Cancer. The very word can act like the disease itself and worm its way through our bodies, eating at us from the inside out. It is a word which strikes fear in our hearts to hear it pronounced as a diagnosis. Science is slowly finding answers, cures for some variants even, but far too many people battle this disease…and lose.

It is a rare thing to find a person whose life has not been touched by cancer in some way. It is prevalent, dreaded, deadly. As such, cancer is something we can relate to, it touches us, it is personal. I grew up with cancer, not that I had the disease, but have lost too many friends and loved ones to it, including my father. And timely as ever, am dealing with a cancer diagnosis once again as I read Megan’s Way. This time cancer struck one of my dogs, and while she is doing fine now, I know the time will come when we have to make the decision.

As you may have guessed, cancer is a major theme in Megan’s Way. Megan Taylor is not a newbie to cancer. She has contracted the disease and battled it before and won, or so she thought. Prior to the opening of the book, Megan learns the cancer has returned and buried itself deep in her bones. She won’t survive this skirmish. The best she can do is prolong life by a few months, but at what cost? The cure in this case, is worse than the disease, and she has death to look forward to no matter which way she turns.

But Megan does not only have herself to think about. Her fourteen-year old daughter, Olivia depends on her as her sole parent. What will happen to Olivia when Megan passes on? Much of Megan’s Way is spent in the point of view of Megan and her thought process for making her decisions about what to do for herself and Olivia. The following is a moment when she is coming to grips with what the disease is doing to her.

When had age crept up on her, like a flower that had bloomed, vibrant and beautiful, and quickly browned around the edges, struggling to simply keep erect. There is no going back. Gone was the energy that once revolved around what could be – wants, desires, and aspirations – and it was replaced with thoughts of what was best, what had to be.

Her small, veined hands felt cold, and she rubbed them together. Her olive skin had lost its sheen. It was slightly more wrinkled than what she had believed it was, what she had envisioned and held onto in her mind for the past few years. Her legs, she knew were no longer strong and lean, but wilted and frail. The reality was like a weight in her heart. She had chosen to ignore it for so long that the realization hit her fast and hard, like a punch to the gut. She had truly thought she could beat it, age gracefully, and maybe even glow.

Megan is not the only one who is keeping secrets. Each of the inner circle of life-long friends has a skeleton in the closet, and each one feels their secret could rip the friends apart.

Melissa Foster does an excellent job describing the physical deterioration of cancer. As the novel progresses, you feel Megan fading physically while striving desperately to stay strong for Olivia. And Foster also masters the confusion and rage of a teenager who knows she’s being lied to by her parent. Down to committing a rash act which puts her life and her mother’s in jeopardy. She also draws the circle of friends well – life long friends all there for one another, banding together in times of sorrow, celebrating as one in good times.

There is much to commend this book, but there were also parts which I felt didn’t work as well as they should have. For example, during the funeral ceremony friends spoke of Megan in terms which as a reader we had no context. We never saw Megan in terms of lighthearted, free spirited, accepting life as it happened. Granted, when dealing with cancer those things are difficult to achieve sometimes, but they do happen and come with acceptance. The personality described during the funeral service would have savored the moments of life she had rather than wasting them in trying to distance herself from her loved ones to help ease their pain.

Melissa Foster’s strongest character in Megan’s Way is Olivia. Her depiction is consistent throughout and Olivia grows through the experience. She knows her mother’s love for her is absolute, and they share a special bond, even beyond the grave.

Copyright © 2008
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$17.50 Paperback
132 pages
ISBN: 978-1-4116-4226-3

As I Rode with Cullen Baker opens, we are met with a scene evocative of Gone with the Wind with Tara burning in the background. Set in the South in the midst of the civil war, fifteen year old Jessica Linville watched while the Federal cavalry burned her house to the ground. When I was younger, I used to love a story set in the south during civil war times with a feisty female character at its center, so this book drew my interest immediately. Let me clear one thing up right away, despite my reference to Gone with the Wind, the character of Jessica Linville is nothing like the character of Scarlett O’Hara. Jessica is a proper young lady with manners, a sense of propriety, and has a genuine caring attitude toward her fellow man. And Scarlett had none of those qualities. However, the character of Jessica is a strong one, and she has a strong voice which carries the action of the book as seen through her eyes.

In order to escape the renegades who are taking the very last that Jessica had, Joshua, who has worked for the family Jessica’s entire life, hacks off her hair, dresses her in slave clothes, and they run off through the night. Jessica lost her mother six years previously to fever, and her father recently in battle, so she lived with the family servants, all of whom, except for Joshua, ran when the soldiers arrived. Joshua didn’t want to let down the memory of her father by running out on her, but did his best to try and get her to safety.

   With bluecoats in the wide drive, he’d forced me into the darkness, saying, “We can’t stay, Miss Jessica. These renegades would harm you.”
   Now, silhouettes of a dozen riders trampled the lawns, cheering as my home burned. I threw myself prone in the dirt in despair, and felt the thudding hooves beat like devils’ hearts in my chest.
   Joshua seemed gone a long time before I saw him returning through the neglected cane rows. Sporadic shouts broke through the diminishing roar of flames, and I prayed that none of those men would notice the hunched figure dodging flickering bands of firelight.
   He knelt beside me, gasping, “Here’s the shirt you got to put on.” Disentangling part of a bundle, he didn’t wait for my approval but began tearing at stubborn dress hooks, uncovering me to the chill air.
   He slid the correct arm into place as if I were an infant. “Step outen them clothes, shimmy an’ all. No— don’t stand up—”
   Pushing at the pale green dress material, then the white linen, I stripped to the skin and shoved first one foot, then the other, into the legs of a slave boy’s britches. They were limp with being worn, and though I was small for fifteen, tight through the hips. Joshua set a hat, rank with sweat, on my disgraced head, and I realized he was disguising me as a boy.

Unfortunately, the color of Joshua’s skin turned out to be a problem in the town where he attempted to send a wire to someone to come and pick up the boy, Jess. In one of the senseless acts that abounded during that time period, a mob of men attempted to lynch Joshua, but then shot him as Jess was trying to remove the rope from around his neck. Before the mob could turn on her, Cullen Baker rode up on his horse, scooped her up, and rode out of town. Thus began Jess’s adventure with the notorious outlaw, Cullen Baker.

Although Cully knew from the very start Jess was not a boy, he does not blow her cover, and goes to some lengths to help preserve it because he takes her to the camp of the Independent Rangers, who specialized in pursuing and capturing men who deserted the Confederate Army, but which more often than not took advantage of the fact that most of the men in the Arkansas and Texas areas were away at war, leaving mostly elderly men, women and children. This left the door open for acts of intimidation, rape, theft and violence for groups of well armed men like the Independent Rangers. Jessica’s feelings toward Cully are ambivalent. She can’t seem to reconcile the fact that he would save and protect her from a mob, but also steals. But then Cully gives the money away.

   The next place we stopped was a frame shack that a big wind would blow into Cass County. The rusted tin roof must have leaked considerably, and the cracks where chinking had fallen out were wide enough for a ferret to crawl through. A dirty-faced boy about ten answered the knock. He looked cold, in a thin shirt, trousers which struck his shins two inches above his ankles, and barefoot. Saving his shoes—if he had shoes— for winter, no doubt. More of the money passed to him. He beamed at Cully and threw a cheerful wave to me. I waved back.
   “Consumption,” Cully explained, settling himself in the stirrups. “Won’t last till Christmas.”
   I was sorry for the boy, especially because he had to live his short life in such poverty. At least, before the war ruined things, I’d known comfort and plenty and the love of respectable people. “Cully.”
   “What?”
   “Which do you think is worse—to have nice things and lose them, or never to have them in the first place?”
   “You tell me,” he said shortly, and then we came to a settlement of three houses together, none looking like it could withstand a hard rain. He parted with more currency at all of them.
   When we were on our way again, I couldn’t help asking, “What will we do for money?”
   “There’s ways of getting more.”
   “Stealing it!”
   “How the hell else would I get it? You see anybody around here going to give me a job and pay me a wage?”

I Rode with Cullen Baker is a fast paced read, somewhat short in length as is necessary for the target age group. While some of the story line is somewhat predictable, RLB Hartmann spins an engaging tale and keeps the reader turning the pages to find out what happens next. Hartmann uses the historical figure Cullen Baker, and weaves a story set during a time when his whereabouts were unknown, making the story potentially feasible. The Cully in the story is a much more romanticized version of the historical figure than you will find in the Wikipedia information about Cullen Baker. However, it was fun to suspend my disbelief and take a journey back to the south of the civil war times and take a ride with a wild desperado with a not often seen softer side. I think Hartmann’s target audience will love the adventure.

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Copyright © 2009
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233 pages
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Have you ever been in a situation in which you have been uncomfortable? Where you don’t know what to say? Or, when faced with a new task tend to panic? If you understand any of those feelings, think how Leah Nells feels, because every minute of every day is a struggle for her to get through. Not even comfortable spending time with her own mother and father, after all, they are probably going to ask her questions that she won’t be able to answer, Leah lives a very isolated existence. And things are about to get worse. She is 14 years old and will be starting high school. She’ll have to contend with a new campus, new classes, new teachers, and perhaps worst of all, more students. The thing that Leah clings to are her books. Even the books Leah reads are different from the norm. She won’t read novels, and tends to like lengthy, non-fiction books with very few pictures. For example, some of the titles Leah picked out were The Little Book of Earthquakes and Volcanoes, The Biomechanics of Insect Flight, Attracting Birds to Your Backyard, and The Social Construction of the Ocean. Now, don’t get any ideas about Leah being a top student, because she isn’t. When she has read all of the books she has on hand, her mother will take her to garage sales and Leah can pick out any books she wants, and her mother will buy them for her. Or at least that’s how things used to be.

As she approaches high school, Leah’s mother becomes more and more frustrated with her socially awkward daughter. It is her greatest wish that Leah fit in and make a friend or two. Her wish is so great, that she pushes Leah in ways that are in some respects cruel. For example, at the start of Leah, Leah and her mother are cruising garage sales, and at the last one they visited, Leah found a book she wanted and her mother handed her the money and told Leah she would wait for her in the car. Now Leah, thrown into an unexpected situation, was unable to cope with the expectation that she pay for the book instead of her mother, and was unable to face it, so she put the book down and returned to the car in shame. Her mother was upset that Leah couldn’t make a simple purchase at a garage sale.

Mrs. Nells clearly comes through as one of the biggest antagonists in Leah, and I’ll admit that Mrs. Nells was the character I disliked the most in the book. I understand wanting her daughter to achieve more, and I understand Leah is a difficult child in many respects, but having a mother who has been my champion my whole life, I found Mrs. Nells animosity toward her daughter disturbing.

  At the mention of her name, Leah stood up and started to go downstairs, but she stopped when her mother said, “No, I’m OK. Cooking helps me take my mind off things, and that’s what I need right now. And leave Leah in her room. I don’t want to see her right now.”
  “Why not?”
  “I’m still upset with her.”
  Leah sat back down on the stairs.
  “Because of what happened on Saturday?” Mr. Nells asked.
  “Partly. I know it’s not the first time she’s behaved like that, and it sure won’t be the last time, but I just hate it when she’s so difficult in public. I can’t help but wonder what other people must think. Like I told her, she’s fourteen already, but she still doesn’t even have the courage to buy a book unless I’m standing right there holding her hand.”
  “She’ll learn. It’ll take time, but she’ll learn. She just needs some help.”
  “Well,” Mrs. Nells said with conviction, “I don’t know who’s gonna help her, but it’s not gonna be me! I’ve had it with her. If she wants to hide in her bedroom forever, then that’s fine with me. We’ve done all we can for her—it’s up to her now.”

I know several parents who are unable to sever the cord with their children and continue to enable them well into their adulthood. But at 14, I believe a mother should still be there to support her child. If the statement was made right after the incident, I could even discount it as letting off steam, but to still be angry with your child for the inability to make a purchase on their own two days after the fact is carrying the animosity to a degree of disproportion. Most parents would be delighted that their 14 year old had difficulty in taking money from them and spending it. Antagonists in literature are necessary, and Mrs. Nells is certainly not the worst mother in the world, just not very likable. The primary antagonist in this piece is Leah’s silence itself. Her inability to communicate verbally except for on a minimal basis is Leah’s deepest shame, and her greatest desire is to overcome her silence.

So many questions filled her mind. Why did she have to be the only girl at school who was shy? No one else had any trouble talking to people or making friends. It didn’t seem fair. Why me? she asked herself. Was this what her life would always be like? Was this moment, alone in her bedroom, unhappy, not only her present and her past but her future as well? She had so many questions, but here in the isolation of her room, there were no answers. Only silence surrounded her and offered itself—the same silence that had been her lone companion throughout her life. Only silence; always silence.

J. M. Reep gives us a calm and thoughtful novel bringing us into the mind of Leah and her struggle against herself. The quality of Reep’s writing is excellent, and the characters are clearly drawn and realistic. Leah is a detailed character study of shyness and introversion. One of the concepts I found to be most unique was the use of Leah’s books, many of which she didn’t even like, as a way to pass time. Leah liked to read them slowly, because if she read too quickly, then she would have to suffer through another trip with her mother through garage sales to pick out some more. She didn’t really enjoy reading the books though, and this concept seemed especially foreign to me. Of course, like Leah, I read avidly as a youngster, and still do to this day, but unlike Leah, I enjoy the books I read, and if a book bores me, I move on to the next. Life is too short to read boring books. I thought it a strange twist to have a character clinging to books like a toddler clings to a security blanket, and have the character not really enjoy the books she clings to. Leah brings to those of us who are not crippled by shyness an understanding of those who are, and for those who identify with Leah Nells a sense of relief from the knowledge that there are others who struggle against debilitating introversion.

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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.