Two kingdoms

After Luke 18:15-17

Two kingdoms face each other

across a gulf, a valley, a canyon,

a divide, deep into the earth, one

the kingdom of children, the other

the kingdom of men, of man,

two kingdoms:

one relying on faith

one relying on acts

one a path to peace

one a journey to war

one a passage in faith

one an existence in fear

one kingdom yearned for

one kingdom occupied

Photograph by Michael Janek via Unsplash. Used with permission.

“Dry Bones” by Jay Tepe

Private detective Frank Hollander and his wife Mary are on vacation, sailing around the Greek Isles. When they come to the Isle of Patmos, the place where the Apostle John was exiled and had his visions as recorded in the Book of Revelation, they meet a strange old man and his grandson on the beach. Later, Frank sees the old man in a dark alley way, just as he’s hit and loses consciousness. When Frank awakes, he realizes he’s had a vision – of something dark and evil back in his home state of Illinois. 

He enlists Bob Morley, his partner in detection (who also works at Home Depot) to travel from the Chicago area to an area not far from St Louis to help him find what was in the vision. But first they’re employed by a county prosecutor to find out what happened to his 13-year-old brother some 25 years before, who simply disappeared after sledding with other children.

While that investigation is underway and meeting the same dead ends that the police had met in the original investigation, they travel to southern Illinois to see what they learn about Frank’s vision. And they discover gruesome evidence of a serial killer – more than 60 bodies of teenagers and children. One of the bodies will turn out to be the prosecutor’s missing brother. And there may be more than one killer involved. 

Jay Tepe

While one might think they would have a hard time explaining what they found o the police and FBI – you really had a vision in the Aegean Sea? – Frank and Bob have already had experience solving cold case crimes and are known to both police and the FBI. The two and especially Frank (Bob has that job) continue to investigate, and gradually learn the killings go back decades, and have their origin in the World War II Battle of the Bulge.

Dry Bones by author Jay Tepe, the third novel in the Frank Hollander series, tells the story of what Frank and Bob find.  It’s a combination of mystery, horror, the supernatural, and spiritual warfare, told from a largely Christian perspective. Visions and dreams play a significant role in the story.

Tepe is the author of two other Frank Hollander mysteries – Your Sin Will Find You Out and Reap the Whirlwind; two children’s stories in the Chronicle of Alastair Pickelwit series; and two standalone novels, Having Drinks at the Gates of Hell and Akbar Jones.

Dry Bones is an interesting, well-constructed mystery, if a bit heavy at times on the spiritual emphasis. 

“Wild Heart on the Prairie” by Vikki Kestel

Brothers Jan and Karl Thoreson and their families have arrived in New York. Immigrants from Norway, they are headed to the Nebraska Territory and their intended claim of 160 acres each as part of the U.S. land-grant program. It is 1866; the American Civil War is over and the brothers, with no prospects in their home country to become farmers, are looking to create a new life. They are more fortunate than most immigrants: they come with solid middle-class resources and they have done their homework on what to expect, both when they land and when they travel and arrive in Nebraska.

But no amount of research can prepare them for the joy of owning their own land and for the hardship and heartbreak that will come from life in a new world – the storms, the locusts, the backbreaking work of busting sod, disease, and even death. They and their families will experience it all, their lives held together by their deep faith in God.

Wild Heart on the Prairie by Vikki Kestell tells the story of the Thoreson families as they carve out a new life on the former prairies of Nebraska. It also tells the story of what immigrants experienced as they arrived and traveled to their final destinations; how small-town life (and neighbors) helped sustain existence; how people built their farms, communities, and churches; and how they endured great personal tragedies. First published in 2014, it is a historical novel that falls in the “faith-filled, inspirational” genre. It is such a good read that I had difficulty putting it down, so I didn’t; I read it straight through in far less than a day. 

Vikki Kestell

Wild Heart on the Prairie is the second of eight books in “A Prairie Heritage” series. Before beginning her writing career, Kestell worked in government, academia, and corporate arenas, holding a Ph.D. degree in Organizational Learning and Instruction. She has also written four books in the “Nanostealth” series, three in “Girls from the Mountain” series, and several in the “Laynie Portland Spy” series, as well as a Bible study entitled “Growing Up in God.”

To learn in a fictional way about how immigrants settled the American Midwest, and how they survived all that life (and nature) threw at them, read Wild Heart on the Prairie. It is a moving book that often evokes tears while it tells a beautiful story. 

Related: 

“A Rose Blooms Twice” by Vikki Kestel.

In Praise of Reading

I was an early reader. I don’t recall how early, but I do remember riding my red bicycle to the dime store when I was six, to spend 59 cents to buy Trixie Belden and the Secret of the Mansion. It was the first of many such trips, for more Trixie Belden mysteries, Robinson Crusoe, Treasure Island, Black Beauty, and Tom Sawyer, among others, published by the Whitman Publishing Company of Racine, Wisconsin. 

When fourth grade arrived, I could participate in the monthly Scholastic Book Club. Few things in school were as exciting as the teacher handing out the four-page order form for the new books available. Most were priced at 25 or 35 cents. One or two would be 50 cents. My mother allowed me a monthly budget of $1.50.

Scholastic Book Club ended with sixth grade, so I was more on my own. I found my way to and around the book sections of department store and local bookstores, including the ones opening at the new shopping malls sprouting all over my suburb of New Orleans. I still have great memories of one called the Dolphin Book Shop at Lakeside Shopping Center. 

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

Photograph by Annie Spratt via Unsplash. Used with permission.

The 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: “Be With” by Forrest Gander

The 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry was awarded to the collection Be With by Forrest Gander. It’s one of the most unusual collections of poetry I’ve ever encountered; I’ve read it three times now and each time it seems a different book.

Be With is a collection of different kinds and forms of poetry. Itis less a collection of poems than it is meditations upon the personal and the intimate, even when it talks about things that’s aren’t personal or intimate. It is a collection of poetry that is about the beauty of language, and how beauty and language can be used to describe and evoke profoundly deep feelings.

The collection officially contains 18 poems. Many of those poems are themselves collections of poems that could easily stand on their own. But grouped together, they become poems telling stories – of caring for an aging mother, of chasing personal demons, of a love relationship, of a border crossing (mostly illegal), and of interpreting a series of black-and-white photographs. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Poetry at Work, Chapter 18: The Poetry of Electronic Work

Think back 25 years (if you’re old enough). It sounds almost quaint today, but email was just beginning to come into its own. At the company where I was working, with more than 40,000 people, some 5,000 had been brought into the email system. Eventually, all would be, but 5,000 was enough to give us critical mass for a new communications venture – an email newsletter for employees. 

To show how new this was, only one other company in the United States had an employee email newsletter. I hoped we would be the second.

I had meetings with the people in charge of the email system – not only were there various departments, there was also an email council overseeing email operations. My proposal was a text-only newsletter to be sent to the 5,000 people on email.

The response was something akin to asking people to sit in a room full of rats infected with bubonic plague. I didn’t know what I was asking. There were too many hardware platforms. I didn’t understand the technical aspects of the work. The system could crash. The company was too diverse for people to care about what was happening in other divisions. To be fair, these objections came not only from IT people but also from my own communications colleagues.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.

“Trouble the Water” by Jacqueline Friedland

Seventeen-year-old Abigail Milton arrives in Charleston, South Carolina, from England in 1845. Her father has sent her for a year to stay with his close friend Douglas Elling. The Milton family had hit something of a financial disaster; Mounting debts from losses during a flood had forced them from comfortable middle class to poverty. Abby had been working at a mill and as a servant to her uncle, while fending off the uncle’s lecherous advances. 

She’s determined never to marry; she intends to become a teacher. And what she first sees of 26-year-old Douglas Elling confirms her resolution. He’s remote, rude, and distracted; he dresses without care and his beard makes him look disheveled. Three years before, he lost his wife and young daughter to a fire – a fire deliberately set because people of Elling’s class are not supposed to hold abolitionist views and, it’s rumored, help fugitive slaves escape.

Abby and Douglas seem content with staying out of each other’s way. She’s assigned a governess to give her lessons and teach her how to act in Charleston society. Douglas has little to do with her until he accidentally spooks a horse who rears and almost tramples Abby. And everything begins to change.

Jacqueline Friedland

Trouble the Water by Jacqueline Friedland is the story of Abby and Douglas, and how two people overcome past tragedy and brokenness as they reach toward each other. It’s also the story of slavery, abolition, the Underground Railroad, and the risks people would take to help slaves reach freedom. 

Friedland received a B.A. degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a law degree from New York University Law School, graduating Magna Cum Laude at both schools. She also received a M.F.A. degree from Sarah Lawrence College. She worked as an attorney for New York law firms and switched to teaching legal skills and writing at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law in New York City. She lives with her family in New York. This is her first novel. 

Trouble the Water pulls you fully into the story of Abby and Douglas. Friedland has done her research; she’s captured the sense of Charleston and the slavery system on which the South was constructed extremely well. The novel is a historical romance, but it is also about overcoming the past and listening to one’s conscience.