Book Expo - From a Distance - Part 1

It's hard to believe that only two years ago Don and I were trekking all over New York City while I attended Book Expo America at the Javits Center. In our new virtual age, publishers, booksellers, and librarians knocked themselves out to make sure the show went on and I thought it was a resounding success. The editors of Library Journal annually host what's called A Day of Dialog, panel discussions and presentations from publishers and writers geared specifically to librarians, affording us a heads up on the hot new books for fall and winter. I found the all-day presentations even more meaningful than when I've attended in person, the authors more approachable while speaking from their home offices and their responses to questions more intimate and revealing.

I thought I'd share with you just a few of the hundreds of titles that caught my eye so that you can compile a TBR list for when your libraries reopen. From Harper Collins comes a translation of an Italian bestseller by Viola Ardone, "The Children's Train," based upon a true story. Poverty and hunger were so rampant in post World War II Naples that an organization arranged for children to be sent north to live with more prosperous families where they could be fed, clothed and educated. The novel centers around Amerigo, an enterprising seven-year-old who abandons his mother in the south to remain with his adopted family in the north, and the ramifications that his actions have down through the years.

Staying with the ever popular WW II theme, Grove Atlantic was touting a new novel by Canadian writer Carol Windley. "Midnight Train to Prague" opens in 1927 as Natalia Faber and her mother are on a holiday trip to a spa in Hungary. Natalia will meet two people on this trip, the mysterious Dr. Magdalena

Schaeffer whose daughter Anna will hugely influence her later life, and the journalist, Count Miklos Andorjon, who she will eventually marry. Germany's invasion of Russia becomes the catalyst for this story of love and friendship interrupted.  

If you remember the uplifting Will Smith film The Pursuit of Happyness based on the life story of Chris Gardner, a salesman and inventor who progressed from homelessness to an internship at a prestigious brokerage firm, then you'll be pleased to know that Mr. Gardner is now the owner of his own multimillion dollar company. He looks back at this life and the amazing turns it has taken in "Permission to Dream," a powerful prescription for a successful and satisfying life.

Vikki Warner from Blackstone Publishers gave a heartfelt endorsement of a debut novel from Memphis-born author Edward Farmer. https://www.edwardafarmer.com/ Set in the cotton fields of Greenwood, Mississippi, and inspired by his own family's story, "Pale" introduces Bernice, a single black woman who, for safety, joins her brother as a servant on the Kern plantation where, of course, she will find none. Reviewers have compared Farmer's literary crafting to the luminous prose of the late Ernest Gaines.

And then there's Norton which will be publishing a new, definitive biography of Malcolm X, "The Dead are Arising," from Pulitzer prize-winning international journalist and Newsday editor Les Payne. Payne spent over thirty years

compiling this tome and tragically died in 2018 before it was ready for print. Fortunately his daughter Tamara had been working as his research assistant and was able to complete it. Based upon hundreds of hours of interviews with people who interacted with Malcolm in all his iterations from his Nebraska childhood, to petty criminality, to his religious conversion to the Nation of Islam, this book promises a deeper, more nuanced portrayal of the man.

That's it for today. Next up: new historical and literary fiction for your reading pleasure.

Gail Tsukiyama's The Color of Air

How pleased I was to discover that Gail Tsukiyama is still writing. She used to be a go to author for me when I was leading book discussions at the library. "The Language of Threads" and "The Samurai's Garden" particularly come to mind. But she has been busy, teaching and reviewing in her hometown of San Francisco, not to mention serving as Executive Director of a non-profit that addresses such diverse needs as literacy and clean water. http://www.gailtsukiyama.com/

In July a fresh cadre of readers will be able to enjoy Tsukiyama's lovely, lyrical prose in a new historical novel set in early 1900's Hawaii where the Mauna Loa volcano is threatening the bustling port town of Hilo. As the townspeople pray

for the lava flow to turn away from their homes and businesses they reminisce about the passage of time and the memories they've nurtured over the decades, the secrets they've kept, the relationships they've formed, and the loved ones they've lost. In fact, the ancestors are never far away, offering gentle advice and admonishment.

Daniel Abe and his high school girlfriend Maile had once been inseparable, but smart and ambitious, each left the island for college, Daniel all the way to medical school in Chicago. Neither thought they would see each other again yet suddenly here they are back in Hilo, Maile escaping an abusive relationship and Daniel a tragic episode in the emergency room that shook his confidence to its core.

Living back home in the cottage his mother Mariko left to him when she died, Daniel reconnects with the land, with the myriad aunties in the village, and especially with his Uncle Koji, the man who loved and helped raise him after his own father abandoned him and his mother. Daniel has questions for Koji and Koji, compelled now by the threatening lava, has confessions he wants to make to Daniel, hoping he's mature enough to hear them with an open heart.

Tsukiyama, of Japanese and Chinese extraction herself, writes atmospheric fiction that reflects her fascination with the period before and after World War II. In "The Color of Air" she deftly mines the history of the Hawaiian sugar trade which built its success on the backs of Japanese immigrants who came to Hawaii by the thousands as contract laborers, promised housing, transportation, and a chance to become Americans. Finding  their living situations little better than enslavement, second generation Japanese-Americans like Koji risked their lives to foment support for unionization. 

Now, marry these detailed historical facts with Tsukiyama's disparate cast of compelling characters imbued with grace, humor, pride, and resilience and you've got a reading experience to really look forward to!

Page Turner for a Sleepless Night

Go ahead! Suspend disbelief. It's not often you find a five hundred page novel that you can read in a day but I did. It may surprise you to know that the author of this political thriller is the same man who brought peace to our hearts with "This Tender Land." In fact, it was only in passing, while William Kent Krueger was speaking to a standing room only crowd at the Southwest Florida Reading Festival (could that only have been two months ago?) that he mentioned his foray into suspensedom. It was an afterthought, as if he might be embarassed by this stand alone coming on the heels of the successful Cork O'Connor mysteries.

The awful title is "The Devil's Bed," but don't let that deter you. The prologue is cringingly violent so move on quickly to chapter one and get immersed in the Barbara Walters interview of President Clay Dixon and his wife Kate. Dixon's handlers are concerned. Kate doesn't seem like herself, in fact she's distanced herself from her husband both physically and emotionally lately and the re-election campaign is about to go into full swing. Without Kate's solid backing, advisors fear that Dixon will lose support in the heartland.

Back on his ranch in Minnesota former VP and devoted father to first lady Kate Dixon, Tom Jorgenson set out for his pre-bedtime ramble, driving his tractor to the edge of his property to get a better look at the full moon. He never made it. How a man with Tom's experience and expertise managed to fall off the tractor and under the wheels seemed suspicious to only one curious CIA operative, Bo Thorsen. The first lady was on the next flight to Minnesota to sit a vigil at her dad's hospital bed, her absence from the White House and Clay's decision not to follow her, noted by political insiders.

I just love novels that have you wondering if there's ANYone you can trust. Krueger's plot may once have seemed far-fetched but nothing should surprise us anymore, right? As Thorsen, an old friend of the Jorgenson's through Tom's sister, is put in charge of the first lady's detail, he senses more and more pieces that just don't fit. Bo comes to believe that what happened to Tom was no accident and that Kate, too, might be in danger. But his burgeoning attraction to the first lady is impossible to keep under wraps, making his impartiality suspect. 

Meanwhile, back in DC, the president is stymied in fulfilling his initially liberal agenda by the sudden death of his most trusted ally and by the aggressive and unwelcome counsel of his father, Senator William Dixon, a ruthless Washington power broker who's never really seen eye to eye with his son. Will President Dixon sell his soul for re-election even if it means losing Kate? And will a haunting incident from Kate's past take her down along with those she loves?

This rip-roaring, fast-paced novel delves into obsessive love, child abuse, unbridled ambition, and back-room deal making whose origins date back to the end of World War II. Every time you set the book aside for just a moment to take a breather and opine "that would never happen," think again. 

The Falling Woman by Richard Farrell

I snapped up an advanced reader's copy of this debut novel by Richard Farrell https://richardfarrell.net/ because I fell for the advertising blurbs that compared "The Falling Woman" to Michael Crichton's fascinating novel "Airframe," about the meticulous search for an explanation of an airline disaster. The Crichton book focused on the nitty gritty recreation of the physical

plane. The Farrell book is much more nuanced. It will lend itself to deep, possibly very personal conversations among book groups.

Charlie Radford is a young up-and-comer at the National Transportation Safety Board, a man whose greatest desire, to be a pilot, was thwarted by a medical condition discovered when he was barely out of his teens. His time in the air traded for a computer simulator, Charlie studies famous airplane accidents virtually, guilty in the knowledge that the only way his career can really take off is if he lands the opportunity to head up a major investigation of a tragedy. And then it happens.

Erin Geraghty's life trajectory has also been curtailed. The long married attorney and mother of two has been in treatment for pancreatic cancer, a debilitating and seldom curable disease that can leach you of the desire to live. Her husband Doug has the fight instinct. She has the flight. Against her family's wishes, Erin decides to take a break from infusions and illness and fly to California for a spiritual renewal retreat for those facing imminent death. Halfway across Kansas, Pointer Flight 795 disappears from the air traffic control radar screen, bodies, luggage, and metal debris littering the cornfields for miles.

For Charlie, the call to Kansas is his opportunity to make a name for himself. It's also an escape from the uncomfortable pressure that Wendy, his wife of five years, is laying on him. Though they had agreed not to have children even before their marriage, she has decidedly changed her mind. While she engages a gynecologist and begins house hunting, he finds himself ignoring her calls and texts and burying himself in paperwork. 

Charlie's and Erin's lives are about to intersect in a strange and unimaginable way. The questions that arise are enormously complicated, giving Farrell's story much more depth than just a tale of a fact-based recreation of an aviation accident. Discussion questions could center on faith and the belief in miracles (or the lack thereof), on the right to die and the right to privacy, on responsibility, as in what do we owe to our loved ones and to ourselves, what truths does a government owe to the public that pays its wages, and what can or should be left unsaid.  

Farrell's love of aviation is evident from the first page. His writing is especially lyrical when he describes flight, a metaphor aptly used throughout this lovely debut novel. The workings of the NTSB and the way that politics taints the board's integrity feel all too sadly true. But the book's true strength is in its realistic portrayal of relationships in all their glorious vicissitudes. "The Falling Woman" will be released in June. If you're lucky your library will be open by then and let you place a hold on it now!