Lulu
Copyright © 2008
ISBN 978-0-6151-9772-2

After I had finished reviewing I Miss Your Purple Hair (Review 136), Robert Chandler offered to send me Minus the Imple. He warned me that Minus was a different book entirely, less fiction and more fictionalized auto-biography. As soon as I started reading though, I was hooked just as I had been with Purple Hair. Chandler’s writing is just compelling to me, it ebbs and flows with a calculated stream-of-consciousness feel.

As we join Bobby or Robby or Robert, he is in a mental ward doing a very poor job of killing himself. So poor, in fact, that he lives and has to come to terms with what brought him to this point. Turns out, he has always been different and it bugs him to no end. Whereas most of us are only dimly aware of our aura, his has a mind of its own and likes to pop out for a visit during times of stress. His aura even merits its own name… Minus. Minus is an Imple, as auras tend to be. Here Chandler describes a sighting of Minus, one of the few times that he really gets to see the little guy:

The second time I saw Minus was the day after Christmas. It’s still nearly impossible to accurately describe him, all these years later. I woke up in the middle of the night again, and my little TV set was still on. It was so late that all that was on was static. I sat up on the side of the bed and leaned to turn the TV set off, when I saw him out of the corner of my eye. My arm was just frozen in place, barely touching the on/off knob. I couldn’t move a muscle. First I thought I was seeing things, so I blinked my eyes very quickly and then I realized it was real. There, at the foot of my bed, was a blue glow of a pleasant hue I had never seen before, just hovering in mid-air.

While Minus is the title character, he’s a relatively minor character in the book. He stops in once in awhile to keep things interesting, but most of the time Robert struggles to keep him hidden so he’s not seen as the weirdo. The rest of the time, we follow him from a young boy through adolescence and then into his adult years. We watch as he struggles to define Minus and even to look for help from the medical community which, as it turns out, isn’t quite ready to admit the existence of imples. We are brought along as he is blessed with a daughter, Violet, who goes on to feature prominently in Purple Hair. We continue on through heartbreak, lost jobs, lost desire to live, and on down into the darkest depths of the human psyche.

90% of Minus is a descent. With the opening scene setting the tone, we are shown what it takes to bring a man to this point. If I had any complaints with the book, it is that the 10% that deals with the ‘back up’ part of life speeds by in the last two chapters. We get heavily invested in the main characters’ struggles and, naturally, would love to experience the ups with him as well. Unfortunately, we don’t really get to, we hear about them, but we don’t get to celebrate them.

Do yourself a favor and climb aboard the Robert Chandler express. I’m convinced that it won’t be long before he is a household name and the author of many mind-expanding books. You won’t believe every word of this book but it will leave you with enough ‘what-if’ moments to make it seem very plausible indeed.

Preview Minus the Imple

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There’s good confused, and there’s bad confused. As I read John C. Stipa’s No Greater Sacrifice, I was good confused. If you’ve read any of the Dan Brown novels you know the confused I’m talked about, where the characters leap to the right conclusion time and again when presented with sketchy puzzles while you’re left in the dust.

It helps that our heroes are super-hot Renee D’Arcadia, an archeologist running from her leukemia diagnosis and David Arturo, ex-special forces history professor running from his past. They’re good at these puzzles where I would still be trying to figure out the first one. When they are summoned to France for the reading of a will, they are given the first few pieces and thrust into a circle of ne’er-do-wells who, as fate and plot development would have it, are trying to give them just enough rope to hang themselves.

As we learn more about our protagonists, we discover that they have met before and the meetings were not necessarily good ones. This time, however, romance blossoms as they must lean on each other to solve the puzzles and find the next clue. A small but strong supporting cast gives them assistance in sorting through the centuries-old mystery. We are dragged along into under-ground caverns, crypts, and cathedrals as the pieces slowly start to fall in place.

Stipa’s dialogue is crisp and the pacing of the novel is unrelenting. It bogs slightly as the heroes gather to work through most of the ‘thinky’ parts of the puzzle, then speeds off again once we’re given enough pseudo-history to explain why they’re getting shot at, stabbed, and chased. While the action parts are fast paced and well described, the characters also dive into their emotions and motivations with dialogue such as this:

David rocked back and rested on his heels. “People are raised thinking relationships require a certain level of deception, as if it’s some sort of psychological game. And they think it’s normal! We learn the ploys and tricks as early as middle school. Girls play hard to get, boys tease them instead of showing emotion. I never got it. I wasn’t smart enough to keep up with a lie. It was easier to be truthful.”

This slow building of sexual tension between Renee and David doesn’t detract from the story. When a misunderstanding temporarily divides them, they (and we) quickly realize that they are much better together as a team. Still, the hook of this book is the action and that is where Stipa’s writing shines. As the heroes close in on their final objective they are being pursued by a killer and we get this description as he climbs across a rope with bleeding hands in chase:

Dropping to the ground, he braved a glimpse at the ragged peels of skin and shredded rope mixed with dirt and blood. He dabbed the seeping mess against his trousers. Pulling out his pistol, he stole into the chamber and hid below one of the outer stones. The man and woman were talking, something about a Telesterion. He closed his eyes and said a silent prayer. ‘For the Lord has sent his angel to show his servants what must soon take place.’ Like fog creeping in a cemetery, he moved to the inner circle.

Technically, the book was a treat. Well edited with great cover art and some helpful illustrations inside (I would have loved to have even more), it feels like a polished and finished piece. More importantly, I enjoyed the writing and the story of No Greater Sacrifice. Even if most of the history and puzzles left me confused, it was a good confused. The good guys solve the puzzle, prevail over the bad guys, and find each other in the process. In the end, that’s what a good romantic thriller is all about.

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The Curable Romantic
Katharine Miller
ISBN 978-0-557-06535-6
KLM Design
Copyright 2009
100 Pages
Paperback
$17.50

The Curable Romantic is an amusing and insightful look at relationships and the people silly enough to have them. It’s harder to write humor than just about any other genre. Humor has to connect to an absurdity that other people can relate to and find a common ground. Luckily human relationships are imbued with enough silliness that poking fun of them usually strikes a chord.

In her book, Katharine Miller does a great job of not only writing funny essays, but also illustrating them with clever pictures. Her essays reminded me of the insightful humor of Erma Bombeck and I found myself turning the page to see what the next illustration would be.

The book started life as a series of articles and blog posts that Miller penned over the years, starting in her High School days. Loosely assembled as a “How To” book for navigating the rapids of dating and mating, the book also contains lists such as ‘topics to avoid on the first date’ (quantum physics, your sister’s failing marriage) and a guide to pet names (good – tiger, bad – dodo, questionable – platypus).

Throughout the book is an undercurrent of cynicism as seen in this introductory paragraph to considerations about moving in together:

After an unspecified amount of time – and countless walks of shame – you’ve finally decided to try living together. But cohabitation is more than being able to tolerate his morning breath and no longer needing to slather on a face full of makeup before dawn. There are things to consider before loading up the moving truck.

Most of the articles are written from the perspective of a female who is dating a man. Although Miller says right up front that she isn’t a professional therapist or psychologist, she does offer up nuggets of common-sense wisdom. Here, she gives advice about how to get to the second date:

Keep the conversation current and relevant. Don’t delve too much into your past and do not discuss previous relationships. It is common to have a first date with someone following a breakup, but your new beau doesn’t need to hear all the gory details of the old one. He does need to hear how his shirt complements his eye color.

Practical snippets of advice, humorous observations of the human condition, and clever illustrations combine to make The Curable Romantic a quick but enjoyable read. I recommend it for anyone who is in a relationship or may be at some point. In other words, just about all of us.

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I Miss Your Purple Hair

I Miss Your Purple Hair is a good book and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I’ve read 100 page books that felt like they’d never end, but this was a 300+ page book that was over before I knew it. I became invested in the characters and was genuinely curious how they would overcome their dilemma.

As dilemmas go, this is a big one. As our heroes and heroines visit the zoo one day, the world ends. Earthquakes and Tsunamis wipe out most of the coastal regions of the earth and 3/4s of the earth’s population is wiped out. Instead of taking a holistic view of the carnage and destruction, Chandler gives us a snapshot of 14 individuals caught in an undamaged valley surrounded by newly formed mountains, volcanoes, and more than a few newly released zoo animals. When the bottled water and animal crackers give out, it becomes obvious that no one is coming looking for them.

So what would you do? I can almost guarantee that you wouldn’t handle it as calmly as these folks. They pitch in, take each setback as it comes, and … well, you’ll have to read the book to find out the ‘and’. There is an undercurrent of new age philosophy that pervades this book, but it’s not overdone. The main characters are Mateo and his 15 year old daughter Veronica, or Violet as she is also known. As we meet more individuals, we have to piece together how they all fit. All is eventually revealed.

Better than the story is the story telling. Chandler’s writing is fluid, smart, and literate. In this short paragraph, a character named Mia leads a group to explore their surroundings:

They moved on, with Mia in the lead. The stainless steel walking stick she employed had been acquired from the wreckage of the snack bar. A distasteful hint of sulphur merged with the pleasant aroma of indigenous foliage to create a unique scent. It had become oddly familiar, this mixture of perfume and poison, stinging the sensitive tissue around their eyes, noses and mouths and irritating their throats. It laced the breeze that snuck in from the northwest, passed over the rocky barriers that formed the perimeter, and then swooped down across the basin they traversed.

I had several pages earmarked to share with you because this phrase or that turn of a word amused or delighted me. This description of aftershocks begins chapter eighteen:

The tremors arrived unannounced, and like a band of oafish trespassers, rudely left chaos in their wake. Obscured behind the sound of the rolling thunder, they caught the huddled survivors off guard, sending them reeling across the concrete floor. While they were flung about the room, the tremors did what they were designed to do. Succinct and purposeful, the seismic waves reshaped the geography, continuing the work initiated by the earlier quakes.

The mechanics of this book are excellent. Often self published books feel raw or a little rough around the edges. This one isn’t like that. Each chapter starts with a quote, be it from Jung or Ayn Rand or Albert Schweitzer. Unlike some books where these quotes feel like an afterthought or distraction, I found myself reading them for hints about the upcoming chapter. The cover looks professional, the editing is impeccable, and even the business cards Chandler stuck in with my copy were well done.

At $17, this book also points out the down side of self publishing. The more pages, the more cost. To produce a substantial work of fiction and to make a couple of dollars from your hard work, the price is high. Still, I Miss Your Purple Hair is worth the price of admission, and I look forward to reading more books from Robert Chandler.

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It took me awhile to warm up to This Night Wounds Time. Shawn Sutherland takes a look into the disappearances of two Texas teens on a night in 1988 in this very personal book. Sutherland attended the same High School a few years prior and had met one of the girls in passing shortly before their abduction. It took 20 years for the posters that blanketed the town of Carrollton Texas to spur him to action.

Unlike many books I’ve read, this wasn’t a vanity project or even done to make a profit. Sutherland is selling this book at cost simply to publicize the case and, hopefully, to re-energize the investigation. To me, this is a great use of self publishing. While he doesn’t turn up any new leads or solve the case, he does make a compelling case that perhaps not enough has been done to solve it.

As a bit of a synopsis, the case is still open as a missing persons case because the bodies of Stacie Madison and Susan Smalley have never been found. While they were well known and popular, they seemed to simply disappear into thin air on that fateful March night. Stacie’s Ford Mustang was found locked in the parking lot of a popular hangout and there was no sign of foul play. Their movements that night are hard to document and full of holes. Were they abducted by a scorned boyfriend and his brother? Did they meet up with some friends from Dallas? Or was it something else entirely? The problem remains simply that no one knows. Or more accurately, someone knows but isn’t saying.

The book is extremely well researched. Sutherland talked to virtually everyone associated with the case that would talk to him. This included parents, friends, police detectives, and even the most likely suspect, the ex-boyfriend of one of the girls. The book is liberally interspersed with pictures of the town, the girls, the car, and anything else that helps to illustrate what is being discussed. All references are painstakingly referenced.

So, if it’s such a noble cause and a well researched book, why was I slow to warm up to it? The formatting was a little distracting. Every few paragraphs gets its own subheading. The footnotes also get repetitive. There is not only a Preface, but also a three page list of acknowledgments and even an explanation of the Title (words on a King Crimson album cover) before the book gets going. As the book comes to an end, it has three chapters that could potentially be considered a conclusion. And in the middle is the somewhat formal, fact-based writing that is clearly Shawn’s writing style in his ‘day job’ in a legal field. This excerpt is pretty typical:

Accordingly, we must presume Stacie and Susan parked their car at the intersection of Webbs Chapel Road and Forest Lane in order to accept a ride from someone they knew to one degree or another.
In any event, based on the above assertions, the presumption can only be that the girls entered a vehicle owned by someone they knew. More than likely, they knew the driver of this car very well.

Once I got past these little quirks and indulgences, the story really was gripping and every parents’ worst nightmare. I can only imagine how my life would change if my teen were to go missing, with no explanation and no closure. Sutherland does take the time to detail the aftermath including how the families have dealt with it.

When everything was said and done, I was glad I had read the book and that Shawn Sutherland had written it. I got past my hang-ups with formatting and got drawn into the narrative. By the end, I was truly invested in the case and Sutherland had done his job. Even if you’re not a fan of true crime, you’ll find yourself trying to figure out ‘who done it.’

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I’ll admit it, the frenzy over the 2012 movie convinced me to check out this book. For those of you who have been living under a rock, the year in question was predicted by one of the Mayan calendars to be the last year. According to alarmists, sometime in December of that year, something is going to happen. It may be solar radiation or an asteroid or fire ants and kudzu, but SOMETHING bad is supposed to happen. In 2012: The Last Entries, we follow the last agonizing months of 6 people through their journal entries.

Damon Wakefield is the first character we meet, and the one best prepared for the end of everything. He is a survivalist living in a bunker that he’s constructed in the Northwest. Christine Ashworth is a spoiled college-aged socialite from New York, convinced that her money will protect her from whatever is heading her way. Judith Garbe is an Oklahoma newspaper columnist who loses her job and pines for her children. Joyce Carter finds herself living on the streets in California after losing her job as well. The Reverend Robert Miller is from Atlanta, and his thriving TV ministry is his love in life. Finally, Zoey Ragan is a Nebraska farm wife who is forced into seclusion by the government when her husband contracts smallpox.

Here is a sample from Joyce Carter’s journal:

I knew this was going to happen. My Mother would have called in a “premonition”. Whatever it’s called, I knew I was going to be laid off from my job. I don’t believe it’s anything supernatural or that I psychic abilities at all, the factory I worked in was going under, and so many people had already been laid off. Sooner or later, I knew my turn would come, and it finally did. There is no help for the working people…

The end of the world in this book is an apocalypse of biblical proportions. Plagues, swarms of locusts, meteor strikes, earthquakes, and the accelerating deterioration of civilization are seen through the eyes of these characters, chosen because they are close to the ‘action.’ Month by month, each character logs a journal entry telling us what is happening around them. I honestly found many of the entries to be chilling, because the fabric between civilization and anarchy isn’t as thick as many of us think.

The book is very readable however I kept waiting for the stories to converge, somehow tying them together but they don’t. They are distinct threads that you have to follow from month to month. Some of the characters are pretty self absorbed, others more believable and sympathetic. The book is short so it’s a very quick read. What happens when the last sand spills from the hourglass is left up to our imagination, but the run-up to the end is a prophecy that I very much hope never comes to pass.

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Stubbs and Bernadette

Stubbs and Bernadette
Levi Montgomery
CreateSpace (September 2009)
ISBN 9781448680573
202 Page
$12.95 paperback

I dare you not to like Stubbs and Bernadette by Levi Montgomery.  Double dog dare you!  This book made me late for work on more than once, its that hard to put down.  There is something so compelling and sweet about the way that Montgomery describes Bernadette, you just want to shield her from the world.  Bernadette in this case is Bernadette Elsbeth McIntyre and the name is bigger than the girl that wears it.  She is described as a waif, an elf, a sixteen-year-old in a twelve-year-old’s body and you’ll be able to immediately picture her.  There was always someone in everyone’s High School that resembles her.  She is the artsy girl, the one that doesn’t dress just right, the one that never quite fit in.

Tyler Stubbs doesn’t have a chance.  By completely ignoring him, she enchants him as none of the more ‘available’ girls in school can.  From the first glimpse of her painting her toenails before class, he’s hooked.  As the new kid, he’s supposed to be more worried about fitting in with the popular kids, or the jocks, or some other group that is socially acceptable.  Instead he finds himself attracted to the misfit.  She’s attracted to him too, but so socially awkward that it takes half the book before she even really admits it, to herself or to us.

The conflict in this book is Bernadette herself.  She has a condition or a syndrome or something that’s never fully defined but it’s a big one.  She has very little impulse control and it comes out in inappropriate ways.  This scene is typical of several in the book, as Bernadette takes it on herself to dress the naked watermelons she and Stubbs encounter in a store:

“Amid the shouts and laughter and confusion, the grocer comes running.  Tyler can’t really tell what the grocer’s saying.  There’s a bit of a language barrier, and he’s pretty upset, but he can tell he wants her to leave! Now! Go! Get! Shoo!  She isn’t paying any attention to him, just wrapping melons methodically, sticking her tongue out the tiny little concentrating bit.  He’s beginning to fear they’ll call the police or something, so he goes to her, shakes her elbow, gets her attention…

This may be the first time Stubbs has to shake her out of this reverie, but it won’t be the last, and eventually it becomes too much.  As much as he loves her, he can’t save her from herself.  Ever had a friend like that?  A lover?  It’s frustrating, and this book will resonate with you.  You’ll find yourself agonizing along with Tyler Stubbs as he tries to figure out what to heck to do about his weirdo girlfriend.

The problem with Bernadette, and really with many of us, is that she doesn’t think she has a problem until it’s finally pointed out to her.  She’s convinced that the rest of the world is wrong and she’s the only one that gets it.  Even when her impulse control almost kills someone, she doesn’t own it, it owns her.  Stubbs finally has to sacrifice their relationship to save the girl he loves, and only then does it sink in to Bernadette that she needs to change.

How she changes and what happens next will just have to wait until you read this book, because you really owe it to yourself to give it a read.  All of Levi Montgomery’s books are good, really good, but this one is my favorite so far.  There is something about the characters that is compelling, and his writing is always fresh and hard to put down.  My
only lament about this book is that it ended too soon.  I really was left wanting more.

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Cursing the Cougar is two books in one.  Which book you like says a lot about you as a reader.  The first book is a lushly written coming-of age story that crests and falls on the emotions of the characters.  This is the kind of book they don’t write anymore but should, Jane Eyre in blue jeans holding a torque wrench.  The second book-within-a-book is a taut psychological thriller complete with deranged bad-guy and brief glimpses into a warped mind.  While it would be easy to dismiss Cursing the Cougar as lacking in direction, it’s actually in the intersection of these two tales that we realize that life is LIKE that, sometimes evil visits our slowly simmering lives and turns up the heat.

In Cougar, Levi Montgomery introduces us to Tug and his teenage daughter Morgan.  Tug drives a tow truck, but there is much more that lurks below his surface.  Since his wife died (as far as Morgan knows), he has been raising her himself.  Sometimes it’s easy, but now that the teenage years are upon them it’s more… not.  Morgan tries to unravel the mystery of boys while Tug tries to unravel the mystery of teenagers.  Montgomery gives us a glimpse into the world of teens with this lunch room description:

Morgan sits in the lunch room listening to the gabble.  Lauren sits across from her with her latest acquisition, a skinny red-headed boy named Clay.  Or Clayton, maybe.  She didn’t pay that much attention.  He’ll be gone next week.  Next to Lauren is Megan, permanently attached to Guy.  They got themselves surgically joined at the age of fourteen.  Why can’t she find one like that?  Guy’s the perfect other half of Megan, filling in around her like water fills in around rocks.

The neighbor boy is Hector.  I picture him as Carrot-top, gangly and unattractive unless you like gangly.  We know early on that Hector and Morgan are on a collision course with their feelings about each other so I’m not giving away that much by telling you.  They spend a lot of the story pretending they aren’t.  I guarantee you’ll be like me and end up yelling “kiss her already!” at Hector.  And he deserves it, man that kid is dense for a smart kid.

Oh, you’ll wonder what the title of the book means.  It’s about courage, I’ll give that much away.  Specifically, it’s about courage in the face of danger.  Oh, another hint, Tug and Morgan like to bow hunt.  I probably have given away too much, but it won’t detract from your enjoyment of the story to know that.  In fact, that’s one of the nice things about this book.  I could spend three pages telling you quirky little fun facts about the characters and you’d still find many more.  Every page seems to serve up a tasty little morsel to draw us further into the world of Tug and Morgan and Hector and… Annie.  Annie is Hector’s mom and might be Tug’s love interest.  Except she has a dark secret, someone from her past that haunts her present:

Even with the hard drives, the thing was way harder than it should have been.  They went through drive after drive, not finding anything.  He tried to resign himself to the fact that it had been a long shot to begin with, but he just couldn’t stand the thought of her getting away from him like that.  He wants to feel her throat crushing in his hands…

Now I KNOW Levi is going to be annoyed with me for giving away so much.  His carefully crafted prose doesn’t give it away, you have to earn it.  You have to learn and discover and grow with the characters.  I gave you a head start but it’s not going to do you much good, you’re still going to have to earn it.  Cursing the Cougar is well worth the entry fee, it’s just simply a good book.  Well, TWO good books really.  The nice thing is, it doesn’t matter which one you enjoy more because either way you win.

Also from Levi Montgomery is Other Loves which I have also reviewed.

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Lulu.com
Copyright © 2009
214 Pages
$13.95 Softcover
$ 7.99 E-book
ISBN 977-0-578-01334-3

I can guarantee you’ve never read anything like The Sophisticated Savage. Part scholarly essay, part interview, and part soul-baring diary, Carla Seidl weaves a tale that is hard to put down. What you will likely discover is that you end up finding out much more about Seidl than you do about the title character. Whether you end up empathizing with her or shaking your head, you will be right inside her head during a fascinating time in her life.

While studying at Harvard, Seidl decided to take a sabbatical to teach English on the Galapagos islands. I had to hand it to her right there, at 19 I was nowhere near that adventurous so it was fun to live vicariously through someone who is. Quickly she meets Fredy, a transplant from the jungles of Ecuador. She is struck by his self assurance and he spins her away into his world when he pulls her onto the dance floor.

Fredy is many things. To the locals, he is known as Billabong because of the shirts he wears. To the tourists, he is a surfing instructor that always knows where the best waves are to be found. To Seidl he is an enigma, she finds herself both attracted to and repulsed by him. He spends much of his time putting the moves on her, feeding her lines, and she spends much of the book trying to determine what is real and what is fabrication.

The most thoroughly researched claim made by Fredy is that his Huorani ancestors were cannibals and as a child, he had tasted human flesh. Here is an example of Seidl researching the likelihood of this boast:

For my own purposes, trying to find mention of cannibalism among the Huorani, my hands came up empty. Blanco Villalta, for instance, in his 1970 book on cannibal rites in the Americas, describes cannibalistic traditions observed in Brazil, for example, among the Tupinambaes, the Tupiguaranies, and the Guaranies, and in North America, among the Algonquin, Athapascos, and Aztecs, but does not share any information about cannibalism in the region of Ecuador.

Much like Fredy both fascinates Seidl and drives her a little crazy, her book did the same for me. I chose this quote because it sums up both the good (the thorough research and documentation) and the bad (too many commas). After awhile you forget about the commas and enjoy Seidl’s book for what it is, a glimpse into a world most of us will find quite foreign while seeing behavior that is quite familiar. Here is another excerpt that is more typical of what you will find in the book:

Meanwhile, Fredy asks me to lend him a dollar so he can take a taxi to his surf spot, and then after dinner says he is going to buy a tabaco. I stop. How, I say, do you have money for cigarettes if you don’t have any for food? He says he has diez centavos, and I say, with that you can buy an egg, some bread, or a banana. He laughs, as though what I am saying is strange or funny.

Seidl goes so far as to ask Fredy to take her to his jungle home, to meet his tribe and spend time with his family. While they do trek back to the mainland and end up somewhere, they get only as far as meeting a cousin and seeing the town where Fredy lived before coming to the Galapagos. Eventually his claims of living in the jungle as a savage cannibal, the son of the king of the tribe starts to unravel and we see him for what he most likely is, a bit of a scam artist and womanizer from humble roots. And yet there is enough truth to his story that Seidl, and by extension we, can’t rule anything out completely.

There is much more to this book and I encourage you to discover it for yourself. It’s a travelogue, a look into tribal Ecuador, and a coming of age story rolled into one. You probably knew people like Fredy from your own past, people who were so fascinating that you always thought you’d like to write a book about them. To Carla Seidl’s credit, she did exactly that. She shares her adventure with us as she goes from Harvard undergrad to world wanderer. On the way she matures and discovers both passion and loss. When it is all said and done, we are left to wonder if the Sophisticated Savage is Fredy, or Seidl herself.

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The King, Father, and Mother is reminiscent of Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons, not quite as good as the Davinci Code but still a compelling read. In Eric Rhodes’ book, we follow three men, separate in time but connected by an Irish hillside and a mysterious stone. The first is an ancient monk who inscribes the stone. The second is an injured knight who has risen through the ranks of the Hospitallers to lead the hospital ward in Ireland that contains the stone. The third is a modern-day stock broker, buffeted by the crash of the markets who has come to this place to find solace.

Most readers will find their common ground in Jonathon Silvernail, a commodities broker and head of a fledgling hedge fund. He is today, a man who had lost his way in the twists and turns of the stock market. His wife Christina is a yoga instructor, and together they delve deeper than the shallow, modern-day world. When a trade goes disastrously bad, Jonathon and Christina decide to go to Ireland to unwind. While they are there, they begin to trace the roots of mysterious symbols they find on a stone and are drawn into the worlds of the other two men.

The writing in this book is well constructed and moves along briskly. Descriptions such as this move us along with the characters:

Jonathon was up early once again, feeling compelled to go have another look at the ogham stone. It was as if the spirit of the Gnostic monk who carved the stone was calling him. If it was magic it must be incredibly powerful to work after nearly 1600 years, he thought.

From across the ages, the wisdom of Abba Ioannis is recorded on the ogham stone, and Jonathon’s obsession becomes deciphering what he finds there.

While most will find Jonathon to be the most approachable figure, the third man’s story is the most compelling in the book. Ian Sinclair becomes Christian Sinclair as he joins the order of the Hospitallers and is sent to the city of Acre to convert, and ultimately fight, the Muslims as part of the crusades. While he is there, he learns tolerance and, over time, appreciation for the Muslim religion, even finding commonalities in the beliefs and rituals. This tolerance for other religions is unusual during the crusades, but serves him well when he is sent to tend the hospital in Ireland. There he finds the rituals of the Druids and sets about to preserve their artifacts.

I enjoyed most when the book examines how the Christian faith has ‘borrowed’ from the religions is has absorbed. By looking at the world through the eyes of religious men of earlier times, we get to see how it has evolved. It is perhaps appropriate that the turmoil of the stock market requires the modern day character to forego the religion of money and go back to the basics.

In the end, Jonathon does decipher the ‘code’ of the stone and his newfound truth is simple but timeless, something from which all of us could benefit by taking it to heart. The King, Father and Mother would benefit from some rigorous editing and the ending was a bit abrupt, but it was enjoyable romp across the centuries and teaches as it entertains.

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