"Joe And Me: A Love Story Of A Guitar And Her Boy"

In 1933 Victor Marcini, master luthier (a maker of stringed instruments) crafts a special guitar for his soon-to-be born son. Young Joe begins calling her "Wose" and, later, Rose, since she's partially made of rosewood. Readers get the whole story not from Joe, but from Rose.

Rose is a magic guitar. "Joe And Me: A Love Story Of A Guitar And Her Boy" ($13.99 in paperback from Stansbury Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle) is lovingly crafted by Chicoan Carolyn Ayres, combining her own love of the guitar with a deep insight into how the world looks through Rose-colored glasses.

"Although I had no eyes or ears," Rose tells readers, "I could see and hear. Victor had inadvertently activated the tree consciousness that was ingrained in my wood."

Though Rose doesn't talk, she expresses herself in more subtle ways. As Joe's guitar instructor says in wonderment, "I've never seen or heard another like it. When you play it, the guitar seems to be trying to please you by resonating with a tone I can't get from it." That's what love will do. 

Rose's narration is studded with puns (and Ayers provides a short glossary of music terms so those not familiar can join the fun). Yet--and this is hard to explain--the wordplays are not jokey but rather part of Rose's stream of consciousness. 

When Victor's wife, Collette, takes ill, Rose begins to fret. With Collette's death, and then Victor's, Joe flees the area so creditors will not claim Rose for themselves.

Joe, now a teenager, hooks up with a musical group and is soon packing them in with his playing. But Rose's magical sounds attract the attention of thieves, and Rose tells the extraordinary story of what happens over the next decades as she is separated from Joe, yearning to return. 

Rose, it turns out, is not only magically beautiful, but knows it all too well. Events will take her down a peg but that's part of the symphony of her life, a symphony constructed by Ayers with a kind of whimsical clarity that will surely pluck the heartstrings of those who listen carefully.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meredith is a friendly and compassionate guide.

"The Doomsday Medallion: A VanOps Thriller"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Cartwheels: Finding Your Special Kind Of Smart"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"A Fickle Wind"

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

Yet life went on for David Janzen, 12, at Central Elementary School in Del Rio Vista, "a small, central California farming community." The new novel by David H. Dirks, "A Fickle Wind" ($8.99 in paperback, self-published; also for Amazon Kindle), continues Janzen's balloon experiments begun in "The Art Of Stretching." (The sketches by Benjamin Pacheco perfectly capture the kid-centric fascination with engineering.)

In the earlier novel, Janzen and his friend Jack, who uses a wheelchair, inflate a homemade balloon with natural gas from the science classroom (Janzen's dad is the science teacher) in their effort to send a "rat astronaut" into the skies and back again safely. Now, in the new story, the goal is to hoist a radio-controlled camera into the Del Rio Vista sky and take pictures from high overhead.

Dirks, a long-time Chicoan, was one of the first three engineers for KCHO radio after it debuted April 22, 1969; he now lives in Brentwood with his wife, Karen. Janzen, on the cusp of high school, is infused with the same love of engineering. 

Ribbed at home by his three sisters, taunted at school for being a "shrimp," and bullied by a neighbor kid who secretly envies the experiments, Janzen manages to navigate his world with equanimity, expanding in awareness and friendships, including Fernando Chavez and MBB (Molly Beth Brown, "unpretentious," with "beauty more hidden than revealed").

The camera experiment makes for a great tale, and when Janzen and friends gather they revel in all their childhood stories. But childhood is ending. When he is baptized at thirteen, afterward chomping down Aunt Martha's baptismal cake, David wonders at how "the two worlds, sacred and secular, were, as they say, miles apart... Day-to-day living was carried out with only a notional nod to the sacred."

In unpretentious prose, foreshadowing something beautiful not yet fully revealed, the novel evokes a forgotten wonder--even as it makes the reader yearn for the next installment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jack would never forget.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Invisible Wounds: Mental Illness And Civil War Soldiers"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Earthly Delights: Poems"

Troy Jollimore teaches philosophy at Chico State and, in his new book of poems, celebrates a world that contains movies. And yet, even in the theatre, "in the very temple of Delight," as he quotes Keats saying, "Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine."

Listen: "A friend who left for the East Coast two years/ ago has flown back to Chico to take photos/ of Mount Lassen exactly one hundred years after/ its catastrophic eruption. For a while/ it feels as if everything is a reenactment of something that has already happened: even dumping/ a skitter of Raisin Bran into a bowl/ ... or trying on sneakers takes on/ the aura of a ritual." 

Well, "Are you trying/ to deny time and change, to say that death/ will have no authority here, or are you/ celebrating the fact that everything is/ in flux and ungraspable, or is the season/ doing one or the other of these things for you?"

In "Earthly Delights: Poems" ($17.95 in paperback from Princeton University Press; also for Amazon Kindle) melancholy seems ever present for something lost or just beyond the horizon.

So, in "Early Morning, Upper Bidwell Park," the poet writes, "When God made the world he did it like this/ world-making in the daytime/ world-undoing at night// And it has occurred to me that we might be living/ in one of the undoings...."

Elsewhere, "When the Senator Theatre closed in 1999 in Chico, California,/ the last film to be shown was 'American Beauty,' and so I went, for the last screening./ I went to take in the last images, to feel the last light, to be a part/ of the end of something, to be, I suppose, a kind of witness, and to be a part/ of that crowd of others...."

Then a postscript to a poem called "Fire": "The world will end in fire, not ice,/ William Tecumseh Sherman said,/ as we, horizons glowing red,/ inhaled the ash of Paradise."

Now the poet sings of the "melancholy night, sagging with the heaviness/ Of summer, and of silence, of things we cannot guess,/ Rocked gently on the azure by the wind's caress,/ The trembling tree, the nightingale's mournful address."

"Lily's Lament"

Chicoan Dick Cory, retired science and health teacher, continues his environmental activism in his thirteenth self-published book. This one is for kids, but also for adults, with a narrative by a long-tailed lemur.

"Lily's Lament" (approximately $20 at Made In Chico) features full-color illustrations by Steve Ferchaud which bring lemurs to life with a distinctive tail to tell. There's a bite to this tale as it's the story of what's happening to the lemurs' home in far-off Madagascar.

"What bothers me most," Lily notes, "is I'm getting old at 17, and as leader of my troop (alpha female), I may not be able to protect and care for my family much longer. Our living space has been squeezed down to the ... southwest corner of our country. Although we spend about one-third on the ground, we still need the forest for food."

Lily is eighteen inches tall; though she weighs but five pounds, "don't sell me short on brain power. I've been able to learn simple arithmetic, understand patterns, and pick the right tool to do a job (sequencing)." As Cory writes in the introduction, non-human animals have ways of communicating, even "the ability to select, create, and use tools."

For Cory, "watching long-tailed lemurs hop, skip, and jump across open ground in Madagascar is so much like children playing on a school playground during recess. There must be some common emotions, pleasures, and need of expression." Humans should not forget.

Lily's country is poor; the most important export is natural vanilla, but the consequences for Lily are stark: "I like awake at night in my cave bed wondering what value we have to our country. Is the wood and natural vanilla so valuable to drive us off the island? Our lives are at stake (endangered) not only by this lost ground ... but by hunters for food, and pet collectors. We live on the edge of 'no more' (extinction)."

Could tourism be an answer? Kids coming to Madagascar "could watch us jump from tree to tree, climb the rocky sides of steep mountains, and hop, skip, and jump" along the ground. It's an optimistic dream, and Cory leaves readers with much to think about.

"InSanity"

"Our connection evolved into a salacious summer fling," writes Chicoan Robyn Alana Engel in her new memoir. "Between romps, there were frequent 'I’m here for you' phone calls. We’d stroll along the creek at Bidwell Park hand-in-hand and laugh about absurdities like a chihuahua chasing its own tail." But "'Jeff' wouldn't commit to an exclusive partnership with anyone.... I slipped into a bout of depression. I didn't realize this then, but my brain was screaming for balance."

The screaming continues throughout "InSanity" ($11.99 in paperback, self-published, with more at rawknrobyn.blogspot.com; also for Amazon Kindle), a dark and mordant work of creative non-fiction which explores in gritty and fairly explicit detail the tension Engel feels between self-care as a single and an insatiable desire for sex.

"Am I oversexed," she wonders in print, "due to a lack of touch throughout my childhood? Or am I oversexed because I'm trying to make up for lost time--having been such a late bloomer?" Her introduction to "Justin," her prince charming, came only in her late thirties, but the marriage didn't last. Then, later, Engel receives news that her ex had died by suicide.

Memories of growing up in an outwardly successful but inwardly psychologically abusive family flood in (never hugged by mom, ignored by dad). And guilt about how poorly she treated her middle brother. Depressed, schizophrenic, Glenn died by suicide in 1988.

Engel's own will to live is fed by a need for constant emotional and sexual stimulation ("loneliness makes me feel crazy"). Her hookups over the years (with Jeff, Twig, George, Mr. Scorpio, Fred, Paul E., Troy, Eldee S., Paul Revere, JT) and run-ins with roommates, neighbors and bosses reveal a blushingly hilarious acid tongue, a person who can't stand boredom--but also someone deeply wounded.

A licensed therapist, Engel played Annie Bidwell, shook Bernie Sanders' hand when he came to Chico, helped Camp Fire victims. For Engel, "you have to choose life, in order to inspire others to do the same.... I choose life, and I intend to give my best to the whole of it. I arrive home, in sanity."

(Please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 for 24/7 free and confidential support.)

"Sunroofs And Shoeboxes"

For Chico State journalism graduate Jaime Mathews, now living with her husband and kids in Danville, her life as a single person was, well, frustrating. "I was thirty-one years old," she writes, "and I always thought that by then, I would be married with children.... Instead, I was living with a roommate, my dog, and two cats, working at my dad's business while I was also growing the hair salon I had purchased (and already disliked)."

She felt stuck. So she started writing "on January 7 because beginning on January 1 seemed way to cliché for me" and "committed myself to writing every day for six months about the things I was grateful for. You see, I knew about the power of mindset. I had studied it constantly during my master's program in holistic health and nutrition."

Though the resulting "gratitude journey" opened many personal and professional doors, the point is to express gratitude for what you already have (and may not realize it). 

Those daily posts are contained in Mathews' upbeat "Sunroofs And Shoeboxes" ($12.99 in paperback from The Sweet Life Co., thesweetlife.co; also for Amazon Kindle). Subtitled "train yourself to find happiness in a coffee mug, joy in the laughter of a stranger, and fulfillment in the beauty of a sunset," it's like opening the sunroof on a car: "There is a distinct feeling of expansiveness."

Noticing a little extra around your mid-section? Well, your intuitive sense is called a gut feeling and "because of this, having a more visually present gut can actually be a very healthy reminder to pay attention." (Though a too-present gut can indeed pose a health risk.)

Need creative inspiration? Try Chico's Thursday night market "which showcased the uniqueness of this college town: kettle corn ... fresh herbs, and the most amazing breads."

Sad, scary, or dangerous situations can stimulate gratefulness for others: "We are not meant to live this life on our own." 

"So the next time you fail your New Year's resolutions, forget about them" and loosen up; set a goal whenever, and go for it, being kind to yourself and those around you. 

Readers will find Jaime Mathews a cheering companion along the way.

"Abandoned Chinatowns: Northern California"

With floods and civil war in China in the mid-nineteenth century, many Chinese men came to Northern California during the gold rush boom not so much to start over but to "earn enough money to provide for their families back home and to return to their homeland with financial security." 

As southern Oregon writer Margaret LaPlante points out, this led in the 1850s and beyond to the establishment of numerous Chinatowns and created tension not only among non-Chinese but also within their own communities. "Fires swept through Chinatowns continually," she writes, "but the Chinese showed their resiliency by rebuilding time and time again."

LaPlante captures some of these Chinatowns through hundreds of historical photographs in "Abandoned Chinatowns: Northern California" ($23.99 in paperback from America Through Time). San Francisco's original Chinatown was destroyed by earthquake and fire in 1906. Other Chinatowns throughout Northern California had their own challenges. 

One photograph shows the "third Joss House in Oroville's Chinatown; the first two burned." The Joss House, or Chinese temple, "was built in 1863 using bricks manufactured in nearby Palermo. In 1937, after a series of vandalism and thefts, the town decided to turn the Joss House into a museum," still also available for worship.

LaPlante writes that the "Chinese who lived in Red Bluff built elaborate tunnels underneath the downtown. Most of the tunnels stretched out to the Sacramento River. As in most Chinatowns, there was a great deal of opium, gambling, and prostitution."

In Truckee, many Chinese "worked on the railroad. The Truckee Chinatown burned in 1878 but was rebuilt on the outskirts of town. In 1886, during the anti-Chinese movement, Truckee's ... 'Caucasian League' ordered all Chinese residents to leave Truckee on their own or they would be shipped out in boxcars."

LaPlante devotes an entire chapter to detailing "anti-Chinese sentiment." The 1870 Naturalization Act forbade Chinese from becoming citizens and vestiges of discriminatory policies remained until at least 1965.

The Chinese "planted vineyards in the wine country; they cleared the delta...; they installed irrigation for orchards; and they worked in the fishing industries and in canneries.... They operated laundries, restaurants, markets....."  LaPlante's book is a timely reminder of what has come before.

"The Yahi Storyteller"

Lewis Foreman, a correspondent tells me, was part of the Chico High School graduating class of 1959. Now, in his eighth decade, he has written and illustrated a book of extraordinary tales that tell of ancient civilizations, galaxy traveling machines, and a perpetually sunlit garden world at earth's center.

And it begins with the story of a talented drummer whose stage name is Frosty. Years ago "he had left his home town of Chico, Ca., which had not satisfied his musical desires, and moved to the City." In San Francisco he finds "drugs and Rock and Roll" and later sets off to Reykjavik to explore his Viking heritage. What he finds is no less than the Reality behind all mythologies--and sword-and-sorcery adventures aplenty.

"The Yahi Storyteller" ($39.92 in paperback, self-published; also for Amazon Kindle) prefaces Frosty's own incredible journey with the long tale of Sky Hawk, part of the Acoma Anasazi, who "had wandered the southwest and had eventually entered California," coming to the land of the ancient Yana nation and the Yahi people.

Only a few Yahi survive the cattlemen's attacks (and Foreman's book does not look away from the grisly slaughters), but they do find hidden caves in which to live, and eventually Sky Hawk the storyteller is welcomed into the Yahi family.

"The Great Spirit is the manifested Father and Mother Creator," Sky Hawk tells the children, "and has been called by many names. The Navaho people call it the Holy Wind, the pale-skins call it the Holy Ghost."

Father and Mother Creator, neither male nor female, "are beyond creation." "They, together with the manifested Great Spirit, are the Creator. Three, yet all one. They are Power, Wisdom and Love." 

This back story sets the stage for Frosty's literal slide into the Viking era, where the drummer is renamed Sigmund Thorsson, summoned by the leader, Ice Wolf, to learn drums--and to explore a strange tunnel into the center of the earth wherein Centaurs, Sprites, Satyrs, Dragons and apes reside. 

The dark lords and their Fallen minions have arisen to enslave others, so the Viking exploration turns into a battle with cosmic consequences. 

Foreman's fertile imagination is wonderful to behold.

"Miseducation: How Climate Change Is Taught In America"

Spring 2019. "Sixth-grade science teacher Kristen Del Real had invited me to come by during her prep period, so for the first time since age thirteen," Katie Worth writes, "I found myself walking the halls of my alma mater, Chico Junior High School." She had returned to find out what kids were being taught about climate change.

Worth worked with FRONTLINE and The GroundTruth Project, part of a team that won an Emmy for the interactive documentary "The Last Generation" (bit.ly/3dMzMNL) about three young people living in the Marshall Islands. Rising sea levels threaten their very homeland.

One of them moved with his family to Oklahoma, and Worth wanted to know what his textbooks said about climate change. The answer fit into her larger investigative journalism project now published in book form: "Miseducation: How Climate Change Is Taught In America" ($16 in paperback from Columbia Global Reports; also for Amazon Kindle).

Worth "traveled to more than a dozen communities to talk to kids about what they have learned about the phenomenon that will shape their future. What I found were points of friction in abundance." 

Del Real explains that several years earlier, students started to lose interest in their climate change "solution projects" because a history teacher "was showing them YouTube videos alleging that global warming was a hoax...."

And yet, Worth writes, "the more that scientists have studied a link between human industry and global temperatures, the more unambiguous they have found it." 

Her report explains how "climate deniers" create "climate doubters" among the general public in a striking parallel with tobacco industry tactics. She is frank in her reporting that climate scientists don't know everything, and she interviews climate skeptics and fossil fuel advocates. 

But the bottom line is that climate change is falsely presented as a debate, as if coming from "legitimate scientific disagreement."

In 2019, Paradise Intermediate seventh-grader Nakowa Kelley said in Marc Kessler's science class: "This global warming stuff? My parents said it's not true." With care and attention, Kessler tells Worth he helps students search for the truth, but it is a challenge. 

The previous November Nakowa's house disappeared in the Camp Fire.

"Follow The Crypto"

Retired Chico State dean Stephen W. King (swkingbooks.com) has just published the second novel in the Lucas Bitterman series, and it takes up King's interest in the new world of cryptocurrency. 

Luke, a member of the Secret Service, finds that, after an earthquake in Bellingham, Washington, he must "Follow The Crypto" ($18.99 in paperback from FriesenPress; also for Amazon Kindle). As the story unfolds, readers will learn not only about how Bitcoin works but why it's the favored monetary system for various nefarious doings and for avoiding taxes. That's because it's untraceable. Sort of. 

The earthquake doesn't cause much damage, except, as a news alert says, to "one side of a three-story downtown building." It falls nine feet into one of the old mining tunnels under Bellingham; nobody hurt, but investigators find strange things in condo 2A, where someone named George Kennedy lives. We're talking "digital wallets," code numbers, and cash. About $30,000.

George has made it known to local bank tellers to expect big deposits because he's a professional gambler. In actuality, of course, George is not; he's not even "George." But before he flees the area he wants to visit the bank one last time to retrieve "almost five pounds of gold bullion coins--about $150,000 worth of American Eagles and Canadian Maple Leafs."

Luke, serving as one of the Secret Service representatives on the government's Joint Task Force on cryptocurrency crimes, is soon involved in what is becoming a bigger case than one about a local con artist's bad luck. Staying with an old friend and his wife near Lake Whatcom, Luke unravels a drug smuggling scheme that stretches from Bellingham down the I-5 corridor all the way to Mexico.

Along the way we meet not only the corrupt officials running the operation but a greedy wannabe. And, after a killing, the question becomes whether the good guys' plot to catch the murderer will work. 

But there is more. Once motives have been revealed things get increasingly complicated and Luke wrestles with the "inherent tension between law enforcement and criminal justice." King is at his best in asking where justice may be found and, fortunately for readers, his answer is not encrypted.

"Paradise Found: A High School Football Team's Rise From The Ashes"

Paradise High's junior safety Dylan Blood said it this way: "After all we've been through, we have each other's back in everything; we play for each other. It's win or death. If it wasn't for Paradise, none of us would be who we are. Paradise is something within each of us, and we're fighting for it together." 

It's the spirit of "CMF"--"Crazy Mountain Folk." And it's captured in a heart-rending new book by LA Times columnist Bill Plaschke. Reporting on the Bobcats' first football season after the Camp Fire, Plaschke entered the life and thoughts of Coach Rick Prinz, the coaching staff, athletic director Anne Stearns, the players, and those who cheered them on. 

"Paradise Found: A High School Football Team's Rise From The Ashes" ($28.99 in hardcover from William Morrow; also in audiobook and Amazon Kindle formats) reads like a cliff-hanging thriller--because it is.

Readers may know how the season ended, that cold (and rainy) dose of reality, but will not be prepared for the many stories of players and their coaches escaping the burning town and then living what came next: disruption, anger, questioning, and--commitment to football. It is enough to reduce a book columnist to a puddle of tears.

"'Football became the thing that bound the town together,' explained Jay Bell, athletic director at the high school from 1985 to 2004. 'Paradise is a different kind of town, and we had a different kind of football program.'"

On Thursday, November 8, 2018, coach Prinz texted team members at 8:10 a.m., confirming practice that afternoon at 3:00 p.m. unless the smoke got in their way. Little did he know.

Much later, after the season, at the banquet to honor the players, Prinz recalled that text. Then he said: "Eleven minutes later, we were running for our lives. These young men faced the reality of death. ... I could see the anguish and fear in my players' eyes. We didn't have a school, we didn't have a practice field, we didn't have cleats, we didn't even have a football!" But, of course, they had something else. 

You must read this book. Period.

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. Send review requests to dbarnett99@me.com. Columns archived at https://dielbee.blogspot.com

"I Lift My Eyes To The Hills: God's Help In Times Of Trouble"

Back in 1983, when Stephen Payne was going to Chico State, he and a friend, he told me in an email, "decided on a lark to build a raft out of inner tubes and plywood and float down the Sacramento River for two days." Aside from almost capsizing in a patch of whitewater, they made it, a cause for thanksgiving. 

Now living with his wife, Laura, in Southern Oregon (with an uncle and aunt in Orland), Payne finds continuing reasons for thanksgiving, not least of which is Laura surviving stage-4 melanoma. Yet, as a Christian, he recognizes that "in the midst of the storm, when all had seemed bleak, it was not easy for me to remain grateful to God." 

He found comfort in the Psalms which provide assurance that "the Lord will watch over your coming and going, both now and forevermore." Thus, "whether he answers as we hope or not, he is still faithful, and he is still good."

That conviction is expressed in his coffee-table book "I Lift My Eyes To The Hills: God's Help In Times Of Trouble" ($19.99 in hardcover, self-published, available at www.liftmyeyestothehills.com), featuring his stunning full-color photographs of the natural world (and its people), all set within the context of the Psalms of thanksgiving.

Ten chapters each focus on a verse, such as Psalm 96:12, "let all the trees of the forest sing for joy." Payne presents a brief exposition; a set of his glorious images taken in Oregon, California, and around the world; his own accounts of nearly capsizing as he faces metaphorical whitewater; and chapter discussion questions.

He and Laura spent a decade with Wycliffe Bible Translators translating the New Testament for the Kwatay people in Senegal; Steve now trains national translators. Through it all he continues his love of photography. 

Tourists snap the sunset's "burst of color" and then leave, but with patience the photographer begins to see "the high clouds overhead start to glow with the pastel shades of alpenglow." That, he writes, is like committed love, for God or one's spouse: "enduring, soft, tender, and patient," even in the midst of rapids.

"Rickety Stitch And The Gelatinous Goo: The Battle Of The Bards"

"Listen," the living skeleton says to encourage the lovely Canta in a new graphic novel, "You don't need a big audience to sing. You don't need adoring fans or chests of gold. And you don't need approval from anyone. You just need the music. ... We sing because we love to. The melodies, the stories ... they inspire us."

The skeleton, along with his sidekick, a talking hunk of gelatin, and a group of oddball friends, have journeyed far to the city of Harp's Edge, there to join in a great music competition that will, in an unexpected way, bring down the house. 

"Rickety Stitch And The Gelatinous Goo: The Battle Of The Bards" ($16.99 in paperback from Knopf Books for Young Readers; also for Amazon Kindle), illustrated by Ben Costa, and created and written by Costa and James Parks, is the third outing for Rickety and company.

Book 1 of "Rickety Stitch And The Gelatinous Goo" set our heroes on "The Road To Epoli"; Book 2 saw them on "The Middle-Route Run." For Costa and Parks, both from the Bay Area, Rickety's stories are part of a larger universe, the Land of Eem. Readers coming first to Book 3 will miss the backstory, but there's plenty of action--and poignant betrayal--to keep teens and adults mesmerized.

Rickety desperately wants to find out who he is, and his purpose. He comes from an earlier time, never co-opted by the again-resurgent Gloom King; as one character puts it, he's "the undying ember of a golden age that has been all but forgotten." 

Throughout the story, there are flashes of that reality, and oh, the song: "What Once Has Been, Again Shall Be," written by Costa and Parks, and sung by former Chicoan, and now Oaklander, Evin Wolverton, who co-wrote the lyrics (listen at RicketyStitch.com). Wolverton performed in several E-R Sessions, back before the Plague.

Outcasts and outsiders find courage together. As the song says, "For every sorry heart, we'll lift each other/ For every crashing wave, we'll brave the sea." Though a deep sorrow has come upon the world, Rickety's antics will keep readers in stitches.