Letter From Elba

If I had to describe myself in one word, I think that word would have to be…

Bookworm.

In first grade, the reading die was cast.  The library let me take out five books.  I read them and the next Saturday I would take out another five books.

I’ve continued this five books a week bit – although sometimes I re-read old favorites- to this very day.

Take a look at my night table right now.

Eagle-eyed readers may notice that there are only four books in the pile.  But that’s because I am currently reading two on my Kindle.

And eagle-eyed readers can probably tell that these all come under the heading of “Old Favorites.”  (That’s a first edition Act One, btw.)

But today I want to talk about two nifty books just perfect for these unseasonably hot dog days.

One came out in 2016 and one is brand new.

English Professor Note: Warning! Neither of these choices can be considered great literature.  Janeites and fans of F. Scott Fitzgerald don’t have to be worried about the competition here.  But they’re both fun, exciting and quick to polish off.  What could be better as we head into fall?

Let’s start with the brand new one.

The Marsh King’s Daughter by Karen Dionne.

Spoiler Alert:  The Marsh King’s Daughter is not for the faint of heart.  Not quite as graphic as The Silence of the Lambs, it’s still gory and really scary.  If your idea of a perfect beach read is The Devil Wears Prada, skip this book.

However, if you’re in the mood for excitement with a high concept premise and a memorable heroine, read on.  No plot twists will be revealed.

TMKD – recently rave-reviewed in the New York Times Book Section- is the story of Helena Pelletier.  Helena is a thirty-something, happily-married mother of two daughters who makes her living in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula selling home made jams and jellies. She knows a lot about wood lore and the local flora and fauna.  She can hunt, fish, trap and track.  Her father taught her how to do all these things.

But Helena is hiding a secret from her loving family.  Her father has been in prison for the last fifteen years for kidnapping and murder.  He kidnapped Helena’s mother when she was just fourteen and kept her prisoner for fifteen years.  Helena was the child of this unholy alliance and she was twelve and her mother twenty-eight when they were recovered from their captor.

In Helena’s own words “..I never went to school, never rode a bicycle, never knew electricity or running water.  That the only people I spoke to during those twelve years were my mother and father.  That I didn’t know we were captives until we were not.”

Think Jaycee Dugard or Elizabeth Smart or those poor women who were held prisoner by a maniac in Ohio.

Ever read a People Magazine article about them? Have you ever wondered what it would be like to survive something like that?

Then ask yourself what it means to find out you are a child of such a union.

Helena has to come to grips with the past quickly.  The book opens with the news bulletin that her father has killed two guards in a prisoner break and he is somewhere on the loose.

Helena knows that she has to find him before he finds her- and her daughters.

Karen Dionne does a great job with the setting in Michigan’s barren Upper Peninsula landscape.  She knows her territory- both physically and psychologically.  She handles the sensitive topic of kidnapping with insight and compassion and she has created a heroine who is resourceful, brave, vulnerable and most of all, believable.

As Helena sets out to track her fugitive father, Dionne keeps you guessing.  There are enough thrills and chills to keep you turning the pages, too.

I read it in one gulp.  And if you’re brave enough to follow a Native American psychopath equipped with uncanny wilderness skills and no conscience, grab your bear rifle and get in the truck

The Marsh King’s Daughter needs all the help she can get.

The second book I’m recommending is Ready Player One.

(If you have a techie boy in the family, you have already seen it when he unpacked his back pack.  Chances are he has read it.)

Author Ernest Cline also starts out with a bleak, vast universe.  It’s what remains of the United States of America in the year 2045.  People are living in dystopian misery in abandoned trailer homes piled one on top of another.  The hero, Wade Watts, is a teenager living in “the stacks” and his only outlet from this grim reality is logging onto OASIS (Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation) and playing video games to distract him from his misery.

The story takes off when James Halliday, a Steve Wozniak-like character, dies and hides his immense fortune in one of the games.  But in order to find it, the player has to be adept, not only in classic video games like Dungeons and Dragons but “ancient” television programs and movies like War Games.  The player who thus scores the highest in all this role-playing will find the “easter egg” Halliday has cleverly hidden and become enormously rich and powerful himself.

Needless to say, his challenge is taken up by “gunters”- short for “egg hunters”- throughout the universe.

And needless to say, all this imagination and clever pop culture was immediately snapped up by the great game changer himself, Steven Spielberg, and will be released to much anticipation in Spring of 2018.

Here. I’ll let Wade explain it to you.

Next stop? John le Carré’s new one-  A Legacy of Spies.  I can’t wait to rendez-vous with the old Circus crowd again.

See you at the library.