groucho Marx and T.S. Eliot) and some not so famous. In high school the author would write messages on the chalk in the room. The teacher missed it, but "not the boy who attended the same classroom earlier in the day."

Myers notes that she experimented sending "naked mail" through the system, including "a potato, coconut, flip flop, cowboy hat, plunger, … and a can of sardines." Put on enough postage, a clear address, and off it goes.

This captivating book, designed by Connie Ballou, is printed on matte paper with a sewn ribbon marker. The official book release party is Thursday, Nov. 10, 6:00-9:00 p.m. at Beatniks in Chico. The Christmas preview is Sunday, Nov. 20, from 4:00-8:00 p.m. at Zucchini and Vine, and from noon until 2:00 p.m. at Magna Carta in Chico Friday, Nov. 25, and Saturday, Nov. 26.