Reading Road Trip...Hawaii

Aloha!  You can't really take a road trip to the Hawaiian islands, but let's not be too literal here. I lived in Honolulu for a year in my twenties, sharing a one-bedroom condo that belonged to my roommate's uncle in a place called Nuuanu Towers. We had a view of Diamond Head in the distance and the Iolani Palace (aka,the headquarters of the classic Hawaii 5-O starring Jack Lord). The year I lived there, everyone my rooomate and I had ever met wanted to come visit us and they always wanted to go to the Iolani Palace. Because the show was still in production, tourists would often get to catch glimpses of the show's stars. James MacArthur was known to be particularly gracious and would often mingle on his lunch breaks. (And because life takes strange detours, one of my former landlordes is now the producer of the reboot of the show.)
I actually started one of my first crime stories while living there. It started with the word "Pau," which is Hawaiian for "finished" but pronounced as in "pow" like the gunshot.  I still have that story somnewhere although I'm pretty sure I'm never going to finish it.
Myster writer Toby Neal has a whole series of "Lei Mysteries" set in Hawaii (well into the double-digts by now) as well as a grittier series called "Paradise Crime." She also has a couple of one-offs.
The books cover topics as trendy as the "farm to table" movement and as classic as artifact looting. There's a real "island feel" to the books--not something you could pull off after taking a cruise and then watching a lot of YouTube videos. Toby is currently living in Northern California due to family obligations, but you can tell her heart belongs to Hawaii. (In my stay in Honolulu, I learned just enough Hawaiian to be able to say, "My heart belongs to Hawaii."  Ko'u naau no i Hawaii. Pronounce every letter and you'll get it right.

When I was living in Hawaii, there were a number of issues that were starting to bubble up, including the rights of people with Hansen's Disease (more commonly known as leprosy) to be "mainstreamed." (My roomate attended the church where Father Damien first preached in Hawaii, before he went to the island of Molokai (one of the most beautiful of the islands) to serve at the leper colony there.)
There were also tensions among the native Hawaiians and the military population stationed there, among them the Marines and Navy men on the island of Oahu. That's nothing new, one of the most crimes in Hawaii history, the Massie case, occurred in 1931 and involved the rape of a white woman and the lynching of one suspect, Joseph Kahahawai by the victim's husband, mother, and two sailors. the case was fictionalized in the novel Blood and Orchids, which was made into a television movie.
famous
To my mind, the best book about Hawaii is probably The Shark Dialogues, written by Kiana Davenport, who traces her ancestry back to the first Polynesian settlers on the islands. It's a richly layered family saga-type book (much like James Michener's book Hawaii), and  though set in contemporary Hawaii, it's filled with myth and legend. IN some ways, it reminded me a lot of Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior, although Kingston's book is a very different genre.

Reading Road Trip ... Georgia

John Berendt is a terrific writer. His book, The City of Falling Angels, is so seductive in its story of the destruction of the city's famed opera house that you almost feel like you're there (with side trips to some glass-blowing factories. The book that made his name, though, was Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Not only was the book a runaway best-seller, spending four years at the top of the New York Times bestseller list (longer than any work of fiction or nonfiction before), but the photo used on the cover sent so many tourists to the Bonaventure cemetery in Savannah where "the bird girl" statue was located that the family had it removed. (Ironically, the photographer who took th iconic shot used on the cover is buried in the same cemetery where the sculpture used to stand.)

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is true crime of the very best sort. It reads like fiction, full of quirky and multi-faceted chraacters, with a brooding sensibility that is dripping with Southern Gothic trappings. It's a great read.

If you're looking for a great crime fiction set in Georgia, check out Karin Slaughter's Undone. Set in Atlanta, the book is number three in her series about Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent Will Trent. It's paced like a movie thriller and it just does not stop. I like Slaughter's work a lot, and this is one of my favorite of her novels.

And finally, there's Melissa Fay Greene's Praying For Sheetrock, a finalist for the 1991 National Book Award and a New York Times "Notable Book." The story of how one black man took on the racist power structure and prevailed is as timely now as it was two decades ago.

Reading Road Trip ... Florida

Florida...long before Portland, Oregon embraced the mantle of weird, Florida seemed to be the source of all the weird news. For me Florida means the Space Coast and the home owned by my parents' friends, Les and Mary Gross, Miami Vice, and Disney World.

I'm not a fan of the Disney brand and I share that opinion with my favorite Florida-based writer, Carl Hiaasen. I've been a fan since Tourist Season (after living in Honolulu for a year, I'm not that fond of tourists) and particularly loved Native Tongue.  I also highly recommend the fantastical novel Swamplandia, tom Dorsey's Florida Roadkill, which I picked up because of the flamingo on the cover. (Flamingos say "Florida" to me, whether it's the actual birds of plastic pink flamingos in a trailer park.)

Other great books set in Florida include Elmore Leonard's Rum Punch,  Jennine Capo Crucet's collection of short stories, How to Leave Hialeah, Charles Willeford's Miami Blues, Joan Didion's Miami, and Kate DiCamillo's Because of Winn-Dixie.


I know that everybody always mentions The Yearling in lists of books set in Florida, but I never read that. Nor did I ever read Where the Red Fern Grows. I read enough sad animal stories as a kid to last me a lifetime. Old Yeller???? I bawled for days. And I wasn't the only one. My grandfather had to kill a dog when he turned on my father and it put my dad off pets for life.

Reading Road Trip ... Delaware

For most people, the state of Delaware is mostly famous for being the birthplace of everybody's favorite ex-VP and current meme star, Joe Biden. Delaware is a small state, located on the Delmarva Peninsula (Delaware/Maryland/Virginia) and unless you have a destination in mind--like heading for Rehobeth Beach, it's mostly a drive-through state. (The top ten attractions are mostly museums housed in stately buildings that were formerly private homes.)

I've read two books set in Delaware (that I know of), Ann Rule's And Never Let Her Go, the chronicle of Thomas Capano, who killed Anne Marie Fahey, who was secretary to the Governor. "Tommy" is a mesmerizing figure--a wealthy attorney (and former state prosecutor) with a very dark side. This book isn't as well known as Rule's book about Ted Bundy, The Stranger Beside Me, but it's a fine example of her style and substance.

The other book I've read couldn't have been more different. The Saint of Lost Things is an immigrant story, a family story, a woman's story. The characters in the novel are particularly well-drawn, and the central character, an Italian woman named Maddalena who has been trnsplanted to Wilmington, Delaware in the early 50s, is a memorable woman. There's a sequel to the novel, All This Talk About Love and a prequel, A Kiss from Maddalena, but I haven't read either of them.

Reading Road Trip ... Connecticut

Speaking of Columbine, Wally Lamb's book inspired by the event, The Hour I First Believed, is set in Connecticut.  I have not read that book although I have read She's Come Undone and I Know This Much is True. (The latter also takes place in Connecticut.) The last two books were featured on Oprah's Book Club and sold a bajillion copies. I found Lamb's books well-written but damn depressing.

Ira Levin's The Stepford Wives (set in Connecticut0 was much more to my taste. I saw the movie before I read the book and the virtual lobotomizing of the Paula Prentiss character scared the bejezus out of me. According to Wikipedia, Levin based the town of Stepford on Wilton, Connecticut, where he'd lived in the 60s. This is my favorite of Levin's books. I like it more than his most popular work, Rosemary's Baby.

Probably my favorite book set in Connecticut is The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Witch was my gateway to the historical romances by Victoria Holt and Phyllis A. Whitney, which I devoured as a teenager.
Speare. It was written in 1958 and I don't think it's been out of print since. It was probably the first "historical novel" I ever read, and i loved the heroine Kit Tyler, a smart and independent young woman who triumphs in love and life. I loved that her full name was "Katherine," like mine. (I have a cousin Katherine who goes by Kit, which I always thought was sooooo cool.) I'm pretty sure that Witch was the gateway book that led me to the historical romances of Victoria Holt and Phyllis A. Whitney and Mary Stewart, which I devoured when I was a teenager. (And they in turn led me to historical mysteris and after that, there was no turning back.

A Weekend Drabble

 I misread a "call for submissions" notice and created this Drabble (a story in exactly 100 words) for a market that doesn't actually exist. But I kind of like it anyway. So here it is. SHATTERED GLASS

 This is why you can’t have nice things, Alice scolded herself as she picked up the shards of the vase she’d just broken. She knew the voice in her head was not her own but belonged to her stepmother, but even so, it hurt.

Alice was a big girl and her bulk made her clumsy. She knew that. Her stepmother didn’t need to be such a bitch about it. But then, she was a bitch about everything. Even about the color of the tulips Alice had brought her. So, Alice had whacked her over the head with the vase.

Oops!

Reading Road Trip ... Colorado

I have never been to Colorado except in movies and books. I read Isabella Bird's wonderful A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains when I was in middle school and it sent me off on a binge of reading 
about women explorers. And of course, since Stephen King is one of my favorite authors, I checked into the Overlook Hotel in Sidewinder, Colorado when I read The Shining, and later, Doctor Sleep.

Isabella Bird

But most of what I've read about Colorado has to do with the Columbine high school shooting. (Interestingly, the high school massacre is not the first massacre in Columbine's history. In 1927, a union action went bad when police and coal miners clashed in what's become known as the Columbine Mine Massacre.)

I don't read a lot of true crime books. I'm not an avis follower of lurid criminal cases on TV. I will admit that the JonBenet Ramsey case intrigues me and I wish someone would explain how she got that strange first name.) I like watching homicide hunter because I enjoy Joe Kenda's character but also because I know that the crimes depicted on the show were solved and the person (or persons) responsible were brought to justice. As Kenda would say, "Justice. It works for me."

But Columbine was a whole new level of crime and at the time, the narrative around it seemed familiar. Misfit kids. Outcsts. Yadda-yadda-yadda. Except...that's not how it happened. Dave Cullen's book Columbine (see an excellent review by Jesse Kornbluth here) tells the real story and it will chill you. Dylan Klebold's mother Sue has done a TED talk about her son and his friend Eric, and watching that in conjunction with reading Columbine will make you want to weep. She. Had. No. Idea.