Mama's Comfort Food by Rhett Devane

(Wild Women Writers, Paperback, 286 pp., $15.00)

Reviewed by Pamela Akins

           Mama’s Comfort Food is the third in Rhett Devane’s series set in the small north Florida town of Chattahoochee. In Devane’s two earlier books, The Madhatter’s Guide to Chocolate (who could resist that?) and Up the Devil’s Belly, very real bad guys brought physical and emotional harm to folks who are secondary characters in this new novel. In this book, the conflict is within the book’s heroine.

          Mary Elizabeth Kensington, a 46-year-old career-focused blonde with Atlanta-based Greater Metro Public Broadcasting, speaks with a clipped British accent and maintains an impeccable antiques-filled townhouse. Just when Mary Elizabeth becomes engaged to nice-guy Donald “D. J.” Peterson, she learns she has breast cancer. She disappears from Atlanta and slips back home—not to London, but to Chattahoochee—where she’s welcomed, after years of estrangement, as Karen Fletcher, the daughter of Joe and Evelyn Fletcher. There, Karen finds shelter and comfort with her family while she undergoes weeks of chemotherapy and alternative medicine in preparation for surgery to remove the tumor. Not only does Karen have to deal with her cancer, she must also come to terms with her alter ego, Mary Elizabeth, and the loss of the successful life and love she’s left behind.

           The book is a set piece of southern sociability, solidarity and sisterhood—Ya Ya or otherwise. We meet half of Chattahoochee at the Triple C Day Spa and Salon, as folks cycle through for cuts, colors, acrylics, and gossip. Most are drawn in broad strokes of Southern caricature, and there’s not a bad soul in the bunch.

          One of the most present characters never to make an appearance is Piddie Davis Longman, Karen’s late maternal grandmother, whose wisdom is cited throughout the novel. The book opens with an excerpt from an audiotape from Piddie to her granddaughter and a posthumous invitation to come home:

          If you ever decide to come back home, you won’t be at a loss for entertainment. This place is better than The Young and the Rest of Us! (Laughter) That’s what me and my best friend, Elvina Houston, call that ‘soda popper,’ The Young and the Restless.

          I love you, Karen. You was my first grandbaby. I cherished you from the time you was just a twinkle in your mama’s eyes. I changed your diapers and wiped your little red behind even before your mama and daddy did. Don’t you ever doubt for one minute that you got a family here ready to take you in with open arms. Forgiveness is our nature—comes as easy as breathin’ in and out.

          In the midst of all this Southern goodness, there is one bad guy—or rather gal—Trisha Truman, office manager at GMPBS, a slutty blonde with overly processed hair who puts the moves on Karen’s, er… Mary Elizabeth’s fiancé.  Trisha becomes the snake in this Eden, exposing Mary Elizabeth’s fraudulent façade (and Karen’s disease) to others.  I expected that this might lead on to the revelation of some dramatic origin of Karen’s split with her family and transformation into Mary Elizabeth, but that’s not what the author provides. Instead, the primary villain of this tale is the Big C, cancer, and the book is less about triumph over an outside threat, or the disclosure of juicy secrets, than it is about facing down personal obstacles, including Karen’s 20-year denial of who she is and where she’s from.

          The most charming parts of the book are characters’ favorite food memories—mama’s comfort food—preceding each chapter: fried chicken, homemade mac ‘n cheese, Dutch oven pot roast, banana and vanilla wafer pudding, teacakes, bowls and bowls of homegrown Southern vegetables—peas, corn, beans, turnip greens, tomatoes, okra—and the South’s version of chicken soup: chicken ‘n dumplin’s. Who doesn’t remember as a child buttering bread fresh from the oven, licking the batter bowl, or eating cookie dough from your fingertip? Makes you just want to get up and start cookin’. And you can, without even opening a Paula Deen cookbook. Full-blown recipes are sprinkled throughout the book.

At its heart—and it has a lot of heart—Mama’s Comfort Food is a guide to the challenges of breast cancer, a window into what it’s like to deal with chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation, as well as the physical and spiritual healing powers of alternative therapies. Mama’s Comfort Food also offers hope through the ultimate comfort food, the love of family, friends and community.

Pamela Akins is creative director of Akins Marketing & Design, and, although a born and bred Texan, she now lives in Sarasota, FL and  New London, CT.

Vida by Patricia Engel
(Black Cat, Paperback, 176 pp., $14.00)

Reviewed by Justin Bendell

           In Vida, Patricia Engel’s fine first collection,  many of the stories revolve around the choices we fail to make, these moments that, once experienced, change the trajectory of life forever. Call it fate?—not quite. Often it’s what happens when we’re not paying attention.

          We are guided from story to story by Sabina, a Colombian-American raised in New Jersey. Sabina is cautious and hopeful, lackadaisical and wise, a navigator of the strange middle-space between adolescence and adulthood. The nine stories are set in New Jersey and Miami, New York and Colombia. I can’t help but think that these stories are a tip-of-the-hat to the late J.D. Salinger, whose own Nine Stories traverses similar emotional and geographic terrain.

           Engel, a graduate of Florida International University’s MFA Program, is a gifted writer, crafting sharp sentences and crisp dialogue.

          In the first story, “Lucho,” the title character is a charismatic, cigarette-smoking new kid in town. Sabina is a lonely teenager “in a town of blancos.”  She and Lucho, both outsiders in their own way, find solace in time spent together.  He tells college-bound Sabina, “College is for pussies. You gotta get out there and live. . .” and we bear witness to the results of her choices. The tension between caution and recklessness, as well as Sabina’s struggles with identity and alienation, carry through the collection.

          We follow Sabina through post-college slackerdom and romantic dead-ends, spirited inspiration and existential malaise. Her goal—be it love, a sense of well-being, or a rooted identity in a rootless world of drifters and exiles—is often elusive.

          In “Refuge,” Sabina, now a college grad, is in an on-again off-again relationship with a man of questionable loyalties but whose lashes “could split your will into shards.” The story is set in New York, in the aftermath of 9/11, with the television showing “the repeated loop of the towers collapsing like a deflated carnival castle.” Not so sure of love’s ultimate worth, Sabina asks her guitar teacher’s sexually-active daughter, Sierra, if she has been in love with any of the guys she slept with, “as if love is the reason everyone does the things they do."

          This questioning of the value or importance of romantic love crops up again in the title story, “Vida.” It is here that Sabina comes closest to pulling her life together to help an abused friend, Davida, escape Miami and return to her family in Colombia. It is a glimpse of Sabina as agent, someone who pulls herself from the morass of ambivalence long enough to make a difference. At the end of the story, on a drive from Miami to New Jersey, Davida affirms, “There is no love. Only people living life together. Tomorrow will be better.” At times, Sabina’s tendency to deflect decisions in favor of compulsive distraction irks me. Perhaps this expectation is my own failure to recognize Sabina’s struggle in a society where she doesn’t entirely fit in. What remains to be asked, then, is if there is any place where Sabina might feel entirely at home.

          In “Madre Patria,” we visit Colombia for the first time with a young Sabina and her parents. Here she meets Carla, who was “eighteen, beautiful, with golden skin and canela hair.” Carla is a person who young Sabina relates to, who serves as a model of Colombian pride and identity. Before returning to New Jersey, Sabina’s Colombian tio reminds her, “This is your country. . . For better or worse you carry its salt in your blood.” It is a reminder that our past shapes us, and lives with us and, for Sabina, this connection might be what has been missing.

The sad beauty of life shines through in this strong debut.

Justin Bendell, an Illinois native, is a writer and teacher whose work has been published in Confluence and Sojourns Magazine. Following years of hard gardening in the desert Southwest, he moved to Miami Beach where he currently resides with his wife, two rabbits, and a dwarf lemon tree.

Try to Remember by Iris Gomez

(Grand Central Publishing, Paperback, 368 pp., $13.99)

Reviewed by Sheldon Frank

           In Iris Gomez’ riveting and enlightening debut novel Try To Remember, Gabriela De La Paz narrates her teenage years in late 60’s Miami. The book portrays her awakening and developing as a high school student sensitive to the new waves of modern thinking—including ideals of feminism and of the Civil Rights movement—while attuned to her family’s and society’s collective memory of early civilizations. She comes of age in the twin crucibles of her Colombian immigrant family and the South Florida setting of that era. Miami was then evolving from a traditional Southern White-dominated town, with fringes of Blacks and Jews, to a dynamic city, bustling with Caribbean immigrants, Northern snowbirds putting down roots, and developers building upwards to the sunny sky and outwards to the borders of the Everglades.

          From the first paragraph, we see that the adjustment of the De La Paz family will not be easy: "…the storm that would end up sweeping me away from my family stirred and blew its first breath right inside our pink Florida house. My father had become absorbed in furious daily scribbling."

           A typical letter from Papi went like this:

           PLEASE I INTRODUCE MYSELF WITH RESPECT. ROBERTO DE LA PAZ. WITH MANY YEARS EN LA PRODUCCION CRUDA. I PROPOSE TO YOU FOR PUMP MANAGER POSICION.

          Gabi is delegated to translate Papi’s employment-seeking letters—for positions having nothing to do with his oil-drilling experience—into words of logic and American English. Her tools are an old Royal typewriter and the growing understanding she forms of her father’s condition and of the way American society works. She hopes to discharge her daughterly responsibility long enough for Papi to gain employment and mental health, and then be able to discover and pursue what she wants.

          Papi suffers accelerating episodes of temper outbursts and delusions about people owing him millions. His mysterious condition and failure to get a job force the women of the family to act. The mother breaks long family tradition by working outside the home, in menial employment. Gabriela, elder than her two brothers, becomes, in stages, interpreter, diplomat within the family and to the authorities outside, accessory breadwinner, and Mami’s collaborator in keeping the lid on Papi’s behavior. Gabi breaks through her mother’s denial, secrecy, and martyrish pretension of business-as-usual to cry for help—first within the family network, then, cautiously, to trusted helpers with access to U.S. society.

          On her journey, Gabriela seeks out a number of mentors, including extended family, classmates, friends, and teachers.

          Grandfather, from Cartagena, sends poems that fortify her when she feels lonely or weak, summoning the natural beauty of pre-Colombian times, "Tempestad/Don't say no to me, Light—constant,/panoramic, faithful in distance;/illuminate this solitary shore."

          “El Chino,” an attorney from Hawaii, schools her on the path toward U.S. residency, the obstacles, and the individual freedom and responsibility she can attain.

          Lara, a German-Argentinean academic, exposes Gabi to modern and ancient literary and cultural trends, from Ruben Dario’s poetry to the ancient Greek forms of love. “There were four kinds…eros, passionate love. Next came philos, friendship, and then, storge, the familial form. Last, but not least, there was agape, divine or selfless love…great love…contains all four." Lara fosters Mami’s hesitant steps towards acculturation and allowing Gabi independent steps, from choosing her prom dress to competing in a scholarship essay contest.

          How Gabi weaves these strands into her own identity, future hopes, and fight for her family, are the fabric of the novel, as it unfolds in a natural and believable way. We feel Gabi’s fear of deportation and of sinking into the quicksand of a patriarchal, pre-modern culture. As befits a book about adolescence, the hero has limited control of her quest in the beginning—needing to choose and deploy allies in her battles. Later, she pushes the arc of the plot with more direct efforts.

          Gomez organizes chronologically, moving steadily forward, with occasional flashbacks. The narrative slows around key events: Papi’s outbursts, brother Pablo’s drug problems, Mami’s appeals to relatives and priest, and Gabi’s adventures with her first boyfriend. The tempo aids believability, with gradual exposition and attainment of insight—like a diary, or a therapist’s case notes. Gomez presents characters in three dimensions, faults and all. Dialogue and the inclusion of Spanish are natural, understandable, and flowing.

 I felt privileged to share in this intimate story, akin to the Anne Frank diary it cites.  This novel should sit on bookshelves alongside other renderings of our complex Florida heritages—from Joan Didion’s reportage to Peter Matthiessen’s historical fiction. It relates also to novels of immigration experience by Julia Alvarez, Sandra Cisneros, and others. Both immigrant and immigration attorney, Gomez will, I hope write other novels, following Gabi to adulthood.  She displays her poet’s ability with description and metaphor, and updates the old, simplistic White-Black-Cuban analysis of Miami, summoning the detailed and dazzling rainbow, which we still see here today, between storms.

Sheldon Frank is a Miami psychiatrist and writer, with close ties to France and Colombia. His poetry collection Is This Trip Necessary? earned an MFA degree in 2010 from FIU.

           For the uninitiated, Hialeah is one of South Florida's most densely populated Hispanic neighborhoods.  Weighing in at a ninety-seven percent Latino demographic, the city is blue-collar to the bone with certain stretches seeming like endless strings of funeral homes, auto repair shops, liquor stores and pay-by-the-hour motels.  The nation's first legally sanctioned Church of Santeria is safely headquartered in Hialeah.  Street vendors sell limes, churros, shrimp and cellphone adapters in Hialeah.  And, without question, the still-throbbing heart of Miami's Cuban exile community beats on in Hialeah.
          And it is this landscape that the characters in Jennine Capo Crucet's short story collection How to Leave Hialeah explore, both the triangular chunk of prairie landlocked between the Everglades and North Miami and the delicate space between the country they left behind and their expectations for the one they came to.  Navigating the shifty terrain of life in Hialeah, these stories (eleven in total, all but one set in Hialeah) see the characters facing the requisite concerns of life and death and sex and spirituality with a raucous aplomb all their own.  Often comedic, mostly tragic, the narratives in HTLH seem almost mundane, as though these are the occurances of everyday life, that is until the unexpected happens.  And the unexpected, in the hands of Capo Crucet, leaves a hilarious, and sometimes harrowing, mark upon the reader.
          Take, for instance, the events of "El Destino Hauling."  After having been left by his wife, Tio (Uncle) Nando opens a dump truck business together with his son, Fernandito.  Much to the family's surprise, they soon drop their insurance fraud ways and make an honest, and successful, go at the business.  When tragedy strikes and Linet, Nando's ex-wife, arrives at the funeral, the true extent of the family's loss becomes painfully evident.  Suffice it to say that the funeral is not without its hijinks but the joke is certainly not at the expense of the characters, as evidenced in this passage:
          The wax they used to rebuild Nando's face was peach colored, but his skin was very tan, so his face in death looked as though patches of sunlight shined on it from some nonexistent window.  He'd been buried smiling.  We had the makeup artist to thank for that: she'd painted on new lips.  Linet's attempt to climb into the coffin left Nando with a perfect handprint on his forehead where the wax caved in from the pressure of her fingers.  Maribel tried to undo it, but she only made it worse; there was no way to get under the wax to pop it out again.  She shut the coffin to keep anyone else from seeing, but my mother had stood on her toes and seen, over Maribel's shoulder, Linet's perfect palm, then Maribel's frantic fingers digging at her brother's face.
          There's something to be said for the American Dream going terribly awry in this story, as well as a few others, but mostly life is simply not kind to the characters inhabiting Capo Crucet's Hialeah.  And death is rarely a reprieve.  Just ask the dead body in the story "Drift."  It inadvertently floats into a neglected canal and is discovered by Rebeca and Jovany, a brother and sister who live in an inhospitable house with their uncle and his family while their mother returns to Cuba to try and bring their father back to Miami.  The general consensus, however, is that neither is coming back.  Rebeca and Jovany each build a relationship with the body, keeping its presence a secret until Jovany, frustrated, embarrassed to have been abandoned by his parents, and egged on by a group of friends, projects upon the corpse his feelings for his father who "[had] gone back to his mother in Cuba—where she still lived—because after two kids and so many jobs, he'd just been happier there."
          Again it seems that life in the "City of Progress" provides more complications and setbacks than it offers answers and, as in the case of Rebca and Jovany's parents, the push-pull of the Old Country is too potent to be denied.  The same goes for Nilda, the wife of Luis, the paternal figurehead of one of the collection's best stories, "The Next Move."  When Nilda leaves to visit her sister in Cuba, Luis is left alone for the first time in twenty-eight years.  Coming to the realization that his wife cares more for the family she left behind than the one she's built with him Stateside, Luis finally understands that his Cuba and her Cuba have been, and always will be, two different places.  Luis said, "I didn't think about what I'd said until I saw her sinking down the airport terminal toward me, her face red from crying so many goodbyes, her hands empty.  She had left everything there, even her suitcases, for her sisters to have, everything except her driver's license and her plane ticket."
          But that's not to say that the stories in this collection are all based on an older generation's immigrant experience.  A great number concern themselves with the generation that was born here, the generation that is too American to be Cuban, and too Cuban to be American.  This is the generation that sees no problem with lobbying a Santera priestess to resurrect a dead salsa singer in order to solidify a job prospect ("Resurrection"), that believes a University of Miami football jersey constitutes formalwear ("Noche Buena"), that believes that life and death (emotional and otherwise) depends on escaping Hialeah (the title story).
          All in all, How to Leave Hialeah belongs to that grand tradtiion of short story collections that create a character out of place—Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio or Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street come to mind—and issues readers the passport required to understand its inhabitants as though you've lived there all your life.  Some folks have truly lived in Hialeah and some manage to escape.  What Jennine Capo Crucet's stories provide is a chance to return to the much-maligned city, again and again and again.

J. David Gonzalez was born in Hialeah but is now firmly entrenched in Little Havana.  He is co-editor of HinchasdePoesia.com

Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber

(Norton, Hardcover, 362 pp., $25.95)

Reviewed by Pamela Akins

           When you read this exquisitely crafted novel—and you must—prepare yourself for the luxurious sensory saturation of paradise. On almost every page, you can see, hear, smell, taste, and feel the lushness of an Eden that threatens to overpower sensitive souls with its grasping profusion and punishing abundance. As with her memoir The Language of Baklava, Abu-Jaber uses the metaphor of food—as wholesome natural nourishment or addictive sugary confection—to serve up a contemporary tale of family estrangement and love.

          The family is the Muirs: Avis, the nurturing mother; Brian, responsible father; Stanley, sensitive son; and Felice, a runaway daughter—all heading in different directions. Each chapter is from the point of view of a different family member, and gradually, through these shifting realities, Abu-Jaber reveals the schisms between them.

           From her home-based business, Paradise Pastries, Avis bakes intricately constructed, delicately flavored pastries for commercial customers. Through luscious prose, you can smell the spices, sugar, and vanilla in the air of her kitchen and taste every cookie, tort, and petit four. To Avis, “sweets should be an evanescence: cakes and pies represent minutes, cookies and mille-feuilles are seconds, meringues are moments” and baking brings meaning to the chaos of life:

          Avis labored over her pastries: her ingredient base grew, combining worlds: preserved lemons from Morocco in a Provencal tart; Syrian olive oil in Neapolitan cantuccini; salt combed from English marshes and filaments of Kashmiri saffron secreted within a Swedish cream. By the time Avis was in college, her baking had evolved to a level of exquisite accomplishment: each pastry as unique as a snowflake, just as fleeting on the tongue: pellucid jams colored cobalt and lavender, biscuits light as eiderdown.

          Yet amidst all this buttery sweetness is bitterness and sorrow. Five years earlier, following the death of a classmate, an “enchantment” came over 13-year-old Felice:

          …the light in her face seemed different: she’d gone from clarity to a gray gem. Even her voice was different, textured. There was a new satiny quality about her, like grief, that made her seem older—her loveliness elevated into something unearthly.

          Felice runs away, returns, runs away again, and eventually stays gone. Violet-eyed and beautiful like a young Elizabeth Taylor, she lives on the streets of Miami, modeling tattoos, skateboarding, clubbing and hanging out with other street kids. And her parents do not understand why.

          Brian, a lawyer and the ethical voice for a large real estate developer, is bitter over the “spiraling disappointment” of his “unbearably lovely, worthless” daughter and a son he doesn’t understand. Nor does he know how to assuage his wife’s grief. Instead, he doubles down at work, thinking discipline is the answer.

 But Avis cannot abandon her daughter so easily and meets with her whenever Felice permits it. Early in the novel, Avis bakes Felice’s favorite cookies and waits at an outdoor restaurant for her. Just getting there is a challenge:

 The pedestrian mall is fluted with trees, a late-summer flush over the simple, old Art Deco buildings. A ruffle of awnings and brick red table umbrellas, planters spilling over with arthurium, ginger, hibiscus, blooms in decadent colors, vermillion, magenta, sapphire. Grand date palms line the center of the walkway, their emerald fronds like starbursts and water fountains. Orchids and bromeliads tumble from crates hanging over store displays or secreted in the branches of trees. Avis hunches her shoulders and lowers her head—she doesn’t have the reserves to take in this exuberance.

When Felice doesn’t show, Avis retreats into isolation at home while Brian is seduced by speculative deals and dealers at his office. Change comes when Avis is distracted from baking by a caged mynah bird behind her home. Soon she develops an uncertain friendship with Solange, the bird’s Haitian mistress. Like Stanley, who owns an all-natural produce market, Solange is in touch with the ways of the earth, digging in the dirt, growing vegetables, making herbal teas. From this mysterious voodoo woman, Avis learns there are worse things than an ungrateful runaway daughter.

As each family member faces his or her own vulnerability through the threat of physical harm, financial ruin, or abandonment, the need to survive refocuses principles and priorities.

In Abu-Jaber’s Miami, there are many birds of paradise—spiky flowers filling gardens, wild and captive birds shrieking warnings, and delicate, uncertain spirits, captive and free. Through this rich, sensitively woven tale, the author shows us how one family finds new ways to hold on to each other while letting go.

Pamela Akins is creative director of  Akins Marketing and Design, and, although a born and bred Texan, she now lives in Sarasota, FL and New London, CT.

Flaherty's Run by Henry Hoffman
(Lachesis Publishing, Paperback, 191 pp., $14.95)

Reviewed by James Elens

           Henry Hoffman’s third novel, Flaherty’s Run, tells an engrossing story of love and revenge in Florida right after the close of World War II. Will Flaherty is a veteran trying to recover from his experiences and begins his assimilation back into civilian life by helping his sister operate a traveling book van. The war catches up to Will, however, when he learns that his sister has fallen in love with an escaped German POW named Max. He agrees to help his sister get Max to safety by driving with them in the book van down to Key West, where Max will be able to escape.

          It’s a unique narrative for its time and setting, a road story much less concerned with the war itself than the relationships that are formed and broken in its wake. Those hoping for a traditional war yarn will be disappointed, but those looking for a rich piece of historical fiction have much to enjoy here. A former library direction and encyclopedia contributor, Hoffman stuffs his novel with wonderful descriptions that bring out both the scenery and the culture of 1940s Florida, such this description of the state’s eastern coast:

           “We should make Daytona by lunchtime and Fort Pierce by dinnertime,” Will said, returning his attention to the passing parade of roadside attractions: a teepee with a Seminole chief decked out colorful headdress stationed by its entrance, followed by a large revival tent rimmed with placards promising sinners immediate salvation, followed in turn by a long picket line of stately oaks through which could be seen rich farmland dotted by grazing cattle.

          Hoffman is clearly dedicated to the period in which his novel takes place, but he is also able to bind his thorough evocations of post-World War II Florida to a genuinely tense plot. Will is believably conflicted as he illegally helps his sister drive Max down the state toward Key West, and every stop they make is rife with the possibility that Max’s identity will be discovered and their plan will be foiled. The stakes escalate when it becomes apparent that escape is not the only thing on Max’s mind, and Will is faced with a gut-wrenching decision about whether to continue helping Max or stop him. The external struggle of the situation and the internal struggle inside Will make for a compelling finale that is truly surprising and well-earned as the trio’s journey to the southernmost tip of United States reaches its end.

          While the period is beautifully evoked and the story is mostly well-crafted, the chance for the reader to connect with the characters is often hampered by clunky and expository dialogue. The same thorough historical information seen in the narration frequently makes its way into what the characters say, and it comes across as wooden or unbelievable speech that detracts from the novel’s sense of realism. Take for example this passage from Max, which would have struck me as narrated background exposition if not for the quotation marks:

          “The rural communities were in some ways fortunate, despite their lack of luxuries. Throughout the war there was always sufficient food available to prevent starvation, according to my mother. Following the war and the destruction of the cities, large numbers of previously wealthy town people had no choice but to come to the rural villages to trade their possessions for basic foods, like potatoes, flour, and sugar. On the other hand, those who were not wealthy would come to the rural areas to beg.”

          Interesting and vivid historical information, to be sure. But it’s not natural spoken language, and this tin ear for dialogue often distracts the reader from the well-written descriptions and the engaging plot.

          Still, Flaherty’s Run is an original and often touching story that deftly explores a specific time and place not often evoked in fiction. Henry Hoffman brings not only a wealth of knowledge and a keen eye for historical detail to the table, but also an engrossing and surprising story where the allegiances that seem so clear during war become harder to see and maintain back home, and where caring for others is a human quality not even battle can destroy. I’m looking forward to his next book.

A child of the beach, James Elens grew up in the Panhandle and now lives and writes in South Florida.

Adventures in Nowhere by John Ames
(Pineapple Press, Hardcover, 200 pp., $18.95)

Reviewed by Frank Tota

           John Ames’ first novel, Adventures in Nowhere, recounts the story of Danny Ryan, a ten-year-old boy living at the outskirts of 1954 Tampa. Since Danny and his family moved from Los Angeles to Nowhere, a neighborhood just upriver from Sulphur Springs, three years earlier, his life hasn’t gotten any easier. His father is prone to fits of insanity (he’d probably be diagnosed as a schizophrenic today), and the family lives in fear of his unstable condition. Danny spends as much time away from home as possible.

          The novel blends Danny’s interior geography and family anthropology with those of semi-rural Florida. As the story opens, Danny contemplates crossing the Hillsborough River over mats of hyacinths:

           It was hyacinth time. The Hillsborough River was so full of them that Danny could hardly spot a patch of open water.  Hanna’s Whirl was like a green prairie dotted with fabulous purple flowers.  People said the hyacinths were a disease to the river, but they were a picturesque disease.  However, ten-year-old Danny was not thinking about the beauty of the flowers.  His father had been crazy earlier that morning and had nearly killed him.

          This is typical of Ames’ attention to detail and his frequent juxtaposition of how we as readers might see the world with what goes on inside Danny’s head. I like the effect this has in mixing the wonders and potential dangers of the world, both in communing with nature and in interpersonal relationships, lacing the narrative with menace throughout.

          Adventures in Nowhere is, at its heart, a coming of age story populated by an appealing cast of characters: Danny, of course; Danny’s troubled father and worried mother; Danny’s sisters, one of whom was approached by a talent agent to be the next Elizabeth Taylor; Danny’s best friend Alfred Bagley, who one day plans to turn his “endless collections” into a career as a junk dealer; and Buddy Connolly, the Eagle Scout type of role model who rescues Danny from drowning in the Hillsborough River.

RIt’s hard for me to read a novel about a ‘tween boy’s adventures along a Southern river without thinking of The Advenures of Tom Sawyer. But while Tom seeks adventure to escape the strictness and structure of school and his aunt’s house, Danny seeks security to counter the unstable nature of his home and family. Unlike Twain’s almost idyllic St. Petersburg, Missouri, Nowhere and nearby Sulphur Springs provide a backdrop of stagnation and decay. By the time the novel begins, Sulphur Springs is in serious decline from its heights earlier in the century as a winter resort for wealthy northerners (in fact, it has just been annexed by Tampa), and its famous Arcade, the first indoor shopping center in Florida, is a seedy span where Danny learns a number of life lessons. His own neighborhood, nearby, is “a patchwork of woods and fields dotted with a few lonely houses” upriver from what he thinks of as “a normal neighborhood, like one you’d see in a movie, where there were sidewalks , and men in nice clothes went away to work every morning, and kids had their own rooms.”

While I enjoyed reading the novel, in quite a few places the narrative almost lost momentum, as the story took back seat to the telling, even the over-telling. Ames captures the inquisitive mind and tumbling thought process of a ten-year-old boy, which is enjoyable in small doses, but too often it derails the action, because it is presented the way a ten year old boy might tell a story, including all the details he can remember, germane or not:

At this answer, Alfred dissolved into uncontrollable giggling.  As always, Danny could only watch and wonder.  Alfred continued giggling until they were on the verge of the fish hatchery.  Danny couldn’t understand why it was called the fish hatchery when it was really a place where aquarium plants were grown.  Apparently, it had once been a fish hatchery, but its title had not been updated.  More confusing still, if a kid had nerve enough to approach the door to the long frame building where the plants were sorted, he could see on the wall yellowing pictures of the hatchery when it had seemingly been a swimming spot, overrun with people in old-fashioned bathing suits. So had it been a fish hatchery before or after it had been a swimming pool?  This was what could be expected of Nowhere. One could never get an accurate line on it.

Nonetheless, Ames has written a charming story of a troubled boy and paints an evocative portrait of a Florida that no longer exists. As far as I can tell from my exploits on Google Earth, Hanna’s Whirl is near the spot where Nebraska Avenue crosses the Hillsborough River in Tampa, and Danny’s Nowhere is a bit upriver, to the east of what is now the Hamilton Health Subdivision, not far from Busch Gardens, Adventure Island and the Tampa Executive Airport. The Sulphur Springs Arcade was demolished to build a parking lot for a dog track, and much of Adventures in Nowhere’s geography was bulldozed in the 1980s.  The river remains.

Frank Tota lives and writes in Miami and will soon do the same in Maine.

The Eden Hunter by Skip Horack
(Counterpoint, Paperback, 320 pp., $15.95)

Reviewed by Brian Sullivan

           Skip Horack’s novel The Eden Hunter takes place in 1816 in the Florida Panhandle. At the end of the War of 1812 the southern Alabama and Georgia border with Spanish Florida was still mostly unsettled. The tenuous order that existed in this near wilderness had been shattered by the crushing of the Red Sticks of the Creek Nation and the withdrawal of the British military from the Gulf Coast. The borderlands were populated by fugitive Red Sticks, runaway slaves, and gangs of white, black and red criminals who, at the time, were called “banditti.” There has likely never been a time or place in America that was so lawless, violent, and dangerous.

          Kau is a pygmy hunter from the Congo who is captured from his forest and sold to Spanish slavers and eventually finds himself the property of an innkeeper in the Mississippi Territory in 1816. He runs away and begins a search for a place where he can live free and in peace. He thinks that his Eden is somewhere in Spanish Florida and sets out on his odyssey, pursued by slave catchers, through the borderlands.

           Horack’s novel explores this landscape with a fascinating character who is the ultimate outsider. Kau is set apart by his culture, his tiny stature and his filed, pointed teeth. While relations with people are difficult, the one thing Kau can connect to is the wilderness itself. The forests and swamps are both like and unlike his remembered Ituri Forest in the Congo.

          The magnet that draws Kau is Negro Fort, built by the British on the Apalachicola River and manned by runaway slaves under the charismatic former slave who calls himself General Garçon. The fort in Spanish Florida was abandoned by the British who left cannons, thousands of small arms, and powder and shot. It is a beacon to slaves in Georgia and Florida and its existence intolerable to American authorities. The American army and navy hover outside the borderlands, threatening doom to the farms and fort of the runaway community..

          This little known chapter of American history is vividly imagined for us in a skillfully written novel. Horack avoids the character clichés that others fall in to when writing about Native Americans and slaves. His characters are real people, both good and bad, noble and base. Kau, as a complex protagonist should, has a conflict within himself that is subtle and unfolds slowly.

Horack, who is from Louisiana and lived in the Florida Panhandle, displays his skill by letting us see this natural world through Kau’s eyes without ever becoming distracting or overwritten. Kau, having grown up as a hunter in the forest, is a keen observer of the flora and fauna around him. In this scene Kau enters a swamp:

He stepped into the dark water and let his foot sink. Powdery sediment pushed through his splayed toes until finally the bottom held firm. He eased forward, grabbing hold of saplings to help keep his balance. Rustling one he heard movement in the high branches, then a sunning snake slapped down onto the water and vanished.

           Horack faces the distinct problems of historical fiction writers, making readers understand the aspirations, motivations and thoughts of disparate peoples who are separated from us by time and culture. The casual violence, the brutality, the disregard for the most elementary human rights and dignity, are appalling to the modern reader but were perfectly normal to the people of the early 1800’s. For instance, among the Creeks at that time, the horrific torture and death of captured enemies was not an act of evil, but a positive, necessary act of goodness that restored balance and gave comfort to the ghosts of men lost in battle. Taking pleasure in torture was a given. Strangely enough, these same people viewed whipping slaves with disgust, while among the whites this was part of the fabric of everyday life. Horack handles these historical fiction problems well, giving an unsparing look at the violence of the age in a way that does not alienate us from the characters. Likewise, the dialogue and accents of Spanish, American and Creole slaves, Native Americans, and whites are written with a consistent and unobtrusive style that allows the reader to focus on the characters and the story.

This is not just good historical fiction, this is a great book.

Brian Sullivan is systems consultant in South Florida.

           In 1982 an artist named Christo draped pink fabric around several islands in Biscayne Bay. Frances, the protagonist of Stiltsville by Susanna Daniel, describes the display as "vain" and "gaudy," yet in the next breath wishes they would "stay forever." Things like this can only exist in South Florida, the character reflects.
           The title of this debut novel refers to a group of houses that were built on high stilts out on Biscayne Bay. Once, when I was much younger, I was out for a boat ride and saw the odd cluster of stilt houses for the first time. "That would be a great place to have a party," I thought. And then, "What if they collapsed?" The fragile houses serve as a nostalgic symbol in Stiltsville, as Daniel documents some intriguing times in Miami from the late sixties to the early nineties. 
           Frances Ellerby lives much of her life moving from one uneasy doubt to the next. Should she marry Dennis? Is it the right thing to do? Did she raise her daughter right? Would she be justified if she had an affair? What must she reveal and what must she keep to herself? Frances, it turns out, has it pretty good, which made it a bit hard for me to root for her. I fell in love, however, with the people around her. First, her husband Dennis who is honest and loving. I was on his side a hundred percent when he gave up that high-paying lawyer job to live a simpler life. In contrast to Frances, everything seems clear to him. Then there's Dennis' sister, who leaves a man at the altar when she finally confronts the fact that she's a lesbian. Dennis' mother is a kind woman who keeps to herself for the most part, but suddenly turns into a frightening, angry mother bear when someone dares to attack one of her own. And there's Frances' best friend Marge, who can't seem to hold on to a man, but teaches Frances much about grace with her endless capacity for forgiveness.
           The book documents dramatic events in Miami history. Frances reflects, "I lived in Miami through scandals and riots, through dozens of tropical storms and one devastating hurricane, through the Mariel boat lift and the cocaine cowboys." Frances lives on the fringe of many of these events, such as when a container of cocaine falls from the sky and lands in the water by the stilt house near theirs. "I remember that!" was a thought that crossed my mind more than a few times as I read the book.
           The action moves at a subtle pace, but prepare yourself for a couple of hard punches in the stomach. Like her house in Stiltsville, Frances' good fortune can't last forever. Very few stilt houses remain off the coast of Miami, and there is a local movement to protect them. Daniel's book is a gentle reminder that we need to treasure our own stilt houses while we have them.

Susan Jo Parsons is the Publisher of the Florida Book Review.

           In his promising first novel Headz, J.J. Colagrande introduces a motley crew of character in their homes of New York, Miami and San Francisco, then follows them as they journey to Oracledang, a fictional music festival in Chicago, where the spirit of the place and their encounters with each other change each of them.
           Appropriately for the subject, Colagrande writes in a highly lyrical style, continuously evoking the sounds and rhythms of music in his descriptions of his characters' daily lives. One character, KC, describes life in New York through, "the vvrroom of motors, Verizon jackhammers d-d-d-d-d-d, car horns MEEP MEEP." Colagrande's turns of phrase are often reminiscent of rap or hip-hop lyrics: "The day pleaded guilty to manslaughter to the tune of at least ninety-five degrees."
           Sometimes the writing in Headz tranforms into music itself. Colagrande sprinkles songs, ostensibly written by protagonist Thelonious Horowitz, into the narrative. Along with Horowitz's personal musings, called "'ludes," these add richness to the book's style of storytelling, which often deviates from the expected. In addition to frequent point of view shifts and lyrical snatches, Headz includes everything from a list of bumper stickers to an ASCII map of a parking lot, which, while surprising the reader, still further the plot. Take, for example, the extended story of a portion of marijuana which is repeatedly sold and sold again, working its way through a variety of situations before returning to its orginal owner, not only a fascinating narrative device but also useful for introducing and linking a number of characters.
           Despite covering four very different corners of the country, Headz is still strongly rooted in place. I especially appreciated a reference to Andiamo!, a pizza establishment Miami locals may recognize. Although I am not as familiar with the books' other settings, Colagrande still evokes them, whether through the sounds and smells of Manhattan or the details of cafés in Berkeley, and so is able to comment upon them liberally and poignantly. Many South Floridians will sympathize with his portrayal of a Miami "sick with condo fever," where the School of the Arts "looks like an asylum," while New Yorkers will understand the "intellectual subway hierarchy battle" between those reading magazines or novels, the Times or the Post.
           The strongest point of Headz is the richness and diversity of its characters. Despite the great number of point of view characters, Colagrande still gives each individuality. Perhaps the most sympathetic is KC, an aspiring author who heads to Oracledang to get out of New York and her decaying relationship with her boyfriend; she decides to self-publish her novel and visits the concert not even expecting to get in, just trying to "sell a few copies," but in the process has the adventure of a lifetime. Even the minor charactes are intricately detailed, from Bodhi-dog, a Golden Retriever who is emphatically "not a Catholic," to Geri, a clothing designer who makes money sewing pot into inconspicuous textiles, like My Little Pony pillowcases and Cabbage Patch Kids pajamas. The big detriment of having so many characters is that they are continually coming and going in the story, often unpredictably.  Sonia, a major character in the San Francisco act of the book, exits the narrative halfway through the novel with barely any warning, while others are still being introduced in the last quater of the book.
           Headz contains reference to a language of young people involved in a drug and music scene that not all readers may be famlliar with. But despite it being a niche work in that sense, I still came out with a solid appreciation for the intricate community presented in the novel.
           Perhaps what I took away most from Headz was a strong sense of fate. The characters seem destined to cross the country, encounter one another, and be changed by those encounters. One character refers to destiny as a "game of cosmic Yahtzee," a feeling especially reinforced by the novel's twist ending. Those reading this book should expect to go on a fun and exciting adventure with its diverse characters and keep in mind what Thelonious Horowitz says: "Oracledang! I'm going to O.D. I can't wait. It's like staying young forever. Word!"

James Barrett-Morison is a college student in Massachusetts who hails from Miami. He is also a contributing editor of the Florida Book Review.