Daniel A. Poling. Your Daddy Did Not Die. Greenberg, 1944.

Readers who are familiar with tales of World War II may recall something of the four Immortal Chaplains. The American troop ship Dorchester was on its way to Europe in late 1942 with about 900 soldiers on board. It was early in the war when German U-boats were big trouble for the Allies. A German torpedo sank the ship. About 300 men survived. As the ship was sinking, the four chaplains assigned to the troops—one Jewish, one Catholic, two Protestant—gave their life jackets to other soldiers and went down with the ship, praying together.

One of the chaplains was Clark Poling. Your Daddy Did Not Die was written by Lt. Poling’s father as a kind of memoir about his son to Clark’s three-year-old son, Corky. It is homey and sentimental. I can recommend it as a good sketch about what life was like for the middle to upper middle class in the United States from 1910 until the beginning of World War II.

We learn a lot about the Poling family. It is honestly a little hard to keep track of everything. Clark’s mother died when he was a preschooler and his father remarried a widow with her own children. It seems, then, there were six children in the family, and maybe one born afterwards. If it seems a little hard to note this for sure, it is partly because the story is largely told in a nonlinear, rambling style.

The author himself was a fairly high-ranking (if such a term applies) clergyman. He was the assistant pastor for many years for Norman Vincent Peale, published Christian Herald magazine, and was a leader of Christian Endeavor, a ministry for church youth leaders. We get a sense of what mainline churches were like in the first half of the twentieth century. Religious belief and membership was pretty much taken for granted. I could not help thinking of Will Herberg’s acclaimed 1955 sociological study Protestant, Catholic, Jew. Back then, every American was one of those three religions. Atheists and skeptics were Communists or (before the war) Fascists.

No reader can seriously question the author’s faith or the faith of his son, but we note a generational shift. Clark and his brother Daniel, Jr., who was also a pastor, were the seventh generation of clergymen in the family going back to the Puritans. Clark’s grandfather was a Baptist missionary to Oregon who worked in rural areas and among Indians. The author calls him a Fundamentalist, that is someone who subscribed to the teaching of The Fundamentals, including the atoning work of Jesus alone for salvation and the complete inspiration and infallibility of the Bible.

From his tone, we sense the author was less strict. His son had doubts about parts of the Bible such as the virgin birth of Jesus, but still believed in God and in the Christian religion. We can see in this the gradual shift of emphasis in many mainline churches that continues until the present.

There is no real theme to the book, but there are fond memories of the fallen chaplain. We learn, for example, that in the war a greater percentage of chaplains were killed than any other army corps except for the Air Corps. They were often in harm’s way but were noncombatants. Readers can appreciate the family’s sacrifice. While Lt. Poling did have about two years with Corky before he left for Europe, he never did meet his daughter whom his wife was carrying when the Dorchester went down. As they say, freedom is never free.

Lt. Poling had only been in the army about a year when he was killed. That was true of two of the other chaplains as well. However, because of his job, he got to know hundreds of soldiers during that time. Some people, especially mothers, often worry that the rough life of many soldiers would corrupt their sons. He observed that young men who were raised well and had positive character traits still had them in the service. Their experiences would affect them, yes, but their basic personalities, whether for good or evil, would come forth in the military as much as any other occupation.

From what I have seen, that is still true today. To mothers I would say, if you want your sons to become men, the service is a good option. Yes, there are great risks, but at the same time it truly tests their character. I still recommend the military experience for any young man who can pass the physical.

Above photo is of the 1948 Immortal Chaplains Commemorative Postage Stamp. I believe Lt. Poling is second from left. Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons.

F. M. Luzel. Contes Bretons: Recueillis et Traduit [Breton Folk Tales: Collected and Translated]. 1870; Wikisource, 2021.

I recently heard of François-Marie Luzel for the first time. As some readers of these pages may know, I studied folklore and oral transmission in college and have an interest the Grimm Brothers tales (märchen to scholars) as well as ancient epics. Since starting this blog, I have noted Joseph Campbell’s work. Luzel was the Grimm brother of folk tales of Brittany. He spoke the Celtic Breton language, which is very similar to Welsh. A Breton and Welshman can carry on a conversation with one another with nearly 100% understanding. Luzel then translated the folk tales he collected into French. This collection contains six tales, all somewhat reminiscent of folk stories from other places, but with a clear connection to Brittany and France.

Luzel tells us that most of the tales were told by more than one person as he was doing his research. He included what he considered the most representative details of each story with some endnotes describing certain variations. In other words, we can read this as a scholarly collection, but for most of us, we read it as a collection of clever fairy tales. While children can appreciate them, they were probably meant for grownups as were the Grimm tales. And at least one tale has a postscript telling us that the story really happened…

The first tale, “The Giant Goulaffre,” combines a number of typical folk tale elements. Indeed, when our two heroes enter the giant’s castle, the giant first becomes aware of them from their scent: “I smell the odor of a Christian, and I want to eat him!” (257) says the giant, not unlike “I smell the blood of an Englishman…I’ll grind his bones to make my bread” in “Jack and the Beanstalk.” We understand that many animals have a better sense of smell than humans, so this illustrates the animalistic or savage side of the giant.

The main character of the story is a young Breton named Allanic, the only son of his widowed mother. He wants to explore the world to find his fortune, as so many young men in such tales do. He also is skilled musician, playing the pipes. For some of his adventures, he has a dancer friend who accompanies him. (It makes me wonder if Mat and Rand in The Eye of the World were inspired by this or a similar tale.) They outwit the giant to escape his hunger and end up in Paris serving the king.

When the king hears of Allanic’s escapade with the giant, the king sets him back on two quests to regain items the giant has stolen from the king. Allanic is able to very cleverly outwit the giant—indeed, he gets the giant to kill his own wife and daughters. It is no spoiler to say that at the end, Allanic gets to marry the king’s daughter because of his loyalty, bravery, and cleverness, not unlike the ending to many other fairy tales.

“The Man with Two Dogs” is more magical. This also involves an enchanted castle, and our hero is able to outwit evil devils, who also want to devour Christians. He gains the help of a captive princess. In this case, he is actually eaten three times, but each time a piece of his body is left behind so that he is magically recreated, the third time from only a fingernail. In this case our hero is Jean, the son of the king, but Jean is usurped by his older sister and her husband, so there are also three trials to regain his rightful throne. Once again, the cleverness of both the hero and heroine as well as the magical abilities of the two dogs is able to save the day.

The hero of “The Godson of the Holy Virgin” is, as in the first tale, a poor boy who does well. His parents are old when he is born and ask the parish priest to be the godfather of their son because the father had been tricked by a troop of devils to give them his firstborn son. Because he is a priest, the godfather says the boy’s godmother must be the Virgin Mary.

As the boy, Pipi, comes of age, he also must go out on some adventures and overcome those devils. He does so with the help of the Blessed Virgin and a holy book she gives him (presumably some Scriptures). In this case he also helps free the daughter of sorcerers. Their wedding, we are told, was attended by a great-great grandfather of one of the storytellers, so we know that the story really happened.

“Jesus Christ in Lower Brittany” begins by telling us that one time “Our Savior Jesus Christ once had made a tour of Lower Brittany, accompanied by St. Peter and St. John” (816). This is more of a clever moral story with echoes of the Greek myth of Philemon and Baucis. In this case, the lonely widow they bless has to learn a lesson, to distinguish between what God can do and what happens to humans who try to imitate God apart from Him and their own desires. Like the other tales, there is some humor, though in this the humor is more lighthearted. They three travelers teach a similar lesson to the cook of a lord. Both episodes have echoes “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” in those lessons.

“The Two Sons of the Fisherman” may be the most magical of the stories here. A fisherman and his wife have twins after being childless for a long time. When one twin comes of age, he wants to seek his fortune. He does, and ends up rescuing a princess in a castle whom he marries. But then trouble begins. Without going into too much detail, this is the second story that involves a deadly “wheel of razors.” (Were they trying to imagine a deadlier circular saw?) Brother number two ends up rescuing brother number one in a heady triumph of good over evil.

“The Miller and His Lord” may be the cleverest of the stories. It is probably the funniest. A miller owes his lord rents but is unable to pay them. Unfortunately, the lord shows no mercy, so the miller leaves for the nearby town with his one valuable possession, a cow. He is attacked by robbers. He escapes, but the cow is captured, killed, and eaten by the thieves. While the thieves are resting after their repast, the miller gets into the cow skin—its head and horns are still intact—and scares the robbers off. He gathers all the money left behind that they have robbed from others.

He is now able to pay the landlord the twenty écus he owes. The lord asks him where he got the money, and he said he sold the hide of his cow for a hundred écus. The greedy lord then slaughters all he cows in his own herd and takes the leather to the town, expecting a hundred écus per hide. The people there laugh him out of town. The miller shares a few other supernatural secrets which his lord believes. Ultimately, the lord loses his wife and his wealth. Without going into detail, the additional devices are equally clever. Towards the end, the positions of the miller and greedy lord are nearly reversed.

One recurring image or idea is that all the protagonists except in “Jesus Christ in Lower Brittany” have to overcome or face three challenges. In the case of “The Man with the Two Dogs” there are three trials followed by three more different trials. There are certain other recurring elements, especially the triumph of clever young men and the helpfulness of high-ranking but endangered young women. and, of course, there is the general triumph of justice over injustice. Readers who like fairy tales will definitely enjoy these. While I read them in French, they have been recently translated into English. Have fun!

N.B.: References are Kindle locations, not page numbers.

Jonathan Cahn. The Josiah Manifesto. Front Line, 2023.

This past year we happened to see a television interview with Jonathan Cahn on his latest book, The Josiah Manifesto. It sounded intriguing, and when we saw that one of the local libraries had a copy, we were able to read it. It certainly suggests something about the power of God, and that He truly observes what is going on in the world.

The book is divided into two parts. The first part is largely a study of the biblical concept of Jubilee and how that applies to things going on today. The second part is the titular manifesto, a call to action based on the figure of King Josiah in the Bible.

The concept of Jubilee is that every fifty years the nations of Israel and Judah were to restore things to their original state among the people. That meant property that had been bought and sold was to revert to its original owners, that any slaves or indentured servants were to be released, and that any debts were to be forgiven. Cahn basically sees this as a restoration to the way things were and a way to start from the point that God intended.

Without going into too much detail, he notes a couple of “jubilees,” fifty year restorations of justice from injustice. The most important which he discusses at length is the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, the court ruling that legalized abortion on demand in the United States. The restoration of protection for the vulnerable babies in the womb was fifty years after the original ruling.

He notes also that in 1970 the first two states in the Continental United States legalized abortion: New York and Washington. In 2020 they were the two states most in the news over Covid-19. The first case in the country was in Washington and the most and deadliest cases were in New York. To him this is not coincidence.

As a biblical parallel, he notes that the first of the ten plagues of Egypt under Moses was the Nile River turning to blood. This paralleled the drowning of babies in the river when Moses was a baby. “…the waters of the Nile would turn to blood just as the blood of the Hebrew children had once reddened its waters.” (126)

He notes that the United States and a few other nations finally recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2017, fifty years after Israel began ruling there in 1967. Cahn also speaks of an interesting series of events after fifty years of Communism in Cuba, events which he observed.

The second part is the actual Josiah Manifesto. Cahn sees King Josiah of Judah as a leader of a nation in a condition similar to that of America and most of the Western world. When Josiah became king, the nation had been ruled by a succession of ungodly rulers who promoted idolatry—including child sacrifice—and persecuted and killed the prophets. Josiah rediscovered the Hebrew Scriptures and restored worship of the true God and a just government.

King Manasseh, Josiah’s grandfather, had embarked on a campaign to further the worship of foreign gods, to erect pagan shrines and altars, and to bring the practices of the pagan world into the land. In its initial stages it could be championed in the name of tolerance, acceptance, freedom, and openness to the new.

But once things were legitimized, established, and enshrined, the banner of openness and tolerance was withdrawn and replaced by an iron rod of coercion, oppression, persecution, and cultural totalitarianism. It is no accident that Manasseh is recorded as having “shed very much innocent blood, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another.” [see II Kings 21:16] It was the inevitable flip side of the coin. It was inevitable that the same culture that called evil good would call what was good evil. If one embraces evil, one must end up waging war against the good. (194)

The Josiah Manifesto, then, becomes a study of Josiah and how people in today’s world, especially the West, can promote justice and recover a lost worldview. Throughout, it exhorts the reader to trust in God. There are few specifics, but a general call to be courageous and stand for the truth.

The more a culture departs from the ways of God, the more revolutionary it will be to walk in them. Every godly act will become a revolutionary act. Every godly word will become a revolutionary world. And every godly life will become a revolutionary life. The people of God must increasingly live as a revolutionary people. Those who follow Messiah must increasingly return to their first of all states, the state of revolution. (206)

A culture that has fallen from God will always seek to justify its altered state by altering standards, redefining values, and reframing reality. (225)

But, as Joshua would have said, the righteous are to “be strong and of good courage.”

The righteous must ultimately be defined by that which they stand against but by that for which they stand. Their lives must bring forth healing, restoration, salvation, and redemption. Their impact on the world must be positive. They must love in the face of hatred, bless in the face of persecution, return good for evil, and manifest heaven in the face of hell. (239-240)

It is impossible for a universe to come forth out of nothing, for a sea to part in two, for a man to shut up the heavens, for a virgin to conceive a child, for the dead to rise to life, for a weak and broken band of disciples to change the world, and for a nation that has been dead for two thousand years to come back to life. But God is the God of the impossible. And those who follow Him, especially in times of adversity and impossibilities, must live against the odds, above the laws of the natural, and by the power of the impossible. With God all things are possible, and nothing will be impossible. (271)

May it be, Lord. May we be found faithful.

The last chapter brings the two parts of the book together. Without creating any spoilers, let us just say that it reminds us that, regardless of what seems to be going on, God is still on His throne.

Wilson H. Faude. Hidden History of Connecticut. History Press, 2010.

Hidden History of Connecticut is for Connecticut residents and those who are visiting the state. While each short chapter describes a historically significant event or person, each includes some location or landmark that the reader can visit. In most cases, these places are not well known, even to the average resident of the state.

The landmarks include some historical houses and buildings. Many chapters deal with artists who lived or settled in Connecticut such as Frederic Church or the “Harvard Five” architects. You will not find the Mystic Seaport or any university museum here. There are, however, descriptions of the New Britain Museum of American Art—the first museum in the country dedicated just to American artists—and the Florence Griswold Museum which housed a large artists’ colony a hundred years ago.

We also learn of certain significant historical events. Most people in the state are aware that Connecticut, when it was a colony, had the first written constitution of any government in the world. Here we learn a little more about it and especially the famous, if legendary, story of the Charter Oak.

The meeting in Connecticut in 1780 between American and French military leaders including Washington and Rochambeau would lead to the success of the Revolution a year later. The author believes this would have led to annual celebrations and re-enactments in many places, but Connecticut tends to be low-key. So it is with the house of Oliver Ellsworth in Windsor who proposed the Connecticut Compromise which saved the American Constitution.

An easily-overlooked set of plaques commemorates the Washington-Rochambeau event. That is all. An even easier-to-miss plaque notes a meeting in 1976 between William Buckley and Ronald Reagan that gave some direction to Reagan’s eventual successful presidency as well as some direction for Ronald, Jr., in pursuing ballet.

While some historical places are known for festive Christmas celebrations, Hidden History of Connecticut tells of at least four places that have interesting Christmas presentations of one kind or another that are often overlooked. This includes the Butler-McCook and Harriet Beecher Stowe houses and the Boar’s Head Festival, all in Hartford, and the Hill-Stead House in Farmington.

There are many more gems and touching stories. Some perhaps more trivial than others, but all noting historical curiosities and interesting places to visit in the Nutmeg State.

Marissa Hale. American Wild. Publish Pros, 2023.

The title of American Wild has a double meaning. Yes, it is a novel set in the wilderness of North America west of the Appalachians mostly in the 1780s, but it is also a wild story. And like The Frontiersmen, about a similar time and location, it is the novelization of true events.

In some ways, one could look at this as The Frontiersmen from a woman’s perspective, not only that the author is female, but that the main character is a lady. And we mean a lady. She is a French noblewoman whose fiancé is an officer fighting for France in the American Revolution. When Captain LeClerc returns after six years in North America, they marry and return to America. He sees more opportunity and freedom than he could experience in France in 1783.

However, he does not settle in one of the coastal cities or even one of the original thirteen colonies, He wants land to work over the mountains in the wilderness that is opening up. Much of the story takes place in what would become Kentucky. Not far from Mammoth Caves in western Kentucky there is a prominent hill, now a state park, called Frenchman’s Knob. Among other things we learn how the place got its name. Like The Frontiersmen, the story is based on much detailed research, and a reminder that even in the eighteenth century, people were coming to North America to start a new life from many countries.

And on the frontier it was a completely new life. Communication with the old world was sporadic at best and nonexistent for most. For many it was a new language and a new kind of government. When adding in the challenges of mere survival in the wild, we can only admire what some of our American forebears endured.

Victoire “Vittorie” Monet LeClerc is our main character. She is more than a mere fish out of water. Raised in the literal lap of luxury, her father took part in the Treaty of Paris. She had met Ben Franklin and John Adams when they came to France after the Revolution to negotiate America’s independence. Now she has come to their country, but not to Boston or Philadelphia, or even to someone’s Virginia plantation.

With her husband Gilbert, she does visit Virginia at first, but Lexington, Virginia, west of the Blue Ridge. The book mentions two of the main figures in The Frontiersmen, Daniel Boone and Simon Kenton, but the historical figures besides Captain and Mme. LeClerc are other scouts, notably William Smuthers and Henry Skeggs.

Skeggs (a.k.a. Scaggs) is another one of those woodsmen like Kenton who seems to have been everywhere. He knows the way to the land Gilbert has purchased and seems to know everyone else as well, including Ohio River pirates and the various Native Americans who pass through. (As The Frontiersmen suggests, there were apparently few Indians in Kentucky at the time it began to be settled.)

American Wild shows us the challenges of life in the wilderness—outlaws of various kinds, the necessity to produce everything to live on yourself, the loneliness. In the case of Mme. LeClerc, the loneliness was compounded because she spoke only French. A few other French speakers besides her husband show up from time to time, but until she masters English (about half a dozen years) she is on her own.

Still, most people settling the American wild are in similar positions and understand and care for each other. Even in small settlements, people begin to discover who has specific skills, and a division of labor naturally evolves. There is hard work and not much play, but American Wild tells a tale of struggle and ultimately success. Hard times, yes, but those things makes us appreciate what we have and what those who went before us accomplished. We personally have no horse in the Kentucky race, but American Wild and The Frontiersmen together weave a picture of historic America that readers will not be able to forget.

Carl Hiaasen. Wrecker. Knopf, 2023.

Whether Carl Hiaasen is writing for young teens or adults, his stories are usually set in Florida with some distinctive characters. Wrecker is no different in that respect, though it is very much an original tale.

Valdez Jones VIII, fifteen years old, is known as Wrecker because he comes from a long line of Key West salvage operators. That family tradition goes back to the 1700s with Valdez Jones I, who came from the Bahamas to Key West and stayed on. The only exception to that tradition is Valdez Jones VII, Wrecker’s father, who gets seasick.

Wrecker attends high school, but his real love and interest is boating. He owns a small outboard boat and spends much of his spare time fishing and diving around reefs and wrecks. He also has a unique after school job. A retired man who lives near him pays him fifty dollars a week to clean the gravestone of his sister every day it is not raining. The resident iguanas and feral chickens keep the cemetery markers dirty and defaced.

He usually does this after dark by climbing over the cemetery fence with a ladder and using a hose from a neighboring house. One night he hears a girl or woman singing in Spanish next to a gravestone. She disappears before he can start up a conversation.

The two gravestones catch his interest. The one he cleans has the legend “The rumor is true.” The gravestone where the singer left a vase of roses belonged to a black man hanged by the Ku Klux Klan in Key West around 1920. He wonders who would even remember that man today. Wrecker himself has a black father and white mother and tries to imagine what it would have been like back then.

One day while he was out fishing, he tries to help a speedboat that has run aground. His sixteen-footer is too small, but the man in charge of the cigarette outboard, known to us only as Silver Mustache, tosses Wrecker some money for the help. Soon Silver Mustache contacts Wrecker to drive his boat on occasion and to clean another gravesite in the cemetery. In this case there is more than just a marker, it is a mausoleum for one Bendito Vachs. This also strikes Wrecker as unusual, not because the outside of the crypt gets fouled, but because the date of death on the grave is still a few days in the future.

There are some interesting subplots, too. Wrecker’s father (“number seven”) abandoned him and his mother a long time ago to pursue an unsuccessful career at singing and writing songs. However, Wrecker does not live with his mother and stepfather but rather with his twenty-three year old stepsister. She is paralyzed from the waist down from when she was hit by a drunk driver. The settlement was generous, so she does not have to work but spends her time as an environmental activist, especially concerned with protecting the waters around the key.

Like the other book we recently reviewed, this takes place during and shortly after the Covid-19 shutdown. Wrecker’s stepfather is quite ill from the virus but does survive. His mother has different medical concerns, namely plastic surgery. Her latest attempts at beautification include a Reese Witherspoon chin and Nicole Kidman eyes.

Things get very complicated. One day while fishing, Wrecker sees a sunken speedboat that looks a lot like the one that he tried to help earlier. He dives and sees “dozens” of tightly wrapped and taped pizza boxes on the boat. He brings many of them up to his own boat, but it is weeks before the reader learns what the boxes contain. He figures the men were smuggling something, and maybe the boxes could be leverage. After all, his Valdez Jones ancestors used to brings things in from Cuba during Prohibition.

Valdez becomes friendly—just friends—with Willi, a girl in his class at school. Together they soon realize that Wrecker is in over his head. Silver Mustache’s business is indeed smuggling, among other things. The men he works with are armed bodyguards. Also Silver Mustache seems to have learned a lot about Wrecker’s family including his sister and her activism. He knows Wrecker’s phone number, and it seems as though Mr. Mustache is always changing his own phone number.

Wrecker and Willi realize that they have gotten into a relationship with people they would rather not have ever known. They want to come up with a plan to extricate themselves from that relationship before it turns deadly or Wrecker becomes a criminal in order to survive.

The story of Valdez VII, the singer, is humorous. He calls himself Austin Breakwater and seems to be ripping off Jimmy Buffett. His first song “Tequilaville Sunset” actually breaks the Billboard 100 one week because of the publicity around a lawsuit. No, Buffett is not suing him for stealing from “Margaritaville,” the Eagles are suing him for stealing from “Tequila Sunrise.”

There are a number of clever references to popular culture here, even though Wrecker himself is more interested in other things. He chooses a lock combination of 2003 because that was the year the Marlins won the World Series. He was not alive back then, but he heard talk of it so it is an easy number to remember. Willi’s favorite author is Judy Blume.

When “Austin Breakwater” is explaining to Wrecker why he is trying to make a career of singing and songwriting, he says, “This is how Jimmy Buffett started. James Taylor. Bonnie Raitt. All the greats” (86). It just so happened I saw Bonnie Raitt play at least twice that I recall before she had recorded anything. She was a terrific steel guitar player.

One of the times, she opened for James Taylor before anyone had heard of him. (It was supposed to be Chris Kristofferson, but he could not make it.) Back then, I recall Taylor being tall and very mellow. Both were at the same small venue, but the audience could really enjoy the music without having to deal with any hero worship or avid fandom as they do when the musicians become more famous and play for bigger crowds.

Wrecker is an entertaining and ecologically aware tale that YA readers will enjoy. They may even pick up bit of history and pop culture.

Gordon Korman. Mixed Up. Scholastic, 2023.

Mixed Up is more serious than many of Gordon Korman’s novels, but he still our favorite YA author. Mixed Up is worth reading as it deals with some serious ideas.

We were reminded of a couple of movies as we read Mixed Up. One film was Yesterday. Readers who saw that recall that there was some kind of “anomaly” in nature that caused everyone in the world except for a handful of people to forget all about the Beatles. A young, struggling British musician was not affected and became a rock superstar by playing the Beatles songs as his originals.

Mixed Up has a different kind of anomaly. Two twelve-year-old boys who live in the same city but in different neighborhoods begin sharing each other’s memories. Theo begins to remember things that happened to Reef and vice versa. It becomes more complicated as these memories begin to become more real than the things that actually happened to them.

Reef was raised by a single mother who died recently. He was taken in by the family of Jenna, his mother’s best friend, and Willis with three kids of their own. The two older kids in high school pretty much ignore him, but their younger son Declan is downright evil in the way he torments Reef (e.g., he calls him Reek). He has a way of doing things that would get him into trouble except that he makes it look like Reef did it.

However, because of this “mixed up” memory situation, Reef reaches a point where he cannot even remember what his mother looked like if it were not for photos he kept on a cellphone—but he knows what has been happening to Theo.

Theo’s family is intact, but he has been a big disappointment to his father. His father was a jock type who “ruled the school” when he was in middle and high school. Theo is simply not interested in those things. He would rather keep a vegetable garden and keep to himself. His father is really demeaning to him, but Theo seems to handle it about as well as he can. But things get more complicated as Theo begins having memories about his mother dying and having an adopted brother who torments him.

Eventually Theo and Reef meet up. This is somewhat awkward for both of them. They know that they can probably help each other, but they are not sure what to do.

It also becomes a little complicated as Reef blames himself for his mother’s death. Portia, a girl he really liked, invited him to a party. After the party, Portia got sick and was out of school for three weeks. A week later, Reef and his mother both came down with Covid—this is right before the Covid shutdown. The virus killed his mother, so Reef blames himself for his mother’s death.

So we have Reef mourning and Theo not able to live up to his father’s expectations. These are problems that many people can identify with to some degree. And then there is the memory mix-up. The two boys are forced to help each other get through this.

Things get more complicated. Theo begins to volunteer at a food bank near Reef’s school so he can stay in contact with Reef. Portia also volunteers there, and Theo develops a crush on her, too. Reef had used to be outgoing, but since his mother’s death he has withdrawn. Portia and a lot of others who knew him feel sorry for him but do not know what to do to help. Theo and Reef both want to help each other to somehow change their memories.

Even though this is more serious than many of Korman’s stories, it still has a kind of crazy ending that many of his tales have. Without spoiling anything, let’s just say that the wrap-up might remind some readers of the movie Back to the Future.

Except for obvious science-fiction element of the memory mix-up, Mix Up is honestly realistic. It speaks to many of us because the problems the boys encounter are not uncommon. There is not a perfect ending, but it is one that shows us that some things we have to accept and learn to live with.

As kind of a postscript, Mixed Up also has another message. Even though sometimes we wish we knew what other people were thinking, it is a good thing that we do not. I would say to my students, “If we could read one another’s minds, the school would have fired me a long time ago.” The students usually chuckle at that and perhaps imagine some of the things I might have been thinking. Then I add, “And the school probably would have kicked out half of you!” The students usually laugh at that, too. We have enough problems dealing with our own thought lives without having to worry about what others are thinking.

M. C. Beaton. Death of a Celebrity. Warner, 2002.

We have enjoyed the various Hamish Macbeth mysteries we have read and reviewed, and it has been a while since we have read one. Death of a Celebrity reached a point where I had to read past my bedtime to find out what was happening.

From the title, the reader can guess immediately who the victim will be. A beautiful emcee of a Highlands-based television program has made some enemies. Like some talk show hosts, Crystal French deliberately observes and interviews Highlanders to put a negative spin on them. She gets lots of hate mail, but her ratings are climbing throughout the U.K.

She is doing piece on the allegedly amateurish police work in the Highlands and is on her way to interview Hamish in Lochdubh when she is murdered. There are multiple suspects. Yes, folks who wrote nasty letters and phoned in threats are among them, but those things happen to all celebrities. There are people closer to her that deserve more investigation.

What about all those people she interviewed and made to look like idiots on television? And then there are people at the television station. What about Felicity, the woman whose show was replaced by Crystal’s? We learn that Crystal slept around to get herself promotions. What about one of her paramours—or one of their wives? She seemed to rub everyone the wrong way.

Some of the usual supporting cast is here. The alcoholic sergeant Jimmy Anderson shows up as does Inspector Daviot. It turns out Daviot and one of the television executives belong to the same fraternal lodge, which puts pressure on Hamish. Hamish’s true nemesis, Blair, is out of town in this one, replaced by one Carson from Inverness. Carson goes by the book—he insists Hamish call him “sir,” for example—but he is much more tolerant of Hamish and willing to consider his ideas.

As always, Hamish is trying to balance doing a good job but avoiding promotion so he does not have to leave Lochdubh. This is an earlier novel than some we have read, late enough so his dog is Lugs rather than Towser, but he has no cat yet.

Also this is the book that introduces us to Elspeth, one of Hamish’s two ongoing love interests. Hamish learns that is ex-fiancée, Priscilla, is engaged, and he has decided to have nothing more to do with women. Elspeth arrives in Lochdubh as a reporter who does the regular horoscope column. Other books remind us that her mother came from the gypsies. Hamish suspects some of the horoscopes are geared consciously towards certain people. For example, one the day she is murdered, Crystal’s horoscope warns her to stay home.

Elspeth helps with the investigation, and she and Hamish develop a mutual attraction. Alas, in typical Hamish fashion, there is enough mutual misunderstanding to make the relationship rocky. Hamish at one point sounds like a “Teenager in Love”:

Women, thought Hamish. I cannae figure them out at all. You want them, they don’t want you, you don’t want them, they want you. (191)

As always, this is a source of humor as well as some frustration.

The plot itself becomes a real page turner as more and more facts are learned. It seems as though the evidence is pointing pretty clearly to one suspect when that suspect gets murdered, too. And that murder sounds like a setup, perhaps associated with organized crime.

Without going into too much detail, neither murder mentioned here is the last of the body count…

There are no real dead ends or red herrings, just many complications that keep Hamish looking and keep readers reading. There will be a few surprises and humorous interludes on the way, but we know that Hamish will never transfer out of Lochdubh in spite of his ability to solve crimes. If nothing else, he knows his people. And M. C. Beaton knows Hamish.

Gene Edwards. The Divine Romance. Tyndale, 1992.

I had heard good things about The Divine Romance, so I picked it up last summer at a book store and finally got around to reading it. I was not disappointed. This book is lovely.

Its theme is very simple. The Bible calls the body of believers the Bride of Christ. This book narrates the “romance” of God the suitor from eternity past to eternity future in the form of a novel. Edwards does a good job of presenting the idea as a mystery—as something not really understood well but gradually revealed. It begins with a quotation from Paradise Lost, and there were scenes in it, especially those in the Garden of Eden, which echoed that epic.

While not quoted per se, the concept is clearly based on a few verses from the New Testament. When discussing Jesus’ ministry, John the Baptist refers to Jesus as the bridegroom:

The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. (John 3:29)

Paul picks up on this when he writes about marriage in Ephesians 5:28-32:

He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

He uses the word mystery and compares the “oneness” of a husband and wife with the relationship between Christ and His followers.

Then, the Book of Revelation, which is mostly prophecy about the future, describes the followers of Jesus as the Bride getting ready to be married to the Lord.

“Hallelujah!
For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
and his Bride has made herself ready…” (Revelation 19:6-7)

The very end of the Bible, which is an invitation to follow Jesus, has these words:

The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.” (Revelation 22:17)

Edwards does a magnificent and moving job of sharing the mystery with his readers.

Without going into too much detail, Edwards begins with creation, specifically the creation of the angels. Then as the Lord created the earth and all its creatures, we note that all the visible creatures had a mate except man. After all, God created man in His image, and He had no mate.

The creation of woman is described beautifully. Again, one cannot help thinking of Paradise Lost as we see Eve being formed from a rib of the man. Now man had a mate. The angels speculate. Adam had a partner inside him. Does God have someone inside Himself?

“I suppose if there is someone now hidden in God, then it might follow that one day God shall be hidden in that someone.” (50, emphasis in original)

Incarnation? Does God have a bride?

When God becomes incarnate in Jesus, we see a few episodes that suggest brides or partners. So at the miracle of the wedding at Cana, we are reminded that it appeared the best wine was saved for last (John 2:10). But Edwards suggests something more. Perhaps God will be saving His best for last. If the prophets would envy the apostles who got to see Jesus (cf. Luke 10:24), will those living through the end times be even more enviable?

When Jesus forgives the prostitute who washes His feet at Simon the Leper’s house, Jesus says “Go, and sin no more” (cf. Luke 7:48-50). Edwards has her say: “I am cleansed…and I shall sin no more. But I shall never…never…go away.” (124)

There is so much more. We are reminded from time to time not only of what Jesus did, but that a love relationship like a marriage relationship grows. “She is learning to love me,” says Jesus (230) the way we have to learn to love our spouses as the marriage matures.

We get a sense of the spiritual battles Jesus fought—when He cast out demons, yes, but especially on the cross. But why the battle? For His bride. There is perhaps even a greater mystery than the incarnation: not God hidden in man, but man hidden in God:

“And now, at long last, I will reveal to you—from ages unknown—the Mystery hidden in God.” (185 emphasis and capitals in original)

This is a profound mystery. Read Colossians where it is written:

For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. (Colossians 3:3)

We humans usually see this meaning something like God is our hiding place, where we can run to protection. But Edwards is suggesting something more profound: that to God we are like Adam’s rib, hidden in Him and a part of Him in some profound way like the way a husband and wife are one.

The Divine Romance is exquisitely written with lines of poetry interspersed from time to time. Even much of the prose is poetic. It deeply demonstrates God’s eternal plan for man from His perspective. Read it and be moved. Read it and be very blessed.

David Day. An Encyclopedia of Tolkien. Canterbury Classics, 2019.

Yes, An Encyclopedia of Tolkien is a reference book. But unlike most reference works, this is a book your reviewer read from cover to cover (well, not the endnotes or index). It is truly a literary approach to the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. Anyone interested in the inspiration and main themes of his work, this is your book.

The entries are about evenly divided between items that appear in Tolkien’s legendarium and items that inspired or influenced his work. For example, we read about Galadriel, Middle-Earth, and Aulë. We also encounter entries about White Ladies from Welsh mythologies, Midgard (Middangeard) from Norse and Anglo-Saxon legends, and the trio of Hephaestus, Vulcan, and Wayland legendary smiths from Greek, Roman, and Norse myth—the characters and places from older works that inspired the elf queen, the land, and the skilled smith from the Tolkien tales.

This is not a dictionary or glossary. The appendices that appear in the Christopher Tolkien edited works such as The Silmarillion or Unfinished Tales contain those. The entries here may describe the character, place, or theme from Tolkien’s work but the focus is on the literary connection and significance.

In other words, if you want to find out what Galadriel did or who she is, you will have read the applicable works. In her case, she appears in The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion (“The Rings of Power”), and Unfinished Tales. What An Encyclopedia of Tolkien tells us is that she is an immortal elf queen, daughter of Finarfin and ruler of Lothlórien. Its appendix lists the works of Tolkien where she can be found. It also names works that Tolkien read that may have inspired her creation.

Throughout the book we are reminded that Tolkien was a Medieval scholar. He was familiar with both the tales and the history of Europe during that time period. So, yes, there are entries about the Ring Cycle, King Arthur stories, and the Kalevala. There are entries about the Holy Roman Empire and the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields of A.D. 451.

That battle in what today is northeastern France put an end to the expansion of the empire of Attila the Hun. The empire would fall apart altogether a few years later after Attila’s death. The victory was caused by an alliance of traditional enemies, the Romans and the Visigoths, who understood that the Huns were a threat to both of them. Tolkien based his battle of Celbrant described in The Two Towers on this historical event.

A recurring theme is that Tolkien sought to improve or make more interesting some of the Medieval tales (or tales set in Medieval times). For example, he thought the prophecy in Macbeth about Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane Castle was sketchy. After all, it was not the woods itself that moved, but simply cut branches used for camouflage. What if there were really actual trees that moved? That is where the Ents come in. By the way, The Encyclopedia of Tolkien does share derivations of many words Tolkien invented. Ent in Anglo-Saxon means “giant.”

Jewel and ring legends were popular throughout Medieval Europe. Tolkien clearly was inspired by the rings of the Volsungaga and Niebelungenlied as well as the Sampo of the Kalevala and even the Holy Grail of the Arthurian tales. Tolkien, according to Day, made his versions more chaste for the most part. He wanted to concentrate on the story, no the sensationalism.

The Appendices have some interesting additions. There are charts listing the ancient Valar of Middle Earth and comparing them with the gods and heroes of the Greek, Roman, and Norse myths. There is a outline of the history of Middle Earth which Day tells us covers 37,000 years. There are descriptions of key battles, some genealogies, and few miscellaneous timelines.

Particularly interesting and helpful to readers and researchers are summaries of the three Norse ring legends: the Volsungsaga, the Niebelungenlied, and Wagner’s Ring Cycle. A fourth essay probably reflects the editor’s own experience in becoming a Tolkien student. It details how The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings became adopted by the hippie counterculture of the sixties. My one reaction to that—there were also many non-hippies and non-peaceniks from that era who enjoyed Tolkien, too.

While there is not exactly a glossary of Middle Earth, the appendix contains a list of people, places, and events with references of where to find them in the Tolkien oeuvre. For example, if we want to read about Galadriel, look in “S Quen, RofP, App; UT II 4; LR II 7,9; III 6, V 2, App. A.” In other words The Silmarillion (“Quenta Silmarillion,” “On the Rings of Power,” and the Appendix); Unfinished Tales Part 2 Section 4; The Lord of the Rings, Book 2 chapters 7 and 9, Book 3 chapter 6, Book 5 chapter 2, and Appendix A. There are many more names in the list than entries in the encyclopedia’s body. Day uses the abbreviations to save much space as many reference works do.

Clearly, there is much more. Use The Encyclopedia of Tolkien for research, literary studies, background, and references in the Tolkien legendarium. There is a lot to it.