“Ode To Hemingway: Three Stories And Ten Poems”

Ernest Hemingway, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954, made his literary debut in 1923 with “Three Stories And Ten Poems.” He was unable to accept the Prize in person after surviving “two plane crashes in two days in the elephant country of Uganda,” resulting in a concussion from which he never recovered.

Retired Chico State business professor Curt DeBerg (curtdeberg.com) has spent decades on Hemingway’s trail, visiting the writer’s haunts around the world, detailing his many demons. Now living in Hendaye, France, DeBerg, 70, suffered his own plane crash in 2016: “I was pulled from the wreckage with a leg that would never fully heal.”

Rather than a memoir of the crash, DeBerg has crafted what he calls “a ledger of survival,” an homage to his favorite writer. “Ode To Hemingway: Three Stories And Ten Poems” (available in Amazon Kindle format from Paul Adrian Books), with sketches by Tony Ridgway, expresses not disillusionment with a world war (as Hemingway did), but rather with “the polarization of modern political rifts and the slow, grinding recovery of the body.”

The stories are very short, dark, death imbued. In an Interlude DeBerg defends his love of Hemingway’s writing, despite what critics might say (“Don’t let others tell you what should make you happy”). The poems (with explanatory notes) evoke emotional moments in DeBerg’s life, like when his brother, who he felt “small” around, showed up for him after his plane crash, which “changed something between us.” 

“Then the sky fell./ The plane went down in a Polish field./ The twisting carnage of the cockpit/ Broke the bones but hardened the spirit./ And you were there….”

In 2021, DeBerg “discovered that a Franciscan sister had preserved a copy of ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ bearing what are believed to be the last words Hemingway ever wrote—a personal inscription to the nun who cared for him in his final months.” DeBerg carried the book to the Nobel Prize Museum in Stockholm “and spoke at the ceremony” covered by the New York Times.

Two lives, intertwined, but with a significant difference. DeBerg’s “Ode” refuses to follow the way of despair.

“Tell The Chickens It’s Time For Bed”

“Grandma Nancy” (Nancy Pattison) has deep roots locally. She grew up in Chico and writes me that her father Bill worked with Sierra Gold Nurseries and her mother Maggie worked at Chico State Student Government. Nancy graduated Pleasant Valley High School in 1973. 

Now living in Talent, Oregon she has written “The Norse Prophecy Series” under the name Anna Pattison and, for kids, “Grandma Nancy’s Red Barn” coloring book and the picture book “Tell The Chickens It’s Time For Bed” ($13 in softcover from Berkano Books LLC), whimsically illustrated by Gwendolyn Janke, whose muted colors suggest the sun is going down.

The book uses the idea that all sorts of animals “who bring eggs into the world” need time to rest. In just a few bold words on each page, Pattison aims to snare young readers (or listeners) with the rhythm of the words, over and over, helping them see that night is approaching for them as well. They can act like all these other curious creatures and welcome sleep. 

“Tell the chickens it’s time for bed,” the book’s first page begins, with the second continuing: “they laid their eggs, now they can lay their heads” (flip to the next two pages) “Dow-Ow-Own Upon their feather beds.”

Sure enough, the full-page drawing shows a simple bed with a chicken roosting on top, obviously snoozing, with a few feathers (okay, a lot of feathers) wafting in the air. Colors are in the darker shades. You can see the moon and stars.

Next, the salmon, “having laid their roe” can now lay their heads “Dow-Ow-Own Upon their water beds.” The full page water bed never looked so inviting.

Then follow the bees, the seahorse, the cobras, the chameleon, the toucan” and—well, the kids: “Tell the children it’s time for bed. They’ve played today, now they can lay their heads “Dow-Ow-Own Upon their night-time beds.” (The little beds under the big tent seem quite cozy.)

There’s also a translation of the first four pages into musical notation, written by Nancy Chew, arranged by Chuan Choy, encouraging children to go “Dow-Ow-Own” into bed. All in all, an egg-celent idea, pairing giggles with bedtime. 

 

“The Psychic On The Jury: A Mel Walker Story”

When I met Sacramento-based writer and software engineer Brian C.E. Buhl at the Paradise Chocolate Festival, I figured he’d already know my name—not because of my fame as a columnist (ahem), but for his chronicling of a group of psychics called The Society of Supernatural Investigations—maybe he was one of them. If so, he held that fact close to his vest. Actually, upon further investigation, the group turned out to be fictional, emanating from Buhl’s novel called “The Repossessed Ghost.”

A key character from that novel is central to “The Psychic On The Jury: A Mel Walker Story” ($5.99 in paperback from Water Dragon Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle). Mel (short for Melchizedek) is a psychic, one who can see the past (unlike another psychic he meets who can see the future—with devastating consequences, but that’s looking ahead). 

When Walker gets a jury summons to appear in a Sacramento courtroom, “I spent the weekend worrying about it…. Serving on the jury itself isn’t such a big deal, but I had run-ins with the law. I had been a ‘person of interest’ in a murder, which I think is just a fancy way of them saying I was the suspect. What if showing up brought all those legal headaches back to the surface?”

That doesn’t happen but maybe something worse does. Walker is seated, Juror Number One, in a capital murder case. “They had me, a psychic that can talk to ghosts, sitting as a juror in a murder case. Incredible…. If they had the murder weapon and they let me touch it, I could pull a vision from it and tell them not only who the murderer was, but what they were thinking as they were doing it.”

One David Gomez is charged with stabbing his best friend to death after an argument. Long story short (the book is really a long short story), Mel can “see” who actually did it (not Gomez) but can he convince the jury? And what about the actual perp, who is in the courtroom? What will happen?

There’s not a ghost of a chance I’m going to tell you.

“Fault Lines: The Geography Of Love”

Susan Tchudi, retired English professor and co-host of KZFR’s Ecotopia, lives in Yankee Hill. A keen curiosity about the dynamics of blended families led to her multigenerational novel about Mark and Hannah Abbott, tracing their early years and then the lives of their children as both Mark and Hannah turn 70 in 2015.

In “Fault Lines: The Geography Of Love” ($15.99 in paperback from TurkeyTail Media Farm; also for Amazon Kindle), family members narrate their own chapters as the decades go by, though Mark’s chapters are conveyed by third-person narration since, Tchudi writes me, “it’s Mark’s growth and change we come to understand/focus on.”

Hannah says in 1997, age 52, “Honestly, it’s not been that easy, being married to Mark. It’s gotten easier. But he came into this marriage so fragile. I think in some ways, that’s what attracted me to him…. But that vulnerability was accompanied by huge insecurity, neediness, a hole in his heart that couldn’t be filled.”

Mark had become a psychotherapist in Sacramento. Hannah was a renowned artist. By 2015, “Mark and Hannah had been married for over thirty years and had come into the marriage with two teenagers each—Isla was his; Sarah was hers…. Richie was Hannah’s oldest child, one who had gradually, over time, come back into the fold.” Then there was Marcus, “Mark’s son, the drug addict.” 

Isla, age 42, puts it this way in 2011: “Sometimes I think our family is coming together and sometimes I think it’s falling apart. And I guess that at different times it’s both of those things.” Hannah is the moral center of the family—calm in the face of family chaos—but will face devastating news. Mark must come to terms with a family secret hiding from him in plain sight.

In her immersive story, Tchudi treats the triumphs and heartbreaks of family life with honesty and compassion. 

The public is invited to the book launch party on Sunday, June 7 from 4:00-7:00 p.m. at TurkeyTail Farm. In addition to readings from the book light refreshments (and wood-fired pizza) will be provided as well as music from the Blue Oaks Saxophone Quartet. Write susantchudi@gmail.com for directions.

“Three Fire Mountains: Stories Of Wildfire And Recovery In California”

“Wildfire traumatizes a community all at once,” writes Katie Simmons, former Disaster Recovery Director for the Town of Paradise, “leaving everybody reeling with shock and dealing with one another and themselves in a heightened emotional state.”

Now Deputy Chief Administrative Officer for Butte County, Simmons was part of the first Policy Fellowship with Stanford University Impact Labs over the course of two years, beginning in late 2023. “When I started the fellowship,” she says, “I didn’t plan to talk about suicidal thoughts, or my dad’s death,” or her chronic illness. Instead, “I planned to talk about fire through the narrow lens of data…. As it turns out, reckoning with fire is indistinguishable from reckoning with life, because fire touches every part of life.”

Simmons reckons with both fire and life in her extraordinary memoir, named for a Camp Fire memory her youngest daughter had as she saw it from Chico. “Three Fire Mountains: Stories Of Wildfire And Recovery In California” ($37.99 in hardcover from Springer) is a heart-rending account of recovery’s messy reality, told through individual stories as well as from a professional vantage point that contends with agencies at odds with each other.

Simmons presents a recovery triage tool, a host of questions dealing with the aftermath of a fire both for individuals and the community. She feels rage when Federal and State agencies don’t seem to understand the vast difference between urban and rural recovery (and what does recovery even mean?) and intact and destroyed communities.

There are some victories. “For both the Camp Fire and North Complex fire,” she writes, “I worked with staff to build cases for time extensions on FEMA Individual Assistance and we were successful.”

When the fire is out, “except for the destruction it has wrought and the landscape it has altered, the sky turns blue again and life goes on.” But trauma remains. “Fire recovery is like putting together a delicate puzzle wearing a blindfold and heavy gloves.”

“As we await the start of another fire year I wonder … how do we keep going?” We keep going, she writes, because of love. “My definition of recovery is love.”

“The Joyful Online Teacher: Finding Our Fizz In Asynchronous Classes”

It’s no secret that the Covid lockdown had a devastating effect on the educational development of young people. Overnight, teachers who had never taught online had to open the doors to “Zoom school,” not good PR for the online modality.

When Flower Darby spoke with online instructors at Butte College in 2025, during a daylong emphasis on “humanizing” distance education, she previewed some of the themes in her new book. “The Joyful Online Teacher: Finding Our Fizz In Asynchronous Classes” ($19.95 in paperback from the University of Oklahoma Press; also for Amazon Kindle) focuses on courses taught in Learning Management Systems (like Canvas, in the news because of cybersecurity attacks) and not live via Zoom.

“I wrote this book,” she says, “to uplift online instructors who may be feeling overwhelmed, undervalued, and depleted of joy in their work.” A veteran online instructor herself, Darby, Associate Director of the Teaching for Learning Center at the University of Missouri, concentrates not on the “how” of teaching online but the “why.” In spite of all the challenges, an online class can “promote thriving for all,” inspiring students and energizing instructors.

Drawing on the work of positive psychologist Martin Seligman, Darby takes instructors through the PERMA model of well-being: “Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment.” The book centers on developing positive emotion in students (yes, in asynchronous courses) as well as relationships. But it’s also aimed at the importance of instructor self-care in setting boundaries. 

Students want to know there’s a real person behind the computer screen, so instructors can share brief videos about themselves and their interests. They can respond to student email in a timely manner (though not 24x7).

Meaningful learning online takes disciplined effort and that’s a good kind of “friction.” But, Darby adds, “let’s create and teach online classes with an intentional effort to minimize the times when students feel alone, disconnected, frustrated, anxious, or bored. We’ll do a lot to support their success, and we’ll enjoy our work more fully, when we do.”

For instructors, the book is indispensable practical encouragement. For readers, it’s a way to see online courses in an entirely different light.

“Singing For Change”

In a series of novels, starting with "Venice Beach" in 2015, Chico writer Emily Gallo (emilygallo.com) has charted the lives of a group of unlikely friends. Many wind up at Dutch Bogart’s former pot farm in Garberville. The reclusive Dutch, a former Sixties musician, lives on song royalties. 

Among the “motley crew” is Buster Fingerpickin’ McCracken, a famed blues musician now in his eighties. When Dutch gets a call from “Playing for Change,” a charitable foundation “trying to spread music for social change around the world,” the opportunity to make a music video along the boardwalk ignites something deep in him, and he’s able to persuade Buster to join him. That’s when Dutch meets audio assistant, Vivienne, a reporter for the Haiti Liberté, and he is smitten.

The events at first seem prosaic in “Singing For Change” ($14.95 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle), but the reader knows from the start a horrific tragedy is waiting in the wings.

Friend Malcolm works in Venice at Café Gratitude. His wife, Savali, an LGBTQ+ activist, is Samoan, a third gender in Samoan society called Fa'afafine. They take in Graciela, just getting started in her teaching career, to care for their daughter, Aja. Through a turn of events, Graciela meets Clippers basketball star Elijah Knight and despite his complicated family dynamics, wants to see more of him. A lot more.

By coincidence, Vivienne, Savali and Elijah are all claiming their bags at LAX when they run into each other moments before the shooting begins. The gunman “stopped and studied the crowd milling around the luggage carousel, choosing for best effect. The one who towered over everyone, the woman in a man's suit. He pulled the guns out of his pockets, slipped in the magazines and started firing.” At least seven dead, the three friends severely wounded. Was the gunman targeting people of color? 

There is much more to the story. Dutch envisions a “We are the World” concert for gun control, and Gallo shows how it happens, complete with all the big name music stars, including Dutch. 

“To save our country,” he sings, “To do what’s right/ This is our time/ This is our fight.”

“Getting It Write: (Mostly) Unpublished Writing 1974–2025”

“For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved to write,” writes Chicoan Stephen Metzger, who taught writing, literature, and journalism at Chico State from 1982-2010 and composition at Butte College from 2010-2018. He’s also been a freelance writer since the early 80’s, successfully publishing some 500 pieces in all kinds of publications. Yet some of his work, “despite my highest hopes,” never saw the light of day.

Until now. Welcome to a miscellany of humor, essays, poetry, commercials, and one-act plays (which entertained Chico audiences in the early 2000s), works “that I didn’t want to disappear.” A breezy read, “Getting It Write: (Mostly) Unpublished Writing 1974–2025” ($20 in paperback from Stansbury Publishing) is an antidote to the terribly serious business of real world events. 

Metzger’s cockeyed sense of humor and twisty points of view may explain why he failed repeatedly to win the famed cartoon caption contest at the New Yorker magazine (despite his entries being “way funnier” than the winners). But never mind that. He’s out to serve the public with “This Week’s Pets,” a list of “abandoned pets” needing “loving homes.” 

Take Arnold: “a spunky young Rottweiler/German shepherd mix, trained to respond to German. He knows ‘Fassen!’ (‘Attack!’) but is still learning ‘Aus!’ (‘Let Go!’). Arnold would do well in a home with an English-German dictionary, a heavy-duty cage, pepper spray, mace, a taser, and a six-foot steel pole with chain.”

Have a go at a riddle poem: “Blinded, I show you/ Nothing.// Undressed, I show you/ Mountains, back yards,/ Sunsets.// From outside: lamps, sofas,/ Kitchen sinks.// When I come clean/ You can’t see me./ You feel my pain.” (The answer is in the following: wodniw.)

He offers serious advice: “Remember that there are smart people who disagree with you and stupid people who agree.”

There’s language advice, too, from Metzger’s “The Writer’s Way” textbook: “Trust me here: when in doubt, use ‘who’ instead of ‘whom,’ since ‘whom’ when it should be ‘who’ sounds way worse than ‘who’ when it should be ‘whom.’” An example: “This is my brother, whom loves to fish. (Wrong: And sounds really stupid.)”

Metzger’s drollery abounds, for whomever needs it.

“Stumpy”

Every spring on the National Mall in Washington, DC, the cherry trees bloom to the delight of millions of visitors. Some of the trees, though, because of rising waters of the Tidal Basin, decayed and died. Yet one Japanese cherry tree, though hollowed out, continued to blossom. When the National Park Service had to remove the tree in 2024 to fix the seawall, which was failing, cuttings were taken to the U.S. National Arboretum for later replanting. The famous blossoming tree even had a name.

Longtime Chicoan Karen McHenry tells the story of “Stumpy” ($19 in hardcover from Kismet Publishing), a lyrical children’s book for ages 6-10, from the tree’s perspective. The colorful illustrations by Tommy Hardman, where pink blossoms predominate, bring Stumpy to life. 

A tourist sensation during the day, as night comes Stumpy is alone with his thoughts. “It is silent now, except for the lapping of the water at the sea wall and the rattling of leftover autumn leaves twirling past. Stumpy gazes out over the Tidal Basin that has been his lifelong home and wonders what becomes of cherry trees when they are cut down. He shudders, knowing that it isn’t the chill breeze blowing around him. He was once a robust, sturdy tree. Now, he is scrawny and crooked and hollow inside.”

Yet Stumpy continues to bloom and a visiting bird calls Stumpy “the Little Cherry Tree That Could.” What’s more, says the bird, “People see you as a symbol of perseverance—because you refuse to give up. That is why they come to take your picture, and put flowers at your roots, and play music for you.” Those words “warm Stumpy’s hollow core, down to his chilly roots.”

Later a mysterious voice tells Stumpy that it’s too late for him to be moved; he must be cut down. What will happen then? The voice responds that clippings from Stumpy will be replanted: “You will live on, not only in people’s hearts, but in new trees. … The Sakura Japanese cherry blossoms are a symbol of a life well lived. And you, Stumpy, are a symbol of that, too.”

May McHenry’s pitch-perfect story tug at your heart and blossom into resilience.

“100 Years Of Ridin’ Wild! Red Bluff Round-Up, 1921-2021”

The Red Bluff Round-Up is “the largest three-day rodeo in the United States.” As Josie Smith writes, “The Round-Up is more than a rodeo. It’s a living, breathing testament to the quintessential true grit spirit of Tehama County, its sense of community, and the determined resilience of the American West.”

As memories linger after the Round-Up each April, they are added to its extraordinary history, which Smith, a board member of the Tehama County Genealogical & Historical Society, has compiled with the help of many hands. “100 Years Of Ridin’ Wild! Red Bluff Round-Up, 1921-2021” ($79.95 in large-size softcover from Chico’s Stansbury Publishing) is available at the Red Bluff Round-Up Mercantile Store, 649 Main Street, Suite 1. The store is open Tuesday through Friday from 11:00 am – 5:00 pm and Saturday from 10:00 am – 5:00 pm.

Each chapter covers a decade of the Round-Up, full of personal stories. There are hundreds of black and white and color photographs and a century of champions. “I took one year out of the picture business to go into rodeo,” team roper and actor Ben Johnson noted. “My dad was a world’s champion, so I wanted to be. I won the world’s championship in team roping (1953), but at the end of the year, I didn’t have $3. All I had was a wore-out pickup truck and a mad wife.”

Radio announcer Bob Tallman put it this way: “Pick a road, any county road. You’re going about 40 miles an hour in your pickup. At that point, jump out, and try to tackle a mailbox. That’s steer wrestling.”

It began October 6, 1921. That day, Tehama County Day, “the first day of the Red Bluff Round-Up, private businesses closed at noon so people could enjoy … the opening of a four-day rodeo program put on by the newly created Red Bluff Round-Up Association. The Red Bluff Daily News enthusiastically declared: ‘Red Bluff Rodeo Starts With A Whoop!’”

The book is a stunning achievement. 

Give the last word to bullfighter Felix Cooper, who noted in April 1974 that “If the whole world was full of rodeo people, it would be a good world.”

“The Heyday Of Willie, Duke, And Mickey: New York City Baseball’s Golden Age Amid Integration”

Robert C. Cottrell is Professor Emeritus at Chico State in History and American Studies, but he’s also a consummate baseball historian. In “The Heyday Of Willie, Duke, And Mickey: New York City Baseball’s Golden Age Amid Integration” ($38 in hardcover from Bloomsbury Academic; also for Amazon Kindle), Cottrell focuses on an unmatched era in Major League Baseball.

“At different points during the mid-1950s,” he writes, “Willie Mays, Duke Snider, and Mickey Mantle were each viewed as not only the greatest center fielder but the finest player in the major leagues, in addition to being a candidate to eclipse Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record.” The statistics are all here, but so are the stories.

“For the four years—1954-1957—featured in this book,” he adds, “Mays, Snider, and Mantle vied for supremacy among New York City center fielders as their teams strove for and reached the pinnacle of American sports at the time. Each was proclaimed, for one year at least during that critical period, the very best player in the game as he led his respective team to a World Series championship.”

The Yankees, Giants, and Dodgers  “exuded star power befitting their sporting prowess and New York City’s preeminence.” 

Yet Cottrell’s story “is also that of the game’s far too belated integration, its reticence in pushing back against the American nation’s racial divisions. The decision by some in Organized Baseball to sign Robinson, Doby, Campanella, Don Newcombe, Paige, Minnie Minoso, Irvin, Mays, Aaron, and Ernie Banks to contracts paralleled the budding civil rights struggle to rid the United States of hateful, hurtful, poisonous Jim Crow edicts and discriminatory practices.”

In fact, “only recently have Negro League games, according to MLB, been acknowledged as on par with those of the major leagues.” In postwar baseball, the Negro Leagues began to “wither,” as Cottrell writes, “tempered by the introduction of Black players into the National and American leagues….”

Cottrell also documents the painful moves of the Dodgers to Los Angeles and the Giants to San Francisco. 

All in all, it’s inside baseball, a paean of praise to a beloved game, warts and all.

“The Family Liar: A Novel”

Teri Kanefield (terikanefield.com), with a law degree from UC Berkeley and a degree in fiction writing from UC Davis, now lives in San Luis Obispo. She writes me that her “husband lived in Los Molinos. We spent lots of time in Chico because my stepdaughter was in a production of Annie at the Chico Theater Company.” All the while, for more than forty years actually, she wanted to tell a story based on her life in a horrendously dysfunctional family.

Though she changed names, “telescoped events, combined minor characters, and left out a lot,” she drew on “letters, diaries I began keeping at the age of twelve, and memory…. To borrow Emily Dickinson’s phrase, this novel is my letter to the world.” 

“The Family Liar: A Novel” ($18.99 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle) is a kind of mystery story told by Natalie; in later life she is determined to discover the reasons her father, Jack, was mostly withdrawn and passive while his wife, Natalie’s mother Lenora, operated as a master manipulator, turning family member against family member. 

The couple married in 1959 “at United Hebrew, St. Louis’s reform temple. After the wedding, they rented a one-bedroom apartment four miles from Jack’s television repair shop.” Natalie was born a year later.

When she was eight, a game of pennies taken from her father’s piggy bank went awry, and her mother, “impatient with my explanations, said ‘I can see you are a liar, but I’m not going to spank you. Your punishment is that from now on you will be known as the family liar. We will always know who the liar is. Once a liar, always a liar.’”

The family, including siblings Carly and Teddy, moved to California when Natalie was ten. Natalie could hardly wait until she turned 18 to leave. On her own, virtually ignored by her family, which was breaking apart, Natalie contended with the nagging question: Is it all my fault? Am I bad?

The story, raw in its emotions and psychologically astute, offers a kind of answer to Natalie’s mystery and, as a result, a powerful transformation of Natalie herself and, perhaps, even the reader. 

“Author Of Creation: Free Will, The Trinity, And The Restoration Of All Things”

As Christians around the world contemplate the promise that in the resurrection of Jesus Christ on Easter morning all things will be made new, one may wonder what such an audacious claim actually means. My friend and colleague, retired Butte College philosophy instructor Ric Machuga, proposes an answer in “Author Of Creation: Free Will, The Trinity, And The Restoration Of All Things” ($34 in paperback from Cascade books; also for Amazon Kindle).

For Machuga, it’s a matter of “faith seeking understanding,” and thoughtful believers as well as others interested in the Christian story, and whether it “hangs together,” will perhaps find unexpected (and delightful) answers to some of the most perplexing questions: What is a free will? What is the soul? Who is God? What is Jesus? What is belief? With so much evil in the world, how can God be all-powerful and truly good? Who will be saved?

Though philosophically astute, the book offers a vast variety of everyday examples to make its points, drawn from tennis, biology, the lottery, and an author and the author’s book. In fact, Machuga argues that the best way to understand God is not as a “Supreme Being” (the biggest dude on the block) but rather as a divine author with creation as his “book.” 

God is like Shakespeare, and creation like Hamlet. So it’s mistaken to think of God as a Divine Craftsman within the universe, part of the cause-and-effect chain, and better to recognize that God created the universe with time, not within time. 

Shakespeare intimately knows Hamlet, but Hamlet, of course, knows nothing of Shakespeare. Similarly, humans know nothing of this unknowable God except that in the Incarnation “God (the father) writes himself (the Son) into our story and then sends the Spirit who teaches us how to read what God wrote.”

In the end Machuga proposes what he calls “trinitarian universalism,” that “this God both can and will choreograph our free choices to bring all creatures to a glorious end…. A Supreme Being can’t ensure that ‘all shall be well’ without violating human freedom.”

Easter hope, then, is a sure and certain promise.

 

“The Burning Battle: The King’s Frog Hunter Book 3”

The kingdom of Ameram, including its aging monarch, King Ahmbin, and his only child, Ekala Oleen, heir to the throne, is under siege. An evil force is at work in Ameram manifesting in the disfigured Baskin who wants nothing more than to rule from Ahmbin’s Castle Ambermal.

Baskin will stop at nothing to twist the many peoples of the kingdom and beyond to do his will. Only a small group of compatriots loyal to Ekala can offer a defense. They must try to untwist the twisted and fight with near-living swords against an enemy spawning deadly worm-snakes.

One such friend is the King’s Frog Hunter, Thalmus, “guardian of the Prophecy of Ameram” which predicts the rise of Ekala Oleen. (In Ameram, frogs are human-sized and plenty mean, but their legs are a delicacy.) 

Former Paradise resident Ken Young, now living with his wife Cindy in Idaho, brings his epic sword-and-sorcery trilogy to a conclusion in “The Burning Battle: The King’s Frog Hunter Book 3” ($18.25 in paperback, kingsfroghunter.com; also for Amazon Kindle). Book One, “The King’s Frog Hunter,” introduces Thalmus; Book Two, “Shadows Of War,” shows the Prophecy includes Boschina, the Stone Cutter’s daughter, whose father, Veracitas, carves the truth.

With cover and maps drawn by the inimitable Steve Ferchaud of Chico, and profiles of persons, animals, and locations included, the book takes Thalmus, Boschina, and others, through seemingly unending skirmishes. As Thalmus says, “There is a source stirring in the depths of Ameram that is driving this upheaval. We have felt its presence, experienced its wrath, but we have yet to find it.”

But find it they will. As battles rage in the North and South Fords of Ameram, Baskin seems always just beyond their grasp and Captain Kali, with her forces weakened, threatens to give up. But Thalmus encourages her. “There is always a way. Sometimes the answer is hidden from our sight until we venture forward.”

Then, in the most unlikely of places, the showdown with Baskin begins. A city is in flames, and the evil threatens to engulf all that is good. But for this deeply imagined story, the end, blessedly, is not yet.

“Eve And Me: The Shadow That Spans 3000 Years”

“Throughout our long history on this planet,” writes Karen Gilden in a book-length exploration of women’s history, “men and women have sought to make life easier for themselves and for the ones they loved. There is evidence that early men and women lived together happily without either being dominant.”

Then, she says, the story takes a turn: “But whenever land was procured, when trade became a way of bettering yourself, when couples were divided in their efforts, equity was lost. And slowly but inevitably the idea of power over others evolved, and centuries passed. Women were no longer equal partners in life but were subject to laws that, in some places, reduced them to little more than slaves.”

Gilden was born in Chico, attended public school in Willows, and in 1959, when she graduated from high school, enrolled at Chico State. Though a music major, she found she was more interested in travel and writing. She and husband Ray lived in France, Turkey, and Oregon (where she now resides) during their 53 years of marriage. He was a feminist before the word became popular, “a kind, intelligent, courageous man who spent much of his time in determined activism” before he passed away in 2018.

Gilden combines historical vignettes throughout the ages with a memoir of awakening to feminism in “Eve And Me: The Shadow That Spans 3000 Years” ($18.50 in paperback from Artha One Publishing). The shadow is what she calls “the mythology of Eve,” who, beguiled by the serpent in Genesis, must come under male authority. “Misogyny,” she writes, “has never needed an excuse to stick its ugly snout into women’s business….” Religious and cultural institutions have embedded the “fear and hatred of women.”

She writes of women who have made their own rules, and that gives her hope. “Eve broke the rules and paid the price” but “those cracked and disregarded rules, like broken windows, let in unfiltered light.” In the various waves of feminism in her lifetime, the shadow, here and there, is being dispelled by “light that I believe is waiting for us, but in a future only men and women together can create.” 

“Seeing Daylight”

Reno-based upper middle-grade novelist Suzanne Morgan Williams (suzannemorganwilliams.com) has fond memories of Redding, where her husband proposed, and of visiting her great aunt in Oroville. In “Bull Rider” she introduces readers to Ben O’Mara, newly returned from fighting in Iraq, and his younger brother Cam, who tackles a big bull named Ugly.

Now, in a sequel, Williams focuses on Ben, 19. Suffering from TBI (traumatic brain injury) and PTSD, his return to his parents’ ranch in Salt Lick, Nevada is not going well. “Seeing Daylight” ($15.99 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle) is a deeply researched story of the interior life of a wounded warrior, and how organizations that provide service dogs to disabled vets can bring them back from the brink.

It’s also the story of Molly, 17 (about to turn 18) who lives with her mom in Winnemucca. She wants to train a dog for Canine Heroes, like her mother does, but her mother pooh-poohs the idea. In contrast to Ben’s tight-knit, supportive family, Molly’s is somewhat frayed.

Ben and Molly narrate their alternating chapters, and at first it seems they are unlikely ever to cross paths. But when Ben is pressed to seek therapy after screaming nightmares that scare his younger sister, and uncontrollable flashbacks to the IED explosion and aftermath (an Iraqi child dragged him to safety), Molly meets Ben (whom she had more than admired in high school) and works on training a shelter dog for Ben. She calls him Roger.

After the explosion, Ben tells us, “the field docs shot me up with drugs that dropped me into a medical coma. Time dissolved. And after they amputated my lower arm and repaired by head and the traumatic brain injury started to heal, I had to learn to talk again, to walk, all that…. a sadness is pooling in my chest, drowning me, and I can’t put my finger on exactly why.”

A shooting incident in which Molly is wounded threatens to undo a budding romance. Yet Ben’s transformation is not yet over, and readers will be riveted by what the human spirit can accomplish given a big hearted dog and the love of a feisty young woman.

“Tuk With A Red Scarf”

Now living in Chico, Judy Blishen Soto, “a Native American of the Ohlone tribe” made Paradise her home. She writes that she was “an entertainer, singer, songwriter…. I had over two hundred creative works, poems, short stories that I had written and were getting ready to publish, plus songs I had composed.” Everything was destroyed in the Camp Fire.

She started again, this time with a family story about their beloved black Lab. It really happened, she writes in an author’s note, and “none of the names or events in this story are fictitious.”

Designed for kids six through eight, “Tuk With A Red Scarf” ($10.95 in paperback from Austin Macauley Publishers; also for Amazon Kindle) is a delightful tale (ahem) of a dog who brought a little miracle to pass.

“It all started out to be a normal day, giving my husband and three children breakfast and seeing them off to school and work.” The family had two pooches, Scottish terrier Scotty, and Tuk with a red scarf. Weirdly, this morning only Scotty came to eat; the gate was open and Tuk was gone.

Soto waited until the children got home from school but no Tuk. So they piled in the car to drive to the pound, a half hour away, before “my husband got home from work… We had two and a half hours to look for Tuk and get back home to make dinner and pretend all was well.” 

They didn’t find Tuk, but, strangely, there was another black Lab--wearing a red scarf--named Leonard, who (sadly) was going to be put down the next day since he had not been claimed in weeks. 

“We could save this dog’s life. Children let’s decide, should we take Leonard home and maybe your dad won’t notice it’s not our Tuk with a red scarf?” You know the answer, and off they went with Lenny. “We still need to pray for Tuk,” Soto told her children, “that nothing happens to him and that God will keep him safe and bring him home soon.”

What comes next is one of those unexpected twists that no one would believe unless it actually happened.

“The Jumper: A Rick Rose Novel”

“Any idea what you call a dentist who gets caught drinking on the job? How about unemployed? That was me in 2019. Six months later, I graduated summa cum laude from an AA program, but my patients weren’t the least bit impressed. They’d already found other dentists.” 

But Rick Rose, the endearing creation of Chico novelist (and retired dentist) Mike Paull, is not lamenting. He’s become a forensic odontologist. “It looks good and sounds a lot better than unemployed. You see, for the last four years I’ve spent a lot of time in the morgue, working for Dr. Alexandra Keller, the chief medical examiner for the city and county of San Francisco.”

Now, in late 2023, the morgue contains the body of an unknown man who had, at 3:00 am one morning, jumped to his death from the Golden Gate bridge (alas, before the nets were installed). Yet it turns out that’s not exactly what killed him. So Rose is tasked with determining the identity of “The Jumper” ($15.95 in paperback from Amazon; also available in a Kindle edition).

Something under the victim’s tongue may be a clue. What Rose discovers leads to an oncologist, a maker of leather bags, the owner of an exclusive apartment complex, a taxi driver, and a bucketload of cash.

Rick, 40, lives alone, except for his feisty cat Einstein inherited from a failed marriage (though he and his ex are on somewhat friendly terms; she sells coffee from a truck he helped her buy). When he learns that Josie has been taken advantage of financially by a shyster, he resolves to track him down. Little does he realize the two seemingly disparate investigations will have international implications and put his life at risk.

Over the course of three novels (including “The Mouth Mechanic” and “The Head Case”), Paull gives readers a character worth cheering for, a man who can be a wee bit sarcastic as the occasion demands. But Rick Rose is good at what he does, and so is Paull. “The Jumper” propels readers from chapter to chapter until the very end but (one can hope) not the end of the Rick Rose series.

“Infidelity Rules—A Menu For Disaster: The Perils Of Loving Food, Wine, And Married Men”

The metaphorical valentines lay in tatters for Quinn, perhaps in her late thirties, who describes herself as “six-foot-tall in bare feet” with “dark, wavy red hair that tumbles down my back and refuses to be tamed.” 

Her fiancé had ditched her two days before the nuptials. Later, “I divorced after stupidly marrying a different man out of friendship, not love. I had married Chris because he was safe, not because I couldn’t fathom a life without him.”

Outwardly Quinn is a successful sommelier at Persimmon, an upscale restaurant in DC. “I love the magic that happens when a great glass of wine pairs perfectly with a dish. It’s lusty and romantic, the only goal sheer and immediate pleasure. It’s akin to the ideal relationship, fleeting but swoon-worthy, each bringing out the very best in the other. … and, if you get a lucky match, the combination will make you moan. I swear it will.”

That fairly well describes what she’s looking for in men. “I don’t date single men anymore. I have affairs with married men instead. But I never, ever play with men in happy marriages. … I like my flings. Nothing but freedom and great sex. Love just gets in the way.” 

But when Marcus, Hollywood hunk material married to a woman who has grown distant, enters Quinn’s life, readers might guess that though she wants a fling, she will have to make a life-defining choice of whether to fling him away.

“Infidelity Rules—A Menu For Disaster: The Perils Of Loving Food, Wine, And Married Men” ($17.95 in paperback from Black Rose Writing; also for Amazon Kindle) is by Joelle Babula (Joelle Butler), Chico State grad, former captain of the Chico State women’s basketball team and Orion managing editor.

“I know I wanted a married man,” Quinn tells us, “and I’m trying to squash that nagging feeling in my gut that I’m getting too involved. That my lust is evolving into something more. Something I may not be able to easily shimmy out of.” All the shimmying makes for an upbeat romp—paired with a great glass of wine.

“The Oxford Handbook Of The Philosophy Of Love”

What is this thing called love, especially romantic love? Pure emotion? Some forty contemporary philosophers contribute their thoughts in “The Oxford Handbook Of The Philosophy Of Love” ($150 in hardcover from Oxford University Press; also for Amazon Kindle), edited by Christopher Grau and Aaron Smuts.

Though the work is designed for specialists in the area, the writing is accessible to those who want to hear some reasoning about what at times seems so unreasonable. While poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning writes “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways,” some of the essays in the book ask not how, but why. Is love, can love be, reasonable?

It doesn’t seem the case that we can reason ourselves into romantically loving another. Yet, if we do love another, we can give reasons why—at least according to Hallmark. Here’s a Valentine for her: “You give me so much to love—your kindness, our closeness, the way you put our family first.” For him: “I can count on you to be right beside me with your strength and support. That feeling of being loved is one of the best things in my life.”

Troy Jollimore, the Chair of the Chico State Philosophy Department, tries to sort things out in a key essay, “Love As ‘Something In Between,’” which focuses on romantic love. “Even when falling in love surprises us,” he writes, “it is rarely if ever experienced as a purely brute and unintelligible psychological happening.” In fact, “nearly everyone can identify something they find lovable or attractive in their beloveds.”

Jollimore admits that “talking about having reasons for loving may strike us as cold, excessively rationalistic, or unromantic. We must allow that love is not entirely a matter of reasons….” It’s not that reasons drive our feelings, but rather that our feelings can, well, be reasonable: “That an emotion is spontaneous, immediate, or unpremeditated need not imply that it is not at the same time appropriate, fitting, and justified.”

The bottom line: “love is partly guided by and responsive to reasons. It is not an entirely rational phenomenon, but something in between.” 

Could Hallmark be on to something after all?