Jesus Land

Jesus Land by Julia Scheeres was originally published in 2005. My paperback copy has 363 pages, including an interview with Scheeres. Julia Scheeres has a website that you can visit for more information. Jesus Land is about Julia growing up in her Calvinist Christian family in Indiana in the 70s and 80s, and about the relationship she had with her adopted African-American brother, David. They were the two youngest children in the family. The first part of the memoir discusses Julia and David's experiences in an abusive home, and the second part their stay at Escuela Caribe, a Christian reform school in the Dominican Republic. This is a painful, disturbing, engrossing, and deeply troubling memoir. I don't even know where to begin. I'm feeling heart broken and out of sorts after reading her memoir because the Christians Julia and David Scheeres encountered in their childhood weren't really Christians. For those of you who don't want to read some of my thoughts about Scheeres' book, let me tell you it is recommended, but with a caution that it is disturbing.

I'm about ten years older than the Scheeres, grew up in the Midwest (although not in Indiana), and I don't remember any of the blatant racism David experienced. However, part of my childhood was spent in cities, part in small towns. I remember African-American teachers in my schools and not giving it a second thought - they were Mr. or Mrs._____ and that's it. Since I hated moving to a small town, basically for my high school years, I understand the weirdness of a small town versus a city and the difficulty moving to a rural community. Small towns can be rather ingrown and inbreed. But, it would be a horrible mistake to label all Midwesterners who are Christians with the broad brush of "fanatic-Christian-racists". We aren't. Some are, but not all of us. While the Scheeres household was fanatic, it was also abusive with indifferent and violent parents. I really think even Scheeres herself (from reading her interview in my copy of Jesus Land) would encourage readers to not hate all Christians. I actually prefer the UK release title, Another Hour on Sunday Morning, because Jesus had nothing to do with what happened to Julia and David Sheeres.

On the other hand, perhaps many people don't realize that they carry with them some racist attitudes. A comment on a blog recently had me pondering this. It was meant to be a throwaway silly comment about kids playing "cowboys and Indians." But see, there's the rub... We have good, dear friends who are Native Americans and live on the Rez. The whole kids playing "cowboys and Indians" comment would never come into my mind, let alone out of my mouth or put into words on a blog. Do I think the blog writer is racist? I don't know. Did I find the comment hurtful? Well... yes.

Also, from my memories, I think David certainly could have reported the abuse and would have been taken seriously in many places in the Midwest at that time. I was a young adult in the late 70's and early 80's and reports of child abuse were consequential by that time. I can't speak with any certainty about Lafayette, Indiana, but any reported abuse would have been taken quite seriously in many other small towns and communities in the Midwest. Edited to add that now I'm wondering if this memoir is slightly exaggerated, and part of the perceived racism was dealing with bullies.

Synopsis from cover:

Julia Scheeres and her adopted brother, David, are sixteen years old. Julia is white. David is black. It's the mid-1980s and their family has just moved to rural Indiana, a landscape of cottonwood trees and trailer parks, and an all-encompassing racism. At home are a distant mother - more involved with her church's missionaries than with her own children - and a violent father. In this riveting memoir Julia Scheeres takes us from the Midwest to a place beyond our imagining: surrounded by natural beauty, the Escuela Caribe - a religious reform school in the Dominican Republic - is characterized by a disciplinary regime that extracts repentance from its students by any means necessary. Julia and David strive to make it through these ordeals and their tale is relayed here with startling immediacy, extreme candor, and wry humor.

Quotes:

"It's just after three o'clock when we hit County Road 50. The temperature has swelled past ninety and the sun scorches our backs as we swerve our bikes around pools of bubbling tar." opening

"So much for the famous 'Hoosier hospitality.' When we moved to our new house, no one stopped by with strawberry rhubarb pie or warm wishes. Our neighbors must have taken one look at David and Jerome and locked their doors - and minds - against us." pg. 8

"Neither of us uttered a word about what happened. We never do. But I can't smudge it from my mind. The farm boys' sneering red faces. The runt shaking the fence. The brown lump of spit tobacco. The anguish in David's eyes. They don't know the first thing about us; they just hate us because we're black." pg. 13

"Mother's got romantic notions about toiling the land - or mostly, about her children toiling the land. And with fifteen acres, there's always something that needs toiling with." pg. 23

"Seems we can never just be brother and sister like in other families. Our whole lives, people have felt an urge to make up special names for what we are. at Lafayette Christian, we were the 'Oreo twins' or 'Kimberly and Arnold' after the characters on Diff'rent Strokes. And while those nicknames bugged us, they were certainly preferable to what they call us at Harrison." pg. 55

"As we paint each other's nails Cinnamon Vixen, I consider telling her how bad things are at home. After she and Dan and Laura left for college, everything got worse. Mother's mood swings, Dad's violence, the name-calling at school." pg. 70

Daughters of the North

Daughters of the North by Sarah Hall was originally published in 2007. My paperback copy has 207 pages. I wanted to read Daughters of the North because it was on the short list for the Booker and has received many good reviews. I can't say I enjoyed it as much as other reviewers. Daughters of the North is divided up into seven "files" rather than chapters. Basically, it is an interesting novel, but the conclusion was poorly handled, feels cut short, and left me feeling disgruntled. In the end, although it is a very intriguing story about a future dystopian society, I would recommend reading Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale as a better dystopian novel that handles some of the same societal issues. Recommended

Synopsis from cover:

In her stunning novel, Hall imagines a new dystopia set in the not-too-distant future. England is in a state of environmental crisis and economic collapse. There has been a census, and all citizens have been herded into urban centers. Reproduction has become a lottery, with contraceptive coils fitted to every female of childbearing age. A girl who will become known only as "Sister" escapes the confines of her repressive marriage to find an isolated group of women living as "un-officials" in Carhullan, a remote northern farm, where she must find out whether she has it in herself to become a rebel fighter. Provocative and timely, Daughters of the North poses questions about the lengths women will go to resist their oppressors, and under what circumstances might an ordinary person become a terrorist.

Quotes:

"My name is Sister.

This is the name that was given to me three years ago. It is what the others call me. It is what I call myself. Before that, my name was unimportant." opening

"For years I had not been out of Rith. No civilian had, unless they were being transported to a detention centre. The zones did not allow for transference. The original register bound people to their areas at the time of the collapse." pg.9

"Whatever you're doing, or think you are, you've got the wrong idea. I don't know. You better be careful of that lot, eh." pg. 17

"There were other choice words, no doubt, perched on his tongue, sitting behind his stubby decaying teeth, and I had heard them all before. Cult. Faction. Coven. I thought maybe he would spill his vitriol; reiterate all the worst rumors about Carhullan from the time before, when there was a media to be curious and to condemn the place." pg. 19

"back then he had seemed unafraid, undaunted by the gravity of approaching disaster, even when the market crashed, businesses began to go bust, and jobs were lost, even as the country began to stagger towards collapse." pg. 25

"The awful truth was upon us; things were breaking down, completely, irreparably; all the freedoms we had known were being revoked, and nothing could be done to stop it." pg. 26

The Experiment

The Experiment by John Darnton was originally published in 1999. My hardcover copy has 422 pages. Darnton is a skilled writer, which I'm sure helped facilitate my enjoyment of The Experiment even though the main storyline held no real surprises. There were a few plot twists and more than enough character development to hold my attention. Darnton provided enough information interspersed with action to make this a highly recommended novel. I will be looking for more of Darnton's novels. Highly Recommended

Synopsis from cover

New York, at century's end; A mutilated body has been found, its face and fingerprints removed, a coin-sized circle carved into its upper thigh. On a remote island off the Southeast coast, a young man is running from a place he cannot survive, toward a world he cannot comprehend. And in the echoing canyons of Manhattan, another young man - a journalist - is moving closer to the truth about his own past, and to an encounter that will alter everything he has ever believed about himself.

For thirty years a colony with its own laws, values, and complex living systems has been growing. Covertly supplied with the latest technology and DNA materials, its leaders carefully monitor their human trials and conceal the inhabitants from the outside world. Now someone has escaped. When Jude finds him cowering in the shadows of his apartment hallway, he will understand why this ragged stranger who calls himself Skyler is so frightened.

They share the same face.

Now Jude and Skyler are running together - bound by a new, secret science - hunted by unknown pursuers as they search for the mystery of their birth. Aided by a doctor with her own dangerous secret, they flee across the country, drawing nearer to a conspiracy at the very heart of America's power structure...survivors of an experiment that has gone tragically, irreversibly wrong.

Quotes:

"Skyler and Julia crept to the basement door of the Big House and looked around to make sure they weren't being watched." opening sentence

""They had no plan, really, other than to break into the Records Room and search for clues to explain what had happened to Patrick." pg. 1

"The chest was gone. In it's place was a cavity, sliced open, neat as a gutted fish." pg. 4

" 'Patrick's not the first to die.... and he's not the first to be called in for a special physical. Why don't they ever discover something during the regular physical?'

'I don't know. Sometimes they do.'

'But not always. And that makes it seem like they know something's wrong beforehand - don't you see?' " pg. 5

"Jimminies, the children were called, though where the word came from or what it signified, they were never told. They were all about the same age, a year or two different, no more. So they were especially close.

Growing up in the Lab, they felt secure and content. Neither Skyler nor any of the others had ever really questioned not having parents, even though they knew that children on the mainland - 'the other side,' it was called - possessed them." pg. 6

" 'He stuck a knife in at an angle and spun it in a circle, like extracting an oyster.'

Jude wished he would dispense with the culinary metaphors.

'Maybe there was a birthmark there, or a scar, or some identifying feature.' " pg. 39

Flood!

After we experienced the real thing, our favorite childhood sandbox game became Flood! Usually this game was played with my older brother, El Dictator or ED, but sometimes my sister, the High Powered Executive or Hipee, joined the fun. Our parents disliked Flood! and often banned it for limited periods of time, but we still managed to sneak in a game or promised we would just have a limited Flood! rather than a Total Apocalyptic Deluge. See the problem our parents had with Flood! was not so much that we were playing it as much as the fact that the sandbox was right next to the house and if we got carried away water would run into the basement.

Flood! was a rather time consuming game. First we had to build a landscape with dams, canyons, mountains, roads, and a city out of sand. This could take hours. We populated our city with Matchbox cars. Once we had the entire sandbox fashioned into some heavily populated area, we turned on the water and slowly introduced the means of their devastation, the hose. ED, naturally, was in charge of the hose. I got to make up a story to go with the natural disaster and help various groups to escape in their Matchbox cars. Not everyone made it out alive.

After the water destroyed everything we faced our time of reckoning. We could stop, and thus complete a limited game of Flood! which would be pleasing to our parents and ensure that we could play a future game of Flood! much sooner. Or we could take the road of perdition and make Flood! into the huge natural disaster that we wanted it to be. This required running the water until the whole sandbox was flooded and water was running out into the yard. Matchbox car would be floating away or buried in the sand. Our mother would notice the water had been running for an awfully long time and she’d start yelling at us to, “turn off the water” and asking, “did we want to flood the basement?” and mentioning that we should, “just wait until your father got home.” Choices….choices….

It is with great trepidation that I admit we usually chose wrong. I blame ED.

Reaper

Reaper by Ben Mezrich was originally published in 1998. My hardcover copy has 342 pages. The premise, that a biological virus is about to be spread through TVs or computers has been tackled before - and with better results. Although there were a few exciting moments, all in all the characters were under developed and the plot implausible and full of holes. If this premise had been tackled by a better writer and the plot and characters fully developed and details researched, it would have been much better.
A so-so book - don't bother.

Synopsis from the cover:

In Boston, nine lawyers on a conference call suddenly convulse with pain, turn chalk white, and die. In Vermont, a young woman watching her favorite sitcom meets the same grisly fate, as does a group of sewer workers in Washington, D.C. Whatever has killed these people is spreading fast, and the task of eradicating it falls to young virologist Samantha Craig and paramedic Nick Barnes, whose brilliant surgical career was ruined by a crippling hand injury.

When Nick and Samantha discover that the virus, named Reaper, is spread through TVs and PCs, they realize that the information superhighway will become a killing field, with tens of millions dead, unless they can root Reaper out. Their search employs a dazzling array of real-life wizardry, from Mylar body paint to Stealth helicopters to CIA-bred swarms of insects. At the core of Reaper's madness, they find a suavely megalomaniacal, up-from-the-slums, high-tech billionaire; an icily ingenious hacker; and a high-powered cabal that will do anything to save the world from technology, even if that means annihilating the world.

Quotes:

"Mitch shifted his eyes back toward the television screen. The blue light started flickering; and moment Client 297 would appear. The anticipation was intense, and Mitch noticed that his heart was really racing. He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself - and felt a sudden, tearing pain under his rib cage." pg. 3

"Pulse jockeys. That was what they called themselves: the hard-core paramedics, the EMTs, the emergency specialists who lived for the adrenaline, the vein-popping surge they got when the pavement was flashing by and the sirens were screaming in their ears." pg. 14

"He moved his gaze from chair to chair, corpse to corpse. They were all the same. Ivory-white skin. Bulging eyes. Contorted spines. Jaw-clenched grimaces." pg. 24

"As you know, if we are talking about a virus, there could be a dormant form, mutations - with viruses, anything could happen. But there is no evidence that this is viral. It could have been some sort of chemical contamination, or perhaps bacteriological." pg. 32

Killer Tricycle

That was the name of the game. We called it a game, but it was really a death match played with my older brother, El Dictator, and my younger sister, High Powered Executive. (Let’s shorten that to ED and Hipee.) This was during our bottle collecting days. Let me try to explain how Killer Tricycle was played.

Killer tricycle requires a closed arena atmosphere. If an arena is not available, you can use a large basement area with either cement or hard surface floors. You need, naturally, a tricycle, along with boxes or various kinds of obstacles that contestants/runners can jump up on for a safe area in the arena. We were lucky in this regard, as our family tended to move frequently with our dad’s job, so we had plenty of filled boxes stored down in a large unfinished basement area that we could use. The boxes are set up as islands, so to speak, all over the room. Between the boxes there is enough room for the tricycle to easily maneuver and for the runners to run away from the tricycle.

Once the course is made, the game is simple: run and jump out of the way of the tricycle, powered by ED, or die. ED was always the killer tricycle driver. I think he really wanted to eliminate us, but societal rules and the fear of parental retribution stayed his hand. However, if he could take his aggression combined with disgust at having younger sisters and channel it into a game, then it was more acceptable. This necessitated the birth of Killer Tricycle and it was played with abandon… frequently.

Now ED was always a big boy, and I mean big as in tall, not fat, and he was strong. If this brings to mind the picture of a tall kid trying to pedal a little tricycle, think again. ED used the tricycle simply as a scooter. He had one leg on the tricycle and one leg for power. ED could make that baby fly, from 3 wheels to two on corners, as he zoomed around the boxes trying to chase down, run over, and maim Hipee and me. Our part in Killer Tricycle was to run away from him and jump up on the boxes to get out of his way. And we had to be able to move. If we couldn’t run and jump out of his way, he would crash into us. Frequently he crashed into the boxes we jumped up on to escape him.

I don’t remember ever being hit by ED and the tricycle. I vaguely remember some crying and tears from Hipee on at least one occasion. Hipee could yell. (She had some lungs on her. Still does.) I do wonder now why we were allowed to play this game. I have a feeling that our parents didn’t really know exactly what Killer Tricycle entailed. We probably said that we just ran around in the maze of boxes and jumped on them to stay away from ED on the tricycle. All true, but it doesn’t quite describe the reality of the frantic game called Killer Tricycle.

Praise the Human Season

Praise the Human Season by Don Robertson was originally published in 1974 by Arthur Fields Books. My hardcover copy has 495 pages. Praise the Human Season is no longer in print and because of this the world is missing a truly great novel. Hopefully interested readers will be able to find a copy in their libraries (assuming that the library copies have been checked out enough that they have kept them). Robertson is the author of The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread. The good news is that some of Robertson's books are being reprinted or due out this summer. I will be able to continue the adventures of Morris Bird III in The Sum and Total of Now, due out Aug. 4, 2009, and The Greatest Thing That Almost Happened, due out Sept. 1, 2009.

Praise the Human Season is a love story of a life time between Howard and Anne Amberson. Knowing that they are both nearing the end of their lives, Howard Amberson decides they need to take a road trip with no destination in mind. At the same time Howard is secretly writing down his memories and recording past incidents in their lives. Not only is this a touching, heart breaking novel, it is also very humorous. The story of their adventure is interspersed with Howard's written memories from the past.

Very Highly Recommended- one of the best

Synopsis from the cover:

If ever there was a human book, this is it. A shining tribute to the human spirit, this is the delightful story of Howard and Anne Amberson, who in their seventies decide to take off, footloose and fancy-free on an aimless auto trip to find "the meaning of the apparatus."

Off they go on a rollicking, heart tugging, inevitably overwhelming voyage of self discovery. By day the Ambersons drive through the fall Ohio countryside. At night, when Anne is asleep, Howard, a retired English teacher and track coach, secretly scribbles in a ledger, re-creating in his precise hand past lives, past loves, a vast panorama of departed family and friends, After all, the Ambersons have lived a total of 146 years and the names on tombstones reel endlessly through their travels. But far from being lugubrious, Don Robertson's novel is an exultant celebration of the joys of life, the quirkiness of married love. It is a very funny novel.

As Howard peers nearsightedly over the wheel, he and Anne reminisce about their long life together and bravely discuss their fear of death, until Howard concludes that next to their love for each other, what does the apparatus matter?Don Robertson has written an transcendent love story of two people in the autumn of their lives, a hymn of praise to the human season.

Quotes:

"In the spring of 1971, when it became apparent to Howard W. Amberson that neither he nor his wife had much time remaining, he walked to Woolworth's and purchased a large ledger, bound in red and gray. He also purchased a dozen of those throwaway Japanese felt pens. He returned home, seated himself at the kitchen table and began to write....Amberson worked on the ledger in secret, usually late at night after his wife had fallen asleep." opening sentences

"The ledger... or journal... became obsessive with Amberson. It gave him enormous pain, but he kept at it. By the autumn of 1971, he had written several hundred pages, and his obsession led to another obsession that was even less reasonable. He decided it was imperative that he take his wife on a motor trip. He was seventyfour, and his wife (her name was Anne) was seventytwo, and she carried a large scar where her right breast should have been." pg. 4

"Amberson managed a sort of smile. 'I have been working at the idea for some months now,' he said. 'There is an apparatus we do not understand, and Anne and I have the right to investigate it. We are not stupid, and perhaps we shall discover something.'

'Howard, you are talking absolute crap.'

'I am talking nothing of the sort. I have given it all a great deal of thought.'

'You'll take her away from her home when she is dying, when you are dying?' " pg. 6

" A movie camera will enable me to photograph changing leaves," said Amberson. "And relics in museums. And sunsets. And Indians weaving rugs. And then I'll splice all the film together and give illustrated lectures in church basements. I'll call them 'Footloose with the Ambersons.' " pg. 7

"There was rancor in our family (there is rancor in all families, even the happy ones, and never mind what Tolstoy says), but most of the time it was successfully suppressed. We believed that existence was hard enough, which meant we believed that it was foolish to bring troublous things into the open." pg. 10

"We weren't lazy, were we? We worked hard. We had energy. Why then does it come down now to all this silence? How can a person live most of his life one way, with the energy and all, and then end it another way, with all the pooping around, with all the groaning and all the complaining and all the scars and all the pain? Where's the mercy in it? How come it isn't neat? Sometimes I can taste the silence. It is like dust. I kiss the old pictures, and then I close my eyes, and then I see the boys, and I...well, I...just..." pg. 41

"See it this way, Amberson: Acknowledge yourself to be an honest man but at the same time moderate and thoughtful and not afraid of sentiment, not afraid to embrace it here near the end of your life as your days leak away." pg. 69

" 'I won't ever see this place again, will I?'

They were standing in the front hall, and Amberson had been about to open the door. He turned and said: 'That's not so. We're just going on a little trip.

'I knew that was what you would say.' " pg. 74