"Matthew 25 Christianity: Redeeming Church And Society"

Donald Heinz, Lutheran minister and Chico State emeritus Professor of Religious Studies, offers in his new book what he calls a field guide to a new Christian movement, one based on the words of Jesus in Matthew 25.

"You've heard the story," Heinz writes; "it is the end of the age and all people are lined up, like sheep and goats, before Jesus as the cosmic judge. A series of questions ensues and judgments are made. Did you see me among them, Jesus as King asks, when there were homeless to be sheltered, naked to be clothed, hungry to be fed, thirsty to be given a drink, strangers to be welcomed, the imprisoned to be visited? If you did these things for the least of these, you were serving me. Now you will inherit the kingdom prepared for you since the foundation of the world."

For Heinz, "Matthew 25 Christianity: Redeeming Church And Society" ($29 in paperback from Cascade Books; also for Amazon Kindle) has both an inner and outer expression. Within the Christian tradition "new movers and movements came to take Christianity seriously, and were gripped by it, and made the concern with 'the least of these' the cause of their religious life" (think Francis of Assisi, Martin Luther King Jr.).

But today "we have isolated or distanced the poor, or insulated our social imagination" until "it is nearly impossible to see them." He proposes churches identify as "Matthew 25" congregations--but there must be more.

If his book seeks to take the likely original reference in Matthew 25 (to Jesus' itinerant disciples, often poor) and bring it into "new social contexts" and a care for "all the people of the world who are in need," he also advocates for the institutionalization of such a social gospel framework within governmental structures. It's not a theocracy, Heinz writes, but a call for the voice of Matthew 25 to become part of public discourse. 

In the end Heinz invites readers to "sell all and sign on": "The apostle Paul took a world-friending God public, rendering the Jesus movement a light to the world. What are we going to do with this?"

"Chico's Chapmans: The California Years 1861-1899"

"Augustus Hartley Chapman's name," writes historian Michele Shover, "hovers like the wisp of a phantom in Chico…." Gus Chapman died in 1899, when Chico had fewer than 4000 residents, and though he had a remarkable part to play, except for "Chapmantown" his name has mostly been lost to history. Until now.

"Chico's Chapmans: The California Years 1861-1899" ($35 in paperback from Stansbury Publishing) is Shover at her indispensable finest. The fruit of forty years of research, her book is a compelling narrative of daily life in Chico focused on the man from Michigan who worked for John Bidwell and then turned into a longtime rival. 

In more than four hundred pages, including dozens of historical images, Shover captures a community beset by economic downturns, fires, political squabbles, controversy over whether to split Butte County (take that, Oroville!), failing wooden water pipes, family tragedies, anti-Chinese sentiment, murders. 

It was Chapman who in 1877 "formed a private vigilante committee of business leaders—the Citizens' Executive Committee on Anti-Chinese Crimes—to circumvent Chico government's refusal to act"; it was "the only vigilante committee in Chico history" and burnished his reputation "as a man of principle, courage and leadership."

Gus was also very much a man of his times. 

In 1865 he "left with Bidwell's partner George Wood to open a competing store." Five years later, with both Bidwell and Chapman selling lots on their respective subdivisions, Chapman, elected as a school trustee, voted to put the new Oakdale school near his own property. That despite Bidwell's offer to sell property for the school "on the east side of Orient Street ('Old Chinatown')" for a dollar.

As Shover notes, "A schoolboard member today who did what Chapman had done would be indicted. However, nineteenth-century government, in general, enforced no business standards or public ethics."

Chapman and his wife Sarah celebrated "their shared birthday and their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary" in 1883. Sarah kept the family together (and Shover pays due regard to her work). 

When Gus died, despite his many failures, "only his creditors were aware of one point central to his honor: he had paid off every debt in full. He died owing no man."

"Generation Dread: Finding Purpose In An Age Of Climate Crisis"

Whether she and her husband Sebastian should have a child is a question that suffuses Britt Wray's deeply researched report on the effects of "eco-distress" felt by many young people today. In an era of climate extremes thirty-something Wray, born in Toronto and later a Human and Planetary Health Postdoctoral Fellow at the Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health, traces the effects of what is called "global dread." 

It's defined by author Glenn Albrecht as "the anticipation of an apocalyptic future state of the world that produces a mixture of terror and sadness in the sufferer for those who will exist in such a state." Should one bring a child into such an uncertain world?

Wray's analysis focuses on those who feel pain as wildfires, droughts, floods and hurricanes ravage the globe. The overwhelming problems, exacerbated by racism that makes the most vulnerable even more vulnerable as the climate changes, can produce either a depressed apathy or ill-directed energy from culturally privileged eco-warriors. 

There is a better way, she writes. "Generation Dread: Finding Purpose In An Age Of Climate Crisis" ($24 in hardcover from Knopf Canada; also for Amazon Kindle) proposes "a way of transforming fear into radical hope." 

Wray is scheduled to give a talk on "teaching climate change and resilience" Thursday, October 13 at Chico State's ARTS 150 Recital Hall at 6:00 p.m. The public event is free and will be available on Zoom (details at bit.ly/3rKsG3g).

"If you're resigned to the idea," Wray writes, "that everything before us spells out a very particular vision of mass suffering, bring that thought into your arms and legs with a big inhale, and be present in the moment. Then feel that you actually don't know what exactly is going to happen. No one does! … There's an excitement about the future that can arise in that dark place." 

For Wray, it's not about grasping expectations, but rather exerting one's agency in the moment, and building a community-based model of mental health care. We feel the pain—and "invest in the future anyway." 

So what about having a child? That, dear reader, is Wray's story to tell.

"Don't Mess With Me Texas"

Chicoan Nancy Good, writing as Skye Ryter, has published a harrowing account of abuse and "comeuppance" which she calls a "memoir/novel based upon actual and fictitious events…. The author is offering her personal perspective on the subject of protecting children from their abuser(s)."

"Don't Mess With Me Texas: Based On The Satanic Panic, Child And Domestic Abuse And The Children's Underground Network In The 1980's" ($7.99 in paperback, self-published; also for Amazon Kindle), contains graphic descriptions of what the author calls "sexual child abuse," "satanic ritual abuse," and spousal abuse. It is not for the squeamish.

Narrator Kiftin O'Tool, after a college stint in Redding, finds pool parties and popping pills for back pain not quite the career she planned. At 26, promised a cush job in Hawaii by an Army recruiter, she enlists as a motor-pool driver. That's where she meets troubled Scott McConnell.

"I'm ashamed to admit it," the narrator tells readers, "but I was obsessed with him. Everything inside of me was telling me to help him. To love him into decency. It could be my purpose in life to show him how to behave responsibly." She adds: "I have since learned that when a child is abused by a parent, they will unconsciously seek out a mate who produces similar high anxiety. Having an overwhelming desire to 'fix' the mate is really a deep desire to fix the relationship with the abusive parent."

She can't quit Scott. They marry and later, with new daughter Kali, move to Texas where Scott's bizarre parents reside (his mom is stone cold, his dad a spider-keeper) and it becomes clear Kali is being sexually abused in satanic rituals that revel in human dismemberment and death.

And so the narrator goes into hiding with Kali. Mind-bending custody battles ensue over many years, and there's another marriage, but it's clear in the late 80s that police don't believe her abuse reports and the Texas judicial system is stacked in favor of the father (and the handsome Scott can talk his way out of almost any situation). 

Sadly, the eventual comeuppance fails to wash away images of the immense cruelty humans inflict on one another.

"Ernest Hemingway And Tony Oliva: A Tale Of How The Great Writer Helped The Great Ballplayer"

Curt DeBerg, originally from Rock Rapids, Iowa, retired from Chico State as a business professor in 2020 and moved to Hendaye, France. Smitten with the travels and travails of Ernest Hemingway (who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954), he published "Traveling The World With Hemingway." But DeBerg is also a lifelong fan of the Minnesota Twins, a totally unrelated preoccupation, right? Maybe not.

Let's go back to the late 1950s, and zoom in on Cuba. A man named Joe Cambria (known as "Papa Joe") scouted for the Washington Senators there "and he liked to have a drink or two in Havana's Floridita bar" (no stranger to Hemingway). In 1961 the Senators moved from Washington and became the Minnesota Twins.

Papa Joe had his eye on a young slugger named Pedro and wanted the Twins to take him on. The trouble was that the young man wasn't so young; in 1960 he would be 22, too old for Twins owner Calvin Griffith to consider. 

Around the same time Hemingway (known of course as "Papa Hemingway"), a baseball fan himself, "was sixty years old and in failing health. He and his fourth wife, Mary, were forced to leave their bucolic estate in Havana. For nearly twenty-two years, the Hemingways had made Cuba their home base."

Could Papa Hemingway have met Papa Joe? DeBerg imagines it happening in his short tale, "Ernest Hemingway And Tony Oliva: A Tale Of How The Great Writer Helped The Great Ballplayer" by Curtis L. DeBerg ($9.95 in paper, self-published; also for Amazon Kindle). For Pedro was Tony Pedro Oliva, inducted on July 24, 2022 into baseball's Hall of Fame.

DeBerg imagines that with Papa Hemingway's help, Pedro was able to use his younger brother Antonio's "birth certificate to fabricate his age in order to obtain a travel visa to the United States." So Pedro became "Tony" Oliva, three years younger than he really was, signing with the Twins as a nineteen-year-old.

Did any of that really happen? Even Tony Oliva's biographer doesn't know for sure. DeBerg's earnest yarn invites readers to think that it could have.

"Resurgam (Rise Again)"

Long-time Chicoan David Dirks, now Brentwood-based, draws on childhood memories for a series of books about the fictional Janzen family. David Janzen tells the story of growing up in the Central California farming town of Del Rio Vista in a Walton-sized family, including his mom and dad (an elementary school science teacher), two brothers and three sisters (including smart-aleck nemesis Kathleen).

Two earlier novels ("The Art of Stretching" and "A Fickle Wind") detail David's balloon experiments; now, in "Resurgam (Rise Again)" ($8.99 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle) David enters Del Rio Vista High School and sets his sights on rockets.

The author and I are about the same age, and old friends (I'm a friend and he's old), and he generously thanks me in the acknowledgements. These books evoke a nostalgic charm, a less frantic time when even one's rival-in-rocketry could lend a hand. 

Janzen and his experimenter pal Jack Johnson (fully recovered after a car accident) set out to build a rocket a few feet long, with a nose cone, and to mix their own rocket fuel, all in the name of science. This isn't a fireworks project; it's serious business on the nearby alkali flats complete with spotters and measurements of the flight path.

Not only is there neighborhood competition in rocketry, but rivalry at the upcoming school science fair. As with his balloon experiments, David's rocket launches rarely go off without a hitch but eventually, through some providential meetings with others, David and Jack manage to send something into the skies and into the notebooks for the science fair. Will they beat the others (including a team with attractive Mandy Sandy and her "beatific smile")?

Rocketry has its up and downs (literally), and David faces the deaths of the older town bully, JFK, and his beloved Aunt Martha, who tells him near the end that David must "promise you will not stop being the person God made you be." She teaches him "one Latin word—resurgam. It means I will rise again. On that day, I will rise."

Despite sadness, setbacks, and sputterings, young Janzen's hope burns bright as he faces uncertain years ahead. As do we all.

North State Writers

"I've just rotten a book!" "Uh, it's 'written,' not 'rotten.'" "You haven't read it yet!" An old joke, but if you've ever yearned for non-family feedback on the book you've just composed, or wanted to know how to publish it, or needed encouragement, or just wanted to meet local writers, this column is for you.

A writers group based in Chico has been nurturing authors (and would-be authors) since it was chartered in 2015. North State Writers (northstatewriters.com; also on Facebook under North State Writers Authors Group) is a chapter of the non-profit California Writers Club.

In recent email correspondence, NSW membership chair Gwen Willadsen (gwilladsen@csuchico.edu) noted that general meetings, free and open to the public, are held the third Monday of each month on Zoom and at the Chico Veterans Hall, 554 Rio Lindo, beginning at 6:00 p.m. 

The speaker for the September 19 meeting, Willadsen writes, "will be (novelist) Erin Lindsay McCabe, author of 'I Shall Be Near To You,' a USA Today Bestseller and a Goodreads Choice Awards semi-finalist. … (It's) the story of a strong-willed woman who disguises herself as a man to fight beside her husband in the Civil War. Erin will speak on writing a complete novel in first person, present tense."

Monthly programs "are designed to serve the needs of both published and aspiring writers. Speakers address writing craft, publishing, marketing, and other relevant topics."

There are now about three dozen NSW members; the group is "rebuilding our membership after the effects of the Paradise fire and pandemic and welcomes anyone who loves writing or even just reading books and would find it interesting to learn more about their creation."

If you have a manuscript that needs some attention, Vice President and editor Lynn Tosello has the goods "on what editors can do for writers and how to find and work with one. Our authors have used various methods of publication including print, eBooks, and internet sites." 

NSW leadership includes President Jim Henson and Secretary Susan St. Germaine; members include naval historian (and tracker of Chico running) Cmdr. David Bruhn, YA fantasy author Nick Hanson, and writer/illustrator/muralist Steve Ferchaud.

What better way to get the word out?

"Ice In The Guise Of Fire"

Logan Malloy, ruthless owner of a local gossip rag in a frigid, hoity-toity resort area of Plumas County, will never sip martinis again. "She sees a gun pointed at her heart, and awareness instantly reduces to the dark width of the barrel…. She feels a painless thud in her chest, a seizing sensation, followed by a white-hot deep burn…. The last image her brain records is the indifferent face of her murderer as she grapples, vacillates between gasps of incredulity and the terror of drifting, helpless, fading, and dying."

No one mourns her passing in the resort town of Moluku Lake, "nestled in the Sierra Nevada." Manipulative, conspiring, Malloy can make or break a person, and has lately become a partisan in the battle between owners of the exclusive Eagle's Nest resort and the insurgent Maidu who want to build a casino (which would cut the Eagle's Nest business in half). At least that's the view of the Nest's owner/operators, Atticus Flynn and Eli Lucas.

The problem for Moluku Lake's police chief, Howard Billings, is that pretty much everyone in town is on the suspect list. These are people with money and with lots to hide (good-hearted Billings himself is having an affair). So he calls in Butte County sheriff Jason Noble and two deputies, Kevin Rodriguez and Lt. Lauren Riley (for whom the divorced sheriff has a deep but hidden desire). Butte County has a morgue. And Billings himself may be implicated.

Thus begins "Ice In The Guise Of Fire" ($11.95 in paperback from Weston Writes; also for Amazon Kindle) by novelist Nancy Weston, who has fashioned a deliciously scandalous police procedural. Everyone is having some kind of affair; even sheriff Noble must overcome his longing for Lt. Riley, half European and half Maidu. Does Riley's Maidu mother, who lives in the area, know more than she's telling?

Throw in a mayor-on-the-take, trophy wives with things to hide, secret rooms, security cameras, a Logan Malloy understudy who wants to be the new king-maker, the sinister meaning of a flower, and, oh yes, a couple of other deaths--and readers are in for a wild romp in more ways than one.

"California Burning: The Fall Of Pacific Gas And Electric—And What It Means For America's Power Grid"

"The Camp Fire started just three days after I joined The Wall Street Journal," writes energy reporter Katherine Blunt. Her award-winning articles form the basis of a measured, and yet devastating, history of PG&E. 

"California Burning: The Fall Of Pacific Gas And Electric—And What It Means For America's Power Grid" ($29 in hardcover from Portfolio; also for Amazon Kindle) begins that fateful morning of November 8, 2018 and ends in Butte County Superior Court on June 16, 2020, with CEO Bill Johnson saying "Guilty, your honor" to each of 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter. (And, in an Epilogue, the Dixie Fire.)

In between, drawing on more than 200 interviews and thousands of pages of court and historical documents, Blunt pieces together not just the utility's origin story, but how its executives came to focus more on developing clean energy sources than on carefully inspecting and fixing gas pipelines and transmission towers deteriorating by the day.

The San Bruno pipeline explosion in 2010 revealed that PG&E had used the cheapest and least accurate safety testing of its gas lines. As Blunt notes, calling on the point made by San Bruno PD detective James Haggarty, "this was not a crime in which one person pulled the trigger. It was a crime committed slowly, over the course of decades, as corporate strategy shifted to prioritize shareholders, forcing middle-level employees to respond accordingly."

And so it was with the Caribou-Palermo transmission towers in the Feather River Canyon, constructed around 1907. In the investigation, Butte County DA Mike Ramsey and Deputy DA Marc Noel determined the hook that failed, leading to the spark that started the Camp Fire, "had been purchased for 56 cents in 1919."

The final part of the book details the maneuvering over the victims' compensation fund, and why so little has gone to those who were actually victims. In the midst of PG&E's second bankruptcy, the judged charged with approving the fund heard from victims. "They all agreed: $13.5 billion wasn't nearly enough if half of it depended on the company's share price."

A reporter tells the story of a "slow crime," dispassionately. And, somewhere, a reviewer weeps.

"Barefoot In Hells Canyon"

Bryan Gould lives with his wife in San Rafael; their vacation home in Rich Bar, in Plumas County, was destroyed in the Dixie fire. But the memoir he's published focuses on an extraordinary adventure many years earlier, in Idaho.

The subtitle of "Barefoot In Hells Canyon" ($23.95 in paperback from Backeddy Books, backeddybooks.com) says it: "Reflections from two men in a frail raft on a voyage down the Snake River in 1958." It's a gorgeously written account of true friendship and a death-defying you-are-there journey down the Snake's rapids. It's perfect summer reading.

In July 1958 two friends, Bryan Gould and Glen Burns, both 19, get their parents' reluctant permission to depart their homes in the Bay Area, hop a freight train or two and then hitchhike the rest of the way to Idaho with only about $20 to their names. (An inflatable war-surplus rubber raft is sent on ahead.) The goal is to "ride our own raft down the Snake River all the way through Southern Idaho. That accomplished, we'd finish out the summer working in a logging camp" in McCloud. 

Bryan is a copyboy for the San Francisco News (several of his columns are reprinted in the book). Many chapters begin with the two old friends, now in their late 70s, trying to remember details of their adventure sixty years ago, joshing each other. (Glen passed away in 2021.)

Undaunted by danger, into the Snake they go. At Whiskey Springs: "The rapid engulfed us, seizing us with a disconcerting violence. Despite Glen's attempt to keep our nose straight, a crosscurrent caught us and bulled us sideways, lifted us high, and for a moment we teetered on the brink, buoyed by a tremendous thrust that threatened to flip us. We stayed upright, miraculously. We glided over the top, and largely out of control, veered into a series of stone teeth that gnashed at us as we twisted from one jaw into another and still another."

Add the loss of their shoes, the kindness of strangers, unexpected cabins, sleeping in a dump, worried parents, and the fact Bryan doesn't know how to swim, it's clear that surviving Whiskey Springs isn't the only miracle.

"The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir"

"We had arrived in summer," writes Thi Bui, "so there was time to prepare for school in the fall." But as immigrants from Vietnam, her family needed time to adjust. You mean you choose classes? They don't just hand you your schedule?

Bui, a graphic artist now based in the Bay Area, as a youngster escaped with her family after the fall of South Vietnam, landing on American soil on June 28, 1978.

Later, as a graduate student, she wanted to capture her family's history. "My parents have been separated since I was nineteen," she writes, though they "remain friends." But what happened? Words were not enough, so in 2005 she learned "how to do comics." Pages of drawings accumulated.

Later, she and her husband and son moved from New York to California, where she taught at "an alternative public high school for immigrants in Oakland." Her book took shape as a graphic memoir, and in 2017 it was published as "The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir" ($19.99 in paperback from Abrams ComicArts; also for Amazon Kindle, with a helpful pronunciation guide at thebestwecoulddo.abrams.link).

It is fitting, at the start of a new school year, that Bui's own explorations of her past become part of the reader's experience as well. "The Best We Could Do" is the "Book In Common" for 2022-2023 for Butte College (butte.edu/bic) and Chico State (www.csuc.edu/bic) and other community groups.

Bui's parents and their growing family knew the ravages of war. In 1975 South Vietnam's president Duong Van Minh surrendered to the north. Bui's father, in talks with his daughter years later, wants to correct "the American version of this story … about a country not worth saving…. Communist forces entered Saigon without a fight, and no blood was shed. Perhaps Duong Van Minh's surrender saved my life."

But the Communist regime ushered in a propaganda campaign and confession sessions with neighbor spying on neighbor. "My parents," Bui writes, "began to talk of escape."

Filled with emotion, the book's images and dialog convey the complexity of the past--and the realization that one's very-flawed parents were trying to do the best they could.

"Toe The Mark"

"My competitive running," naval historian David D. Bruhn writes, "ended in late autumn 1976" when, "running on a muddy trail along the American River early one morning, I slipped and slid into the river." He had run for Butte College; later, after enlisting in the Navy, he graduated from Chico State and "earned a commission via Officers Candidate School." He met his future wife, Nancy, a Navy nurse, at a base in Colorado.

His cross-country coach, Al Baeta, emphasized the importance of holding on to energizing memories. "Running in Chico in the 1970s is one of those memories." And so, drawing on Enterprise-Record archives and interviews with runners and coaches, Bruhn tells the story of the running programs not only at Chico State, but Chico High and PV High, in the 70s. "Toe The Mark" ($29 in paperback from heritagebooks.com) features a foreword by Walt Schafer--no stranger to running himself--and 114 historical photographs.

Tracing the running programs year by year with plenty of stats, the book also weaves personal stories into the narrative, making it not only an extraordinary reference but one that captures the story of legendary track and cross-country coaches (such as Bill Gregg, Chuck Sheley, Jack Yerman, Dale Edson, Cherrie Sherrard, and more) who got the best out of their runners.

In an email, Bruhn notes that "The two individuals pictured on the front cover are Wildcat All-American and 4:01 miler Kim Ellison, and Wildcat All-American and Olympic Swim Trials participant (as a 16-year old Panther) Jill Symons. Symons is (little argument) the greatest multi-sport female endurance athlete Chico has produced to date."

In 1977 Symons, along with Girls Cross Country teammates Suzanne Richter (All-American at Cal, "still number six on the all-time 5,000 meters list"), marathoner Luanne Park, Julie Selchau, and Darcy Burleson, were known as "Charlie's Angels" (after coach Chuck and a certain TV series), arguably, Bruhn writes me, "the greatest high school prep team of any sport in the North Section."

"Toe The Mark" is the ultimate runner's high.

Bruhn is hosting a "1970s Runners Reunion Weekend," August 27-28 in Chico, with more than fifty participants; for information on signed copies of his book write commanderbruhn@gmail.com.

"Trek Tales: A Woman's Journey Of Self-Discovery Packing Llamas In The California Wilderness"

Former longtime Paradise resident Donna Dolinar now lives, with husband Bill, "in Baja, Mexico in a small fishing village," for eight months of the year, and "four months in Tahoe National Forest" in an old Forest Service cabin near the Pacific Crest Trail. How she got from here to there is quite a story, and involves llamas.

Her 1990 marriage to Bill meant becoming a stepmom and welcoming a new daughter into the world. Donna yearned to go on Bill's backpacking trips with friends but how to transport little Liz? 

Cargo-carrying llamas, of course. 

Talking with a friend put the idea in her mind, and a visit to "a small llama ranch called RMC's Stonybrook Pond" nearby began a llama love affair.

Eventually Dolinar took other women on backpacking trips; "through the years there were seven llamas involved in Paradise Llama Treks. My good friend Gibby and I ran our little business with the help of our four-legged friends Peludo, Montana, Tyrol, Kenney, Buck, Shasta, and Gabriel … on most of our trips we had four of them with us."

These three-day trips took place "every year for eighteen years. The coed llama treks were four-day backpacking trips held annually for eleven years." For Dolinar "it was a personal growth story too." That meant facing challenging times, like having to call a helicopter for Bill, dealing with stinky llama spit, or having to admit she had guided her group on the wrong path.

The stories abound in "Trek Tales: A Woman's Journey Of Self-Discovery Packing Llamas In The California Wilderness" ($17.99 in paperback from Balboa Press; also for Amazon Kindle) which includes maps and a picture section. Dolinar's welcoming and humble account of trekking wilderness areas like Caribou, Trinity Alps, and Thousand Lakes draws the reader into life on the trail.

After losing their home in the Camp Fire, there were more adventures to come. Montana and Peludo, owned by "mama llama" Dolinar, play an immense part in the awakening of something deep within the nurse from Paradise. "When I listened to my inner voice and trusted it," she writes, "I found my path."

"The Tenderness Of Stone: A Memoir"

Longtime Chico resident Ira Heinrich worked as a KHSL-TV anchor and long ago founded the Middle Mountain Foundation (now Middle Mountain Interpretive Hikes). "Over more than a decade," he writes in an email, he "directed an interpretive and preservation program in the Sutter Buttes (Esto-Yamani/Onolai)."

His interest in the "Buttes" is no mere whimsey. As a boy of ten they captured his heart when his parents moved into the area. If Mt. Shasta is a spiritual haven for some, so, too, was (and is) the "world's smallest mountain range" for Heinrich. In 2008 he published an account of his growing-up years (available from used book sellers) which is now in Amazon Kindle format. 

"The Tenderness Of Stone: A Memoir" (from Giri Marga Press) is stunningly beautiful prose. Its descriptions of the Middle Mountain penetrate the soul. "It is a time for telling secrets," Heinrich writes of his1960s life (and beyond), taking the reader "into a region of deep and tender intimacy and private tragedy."

"The Place in its totality," he remembers, "was imprinted on some hidden surface of my subconscious, so that I never ceased to feel the Buttes as part of my own body…. From that time on, with every step I took there, with every warm cave and wet, green canyon and serrated ridge or peak I explored, a sense of inexplicable mystery grew in me, even as the Mountain's voice endlessly whispered, 'Although your path is a mystery indeed, still the beginning and the ending of everything for you, is here.'"

One day in church he meets Avalee, her name "hauntingly beautiful to me still." She was 18, and "the two of us, tender, incredibly naïve and hardly more than children, were seduced by this enchanted mountain and its aura of fantasy and dream, into an utterly unlikely image of permanence, marriage and even babies."

She would chide Ira about his Mountain dreams. What's important is what's real, she'd say. But she loved the mountain, too, and was its gift--though not a permanent one. 

Reality? In the midst of a tragedy one day in Marysville, the Mountain still presided over Heinrich's life, unutterably powerful yet unspeakably tender.

"I'm Not Ready For This (Everybody Just Calm Down And Give Me A Minute)"

"We drove together," Anna and her mom, "from Omaha, Nebraska, to Chico, California, in my cute little Volkswagen Passat. … I was hired at Chico State University as an assistant residence coordinator" and there Anna would be completing her MA in Communication Studies. 

Her first date with Rob, her future husband, was at Chico's Olive Garden. Time passes, the couple returns to Nebraska to raise two daughters, and Anna becomes humor writer and personal essayist Anna Lind Thomas (AnnaLindThomas.com).

Skilled in making mountains out of molehills, and then realizing she's been sweating the small stuff, Thomas' first collection, "We'll Laugh About This (Someday): Essays On Taking Life A Smidge Too Seriously," is now joined by a companion volume. 

"I'm Not Ready For This (Everybody Just Calm Down And Give Me A Minute)" ($18.99 in paperback from Thomas Nelson; also for Amazon Kindle and in audiobook format read by the author) reflects on life's challenges.

That includes Rob's vasectomy (and his use of frozen vegetables as ice packs); oversleeping on the first day of sixth grade (and "our Indy 500-style ride to school"); and running a 10K (no runner's euphoria; "instead, my subconscious mind conjures up every injustice I've experienced since birth and lets me dole out insults I'd never say in real life"). 

Training for the run "was enlightening. I learned things about myself I'd rather not know. For instance, I have incredibly poor bladder and, on occasion, sphincter control. My legs and hips jiggle, but not all at once, or in sync…."

At times outrageously honest, Thomas is at her best describing the bittersweet moments, like her friendship with Cindy, an older student in her master's program at Chico State, who rolled "her own cigarettes. She was fast and efficient, licking and rolling and smoking them down before moving on to the next thing." 

The "next thing"? Being in Chico didn't seem a good fit; Cindy breezed through the material but "didn't give a crap…. Her fierce and gritty independence drew me in. And I felt safer and less vulnerable knowing her."

In a way, that's also Thomas' gift to the reader.

"The Lost Boys Of Happy Valley College: A Novel"

In the summer of 2016, eight still perpendicular 70-year-old men meet in Chico to reaffirm their friendship. All students at Chico State in the Sixties, they had last been together on October 12, 1969 at Candlestick Park. They were "watching a fellow Happy Valley College football teammate … playing for the Baltimore Colts against the hometown San Francisco Forty Niners."

Wait—"Happy Valley College"? That's the school's name given in Dick Carlsen's memoir-disguised-as-a-novel, "The Lost Boys Of Happy Valley College" ($15.99 in paperback from AuthorHouse; also for Amazon Kindle).

The group includes "Dave" and his twin, "Dan," and six other brothers-in-mischief. (In the acknowledgements page, Carlsen gives a shout-out to "my twin brother" Don "for sharing his notes on his Super Bowl officiating experience…." In light of the shenanigans all eight engaged in at Chico State, the reader understands why names have been changed.)

Yet Carlsen's tale is more than pranks at nearby Sutter Park ("named after General John Sutter, the founder of Happy Valley") or keggers with "The Raiders" ("a 'jock' organization on campus"). It's really about how each of the eight friends find themselves living out J.M. Barrie's original Peter Pan story. 

"Nostalgia had its grip on them, their common trait. It was in their DNA, from childhoods. Their Happy Valley experiences together offered up a bucket load of nostalgic reflections, which is probably why the other thing they had in common was their reluctance to leave Happy Valley. It was their Shangri La, their comfort zone, their happy place…."

Brought before "Dean Steen" after the "dance episode," the eight prepare to be punished for their "bad form," but Steen recognizes good character in each of their immature selves. He dubs them the "Lost Boys," those who "enjoyed a carefree life in Neverland. They were also mischief-makers," he adds.

By 2016, each had had a successful career but as they try to recreate the good old days (staying in a dorm on campus, frolicking at "Trout Hole") they come to realize how gripped they had been by Peter Pan Syndrome. 

The reunion is transformative, a coming-of-old-age story, as one by one there's "one less Lost Boy."

"Particle Beam (For Such A Time)"

Long-time Chicoan David Dirks, now Brentwood-based, is no stranger to government work as an audio and video engineer. His new novel brings his grade school hero, David Janzen, into adulthood and onto a team at a secret government lab "in the prairies of middle Indiana." Their mission is to develop a particle beam weapon called Teleforce. It's the Cold War 80s, the decade of the Iran-Contra Affair.

In two previous novels, "The Art Of Stretching" and "A Fickle Wind," Dirks detailed young Janzen's fascination with big balloons, "rat astronauts" and pictures taken high up from those very balloons. Now, years later, as an audio engineer, he is charged with bringing Nikola Tesla's invention to reality.

"Tesla," Dirks writes in the Prologue, "was arguably the most talented inventor of the twentieth century. Some say his genius rivaled Einstein's." Hidden away by the FBI, Tesla's Teleforce idea languishes "until someone, the right someone, at the right time, with proper understanding and authority opened the vault."

"Particle Beam (For Such A Time)" ($10.99 in paperback, self-published; also for Amazon Kindle) is the story of what happens at the (fictional) Hans M. Mark National Laboratory which houses the super-secret Teleforce Defense Weapon Administration and the "commanding, overbearing presence of its leader, Horatio Glen Knightsen."

"As my Marine Sergeant used to say as we prepared for action in the Mekong Delta," Knightsen tells his team, "you have been assembled for such a time as this." That translates into long hours and time away from family. 

Janzen and a small group of compatriots frequently meet at a local watering hole and at Senior Engineer Joe Carson's place, where he is often in the company of his next door neighbors, Bunny and Sunny, mysterious and extraordinarily beautiful twins from Mexico.

The first part of the novel explores Teleforce's development and testing, but then things begin to go wrong. Janzen's friends find evidence that the project's secrets are being sold and, in the first chapter's flash-forward, Joe is arrested for the murder of Horatio Knightsen. 

What is the truth? Is Joe a murderer? Has Providence assembled Janzen's friends "for such a time as this"? The compelling answer: Oh, yes.

"Ellie And Her Elephant"

Wayne Edmiston, now living on the Central Coast, has deep Chico roots. He graduated from Chico State College in 1971. An endowment fund to support developing the Meriam Library Special Collections and University Archives was created in the 70s by his great-aunt Ellen Deering. Ellsworth Deering, his great-uncle, was inducted into Chico State's Sports Hall of Fame in the 80s.

An ordained New Thought minister with Centers for Spiritual Living, the long-time teacher has published a whimsical short story for children about the creation of music, the meaning of love, and the world's curious interconnections.

"Ellie And Her Elephant" ($7.99 in paperback from Wedmiston Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle) emphasizes interactivity, pausing frequently to ask readers a question.

The story begins with the Easley family in small-town Halcyon, California, as news comes that the small zoo's elephant is about to give birth. Nine-year-old Ellie Easley's submitted name is drawn in the subsequent name-the-baby contest. The name had to begin with "El," and wouldn't you know it—Ellie won for "Ellie."

Ellie's father wows local children with piano playing, telling them a tale of music's origin. Uncounted years ago, the animals in the African forest started making noises. That woke a big lion. 

"'I was purring and happy, now you've made me so angry I could cuss you out. I'd rather be purring than cussing because of the noise you're making!' This roaring became known throughout the jungle as a 're-purr-cussion' (repercussion)." 

An elephant named Ellie learns to trumpet. When Ellie dies, she becomes "part of the symphony of life in another time and place." Is her earthly music gone? No; the ivory humans find much later comes to reside in the very piano Ellie's father is playing. Ellie moves her wheelchair to the keyboard and it is "like an electric current—warm and comforting to the touch."

As the years pass, Ellie becomes a skilled musician and, with help from her physical therapist, prepares an extraordinary surprise for her father when she plays at the big concert. And Ellie the elephant becomes a mother.

"What did Ellie the elephant give to the world?" Edmiston asks; "what do we have that we can give?"

"Westbound"

Chico State grad K. Patrick Conner was a journalistic voice in Chico before joining the San Francisco Chronicle in 1987 where he worked for more than two decades. He is also a novelist; his latest is a stunning evocation of the pioneering spirit that drew many to California, which can even transform a dull old man living in the twenty-first century.

It's 2005, and Elliott Madison, 78, long retired as a newspaper editor, is completing a historical account of how his great-grandparents met and married in the California goldfields in the 1850s. 

William Madison's journal begins with his horrendous voyage from South Carolina around Cape Horn; he settles in the Anderson Valley near Boonville.

Amelia Snyder, 18, his great-grandmother, journeys overland from Iowa with her brother and father (her mother died of cholera in 1849). Her letters to cousin Emily are heartbreaking as they recount the tragic trek (including the loss of her father) and its aftermath.

Elliott himself is a quotidian contrast. Long since divorced, his granddaughter Alissa, 23, lives with him in the Bay Area and practices drums for "a heavy metal power trio" named The Sores. She's estranged from her mother, Elliott's daughter, and Elliott spends much of his time researching in the library. Until one day a letter he receives will change his life forever.

"Westbound" ($39.95 in hardcover from NaCl Press; also for Amazon Kindle) seamlessly mingles Elliott's present life with the dramatic accounts of his great-grandparents in a way that makes them present as well. 

Amelia writes her cousin: "Father told us we would reach the Platte River today, but we were not prepared for what we saw. It is a river of shallow channels and sandbars, the color of gold as it spreads across the vast plain…. For the first time, I began to understand that even with Father's description of the trail that lies ahead, it is a land that cannot be imagined before it is seen."

Neither can Elliott's own future. That mysterious letter brings a woman named Phoebe into his life, and the house William built for Amelia, and the telling is so poignant I neglected to take notes on the book and just read, entranced.

"The Trial Of Juan De La Cruz"

Back when the Beatles made their first cultural splash on the international stage, a linguistic anthropologist named John Stirling journeys to "the wild mountains of southern Oaxaca" (WAH HA kah) in Mexico. In the tiny village of Santa Carmen, where perhaps eighty people live, he is to meet nonagenarian Juan de la Cruz, the last person on earth who can speak Xocatec.

Stirling wants to know how Xocatec is structured, but it's soon clear more is required for someone to "get" a language. And when Juan is accused of murder by a mentally ill woman in the village, and Mexican authorities step in, John and his friends learn firsthand the sometimes deadly effects of a dominant culture.

"The Trial Of Juan De La Cruz" ($2.99 in Amazon Kindle edition, self-published) by Chicoan Mike Findlay, retired Butte College and Chico State anthropology instructor, is one of three novels "Through An Anthropologist's Looking Glass," including "The Tribe In The Red Brick House" and "The Trail To Tlaxiaco" (Tlah HEE ah Ko).

Most of the first half of "Trial" delves deeply into the Stirling's work as a linguistic anthropologist (there's a helpful glossary), but it threatens to overwhelm him as he spends more and more time with his tape recorder. "John often talked well into the night—endless streams of discourse with a mechanical device. He began to shut the world around him out, keeping his thoughts to himself in his little cottage up in" Santa Carmen.

John is shaken out of the "cult of grammar" as Juan tells the story of hunting with his brother many years before, coming to a place "empty and dead and brown like coffee. We knew we had entered the area of the ancient battles—the wars." In frustration, Juan kills a great horned owl, a sacred animal, and the fruits of his desecration are with him still. 

Juan's trial shows the stark contrast between justice in Santa Carmen and the Oaxacan "guilty if we say you're guilty" system. 

This somber tale of how cultures mix (or don't) raises a question: Which way will the owl turn in our own day--toward healthy community, or widening chaos?