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262 pages

When I saw Minnie posted for review request, I knew I wanted to review it even before I read the preview. There was just something about it that appealed to me and drew me in. In fact, I put dibs on the book before I read the preview, and then realized I had better do my homework first and find out exactly what I was getting myself into. My instincts were spot on, because as I read the preview, I knew the protagonist for Minnie was my kind of character.

Sadey Leach has reached her senior year of high school, is barely scraping by in her classes, and her ability to graduate is in question because she has not completed the compulsory number of volunteer hours required during her high school career. Sadey is very Goth girl in her appearance, black hair, black clothes, heavy dark makeup, and has an irreverent and uncaring attitude she projects to the world. With an attitude as black as her appearance, and bouts of underage drinking and experimentation with pills, Sadey Leach appears to be on a self-destructive path with no redeeming features.

Minnie is a fluffy grandmotherly type of seventy-nine who resides at Forest Hills Convalescent Hospital and is confined to a wheelchair. Minnie is very lonely, as she does not frequently have visitors and has been praying that God will send her a friend to give her some company. On Sadey’s first volunteer day, she wheels Minnie, who says she feels like Queen Wilhelmina when someone pushes her chair, to the table for dinner.

     “This is Hell! This is Hell!” Sadey said behind clenched teeth as a resident’s fart entered her vicinity.
     “Please don’t say that.” Sadey glanced down at Queen Wilhelmina as she fought with a bib.
     “What?”
     Wilhelmina sat as straight as she could. “Young lady, God frowns upon swearing.”
     Sadey bent down close to the woman’s ear. “I’m not here to make friends. I’m here to work for twenty-four hours because I want to get out of this Hell-hole called Woodridge.” Sadey fastened her bib and moved on, rolling her eyes so hard she thought she damaged the nerves.
     Wilhelmina felt the intended sting by the girl’s words. Lord, when will You bless me with that friend? She knew that getting something as grand as a friend wouldn’t come easy and without complications like the girl with thick makeup masking her face like an oil change gone wrong.

As the character of Sadey develops, we find her public persona is simply a defense mechanism against the situations in her life. Saddled with an alcoholic mother who has an endless parade of men coming through the house, and the responsibility of caring for her three year old sister because her mother didn’t want the baby and refuses to care for her, Sadey is barely hanging on. All of her mother’s income goes to alcohol and cheap cigarettes, so Sadey finds odd jobs where she can to help provide food for herself and Cora. The closest thing to a mother-daughter relationship Sadey has experienced in her life, is when her mother left discarded magazines for Sadey to read. Relying on her neighbors, Mira and Darius Finn, to watch Cora while she volunteered at the nursing home alleviated one of the issues in Sadey’s complicated life.

After a few more visits at the Convalescent Center, Minnie invites Sadey to unburden herself to a willing listener when she’s ready, and shortly after Sadey takes her up on the offer. Through their growing relationship, Sadey learns that while Minnie looks the part of the archetypal grandmother, Minnie has had a hard past, yet has a sweet soul and a positive attitude toward life. Sadey becomes the friend Minnie had been praying for, and through Minnie’s influence, Sadey is changing not only her appearance, but her attitude and outlook on life.

Ashley Lane spins a tale which has all of the elements of a good story; love, loss, growth, relationships, hardship, drawing the reader in from page one. As I read Minnie I was reminded of the following quote:

A reader is not supposed to be aware that someone’s written the story. He’s supposed to be completely immersed, submerged in the environment. ~ Jack Vance

In a few broad strokes, Lane paints the picture of two souls who were meant to meet, and the impact they have on one another ripples out to their surroundings. Minnie espouses good Christian values without being preachy, and shows how overcoming bad circumstances is possible. It contains a message of hope and love which is uplifting. Even the cover, though simple, conveys a message to the reader. A sunny background, a wheelchair, and a butterfly, all add up to a message of hope and the circle of life. Ashley Lane delicately and deftly depicts characters at both ends of the spectrum, one entering adulthood, and one nearing the end. She captures the feelings of loneliness and invisibility which plague our aging population, and equally well portrays teenage angst at its height. The peripheral characters are also excellently portrayed and I feel like I know them; they could all live in my neighborhood. I laughed and cried, and the characters have stayed with me days after finishing the book, which is what we look for from a good read.

Preview Minnie by Ashley Lane

Today, I have remained neutral throughout most of my life when it comes to the topic of religion, but I grew up a Southern Baptist and carried a small hardcover Bible to Sunday School.  It had a cartoon picture on the cover of Jesus walking through a rocky valley while carrying a baby lamb.  Inside, there were a ton of other colorful illustrations that kept my young mind entertained when there was no chewing gum left in my mother’s purse or I’d grown tired of drawing stick figures of my own on the back of the church bulletin.

There was Adam and Eve in a pretty garden with a snake in an apple tree, and fig leaves winding out across the middle of the picture to strategically cover any private places. There was a glorious picture of a giant ark with hundreds of animals coming out of it; a dove and a rainbow in the sky.  An old man clung to a mountain top with two tablets in his hand beneath a dark sky full of lightening.  A mother and father in dirty clothes knelt next to a manger in a barn.  Cows and sheep lay in the background.  Colorful kings carrying shiny gifts were looking through the gate.  And in the makeshift crib lay an angelic baby on a bed of golden hay.  Angels filled the sky overhead and shepherds could be seen guiding their flocks in the distance.

The next photo was of that mother holding her child.  She wore a white and blue hood and gown; the cherub-like baby was wrapped in crisp white fabric.  Books later in the Bible, there was another picture of that same mother, a bit aged, standing in the front of a crowd along a street.  A single tear made its way down her cheek. Her mature son was being paraded down the street, half naked.  His back had been whipped and was bleeding. A crown of thorns was wrapped tightly around his head.

These are images that any of us, religious or not, have seen somewhere before.  They’re used throughout religious history and teachings, and you could say Mary and Jesus are iconic figures in the photo albums of our minds.  But what about Joseph?  Who is he really, besides the tall thin character standing behind Mary in your mother’s Christmas nativity set?  What do you know about him?  Thanks to Stephen Bruce’s novel, The Father, I have a pretty good picture of him now.

First, I have to commend the author on his beautiful and captivating book cover.  He has not attempted to set any certain preconceived images in the reader’s mind about what this book is about.  There are no people on the cover engaging in any event to even give you a hint.  Rather than a typical blue cloudy sky, he has painted it red…the same color of blood or also a typical color associated with love, which also happens to be in the title.  (It has often been suggested to POD authors to use some red on your book cover to grab attention.)

You are looking down a cobblestone road with a flash of light at the end, possibly indicating reward or hope at the end of a long rough journey (the light at the end of the tunnel?).  The buildings along the road and the scroll-like font of the title might indicate a story of Biblical nature, but my point is that this is a well thought out cover which I believe would grab a book browser’s attention for all the right reasons.

And that’s just the cover.

Mr. Bruce writes in a third person narrative, which I often prefer.  It goes back to the days of enjoying having someone else telling you a story.  We also assume our narrator knows all, and for a writer it is much easier to present multiple points of view using a third person voice overhead that sees and knows all.  Writing technicalities like this aside, right from page one the author puts you on that dirty stone road which you see on the cover.  You are standing next to Joseph and watching with him as Jesus is led through the streets carrying a cross.

Such was his rage. It was an anger that he could not express, an impotent fury which had suggested itself to him before but which was now close to consuming him. In his mind’s eye he saw a black tidal wave, of immense size, racing towards him, destroying everything in its path and blocking out all light as it rushed to embrace him. Dreadful as this image was he felt a willingness to allow the wave to wash over him, to obliterate him completely, sparing him the agony of watching his beloved son suffer.

I immediately recalled images from Mel Gibson’s Passion movie from a few years ago; you will as well if you read this book and you’ve seen that movie.  The pain and suffering of Jesus is vivid and heart wrenching, despite the violence and rage which other movies and the news have blatantly shown us everyday, desensitizing our eyes and minds to horrible things of that nature.

But I believe that is why Stephen Bruce has chosen to tell this well-known story from the point of view of someone else who may or may not have been there…Joseph, the “foster” father of Christ, a man that most of us only know as a modest carpenter.  In the Bible, Joseph never even speaks in the Gospels. Christian tradition, though vague on the time and place of his death, represents Mary as a widow during the adult ministry of Jesus.

That is why the characters are a truly important part of this novel.  Stephen Bruce breathes such life and emotion into them, causing this novel to read like a biography which the author might have penned as the very events on the pages were taking place.  From the crucifixion to Joseph pleading for the body of his son, you too will feel the agonizing emotion and love of this man.

As a reader, I tend to stray from books like these which present a story that I may personally only know bits and pieces of, but it’s a traditional story that “everyone” knows some part of which often makes it look very predictable in our eyes and not worth reading.  Bruce’s novel is in no way such a story, despite being about the death of Jesus.  It is much more than that.    More so, it is about the love Joseph had for his son and the inner turmoil any father would go through should he have to watch a dear loved one suffer.

Clean, in-depth writing, vivid detail that captures and holds your attention, and strong powerful characters that you will want to visit with again and again, The Father is a book I will be adding permanently to my bookshelf with intentions of sharing it with friends and loved ones of my own.  I applaud Stephen Bruce on a magnificent piece of work, and if there are any traditional publishers out there reading this now…this book is worthy of your attention!

Eve Paludan is a busy woman: writer, photographer, editor, web designer, and artist. Just check out her CV on her MySpace page. It’s a hefty list of accomplishments of which anyone should be proud of. She should also be quite proud of a lil Ebook she’s written and made available through Lulu called Letters from David.

Thanks to email and the rising price of stamps, I’ve often wondered if the art of letter writing is dead. We’ve even given it the sluggish nickname “Snail Mail,” adopting our eager fascination with having things so immediate thanks to our ever growing lack of patience. And yet the ending highlight of each of my workdays is coming home and checking the mailbox.

On birthdays as a child, my eyes bulged with excitement over bright colored envelopes addressed to me with a funny Hallmark card and a crisp one dollar bill on the inside. My mother, with her “chicken scratch” cursive, penned letters on notepad paper to me while I was in college. Christmas cards with a quick signature still adorn my doorway in December. What would we have to say without sentiments printed by the greeting card company? Eve Paludan’s book says plenty.

Here’s the blurb from her Lulu page, which also happens to be the first paragraph of the story:

Claire Mead didn’t have her husband anymore, her children lived abroad, her income was shrinking and she hadn’t shaved her legs all winter. She hadn’t had recreational sex with herself, or laughed, truly laughed, for months. She was going broke and still cried much too easily since David, a.k.a. “The Saint,” had died, but suddenly, she realized she had something she had never once had before in her life — her freedom.

You have to admire the preservation of someone’s old journal or diary found behind glass in a museum somewhere for you to learn history or study their penmanship, or perhaps it’s passed down from generation to generation amongst family members. I tried for years to keep a journal of my personal thoughts, but writing it down went down the drain once I learned to type. Literature and Theatre has celebrated the power of the written word for a long time. I immediately think of James Patterson’s recent book about letters, and a play I saw once called “Love Letters.” It was just two chairs on the stage, back to back, with a guy and a girl sitting there and recalling letters they’d written to each other. They were miles apart now in life, but their letters always brought them back together. It was so powerful and captivating.

Eve Paludan’s book is NOT another collection of letters allowing us that glimpse into someone else’s life for a while. Yes, Dear _____, letters in italic are placed throughout the manuscript, but it is what comes between them that makes up the essence of her story. Her central character, Clare Mead, is a widow with a son away at war and a daughter in Paris, but she’s determined not to let loneliness be an illness. She refuses to succumb to it and is trying to adapt to the new emptiness in her life – this freedom. She seeks out the advice of other women like her, but soon ends up in a bit of an odd situation with her husband’s best friend, Tucker, who was also responsible for his death. A tornado is coming and the two end up taking cover in her basement, and begin to reminisce of the old days and the way it could have been.

Secrets begin to unravel as you discover Tucker was once her lover and they had a child together, but their roads in life went in opposite directions. Tucker beats himself up over the death of his friend, while Clare refuses to mourn anymore. Together, they relive the memories they shared with David, a best friend and a husband. Just as you think Tucker and Clare’s time together is building to the climactic arrival of the tornado, no weather alarm will prepare you for the secrets that are revealed in the letter than begins the next chapter! It’s a letter from David, Clare’s husband, which Tucker had been saving to give to her at a later time.

My only criticism of the story comes into play in the letters themselves. Although Paludan has used them sparingly to push the story forward, be warned that they are heavy in content that is crucial to the plot and backbone of her characters. Therefore, they can seem a bit melodramatic and even soap opera-ish at times, but they do not distract from the overall point the author wants to make.

Letters from David turned out to be a “whirl wind” of a story that I totally was not expecting. At first, based on the author’s previous work, I predicted a much heavier romance and cliche collection of predictable love letters. Not so! The story continues to build with David, the son, writing to his half sister in Paris. Although their story is told completely in letters, reading it as if you were a person in another room over hearing a conversation is quite intriguing. Paludan has written a magnificent tale of love and loss which anyone can enjoy. So, grab a box of tissues and your high school yearbooks, because this book will take you down a path off memory lane where you never expected to go!

I was expecting

to eat myself small

and drink myself huge

but didn’t realize

I was already just the right size.

The day my letter comes, I’ll be expecting to open that envelope and find it addressed to Author. But it won’t be. It will say Dear Mr. Entrekin (that’s me)…

Somewhere, somewhen, there is a letter, and it is addressed to me. I just worry that all the rest will be addressed to ‘Author’, and I’m tired of opening the mail.

My crummy little Jersey City apartment. Baldwin Avenue. Near Journal Square. Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers, lived less than a mile from me.

The sometimes poet, the editor of the literary magazine: everything short of the tweed jacket with the elbow patches, basically.

I wonder if my breath caught the World Trade Center and won’t let it go.

It is getting more difficult, then, to separate the wheat from the chaff.  Google can sometimes help, but not always.