Char Miller Natural Consequences

Writing informed by wit and perceptiveness is easily identified but difficult to define.  Dip into any piece in Natural Consequences: Intimate Essays for a Planet in Peril, and you’ll find yourself immersed in your enjoyment of the reading experience, in the individual observations of Char Miller informed by, yes, wit and perceptiveness.  His ability to write about the odd intersections of life, law, and the world around us is just plain fun to read.  You won’t be inclined to analyze your enjoyment, you’ll simply think, “Wow, I never thought of that before.  Cool!”

And here you are. Natural Consequences collects short essays, opinion pieces, and wondering words asking excellent questions that may or may not have answers.  Miller talks a good game, whether he’s exploring the problems of wildfires, the arcane minutia of water management, or simply flaneuring his way around any one of the many places he’s lived, mostly, in this book, in California. 

Miller’s thoughts and writing are informed by a deep and eclectic understanding of history.   He’s written about a variety of subjects, from Teddy Roosevelt’s environmentalism to marijuana policy and politics.  All of this clearly goes into the mix when he’s writing these short essays, giving even the short form the breadth and depth of a longer work.  And while he’s clearly able to acknowledge and understand the Big Swirly that seems have a growing grip on current events, every piece he writes has a way of bringing good cheer and an upbeat attitude.  After all, the first step to solving a problem is identifying it.

Natural Consequences identifies and looks in iterative depth at a host of problems, mostly environmental.  One of the more interesting effects in the reading is that even though all of the material was written well outside the 24-hour news cycle, everything here feels contemporary.  He wasn’t writing about the future but he approaches the specific problems and events with the eyes of a historian.  There’s always a before and he understands there will always be an after.  As tied to time and place as these essays are, they’re informed by an understanding of timelessness. 

Char Miller is just as witty and enjoyable in person as he is on the printed page.  My guess is you’ll have the book downloaded before the interview is finished.  Download it here, or start listening now.  All too soon, now will be then.  As you read, as you listen, you’ll realize, it’s never too late to start anew.

Laurie Loewenstein Funeral Train

Sherriff Temple Jennings is already busy enough.  He’s half the law enforcement in Vermillion, Oklahoma.   Between the Depression and Prohibition, with the dark overlay of the Dust Bowl, he’s working as much as he can.  When a passenger train derails coming into town – with his wife aboard – he has more death on his hands than he might have imagined possible.  His wife is not among the dead, but her injury is serious and will keep her off her feet.  Then an unpleasant recluse, Ruthie Jo is murdered.  What’s more, the AT&SF has sent Claude Steele to look into the derailment. 

Laurie Lowenstein’s Funeral Train combines a dense, atmospheric and convincing historical setting with carefully crafted characters and a low-key, but gripping plot.  She does a spectacular job at building a world that’s detailed enough to feel real and populating it with characters to match.  Given how distant in history Depression-era Oklahoma is, it’s commendable that Loewenstein evokes all the ways things have and have not changed.  For all the historical distance, it’s both relatable and relevant.

The key is in the characters.  Sherriff Jennings and his wife are entirely but not unrealistically decent.  She writes in a lightly clipped, stripped down prose that is atmospheric but feels natural.  She also knows how to architect a toe-tapping plot that will make you wait impatiently for the sequel.  It’s almost weird to realize readers will enjoy their visit to Vermillion a lot more than the residents.

Unsurprisingly, Laurie Loewenstein is as down-to-earth and straight-spoken as one of her characters, though she knows their lives better than they do.  She also clearly relishes the history and the writing behind her stories, as evidenced in our excellent conversation, which you can hear below or download from this link.

Robert Freeman Wexler The Silverberg Business

Shannon, a detective working for the Llewelyn Agency out of Chicago, is recruited to find missing money intended to purchase land in Texas for refugee Romanian Jews.  It seems like a straightforward job for a straightforward man.  Shannon is a methodical thinker who has family in Galveston.  But while his thoughts are those of a careful, entirely rational man, his dreams are not.  As he becomes involved in what he calls The Silverberg Business, the weird begins edging in, first in dreams, but does not confine itself to his hours of unconsciousness.  Readers will experience a similar expansion. Robert Freeman Wexler’s novel The Silverberg Business is mind-boggling in content, and in its unique ability to entertainingly take reader places they’d never expect to go.

Wexler’s prose carefully matches the mindset of his narrator; he’s modest, unassuming and smart as hell.  The latter proves to be helpful, as hell or portions adjacent appear to be encroaching on this world, particularly in the vicinity of Galveston.  Pay attention to the evocative cover image of John Langford (from The Mekons), as this fellow and a few of his buddies show up early and often.  There’s an otherworld journey that readers of Carlos Casteneda and H. P. Lovecraft will enjoy more than Shannon, as well as a poker game you’ll need to read to believe.  Wexler’s brilliant writing makes all this utterly seamless, and seriously fun. 

Wexler’s novel is heavily and enjoyably informed by the real and colorful history of Texas circa 1888-1900-something.  He manages to get more than a few big thinks in but keeps the plot humming an oddly joyful tune.  Even though a hefty portion of the novel unfolds in relatively realistic places and times, there’s no denying that this is likely the most delightfully weird novel you’re likely to have laid hands on in recent memory.  Better still, it does not wear its weird on its sleeve. The Silverberg Business just does what the world it creates requires.  It’s uniquely novelistic, and the effects it creates in readers’ minds are the province of the written word.  Mystery, western, weird fiction, there’s no description that fits it better than The Silverberg Business.  It’s an excellent investment of valuable reading time.

Robert Freeman Wexler calls himself The Laconic Writer, and when you hear him speak you can understand the veracity of this statement.  He always chooses his words carefully, and you can download the evidence from this link, or listen to the unredacted audio evidence below.

Laurie King Back to the Garden

With Back to the Garden, Laurie R. King returns, not to innocence, but instead a dark, complex story steeped in history, forensics, and played out across the varied landscapes of Northern California.  Inspector Raquel Laing, recovering from physical and emotional wounds, has been shelved over to the cold case squad under the tutelage of Al Hawkin. In the early 70’s, there was talk of a serial killer, The Highwayman, but nothing ever gelled. After many years, there’s been a break in the case.  Raquel is sent to look into a case recently come to light when a body is revealed on the Gardener estate.  Back in the 70’s, it was, for a few brief years, a commune, known as the Garden.  Now it’s a quiet sort of park and museum.  For Raquel, it’s a knotty mass of overgrown secrets, aging personalities and a chance at redemption. 

Cleverly structured between Then and Now, King has a field day, crafting a story that’s compelling on every level.  As a character study of the free-living, free-loving 70’s, it’s an evocative exercise of imagination, recreating a time and out of whole cloth creating a place, The Gardener estate to, embody that time.  Half Hearst Castle, half Woodstock, King’s creation is s wonderful as the real thing might have been.  While location, location, location plays a part here – King’s descriptions of the place are exceptional – it’s the people, the characters she creates who drive the power of the place.  She gets the perfect balance of complex motivations and detail to power her plot on the past and the present. 

In the present, Raquel Laing proves to be King’s most compelling crime-solver yet.  Her damage is deep and self-inflicted.  We feel deep sympathy for her, but as well, more than a little wariness.  Raquel Laing may walk with a cane, but she’s clearly capable of being a very dangerous woman, especially if she’s in search of a truth.  King does a great job with her knowledge of forensics and police proceduralities.  Like her protagonist, she fearlessly uses the tools at her disposal as a mystery writer to ratchet up tension and insight in the same scene.  She evokes a sense of understanding the darkest of human desires without needing to hide behind explicit scenes of violence.  It’s a deeply readable dive.

There’s a large cast of characters here, in the past and in the present, that King balances with professional, evocative great writing.  It’s the sort of skill that one might overlook, except in retrospect.  You’ll find yourself able to visit them, then and now, and wanting to meet them in their natural habitat.  That’s this novel, and yes, you may well want to go Back to the Garden until King brings back Raquel Laing.  You’ll hope that now will not need to be then for too long before she does so. 

As in the writing to be found there, Laurie R. King was in fine form when we spoke about Back to the Garden.  Download the interview here, or take your laptop out to the garden and listen below, before it gets too dark.