Book Review: EO-N

EO-N. Dave Mason. Self-published: Hellbox Editions, October 1, 2020, Paperback, E-Book, 298 pages.

Reviewed by Marssie Mencotti.

In 2019, Alison Wiley, a biotech CEO, is processing her new reality: she’s the last bud on the last branch of her family tree. On the heels of her mother’s crushing death, she's pulled into a seventy-four-year-old mystery by a chance discovery on a Norwegian glacier.

In 1945, Jack Barton flies combat missions over occupied Europe. Günther Graf, a

war-weary and disillusioned Luftwaffe pilot, is trapped in the unspeakable horrors of Nazi Germany. Their paths, so different yet so similar, are connected by a young victim of appalling cruelty.

A story of love and loss weaves together five seemingly separate lives to remind us that individual actions matter and that courage comes in many forms.

Born in England and raised in Canada, Dave Mason is an internationally recognized graphic designer, and has co-founded a number of additional ventures, including OpinionLab Inc., the leader in web and mobile voice of customer feedback systems (acquired by Verint / Nasdaq VRNT); Cusp Conference LLC, the annual Chicago-based conference about ‘the design of everything;’ and PowerPlayer Inc., a company dedicated to helping youth coaches teach young athletes through feedback. EO-N is his first novel. 

For those who have a love of puzzle-solving and also believe that the beat of a butterfly’s wings can change the world—this book is for you. I simply hated having to put this book down to sleep or eat. There are absolutely no slow spots. Dave Mason grabs us by the collar and plops us down in another dilemma, another fact that needs to be checked, another person who also has questioned the wartime protagonists and why the clues are so jumbled in the glacial discovery.

The parallel construct works perfectly because the two worlds of the novel are so different in scientific advances but so alike in the desire to do good. To make sense of it all despite the frequent intrusions of evil through misuse of finance and power. Emotionally, the author understands Alison’s grief and her need to touch her ancestors for some meaning in order to move forward. He writes eloquently about Alison and her detachment from family through untimely deaths and illnesses. Her natural inclinations first as a scientific researcher and then as a CEO propel her to find out what this odd finding on the glacial ice in Norway means to her life. 

From the past, we meet a Canadian pilot and a German pilot, both with loving families at their respective homes and both with a great need to put those families back together in some way. There’s a strong undercurrent here that our combined ancestral destinies once entwined cannot be severed. Dave Mason masterfully unfolds the puzzle of how they became entangled in the first place. He shortens the distances between their World War II world and our contemporary one. Seemingly disparate strangers slowly fall into one another and both worlds spiral toward a conclusion that seems both possible, probable, and unavoidable.

I’m struggling not to reveal the genius in the construction of this book. It is spare. Don’t look for flights of fancy or fantasy. Its history is careful and verifiable. We ride along in the bumpy wooden de Havilland Mosquito that actually served as a two-man (pilot and navigator) bomber used at low and medium altitude for tactical bombing and at high altitude for everything else. I was breathing fast when the protagonists were in the air because, at that point in the war, everyone was shooting at everyone else in the air, on land, and at sea. The war was nearly over and good and evil were converging on land and in the air. Saviors were sometimes enemies and vice-versa. The politics were even denser as the thousand-year Reich having taken the worst of turns toward mass murder and enslavement struggled to save what it could of any scientific advance borne by their unethical practices. I was blinded by this book for a time, asking myself how I might feel if I were around in the last few days of madness on either side of the conflict. It can’t end fast enough. Mason makes us tangibly feel the tension of an end to a conflict that seems too slow in coming. We’re on the ground in Norway at the twisted end of a gigantic lie that ultimately took the lives and loves of millions of people both military and civilian. The positional timing of EO-N right at the end of the war makes it even more edge-of-your-seat exciting.

We are, in the contemporary chapters, guided by intelligent characters struggling with depression, PTSD, and loss of faith in the future but driven by a need-to-know, and a need-to-find-out. They are longing, and literally suffering from a crisis of identity. Each fact is revealed to them and to us by experts in all sorts of anthropological research, historical detective work, and DNA—driven science which connects scientific and governmental communities in multiple countries. What an immense scope this book takes while holding you in the palm of its hand, and with driving compassion, moves toward the solution of this simple but tangled tale. We want answers for our modern characters, both Alison Wiley and Scott Wilcox. 

I have to admit that I wanted to hear more about the youngest character in the book. As an avid reader and writer myself, I have to resist folding everything too neatly and hastily after the exhaustion of holding it together on a razor’s edge for so long. The relief of a quick satisfying ending is a great temptation but when a book takes you on such an exciting and fast-moving flight over fearful times, a slightly softer landing blending contemporary and wartime sensibility would have suited this reviewer a little better. 

Overall, a great read that I highly recommend. Dave Mason won’t let you forget that people fight and die in a war without ever fully knowing the great good that is quietly done by some people in a time of war. This book may be historical fiction, but in its heart, it is true.00

Book Review: Memories of Marshall: Ups and Downs of Growing Up in a Small Town

Memories of Marshall: Ups and Downs of Growing Up in a Small Town. Greg Peck. Independently published, August 2020, Print, 170 pages.

Reviewed by Brian Johnston. 

Did you grow up in a small town? If you did, what kind of memories and experiences did you have? What kind of friendships did you build? And what has changed since your childhood? Greg Peck has published a delightful collection of essays in which he recalls his memories of growing up in Marshall, Wisconsin in the 1960s and 1970s.

Peck has a background in journalism, and it's reflected in the pacing and liveliness of his new memoir, Memories of Marshall. He describes many different events in vivid detail, and there are lots of great pictures with captions to go along with the stories. Some of the essays were originally published in newspapers and reprinted here.

Memories of Marshall is an easy and fun read, and while it’s ultimately about Peck and his own experiences, it will inspire many readers to recall their own experiences growing up, whether in a small town or a big city. I can testify that reading this book, I thought about many of my own childhood memories with relatives and friends.

There are lots of great life lessons in this book as well. The importance of family is a big one, as is the importance of building and maintaining lifelong friendships. While the stories are largely about growing up, Peck also profiles many of his friends from high school and describes what happened to them throughout their lives. He has spent a lot of time and effort in maintaining those connections, and he also clearly put a lot of thought and effort into writing about them here.

If you’re looking for a book that will allow you to think of simpler times and recall wonderful memories of growing up, Memories of Marshall would be a great selection. I recommend it to anyone who likes history or who just likes to reminisce.

Book Review: Kelli's Pine

Kelli's Pine. Jay Grochowski, Independently Published, March 31, 2020, Trade Paperback, E-book, and Audiobook, 315 pages.

Reviewed by Paige Doepke.

Kelli's Pine is a story of life, love, and natural growth that happens over time. The novel follows Eddie Blackburn, lover of baseball, throughout different stages of his life: from his first big love, quickly into parenthood and adulthood, and all of the little steps in between. 

The story skips forward and backward to meaningful moments that help explain why his character experiences life in the way he does. It is a lovely way to get to know a character, almost in the same way you would get to know a new friend, with little snippets here and there of their life thus far. This somewhat guarded manner in which we get to know Eddie is just another interesting layer of characterization Grochowski builds.

While Kelli’s Pine is often a story involving baseball, it’s not actually a story about baseball. Baseball is just the thread that connects the various chapters of Eddie's life from start to finish. His love of the sport, and his family's extreme athleticism, is what he can always rely on. Despite the challenges of starting a family sooner than expected, the letdown of adjusting both his dreams and those of his wife, and an up-and-down business that he doesn't love, baseball is always there. 

For his son, Cole Blackburn, who inherited his mother's abilities as an athlete and her social anxiety, Eddie creates an unorthodox baseball education. He will do whatever it takes to ensure that Cole can break out of the stagnant lifestyle in which their family is stuck. Eddie grooms Cole, almost entirely on his own, into a baseball superstar, helping Cole become the athlete he never became himself.

What struck and delighted me the most about this novel is that it is a true depiction of real life. Eddie’s life did not always progress in the ways he expected, as none of our lives ever do. He made mistakes and took wrong turns, which created roadblocks to his projected future. But as a reader, we can see that as life is happening to him, while it feels to him like it’s being muddled up, it’s really coming together in a beautiful way. Eddie has a family that loves him, a son with a bright future, and the strength of a well-lived past.

This novel makes you think about your own life and how every turn has led you to this place in which you were always meant to land. I highly recommend Kelli’s Pine to the interested reader, baseball enthusiast or not.

Book Review: Muskrat Ramble

Muskrat Ramble. Mim Eichmann. Living Springs Publishers, LLP, March 2021, Trade Paperback and E-Book.

Reviewed by Wayne Turmel.

Muskrat Ramble is the ambitious story of a woman’s journey through the first half of the Twentieth Century. The novel follows Hannah Barrington, a woman damaged by racial prejudice, constricting social mores, and tumultuous changes in American society as she tries to navigate the world with two small girls in tow: one white, one biracial.

In this sequel to the author’s first book, A Sparrow Alone, Hannah flees Missouri for New Orleans in hopes of finding a better life for herself and her girls. She arrives in a confusing world where race is divided into fractions, a single woman is at the mercy of unimaginable constraints, and new music—Jazz—provides the soundtrack. 

The book’s title comes from a ground-breaking recording by Creole jazz pioneer Edward (Kid) Ory. Hannah meets Ory when he’s still a young, unknown trombonist and their relationship intertwines again and again over forty years. The true story of his rollercoaster musical career provides touchpoints for Hannah’s own story, and he’s one of many real-life characters Hannah encounters.

The novel also chronicles the heroine’s encounters with the biggest events of the century, such as life on the home front during the Great War, the outbreak of Spanish Influenza, and the migration of African Americans north to Chicago. 

The author’s personal musical passion and expertise shines through in the way she documents the music and its characters. The intersection of jazz, classical music, and vaudeville is lovingly detailed. Hannah’s is not a simple story, and you’ll learn more about opera costuming, the music business in the Twenties, and the horrifying treatment (or lack thereof) for autoimmune diseases like encephalitis than you may expect. People who enjoy historical fiction for the details and to learn something they didn’t know will be richly rewarded.   

This tale of one woman’s harrowing personal odyssey through half a century is not a breezy read, but worth the journey.

Book Review: She Made It Matter

She Made It Matter. Chiara Talluto. Independently Published, November 2, 2020, Trade Paperback and E-book, 258 pages.

Reviewed by Deanna Frances.

Self-discovery and forgiveness are two of the primary themes of Chiara Talluto’s new novel, She Made It Matter. Talluto, who has previously penned the Christian-themed adult story Love’s Perfect Surrender and children’s fiction tales such as Petrella, the Gillian Princess and A Tribute to Tulipia, tells the story of 36-year old Amanda Reynolds, a woman with a troubled past who embarks on a journey of self-exploration as she continues on her path to recovery from alcohol abuse.

After facing an alcoholic relapse, which rendered her unconscious in the presence of her two young daughters, Amanda finds herself at the lowest point in her life and wonders how her picture-perfect family will forgive her. Realizing that recovery from her alcoholism is the only option, Amanda begins to consider that the answers to her recovery lie in facing the darkness of her childhood and secrets that she has kept hidden, even from her loving husband, Ryan.

Despite facing initial disinclination from her husband, Amanda decides to temporarily leave her home and family in the Chicago suburbs and embark on a month-long journey to a rehabilitation center in Taos, New Mexico, in the hopes of cleansing herself of her alcohol abuse. Arriving in New Mexico, she suddenly realizes that while the rehabilitation center was not what she initially expected, it may be just what she needs to face her past and recover.

Throughout her journey, Amanda experiences both triumphs and losses. However, she learns more than she could have ever imagined and meets incredible people along the way who guide her on a path to physical, mental, and spiritual discovery and healing. By learning how to face the darkness of her past and forgive others, Amanda frees herself from her childhood's devastating family secrets and learns how to move on and make life matter.

As I began reading She Made It Matter, I was immediately intrigued by Amanda’s story. Since I have had no personal experience with alcoholism, I wondered how a young and successful wife and mother could have found herself in such an unfortunate position when everything in her life seemed to be perfect. After reading about her older brother's untimely death and her history of family abuse and neglect, I felt compelled to hope for Amanda's healing and success on her journey towards recovery. 

This novel is separated into three parts, which divide Amanda’s story into her past, present, and her turning point towards a successful future. While the short first section provides an initial look into her troubled past, I appreciate how Amanda's childhood stories were continuously told through flashbacks in the much larger second section, giving even more insight into how Amanda's childhood molded her into the person she became as an adult.

While the story is written primarily as a realistic yet fictional account, I was surprised to see a hint of magical realism through the “physical” appearances of some of Amanda’s deceased family members throughout the story. Amanda’s older brother, Joshua, continuously appeared to her during her journey to serve as not only an emotional support system but a guide who directed Amanda towards the goals she needed to reach to find inner peace and forgiveness. As her spiritual guides, Amanda's family members are able to heal the emotional wounds from her past and help her move forward, which I thought was a unique element to the story.

I would recommend She Made It Matter to any readers interested in realistic stories of self-discovery, recovery, and emotional healing. Chiara Talluto has written a compelling story that displays that hope and inner peace can be found, even through the most unconventional journeys.