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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's a balanced yet sobering account.

“The Picasso Job: A Phoenix Thriller”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Readers will have a barrel of fun.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peace had come, but at an unimaginable price.

“Happy-Go-Lucky”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Pumpkin Patch Surprise!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Readers will see the answer in this powerful memoir.

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

“50 Ways To Enjoy Life More”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“HIDEAWAYS: Within And Outside My Polygamist Family”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Too BUSY For Bed!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The Goolwind Tales: Book One”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Just Be"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Dear Dotty: A Novel”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The wardens’ physical danger makes comeuppance all the sweeter.

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

“Across Yosemite’s Wilderness: A Trailblazing Woman’s Career Protecting The Park’s Backcountry”

Laurel Munson Boyers was born in Yosemite Valley. In 1903 her great grandfather, who ran a way station for park visitors, welcomed Teddy Rosevelt and John Muir. Her parents lived near Ansel Adams, and after she joined the park service in 1976 Boyers guided former First Lady Laura Bush and companions through the backcountry (the two becoming longtime friends).

Having served the park for more than thirty years, “the first female full-time mounted wilderness ranger” and a decade as “Yosemite’s first female wilderness manager,” Boyers recounts her life in a two-part memoir, “Across Yosemite’s Wilderness: A Trailblazing Woman’s Career Protecting The Park’s Backcountry” ($22.95 in paperback from Falcon Guides; also for Amazon Kindle).

Dozens of photographs celebrate the park’s grandeur and its dedicated workers, with artwork by brother Lex Munson, who lives outside Nevada City. Boyers herself still lives in the park with husband Darell but writes me that “my nephew, his wife, son and daughter (named Laurel Ann after me) live in Cottonwood.”

The book’s first part is “a telling of my last wilderness patrol, an expedition across the entire length of Yosemite National Park in 2007, when a group of us took a 10-day backcountry journey all the way across the park.” Part two “holds essays about the years that led up to that remarkable patrol … caring for that part of the park that is beyond Yosemite Valley.”

Though she recounts scary experiences leading horses and mules in slippery environments and hearing strange sounds when she is all alone in a backcountry cabin, Boyers focuses on what she calls the timeless benefits of the wilderness: “witnessing the wonder of nature, of intact ecosystems, of living and breathing and enjoying open space and wildness with one another, or even while alone.”

Just as Chicoans do with Bidwell Park, she wrestles with just how human-accessible to make Yosemite’s backcountry. “We need to maintain humility and understand that we don’t have all the answers,” yet “we need to eliminate the impact of humanity’s presence on the nonhuman world as much as possible to allow these systems … to evolve naturally. Our future may depend on it.”

“Slugs Don’t Eat Arugula: Tales Of Whimsey, Woe, And Wisdom From The Kitchen And Garden”

“I enjoy gardening,” writes Chicoan Jeremy Miller. “I enjoy the feeling of being linked to my backyard and the plants and animals that live there, … noting the traffic of insects that zip around the sunflowers, and having the ability to pluck a cherry tomato off the vine and pop it directly into my mouth … not only do I know where my food came from, but I also know that I was a part of that process.”

But for Miller, not every foray into gardening goes as planned (there is, after all, the “Nightmare on Avocado Street” and the “Peach Pit Conspiracy”), and not every culinary attempt is a triumph (“Even butter can’t make bitter beets taste better”). That makes his collection of short essays, drawn and edited from Edible Shasta-Butte magazine over the years, deliciously relatable.

“Slugs Don’t Eat Arugula: Tales Of Whimsey, Woe, And Wisdom From The Kitchen And Garden” ($14.95 in paperback from Memoir Books) is available in Chico at Northern Star Mills and C Bar D Feed. 

Chapters move thematically, from the kitchen to the garden, to a dubious look at natural remedies (“The Witch Doctor’s Pantry”) to Miller’s diet regimen (“Kettle Chips Are My Kryptonite”) and, finally, to recipes that include carrot cake muffins (gluten free) and sauerkraut (makes three quarts and takes three weeks).

Though he has books on organic gardening and “compost care,” Miller admits all the good advice mostly ends up on the compost heap. Instead, he wants “to embrace the simplicity of a ‘Tarzan the Farmer’ mentality: ‘Dig! Plant seed! Water! Grow! Eat!’ Somewhere in between diligence and naivety, my garden turns into a jungle, and Tarzan is happy. And the gophers are happy. And the snails. And the weeds. And the zucchini.”

Some pocket gophers jump over barriers. So “I had yet another gardening excuse … ‘My real challenge is the overland migratory … gophers (“OMG!”), which are actually endemic to west Chico, California.’ I don’t even care if it is true; I intend to use it over and over.”

Get the book. The stakes, as gardeners say, couldn’t be higher.

“The Redemption Of Elijah Kidd Kane”

“As long as Paul Early Kane had been married,” we are told, “he desired his boys to have the best life opportunities. He had attended Harvard-Westwood Academy for the Gifted in the southern hills of Ojai Valley, California, before going to Harvard University….” 

But when Paul’s favored son, Joseph, fails to get into the Academy and his younger brother, Elijah Kidd Kane, 13, is accepted instead, and taken under the wings of the Academy president, Grant Humphreys Harvard, it becomes clear to readers that Elijah is being groomed for a secret, and sinister, project.

“The Redemption Of Elijah Kidd Kane” ($12.95 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle) is the first in a new immersive fantasy series by former longtime Chicoan David Dirks, now living in Brentwood with Karen, his wife of 54 years.

Seen as “ordinary,” Elijah is neglected by his socialite mother; a child of privilege, “he lived life by allowing it to happen to him.” The boy is warned by his grandfather, Emmanuel, that he has visions regarding Dean-Headmaster Samuel C. EngleHoffer. “He is of German Aryan descent and still holds to some of their most ancient principles… He will use his power to trip you.”

The tension between Harvard and EngleHoffer notwithstanding, they both worship at the giant Sphere at the Academy, a broken sphere in which a smaller, perfect sphere emerges. There is talk of appealing to the Keeper, and a plan to use Elijah as Harvard’s agent to create a science and technology academy in Botswana. 

Somehow the “Spirit of Mars,” the spirit of the late scientist Nikola Tesla, has made it possible to establish free power for that African country, getting the populace used to all the electrified amenities, before lucrative charges are suddenly imposed. 

It’s clear a spiritual battle is taking place. A young Botswanan girl, Esi Ada Ogolla, must not only challenge the Interior Minister, a warlock, who craves spiritual power for himself, but bring Elijah to see the true Light and aid Esi and the other New Freedom Warriors in stopping sex trafficking of children.

There will be more to come in the series. Victory will not be easily won.

"New Leaf"

Chicoan Nancy Anderson’s children’s book is a parable about brokenness leading to new life. Beautifully illustrated by Madeline Einfalt, with design layout by Nica Petrova, “New Leaf” ($25 in hardcover, independently published, available at Made in Chico or from the author at NewLeafTeamChico@gmail.com) is also a tribute to New Leaf Home in the lowland region of southern Nepal. (Proceeds from the book will be donated to the home.)

After the end of the story there are several pages devoted to New Leaf Home. “Since 2010,” Anderson writes, “thirty girls have experienced hope out of brokenness. A miracle has happened leading to a new leaf, new life. Blossoming young women are bearing fruit in their redeemed lives.” And the founding directors “thank God that He changes the lives of our New Leaf girls!”

A little girl tells the story: “In a small rural village in Southern Nepal stands my mango tree. … My mango tree stands firmly planted near the well. It gives us delicious green mangos in the summer. Leaves of every shade of green delight my eyes. Tall grasses bend gently in the breeze.”

But then, one night, “A frightful storm comes to my village. Thunder booms. My eyes are big. My heart is pounding. … Frequent lightning flashes across the blackened sky. Rain falls fast and hard. I am afraid.”

In the morning, “I run out to see my mango tree. It is broken. The branches are ripped off, and the remaining leaves are shredded.” Some in the village think the tree is dead and needs to be cut down. Others, though, even as the seasons progress and nothing seems to change, say “Let’s wait and see what happens.”

“The broken tree needs to be nurtured. A few people, whom I do not recognize, come forward to gently protect and lovingly care for my mango tree.” And then: “I see some new yellowish pink leaves coming from one of the torn branches. My mango tree is alive!”

That nurturing will, in the end, bear much fruit.

Nancy Anderson is Nancy Wiegman’s guest on Nancy’s Bookshelf on Northstate Public Radio, mynspr.org, Wednesday, July 16 at 10:00 a.m., repeated Sunday, July 20 at 8:00 p.m.