I am not going to extol the value of reading literature or tell why novels are important to our mental, emotional, and spiritual health. I’ve written plenty about reading (and recommended in the last BookNotes that you pre-order Jeff Crosby’s forthcoming book The World of Wonder: The Spirituality of Reading) and while many of our BookNotes readers may appreciate my emphasis on non-fiction here at BookNotes, I know many are eager to hear some good suggestions for Summer fiction.
(If you’re super-duper interested, I created for a clergy retreat I led a while back a list of 50 novels that I appreciate and you can check that big list HERE.)
I’m going to tell you now about 10 recent novels — it seems like a good round number — but I have to say that the first two are indie authors, self-published, no less, which are the most moving stories I’ve read in ages. And, believe me, I’ve read some good ones, most recently a heady 650-page postmodern (I use the term loosely) Irish novel called The Bee Sting and an edgy cool older one called The Dylanist. And you know Beth read right away devoured the new Fredrik Backman, My Friends.
But these first two that you may not even have heard of are wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, easy reads and I hope you give them a try. Support indie writers and a small-town bookstore in one fell swoop — order them today.
All books mentioned here at BookNotes are 20% off.
The Life-Saving Adventure of Gracelyn Gordon and Her Dog Ethan D. Bryan (Blue Cat Publishing) $14.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $11.96
Okay, forget about the uninspiring cover. Please. Here is what I wish I could do. I want to tell you about almost every single chapter of this fast-paced, easy to read, utterly charming story written by a good customer and dear friend, a book as earnest and lovely as is the author himself. But I can’t, because I do not want to give away the surprises that await in almost every chapter and, well, because there are a lot of them. There are 40 pretty short chapters and you’ll finish this in a few days or so, I bet; maybe a week. It is hard to put down, believe me.
Here’s the gist: Gracelyn Gordon is an artist living in Missouri. That’s the first thing to know; Ethan has crafted an endearing story about the work of a painter and I think I haven’t read anything so nice about the demanding work of an artist — working for commissions, doing photos and sketches to inspire future paintings, the deeply emotional work of choosing colors and actually making art, the driving passions of one called to this vocation, the overall joy but yet the mundane practicality of contracts and museums and visiting stores to buy brushes and canvases. There isn’t too much about that, and it doesn’t show the darker, painful side that surely plagues the work, but there is enough here about the life of a single, small-town, female painter to bring smiles to readers who are (or who know) working artists. I so enjoyed that part of it.
And here’s the next part: Gracelyn’s mother died when she was very young so she was raised by her upbeat, creative, wonderful father. They had a great relationship. There are lots of fun flashbacks and I think even if your dad was not as generous or outrageously creative as Gracelyn’s dad, it will pull some heart strings. I shed some tears with this one, and I’m glad I got to experience this good relationship between a school teacher dad and his young adult daughter. We need these kinds of models, I think, and even if most of us don’t have Bob Goff-like parents full of whimsy and adventure and faith and kindness, seeing this unfold in the novel is wholesome and good and beautiful. Whew.
But here’s the real situation: as the book begins you realize that Gracelyn’s father has died and he has spent the last year of his life leaving a whole bunch of clues around the country for a cross-country scavenger hunt. He has no idea if she should even pursue this crazy dare, but when she gets to the first place — the Dr. Pepper museum in Waco, Texas (her dad and mom met at Baylor University, there — and is befriended by the owner she calls Mrs. Pepper, she realizes that her father has invested in relationships with these people all over the country, each waiting to greet her if and when she ever shows up. And, as you’ll find, almost everybody is all in.
She gets one thing wrong (a misunderstood clue having to do with the book her English-teacher dad loved to teach, To Kill a Mockingbird and something to do with Atticus Finch) but daunting as some of the trips are, she travels around the country meeting people along the way, some whom become life-long friends. What a great plot device for a story, eh?
I can’t tell you more of where this adventure takes our valiant adventurer as that would spoil the fun of surprise. She has a girl-pal that goes with her on a few of the escapades, modeling, again, the goodness of real friendship. It was not only enjoyable but inspiring, truly. And there are plenty of shenanigans with her dog, Fagan.
There is an afterword by Ethan saying a bit about how he came to write this tale. He didn’t say what a baseball fan he is (you may know, at least, his Zondervan title A Year of Playing Catch which we’ve touted here) but it made sense that one of the clues her father left took her to a famous baseball stadium. Gracelyn’s inspiration from a little boy with “lucky socks” is just so fun and inspiring I wanted to cheer. Her meeting folks along the way (including stuff tied in to books and music and scenes that will make you clap your hands and wipe away tears of joy) is part of the endearing style of this lovely read. The Life Saving Adventure isn’t quite an epic journey on par with that taken by Bilbo Baggins, but the brave little Hobbit and their journey does come up. You’re going to love this.
Just for fun, Ethan has enclosed as a book-marker (for a limited handful) a bonus gift of a baseball card (of players from his beloved Kansas City Royals.) That’s cool, is it not? Ethan’s prose and the story his writing invites us into is inspiring, wise, gracious, kind, good. You will want to be a more gloriously adventuresome person having read this book, even if you never travel (and even if you don’t have the exceedingly good fortune at (almost) every turn that Gracelyn has. You, too, will want to see God’s hand in things, you’ll want to sing and trust and hope. Carpe Diem and all that. You will believe that love wins, that art matters. This book brings it. Enjoy.
I don’t say this often, and I suspect it may never happen, but I want a sequel. The book ends in a lovely, upbeat, rom-com sort of way but I still want to know what happens with a few of the characters. I want to know more about Gracelyne’s developing art and her life. And I want more adventures. The sign of a good book, eh?
The Ballad of the Lost Dogs of East Nashville: A Novel John J. Thompson (Gyroscope Productions) $23.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.19
If the easy-flowing and upbeat prose of my friend Ethan’s poignant story of Gracelyn (above) was the most enjoyable sweet story I’ve read all year, I want to suggest that this indie novel — the author’s first fictional release — is right up there as well. It is equally passionate about the arts and tells a very compelling story, set, however, mostly, in one specific place. If the previous one is necessarily about travel and adventure, The Ballad of the Lost Dogs is, in fact, set mostly in one neighborhood in one run-down but then gentrified section of East Nashville. I think a number of the streets and coffee shops and churches may be real and, as one reviewer noted, it “truly captures the core of the magic of East Nashville.” That’s from Chuck Beard of East Side Storytelling, an outfit that specializes in helping people tell their stories. That’s a huge endorsement and when he says “I can’t recommend this book enough!” I know what he means. I adored this work and have been waiting for a while to tell you. It is not soapy like the popular Nashville TV show a while back, but it’s got some of that vibe, a story about making acoustic music in Tennessee.
The backstory: John J. Thompson fell in love with the best (dare I say the most edgy and creative) sorts of contemporary Christian music in the 1980s as a young teen and he’s been at it ever since. He worked at the legendary, artful — some might say radical — Cornerstone Festival outside of Chicago. (Rez Band’s Glenn & Wendi Kaiser make a cameo appearance in one scene in the novel) and formed a band (The Wayside.) He ran TrueTunes and knows his way around all kinds of music. He wrote a fabulous book ten years ago about resisting mass-marketed stuff — with chapters on beer-making and coffee and record shops and finding a creative, localist faith called Jesus, Bread, and Chocolate: Crafting a Handmade Faith in a Mass-Market World. (Which we still stock at our very analog shop here in Dallastown.) He teaches at Lipscomb, now, and, yes, for those in the know, the book is somewhat of a nod to his friends in the alt-rock band The Lost Dogs. And, yes, The Ballad of the Lost Dogs of East Nashville is about the power of making real music.
(A fun aside: who has a fictional character in a novel write a fictional song, and then has that song recorded, for real, by guitar virtuoso Phil Keaggy?)
The story revolves around Jerry, a recovering alcoholic, wounded deeply by awful experiences in the Vietnam war who works as a tour bus driver where he meets country singers who hate country music and CCM bands who live like heathens. And yet, he meets genuine artists and as he drives bands around he is encouraged to pick up his long forgotten guitar. He plays along with great albums (mostly of the 70s era) from John Prine to Johnny Cash to Ry Cooder. He revives an old lullaby he wrote for his long-lost daughter (now an adult) and plays his guitar almost as a prayer. He’s talented and getting good but nobody knows; he never plays for anyone.
East Nashville was a fairly rough part of town, or so the story tells us, and many of Jerry’s neighbors were black. He grows in his appreciation for R&B and soul and exchanges records with an older black neighbor — they borrow each other’s LPs and they learn from each other; the scene unlocked something in me and I bawled my eyes out reading this lovely little episode. Jerry shows up for his neighbors after the awful 1998 tornados and new friendships are forged.
There is a scene about the economics of gentrification — from the point of view of a working class black man — that explains the injustices of these evolutions in neighborhoods becoming trendy as well as any nonfiction expose. While the artful telling of this plot about Jerry and his love of music is the main thing, the subtext is the changing neighborhood, the longing for authentic multi-ethnic friendships, even the value of intergenerational relationships. Man, there is a lot that comes upon in this allusive, lovely fiction — not as “points” or “topics” or “messages” but just woven nicely into the story. In ways that good stories can, we learn a lot about the multi-cultural neighborhood of changing East Nashville. Which could be almost anywhere in these United States, it seems, where rich and poorer and folks of different faiths and places by necessity come together. Or don’t.
Church looms large in the background of this story, although it isn’t written in a way that seems to be “about” religion or evangelical faith; indeed it may be especially for the exevangelical or “spiritual but not religious” crowd. Yet, as Jerry visits the church of his record-loving Black friend, he connects with an amazing singer — as shy about singing in public as Jerry is about playing in public.
I can’t say all that happens but early on we realize that something significant — really wonderfully magical and big — has happened the night before and a music journalist is trying to interview this band of brothers that have been playing music together on the sly. The back stories of each colorful character unfold and each person — a Mexican-American who plays a mean accordion, a well-dressed African American bus driver (despite his engineering degree he couldn’t get a job in the mid-twentieth century American South) who sings Bill Withers and Al Green and some young white kids with amazing chops, and a spoken word poet named Nadia — has a story to tell about their lives and how they ended up on the streets of East Nashville.
Thompson gets the music stuff right, it seems to me. The occasional lingo about amps and instruments and the description of the needle going down on LPs (and the tons of musicians and records that are name-dropped) is fabulous. I have no idea why, but I was choked up in a brilliant paragraph about the accordion, as the gentleman played it like a prayer for his extended family.
There are some QR codes in the back of this well-designed book which include playlists — tunes from Solomon Burke to Katrina and the Waves, from The Staple Singers to Merle Haggard, from Tom Petty to Los Lobos to Marvin Gaye to Billy Preston and two from Van Morrison alongside bunches more. The unintended band that developed so magically in The Ballad of the Lost Dogs becomes known as Lost Perros. Look up their playlist on Spotify. You’ll really want to read the book, then.
Kudos to John J. Thompson for crafting such a fascinating and large story, set in one neighborhood but which fans out in time and place, asking about the spiritual impact of art, the power of music, the joy and healing in music-making together. And — no spoilers here, really — exploring the question about whether a good thing can last; can a true thing get too big, too fast? Can success compromise even our best intentions at earnest companionship?
For a while we have a few autographed copies.
John J. Thompson’s Ballad of the Lost Dogs of East Nashville is the rock-n-roll fable we all need right now. We need to remember that our neighbors have a wealth of knowledge, and stories that bind us together. While experiencing this book, I wanted to be in that garage, listening to friends from all walks make music. I found pieces of myself in several of the characters. It became real. I went “in”, and wanted to stay. What more do you want from a novel? — Andy Zipf, graphic designer
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I hope you don’t mind, but to save your eyes (and so you can get to ordering and reading these fabulous stories) I’m not going to say much about these. We haven’t read them all. I wanted to keep it at just 8 more for this total of 10, so here are a handful. All are 20% off. Enjoy.
James: A Novel Percival Everett (Doubleday) $28.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40
I’ve mentioned this before and I hope you know of it — it won the Pulitzer Prize this year. It has been called “majestic” and “genius” and “a provocative, enlightening, work of literary art.” It — as Ron Charles put it in the Washington Post — both “honors and interrogates Huck Finn, along with the nation that honors it.”
James is a re-telling of the story of Huck Finn from the point of view of Jim from the famous Mark Twain tale, and it is not only thrilling and what the Times reviewers called “soulful” but an entertaining and ambitious work. Wow.
This Is Happiness: A Novel Niall Williams (Bloomsbury) $18.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40
This is not new but came out recently in paperback — it was on many best-of lists and won countless accolades, not least was Beth’s claim that it was one of her favorite books of the last decade. Not a few customers (and my own pastor) have insisted that I mention it. Niall Williams is an esteemed Irish novelist (who lies in County Clare) and he is elegant and exceptional. His artful sentences are worth savoring.
This Is Happiness is set in a small town in Ireland — it opens with rain — and continues to be rural in tone. It is said to be about “the loves of our lives and the joys of reminiscing” but that is only the broadest theme; it is about place, for sure. One reviewer called this artful bit of storytelling “a breathtaking tale” which another said is “comic and poignant in equal measure.” The New York Times captures it well saying it is “a big-hearted story, an intimate study of a small place on the brink of change.”
The Collector of Burned Books: A Novel Roseanna M. White (Tyndale) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19
Evangelical Christian fiction is known for doing inspiring historical fiction and this new one is set in Paris 1940; as you might guess the book’s broadest theme is about the Nazi Party burning books in Germany. As you may know, German writers who were exiled for their opinions (or because they were Jewish) made their way to Paris. I do not know if this is even true, but these exiled writers opened a library meant to celebrate the freedom of ideas and gathered every book on the banned list.
One of the main characters in this well-written story is Corinne Bastien, who has been reading those books and making that library a second home. And, it is about Christian Bauer, a German literature professor sent by Goebbels to France “to handle the ‘relocation’ of France’s libraries. Readers will be surprised to find what this professor conscripted into service does to try to protest whoever and whatever he can.
One reviewer said that Roseanne White is a “brilliant storyteller.” This includes discussion questions, making it good for book clubs.
An American Immigrant: A Novel Johanna Rojas Vann (Waterbrook) $17.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $13.60
This is not brand new, but it seems like this is a fine moment to highlight this solid bit of evangelical storytelling. Rojas Vann is a Christ-Award winning fiction writer (and a second generation woman from Columbia.) We are glad to see the Christian fiction industry promoting books by women of color, set in the context of Latina culture. This book is about heritage, identity, and sacrifice, an epic story of generations. The main character, Melanie Carvajal, is a Miami journalist. We are told the author was inspired by real-life events… One reviewer says “this story will have people talking.”
Here are a few of the many lovely endorsements:
A beautiful homage to a mother’s bravery and the grace and grit that is our inheritance. An American Immigrant is a clarion call to water our roots and refuse to allow those we love to be lost in translation. — Alicia Menendez, MSNBC anchor and creator of Latina to Latina podcast
In a yearning and humbling journey to the place of her mother’s birth, a fictional Miami journalist discovers her innermost worth by yielding to family truth, creative courage, and cultural clarity — which she needs to give both her heart and the hard world her authentic best. An enchanting, brave, and uplifting story of discovery, family love, and determined hope. — Patricia Raybon, Christy Award–winning author of the Annalee Spain Mystery series and My First White Friend: Confessions on Race, Love, and Forgiveness
Johanna Rojas Vann takes readers on a journey that brings about knowledge, empathy, relatability, connection, and empowerment. The food and culture made me want to dig up recipes and follow in Melanie’s shoes in An American Immigrant and celebrate the blessings God brings us. Readers don’t want to miss this uplifting story! —Toni Shiloh, Christy Award–winning author
Flight of the Wild Swan Melissa Pritchard (Bellevue Literary Press) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19
Speaking of historical fiction, this came out a year ago in hardcover and we sold a few. It is now out in paperback. It is simply remarkable, and has gotten extraordinary acclaim, and is “a fascinating immersion in the 19th century world of drawing rooms and battlefields, crinolines and leeches.” Yes, it is a fictional account of Florence Nightingale. It has been called magnificent and moving and “a tour de force.”
With blurbs by the likes of esteemed and beloved poet (and memoirist) Joy Harjo — she refers not only to the author’s “exquiste ear for tone and detail in story” but “her gift of mystic perception” — Flight of the Wild Swan has been nominated for major awards and gleaned notable recommendations. It is one of these very well-done, captivating novels called “lush and lyrical” and yet offering a serious study of Victorian era expectations and Nightingale’s Christian faith as she pioneered notions of skilled and compassionate nursing care.
Flight of the Wild Swan offers a fascinating immersion in the 19th-century world of drawing rooms and battlefields, crinolines and leeches. Just as vividly, Pritchard’s tour de force evokes nursing and medicine today, when Florence Nightingale’s pioneering contributions are still felt and in which women still struggle for equality. An enchanting, inspiring, and utterly relevant novel.” —Suzanne Koven, MD, author of Letter to a Young Female Physician
Forty Acres Deep Michael Perry (Sneezy Cow Publishing) $12.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $10.36
I have promoted this before so I will be brief. Michael Perry is an essayist, memoirist, funny fiction writer (see the hilarious Jesus Cow) and an all around smart, rural, farmer guy. He writes beautifully about so much — often the day to day experiences of his Minnesota rural community.
This is a short novella, moving, wonderfully rendered, magical in many ways. I read a part in a workshop I did once for folks in rural communities and thought it might bring insight to the complications of modern-day small farmers. This is vivid and what the Wall Street Journal (of all places) called “beautiful and immediate and elegant.” It’s a very compelling read.
The plot begins when a northern farmer named Harold awakes with his wife having died in her sleep. There is a terrible snowstorm and roofs are composing. The wintery beauty is stark and his next days are haunting — mundane stuff about the snow and the property and the truck, and some almost funny scenes like his visit to a newfangled coffee shop in town. Perry says it is “seamed with grim humor and earthy revelations” and you will have to read it for yourself to wonder if this story is fundamentally unforgiving or if there are images and impulses to hope.
In any case, there are farmers who are taking their own lives these days — that is how bad it is, and as we know, with the Trump budget just passed, many small farmers and those in rural landscapes are going to have some support and services stripped. Maybe this glimpse into the hard life of Harold may be helpful. It’s a gripping read… small sized and not much over 100 pages.
The Life of Herod the Great Zora Neale Hurston (Amistead) $28.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19
When I heard, maybe nearer the end of last year, that there was a newly found (unfinished) manuscript by the great black writer Zora Neale Hurston (author of the must-read American classic, Their Eyes Were Watching God) and it was about Herod the Great, no less, I could hardly believe it. Some have said this was to be part of, or maybe a sequel to, her 1950s classic Moses, Man of the Mountain.
How did just a never-released manuscript come to be issued in what is surely one of the most remarkable literary events of the decade? That, I suppose, is another story.
I have not read this yet, and have intentionally avoided reviews. It does have a strange twist: Herod, surely one of the most notorious characters in the Bible, is, in Hurston’s bold retelling, “not the wicked ruler of the New Testament who is charged with the ‘slaughter of the innocents,’ but a forerunner of Christ —a beloved king who enriched Jewish culture and brought prosperity and peace to Judea.” Of course he was friends with Julius Caesar and Marc Antony, so this is going to be a dramatic and exciting read. But, really?
What is going on here? I have no idea.
One contemporary black writer, Tayari Jones, says it is a “treasure for the whole world”, writing “The Life of Herod the Great—like Hurston herself—is a masterpiece, a miracle, and a marvel.”
The book concludes with several letters by Zora Neale Hurston herself, with comment by expert in the life and work of Hurston Deborah Plant, who founded and chaired the Department of Africana Studies at the University of South Florida.
Dream Count: A Novel Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Knopf) $32.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $25.60
I suppose you know of the very esteemed work of Ngozi Adichie whose book Americanah was considered as one of the top 100 Best Books of the Twenty-First Century in one big New York Times list. That was considered dazzling, funny, defiant, wise, brilliant, masterful, cerebral, gorgeous, rare, “witheringly trenchant and hugely empathic.” So this, the long awaited next novel by this remarkable young writer, is now, after a dozen years, is finally here.
The reviews have been celebratory and animated. The Wall Street Journal said it was “tender and wistful” and –Shahidha Bari, in the Financial Times, says it is “moral and furious.” The plot involves a Nigerian travel writer living in the US and several of her friends (including a fancy lawyer who faces a betrayal and a financier back in Nigeria.) The book is said to be about the choices we make as well as those made for us. I believe you will discover some heartfelt stuff about mothers and daughters.
I adored her small nonfiction book We Should All Be Feminists and the small follow-up that Adichie wrote, Dear Ijeawele, also about the roles and freedom for women. Her latest nonfiction is a reflective essay about grief about losing her Nigerian father.
Dream Count feels like a homecoming. The Nigerian author’s first work of longform fiction in over a decade reminds us of the sharp wisdom and sturdy empathy that have made her one of the most celebrated voices in fiction . . . . Dream Count succeeds because every page is suffused with empathy, and because Adichie’s voice is as forthright and clarifying as ever. Reading about each woman, we begin to forget that we’re separate from these characters or that their lives belong to fiction. — Helen Wieffering, Associated Press
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