reading Road Trip...Illinois

You could probably read one Illinois-related book a day and go for years. for poetry, you've got Carl Sandburg and next to his line about "the fog coming in on little cat feet," the poem every school kid in America had to learn was "Chicago." Who could ever forget the first lines?

    Hog Butcher for the World,

   Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,

   Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;

   Stormy, husky, brawling,

   City of the Big Shoulders.

"City of Big Shoulders."   That's such an elegant line. And then there's Chicago-born John Dos Pasos, whose monumental USA Trilogy really is "the great American novel" times three. (And he also infuenced E. L. Doctorow, whose books I devoured in high school.)

Illinois is a complicated state and the three books I most associate with it are Richard Wright's Native Son, Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street, and Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine. It is also the setting for Erik Larson's brilliant book about H.H. Holmes, America's answer to Jack the Ripper--The Devil in the White City. Anyone who has trouble wrapping his/her head around #BlackLivesMatter needs to read Wright's novel, which is a searing character portrait and a time capsule of life in Chicago in the 1930s. "Bigger Thomas " is one of the most compelling characters ever created.

Cisneros' novel is a coming-of-age story that should be as widely read as A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. (Am I the only person who never really liked that book? Maybe I read it when I was too old.) The heroine and narrator of The House on Mango Street is Esperanza Cordero, and she is a sympathetic and believable girl.

Dandelion Wine, Ray Bradbury's semi-autobiographical novel, is an idyllic portrait of the same sort of America that painter Norman Rockwell chronicled. It's a book that evokes a childhood so (mostly) happy that it almost seems like a fairy tale.

I read The Devil in the White City for a client and loved Erik Larson's writing. What really entranced me about the story was not the true crime it detailed, though. I fell in love with the idea of the Chicago World's Fair that was its backdrop. The World Columbian Exposition of 1893 was well-documented in photographs and drawings and I was fascinated by the temporary buildings and wonders put up for the occasion. I so wish some of them had been left behind, the way the Seattle Space Needle is a permanent reminder of the 1962 World's Fair.)  If time travel were possible, that's a place I would have loved to go.

Reading Road Trip ... Idaho

I drove to Sun Valley once with my roommate, a former professional ice skater. We were going there to see an ice skating competition. The mountains were lovely, but I chiefly remember that trip because we stopped to get gas along the highway and a couple of yahoos tried to convince us that some random part of the car was so worn down it was a danger. 'I wouldn't let my daughter get on the road with a car in that shape." We chose to ignore the warning but I was completely paranoid that the guys had done something to the car that would cause it to break down. (I know, I've seen too many horror movies.) But as it turned out, we were fine and there was no problem with the car. I haven't been back to Idaho since, although a friend of mine used to live in Boise and loved it there, despite the extreme weather both summer and winter. (Idaho's a red state but it Boise mayor Dave Bieter sounds pretty progressive. But somehow Idaho is a state that feels like it has a dark underbelly. The Boise Weekly used to have a Historical True Crime feature and the stories in it were fascinating.

The best book I've read set in Idaho is C.J. Box's taut thriller Blue Heaven. (You can read the first chapter here.) Blue Heaven was a stand-alone novel--Box writes the popular "Joe Pickett" series, and won the Edgar in 2009. The story revolves around two kids who have seen four retired cops commit murder. They're on the run in the Idaho wilderness and their only hope for safety is a rancher on the brink of losing everything. Good characters. Great local color. A smart plot (if somewhat farfetched) plot. Blue Heaven is a great read.

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.