Today We Celebrate Our Ex-Spouses

No, I am not making this up. Today, April 14, is Ex-Spouse Day, when we're supposed to acknowledge our ex-spouses. I'm not sure whether this special day was created by Congress––always working hard to be seen as improving Americans' lives––or the Hallmark card company. I'm also not clear about how we're to celebrate, although getting out the old voodoo doll and poking fresh holes or offering fervent prayers of thanks that the marriage is over are no doubt appropriate in some cases. In other cases, maybe dinner is on the menu, so you can raise a glass to being friends instead of partners.

Given that I don't have an ex-husband, I thought I'd celebrate the day by telling you about a pair of exes I've encountered in my reading.

Wade Chesterfield isn't a monster, but the ex-minor league baseball player is so irresponsible that his ex-wife had him sign papers relinquishing parental rights to their daughters Easter and Ruby, now 12 and 6. When their mother dies, the girls are placed in a foster care home in Gastonia, North Carolina. This isn't okay with Wade, who does love his daughters. He pulls the kids out of their beds in the middle of the night and they set off for Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. It soon becomes clear to Wade and the girls that the police and Brady Weller, a former cop who's now the girls' court-appointed guardian, aren't the only ones interested in finding them. Also on their trail is a scary ex-felon, Robert Pruitt, hired by a local crime boss who believes Wade stole a fortune from him. Pruitt is a very enthusiastic hunter, because he nurses a personal grudge against Wade from the days they played pro ball together.

Wiley Cash's This Dark Road to Mercy (William Morrow, 2014) is set during the race between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa to topple Roger Maris's home runs record in 1998. This thrilling competition we know now was tainted by Big Mac's and Slammin' Sammy's illegal use of steroids, and it's a fitting backdrop for this book of country noir. There's always a suggestion of menace lurking just around the corner. No matter how hard these people run or chase, they're still dogged by their pasts and at the mercy of fate. Twelve-year-old Easter, who is both heartbreakingly naive and cynical beyond her years, takes a turn narrating, along with Pruitt and Weller. Unlike a lot of hardboiled books, most of the violence in this one happens off stage. This isn't to say I didn't close my eyes when Pruitt slips on his gloves because I didn't have to be clairvoyant to see what's coming. I was pleased that Wade goes to bat for his girls, and his ex would be proud of him.

Mrs. T. Lawrence Lamb has long considered her husband an unimaginative plodder and money grubber. She sees him as cramping her artistic and intellectual style; an unsatisfactory husband any way she looks at him. But Thorne Smith makes it clear from the beginning of The Stray Lamb (originally published in 1929) that Mr. Lamb is no ordinary man. On his commuter train, he gazes at a "perky shred of an ear ... ornamenting a small sleek head" and wonders what it would feel like to tentatively, delicately bite it. On the outside, Mr. Lamb is one of the more sober of his community's citizens. On the inside, he contains "a reservoir of good healthy depravity that was constantly threatening to overflow and spill all sorts of trouble about his feet." This depravity is tapped after a chance meeting with a man in the woods, and Mr. Lamb wakes up to discover he's a black stallion. And this isn't all. He's soon experiencing the world through the eyes of a succession of animals. As we all know, when you do this you can't help but create havoc. Soon, Mrs. Lamb has had more than enough.

James Thorne Smith, Jr. died at age 42 in 1934. Under the name Thorne Smith, he wrote the Topper books and other charming and hilarious books about booze, sex and fantastical transformations. They deserve a spot on your shelf next to books by P. G. Wodehouse, Tom Sharp, Spike Milligan and Jerome K. Jerome.

Anchors of Disbelief, Aweigh!

Disbelief that didn't maintain suspension

We're anticipating a pretty big storm here tonight and rain through the weekend. Living on California's Central Coast means I don't need to mount snow tires, check a backup boiler or stock the pantry with emergency food. I do need to put our patio bar stools in the garage. During a storm last winter, the wind tossed one of them against a window. That chair took flight much more easily than my disbelief while reading on occasion. Rain at night makes reading in bed mandatory. What books can I read this weekend that will keep my eyes anchored to the pages while my disbelief goes flying?

Disbelief reluctant to take off

Getting disbelief into suspension is a tricky undertaking. Sometimes, my disbelief has its heavy foot glued to the floor, and I need to concentrate harder or put the book aside for awhile to dislodge that foot. Other times, a glass of wine or leaping into the bathtub with the book does it. Occasionally, nothing I do helps. An author I love could have written the book or it could be highly recommended, but it doesn't matter. These days, 50 pages or sometimes 20 pages is enough to tell me my disbelief's flight has been cancelled. Maybe it's an act of God, and the book and I just aren't meant to be.

Surprisingly, disbelief remains suspended

At times, a book will drag me in and keep me there, despite some nagging residual skepticism, until the final page. Such was the case when I read Marcus Sakey's 2011 book of suspense, The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes. The tale opens on a beach in Maine, deserted but for a man emerging from the water:

"He was naked and cold, stiff with it, his veins ice and frost. Muscles carved hard, skin rippled with goose bumps, tendons drawn tight, body scraped and shivering. Something rolled over his legs, velvet soft and shocking. He gasped and pulled seawater into his lungs, the salt scouring his throat. Gagging, he pushed forward, scrabbling at dark stones. The ocean tugged, but he fought the last ragged feet crawling like a child."

The man spots a lonely BMW in the parking lot. Luckily, it's unlocked, and he can get in. He hits the push-button start and in a minute the heat is roaring. Inside are a map, a Rolex watch, several hundred dollars, and an almost empty bottle of Jack Daniel's. The trunk contains some dirty clothes that fit him. The glove box holds an owner's manual, some keys, and a gun. He knows it's a semiautomatic. He knows that, but he doesn't know his name. He assumes the water is the Atlantic, and by the map, that he's in Maine; yet, he doesn't know how he got there or where he came from. He studies the owner's manual and finds a registration card and proof of insurance. He decides he's Daniel Hayes, resident of 6723 Wandermere Road, Malibu, California.

Hayes drives to the nearest cheap hotel and spends a couple of nights. He watches a TV show with a female character who somehow beckons him, and his nights are filled with disturbing dreams of concrete canyons. When a cop knocks at his door, Hayes knows he must run even though he doesn't know why. Maybe he's Daniel Hayes, and maybe he'll find out more in Malibu, California.

Saying more would be a disservice, because the fun of this book is involved in accompanying Hayes as he discovers who he is and what sent him into the Atlantic. Sakey spins his tale out at a satisfying pace. It's not mentally challenging and is suitable for reading, say, when water is 20 feet away from your beach towel or drumming little drops on your window in the middle of the night.

I haven't read any of Sakey's other books. The Blade Itself, which Publishers Weekly awarded a starred review, is about "a horribly botched pawnshop robbery by childhood friends Evan and Danny." My disbelief's foot is tapping, so maybe I'll take a looksee.

Like Marcus Sakey, Charles Frazier is an author new to me. The appearance of his Nightwoods on a Washington Post list of "Notable Fiction of 2011" made me curious. Upon reading the opening paragraph, my foot of disbelief scrabbled to leave the floor:

"Luce's new stranger children were small and beautiful and violent. She learned early that it wasn't smart to leave them unattended in the yard with the chickens. Later she'd find feathers, a scaled yellow foot with its toes clenched. Neither child displayed language at all, but the girl glared murderous expressions at her if she dared ask where the rest of the rooster went."

At its heart, this book is about moving forward despite "whatever trail of ashes are left behind." Life goes one way only: "Nothing changes what already happened. It will always have happened. You either let it break you down or you don't."

Luce has chosen not to let it break her down. When the book begins, it is the 1960s, and she is a beautiful young woman who has taken refuge from life's hard knocks as the caretaker of the Lodge, an abandoned old hotel in the Appalachians of North Carolina. Luce is the daughter of Lola, who had a free-range philosophy about child raising and warned Luce and her sister Lily never ever to cry before she disappeared while they were still in elementary school, and Lit, a bantam-size deputy sheriff who is likened to a mink in a hen house and who has a fondness for substances that make him feel "up."

Luce lives across the lake from town, and her days are rather lonely, but she is content, watching the seasons change, observing the creatures in the woods, and reading the books in the hotel's library. Her isolation is broken by the appearance of her sister Lily's young twins, Delores and Frank. Lily has been murdered by her husband Bud, under the eyes of these children, and Luce is now their guardian. The twins are traumatized and mute; they love setting fires and getting themselves into trouble. But, "[b]eing uncommunicative and taking an interest in fire were neither crimes nor sins, just inconvenient. And Luce didn't have to love them. She just had to take care of them."

Taking care of Frank and Delores, and Luce's life in general, are made more complicated when Bud, whose murder trial stuttered to a halt when two jurors voted not guilty, moves to town so he can look for money he thinks Lily had and keep a nasty eye on the twins. Young Stubblefield, who knew Luce in high school and inherited the Lodge when his grandfather died, shows up, too.  The main cast is now complete, and life will go forward.

Nightwoods is a literary book. It's a compelling narrative told by a southerner with a writing style that makes one think of the words "trance," "molasses," and "baroque." Frazier's characters are all memorable, and what they do is worth watching. Sometimes the prose tends to the purple, but I had no desire to stop reading. If you love the woods, as I do, you'll probably enjoy Frazier's knowledge and feel for those dark and mysterious places. I liked the book, and I'm going to look for his Cold Mountain,  a story about a wounded Confederate deserter who walks for months to return to the love of his life, and Thirteen Moons, set in the mid-19th century and based loosely on the life of William Holland Thomas.

Disbelief well suspended

These are a couple of the books that kept my disbelief suspended during the past few days. On my bedside table for my rainy night reading are The Shadow of the Shadow by Paco Ignacio Taibo II, a historical fantasy that I've been saving for a special treat because a friend raved about it; Michael Kortya's The Ridge, a 2011 thriller set in the woods of eastern Kentucky; Tom Perrotta's 2011 book, The Leftovers, involving a mass disappearance called the Sudden Departure; and Gerontius by James Hamilton-Paterson, who made me laugh out loud with his wonderful satire set in Tuscany, Cooking with Fernet Branca. When I read Gerontius, I'll head up the Amazon with Sir Edward Elgar, a distinguished composer. Other books that took me to Amazon territory are Ann Patchett's State of Wonder and David Grann's The Lost City of Z, and I recommend both of them.

Disbelief is an unpredictable thing. I'd love to hear about the books that are kept your disbelief suspended and those that didn't, and why. 

Disbelief following a moving plot

Murder Most Fowl

For those who have never been there, Plimouth Plantation, site of the village built by the Pilgrims upon arrival in the New World, is a living history open-air museum near Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts. Each actor, or "interpreter," represents as faithfully as possible the life of one of the actual residents of the Plymouth Colony in 1627. It can't be compared to a glitzy theme park or a Murder Weekend; in fact, it feels so authentic that it can be a bit disconcerting to visitors. Chickens and children on stilts or rolling hoops mingle with visitors and characters in the only street. Any character will gladly speak with visitors and try to answer their questions, but only in the framework and words of their character and period. Often they will let young visitors help to knead bread, saw logs, or husk corn.

When my daughter was around six we took her for the first time, although our already Epcot-saturated sophisticate was sure it would be a terrible bore. When the blunderbuss-carrying "guard" at the gate greeted us in friendly but archaic terms, she offered him a stick of gum. His response was perfect; he stared at it in wonder, asked what it was, then started to put it, still wrapped, into his mouth. By the time they found enough common language to explain (he seemed to think a wrapper was a garment), she was shaken entirely out of her complacency and prepared for the wonders to come. She watched beading and clam digging, and we finally had to drag her out of the apothecary's when the place was closing.

Near the Pilgrim village, you can visit the small 17th-century Indian settlement where actual descendants of the Wampanoags and other local tribes practice the ancestral skills of farming, fishing, beading, and boat building (hollowing out logs by burning) as practiced by their ancestors. It is well worth a visit at any time of year, although autumn is best.

Murder at Plimouth Plantation, by Leslie Wheeler, captures a bit of that enchantment. Eighteen-year-old Caroline, niece of protagonist Miranda Lewis, has come from her California home to spend a season at the Plantation "interpreting" Mistress Fear Allerton, a young wife and mother of the Colony. When Miranda, who lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, calls to check on her niece, Caroline bursts into tears and hangs up on her aunt.

Miranda drives down posthaste from Cambridge, but Caroline won't discuss her problem. Next morning, the very real severed head of the ex-policeman who plays Myles Standish appears in Mistress Allerton's work basket, and Caroline becomes the prime suspect.

The story is somewhat confusing, overrun with red herrings and several TSTL* moments for both Miranda and Caroline, but the descriptions of the setting and history are accurate and fascinating.

In Sarah R. Shaber's Snipe Hunt, recently divorced Simon Shaw is invited to spend a laid-back Thanksgiving weekend at a friend's cottage on North Carolina's rugged Outer Banks. He jumps at the offer–Marcus has a stellar collection of classic paperback mysteries he hopes to explore and three charming children who call Simon "Uncle." An archaeologist friend, David Morgan, has a dig in the area, so Simon travels down in advance and slovenly comfort in Morgan's RV to help sift through what a dredge is bringing up, looking for Indian artifacts.

When the dredge pulls up a barnacle-covered body in a World War II-era wetsuit, Morgan persuades the police chief to let him clean and classify the contents of the rubber collecting bucket congealed to the dead man's wetsuit. The body is identified as a local Navy frogman, member of the island's premier family, who vanished in 1942 when German U-Boats regularly patrolled the shoreline, spreading fear of enemy invasion.

The man turns out to have been stabbed to death, not drowned, and his collection bucket contained a small fortune in Confederate gold coins, apparently from one of the many wrecked ships just offshore. The story's combination of Civil War-era treasure, World War II local history, and current-day murder make quick and interesting reading. Forensic historian Simon doesn't get the restful long weekend he had hoped for in this well-written second in a series.

Whether you share your Thanksgiving feast with one or 30 people, at the beach or a crowded family table, watching (or participating in) a parade or football game, may it be bounteous with food, rich with friends and family, and sparkling with conversation. And maybe sometime over the weekend, with some time to pick up and enjoy a good book.

*Too stupid to live