Randy Wayne White does Sanibel and Pine Island Sound proud with his novel Dark Light, #13 in the Doc Ford series. Now I’ve loved Randy’s work since I came across it almost a decade ago in a small downtown bookstore in Fort Myers, but it’s been a while since I’ve picked up another book in the series, and my time for reading has been so compressed of late, it was a joy to tote this book through airline terminals and the Ozarks as a way to wrap each evening. With a storyline that is firmly fixed on his local stomping grounds, and a genuine sense of post-hurricane trauma (I know, I saw what happened to Pineland just a few weeks after Charley), this book is highly charged with suspense. I love the intertwining of history, of the rich and famous, industrialists and authors, who were a major part of Sanibel and Fort Myers during the 1930s and 1940s. If you haven’t read a Doc Ford novel yet, you’re missing out.
I recently finished reading Anne Rudloe’s book on beginning Zen, Butterflies on a Sea Wind, and found it a breath of fresh air in explaining the whole retreat-and-meditation part of Zen within the scope of daily life. I had the pleasure to meet Anne and her husband Jack last fall during a visit to one of my favorite spots in Florida, Wakulla County, when I finally had a chance to tour their Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory, a place like no other, where you see the small creatures of Florida’s Big Bend estuaries up close. The Rudloes embody environmentalism, their staunch stands to prevent the “Miami-zation” of the Panhandle’s coastline grounded in their intimate knowledge of living as a part of an estaurine coast teeming with life. They are fine people. And until I read this book, I had no idea that Anne practiced Zen. But it fits. The book does well to illustrate how the practice resonates so well in a life given over to preservation. Check out this great little video on YouTube where Anne talks about her experience recovering from cancer and how her connections to Florida’s outdoors helped her through.
I’m somewhat of a speed reader, but I slowed down to a simmer as I savored Julia Cameron’s book The Sound of Paper. I’d actually stalled on reading it altogether until I gave myself permission to skip over the exercises this time.
My sister Sal introduced me to Cameron’s earlier work The Artists Way one spring I spent with her in Corfu, and the kick-start it gave me on writing fiction was amazing. I’m sorry I set it, and my fiction, aside. As we journeyed through mystical lands together, Sal and I couldn’t help but buy books. We were browsing the Pilgrim’s Bookstore in Kathmandu, Nepal, when a book on a high shelf fairly leapt into her hand. It was The Vein of Gold, a sequel to The Artists Way, appearing in a way so befitting of our travels that fall. Of course, it made the trek home with us.
While those books are akin to 12-step programs for artists, The Sound of Paper is more of a gentle reminder of what it takes to fill the well, to get the pump going, and to make writing flow. Cameron unfolds writerly truths through the passage of time in her life, from the measured pace of New York City to the languid long days in Taos. Her descriptions of Taos make me think of my cousin the 
novelist, Sean Murphy. He’s lived and taught in Taos for many years, crossing contrails with other creative souls. His award-winning books simply don’t get enough face time in 
the big box stores, and that’s a damn shame. His last two - The Finished Man and The Time of New Weather - are deserving of major press. Especially The Time of New Weather, a morality play writ large on the landscape that is our dissolving country. It’s funny and poignant, and I urge you to find it and treasure it.
Someday I’ll get to Taos. Meanwhile, it’s time to pull out the pen and notebook - for that’s the only way I can write fiction - and listen to the sound of paper.
Nevada Barr’s books always give me the chills as Anna Pigeon stumbles across dastardly deeds done in America’s most beautiful places. This novel has more of a creepy, thriller edge than her others, for several reasons: it features children being mishandled (and perhaps killed, although no murder is in evidence right away) by adults; the children live within a twisted community of polygamists; and the killer tortures small animals for fun. If that isn’t enough to throw into the mix, it’s set along the trails and backcountry of Rocky Mountain National Park, and I’ve walked some of the trails she describes the killer haunting. Tightly written, it features a secondary character that was paralyzed by a fall during an ice climb, and that character becomes an invaluable, though unintentional, assistant to Anna throughout the story.
Directly on the heels of Nevada Barr’s thriller, I finished Sara Erdman’s impressive memoir of two years in the Peace Corps in a small Ivory Coast village. Talk about a compare and contrast on the subject of polygamy! In this part of Africa, it’s the norm, and as Sara unfolds the gentle mysteries of daily life in the village, it becomes evident why it works well for this culture. It truly does “take a village†to ensure all villagers are taken care of, including the absorption of widowed families by their brothers-in-law via plural marriage. However, the cultural norms also fuel Sara’s greatest fear as a health worker, and that is the spread of AIDS. She pulls no punches in her descriptions of personal interactions with government workers expecting graft; the village chief, who, as she finds, needs to approve everything that goes on to feel comfortable; and the villagers themselves, especially the women, who learn to bring their babies to market day to get weighed and immunized. You’ll cheer when the new, efficient motor-powered mill breaks down and everyone goes back to the simple tok-tok of the mortar and pestle for grinding, and boo when the electric lights finally arrive and flood the village in pools of artificial sun all night long. It’s an engaging, well-written book, and a good motivator for anyone who’s ever thought of joining the Peace Corps.
