BEST OF FEAST 2010 - NONFICTION

GIFT WRAP AN EXPERIENCE! Give a book this year at the holidays. Books inform, educate, entertain, encourage, and open doors to new ways of thinking, fresh ideas, and an expanded view of the world and its people. It is truly a gift that can continue to give long after the first reading of the last page. All year long, FEAST suggests books you might enjoy, share, pass along; books you might otherwise miss. This time of year we like to bring you the BEST of FEAST to consider for your gift list. Here, in our five categories, are some of this year’s favorite features!

Wishing you happy holidays and a new year filled with good reads! Watch for a new and exciting format in our next full issue—

Rosemary Carstens, Editor

# # #

IN THE PLACES OF THE SPIRITS, David Grant Noble with a foreword by N. Scott Momaday. SAR Press 2010. Noble has been a fine art photographer and writer for forty years. Beyond that he has been an explorer of history and a detective of the past. He has recorded and interpreted the finely honed messages portrayed by the land and the clues to be found there about the lives of its ancient peoples. The author has woven a magical tapestry of images and personal reflections interspersed with historical and anthropological detail. As he explains his fascination with this region: “The places we know can be infused with memory and spirit, and landscapes can have soul.” This beautiful book features 76 duotone plates and 5 additional photos focused on the Southwest’s most mysterious and compelling sites.

TEARS OF DARKNESS: The Story of the Bataan Death March and its Aftermath, Michael Norman and Elizabeth Norman. Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2009; paperback March 2010. What a story! This book is a very readable, astounding accomplishment based on ten years of research, thousands and thousands of travel miles, hundreds of interviews, and the support of numerous scholars and ordinary people to bring it to fruition. Most of us have heard about the Bataan Death March, of course, but the details set out here, often using quotes from among the 76,000 US and Filipino captive soldiers that were on the march, tear at the soul.

Don’t think for a moment that this is a one-sided presentation dolled up to make the US look good and Japan look savage. The Normans spent countless hours digging among Japanese archives and interviewing Japanese military survivors so they could include accounts both sides perhaps comprehend the enemy’s mindset. This book grips like a novel, probably because the authors used the story of one young Montana cowboy, Ben Steele, who survived the march and is one of the few from those days still living, as a vehicle for telling the story of thousands of others. As readers, we connect with Ben—the story becomes so much more than just facts and figures, a bunch of history dates, or military battle reports. Weaving personal recollections of specific people on each side of the conflict helps us to see these historic events through the lenses of individuals. As in all wars there were botched plans and ill-conceived communications, chaos, and personal egos and agendas influencing outcomes. This is the kind of quality journalism we should see more of in the publishing world and this book should be required reading in Washington.

STRENGTH IN WHAT REMAINS: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness, Tracy Kidder. Random House 2009. Tracy Kidder, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Award, and many other literary prizes, is a thorough professional and an engaging writer of nonfiction. He picks the hard topics and struggles to portray his subjects without bias, to tell their story instead of his—an exceptional quality in times when personal spin has gained greater acceptance in society. This is an astounding story of one survivor of genocide in the small African country of Berundia—against all odds and through providential events—who manages to escape the violence and come to the United States. The story of Deogratias (Thanks to God) puts an individual human face on events so massive, so brutal, as to be nearly incomprehensible. It is, indeed, a story of a people’s terror and loss, but it is also a story of regeneration and of hope that such stories can one day end.

EAARTH, Bill McKibben. Times 2010. McKibben packs a powerful punch. He discusses with considerable clarity how we have fatally transformed our planet’s environment through unsustainable practices deeply rooted in our dependency on oil, through an emphasis on corporate farming aimed at profit-right-now at all costs, and, particularly in the developed world, through an unceasing focus on bigger, more acquisitive lifestyles. His view, simplified, is that we are living on a fundamentally altered planet and we had better get ready to hunker down to a different way of thinking about and using our resources in order to survive both now and in the future. The first part of the book focuses on what might seem to some a “doomsday” discussion, but McKibben fills the second half of the book with examples of successful, hope-filled, viable means for holding back the tide of environmental changes that can only lead to our planet’s demise. Essential reading for anyone who wants a realistic picture of the effects of climate change and some proposals for what we, as individuals, can do to make a difference in our own spheres of influence.

STILL LIFE WITH OYSTERS AND LEMON, Mark Doty. Beacon Press 2001. This small book (only 70 pages) is a literary gem I plan to read and reread often. Doty weaves his experience of falling in love with a still life painting throughout a book that reveals his life and human loves, and he does it with truly lovely, elegant use of language, description, and imagery. I highly recommend this as a read to savor, rather like a perfect meal accompanied by just the right wine and companion. Perfect for the art lovers on your list!

RESILIENCE, by Elizabeth Edwards. Broadway Books 2010. I usually avoid “celebrity” books like I do cow paddies in a pasture—for all the symbolic reasons that simile evokes. But this book is deeply sincere and human as Edwards places herself right there in the mess of life along with the rest of us. She speaks candidly for the most part about her son’s tragic death, her terminal diagnosis, and even about her husband’s shocking infidelity. Nevertheless, addressing those issues is just one small part of this book that is aptly subtitled: Reflections on the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life’s Adversities. I think there’s something here for anyone to consider and I came away with an even deeper respect for this woman whose challenges would overwhelm most of us and would, as of this month, take her on her final journey way too soon.

A PEARL IN THE STORM: How I found my heart in the middle of the ocean, Tori Murden McClure. Collins 2009. Sometimes life is more exciting, more compelling, than anything a fiction writer could imagine. McClure’s story about how she became the first woman to row alone across an ocean grips like super glue and doesn’t let go until the last page. Adventurous physical challenges are not new to this woman—she was also one of the two first women to ski to the south pole. She is fit, athletic, smart as a whip, and was as prepared as any human could be when she set out in her 23-foot plywood boat with no motor or sail to row from the US northeaster coast to France in the worst hurricane season on record in the North Atlantic. Within days she lost all communications. Reading about her physical and emotional challenges is harrowing, her survival miraculous—you are in the boat with her every step of the way, struggling to breathe. An astounding adventure!

TRAVELING WITH POMEGRANATES: A Mother-Daughter Story, Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor. Viking 2009. This book about the power of travel to birth spiritual connections and inspire creativity is jointly written by this mother-daughter team, giving us a generational perspective on a series of events they experienced during travel to France and Greece over a period of years. Sue’s journey begins as she approaches her fiftieth birthday and begins to realize she is ending an era as a younger woman and entering a period of transition that will move her toward her eldest years. She finds herself seeking spiritual guidance through feminine symbols and icons, hoping for new directions in her work, greater understanding and closeness to her daughter, and a graceful entry into the next stage of her life. Ann’s journey is also a period of transition, one from loss and rejection that culminates in a search for the work she is meant to do. It’s an inspiring book, thoughtfully written. It provides a framework for seeking transitions and destinations for any woman who wants to enhance the meaningfulness of her years.

KOOK: What Surfing Taught Me About Love, Life, and Catching the Perfect Wave, Peter Heller. Free Press 2010. I love a book that is part travel adventure, part learning about someone taking on physical challenges in unexpected ways. At an age when most people are settling for quieter sports, acclaimed author Peter Heller gets sucked up into the undertow of learning to surf, coming face-to-face with the ocean’s seductive beauty and endangered existence. Some men buy red sports cars and sport twenty-somethings on their arms when they enter their middle years, but Heller resolves to throw himself whole heartedly into a six-month effort to go from beginner—“kook”—to mastering a big-hollow wave as he and his girlfriend explore the surfer’s life from southern California and down along the coasts of Baja and mainland Mexico. Along the way he finds, often to his surprise, that not everything in his relationships with surf, sea, and girlfriend is controllable, that at times he must simply hope to survive until he can breathe freely again. A great adventure that made me wish I wasn’t far past the age to take up surfing!

THE BREAD OF ANGELS: A Journey to Love and Faith, Stephanie Saldaña. Doubleday 2010. Stephanie Saldaña, who now lives and teaches in Jerusalem, spent years traveling the world, partly to escape what she thought of as a “cursed” family history and partly because she was inevitably drawn to see new landscapes and immerse herself in alternative cultures, especially those of the Middle East. As a poet, Saldaña found herself attracted to the language and poetry of the Arab-speaking world. In 2004, a Fulbright fellowship took her to Damascus for a year to study the prophet Jesus. She arrived as the United States was solidly boots on the ground in Iraq and the streets of Damascus were filled with Iraqi refugees, while anti-American rhetoric abounded.

Saldaña truly seeks to understand how Islam and Christianity intersect and the source of faith; she questions the purpose of her own life and religious beliefs’ place in it. As her friend Frédéric expresses it, “I think that the thirst for something greater than us is human, not Christian . . . I searched for the meaning of my life for many years, but eventually I always hit a wall. But then I felt something on the other side of that wall . . . I guess I call that space God.”

One of the most interesting aspects of this book is its discussion about language. To some, Arabic is the language of romance and poetry, to others it evokes fear of violence. Although I’ve never heard English described as a romantic or poetic language, for some in the world it certainly does evoke fear of violence and domination. In this volume, Saldaña struggles to not only learn the words and grammar of Arabic, but also the nuance, the emotional content. I particularly enjoyed her description of translation: “. . . there is a certain tragedy in translation: the sense of diluting what was once a powerful drink, of tearing a small plant from its roots and trying to place it in a soil and climate where it does not belong.”

In many ways, The Bread of Angels is about words, about stories. As Saldaña says, “We each meet the text— and who we are and the text together create a unique event. We change for it and it changes for us, the act of reading becoming an essential way of transforming ourselves. We can only bring to the text what is inside ourselves—even if the story is a story of death, if we contain life, we will find life.”

BEST OF FEAST 2010 - FICTION

GIFT WRAP AN EXPERIENCE! Give a book this year at the holidays. Books inform, educate, entertain, encourage, and open doors to new ways of thinking, fresh ideas, and an expanded view of the world and its people. It is truly a gift that can continue to give long after the first reading of the last page. All year long, FEAST suggests books you might enjoy, share, pass along; books you might otherwise miss. This time of year we like to bring you the BEST of FEAST to consider for your gift list. Here are some of this year’s favorite features!

Wishing you happy holidays and a new year filled with good reads! Watch for a new and exciting format in our next full issue—

Rosemary Carstens, Editor

# # #

GIRL IN A BLUE DRESS, Gaynor Arnold. Crown Publishers 2008. Longlisted for the Orange Prize and the Man Booker Prize, this engaging historical novel was inspired by the life and marriage of Charles Dickens and presents a very believable and thought-provoking view of the most celebrated author in the Victorian world. This is his wife’s side of the story, an examination of what it is like to be the mate of someone famous, beloved, and absolutely captivating in public—a man who is much more complicated in private and much more fallible.

THE WILLOW FIELD, William Kittredge. Knopf 2006. William Kittredge’s epic first novel spans the twentieth century and uses the personal story of one cowboy and his family to discuss everything from settlers’ experiences and the plight of Native Americans and cowboys to gamblers, whores, and ordinary men and women. It’s the story of the old West told with grit, in plain language. Kittredge knows this Montana land he writes about—its dust has settled deep into his own skin and soul and he brings it to life for his readers.

ITALIAN SHOES, Henning Mankell. Translated from the Swedish by Laurie Thompson. The New Press, in English 2009. There is some fine writing coming out of Sweden, some fresh yet often universal perspectives. In this book, Frederik Welin, a man well past middle age, lives on a tiny Swedish island surrounded by ice three feet thick, alone except for his equally aged cat and dog. Each day, just to prove to himself that he is still alive, Frederik hacks through the ice to the sea and jumps naked into the frigid water. Haunted by memories of a terrible mistake in his past, one day a woman he abandoned forty years earlier appears suddenly on his island and the protection from the outside world he has so carefully assembled begins to crumble. Beautifully written and translated.

BENNY AND SHRIMP, Katarina Mazetti. Translated from Swedish by Sarah Death. Penguin 2009. A delightful small book with some big wisdom packed into it. Two lonely people meet in a cemetery and find themselves deeply attracted to one another. The author moves back and forth between the two points of view and deftly reveals the miscommunications and confusion of two good people from two different worlds, struggling to bridge them because of love and chemistry.

THE ELEVENTH MAN, Ivan Doig. Harcourt 2008. Doig, best known for This House of Sky and The Whistling Season, turns once again to his Montana homeground in this story about a group of boys who played football together at State University and became small-town heroes in an undefeated season. Then comes WWII and each joins up and is scattered across the globe to his own piece of the war, sees action, sees more death than anyone ought to, and struggles to make sense of it all. The backdrop of major battles in both Europe and the Pacific Basin makes for interesting reading about history, especially as contrasted with present-day fighting in the Middle East. It’s a powerful story about men, their women, their moral fiber, and their friendships with one another.

BAKING CAKES IN KIGALI, Gaile Parkin. Delacourt Press 2009. In Parkin’s debut novel she creates a unique voice in Angel Tungaraza—mother, cake baker, keeper of secrets, matchmaker. Readers are lured into the heart of modern-day Rwanda with the amazing sweets Angel bakes daily and they are soon hooked by the lives of a people who have endured unimaginable heartbreak in their history yet found ways to survive, to thrive, to love again. Angel moves through her days as a “professional somebody,” weaving together her customers’ stories in magical ways as she searches to heal her own broken heart. Parkin tell this story lightly and entertainingly, filled with details that bring Kigali to life—yet it floats like crème fraîche on the darker depth that lies below.

MATTERHORN, Karl Marlantes. El León Literary Arts and Atlantic Monthly Press 2010. Marlantes' 600-page literary tour de force about the Vietnam War absolutely blew me away. I think it’s the best book I’ve read this year. It took Marlantes, a Vietnam vet, thirty years to complete and it's sure to become a classic. It is being referred to as the Great American Vietnam War Novel, up there with Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms and Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead. It has important pertinence today as we consider what is asked of our armed forces when our country goes to war, how war takes our beautiful young men and women into its maw and then spits them out, the course of their lives forever changed. This is a powerful, gripping tale that reveals so much of the boots-on-the-ground reality of the Vietnam War—its strange savage mixture of love and friendships formed under fire, the obscene waste of lives and potential, the heart-searing irresponsibility of politically motivated "leaders." This is tough stuff, but as someone of the generation whose men went to that war, it filled in blanks that support my view of war as a tool of ambitious, driven politicians and brass, who are either indifferent to or have insufficient understanding of the effects of their decisions. I can’t recommend this book highly enough.

THE SPACE BETWEEN US, Thrity Umrigar. HarperCollins 2005. This finely written book is about the gap between reality and the preconceived ideas or unthinking reactions we all share about race and class. Focusing on two women who live dramatically different lives in modern-day India, Umrigar casts them in sharp, telling detail. The two are close friends in spite of their differences: Sera Dubash, an upper-middle-class Parsi housewife whose opulent surroundings hide the quiet terror of her abusive marriage, and Bhima, her stoic illiterate maid hardened by a life of despair and loss. Bhima has worked in Sera’s household for more than 20 years. Each character reveals prejudices at various times based on nothing more than feelings. A beautiful, poignant, and compelling story brought to us by one of the finest writers of our time.

BREAKFAST WITH BUDDHA, Roland Merullo. Algonquin 2007. What a gem of a book! Sort of an EAT, PRAY, LAUGH Till You Cry. A middle-aged man with a successful career in publishing, Otto Ringling’s parents have died suddenly in a car crash and now he must head from his urban, east coast life out to settle things at the remote North Dakota farmhouse where he grew up. He decides to drive so that his sister—who he thinks of as “flaky” and lives an alternative lifestyle—will travel with him since she won’t fly. When he arrives at his sister’s home, he finds she is not going to accompany him but convinces him to give a ride to her guru, a crimson-robed Skovorodinian monk to whom she plans to give her half of their inherited 2,000-acre farm. As the two very different men strive to find common ground as they wind their way in anything but a direct route across the country, there are snorts, giggles, and laugh-out-loud sections and some thoughtful insight into living our lives with meaning.

THE GIRL WHO FELL FROM THE SKY, Heidi W. Durrow. Algonquin 2010. Winner of the 2008 Bellwether Prize for best fiction manuscript addressing issues of social justice. One of the key things about this novel is the author’s striking mastery of what is called “voice.” Durrow writes from several points of view in this story of a girl of mixed ethnic heritage—“white” and “black”—whose mother steps off a high-rise roof holding her baby and taking the girl and her brother with her. The girl is the miraculous survivor. Her voice as she tries to leave her painful past behind and become what she calls “the new girl,” is unique and clear and the perfect vehicle for exploring how race plays out in American society. Having been raised the first ten years of her life in Europe where her heritage was not an issue, she goes to live with her grandmother in an impoverished, all-black area of Portland, OR, and is forced to absorb differences in language and culture that are at once painful and torturous. The story addresses very real issues of what it is to be perceived as nonwhite in the United States, of poverty, drugs, alcoholism, and the enduring ties of blood and love. A small book with a giant story to tell.

http://www.FEASTofBooks.com

Champagne at the holidays—nostalgia, history, mythology

Nothing like war to make a fellow crave a good drink. Gervais Raoul Lufbery (1885–1918) was a French-American flying ace in WWI. He served in both French aviation and, later, the US Army Air Service, but all but one of his more than 17 combat victories came while flying for the French. He was famous for his pet lion cub named, appropriately for the topic of this post, Whiskey. Lufbery is often credited with having created a most delightful drink called the French 75, purportedly named after WWI’s powerful French 75mm howitzer artillery piece because the drink blew you away like you'd been shelled by one. 

Lufbery - 94th Aero Squadron

Other sources claim the drink was created earlier in 1915 by Harry MacElhone, owner of Harry’s New York Bar in Paris. The original version contained a potent combo of champagne, gin, lemon juice and sugar. It was popularized in America at New York City’s famous Stork Club. For another note of nostalgia, in the classic movie Casablanca, Yvette is drinking French 75s at the bar.

Now I can’t drink gin—can’t even stand the smell of it—but a variation arose at some point in its evolving history that replaced the gin in a French 75 with cognac, and that’s the drink I remember drinking back in the days when holding a cocktail in one’s hand seemed the height of sophistication. Now it just seems like a good beginning to a celebration or a well-deserved ending to a tough day. I love a glass of very dry champagne at any time, but there is something very party-ish about making it a French 75 or a Kir Royale (adding crème de cassis)—sort of like adding red stilettos to that traditional little black dress!

Cheri Loughlin, who writes the Intoxicologist blog, wrote a nice piece about French 75s, including her personal favorite recipe for the drink, at http://intoxicologist.wordpress.com/2008/05/04/tweaking-the-french-75/. That could be a place to start if you want to try this holiday drink at home or instruct a young bartender on how you’d like one made.

What are your favorite holiday drinks—alcoholic or not—that you traditionally serve or imbibe this time of year? The holidays can be stressful and/or joyful—I say, whatever the character of yours, PARTY ON!

-- Rosemary Carstens

http://www.FEASTofBooks.com

Roux Memories: A Cajun-Creole Love Story with Recipes

This delightful book from Louisiana native Belinda Hulin opens a window on Cajun and Creole cooking and the family memories that surrounded the author’s life as the gumbo pots bubbled, women sat with big bowls in their laps shelling peas, and crawfish, shrimp, jambalaya, pork cracklins, dirty rice, and an array of other foods were prepared in the kitchen. Not to mention those melt-in-your-mouth pecan pralines that cause us to sigh with sweet-lovers’ satisfaction!

Roux Memories (Lyons Press 2010) offers up more than 250 home-tested recipes along with her family’s tales of four decades rooted in New Orleans’ food and culture. Her mother and father, Audrey and A. J. Hulin, were married for 46 years, raised five children, welcomed grandchildren, experienced life’s ups and downs and, through all those years enjoyed what Hulin calls “some of the best food on earth.” Generations of relatives contributed recipes and stories to this cookbook and we are the lucky recipients!

There are so many things that are lost in a devastating crisis that you never think of until you need them. When Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed homes and neighborhoods and displaced hundreds of thousands of people in Louisiana, bonds were stretched, and many recipes lost. Imagine the consternation on any holiday if you couldn’t lay your hands on that time-worn, stained recipe for the special traditional foods your family has enjoyed as long as you can remember!

Hulin tells the story about being at her mother’s house in suburban New Orleans about a month after Hurricane Katrina, shoveling wet, moldy bits of unrecognizable belongings out on the lawn. It was a sad time, seeing all that had been destroyed and lost forever. Checking back through the house, imagine her joy when she found, just above the high water mark, her mother’s dry, undisturbed recipe box! The thought of all those recipes not written down, not surviving, throughout the region, set the author on the path to writing this book. It’d make a great gift for any cook--

For more details and a sample recipe: http://www.rouxmemories.com/
For more about author Belinda Hulin: http://www.belindahulin.com/bio.htm

Rosemary Carstens, Editor

http://www.FEASTofBooks.com

SPOTLIGHT ON BOOKS: Two Novels of Interest

READ, READ, READ! That’s my motto and I enjoy every syllable of it. My whole life it has been such a special pleasure to open a book with anticipation and to find myself drawn into the story, the characters, the writingm from the very first page.
Some books take a little longer to capture my attention. For example, I’ve noticed that books by US authors often try to reach out with maximum impact from the first sentence, as if our short American attention span must be grabbed by the throat and yanked into the story immediately or all will be lost. Of course, I am excited when that opening sentence is something so cool that I just know I’m going to love the book, but I’ve found that novels written in other countries often take a slower approach, building interest more gradually with greater emphasis on character development, setting, or backstory. For me, either approach can be appealing as long as the writing itself is good. It’s similar to how I love Hollywood films and independent foreign films with subtitles equally, though differently, if the stories are exciting, thought-provoking, and engaging. Recently, though, I found myself setting aside a book I had anticipated enjoying because there were so many typos and other editing errors that they constantly distracted me. I couldn’t immerse myself in the tale. I felt, “Why should I care about this story when the author and publishers clearly did not care enough about me, the reader, to present the very best product they could?”

What have you noticed about approaches to fiction in other countries as compared to here in the US? How do you feel about poorly edited books? I’d love to hear your comments—

Here are a couple of my recent finds since the last issue of FEAST was published, both are written by European writers. I hope you enjoy them: 

Girl in a Blue Dress, Gaynor Arnold. Crown Publishers 2008. Longlisted for both the Orange Prize and the Man Booker Prize, this engaging first novel by British social-worker-turned-author Arnold was inspired by the life and marriage of Charles Dickens and presents a very believable and thought-provoking view of the most celebrated author in the Victorian world. This is the wife’s side of the story, an examination of what it is like to be the mate of someone famous, beloved, and absolutely captivating in public—a man who is much more complicated in private and much more fallible. It’s a familiar story in its way (we’ve seen it recently in our own press)—a man becomes powerful, rich, and a celebrity and succumbs to the tantalizing pitfalls of such a position. What’s most interesting here is how true the story rings when examined from the viewpoint of those most intimately acquainted with the person. It’s a cautionary tale in a way—all one sees in a person in public is not necessarily, maybe never, what it seems. 

The Solitude of Prime Numbers, Paolo Giordano. Viking translated edition 2009. An international best seller, this book won the Premio Strega. Its author is the youngest-ever winner of Italy’s prestigious literary award, and his debut novel has been translated into more than 30 languages worldwide. Giordano’s use of prime numbers as a metaphor for two lonely young misfits—Alice and Mattia—who each suffered traumatic childhood events that forever changed their lives, is brilliant. One of my favorite parts is the author’s discussion of the rare occurrence of two prime numbers, so-called twin primes, which occur “close to each other, almost neighbors, but between them there is always an even number that prevents them from truly touching . . . .” This is the story of two such lonely figures who long to be close, who tremble at the possibility, but who do not know how to span the distance. A beautifully conceived meditation on the weight we all carry forward from our childhoods, the efforts of even the most solitary to seek connection and love. This book transcends borders.

Happy reading!

Rosemary Carstens
http://www.CarstensCommunications.com

The Beauty, Craftsmanship, and Unique Character of Wayne Henderson

CLAPTON'S GUITAR: Watching Wayne Henderson Build the Perfect Instrument, Allen St. John. Free Press 2006. I could not put this down! I’ve often thought certain, well-used inanimate objects, like musical instruments, could tell us some amazing stories if they only had a voice: Van Cliburn’s or Ray Charles’s piano, Miles Davis’s trumpet, Eric Clapton’s guitar. Imagine the tales! Musicians form intimate relationships with their instruments; they pour their souls into them and, with the best, their souls are reincarnated and rise into the air as music that makes our hearts soar. Bestselling author Allen St. John takes us on a personal journey to watch retired rural mail carrier Wayne Henderson, one of the world’s greatest guitar builders, make such an instrument. Henderson employs experience, creativity, and more than a little down-home ingenuity—and there’s a 10-year waiting list for his heirloom acoustic guitars. St. John writes with poetry and passion, but also with a clear eye about the process—part magic, part music, huge helping of craftsmanship in a world where friendship, laughter, old-time music, and homemade lemon pies and barbeque count for more than who has the big bucks. This book is special if you care about music and craftsmanship. A great gift idea.

Wayne Henderson

Read more about WAYNE HENDERSON, his music and his craftsmanship, plus all about the Wayne C. Henderson Music Festival and Guitar Competition held each year in Grayson Highlands State Park, Wilson, VA.: http://www.waynehenderson.org .

For more about the author ALLEN ST. JOHN: http://www.allenstjohn.com/

May the last days of August be filled with good music, good friends, and great art! 

-- Rosemary Carstens
http://www.FEASTofBooks.com

Preserving the taste, color, and memory of summer . . .

Lipstick-red tomatoes plump with juice; green slices ready to crisp up in oil for a tart, crunchy hors d’oeuvre; pear-shaped yellow ones to delight the eye; and cool salads dotted with cherry tomatoes as sweet as honey on the tongue. Chilled green, gold, and red melons, refreshing as shade on a blistering day. Raspberries, strawberries, light-as-air whipped cream on a slice of angel food cake. Fresh greens, a half-dozen varieties of garlic, spicy red and white radishes, more tomatoes, a toss of fresh basil, a dash of balsamic, a quick grate of hard cheese. These are only a few of the luscious, sensuous pleasures of summer here in Colorado. The season came in with a roar this year, going from spring to ninety-degree weather in a matter of days. I try not to think about how quickly it’ll all pass and sprigs of yellow will begin to show themselves on our trees. How to preserve at least a smidge of all that glory from the garden or your local farmer’s market? Canning is one answer.

Each June of my childhood, daddy carried my sister and brother and me outside in our jammies in the middle of the night, to return to sleep in the back of our fifties Plymouth station wagon. He and Mom would sip coffee from a thermos as we headed east from Southern California to try to cross the Arizona desert before worst of the blistering heat, then north to Moab, Utah, where daddy’s mother lived. My paternal grandmother and my aunt and uncle, plus a passel of cousins, were all Mormons. They were also farmers and both life-shaping pursuits meant that summers were spent churning butter, whipping cream, picking fruits and vegetables, canning and preserving all that could be processed as each season peaked. While it was never much of a vacation for my mother, who was expected to pitch in with the work while the men sat at ease at the end of their days, for me it was glorious. I loved the wonderful, heavily laden table we sat down to for every meal, the seemingly unlimited quantities of whipped cream, the homemade ice cream, the fruit right at hand in the fields if I wanted a snack when I hid in a haystack reading hot afternoons away. We always took home boxes of canned tomatoes, carrots, venison, okra (which I still hate to this day), pearly baby onions, and an assortment of pickles and relishes. Those gleaming, filled Mason jars seemed like art to me and their memory still shines so many decades later. They were a symbol of rootedness, of the land, of bounty, and even of love as those were happy times for me.

Today people don’t can so much, but it’s all there to be done and not as hard as one might fear. Sterling Publishing has a new book out in their Homemade Living Series that is filled with simple step-by-step directions, tips, and cautions—from tools of the trade to ingredients and resources, plus how to create a range of pickles and preserves, jams and jellies—and recipes, of course. CANNING & PRESERVING: All you need to know to make jams, jellies, pickles, chutneys & more by Ashley English is the ideal roadmap to keeping summer’s vibrancy alive long into the cold, stark months.

Take the challenge—you’ll love the results!

--Rosemary Carstens
http://www.CarstensCommunications.com

Schooner: Boating Dreams on Martha’ s Vineyard

Love boating? Always dreamed of building your own by hand? The careful, skilled craftsmanship required for the task are beautifully documented in this new book from Vineyard Stories : SCHOONER: Building a wooden boat on Martha’s Vineyard written by Tom Dunlop with photographs by Alison Shaw.

Rebecca of Vineyard Haven, a 60-foot wooden schooner designed and built by the Gannon and Benjamin Marine Railway was, at the time of her construction, the largest sailing vessel built on the island of Martha’s Vineyard since the election of Abraham Lincoln.

 Ross Gannon, left, and Nat Benjamin, the boat builders

While you might expect a book about building a boat to be a calm, step-by-step story, proceeding logically from drawings to launch, this is no ordinary tale. Drama abounds as Rebecca navigates her way through bankruptcy court, a two-year work stoppage, a change of owners due to a court-ordered auction, and many an other “high sea” on her voyage to completion.

Beyond the telling of the difficulties of taking this schooner from dream to the sea, this is a celebration of the artistry of boat builders Nat Benjamin and Ross Gannon who have thirty years of experience behind them. Theirs is one of the very few full-time boatyards in the United States devoted exclusively to the design, construction, repair, and maintenance of classic, plank-on-frame wooden boats. Nearly every part of Rebecca is built or cast or fashioned by hand.

SCHOONER goes beyond just relating how a dream of a wooden boat came true, it is a love story—about boats’ magical appeal through the ages, men and women’s longing for the sea, and, perhaps most of all, about a deep appreciation of creating things the “slow” way, hands on, in a world gone mad with its desire for instant gratification.

For more on Gannon and Benjamin Marine Railway: 
http://www.gannonandbenjamin.com/index.php

-- Rosemary Carstens
http://www.CarstensCommunications.com

BOOKS TO BLOW YOUR HAIR BACK: Thrity Umrigar’s The Space Between Us

Don’t you just love it when you discover a fine book in some “accidental” way? Not through media hype or bookstore in-your-face placement, but through the recommendation of a friend who wants to share something special, because you are roaming around the library dipping into books here and there and one grabs you, or, perhaps, even because you have nothing else to read and find one left behind on the bus or subway? I think these are magical finds and somehow all the more special because of it. One such discovery for me was The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar (HarperCollins 2005).

Umrigar is an Indian-American writer, born in Mumbai, who immigrated to the United States when she was 21 and now lives in Cleveland, OH. She is a journalist, author, and assistant professor of English at Case Western Reserve University where she teaches creative writing and literature. She has written for the Washington Post and the Cleveland Plain Dealer, among other newspapers, and regularly writes about books for The Boston Globe. Since her first novel, Bombay Time, Umrigar has received critical acclaim for her ability to vividly immerse us in India, its people, its customs, and its geography—both of the land and the mind. Because I had just read The Space Between Us and The Weight of Heaven, I made a point of attending a panel she sat on at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference in Denver last month. She is impressive in person, too.

The Space Between Us dives into the chasm between our lived relationships with people from different classes or ethnic groups and the preconceived ideas or unthinking reactions we all carry forward from our childhoods about race, class, and difference.

Focusing on two women who live dramatically different lives in modern-day India, Umrigar casts them in sharp, telling detail. She is a master of showing rather than “telling” her readers what to pay attention to and she knows the landscape of Indian culture like the back of her hand. The two women in the story are close friends in spite of their differences: Sera Dubash is an upper-middle-class Parsi housewife whose comparatively privileged surroundings camouflage the reality of her abusive marriage, and Bhima is her stoic illiterate maid, worn into compliance by a life of despair, loss, and poverty. Bhima has worked in Sera’s household for more than 20 years. For each woman the other is her closest friend; each is isolated within her particular circumstances from other intimate relationships, but each also knows the other’s secrets and deepest trials. Despite their closeness, throughout the book we see flashes of class barriers, ingrained prejudices each is not comfortable crossing—Sera, for example, cannot accept Bhima sitting on a chair at her table or drinking from a household cup.

When Bhima’s granddaughter, her last living relative, who she prayed would complete an education and escape the slums, returns home pregnant, Bhima’s feelings fluctuate between rage and despair. Sera is there for her, as Bhima was for her when she suffered at the hand of her cruel husband and devious mother-in-law, but, again, the hand of fate cranks the wheel and Thrity Umrigar exposes the complexity and flawed nature of human beings. A poignant and compelling story brought to us by one of the finest writers of our time.

For more about this book:
Book Club Girl interviews Thrity Umrigar online: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/book-club-girl/2008/05/22/book-club-girl-talks-to-thrity-umrigar-author-of-the-space-between-us

For more about the author: http://www.umrigar.com

-- Rosemary Carstens
http://www.CarstensCommunications.com
Follow me on Twitter: @tweets2go

Bill Varney’s imaginative pairings provide a taste adventure . . .

Strolling down Main Street in Fredericksburg, TX, you might stop in at FROMAGE DU MONDE, known for its fine cheese and gourmet market—and the creative cookery of general manager BILL VARNEY! Varney doesn’t just walk into a room, he fairly bounces—he exudes enthusiasm and good will and meeting him just brightens any day. He is enormously knowledgeable about herbs and is the former owner of Fredericksburg Herb Farm where he honed his skills in raising herbs and learning how to use their delightful array of flavors in surprising ways to enhance any meal.

The day I lunched at Fromage du Monde, we topped off a meal of quiche and fruit with an unusual but delicious summer dessert. If you’d like to serve something different that your guests will love and ask you to repeat again and again, try this:

Lemon Verbena Peach Cobbler with Habanero Cheddar*

4 to 6 cups sliced peaches
1 cup sugar
½ cup butter
¼ cup sugar
2 tablespoons lemon verbena leaves
Zest of 1 lemon
A cup flour
¾ cup sugar
1 cup milk
¼ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
Cinnamon to taste
1 cup grated habañero cheddar cheese

Mix peaches with 1 cup sugar in bowl and set aside. Melt butter in 9x13 inch glass baking dish. Mince ¼ cup sugar, lemon verbena leaves, and lemon zest in food processor. Combine flour, remaining ¾ cup of sugar, milk, salt and baking powder in a large bowl and mix well. Stir in the lemon verbena mixture. Pour over the melted butter in the prepared baking dish. Spoon the peaches over the batter. Sprinkle with cinnamon. Then sprinkle with the grated habañero cheddar cheese.

Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour or until bubbly and lightly browned.

Yields 10-12 servings
*© 2010 by William Varney

Fromage du Monde is located at 226 W. Main Street, Fredericksburg, TX – (830) 992-3134

Bill Varney’s latest venture is UrbanHerbal, an online source for information about herb gardening and their use in food, home, health, and beauty: http://www.urbanherbal.com

--Rosemary Carstens
http://www.FEASTofBooks.com

BLISS: Breathtaking Landscapes and Cultural Conflict

BLISS (Turkish w/English subtitles, 105 minutes, released by First Run Features Feb. 2010). Based on the acclaimed novel by Zülfü Livaneli and filmed in some of Turkey’s most awe-inspiring natural settings, Bliss is a riveting tale about love, honor, freedom, and redemption. When 17-year-old Meryem’s virtue is called into question after she is found unconscious and disheveled by the side of a lake, the village’s elders gather and demand that the family uphold an ancient moral imperative to kill her. A distant cousin is ordered to carry out the sentence, but, instead, Meryem and Cemal embark on a surprising journey.

Cemal is a deeply troubled young man, just returned from war and experiencing flashbacks of the violence he encountered. Meryem, too, is experiencing flashbacks to the violence she endured. Both are stoic in their attempts to deal with their emotional trauma and to meet their cultural obligations. When they encounter a professor who is also seeking peace and clarity in his life, Cemal and Meryem begin to see each other and their traditional lives in ways that provoke deep inner conflict and force them to reexamine their futures.

The landscapes chosen to serve as backdrop for Bliss are incredibly beautiful and provide glimpses of Turkey I’d not seen before. The stark contrast between nature’s grandeur and the vast dichotomy between traditional and modern Turkey heighten the emotional impact of this poignant, deeply affecting film.

See a trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnEMhcaLTuM

-- Rosemary Carstens

http://www.FEASTofBooks.com

Lessons on War: Bataan Death March Not Old News

Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and its Aftermath, Michael Norman and Elizabeth Norman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2009) (out in paperback March 2010). What a story! This book is a very readable, astounding accomplishment based on ten years of research, thousands and thousands of travel miles, hundreds of interviews, and the support of numerous scholars and ordinary people to bring it to fruition.

I had always heard about the Bataan Death March, of course, but the details set out here, often using quotes from among the 76,000 US and Filipino captive soldiers that were on the march, tear at the soul. That our US servicemen were treated so brutally, starved, tortured, and murdered for the least imaginable “offense” is so unacceptable that it can never be forgiven.

Don’t think for a moment that this is a one-sided presentation dolled up to make the US look good and Japan look savage. The Normans spent countless hours digging among Japanese archives and interviewing Japanese military survivors so that they could include accounts from that side of the war as well and perhaps comprehend the enemy’s mindset. An impossible task, in my view. The Japanese treatment of prisoners of war was savage and there is something to think about in this book about the nature of war as it is being conducted today and who it is that truly bears the suffering in all wars.

This book grips like a novel and I think one key reason is that the authors used the story of one young Montana cowboy, Ben Steele, who survived the march and is one of the few from those days still living, as a vehicle for telling the story of thousands of others. As readers, we connect with Ben—the story becomes so much more than just facts and figures, a bunch of history dates, or military battle reports. The Normans wove personal recollections of specific people on each side of the conflict and help us to see these historic events through the lens of individuals. The book details and investigates a figure we’ve all read about in the history books—Douglas MacArthur—and reveals him as a man more concerned with saving his own ass than with performing his duties as a leader. MacArthur was no hero, but a deeply flawed, narcissistic coward and liar. As in all wars there were botched plans and ill-conceived communications; chaos; and personal egos and agendas influencing outcomes.

One of this book’s strengths is that it widens the focus from just the circumstances of the march to include events that led up to it, the post-march conditions for the captives, and an account of the US trial of two war criminals when the war was over. Ben Steele, who upon his return to Montana after the war became a professor of art, contributed the poignant illustrations throughout the volume. This is the kind of quality journalism we should see more of in the publishing world and this book should be required reading in Washington.

To read more about the book: http://www.tearsinthedarkness.com

Go here to see a 5-part video series of Ben Steele telling his story: http://www.tearsinthedarkness.com/video-book

-- Rosemary Carstens

http://www.CarstensCommunications.com

IMPACT: Doug Preston’s latest science-based, action-packed thriller . . .

Doug Preston takes “what ifs” to a whole new level. In his latest exciting thriller IMPACT, the author strikes gold once again. Preston, who achieved worldwide recognition for his and Lincoln Child’s Pendergast series of novels (including such best-selling titles as The Book of the Dead, The Wheel of Darkness, and The Relic), deftly mixes controversial real science with characters and storylines that keep you breathless to the last page.

What do an amateur astronomer in a small fishing community on the Maine coast, a slave-labor mine hidden deep within the Cambodian rain forest, and a determined young scientist at the National Propulsion Facility have in common? The connections are, literally, out of this world. Former monk-turned-CIA-operative Wyman Ford, previously seen kicking ass in Blasphemy, signs on to pull the pieces together in his stylish and highly imaginative, action-packed way. It’s fun, it’s inventive—it takes real events, extrapolates their possibilities, and has you looking up into the night sky wondering what’s really out there, watching.

The inspiration for this story came from an edgy experience in the author’s own life. In 1996 NASA flew a special reconnaissance mission over the largely unexplored region of northwestern Cambodia. The data it gathered was fed into a T3D Cray supercomputer at the Jet Propulsion Lab in California and a startling discovery was made. Buried deep in the jungle was a previously unknown12th century temple covering almost a square mile of land!

When an expedition prepared to go to the temple, Doug Preston was working for National Geographic magazine and maneuvered a spot on the trip led by Elizabeth Moore, head of the Department of Art and Archaeology at the University of London and an authority on the ancient Angkor civilization. It proved to be a rugged endeavor. There were no roads to the temple and the trails were flooded from the monsoons and still heavily mined from the war—not to mention that it was located in heavily armed Khmer Rouge territory, with kidnappings and violent killings occurring regularly. It was, as Preston says, “one hell of a journey,” and he always knew that one day he’d weave the details of his thrilling personal adventure into one of his novels. That day is now and the result, with more twists and turns than a gold medal snowboarder—and just as nerve wracking—will keep you entertained from start to explosive climax.

Visit Doug Preston’s website and read the first two chapters: http://www.prestonchild.com/solonovels/preston/impact/

-- Rosemary Carstens
http://FEASTofBooks.com

Divakaruni brings us One Amazing Thing . . .

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni knows how to weave a story out of disparate threads, bringing them together in an intelligent and compassionate human tapestry. In her latest book, ONE AMAZING THING (Hyperion 2009), the well-regarded author of Sister of my Heart, The Palace of Illusions, and The Mistress of Spices, brings together a cast of nine characters spending a long, tiring afternoon in a passport and visa office. Each has their reason for going to India, and each holds him or herself privately away from the others, focusing inward as they wait. When a violent earthquake rips through their building and traps them, the nine must struggle together for survival. As hopes for rescue seem to dim, each shares the story of a most compelling moment, a turning point, in their lives—something that shaped and molded them into who they are today.

The literary device of stranding a group of very different and unassociated people together in a situation like this, forcing an intimacy that would never happen under ordinary circumstances, has often been employed by writers to create a stage upon which human frailties can be revealed. Divakaruni has taken this device and made it her own—primarily with her ability to portray characters with such clarity that readers can identify compassionately and quickly care about the outcome of their imagined lives. As in our own lives, each has their secret grief and loss, joys and pleasures; each has experienced the indifferent cruelty unintentionally visited upon those around us; and each, when life is squeezed down to survival mode, often realizes what they value most.

Author’s website: http://www.chitradivakaruni.com/
Her blog: http://www.chitradivakaruni.com/blog/

See a video interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wi_-ZYmt28U

-- Rosemary Carstens

http://www.FEASTofBooks.com

Stuff You Never Knew About Slow Cooking . . .

I recently sat down to look over a copy of MAKE IT FAST, COOK IT SLOW: The Big Book of Everyday Slow Cooking by Stephanie O’Dea (Hyperion 2009). This is not a book about gourmet cooking with tiny, cleverly arranged dabs of food on a big plate, often sprayed or drizzled with swirls of some sort of exotic liquid for artful effect. This is a great book for us regular cooks who want quality meals with less fuss that can be eaten and enjoyed by all, from kids to the fussiest of palates.

In 2008 Stephanie O’Dea vowed to use her slow cooker every single day for a year, reporting highlights and disasters on her blog at http://crockpot365.blogspot.com. Amidst her spectacular discoveries: crème brûlée! Have you ever imagined you create anything beyond a good stew or roast, or maybe a soup, in a slow cooker? This success led to a guest spot on The Rachael Ray show. Stephanie was inspired to expand her efforts even more imaginatively and, with the input of a growing following and many experiments (both duds and delights), this cookbook was born. Visit her blog for a sneak preview of what’s in store.

I’m amazed at the range of offerings, from beverages, breakfast, baked goods, casseroles, seafood, and meatless mains to snacks and fondue, desserts, and nonfood fun stuff. All recipes are gluten free and have been tested on her own family and friends.

If you constantly wake each morning wondering, “What am I going to fix for dinner,” this cookbook may be the answer. It’s timesaving without resorting to fast food takeout; you just throw a bunch of ingredients in the pot, then walk away to tend to your day’s bigger challenges, sitting down at meal time to something guaranteed to appeal. I can’t wait to try it!

Happy eating and cooking in 2010!

-- Rosemary Carstens
http://www.FEASTofBooks.com