Chanticleer Book Reviews

Category: Reviews

ANGELS OVER YELLOWSTONE by Elisabeth Ward – a richly drawn saga

An atmospheric picture from American frontier history, Angels over Yellowstone explores larger societal issues through the lens of one small family’s experience as their lives are dramatically affected by the demands of a growing young nation.

In the 1890s in Wyoming, the United States government has decided to fully claim lands in the Yellowstone region that were earlier designated as national parkland. The American Women’s Suffrage movement was in full swing, the Sierra Club was founded, the Boston subway being built, and the Wounded Knee Massacre had just taken place—these were just a few of the events that were shaping this young nation at this time.

In poet/author Elisabeth Ward’s paean to pioneer life, a young woman, Casey Potter, will be especially affected by this news, when soldiers arrive at her cabin one morning to announce that she, her trapper husband Lang, and their little girl Ginger, must move away so that the land around them can be viewed by tourists, untouched by human influence.

The simple life they share will be sacrificed to the greater good, to national domain and the preservation of pristine nature.

Living so remotely from civilization, barely able to think in terms of national agendas, Casey understands only that she and her family have to leave the cabin home they love, forced off the hunting grounds whose bounty has fed their family. But knowing that the soldiers will return soon to burn down their precious homestead, they acquiesce.

Accepting their fate, the three vacate their hearth and home as they are forced to set out and start anew. However, Casey and Lang return to report their moving on to a fellow trapper. It is their return that brings about fatal consequences. Coming to terms with the loss of her home and then the loss of her husband is almost more than Casey can bear. Casey considers the notion of suicide until she finds solace in simple rituals, what she calls “service” or the simple rituals of everyday life.

Ward’s characters are lyrically and powerfully drawn as are her evocative images of the time and place of this young nation at the turn of the new century. The author deftly juxtaposes Casey’s reluctant departure from her secure landscape with Lang’s earlier expedition when he met the girl with rust-colored hair: “…After seeing Casey McGregor’s hair he felt everything was dull.” The author interweaves poetry into the story, intensifying the emotional content. The pulse of her plot is unwaveringly strong, holding the reader to the page.

To some, Ward’s concentration on one white family’s tribulations may seem somewhat skewed, since the biggest losers in the opening of the national parklands were undoubtedly the Native American peoples. Nevertheless, Ward’s tale underscores some larger truths about our twin American conflicting aspirations, to conquer and to conserve.

Angels over Yellowstone combines a richly drawn saga of personal love and loss with some provoking philosophical questions about the American ethos.

December 2, 2015
FIVE THOUSAND BROTHERS-IN-LAW: LOVE IN ANGOLA PRISON: A MEMOIR Shannon Hager – A rare and authentic view inside the US penal system

An authentic and insightful account from behind the bars at one of America’s most storied penitentiaries. Shannon Hager, who worked more than twenty years as a nurse in the deep South’s prisons and jails, shares her inside experiences.

After her years of connecting directly with this bizarre, labyrinthine system that strips away almost every human right, she retains genuine empathy for prisoners and their families in this award-winning memoir.

Hager’s drama began in 1992 when she arrived at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, commonly known as Angola, a name held over from plantation days, denoting the origin of slaves who toiled there. Eighteen thousand acres are surrounded on three sides by the Mississippi River. Angola has been the last stop for thousands of criminals.

Hager had important tasks as a health care professional, such as tuberculosis testing and investigating HIV/AIDS cases within its walls. Hager quickly learned that most of the staff were hostile toward anyone trying to help prisoners. Above all, she was told repeatedly, prisoners were not to be trusted. This led to such paradoxical policies as refusing to allow prisoners to use condoms, because they could be utilized as weapons, or for transporting drugs, even though HIV/AIDS was widespread in the prisoner population.

Though she came to know many prisoners well, and not only befriended but married one, she never got over the feeling of oppression and sorrow that festered inside the prison: “Pain seeped up from the ground like morning fog.”

When she met Big Kidd, an older convict who had spent more years in prison than out, she found herself falling for with this charming, seemingly reformed, self-styled disc jockey/preacher. She quit her job to have a relationship with him; Hager became involved with Big Kidd’s family on the outside. She began to understand what relatives and loved ones experience when they have someone near and dear to them in prison.

Hager poignantly describes her own love story, blooming from the jagged cracks of Angola Prison, as it tries to find enough light and humanity to survive. Loving Big Kidd caused her to share some of his suffering: little privacy, no conjugal visits, and hard choices. It is a love that dramatically breaks all rules.

Hager’s writing style comes from the heart and reflects her gradual immersion into Big Kidd’s reality. Using the common Louisiana practice of nicknaming, she vividly describes the characters she encountered, adopting their accents in conversation and sometimes even writing in their colorful street patois.

Discrepancies and shortcomings of the United States penal system that encompassed more than two million people are exposed by Hager in an up close and personal way. Most of the two million prisoners come from unrelenting impoverishment, turbulent environments, and have no education or skills.

A rare, vibrant view of a complex, dangerous, and at times, inhuman subculture of contemporary society–Five Thousand Brothers-in-Law communicates a significant and compelling message about the poor and oppressed—whoever they are, no matter what their misdeeds.

December 1, 2015
GOD’S HOUSE by John Trudel, an international thriller

Jack Donner can’t get a break. He blames himself for the deaths of those he was close to, and even one he was hired to protect. While bringing the body home from the Middle East, he gets detained in the United States by low level agents over a missing stamp in his passport. Worse yet, he has to use his real identity this time. While his CIA connections eventually get him out of hot water, his troubles are only beginning.

The body Jack brings home belongs to a man who had the technology that could change the world’s power balance forever. A system that produces efficient, clean energy, but could also be used as a weapon of mass destruction. The company behind it, Enertech, was attacked in Lagos where it lost most of its staff.

A young, attractive widow, Anne, is left with the assets, but she wasn’t involved with operations. She has no idea what her husband was working on. Jack planned on retiring, but is talked into staying on as a private citizen commissioned to recover Enertech’s technology along with trying to keep Anne safe during the process.

Anne and her late husband, Bob, were members and supporters of a local mega-church called The Sanctuary, run by a charismatic woman, Liz, with ties to nefarious foreigners. Liz speaks at the United Nations, visits the Dalai Lama frequently, and spreads the gospel of wealth, non-violence, and world peace.

Anne turns to Liz and a few close friends for emotional support during this difficult time. She also turns over everything she knows about the company to Jack. This leaves him with a lot of data and few answers, and puts him under the scrutiny of watchful eyes at The Sanctuary.

Things are not right around Anne’s empty estate. Jack needs help to keep her and himself safe, but there are never quite enough resources at his employer’s disposal to do so. While trained in firearms, he’s not a huge fan of them. He’s more of a technologist than a soldier.

Enertech faces bankruptcy. The pressure to sell to a foreign investor is on, starting a race against time. Problem is, Jack can’t find the answers needed to unlock the key to the technology. One clue keeps him going: a message from Bob to his late wife that is hidden in some kind of cipher, tucked away in the pages of a cheesy novel.

Anne and Jack start developing their own story, though Jack has reservations about getting romantically involved. Everyone he cares about ends up dead. He’s seen too much bloodshed to risk another loss. He about earns a frequent-user pass to the ER trying to protect Anne, and now he has to keep both her and her only close relative out of danger in Brazil.

Will Jack be able to come through for Anne and Enertech? The stakes are high in both cases.

Those Anne trusts raise doubts about Jack. He has doubts about himself, recalling many episodes revealing the horrors of non-staged, real life gunfire and bloodshed, losing friends in wartime.

One of the character’s German accent reads so spot-on you almost hear it. Those who follow events in the Middle East will resonate with John’s novels. His novels seem more fact than fiction; they lend credence to Trudel’s tagline: “Thrillers are fiction until it happens.”

This fast-paced thriller will have you turning pages quickly to piece together puzzles with surprising twists. You would never know that John Trudel’s God’s House is his debut novel. It reads like it was written by a seasoned author.

November 11, 2015
SPIRITUAL BLACKMAIL: My Journey Through a Catholic Cult by Sherri Schettler – a cautionary tale

In the early 1960s, leaders of the Roman Catholic Church found themselves grappling with dynamic shifts in the expectations and needs of contemporary society. In order to accommodate these shifts Pope John XXIII called for a special gathering of religious leaders. The gathering, referred to as the Second Vatican Council, aka Vatican II, outlined new strategies to make the disciplines of the Church and the explanations of her doctrine more accessible to her members.

Unfortunately many of the clergy, as well as the faithful, viewed these strategies as an undermining of centuries-old Catholic doctrine. Confusion and alarm within the hearts and minds of many traditionally-minded Catholics was the unfortunate result.

Author Sherri Schettler’s family was one of the many that succumbed to a deep-rooted fear that the new church had lost the necessary wherewithal to satisfy their spiritual needs. It was this sentiment that rendered them vulnerable to the charismatic “Bishop” Francis Schukardt who, with his renegade faction of misguided fundamentalists, shepherded them into the dark territory of mind control, and ultimately, betrayal. For Sherri, a trusting, vulnerable 14 year-old, the journey became one that would severely test both her faith and her resolve.

Informative and introspective, “Spiritual Blackmail” reveals the many facets of traumatic bonding, also known as Stockholm syndrome, in which an isolated individual identifies with and often defends her “captors.” But Sherri proved to be no ordinary follower.

In this honest and courageous memoir, author Sherri Schettler provides the reader with a riveting account of her years of near-incarceration within the confines of the ultra-traditional Fatima Crusade. And with grace and compassion she exposes, understands, and, ultimately, forgives the cruel actions of a spiritual flock that strayed from its Christian path.

Author Sherri Schettler’s story is a cautionary tale of the power of deception and a window into the genesis of radical fundamental religious thought.

Reviewer’s Note: The Second Vatican Council was formally opened by Pope John Paul XXIII on 11 October 1962 and closed by Pope Paul VI on 8 December 1965.

November 10, 2015
The ARIADNE CONNECTION by Sara Stamey, a SciFi Thriller set in Greece

The year is 2027 and planet Earth is angry. Pollution has gone viral, ravaging the global environment while corporate technocracy has invaded all aspects of the media using its sensory-loaded “NeuroLink” productions to commandeer the thoughts and will of the masses.

Radical climate swings, drought and famine, flood and pestilence take on Biblical meaning. And deep inside its core, the bowels of the earth are being rocked by a violent shift of its geomagnetic poles – a shift paired with cataclysmic seismic activity.

With planetary life headed for extinction, mankind reaches out to its “Gods,” both secular and non-secular, for salvation. At the same time whisperings on the NeuroLink claim that there is a savior among them. Saint Ariadne.

With the story of a lifetime in her sghts, NeuroLink celebrity Leeza Conreid calls upon “freelance import expediter” Peter Mitchell to take her into the dark heart of the militarized Mediterranean League’s territory. She’s confident that her history with Ariadne will give her the access she needs, but Leeza has more than a hot story on her mind. Broken promises and a perceived betrayal have warped her soul, launching her on a revenge-driven mission to expose and destroy Ariadne.

“Saint” Ariadne has her own plan. After pushing into alternative scientific frontiers using pulsed laser, electronic stimulation and a mysterious “tonic” water, she’s on the verge of finding a cure for a rapidly-progressing form of leprosy. But the ongoing electromagnetic upheaval is tapping into something primal in her DNA, and her life’s work as well as her “healing abilities” are under attack. With global salvation at stake, Ariadne must escape from the exile of her father’s house and place her trust in the talents of hard-drinking smuggler Peter Mitchell.

Destined to be a classic in the Speculative Fiction genre, Sara Stamey’s Cygnus Award-winning novel, The Ariadne Connection, takes the reader on a visual feast through the azure waters and rugged Mediterranean landscape of the Greek Islands while tapping into the deep roots of mythological tradition. And her use of well-defined, believable characters invites us to cinch our seatbelts tight and come along for the ride of a lifetime.

With a clever nod to movie blockbusters such as “The Fifth Element” and “Transporter,” Sara Stamey’s near-future novel The Ariadne Connection is a rocket-paced thrill ride that delivers complex, engaging characters in a laser-sharp plot.

October 30, 2015
VILLA of DECEIT: a Novel of Ancient Rome by Ron Singerton

Ron Singerton’s “Villa of Deceit” cleverly portrays the transition from the Roman Republic, which had a complex constitution with checks and balances, to the rise of the imperial dynasty of the Roman Empire, which would rule the next four hundred years with an iron hand, by using the microcosm of a Roman family to reflect the changes and undercurrents that were beginning to change the course of Western Civilization.

The book opens with young Gaius, the hero of the story, intending to celebrate the last night of the Ludi Flores festival with his good friend Appian Dio. But that afternoon, he makes the mistake of attempting to intervene on behalf of a young slave Gaius’s tyrannical father, Toronius, is unfairly punishing. Gaius fails, earning the wrath of his father, and is also injured during the altercation. For Gaius, the incident is further proof of what he has known for some time: Toronius is a brutal man with few scruples, and in Gaius’ eyes, unfit to head the family or the family’s trade.

However, the laws of first century B.C. Rome are of no help in deterring a man such as Toronius. And Gaius’s young mother, who escapes the suffocating rule of her husband by looking after her own interests, is no ally to her son. Not long after the incident with the young slave, Gaius falls in love with a female slave brought into the household. To save her from his father, Gaius convinces her to flee with him and is disinherited as a result. Unfortunately, tragedy strikes, leaving Gaius alone with young son.

In Gaius, the author gives us a highly sympathetic character who, though young, is intelligent and moral enough to draw conclusions about such unfair treatment of slaves, and brave enough to make difficult decisions in order to strive to live his life by a better standard. Forced into choices that carry consequences by the limited options available in those times, Gaius leaves the infant with a relative and joins the merciless military to try his luck at becoming a Roman Legionnaire.

Singerton has done his research, and he paints a very accurate portrait of life for young men during first century B.C. Rome. Fathers demand that they come of age early in life, measuring their manhood and stamina by the number of women they bed in one night, and the amount of fear that they are able to strike into the hearts and minds of others.

In 70 B.C. Rome, slaves and prostitutes are to be used and then discarded when no longer needed. A slave’s life has little value and is easily replaced by more prisoners who would be taken in the next cold-blooded military conquest. Imported to Roman households from far away lands, slave were young children, and the women who were sorted as to their best use in the eyes of their captors. Those captured who were of little use were instantly put to death. The Roman Empire would continue to conquer and expand its undisputed rule across three continents for the next four hundred years.

“Villa of Deceit: a Novel of Ancient Rome” by Ron Singerton will keep readers turning the pages as the author vividly conveys the brutality and wanton disregard of life on and off the battlefield in this cleverly plotted historical novel that speaks to a time that would affect Western Civilization for the next millennium.

October 30, 2015
17,000 Feet: A Story of Rebirth by Fox Deatry – an adventurous PNW novel

What do you do after you’ve done all you can? Jo Packwood, marine biologist at the top of her professional game, decides to climb Mt. Olympia, all 17,000 feet of it, looking for clues to her blighted childhood and facing the cold mists of her future.

The book begins on the trail up the mountain. Jo is accompanied by Solomon, nicknamed Squibb, her long-lost uncle, the person most likely to help her reconnect spiritually with her father Papi, or Nelson, who abandoned her and her mother when she was a small child. Why?—Jo has only vague memories to rely on, most of them painting a scurrilous impression of Nelson—a decorated soldier, yes, but a reckless rake and deceiver.

Jo has recently placed her mother, increasingly isolated by Alzheimer’s, in a nursing home, evoking guilt, as well as frustration at the lack of information about the fractured family. As they ascend, Jo and Squibb spar, share, and commiserate, while he gradually, gruffly, fills in a more human, ameliorative portrait of Nelson, who disappeared, presumed dead in an avalanche, on the very mountain they are climbing.

Squibb is a reluctant mentor whose advice will reverberate for Jo at a critical moment: “Life isn’t a sprint, sugar pie. It’s about bases: you get to each for the grand slam homerun.” Loss of radio contact with a group of hikers up ahead, hallucinations possibly brought on by oxygen deprivation, and the horrifying discovery of a cache of frozen corpses (could Nelson’s be among them?) stymie the pair, with worse to come.

Fox Deatry, media executive and author (American Witches: An American Witch in New York City), tells Jo’s story in flashbacks as she hikes up Mt. Olympia: her discouraging visit with her deluded mother; her mentoring moment with a female cleric; an unexpected talk with one of her father’s old war buddies; and her introduction to Solomon/Squibb who will challenge her to conquer the mountain that killed her father (“Up there, you’ll experience unexpected things”).

Deatry’s descriptive prose shows practiced sophistication, and he conveys ordinary conversation believably. The plot is well constructed, and readers may appreciate the story’s close adherence to the classic concept of the hero’s journey: reluctance at the outset, fateful guidance, life-threatening peril, all leading, as the subtitle references, to rebirth, in a most surprising, cinematic conclusion.

17,000 Feet, an adventure combining real time, powerful memory and lush imagination, offers a heroine in crisis coming to terms with her life’s big questions by taking courage and, finally, taking charge.

October 27, 2015
BRAIN by Dermot Davis, a rare species of complete entertainment

Daniel Waterstone has every intention of writing the Great American Novel, and in doing so, he is going to set the ignorant, crazy mass of modern readers straight on what constitutes great literature. But, after two improbable, failed “masterpieces,” his publisher, the delightfully savvy Suzanne, has told him that success and recognition will best be served by his authoring a book that some of the “great-unwashed” might actually be interested in reading. Daniel likes the idea but is clueless about how to proceed.

The product of coldly academic and overprotective parents, Daniel entered adulthood as a cynic with a dislike for people, a fear of women, and a conviction that everyone except him was crazy. He had such strong feelings of loneliness that he often thought of himself as an alien trapped on the wrong planet. Although highly-degreed in literature, the rigidly naïve Mr. Waterstone will soon learn that he is obligated to finish one final course: Life 101. And if he is willing to take his lessons, life just might have a little something up its sleeve for him.

Daniel quickly finds a theme for the book that will liberate him from poverty and his sense of failure; he enters a bookstore where a flamboyant and somewhat other-worldly writer of self-help books is preaching his gospel to an enchanted crowd. When Daniel calls him out as an opportunistic fraud, the guru challenges him to engage in a “mind-meld” that will supposedly free Daniel from some of his hang-ups.

Amused and seemingly unaffected, Daniel leaves the store cradling an idea for the book that will please the masses: he will write, under a pseudonym, a satire that exposes the pop-psychology industry for what he thinks it is: a total lie, an insult to crazy people done by crazy people. Ironically, his satire becomes the kind of blockbuster success that brings him riches and fame, but at a cost, as author Dermot Davis is happy to tell us all about in Brain: The Man Who Wrote the Book That Changed the World, his mystical and joyous tale of personal growth and fulfillment in the modern age.

“Crazy,” the word, the notion, the concept, is the spine from which flows the energy of Davis’ often tongue-in-cheek fairy tale, its relevance grounded in the infinite variability of human experience, and its ability to score a few points for emotion in the seemingly endless skirmish between skepticism and belief. Score more points for the stubborn and ineffective Daniel if he can revise the “me-versus-them” definition of “crazy” that has him strapped to the cheap seats of human experience.

And, could there be a better word than “crazy” to carry the torch of enlightenment into the shadows of our increasingly soul-less and programmed culture? Probably not, at least in Davis’ jauntily addictive narrative, an arena in which he holds court with the majesty of an imaginative, accomplished humorist.

I was not surprised to learn that the author is also a playwright, as his marvelously crafted characters and sets quickly acquire the kind of three-dimensional believability that one expects to encounter in a live theatrical performance or, according to my mind’s eye, a movie (complete with an endearingly haunting soundtrack and a reincarnated Jack Lemmon in the lead role!).

Dermot Davis’ Brain is that rare species of complete entertainment that can be both deeply philosophical and buoyantly accessible. Laughs, suspense, intrigue, love, and a gentle thread of the paranormal are all there for you, gift-wrapped in a sweet mist of serendipity.

October 23, 2015
HIS LIFE THROUGH MY EYES by Gobi Rahimi

In the early ‘90s, up-and-coming artist Tupac Shakur was taking the rap industry by storm. Known for his electric energy and controversial lyrics, his music focused largely on social injustices and oppression. Equally notorious for the brilliance of his music and for his frequent problems with gang violence and the law, he accrued a large and passionate community of listeners and fans. When he was killed in a drive-by shooting at the young age of 25 in 1996, his legacy as a well-known and respected voice within the genre lived on.

In the book His Life Through My Eyes, filmmaker Gobi Rahimi, who worked continually with Tupac in the months preceding his death, offers a unique glimpse into the artist’s day-to-day life. Sparing no detail, Rahimi takes the reader on an intimate and emotional journey through his memories of the times spent with Tupac, aided by photographs he took during the time. Rahimi tells the story of how he came to work with Tupac and become his close friend.

This book is shamelessly personal; it is as much about Rahimi’s journey to process Tupac’s death and honor his legacy as it is about Tupac himself. This is to Rahimi’s credit, though. What might otherwise feel like a series of empty anecdotes is bonded by Rahimi’s laudable honesty and openness with regards to his grief and admiration for Tupac.

Rahimi touches on the sociopolitical controversy and turmoil that surrounded Tupac during his life, and does not gloss over Tupac’s struggles with racism in the music industry. However, his focus is much more on Tupac as a human being than as a public figure. Rather than recounting details of his friend’s public persona, he centers on portraying the man he knew.

In many ways, the book reads very much like a series of diary entries. Some may find Rahimi’s accounts somewhat chaotically organized, but overall the stories provide captivating, interesting, and thought-provoking insights into Shakur’s life. Rahimi’s respect and love for his friend ultimately shine through. Engaging, personal, and deeply felt, Rahimi’s tribute to Tupac Shakur will be sure to move those interested in his legacy.

October 23, 2015
BAD VAMPIRES by Karl Larew, a humorous new take on vampires

Karl Larew is well known for the depth and breadth of his knowledge in the field of military history, both in academic works and in historical fiction.

Well, as you might imagine, Bad Vampires has nothing to do with world politics and war, or even reality on the home front. Rather, this versatile author has chosen to entertain us by delving into the practices of the netherworld of 19th-century vampirism, BUT, as it exists in the modern world—the difference being that, today, there are both Bad Vampires and Good Vampires. This is a modern fictional account, and one designed to make you chortle instead of scream. It is a hilarious and refreshingly fun read!

Rather than a single locale in Transylvania, the vampires in this tale travel from New York to our nation’s capital and its Virginia suburbs, then Hollywood, and on to Hong Kong, and back and forth, in multiple trips, logging who knows how many thousands of miles.

The 19th-century vampire’s vicious bite and suck method has evolved into a variety of means for the nourishment of vampires. Among Bad Vampires, the process can still end in, well, the end for the blood donor. Good Vampires, however, take care not to let this happen. Further, the New York Association of Good Vampires has rules regarding the infliction of mortal wounds by other means (pistols seem to be the most popular). In any case, Good Vampires are the winners, Bad Vampires are the losers. Bad Vampires have no imagination and can’t put a bullet in the side of a barn, whereas Good Vampires are ingenious in their strategies and never miss a target, even with one hand tied behind them.

This tale is either carried along or interrupted by outrageously corny puns, double entendres, and other linguistic contrivances designed to tickle the characters and amuse the readers. Larew obviously enjoyed drawing these from old TV shows: Bad Vampire Elmer wants to make a movie about vampires in New York City—”Sucks and the City” it gets labelled by a Good Vampire; another Good Vampire calls the Head Vampire about a new idea. The CHIEF tells him, “GET SMART! I could say that 99 times and still not have said it enough!” Do any readers remember “Henry Aldrich” (Hen-reeeeeeee) on the radio? No? Never mind.

It’s hard to develop the character of a vampire. In this story, some are good and some are bad. Protagonist Lance Blodgett is a good one and smart as well. In his day life, he’s an assistant professor of anthropology at New York University, specializing in East European folklore. He has a tender streak and loving heart, which he very soon gives to Carol Binghamton, who isn’t a vampire.

Carol, a computer programmer, finds herself reciprocating Lance’s feelings. She even offers him breakfast, if he’ll bite her where it won’t show. Lance tells her that biting is “too painful and leaves a big bruise. We use little spring-powered lancets, like diabetics use for blood sugar tests.” She kindly offers him a rump.

I wouldn’t want to spoil the story for you—just give you a taste that hopefully will tempt you to try it yourself. You might say, as Lance did after breakfast, “Oh, very good—[it has] a sort of tangy je ne sais quoi.”

October 22, 2015