Book Review: The Road from Money: A Journey To Find Why?

The Road from Money: A Journey To Find Why? Sylvester Boyd Jr. Outskirts Press, March 26, 2014, Trade Paperback and Kindle, 208 pages.

Reviewed by Opal Freeman.

The Road from Money: A Journey To Find Why? is a book of inspiration, encouragement, and education. Sylvester Boyd's excellent novel sketches the life of a young Negro girl in the 1920s as she comes to grips with the realities of life in the deep South.

We are introduced to the main character, Estella Reynolds, when she is an eight-year-old girl, born and raised in Money, Mississippi. She is a happy girl, smart and observant, always asking "why." As she becomes aware of the challenges she faces in Mississippi—brutality, poverty, racism, segregation, and working in the fields—she becomes aware that there is a better life away from the deep South. She becomes the first person in her family to graduate from eighth grade and decides to use education as a means to a better life. After much preparation she leaves Mississippi to explore a whole new world. Her first journey is a long train ride to Chicago.

The author's writing provides a clear picture of the environment in which Estella and her family lived. His story illustrates how the perseverance, history, and strength of the Negro population helped them to survive some of the most difficult times in American history. I loved the book and was excited to read each page, discovering the growth and progress of Estella's life. This is the first book in a trilogy and I anxiously look forward to the next two novels. I highly recommend this book.

Book Review: The Downriver Horseshoe

The Downriver Horseshoe. Scott Miles. Stolen Time Publishing, 2014, Paperback and Kindle edition, 205 pages.

Reviewed by Heather Adair.

In his collection of short stories, The Downriver Horseshoe, Scott Miles offers a fresh take on blue-collar life through a cast of offbeat, male protagonists. Most stories take place in Downriver Detroit, an industrial area on the south side of the city, and although Miles provides rich details specific to the location, it’s likely that you’ll find yourself imagining a setting near you. Solid writing connects us to places and characters that, on the surface, seem peculiar, yet fitting. So pull on a pair of work boots and step into a world where characters live day-to-day, leaving their fate to fickle Lady Luck.

At times, the characters struggle to make ends meet, but the theme that binds this collection of short stories together centers on relationships. Protagonists struggle to find common ground with those close to them, even random strangers. In the end, some characters prevail, or at least set out to do so. Others are not as fortunate. Despite the gloomy circumstances, don’t be surprised to find yourself smiling. Miles creates unexpected scenarios for his characters, and he can paint a caricature in just a few words.

As one example, in “When You’re the Mailman,” the first story in the collection, George the mailman stops off at residences along his route when invited for beers and, occasionally, sex. Talk about transforming the mundane into the novel. Like many of us, George establishes relationships with people he sees everyday on the job. Some of these relationships are fleeting while others are more long-term, like the bond he develops with Otis, a two-year-old who lives with one of George’s drinking buddies. Courtesy of Otis, George finds himself in a jam that leads him to his foster mother, with whom he has an awkward relationship. As George reaches out to touch her, his conflicted feelings lead to this reflection: “I want to make her feel my gratitude, but also my sadness on what I missed out on as a child.” I won’t ruin the ending, but George is one of the characters whose fate looks hopeful by the end of the story.

As a bookend to the first story, the last piece, “Losing Focus,” offers an optimistic outlook for high school student Steven and his family. After overcoming cancer, Steven’s father retreats from family life into the past, spending his time away from work drinking with an old girlfriend and protecting his childhood home from the drug addicts who’ve taken over the area. With the family on the verge of collapse, Steven and his father bond as the latter tosses a beer bottle, causing it to shatter in the lamplight, along with the father’s withdrawal from the present. Steven observes, “Both of us then climb the hotel stairs while the broken glass on the ground sparkles in the distance like moonlight across a dark lake.” Hope exists for this family.

Although optimistic stories such as “Paddy Wagon” and “Mt. Trashmore” are sprinkled between the covers, others like “Freezer Burn” and “Altoona” end on a not-so-positive note. What separates the characters in these stories from the rest is a lack of inner change. While these protagonists attempt to solve interpersonal problems, they make hasty decisions: ones that either weigh too heavily on the risky side or too lightly on the responsible side. To say the least, these characters are idiosyncratic, but this reliance on impulse is one I’m familiar with. I know others are, too.

The circumstances surrounding these stories are unique, but the themes are universal and the characters relatable, no matter how hard they seem on the surface. Although I would like to see Miles create a female protagonist or two, I recommend The Downriver Horseshoe for readers who enjoy a quirky slice of life.

Two of Scott Miles’ stories have been nominated for The Pushcart Prize. He is currently working on his second novel.

Book Review: Guns of Outlaws: Weapons of the American Bad Man

Guns of Outlaws: Weapons of the American Bad Man. Gerry and Janet Souter. Zenith Press, China, November 15, 2014. Hardcover, 263 pages. 

Reviewed by Ed Marohn.

If you love history of outlaws then, you will enjoy reading Guns of Outlaws: Weapons of the American Bad Man. It is full of researched anecdotes by authors Gerry and Janet Souter that illustrate how weapons empowered the villains of the Old West to the mob in Chicago and how lawmen countered these deadly criminals.

Before the Youngers and Jesse and Frank James came into their elevated status as outlaws, the book starts with the villains, such as Joseph Thompson Hare and The Horrible Harpes. The book proceeds rapidly bad guy by bad guy to the Johnson County War and ends in the nineteenth century with Wyatt Earp. Then it jumps into crimes of the twentieth century, where you will discover new facts about many outlaws, including Bonnie and Clyde and John Dillinger.

The common thread throughout the book that ties the outlaws to the pursuing lawmen are the weapons, mostly handguns developed throughout the 1800s and 1900s. Pictures abound of both outlaws and the handguns they used.

The authors have combined their skills in art, photography, and graphic arts to augment their writing of this history. The end result is a creative and unique book. Whether you are a historian, a gun enthusiast, a gun collector, or even a hunter, this book is a gem with its collection of color and black-and-white photographs and drawings of various weapons used by the historical characters depicted in the book.

Book Review: What Solomon Saw and Other Stories

What Solomon Saw and Other Stories. Mary Dean Cason. InkWit, December 5, 2014, 

Trade Paperback and Kindle, 246 pages. 

Reviewed by Stephanie Wilson Medlock.

Mary Dean Cason’s stories about growing up in the South are like Ray Bradbury’s re-creations of his boyhood in Illinois. Both writers can detail a place so vividly that you wish your own childhood mirrored the ones they describe. Cason’s Southern setting has the added benefit of showcasing characters whose sly wit takes you by surprise, along with a descriptive vocabulary that Bradbury’s Midwesterners could never imagine.

In What Solomon Saw, for example, eleven-year-old Martha Johnston recounts her older brother Lester’s abrupt infatuation with Libby, an insulting neighborhood girl whose new breasts suddenly outweigh her otherwise irritating personality. Martha describes the way Lester is rendered stupid by Libby’s budding bosom by quipping, “I could have carved better backbone out of a bar of soap.”

Lester’s preoccupation leads to a hilarious comedy of errors involving a tree house, a striptease, and a thunderstorm.

Not all of Cason’s stories are set in the South, and the protagonists range from a descendant of Charleston’s old families to an English battlefield nurse in World War II. Each tale is satisfyingly complete. Cason gives us the main character’s defining conflict, and with its resolution, we know her people and how they will react to the next set of challenges in their lives.

One of my favorite stories, “Speckled Bird,” describes Bailey Rose, a poor, young woman who has just given birth to her first child. Her World War II-veteran husband already wants a second, and when she rebuffs him because her body has not healed, he beats her — as does her father when he finds out. She says of herself,

“After being hit by Harlan and my daddy in the span of twenty-four hours, I saw my mama’s life laid out before me . . . We was both little bits of liquid silver, sliding under cushions, muffling who we was.”

How Bailey Rose decides to take back her sense of self proves as surprising to her husband as it is satisfying to the reader.

If there is a theme underlying these disparate tales, it is children and their importance to a woman’s life. This leitmotif appears in the delight of large families, the need to instruct and protect the young, the sorrow of infertility, the love that parents have for children from beyond the grave, even the promise of renewal from frozen embryos. Cason’s mothers are all protective, and whatever else they do, being a parent is clearly the center of their lives. If it sometimes strains credulity that all her women are constantly delighted in their maternal state, the beauty of Cason’s writing lulls us into agreement. In describing an orphan girl who grows up desperate for family, Cason writes:

“I should also mention that Addison had me [as a friend]. There were weeks it seemed she never left my house, so hungry for family she ate mine up with a ladle. It was there she grew fat—and fiercely loyal. Addison clung to us like molasses to biscuits.”

What Solomon Saw gives us many likeable characters and offers an affectionate take on parenting often missing in fiction, which stresses the dysfunction of the modern family. It is an essentially optimistic book.

Book Review: Dead Letter: Addressee Unknown

Dead Letter: Addressee Unknown. Janet Feduska Cole. Pegasus Books, April 21, 2014, Trade Paperback and E-Book, 210 pages.

Reviewed by Sue Merrell.

When you are knee-deep in a Chicago winter and need an escape, a book with exotic locations, quirky characters, and high-risk adventure could be just what you’re looking for.

The second book in Janet Feduska Cole’s philatelic mystery series, Dead Letter: Addressee Unknown, offers all three. Dead Letter takes the reader on a river cruise through Germany and Austria with a cast of secret Interpol agents. The heroine and narrator, Elyse, is accompanied by her friend Saul, a slightly nerdy petro glyph expert, and her magazine editor, Auturo, whose heavy Polish accent cloaks every exchange with humor and mystery. In addition, her mysterious college friend, Karl, and his voluptuous bride, Mindy, are never far away. Elyse refers to them as the Slarls—a combination of “slutwoman” and Karl—and they’re the perfect comic nemeses, bungling yet vaguely threatening. Elyse and her friends are hot on the trail of $50 million worth of rare stamps that were pilfered from Jewish collectors during WWII and then hidden, possibly in the Lunersee Lake in Austria.

Cole enjoys outdoor activities such as scuba diving and rock climbing, and these interests flavor her storytelling. Cole also has a nice understated sense of humor.  Unfortunately, though, I do not think Dead Letter lives up to the full potential of the intriguing storyline. The first half of the book is sluggish, mainly because Elyse is narrating instead of participating in the action. She tells the reader about a variety of wonderful World War II mysteries, such as the disappearance of Russia’s opulent Amber Room, but she tells them as she uncovers them on the Internet. There’s also very little interplay between the characters in the first half.  In the second half of the book, the pace picks up with more character interaction and an exciting climax.

Most of the scenes could use more detail. For instance, the book opens with Elyse reporting for jury duty, but I had no idea this scene was taking place in my old hometown of Joliet until much later in the book when Elyse recalls a “mysterious character in the Joliet courthouse.” Likewise, since Dead Letter is the second book in the series, it takes the reader a while to figure out who the characters are and how they are connected. This lack of background leaves the reader a bit disoriented. In addition, the publisher did not provide much in the way of editing and proofreading, and I was surprised by some of the errors (Auschwitz is spelled “Auswitch” in three places).

With better editing, and more character and scene development, Dead Letter could be as much fun as the Indiana Jones adventures.