“When I Come Home Again” by Jennifer Rodewald

The past can come back to surprise you. 

Brenna Blaum works as a speech therapist. She has a nice loft apartment in what had been the old Limestone Hotel in Big Prairie, Nebraska. She has a boyfriend who’s a psychologist and counselor at the high school. This is the town she grew up in, the town where her father was the storied football coach, and the town who’d loved her Down’s Syndrome brother Scottie, who died in a tragic accident with a snowplow.

 

And Big Prairie is now the town to which Craig Erickson, one of the best wide receivers thew town had ever seen, was coming home. He’s been gone for seven years, and he’s only coming back because his mother has cancer and needs help for both herself and the two boys she’s foster parenting. 

 

Brenna and Craig had been a couple. Everyone expected them to eventually marry. So did they. But Craig’s football fame grew in college, it looked like the NFL was calling, and Brenna developed a bad case of jealousy over the girls who threw themselves at Craig and even envy at his success. She was a world-class runner, with hopes for the Olympics. They eventually broke up, and then Scottie’s accident happened. Brenna blamed Craig, because he should have been working out with her brother like he did whenever he was home.

 

Jennifer Rodewald

A lot of anger is simmering right below the surface, and sometimes above the surface. Brenna thinks she’s over the relationship, but even her current boyfriend knows she’s not. And Craig is struggling.

When I Come Home Again by Jennifer Rodewald is the story of Brenna and Craig and the first in the author’s Big Prairie series. Rodewald tells a good story; the novel is well-written and a cut well above most romance novels.

 

Rodewald has written several novels in the Rock Creek Romance series, the Grace Revealed series, and the Big Prairie Romance series, as well as several standalone books. She’s also written several young adult novels in the Uncloaked series. 

 

When I Come Home Again is a story with a wide appeal. It’s a romance, to be sure, but it’s what I’d call a thought-provoking romance. You learn how the past can continue to haunt, about what’s most important in football, about the difficulties for foster parenting for both parents and children, about speech therapy, and about the values that guide life in a small town. It’s a well-done novel.

Poets and Poems: Andrew Benson Brown and “Legends of Liberty”

Andrew Benson Brown has taken some of the signature events of the early American Revolution and turned them into an epic poem. But there’s a twist.  

This is an American Revolution that sounds familiar, vaguely, but isn’t quite what you’ll find in the history books. Thomas Jefferson is sent to Hell for some unknown sin and is guided through the underworld by none other than Dante. Paul Revere makes his famous ride on the fastest horse on earth. It’s not just the short heard round the world at Lexington and Concord; it may have fired by a British soldier and any of a number of other claimants. And if at first you think the story of farmer Sam Whittemore is made up, well, think again! I have a new octogenarian hero.

 

Brown’s Legends of Liberty: Volume One isn’t like any historical poem you’ve read before. A combination of rhymed poetry and illustrations (with stanzas printed right on many of them), this is part epic, part mock-epic, part historical fact, part historical invention, a strong dollop of the tongue-in-cheek, and all sheer fun. And underneath it all, Brown seems to be making a serious point.

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

“A Study in Stone” by Michael Campling

Dan Corrigan is taking advantage of his sister’s office to spend some time at her cottage in Embervale in Devonshire. He needs some serious downtime from his work in London, and he might possibly need to leave it behind permanently. Embervale is not easy to find, but he manages. And he discovers that the cottage has none of the modern amenities, like wifi.  

But he does meet a nice neighbor, Alan Hargreaves, a teacher and writer. Together they eventually find what Dan considers a decent coffee shop in nearby Exeter. And the owner tells them the story of the spring behind the shop. Covering the spring is a stone with a coded message – and no one has ever been able to crack the code. 

 

Dan and Alan set themselves to the challenge, and they’ve soon figured it out. But the owner is not only uninterested but downright hostile. And the two neighbors begin a search for the story behind the stone, which will take them back to World War I.

 

Michael Campling

A Study in Stone is the first in the Devonshire Mysteries by British author Michael Campling. It’s an intriguing story in that it has no murders, no violence, and no crimes whatsoever. What it offers is a mystery engraved on a stone.

 

Campling is the author of four books in the Devonshire Mysteries series: A Study in Stone, Valley of Lies, Mystery in May, and Murder Between the Tides. He’s also published numerous works of science fiction. 

 

A rather quiet story, A Study in Stone is nonetheless an engaging tale of secrets from the past, a family in turmoil, and an even a family would prefer to see left buried.

A curious armor

After Ephesians 6:10-24

Expecting the weight

and awkwardness

of metaled defense,

it’s surprising to find

a different kind

of armor, the kind

you don’t see, can’t

see, but the kind

that’s stronger,

more flexible, resilient,

renewable, suitable

for the fight, the war

before us:

 

A belt of truth,

breastplate of 

righteousness,

shoes of readiness,

shield of faith,

helmet of salvation,

sword of the Spirit

(the Word),

the strategy of prayer

the tactics of staying

alert. And this

curious armor will

prevail.

 

Photo by Michal Matlon via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Saturday Good Reads - Sept. 11, 2021

Twenty years have passed since Sept. 11, 2001, and we seem to have come full circle. The Taliban are back in charge of Afghanistan, including some the very same people who were in charge when Osama bin Laden launched his attacks on the United States. CityJournal republished a 2004 essay by James Q. Wilson, entitled “What makes a terrorist? It takes a whole village – even a whole culture.” And it’s just as apt today as it was in 2004. 

Author Salman Rushdie, himself no stranger to terrorist regimes and their long reach, has continued to write after his The Satanic Verses raised the ire of the Iranian ayatollahs back in the 1980s. And he’s doing something unusual with his latest book – he’s serializing it on Substack. Alex Shephard at The New Republic wonders if Rushdie will be able to revive serialized fiction. 

 

Years ago, as in 1972, I read a small gem of a short novel called Catholics by Brian Moore. Set in the distant future (the end of the 20^th century), it’s set in a monastery on a small island. A young priest is sent to force the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, and his efforts are not welcome. It was far from the only this this writer from Northern Ireland wrote. John Self at The Critic Magazine calls Moore “Belfast’s best-kept secret.”

 

Thomas Jefferson is known for many things – the Declaration of Independence, the founding of the University of Virginia, and serving as the third president (and paying $15 million for the Louisiana Purchase). But did you know he was also a poet? Michael Curtis at the Society of Classical Poets has the story.

 

More Good Reads

 

9/11

 

9/11 twenty years later – Andrew Mccarthy at New Criterion.

 

Artists remember 11 September – The Art Newspaper.

 

Inside the memory of 9/11 – David Smith at The Critic Magazine.

 

Teaching 9/11 to the Emerging Generation – John Stonestreet at Breakpoint.

 

The Sphere, 20 Years Later – Christina Stanton at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

Twenty Years Later – Elizabeth Stice at Front Porch Republic.

 

Writing and Literature

 

To Fit and To fix: The Moral Imagination of Alexander McCall Smith – Jeffrey Bilbro at Plough Quarterly. 

 

McIlvanney and Me: Remembering the Man Who Created Tartan Noir – Ian Rankin at CrimeReads.

 

Pius Samwise: Roman Heroism in The Lord of the Rings – Zak Schmoll at An Unexpected Journal.

 

My First Thriller: James Grady – Rick Pullen at CrimeReads.

 

Is Ambrose Bierce an Accurate Primary Source and Does it Matter? – Jon Tracey at Emerging Civil War.

 

Faith

 

I Don’t Think That’s what “Two or Three Gathered Together” Means – Paul Phillips at He’s Taken Leave.

 

Is Faith a Work? – Stephen Nichols at Ligonier Ministries.

 

Turning Toward Light – Andrea Sanborn at A View of the Lake.

 

Culture

 

A Critical Theorist Worth Reading – Carl Trueman at First Things Magazine.

 

The Courage of Peter Boghossian – Rod Dreher at American Conservative.

 

Art

 

Where was Van Gogh originally buried? We still don’t know – Martin Bailey at The Art Newspaper.

 

Scars in Heaven – Casting Crowns

Painting: Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Letter, oil on canvas (1518) by Rosso Florentino (1494-1540), National Gallery, London.

Suit up; war's on

After Ephesians 6:10-24 

Know your strength;

know its source. 

The battle is on, and

the enemy isn’t whom

you think it is (know

the difference between

the chess pieces and

the hand moving them).

The light stands against

this present darkness,

against forces of evil

in the unseen, heavenly

realms. The time has come

to suit up. The game’s

afoot; the war is on.

 

Photo by Duncan Kidd via Unsplash. Used with permission.

“The Cold Light of Death” by Scott Hunter

For the first third of the book, I wasn’t sure I was reading a DCI Brendan Moran novel by British author Scott Hunter. I checked the titled page at least twice to make sure.  

In Chapter 14, all becomes clear. But the first 13 chapters are set in 1976, and the Reading police are investigating the death of a shop owner. It appears to be a classic robbery gone awry, but Emma Hardy, 26, a newly appointed detective sergeant and in charge of the investigation, isn’t sure. It’s clear the shop owner knew his killer – he was bashed on the back of the head near the back door, as if he knew whomever had come to the back door. The till money is missing, which suggests a robbery, but DS Hardy is suspicious.

 

Her investigation chases down several promising leads; the shop owner wasn’t all he appeared to be. And a witness has reported seeing a suspicious man loitering near the shop shortly before the man was killed. The police artist draws a likeness, and it looks uncannily like one of Hardy’s own police detectives. And then DS Hardy goes missing. The investigation continues, and a suspect is apprehended with the dead man’s book of loans outstanding. The reader knows, or at least thinks he or she knows, what’s happened. 

 

Scott Hunter

Fast forward 45 years. A body is found interred in the old police garage that’s being torn down. Knowing the date of construction leads Detective Chief Inspector and his team to check for missing persons in 1976. They discover the listing for DS Emma Hardy, but the body turns out to be a male, one also connected to the shop owner’s death in 1976. 

 

The Cold Light of Death is the 8^th mystery novel in the DCI Brendan Moran series. While the reader thinks the story (and the killer) is known, and this is a story of how Moran and his crew ferret out the truth, it becomes something different. And it turns out we didn’t know as much as we thought we did.

 

The “Irish Detective” series includes Black December, Creatures of Dust, Death Walks Behind You, A Crime for All Seasons, Silent as the Dead, Gone Too Soon, The Enemy Inside, When Stars Grow Dark, and The Cold Light of Death. Hunter has also published the novels The Trespass, The Ley Lines of Lushbury, Long Goodbyes, and The Serpent & the Slave, and the memoir Rattle and Drum.  In addition to writing fiction, Hunter is an IT consultant and musician. He lives with his family in England.

 

The Cold Light of Death takes a while before it reaches the Brendan Moran story, but it turns out to be one of the best in the series, full of twists and surprises.

 

Related:

 

My review of Black December by Scott Hunter.

 

My review of Creatures of Dust by Scott Hunter.

 

My review of Death Walks Behind You by Scott Hunter.

 

My review of Silent as the Dead by Scott Hunter.

 

My review of Gone Too Soon and A Crime for All Seasons by Scott Hunter.

 

The Enemy Inside by Scott Hunter.

 

When Starts Grow Dark by Scott Hunter.