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Fiction Making certain we’re not certain THE PEOPLE OF THE BROKEN NECK By Silas Dent Zobal 352 pp. Unbridled Books Reviewed by Dennis C. Rizzo Shell shock. Battle fatigue. It’s had many names over the years. Now we know it as PTSD. Silas Dent Zobal peels back the layers of Dominick Sawyer, ex-Ranger, ex-husband, and father to two tweens whom he is afraid of losing. The People of the Broken Neck brings us into a desperate struggle of one person to protect his family. From whom or what remains uncertain until the last chapter. Zobal builds strong characters and gives each enough instability to create doubt in our minds. We might see the distancing and sparring between son, Clarke, and father as a natural component of teen years. We might see the dreams and nightmares of the daughter, Kingsley, as part of the uncertainty she is facing. We might look at Dominick and see a scared, yet protective parent – or a deeply disturbed veteran steeped in paranoia. Charlie, the diligent FBI agent, ple...

Nonfiction Heart and soul and guts WHISPERIN’ BILL ANDERSON: An Unprecedented Life in Country Music By Bill Anderson and Peter Cooper 298 pp. The University of Georgia Press Reviewed by Diane Diekman Bill Anderson, 79, is the only songwriter in history who has written songs that charted in seven consecutive decades. From “City Lights” by Ray Price in 1958 to “Country” by Mo Pitney in 2015, his music continues to thrive. With the help of renowned country music historian Peter Cooper. he tells the story of his music and its place in his life. Anderson was 19 and beginning his music career at a small radio station when a stifling hot August night drove him out of his hotel room and up to the roof with his guitar. “This particular night there wasn’t a cloud in the sky,” he writes.  I began looking up at what seemed like a million stars above and down on what few lights there were in Commerce, Georgia, and I wrote:   ‘The bright array of city lights, as far as I can see / The great...

A Wretched and Precarious Situation: In Search of the Last Arctic Frontier by David Welky New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2017 [2016]. Reviewed by Kenn Harper In late June of 1906 Robert Peary stood on a mountain top on Ellesmere Island and surveyed Nansen Sound, still ice-covered, to the west, and beyond it a land that he called Jesup’s Land, which we know today as Axel Heiberg Island. And to the northwest? Much later he wrote, “… northwest it was with a thrill that my glasses revealed the faint white summits of a distant land…” A few days later, having crossed Nansen Sound with his two guides, Iggiannguaq and Ulloriaq, he climbed Cape Thomas Hubbard. From there, he later wrote, “… with the glasses I could make out apparently a little more distinctly, the snow-clad summits of the distant land in the north-west, above the ice horizon…. in fancy I trod its shores and climbed its summits, even though I knew that that pleasure could be only for another in another season.” Thus, on R...

Nonfiction Fusing of psyches THE FUTURE TENSE OF JOY By Jessica Teich 277 pp. Picador Reviewed by Sue Ellis The Future Tense of Joy is an engaging account of author Jessica Teich’s long journey to emotional well being. She begins by describing her over-reaction to her eldest daughter’s bid for more personal freedom, how it brought up memories of herself at the same age. To a past, she writes, that would not stay put. At sixteen, Teich had been drawn into a secret and abusive relationship with a man at the dance studio where she took lessons. She never told anyone, and had never come to terms with what happened to her or the fact that her parents failed to protect her. Early on, Teich introduces a woman she refers to as Lacey, a stranger she read about and whose life, according to the obituary, nearly paralleled her own. Both women were highly educated, both Rhodes scholars, and both appeared to have the world by the tail. The following excerpt sums up Teich’s feelings about the simila...

Nonfiction But listen to his music I AM BRIAN WILSON: A Memoir By Brian Wilson with Ben Greenman 307 pp. Da Capo  Reviewed by Alan Goodman Brian Wilson has few peers as a prolific and influential Rock And Roll songwriter. As the front man and driving creative inspiration for the Beach Boys he is responsible – in total or partially – for such R & R musical icons as “California Girls,” “Fun, Fun, Fun,” “I Get Around,” “Surfin’,” “Surfin’ Safari,” “Surfin’ USA,” and “Surfer Girl.”   In 1988, Wilson and the Beach Boys were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2000 he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. And in 2007 he was honored by the Kennedy Center for a lifetime contribution to the performing arts. A biopic film about his life won several wards at the Toronto Film Festival in 2014. All in all, not too shabby a track record for any ten musicians, let alone one single person. And yet, Brian Wilson is revealed in I Am Brian Wilson: A Memoir , as barely ...

Nonfiction Dreaming of home THE TRAIN TO CRYSTAL CITY:  FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's 
Only Family Internment Camp During World War II By Jan Jarboe Russell  393 pp. Scribner  Reviewed by Madison Bush Life may be like a box of chocolates, but to some American political figures, immigration is like a bowl of skittles; if three of the skittles in the bowl are poisonous, rather than risk taking a handful, we should throw the whole bowl away. Or deport them. Or detain them.   The Train to Crystal City is a non-fiction account of the last time the United States’ policy followed that mindset. During World War II, the U.S. government approved the arrest, incarceration, and internment of Japanese, German, and Italian “enemy aliens,” and their families. This book is a timely read, a reminder that fear and ignorance, even during wartime, should not excuse denying people equal protection under the law.  Not everyone will have heard of Crystal City, ...

Nonfiction Conscience defined by combat THE RISE OF A PRAIRIE STATESMAN:  The Life and Times of George McGovern By Thomas J. Knock 434 pp. Princeton University Press Reviewed by Diane Diekman The Rise Of A Prairie Statesman: The Life And Times Of George McGovern is the first volume of a major two-part biography on the most eloquent critic of the Vietnam War. Thomas J. Knock, a distinguished historian and teaching professor at Southern Methodist University, has written an aptly titled account of the life and times, through the 1968 elections, of this U.S. Senator from South Dakota. George McGovern was elected to a second term in the U.S. Senate in 1968, after losing to Hubert Humphrey for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. The two had been close friends until divided by the war in Vietnam. Early in the Presidential campaign, Humphrey picked up the torch for President Lyndon Johnson’s bombing approach, while McGovern supported Robert Kennedy’s de-escalatio...