When I Discovered Latin American Literature

Yesterday, I received I Gave You My Silence, the new novel by Nobel Prizewinner Mario Vargas Llosa. Vargas Llosa died last year; this is his final work, published posthumously. 

When I saw the notice that it was being published. My mind moved back in time, some 40 years, to 1986. I was in a master of liberal arts program at Washington University in St. Louis, and I signed up for a fall seminar – The Latin American Novel. We would be reading novels by Garcia Marquez, Vargas Llosa, Manuel Puig (Kiss of the Spider Woman), and Carlos Fuentes, among others. The reading syllabus was challenging.

 

I don’t recall why I signed up for that particular course; others were available. My total reading experience in the Latin American novel was limited to one book – One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Perhaps that was the reason; Latin America has a vast literature, and I’d read very little of it.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

An Unknown Woman: how I discovered a hidden tragedy tied to Russia’s most famous painting – Vladimir Raevsky at The Guardian.

 

Did Edgar Allan Poe Invent Detective Fiction? – Thom Delapa at The Collector.

 

John Brown in Lake Placid – Evan Portman at Emerging Civil War. 

In Praise of Art Museums as Sources of Inspiration

I’d heard that, as you age, you often become more interested in art. What I didn’t expect was to discover how that growing interest in art would affect my fiction writing.

I wasn’t a stranger to art, but I can’t say it was a major preoccupation, either. I had two semesters of art history in college; I took two, because the same textbook was used for both, and it was more expensive than the tuition. I’m also not an artist.

I know when my connection of art to writing fiction started. It was some 50 years ago. We were young twenty-somethings living in Houston, and we saw two exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts. One was the works of Paul Cezanne, and it was stunning. But the one that captured me was “Master Paintings from the Hermitage and the State Russian Museum, Leningrad.” Houston was one of five cities hosting it. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW blog.

Painting: Lumpeguin, Cigwe, Animiki, by Anselm Kiefer, from collection of the artist on display at the St. Louis Art Museum.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

The genre that came in from the cold: Why we love spy fiction – Andy Owen at The Critic Magazine.

 

Fierce, wild, intractability: Emily Bronte’s untameable spirit – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader. 

Surf’s Up in Slop City – Lincoln Michel at Counter Craft.

Books I’m Not Recommending This Christmas

It’s my annual list of the some of the best books I read this year. I call it “Books I’m Not Recommending” because I’m personally resistant to recommendations. But I can tell you what I consider to be the best books I read.  

Poetry

 

The largest single category of my 2025 books is, as it has been for several years, poetry. I read a considerable number of really fine poetry collections, and my reviews end up at Tweetspeak Poetry. If I had to pick one, it would likely be an older one – Autumn Journal by Louis MacNeice. 

 

Three books about poetry that I enjoyed are Dante’s Divine Comedy by Joseph Luzzi; An Axe for the Frozen Sea by Ben Palpant; and Ambiguity & Belonging: Essays on Place, Education, & Poetry by Benjamin Myers. 

 

Fiction

 

I OD’d on Wendell Berry year, reading three of his numbers (not to mention his Mad Farmer Poems). Without question, I enjoyed Remembering, The Memory of Old Jack, and Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story. Berry is still writing, and I’m hopeful I haven’t seen the last of the Port William novels. 

 

Foster by Claire Keegan is a short novel that packs a powerful wallop; her 2021 novel Small Things Like These is also rather amazing. And the (longish) short story Abscond by Abraham Verghese is a wonder. I also read an older short novel, A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr, that was published in 1980 but speaks to us today.

 

Art and Architecture

 

Art continued to be an interest, and three books I would not only say were among the best I read overall but I also wouldn’t hesitate to recommend. Van Gogh’s Ear by Bernadette Murphy explains how the author researched and tracked down the real story of his ear (and his art). Christopher Gorham’s Matisse at War is meticulously researched and focuses on Henri Matisse and what he and his family did during World War II. And Russ Ramsey followed his wonderful Rembrandt Is in the Wind with the equally good Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart.

 

I’m not a major (or even minor) reader of books about architecture, but one I read this year that was excellent was Forgotten Churches by Luke Sherlock. (It probably helped that I had visited some of the ones cited in the book.)

 

Civil War

 

Last December, my historical novel Brookhaven was published by T.S. Poetry Press. The research that went into it – nine pages of bibliography – was extensive. But publishing a historical novel doesn’t mean the research stops. Two books about the Civil War I read this year and I really liked were Glorious Courage: John Pelham in the Civil War by Sarah Kay Bierle and Fred Grant at Vicksburg by Albert Nofi. (I reread Brookhaven, too, and I highly recommend it.)

 

Mystery

 

Willliam Kent Krueger’s mysteries have been around for many years, and I’d read his more literary novels. I finally read Iron Lake, the first in the Cork O’Connor mysteries, and then the second, Boundary Waters. I’ve bought the third and can’t wait to read it. (There are some 20 or so in the series.)

 

I also liked London Blue, the latest in the Lord and Lady Hetheridge mysteries, and Tides of Death by Luke Davis, the first in the DI Gareth Benedict series. I also reached the current end of the Pete Brasset mysteries featuring DI James Munro (Ruse), and the current end of the Hillary Greene mysteries by Faith Martin (No. 21, entitled Murder on the Train). And I enjoyed Suffer the Dead by Rhys Dylan, the fourth of 21 in the DCI Evan Warlow mysteries.

 

And that’s the list for 2025.

Top photograph by Olena Bohovyk via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

At the Savoy Chapel – Spitalfields Life.

 

“Oh I could raise the darken’d veil,” poem by Nathaniel Hawthorne – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Dropped without Joy – Alexander Fayne on the poet R.S. Thomas.

"Boundary Waters" by William Kent Krueger

A popular singer who goes by one name, Shiloh, quietly returns to the Aurora area. No one knows she’s there; she’s enlisted the help of Uncle Henry, an older and local native American, to hide her away in a cabin in the remote area known as the Boundary Waters, reachable only by canoe (or possibly helicopter) through several lakes and portages. It’s an isolated wilderness area, exactly what Shiloh was seeking.  

Since the story opens with the torture and presumed death of Uncle Henry, by someone seeking Shiloh, you know trouble is ahead, likely for the singer but likely for a lot of other people as well. When she was a very young child, Shiloh witnessed the death of her mother but was never able to recall what she’d seen. That is, until as an adult she had been taken through memory regression by a therapist. And now she’s in hiding.

 

The young woman’s stepfather arrives in Aurora and asks Cork O’Connor to help find Shiloh. Two FBI agents approach the local sheriff with the same quest. Cork enlists the help of local tribe member and his young son; the boy has been trained by Uncle Henry and knows the Boundary Waters region as well as anyone. And he knows where Shiloh is likely to be found.

 

William Kent Krueger

As their team sets out by canoe, other men come looking for Shiloh as well. But they’re hired to kill her – and anyone who might stand in their way. They’re followed by a wheelchair-bound man who’s a borderline gangster. He claims to be Shiloh’s father, and he wants her found as well.

 

Boundary Waters, the second in the Cork O’Connor mysteries by William Kent Krueger, keeps the reader guessing to the end. Who is it really who wants Shiloh dead? What does really know? Who tortured Uncle Henry to death? Krueger keeps moving the chess pieces around the board to make a feint here and throw a red herring there. Placing a child at risk layers in another element of suspense and tension. And Krueger cleverly keeps the story moving between the journey in the Boundary Waters and what’s happening back in Aurora.

 

Krueger’s Cork O’Connor novels are all set in the North Woods of Minnesota. Krueger’s also published three standalone novels: Ordinary Grace, The Devil’s Bed, and This Tender Land. He’s received several awards and recognitions, including the Minnesota Book Award, the Loft-McKnight Fiction Award, the Anthony Award, the Barry Award, the Dilys Award, the Friends of American Writers Prize, and the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. His last nine novels were all New York Times bestsellers. Krueger lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.

 

Related:

 

Iron Lake by Wiliam Kent Krueger.

 

This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger. 

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger.

Tamarack County by William Kent Krueger. 

Lightning Strike by William Kent Krueger.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

“When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” song by Patrick Gilmore – Debra Esolen at Word & Song.

 

New Grub Street: George Gissing’s Novel of the Writing World – Tim Page at The Wall Street Journal.

 

Mr, Popular Sentiment – Ferdinand Mount at The Lamp on the contemporary critics of Charles Dickens.

Single Dads in Non-Fiction and Fiction

It was only coincidental. I read Joseph Luzzi’s In a Dark Wood: A Memoir (2015) and the next in my reading pile was Unconditional: A Novel by Stephen Kogon. Both books, one non-fiction and the other fiction, told the stories of young men suddenly finding themselves single fathers. 

Luzzi is a professor of Italian and teaches at Bard College in New York. In 2007, just as his lecture class was about to begin, he noticed a security guard come into the room. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

“Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story” by Wendell Berry

Andy Catlett, whom we first met as a boy in an earlier novel by Wendell Berry, is now an old man. As old men are wont to do, he’s looking backward – at his life, his parents’ lives, and even earlier. And what he sees, far more clearly than he would have seen in his youth, is what shaped four generations of Catletts, including himself and his own children. 

It is a story, a story that happened to his grandfather, Marce Catlett, a story that happened in less than 24 hours but lasted more than a century. And it shows every sign of continuing to last. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

The Irish Tigers from Louisiana (and why they fought for the South in the Civil War) – Patrick Young at The Reconstruction Era. 

 

Life of the Mind & Heart at Hillsdale College – Daniel Sundahl at The Imaginative Conservative.

“Ice Cold Malice” by Rhys Dylan

It begins with a scene common from childhood. Two young brothers, watching to make sure no one is around, slip on to government beach property, looking for souvenirs of military exercises, the sea, and anything else that might look interesting. What they find is a body in a bag. 

DCI Evan Warlow and his team investigate. They body is that of a doctor, or former doctor, as he’s been struck off the approved medical practice list for activities unbecoming a doctor. And the list of suspects is almost longer than the list of people who knew the man.

 

Warlow has his own personal problems to deal with, like his ex-wife, who’s been arrested for driving under the influence. She says it was that one glass of wine mixed with her meds. But she refused a breathalyzer test, declined a solicitor because she could prove this wasn’t DUI, and wasn’t even driving the care at the time of the arrest. All of which Warlow knows to be bad mistakes.

 

Rhys Dylan

Ice Cold Malice is the third of the DCI Evan Warlow series by Welsh author Rhys Dylan, and it’s just as good and entertaining as the first two. Dylan works in enough twists and turns to keep the reader guessing (and on edge) through the entire story. And this time one of his own officers is threatened.

 

Dylan has published 18 novels in the DCI Evan Warlow series. A native Welshman educated in London, Dylan wrote numerous books for children and adults under various pen names across several genres. He began writing the DCI Warlow series in 2021; The Engine House was published in 2022. Dylan lives in Wales.

 

Related: 

The Engine House by Rhys Dylan.

Caution: Death at Work by Rhy Dylan. 

 

Some Monday Readings

 

The Idea of the University & the Future of Civilization – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

The revival of England – David Shipley at The Critic Magazine.

 

Never use your own car – J. Robert Lennon at London Review of Books on Elmore Leaonard.

 

Until I Cross Water – Brian Miller at Notes from an East Tennessee Farmer.

 

Britain: Let our pubs live – Thomas Munson at The Critic Magazine.

 

Crimes that aren’t crimes in New York – Jennifer Harrison at The Spectator.

“Bones in the Blackout” by Emma Jameson

Dr. Benjamin Bones is a young, married physician who volunteers for active duty when Germany invades Poland in September 1939. He expects to be assigned to the medical crops. Instead, his occupation is deemed critical, and he’s sent to the small village of Birdswing in Cornwall. Coincidentally, it’s the same town his wife left some years before – and never returned. She’s also leaving behind in London the man she’d been having an affair with – and it looks like this assignment will be make-it-or-break-it for their marriage. 

Except events never proceed that far. As soon as they arrive in the town that first evening, when everything is blacked out because of the war, a hit-and-run lorry seemingly comes from nowhere and plows into the couple, jilling here and shattering the young doctor’s leg.  

 

It looked like an accident, but Ben has his doubts. As he recovers, he finds an anonymous note left on his pillow at the pub where’s staying. The writer is apologizing for Ben’s injury; the only target had been his wife.

 

Ben begins to look into his wife’s death and the death of another young woman, whose death also appeared to be an accident involving leaking gas in her home. He’s assisted by Lady Juliet, who lives in the local manor, who develops a crush on the young doctor without him realizing it. As he gets deeper into recent local history and the secrets lying buried, he finds that his dead wife had plenty of enemies in the village. And the danger may not be over.

 

Bones in the Blackout is the first of four Dr. Benjamin Bones mysteries by British mystery author Emma Jameson, who’s also written the Lord and Lady Hetheridge mystery series (all set in London and have something to do with the word “blue”). I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the “Blue” series, and I thought I’d try her other detective series. I’m glad I did – Jameson seems to catch the early years of World War II on the home front exactly right and Dr. Bones is just as engaging as her contemporary London police detectives.

 

Bones in the Blackout is a thoroughly enjoyable story, full of unexpected twists and turns and highlighted by a thriller of an ending. I’m looking forward to reading the next three in the series.

 

Related:

Ice Blue by Emma Jameson.

 

Blue Murder by Emma Jameson.

 

Something Blue by Emma Jameson.

 

Black & Blue by Emma Jameson.

 

Blue Blooded by Emma Jameson.

 

Blue Christmas by Emma Jameson.

 

Untrue Blue by Emma Jameson. 

 

London Blue by Emma Jameson.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Don’t trust the BBC on America – Chris Bayliss at The Critic Magazine.

 

Liberalism Without Illusions – William Galston at Democracy.

 

When the Internet Was a Place – Raleigh Adams at Front Porch Republic.

 

An American Greatness: Willa Cather’s “O, Pioneers!” –Bradley Birzer at The Imaginative Conservative.

The Loyalist Who Gave Birth to His Nightmare – Richard Briles Moriarty at Journal of the American Revolution. 

The Bookshops of Old London – Spitalfields Life.

 

Long-Forgotten Rubens Found in Paris Mansion – Jo Lawson-Tancred at Artnet.

Wendell Berry and "The Mad Farmer Poems”

It was a conversation that went much like you might expect. 

“I don’t understand it,” the executive said. “They hate us. They hate what we do. They don’t even really understand what it is that we do. They don’t understand how important our products are for farmers and for the world’s food supply.”

 

I was sitting in the executive’s office, working with him on a speech he was to give. What he was talking about wasn’t the subject of the speech, but it was clearly on his mind. I listened to what was essentially a rant, and then I asked a question.

 

“Have you read Wendell Berry?”

 

He stared at me. “Who’s that?”

 

And there it was. The animosity about the company’s products, the position of the company in the marketplace, the company’s close identification with “Big Agriculture,” and the executive’s being perplexed with the activists and animosity on social media could all be summed up that that question – “who’s that?”

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Robert Louis Stevenson’s Adventures in Storytelling – Andrew Motion at The New Statesman.

 

A Woman Was stabbed to Death on a Train. Wikipedia Wants to Erase Her Story – Ashley Rindsberg at The Free Press.

Two Reviews of "Brookhaven"

One day, I'll figure out how Amazon works. Here are two reviews of Brookhaven, both dated December of 2024 (the month it was published), but which didn't show up until the last week. Still, I thank both reviewers for their kind comments.

From Dec. 26, 2024:

 Immensely Satisfying

A quick admission, I usually have to be drug kicking and screaming to read new novels. So, when this book was placed into my hands, I’m now glad my tantrum was brief and that I settled in to both read and enjoy Brookhaven. The novel is lovely, sad, joyful, redemptive, and all around a thoroughly satisfying example of entertaining storytelling. Without giving away the plot, the author artfully weaves in the awful complexity of the Civil War, along with its immediate aftermath, into the lives of the generations that came after, and all with a most satisfying conclusion.

And from Dec. 31, 2024:

 "Brookhaven" kept me up late wondering what would happen next!

“Brookhaven” is a retrospective novel set amidst the grim realities of the American Civil (and often not-so-civil) War and its aftermath. While Young’s descriptions of the war feel so authentic and in the moment, it is his love story—one of romantic love and, even more, love of a place and its people—that drew me in. Young’s writing is clear and concise, and he weaves together a complicated tale that is engaging, endearing, and enlightening. I don't have a lot of time to read, but the book managed to keep me up late at night wondering what would happen next. I expect it will do the same for many other readers.

“A Month in the Country” by J.L. Carr

In 1980, British writer J.L. Carr (1912-1994) published a short novel. It was one of eight he would publish during his life. And it turned out to be the one that became something of a classic. Even today, it’s considered a “perfect novel.” 

The novel is A Month in the Country. It has the kind of plot that wouldn’t lead you to believe it would become as famous as it has. A veteran of World War I, who specialized in art restoration before the war, has been hired to uncover a mural in a small chapel in Yorkshire, one dating to early Anglo-Saxon times. At some point in the past, perhaps during the dissolution of the monasteries and raiding of the churches by Henry VIII, the mural has been covered over. 

 

Now the church authorities want it restored, if possible. Thomas Birkin, the veteran is still suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (called something else back then), largely manifested by a nervous tic in his face that he can’t control. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Timothy – Brian Miller at Notes from an East Tennessee Farmer.

 

The War on Knowledge – Dan Lerman at Three Press.

 

You Become What You Read – Clinton Manley at Desiring God.

 

What Happens If No One Reads? – Spencer Klavan at The Free Press.

"Foster" by Claire Keegan

Irish writer Claire Keegan writes stories like Johannes Vermeer painted paintings: interior scenes, perfectly drawn, with far more going on than what first meets the eye. Whether you’re reading a Keegan novel or standing before “Girl with a Pearl Earring,” when you finish and walk away you simply say, “Yes.” 

I discovered this when I read Keegan’s Small Things Like These, the story of a coal hauler doing his regular delivery at a convent when he discovers a young girl shivering outside and discovers he has walked into something else entirely. Keegan moves comfortably into her characters’ skins, and the reader becomes almost one with the story.

 

In Keegan’s short novel Foster, a young girl doesn’t entirely understand what is happening when her father brings her to the home of an older couple, Mr. and Mrs. Kinsella. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

My Ántonia, More Than a Century Later – Bradley Birzer at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Ancient Wisdom: Why I Dug into My Family’s Past – Nicholas Lemann at The Free Press.

 

Why My Sons and I Take the Train – Christopher Rufo at The Free Press.

“Remembering: A Novel” by Wendell Berry

It’s the mid-1970s. Andy Catlett is in San Francisco, a writer attending a modern agricultural conference. His family in Kentucky is likely relieved that he’s away; Andy had become very difficult to live with. 

The reason: some time before, Andy and a few others were helping a neighbor on his farm. Andy was operating machinery, and almost without realizing what had happened, he lost his hand. The quick actions by the other men likely save his life; he could have bled to death.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Two Men. A Morgan, and a Martyr – Dwight Longenecker at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

They Became Symbols for Gazan Starvation. But All 12 Suffer from Other Health Problems – Olivia Reingold and Tanya Lukyanova at The Free Press.

 

The History of the Orient Express – Sulari Gentill at CrimeReads.

“Penury” by Pete Brassett

The body of a real estate agent is found in the yard of a small hotel property she recently purchased. She’s dressed and mounted like a scarecrow. The person who finds her is the security man she hired to install monitoring devices for public areas. He calls in the grisly discovery, but he does so anonymously. He’ll say later that it was because he didn’t want to get involved; it may more a case of wanting to avoid the police himself. 

But he’s traced using hone records, and he cheerfully enough tells the police what they want to know. He’s willing to help, at least until his body is found. 

 

Retired DCI James Munro, who still manages to get involved in ongoing cases, finds himself helping an investigating officer who has no experience with murder. Then his own former team is assigned the case, and James finds himself right in the thick of things. And thick it is – a past involving real estate dealings, a Lexus that seems abandoned and then disappears, a suspect who doesn’t want to say what she knows, at least all at once, shifting identities, and fast-paced plot developments that you better read closely.

 

Pete Brassett

Penury is the 12^th Munro and West novel by Scottish writer Pete Brassett, and it is as well-plotted, entertaining, and often downright funny as its predecessors. Brassett had a gift for comic dialogue (even with an overtone of Scottish dialect) between the police officers that helps to relieve tension. It’s difficult to think of another mystery writer with this kind of comic talent.

 

Brassett, a native Scot, has published 13 novels in the Munro and West series, as well as several general fiction and mystery titles. His first novel was Clam Chowder at Lafayette and Spring, followed by three independent crime novels – Kiss the Girls, Prayer for the Dying, and The Girl from Kilkenny, in which he dealt with issues like post-traumatic stress disorder, religious scandal, and manic depression. 

 

With Munro and West, Brassett came into his own, and the series is one of the most enjoyable I’ve read. I have only one more to go, and I hope Mr. Brassett is hard at work on No. 14.  

 

Related:

She by Pete Brassett.

Avarice by Pete Brassett.

Duplicity by Pete Brassett.

Terminus by Pete Brassett.

Talion by Peter Brassett.

Perdition by Peter Brassett.

Rancour by Peter Brassett.

Penitent by Pete Brassett.

Hubris by Pete Brassett.

 

Turpitude by Peter Brassett.

Some Thursday Readings

 

“In the Mountains on a Summer Day,” Poem by Li Po – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Scattered Thoughts – poem by Seth Lewis.

 

Ansel Adams, AI, and the Essence of Creation – Alan Noble at You Are Not Your Own.

A Bible Verse and a Fictional Scene

For the past few months, our church pastors have been preaching a series on the Gospel as seen in the life of David. We’re nearing the end of the series. The sermons have focused on some of the highlights of David’s life, including his anointing by the prophet Samuel, the confrontation with Goliath, the growing animosity of King Saul, the friendship with Saul’s son Jonathan, David becoming king, and Bathsheba.  

Last Sunday, the sermon centered on the end of the rebellion by David’s son Absalom (2 Samuel 18). The army gathered by Absalom has been defeated and scattered; Absalom himself, trying to escape, is caught by his trademark flowing hair in the branches of a tree. He’s dangling there when found by David’s general, who wastes no time in ignoring David’s earlier command to spare Absolom’s life and putting the young man to the sword. 

 

I’m familiar with the account. I’ve read it many times, my attention caught by the image of Absalom dangling from the tree limb. It is a truism that you can read a book of the Bible, a passage, a chapter, and even a verse scores of times and not see something that will suddenly catch your attention during an additional reading.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Photograph by Filip Zrnzevic via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Wendell Berry and what it means to love a place – Fr. Michael Rennier at Aleteia. 

 

At Abbey Wood – Spitalfields Life.

 

Is offshore wind really cheaper than gas? – Steve Loftus at The Critic Magazine.

 

Ray Bradbury Unbound – Bradley Birzer.