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