Deep Water Passage by Ann Linnea

"A Spiritual Journey at Midlife"

Ann and her friend Paul decide to kayak around Lake Superior one summer. It takes them nine weeks and nearly the whole first month was miserable and often dangerous as they paddled the north shore heading east from their homes in Duluth, Minnesota. The weather was stormy and grey and cold day after day. She writes movingly of both the physical stress and her inward turmoil as she mourns the death of a very dear friend and of missing her family, specifically her two children. She has ambivalence about what she is doing and angst about her life once back home in Duluth.

I both liked and did not like this book. I liked the adventure and the good writing, but I felt the author was really quite self-absorbed. Others would probably love and understand that part of the book. I mean, who of us aren't self-absorbed? Still, for some reason, I just couldn't empathize as the ashes of her friend seemed as important as the living people in her life. This sounds callous. It probably is.

This grand paddle was an amazing feat, supposedly the first time a woman did it, and Ann not only was successful but also wrote a good book about it. Unfortunately, there are no photographs which would have enhanced the story; still, the writing is descriptive enough...storms, wild water, pebbled beaches, the wind and rain, the people they meet along the way, the 30+ mile paddling days, the food, and the reunions along the way with their friends and families...all are compelling.

"Another gust of wind and I braced on the right side...The aloneness and separation were as terrifying as the storm itself. I do not know how many braces or gusts of winds or douses from trailing waves I battled, or for how long before my arms began to ache. I had long since given up keeping track of Paul...There was no other reality. No dry or wet tent. No campfire. No beautiful thoughts or revelations in journals. No friends. No family. Just me and the wind and the waves and the cliffs. And I was the one thing that didn't belong out here. "

Ann Linnea now "lives in Puget Sound...where as cofounder of PeerSpirit she offers classes, seminars and consultations to people ready to make sprit-based change."

Book: Incidental Findings by Danielle Ofri

I are realizing that nearly every book has a subtitle. This one is "Lessons from My Patients in the Art of Medicine."

Dr. Ofri writes of learning that her patients want what she wants when she becomes a patient. As she delivers her first child, she experiences many of the little insults that are so common in our modern healthcare system, and often it is those small things that dehumanize and frustrate us. We usually get good care but feel neglected as a person.

Yet, she also writes that, even with the best of intentions, time is finite and physicians and providers are constantly under pressure to move quickly and efficiently through their days all the while having to make significant, often critical decisions.

I have always known that there is art in medicine as there is in nearly every endeavor. I have no idea how many healthcare providers feel it is important or even think about this, but Dr. Ofri has and tries to illustrate what it means in this book. Mostly, it seems, it's about trying to find time to look at a patient directly and really listen to what they are saying. So few of us want to be treated impersonally. Empathy surely helps heal, if not the body, then certainly the mind.

The last chapter is about Dora who has Alzheimer's and who fell in her nursing home and was admitted to the hospital with complications. Dr. Ofri communicates with Dora's sister Goldie who tells her about Dora: "We went through the camps together, you know. She took care of me after we lost our parents. She is the reason I survived." Dr. Ofri looks more closely and finds the "numbers" from the concentration camp on Dora's are, and she becomes so much more than a dying patient. She touches the skin and thinks about "handling the very same flesh as that Nazi...[and] grateful that between then and now there had at least been decades of loving touch from a devoted sister and a husband....[and] now I was part of that chain of touch."

Book: The Living Great Lakes by Jerry Dennis

or "Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas"

I just spent 10 minutes trying to find where the cover photograph of the lighthouse was taken and wandered around www.kenscottphotography.com but without finding this particular photo. It looks like a lighthouse sitting IN Lake Michigan, but with no access, no boardwalk or pier leading out to it. It's a stunning photograph of a beacon or lighthouse against a deep grey sky with huge white spindrift nearly surrounding it and waves all around.

(The web site WAS full of wonderful photographs of the Leelanau area in northern Michigan, BTW, for anyone who loves that part of this state.)

Jerry Dennis lives up there and writes about what he knows...fishing and water. In this book, he travels as part of the crew on the Malabar, a tall-masted schooner that was bought by a gentleman from Maine and which needed to be transported there. It had been in the harbor at Traverse City, Michigan for several years and used for cruises, but had developed serious enough problems in her ferro-cement hull that some thought it should be sunk in Grand Traverse Bay and used a "divers' attraction."

Jerry meets Hajo Knuttel, the man who has agreed to supervise the repairs necessary to make the Malabar seaworthy (at least those above water; they did not go below and that was of some concern through this tale....) and then captain the boat to Maine. Jerry asks to go along and work and write about it.

It's a great adventure, leaving Traverse Bay, up under the Mackinac bridge, through Lake Huron, down the St. Clair and Detroit Rivers, through Lake Erie, over Niagara Falls (just kidding), through the Welland Canal (which allows boats to get past Niagara), into Lake Ontario to the Oswego Canal, to the Erie Canal, down the Hudson River and out into Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean.

Along the way and before the trip begins, Jerry writes of all sorts of Great Lakes related topics. like running up to Whitefish Point one November when he heard of a monstrous storm (just barely making it across the bridge before it was closed) and then happening upon the Edmund Fitzgerald annual reunion; he tells of crewing on the Chicago to Mackinac race; of sand dune mining; of Beaver Island and the strange James Strang; of zebra mussels and other aliens; of Hemingway; of Lake Erie, dirty, polluted and now again much much cleaner and a great fishery; and of storms and weather-watching. All the while, he also tells of the Malabar and their progress.

This is one man's story of a Great Lakes boat trip while he brings the Great Lakes into clearer focus for those of us who live near them, but even more so for those who never quite comprehend what they are until they stand on their shores or until they read a book like this one.

Book: Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson

I heard Diane Rehm interview Helen Simonson a few weeks ago, and so I checked out this book when I saw it at the library. It is a wonderful novel! Major Pettigrew is a widower in his 60s who lives alone in Sussex and who holds dear the notions of civility and honor, doing the right thing and living a neat and tidy life. But he is lonely and one day, by chance, Mrs. Ali enters his world. She is a Pakistani woman who runs a small shop in town. She is a widow. She has a very religious nephew who has come to help her in the shop and Major Pettigrew has a very modern son who works in banking in London. The story opens when the Major hears of the death of his only sibling, his brother Bertie. He is shaken by this news and feels vulnerable and the story proceeds from there.

Ms. Simonson now lives in Washington, DC, but "spent her teenage years in East Sussex." This is her first novel. It is very English but also broadly appealing and pertinent in subject matter. Perhaps there are a couple of overly dramatic scenes, but mostly is it gentle and descriptive, a novel of a stalwart mannerly gentleman and a delightful warm woman. Both struggle with traditional ways but are also able to step out of bounds and leave behind what binds them to some of these traditions, binds them in stultifying ways

Esther, if you read this blog, I guarantee you will love this book, and probably Faith and Maria also. I am not surprised Diane Rehm loved it. It seems she could have been one of the characters.

Elizabeth Strout (Pulitzer Prize winner) says: "In the noisy world of today it is a delight to find a novel that dares to assert itself quietly with the lively rhythm of Helen Simonson's funny, comforting and intelligent debut...."

And, the cover is sweet.....

Great Black-backed Gulls

Great Black-backed gulls are very large gulls, a bit bigger than Herring gulls. They have white heads BUT BLACK wings and mantle instead of grey. It is a boldly handsome gull.

(This photo, BTW, is taken from the new Richard Crossley guide to eastern birds.)

It was the first day of spring yesterday, but it felt like the day before Thanksgiving. Today was worse with a spitting cold rain from the east. I did have a lot of bird activity at the feeders today which helps make working less onerous since I sit by the window and can constantly watch what's going on. The feeders birds are a colorful bunch: house finches, chickadees, nuthatches, blue jays, cardinals, goldfinch, red-bellied, hairy and downy woodpeckers, tufted titmice, doves, juncos...

About 7 p.m. I decided to check out Chippewa Point which is a small peninsula surrounded by shallow water about a mile from the west end of Lake Macatawa. Many gulls and sometimes swans and ducks return here to spend the night. All last week, I kept seeing two Great Black-backed gulls (GBBG) there mixed in with hundreds of Ring-billed and Herring gulls, the gulls one usually sees in Michigan. One evening, a GBBG was sitting on what ice remained, quite far out, a striking black-backed bird on white ice and very noticeable even from a distance.

Tonight it was stormy and the gulls were dynamic! They would rise off the water, move upwards a little and then come back down, over and over, and it looked like they were bouncing off the water. They would fly up a bit, hang motionless in the air and then be blown backwards by the wind. I immediately saw the two GBBGs, one of which was near shore, standing in the shallow water close enough to see its pinkish legs. Both of them suddenly flew off, staying close together, their black wings lovely against the stormy sky, the white trailing edge very visible. They disappeared but were back a few minutes later.

Rain from the east was driving against the windshield but the gulls were mesmerizing, the whole scene just a flurry of wings and hard rain and choppy water. I watched quite awhile in my warm car. And then I saw a third GBB gull! These birds are not very common in Michigan, so it is exciting to be able to see them several days in a row. Maria and Richard stayed here last night but we ate too late to get out there before dark. Now I wish we had just gone earlier so they could have seen them, as it's only a couple miles from my house.

They breed up around Newfoundland and Labrador, so I expect they soon will be leaving.

Common Redpolls

Some winters these small birds show up in Michigan but not always. They breed up around Hudson Bay. They are usually seen in flocks of a dozen or more. I didn't see any last year. But, I did see them several times this year while walking the Stu Visser trail, always busily working high up in the alder trees, which have fruit that persist on the trees all winter and look exactly like little pine cones 3/4 of an inch long. The trail has hundreds of these trees lining the wet places.

I was walking on Thursday and heard the now familiar buzzy commotiony sound they make as a flock and saw them in the trees along Pine Creek. I stood and watched, getting good looks in the eastern light.

I then realized they were down dropping to the ice that still covered part of the creek and were munching up little black dots on the ice that were probably tree litter and apparently tasted good to the birds. So I got even better looks at them. They are small and streaky but with a black chin, a nice blush on the breast and, in good light, a beautiful small deep-rose cap.

I rarely walk that trail without some small or large pleasure, like seeing the redpolls on the ice, edging closer and closer, until suddenly they flew away en masse, spooked by something.

A bit later, on the big pond, I saw my first pair of wood ducks for the year. Dave VH had seen many in the Kalamazoo river the previous day as he was out putting up and cleaning out wood duck houses, so I knew they had arrived back in Michigan. The plumage of the males is complex and stunning; the more drab females have a distinctive large teardrop-shaped whitish eye patch.

Book: Scribbling the Cat by Alexandra Fuller

Alexandra Fuller also wrote Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight which was a best seller with great reviews. She now lives in Wyoming but her parents still live in Africa where she grew up and which story she told in her previous book. She visits them occasionally.

I got this book from the library because I had just finished The Last Resort and wanted to read more of Rhodesia / Zimbabwe. In this book, Alexandra meets a former Rhodesian soldier, an extremely capable, charismatic man, who is living on his own farm near her parents' home in Zambia.

She is coy or perhaps sincere and only calls him K. She persuades him to travel with her into Zimbabwe. I think she was bored and wished to write another best-seller. Perhaps this isn't fair or true, and it certainly is not kind. I don't know, but this book pissed me off. Alexandra seemed to be bored living in Wyoming with her family (including 2 small children) and flocks arounds with K. She writes well though, and there are many vignettes of Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Zambia, mixed in with the war history. K half falls in love with her, and there is certainly a sexual tension between them. Ostensibly, she wants to get more understanding of that time by having K tell her his demons, by having him tell her what he did during the war, by bringing her to meet other half-crazed war veterans.

Along the way, it is a sort of travelogue with descriptions and black and white photos of the landscape and people they meet.

Road sign in Zambia: "Speed kills! Condoms SAVE." She uses a lot of the vernacular in her narrative and "scribbling" means killing.

K is trying desperately to find peace and has become religious. He has a head full of bad memories, including the death of his small son. And he surely is not going to find peace hanging around with Alexandra Fuller.

It seems she could have written about her Africa without adding pain to a man already soaked with anguish. She says she thought "he held shards of truth" but I don't think she thought that at all. She just got restless and stirred things up.

However, a book like this does throw some light on modern Africa and can be read for that reason, I suppose. Ultimately, I felt K had enough posttraumatic stress and didn't need to be dragged through it again.

Book: The Last Resort by Douglas Rogers

Or "A Memoir of Mischief and Mayhem on a Family Farm in Africa"

Today it is the Cote d'Ivoire; yesterday it was Zimbabwe along with dozens of other countries in Africa whose people have lived through horror as those who would rule rampage and run amok in their bids for power. This is the particular story of one couple in Zimbabwe, Doug's parents, Lyn and Rosalind Rogers, now in their 60s and who stubbornly refuse to leave their land. They negotiate, endure and persevere in a situation that keeps escalating to what seems a foregone bad conclusion.

Before Zimbabwe, the country was Rhodesia, and the Rogers had lived in Africa for generations. His "white liberal parents.....had always despised the man they called Smithy" [Ian Smith who declared independence from Britain in 1965 in a last ditch effort to avoid black majority rule] and they had survived the subsequent war of black majority liberation which ended when Robert Mugabe came to power in 1979. Bob Marley and the Wailers performed at the the ceremony for Zimbabwean independence on April 18, 1980. Whites then comprised 5% of Rhodesia's population.

A soldier at Drifters reminisces with Doug: "I will never forget that day, Rogers junior. It was huge! I was 13 when I went to war--now I was 18. We had achieved! Can you believe it?"

"In his first two decades in power Mugabe did indeed do many great things, helping turn Zimbabwe into one of the most literate and productive nations in Africa. But now three decades on, that legacy was crumbling, and his government was lashing out at those he claimed were to blame--chiefly Britain, whites and their 'puppets' in the MDC." (MDC is the Movement for Democratic Change with Morgan Tsvangirai its leader.)

Doug's father rages; "Go back to Britain? I am not British! My people have been on this continent for 350 years! I never set foot out of Africa until I was 50 years old. My own mother never left it once.....My grandfather fought against the British in the f_______Boer War...I am not British. I am not British."

But he is white and therefore easy to blame as Zimbabwe comes apart and the government, in the guise of "homeland war veterans," begin demanding any land owned by whites. And it was not only the whites who were targeted; thousands of blacks suspected of supporting or known to have supported any political opposition were/are also victims.

More and more often the white farmers were forced to either leave or give up their farms to those who had no idea how to work these productive well-functioning farms which then became little more than squatter's camps. So far, Doug's parents have kept their property but the hold is tenuous. Zimbabwe is their home and always has been. They engage in various commercial enterprises just to survive. Eventually, they begin running a backpacker's camp called Drifters in the east of Zimbabwe, very near the Mozambique border, 180 miles southeast from Harare, the capitol. Thus the brilliant title of this book. Even Drifters goes through many permutations.

Doug becomes increasingly worried about his parents, makes several trips back home, and this is the book. It is funny, poignant, informative, complex... Of course, conditions in Zimbabwe are currently eclipsed by the amazing, more recent news from Africa, but this story continues and feel I have learned something about what has happened and actually is happening, always a good reason to read a book.

The cover is also perfect: A frog is submerged in clear water with just nose and bulging frog eyes above the surface. It could be the large albino frog that lived for years in the Rogers' farmhouse, on the kitchen counter no less.

Book: Bringing Adam Home by Les Standiford with Det. Sgt. Joe Matthews

Adam is Adam Walsh, the son of John and Reve Walsh who was abducted from a Sears store in Hollywood, Florida, on July 27, 1981. He was 6 years old. He was lured into the car by Ottis Toole with promises of candy. Ottis said he initially thought he would raise this little boy as his son but Adam soon became distraught as they were driving, and Ottis pulled off the road and abused and murdered him.

The book is elegantly written, and tells the sequence of events and the cast of characters involved in this horrific tragedy. Joe Matthews was/is a detective who never forgot Adam's death and who finally brought a measure of peace or justice and closure to Reve and John Walsh, but only 27 years after Adam disappeared.

While the details of what happened are laid out in this book, and while there are parts of this story that are nearly unbearable, there is not a sense of sensationalism, but it is rather a well-written account of both the police work and the psychosociology of a man and his known world, a man like Ottis who could and did repeatedly murder with little remorse. Adam was just one of those victims and Ottis told many family members about it.

"Everyone in the family knew Ottis had killed Adam Walsh, she said. It was simply common knowledge. Then why on earth had she never told anyone about these things? Matthews asked. Linda didn't miss a beat. 'Because no one ever asked,' she said. 'You're the first that ever did.' Matthews sat back in his chair and stared at the ceiling for a long time after his conversation with Linda McHenry Orand. Common knowledge among the members of a family that one of their own had kidnapped and killed Adam Walsh. And because no one had ever asked, not one of them stepped forward to tell."

I found this profoundly interesting, far removed from any personal experience, yet all the while also knowing there are in our society those who live only for the moment, those who do whatever they can for immediate gratification, those who are often of borderline intelligence, those who seldom think of consequences, those who do not recognize the rules of any higher authority, either secular or spiritual. Still, the author also managed to make Ottis Toole a recognizable human being and, while he was monstrous and without a moral compass, he was not born that way. So this book is sobering, of course for the heartbreak of Adam Walsh and his family, but also for those who flounder in poverty and despair, who are born into a bleak existence marked by gross deficiencies in their families, their neighborhoods and their schools.

And this book is an indictment of the Hollywood, Florida police department. It seems inconceivable that Ottis Toole died while in prison for murder, but not the murder of Adam Walsh. The Hollywood PD, as this book makes clear, lacked the diligence necessary to bring Ottis to trial.

Book: River House by Sarahlee Lawrence

Sarahlee Lawrence is a young woman who grew up in central Oregon, north of Bend, east of the Cascade mountains. She was an only child and left her family farm to raft and guide white-water rivers all over the world. But she returns to build her own house on her parents' land when she is 21. This book is mostly about the process of building that home with help from her father. But, it is not exactly an idyl. Her father has always yearned for the oceans where he surfed when younger and which continue to seduce him. Her dreams are of rivers and now of building her home; his are of the waves. Her mother encourages both of them and grounds them...somewhat.

These are really love stories: the love between a child and her parents, the love of a particular landscape, the love for a home of one's own.

Lately, I have read several books similar to this one...memoirs about place. They have all been beautifully written books and have successfully translated a specific geography into words, fueling my wanderlust. I wanted to immediately get in my car and drive to these places: Annie Proulx' Platte river, Ellen Meroy's San Juan river, and now Sarahlee Lawrence's high desert ranch/farm country near the Deschutes river with the Sisters on the southwestern horizon.

"The log that runs through the center of the house and ties the entire structure together is called the purlin. I had been obsessing about my purlin log for six months, talking about it, walking by it every day, glancing at it, staring at it, and saving it, special."

They were under a time constraint as she has a river trip planned. Her Dad helps her with the purlin and things don't go well. There is a gap, a "full inch" when it is finally lowered into position. They are frustrated and angry and argue with each other. Her Dad dreams of perfect waves all the while working the farm and helping Sarahlee as much as he can. He is desperate for a break from constant drudgery, and Sarahlee is equally desperate to get the roof on before she needs to leave on another river trip and then go to graduate school at the University of Montana.

Eunice would surely love reading about scribing and notching logs and about mixing concrete, about keeping things level, about knowing how the water runs on your land and about the people who live next door or just down the road. I thought of her often while reading this. Sarah writes of her "neighborhood" just as Eunice talks about the reservation.

And the beautiful vignettes of the world surrounding her home: She is on her horse one day when he slips on slick rock near the high edge of a river canyon. "A few feet from the edge, a ball of brush, snow and mud stopped us....Then the lion emerged from the rocks and my breath caught. She sat down on her haunches and looked at me...As dusk washed over us, I sat astonished at the length of the encounter."

The cover notes that Sarah now owns and operates an organic vegetable farm on the ranch. There was a thread through this book about water rights and canals, drainages and new underground water pipes, all of which must have worked out enough to grow vegetables and which makes me happy to think about. I hope she writes another book on how it all happened.

Book: The Last Cheater's Waltz by Ellen Meloy

Ellen Meloy lives in the American Southwest, and this book is about what she worries about living where she does. Which is mostly nuclear fission. She makes a trip to Los Alamos; she finds a suspicious yellow rock (uranium?); she remembers her childhood and how communists and the bomb were very real. She talks about Hiroshima, Oppenheimer, Trinity, bomb tests, half-lives and nuclear waste sites.

She goes to the 50-year anniversary of the world's first atomic bomb (July 16, 1945) on the

White Sands Missile Range. She notices the person next to her. "He was Japanese. He stood very quietly, hands behind his back, posture ramrod straight but not rigid....When the fellow turned to me, it took all of my strength to lift and point with my chin to the nighthawks in the sky above us...."

As she frets about these things, she decides to explore what she calls her Known Universe--the geology, natural history, the flora and fauna, issues of water and fences and rivers, the Anasazi culture, her Navajo neighbors and the San Juan river on which she and her husband are building a home. And she writes of these, so one is immersed in the sunny and sere landscape of southern Utah...a great book to read as the interminable cold, gray, wet Michigan winter brought me to my knees.

"Am I the only one around here who is worried sick about these hot slabs of cold war detritus?...Few could return to hate amorphous dread of nuclear anxiety, so absorbed are we in dreads with seemingly greater odds: cancer, heart disease, cerebral hemorrhage, bombs placed on airplanes for ideological purposes. Locust plagues and dire loneliness. Leaky breast implants..Fascists with Web sites...Planetary decline not by a couple of H-bombs but by the slow-cook of greenhouse gases and shredding ozone layers."

She admits to a nearly incapacitating malaise and Weltschmerz at the beginning of the book. She decides the land she lives on has the power to heal and comfort her (her Known Universe), and this book details the journey as she explores the land around her. She writes lyrically, often beautifully, with occasional segues into despair and hopelessness.

This book is another memoir by a young woman who desperately yearns for something to uphold her as she lives her life. She does not dwell on relationships, which seem not to be the problem, and is free to seek solace in an acceptance of place, both in the present and historically.

"Ricegrass, primrose, joint-fir and other greenery sprouted from the coral sand. I heard sheep bells, and soon the flock itself made its way down the dune. A Navajo herder followed, singing a prayer."

Ebi Gyoza

Maria asked for this recipe as she saw the photo in the wagamama cookbook on my counter, so here it is:

(T = tablespoon and t = teaspoon)

5 ounces cooked peeled shrimp

4.5 ounces canned water chestnuts, drained

2 scallions, trimmed

4 ounces fresh baby spinach leaves

1 T cornstarch

pinch each of salt, sugar and white pepper

1 t. oyster sauce

1 t. light soy sauce

1 t. sesame oil

1 package gyoza skins (wrappers)

vegetable oil, for frying

gyoza sauce, for serving (I made 1/4 recipe of this):

1 large clove, finely chopped

1 large red chile, finely chopped

salt

2 T sugar

1 cup minus 1 T malt vinegar

1 cup light soy sauce

1 T sesame oil

1. Mince shrimp, water chestnuts and scallions or use food processor.

2. Put spinach in a colander and wilt by pouring boiling water over it; then cool, drain and squeeze excess moisture, chop and add to shrimp, etc., along with the cornstarch, salt, sugar, white pepper, oyster sauce, soy sauce and sesame oil.

3. Put a teaspoonful of this mexture in the center of each gyoza skin. (Before I did this, I moistened the outer edges of the gyoza skin with my finger.) Fold over to create a half-moon shape and press to seal...or use the tines of a fork and press around the edges.

4. Heat a large frying pan (or medium sized, but make sure it has a very flat bottom so oil and heat distribute evenly) and when hot and almost smoking, add 1 T of oil. Put 3 or 4 of the dumplings in the pan and saute gently for 2 minutes over low to medium heat.

5. Carefully add 3 T of water, cover immediately and heat for 1 more minute; then remove and set aside for another 2 minutes. Repeat. Serve with gyoza sauce.

I made about 40 of these and thought they were delicious. Adam also loved them (Adam who doesn't like spinach, onions or water chestnuts). We ate about half one night for dinner and I made the rest the next day for lunch.

Gyoza skins: I went into the Asian market and found the spring roll wrapper aisle where there were about 200 packages of spring roll wrappers. As I was searching for gyoza, the nice Asian man happened by and asked if he could help. I had written down "gyoza" and showed it to him, and he immediately went to the opposite end of the market, and crubbed way back in a freezer section and found gyoza wrappers. They are delicate, thin, perfectly round and flat, about 3 to 4 inches in diameter. They worked beautifully.

Book: The Girl with Braided Hair by Margaret Coel

I was at Townsend visiting Maria and Richard last weekend, and Maria had this novel there, which she had picked up from the Pathfinder Library in Baldwin. I read most of it one afternoon, because I like books about Native Americans and I was in the mood for light reading. I didn't quite finish it, so I checked it out from Herrick Library and discovered the author has written more than a dozen similar books. I also picked up The Drowning Man.

The story takes place mostly on the Arapaho Wind River Indian reservation in Wyoming. It is a mystery: who killed Liz Plenty Horses? Her decomposed body is found 37 years after she was murdered. The women in town push to find out why and who killed her. There are several flashbacks and allusions to the AIM movement of the early 1970s with both the good and bad aspects presented in the dialogue of the characters in this book.

It is not a classic but it does immerse one, for a few hours, in the sky, open spaces, sunshine, cottonwoods and sage of the west, along with believable characters and a credible story.

Book: Trail of Crumbs by Kim Sunee

Subtitled: Hunger, Love, and the Search for Home.

Kim Sunee was abandoned on the streets of Korea when she was a very little girl. She was then adopted by a young American couple and grew up in New Orleans.

She writes this memoir as a young women and much (but not all) of the book is about her life in France, her life and love affair with Olivier Grignon, a wealthy, mostly sweet, man who adored her. In much of the book, Kim is a young woman living with an older man, living in luxury, and trying to figure out why she can't accept all the richness and love in her life.

She also loves food and she cooks, which definitely gains her an easier entree into the world of Olivier's family, companions and neighbors, and at the end of most of the chapters, there is a recipe, usually French but sometimes Cajun, some dish her beloved Poppy (grandfather) made for the family back in Louisiana.

Olivier has a young daughter, Laure, and Kim writes of her; she writes of Paris, of a trip to Korea, vacations at the beach, of other love affairs, of Flora and Sophie, of her family back in New Orleans....

But she is unhappy. Olivier, perhaps, is too paternal and, while she loves him, she needs to make her own life, all the while haunted by her abandonment.

Jim Harrison notes that "Kim Sunee tells us so much about the French that I never learned in twenty-five trips to Paris...." and the book can be read for that reason alone. But beyond that, it is also a modern story of a modern life...spanning continents and cultures.

Of course, memoirs are by definition, self-absorbed. Still, this seems an honest attempt to tell of her life (so far) with fairness to all those along the way.

And the recipes: How about Chicken Thighs with Cinnamon and Dates? or Chocolate Cake with Mascarpone-Chestnut Cream? or Cream of Chestnut Soup?

(I remembered Maggie talking about chestnuts when she visited this summer, how they would gather them and what they would do with them.)

"For now, I have learned that home is in my heart--in all the places and people I have left behind. It's in the food that I cook and share with others, in the cities I will come to know, and in the offerings of street vendors around the world--from South Korea to Provence--in the markets I have yet to discover." KS