Donna Andrews. Owl Be Home for Christmas. St. Martin’s, 2019.

Donna Andrews has written a series of cozy mysteries with names of birds in the titles. Owl Be Home for Christmas is the first we have read. It is entertaining and contains some of the things we especially like about the cozies.

In such mysteries the victims are either extremely likeable—no one can understand why anyone would want to kill them—or extremely dislikeable—everyone is a suspect. Owl Be Home for Christmas runs just under 300 pages, but the murder does not happen till a third of the way through the book. And even then, it may not be a murder as the death could be from natural causes. Still most readers of the genre realize about twenty pages in that Dr. Frogmore is doomed.

Doctor Frogmore is one of about two hundred ornithologists attending a symposium or convention on the biology of owls. Most are associated with universities or other groups that include naturalists like National Geographic or the Audubon Society. They are meeting at a hotel and convention center in rural Caerphilly, Virginia, when they are socked in by a blizzard. No one can leave the hotel for days. The only person who arrives comes via snowmobile.

So, yes, this is a kind of extended closed room mystery, The Mousetrap with a cast of three hundred. About two hundred are convention attendees. They make the likeliest suspects, but Dr. Frogmore has managed to alienate some of the other hotel guests as well as most of the staff. Frankly, even our narrator, Meg Lanslow, could be a suspect. She is there as one of the convention organizers, helping her ornithologist grandfather. Her family is there with her—her husband and two sons.

Like other mysteries that take place in a similar setting, there are stolen key cards, rooms that are generally off-limits, and definitely some cabin fever. Meg’s teenage sons see the thing as more of an adventure. Just as there are basement chambers and tunnels in the hotel, the boys dig a tunnel system connecting various doorways and cabins under the snow.

The tale is lots of fun to read, and we do sympathize with the many people who have been not just victims of Frogmore’s rudeness, but whose professional reputations may have been hurt. The plot takes a number of twists and turns. How can you have an autopsy at a snowed-in hotel? What about the doctor’s food allergies? Or the vial of nitroglycerin spray found at the death scene?

Andrews is very good at staging. So we get a good sense of the convention seminars, the dinners, the hotel offices, the cabins, and so on. And unlike The Christmas Hummingbird, Owl Be Home for Christmas actually presents accurate information about a variety of owls. It also illustrates different discussions and disagreements bird scientists have among themselves. We were thinking, as soon as Dr. Frogmore was introduced, that his name was appropriate, too. There are some tropical nocturnal birds like nightjars and whippoorwills known as frogmouths. They are not owls, but they do have some similarities. At one point they are even mentioned in the book.

Those tunnels under the snow may act as symbols for the mystery. It is easy to take a wrong turn, and it is hard to see very far ahead, but if the tunnelers do not panic, they will find their way.

James Polkinghorn. Liquid Shades of Blue. Oceanview, 2023.

We have received a number of novels from Oceanview Publishing, we have enjoyed all of them, and that includes the new Liquid Shades of Blue. We have noted occasionally some books are hard to categorize. This is one. It is marketed as a thriller, and it is one in the sense that readers will want to keep turning its pages. But it not a stereotypical thriller. There are no terrorists or gangsters or serial killers out to get anyone. While the two main characters are lawyers, there is no court case or legal wrangling.

Liquid Shades of Blue is primarily a psychological study with a possible crime in the background. But because there is no terrorist or serial killer type, it does not follow the usual so-called psychological thriller where people fear for their lives because of some psychotic or psychopathic character.

The psychology comes mostly from our first-person narrator, Jack Girard. Girard owns a bar in Key West and devotes most of his time and energy to that. He also is a lawyer. He mostly does small cases for customers, but he used to work for his father’s high-powered law firm. We can see, then, that a lot of the psychology is straight out of Freud. For reasons that become obvious, Jack has some daddy issues. He is happy doing what he is doing on the Keys, away from the big-time Miami firm of his father. Everyone, even Jack, calls his father the Duke.

This may sound strange, but the beginning actually had echoes of Camus’ The Stranger. The story begins with Jack learning that his mother has died. He learns this after he wakes up apparently having spent the night with a prostitute, though he remembers nothing of the night before and how he picked her up—if he indeed did pick her up.

Jack is around thirty years old, and his parents were divorced just a few years ago. His father’s phone message with the news says that his mother killed herself. Jack finds that a hard to believe because his mother had a very positive outlook on life, but the evidence seems to point to that conclusion. Sadly, Jack had one sibling, an older brother who did actually commit suicide. Is there something in the family gene pool that contributes to this?

Jack does what he can to investigate his mother’s death. He visits her condo and his father’s new waterfront home. He visits his mother’s parents who are both still living. He reviews his brother’s suicide. His father admits that he visited his mother the day she died to discuss a settlement issue, but he left her still alive. From his time as a Miami lawyer, Jack does have a contact in the police department and one in the FBI to see if he can discover anything that they might have on his mother’s death.

But the tale focuses on Jack and his father. Mr. Girard is a Nietzchean. He became a successful attorney, he would say, because he had a strong will. He tried to instill in his sons the idea of the will to power. Of course, that also suggests that he saw himself as an Übermensch, beyond good and evil. Clever, amoral lawyers can use the laws to their advantage, regardless of a client’s actual guilt or innocence and regardless of whether a suit is right or wrong.

Because he saw her shortly before she died, the Duke indirectly is looking for Jack’s help to clear his name. A true Übermensch, of course, would never ask for help, but Jack takes him at his word and tries to look into things.

Much of the story, then, tells us not so much about the circumstances surrounding the family suicides as it tells us of Jack still trying to resolve his feelings about his father—not that he had been very close to either parent in recent years.

He learns that his mother had a new boyfriend. The boyfriend is a successful businessman and native of Colombia who has put together a healthcare business that makes him millions. The suspicion is that behind the clinics and hospitals, he also markets drugs illegally. So, while Jack never appears to be in danger, he does cross paths with Julio Guzman as he inquires about his mother’s death. There may be some criminal types in the background, but not anyone trying to kill Jack or do him harm.

Liquid Shades of Blue is psychological in the primal sense—mommy’s dead, big brother’s dead, daddy’s distant and insensitive. Jack dropped out of daddy’s pressurized money-making law firm for a simpler life. Jack’s brother dropped out by taking his own life. Did his mother do the same?

I was reminded of another book we read a few years ago, Unwritten. That novel also takes place in southern Florida and involves some hurting people looking for some psychological relief. Liquid Shades of Blue does not have the tale of inner healing that Unwritten has, but it keeps us reading. There is enough action for readers to admit that, yes, this is a thriller of some kind, even if it’s not the kind of thing Grisham, Steele, or Connelly might write. It goes beyond the thriller formula to get at core beliefs.

William Martin. The Lost Constitution. Forge, 2007.

William Martin writes historical novels in the vein of James Michener. As Shakespeare would say, they have scope. The Lost Constitution is no exception.

Peter Fallon, whom we first met in Martin’s Harvard Yard, has become the protagonist in a number of his novels. Fallon is a Boston-based rare book and manuscript dealer. Harvard Yard had to do with a lost Shakespeare play. The Lost Constitution tells a tale of an early annotated draft of the United States’ Constitution that had apparently been preserved by a family and handed down through generations.

Form this book, we get an idea of the scope of American history. There is Will Pike, an assistant to Rufus King who was a member of the Constitutional Convention. Pike got the job through a recommendation from Revolutionary War hero Henry Knox because his father was a skilled officer under Knox. Pike’s father and brother are involved in the infamous Shays’ Rebellion in Western Massachusetts, which became an impetus for a true constitution, not the mere Articles of Confederation.

We especially get the history as it played out in New England. The Pike family becomes early investors in textile mills there. Martin notes that the Blackstone River, running roughly from Worcester, Massachusetts, to Providence, Rhode Island, has one of the steepest drops for its length. That made it perfect for water-powered mills.

We see a Pike descendant working briefly during the Civil War in St. Albans, Vermont. Readers familiar with Civil War history can guess what happens. St. Albans would be subject to a Confederate raid from across the border with Canada. Other relatives and business partners are involved with logging in Vermont and New Hampshire.

We meet Harriet Beecher Stowe in both Connecticut and Maine. Gettysburg hero Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain had taught with her husband in Brunswick, Maine. After the war she would settle in Connecticut.

We meet sailors out of Newport, Rhode Island. We are reminded that Rhode Island did not send a delegate to the Constitutional Convention and was the last of the thirteen original states to ratify the document. We also meet a prosperous family in the textile business who owns a mansion in Newport. During the twenties and thirties, Newport also figured in smuggling adult beverages during Prohibition.

(One glitch in the book: Stolichnaya Vodka was first produced some time between 1938 and 1946, so it would not have figured with the Prohibition rum runners.)

Then our contemporary, Peter Fallon himself, in tracking down the alleged document, is caught up in intrigue that takes him to all six New England states. He tries to find family connections in Vermont, ex-New Yorkers now living in Northwest Connecticut, maritime interests in Rhode Island, professors at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, another rare book store in Portland Maine, hoodlums and terrorists in Boston, and strange goings-on all over.

A congresswoman from Massachusetts is sponsoring a bill to repeal the Second Amendment to promote gun control. (This character seems to be inspired by Massachusetts lawmaker Elizabeth Warren.) Of course, the NRA and other human rights organizations oppose this. Both sides believe that the earlier draft of the Constitution, purported to have annotations by King, Elbridge Gerry, and others, could prove their case that either the Second Amendment was (1) a specific right for state and local militias only or (2) a broad right for individual defense of life, liberty, and property.

“We’ll think of something,” repeated Bishop. “As I said, it’s all about opinion molding.”

“I thought it was all about the truth,” snapped Peter. (223)

Or when two men are discussing the issue:

“When the framers said ‘a well-regulated militia,” they meant regulated, like the National Guard, guys who handle guns regularly because they’re regulated, get it?”

“I get what Madison said in The Federalist, ‘The Constitution protects the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over almost every other nation.’ Period. Full stop.” (447, italics in original)

Fallon finds himself traveling all over New England from Maine to Connecticut from the Newport seascape to the top of Mt. Washington, the region’s highest peak. He and his girlfriend Evangeline also find themselves in danger. Even though the tale is about rare manuscripts, it ends up with a body count that reminded this reader more of something by Tom Clancy. (There is, in fact, an homage or tip of the hat to Clancy in the course of the story.) This is a historical novel but it has a lot of action in the vein of one of his technothrillers.

There are also a few love stories and family dramas thrown in. There is a little something for everyone.

Martin gives us a lot to think about, both what it means to be an American and what New England is like.

“…this is a government of laws, and laws are made by men, and men might not always be what God intended them to be, but men like you and me, we’re decent, just the same.” (21)

Peter liked to believe that neighbors looked out for each other, a man’s word was his bond, and, as his mother used to tell him, a stranger was just a friend you hadn’t been introduced to. That was the world he remembered from his boyhood, a better world than most Americans lived in now, and probably a better world than they lived in back then.

Still, the chances of meeting a serial killer instead of the Good Samaritan were small, no matter what they told you on television. (99)

The broad-beamed Aaron Edwards approached, his attitude professorial and paternal, that is to say, condescending and lordly. (190)

“…judges are just lawyers who know politicians…” (253)

“But most people just want to do the right thing and live their lives and be left alone. The people are like gravity pulling the pendulum to the center.” (371)

“In America, we get up in the morning, we go to work, and we solve our problems.” (54 et passim)

About New Englanders: “We live through seven lousy months, just to get to five good ones and call ourselves lucky.” (328)

With Martin’s geographical and historical overview of New England in the form of a thriller, it is not a spoiler by saying that the story ends at one place that all New England (with the exception of parts of Connecticut southwest of the Munson-Nixon line) can focus on and agree on in spite of other divisions—Fenway Park.

N.B: There are sailors, criminals, and others who use crude language in this book. For that reason, it may not be for everyone.

B. C. Talbott. The Handmaiden. Word and Spirit, 2022.

“Kathryn never had to work the people up. The Holy Spirit was there before she came on.”
                —Gene Martin (112)
“If I ever walk on that stage and the Holy Spirit is not there, that will be the last time.”
                —Kathryn Kuhlman (123)

The Handmaiden is a biography of famous healing evangelist Kathryn Kuhlman, the first in many years. It has potential for ministering to its readers.

As best it can, The Handmaiden covers Rev. Kuhlman’s upbringing and early life. It does a delicate, if a bit vague, job on her marriage. Primarily, though, it describes her gradual growth in ministry, first working with her older sister and brother-in-law who were themselves itinerant evangelists then with a friend traveling as the God’s Girls duo. We see her establishing an evangelistic and healing ministry first in Idaho, then in Pittsburgh and Los Angeles. (The book is written in a very impressionistic style, so it is hard to tell which came first, Pennsylvania or California, or maybe they overlapped or flipped back and forth.)

The book’s strength is sharing on Rev. Kuhlman’s character. From this book the reviewer is reminded of Jonathan Edwards or D. L. Moody—not necessarily in theological acumen but in their seeking to be used by the Holy Spirit regardless of what is going on around them. This book has the potential for challenging the reader to ask himself or herself, am I really being sold out for Jesus? How much am I holding back? Could God use me more?

Kuhlman would write in a letter:

There is no limit God can do with a person, providing that one will not touch the glory. God is still waiting for one who will be more fully devoted to Him than any who has ever lived; who will be willing to be nothing that Christ may be all; who will grasp God’s purposes and will take his humility and His faith—His love and His power, without hindering, let God do great things. (176, italics in original)

While the purpose of the book is to tell Rev. Kuhlman’s life story, and that it does, more or less, probably the two strongest parts of the book are excerpts from two sermons. One sermon is from Kathryn Kuhlman herself that really reveals something of the nature of God. I said to myself as I was reading it, “This is really anointed. This is worth sharing.” The other was the eulogy given by Oral Roberts at Kathryn’s funeral. That tells us not only something of her character but something of the nature of the God she served.

The impressionistic style the author adopts can be a little hard to follow in places. For example, about halfway through the book we were told Rev. Kuhlman was 58 years old in 1965. That at least gave me an idea of when she was born, even though there were still spots where it was hard to tell which events happened in which decade.

Talbott based much of her information on interviews from co-workers and others who knew her who were still alive as well as documentary sources and extensive watching of clips of her television show. From those sources, especially from her co-workers, we get a sense of what she was like and get a sense of the source of her strength.

Currently, the standard biography is Kuhlman’s own “as told to” autobiography by Jamie Buckingham, Daughter of Destiny. With some polish, The Handmaiden could supplant it, or at the very least, provide some additional insight into the ministry of this twentieth-century saint.

Mabel Ninan. Far From Home. End Game P, 2022..

Far from Home begins with a note that sets the tone for this book:

I had never lived in a place where I stood out. In my homeland, I was simply another brown, Indian girl. In America, however, I was an anomaly. (173)

Any reader who read my recent “Why 2020 Was a Lot Like 1969” would understand that I could identify with that observation after spending some time in the Detroit ghetto. I still see that experience as a lesson on how African Americans might feel much of the time in a place where they stand out physically as a minority.

For Mabel Ninan it would become something else. She grew up in India as a member of a religious minority, viz. a Christian. That would not make her physically stand out, and for the most part it did not make her stand out culturally. The state where she grew up in India was religiously tolerant, so her religion was not an issue.

Ironically, it became an issue in the United States when she tried to make friends with some other women her age from India. We have read articles about how the caste system has been carried into Asian enclaves in the United States and has even affected hiring in Silicon Valley. That was her experience with some expats from India.

No, what she learned from her experience can be summed up in the following Bible verse:

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. (Hebrews 11:13-15)

That is the theme of this book. The author ties her experiences as an immigrant from South Asia in the United States to the Christian believer living in this world. There will be ways we will not fit in to the world as it is. We are in some ways like strangers or exiles.

When I moved to America, both tangible and intangible markers or threads of my identity were almost all lost, impelling me to replace them with new ones. In short, I had to put together my identity skein from scratch. (526)

I have told people over the years that when I was born again, I felt like I was starting my life all over again. I guess that is what “born again” means. So Ninan applies this idea to the spiritual walk of the Christian. In her case it took a few years after living in the U.S.—she moved from her Indian home in her early thirties—after being annoyed at people and feeling left out that “God was using my identity crisis to refine and strengthen my faith” (625).

She began to recognize that “One of the enemy’s strategies is to use difficult circumstances to cause confusion about our God-given identity. His goal is to make us doubt” (797).

Physically, we are earthlings, with both cradle and coffin grounded in earth. But, spiritually, our new birth and identity in Christ changes our status from a native of this world to a foreigner. We are not only the beloved and chosen children of God and coheirs with Christ, but also members of the kingdom of God with the full rights and privileges of citizenship. (871)

In most instances, it appears that the author learned to overcome annoyances or insults she may have experienced. One that seemed to bother her more was when someone could not understand her because of her accent. English was her first language. English is widely spoken and there are many accents. People who hear English one way may not understand it when spoken differently.

I live about a hundred miles from New York City. Many of my neighbors have an obvious “New Yawk” accent. Just recently a neighbor was telling me of a trip he took to Southern California. People there told him he sounded like a gangster! We have films like Goodfellas and television shows like The Sopranos to thank for that perception. Welcome to the melting pot, Mrs. Ninan.

For what it is worth, that is very much like the Vanity Fair episode in Pilgrim’s Progress. Christian and Faithful were arrested there for three reasons: (1) they did not buy anything at the fair, (2) their clothes were different, and (3) they talked in a strange accent. Of course, in Pilgrim’s Progress, these are symbols, but they do remind us that “earthlings” do not always understand what Christians or the Bible are talking about.

[God’s] Kingdom culture values humility, servant-leadership, and dependence on God while the world treats the humble as weak, believes leaders should be served, and promotes self-reliance and self-sufficiency. We are foreigners on earth because we swim against the tide of the dominant culture. (1299)

Like Bunyan’s pilgrims, “Our love for Jesus will make us stand out since it contradicts a world where people love themselves, wanting to be masters of their own destinies. (1362)

Looking back, Ninan sees a parallel with her own “displacement” from India to mankind’s situation:

The fall was mankind’s moment of displacement. It made us spiritual refugees. Uprooted and exiled, we find ourselves shut out of the perfect home. What made the garden of Eden Adam’s perfect home was not the perfections and beauty of the place itself, nor the delectable fruit and myriad creatures that filled it, nor the love he had for Eve. The garden of Eden was the perfect home because God was there, walking and talking with Adam and Eve. The first couple lacked nothing because they enjoyed God’s friendship. (1755)

If believers do not “belong” in the world, where do they belong? As one of her chapter titles says, we all have a “Craving for Community.” She noted that what made a difference in her and her husband’s move to America was finding churches where they knew they belonged.

Even here, it was not all sweetness and light. In India Ninan mostly worked with children and youth. She especially liked youth ministry. One pastor asked her if she would be interested in helping with the church’s web site. He just assumed that being from India and coming to the U.S., she must be some kind of computer programmer. We all stereotype others to some degree. It took some time, but eventually Ninan sees a greater purpose and a bigger picture that she can share with others.

So, yes, Far from Home does tell Americans and others who encounter immigrants to be sensitive and aware of our own prejudices and expectations. Still it mainly reminds all believers, as the old Bluegrass song says:

         I am a pilgrim and a stranger
         Traveling through this wearisome land,
         And I’ve got a home in that yonder city,
         And it’s not, not made by hand.

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

Sarah Churchwell. Careless People. Penguin, 2014.

No serious book is written in America nowadays which does not carry its implied or direct criticism of our ideals, our scheme of life, our cultural attainments.
                —Burton Rascoe 1922 (40)

He is intensely preoccupied with the eternal verities and insoluble problems of this world. To discuss them while waiting for supper with Miss Gilda Gray is his privilege and his weakness.
                —Ernest Boyd 1924 on F. Scott Fitzgerald (228)

(Gilda Gray was the star of Ziegfeld Follies at the time and known for dancing the shimmy, which she apparently started in 1920. Her understudy is a guest at one of Jay Gatsby’s parties.)

Careless People gets its title from a term near the end of The Great Gatsby:

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together and let other people clean up the mess they had made. (328)

The true careless people in Careless People are Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. Careless People is a fascinating and cleverly organized book that analyzes The Great Gatsby while telling about the lives of Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald, especially in 1922, the year that Gatsby is set, and 1924, the year that Fitzgerald wrote most of the book.

Careless People also tells us a few things that were going on in the world that would have been in the newspapers that the Fitzgeralds read. We learn a few things about Arnold Rothstein, for example, on whom the character of Meyer Wolfshiem is based. (N.B.: Churchwell points out that different editions and revisions of the novel spell Meyer’s family name two different ways: Wolfsheim and Wolfshiem. I wondered about this since I have seen critics spell it both ways, but the edition of Gatsby we own spells it Wolfsheim. Churchwell prefers the other way,)

However, the event that ran through the news for most of 1922 that Careless People focuses on was a double murder in Brunswick, New Jersey, a New York suburb. The victims were a married Episcopal priest and the wife of a parishoner that he was apparently having an affair with. The town was inundated with tourists for months viewing the houses, church, and park associated with the murder. The police did a poor job of investigating the evidence, witnesses often contradicted themselves and each other, and some alleged witnesses were probably mere publicity seekers. The murderer’s motive was probably the adultery, and the murderer or murderers were never caught. The priest’s wife was independently wealthy, and some people thought she may have gotten away with killing them because of her status.

This book came out in 2014, so it does not use the currently popular term fake news, but a lot of the news reporting was slanted and sensational back them. Some of the news stories were clearly made up or just plain wrong. Things have not changed all that much.

Readers know that The Great Gatsby contains many allusions to events going on at the time the novel is set. It refers to many songs that were popular. The murder of Rosy Rosenthal really happened pretty much the way Meyer Wolfsheim describes it. Nick Carraway tells us that his family was related to the Dukes of Buccleuch. The bodies of the murdered couple from New Jersey were found in Buccleuch Park. For what it is worth, the novelist Sir Walter Scott really was a relative of the Dukes (their family name was Scott).

Some readers may feel that the book spends far too much time on the murder story, but apart from that, there are many excellent observations about The Great Gatsby. The book is organized in nine chapters parllelling the nine chapters of Gatsby based on an outline of the book written by Fitzgerald. Each chapter contains at least three or four threads: (1) What the Fitzgeralds were doing especially from 1922 to 1924, (2) the progress of the New Jersey murder investigation and its press coverage, (3) observations on what is going on in the corresponding chapter of The Great Gatsby, and (4) what was going on in the relevant world of literature.

Of the fourth, we have many critics quoted. Especially the book notes that 1922 held the publication of two seminal twentieth century works that not only influenced Fitzgerald but many would say were the two greatest literary works of the century: Joyce’s Ulysses and Eliot’s The Waste Land.

On the very first page the author says that Fitzgerald would say that The Great Gatsby had Catholic elements. She thinks he dropped them, but they are there as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Odyssey points out. Indeed, later in Careless People the author notes how Fitzgerald uses the word accident. It deliberately suggests the Latin root accidens, which is a key term in Catholic theology—the “merely material, once its mystical promises have been abandoned.” (223) If the spirit and the soul are missing (as in Gatsby’s lost dreams) what, if anything, is left?

Careless People reminds us that a novel at Myrtle’s apartment, Simon Called Peter, was about an Anglican priest who had an affair like the Brunswick murder victim. However, the book does not mention that the priest in the novel finds redemption through converting to Catholicism. That might be another of those subtle Catholic elements Fitzgerald was talking about. Unlike the priest in that novel, no one in Gatsby finds redemption.

There are many insights into The Great Gatsby in Careless People. Most of the remainder of this review will be simply sharing some of them with the reader. I hope readers can glean a few grains or mine a few gems from this approach.

What is the significance, if any, of the color of the Buchanan dock light? Does it stand for envy, hope, spring, the color of money? Does it mean “go”?

Careless People explains the Valley of the Ashes. There was a spot just outside the inhabited areas of New York City where the city began dumping ashes in 1895. In those days most buildings and homes were heated by coal; the ash had to be dumped somewhere. This region really did appear like a black desert. In the thirties, construction crews began dismantling the ash heaps, using the ash in asphalt and other products.

At Myrtle’s party in the city, we note also the use of ash or dust imagery and ash trays. We also see similar imagery at the scene of Myrtle’s death: not just that it happens in the Valley of Ashes but we see parallels of two men talking in the dust both at the party and after Myrtle’s demise.

The Eckleberg billboard takes on the image of God, this is well known and explicitly stated in the book. But what god is it? Perhaps, says Churchwell, it is “the false god of advertising.” Daisy and money are not all they appear to be.

Myrtle is to Daisy as Gatsby is to Tom.

In spite of what the film versions suggest, the Charleston did not become popular until 1925, not 1922 when the novel is set. The one dance specifically mentioned in the novel is the more sedate foxtrot. (Though Gilda Gray’s understudy may have danced the shimmy at Gatsby’s party.)

The big party at Gatsby’s takes place on July 5, or at least associated with that date because of the railroad schedule. Perhaps this suggests, as does that quotation above from critic Burton Rascoe, that America’s greatness, or at least Gatsby’s “greatness,” is in the past. (N.B.: July 5, 1922, was a Wednesday—not a day for a party, but it might well be the date a new rail schedule would be issued since the trains probably had a very different timetable on the Independence Day holiday.)

Another book we reviewed tells us that Daisy may have been based on an early flame of Scott Fitzgerald’s, Ginevra King, a beautiful debutante from the Midwest. One of her close friends and sister debutante was Edith Cummings, who became a professional golfer. She would become the first female athlete portrayed on the cover of Time magazine. In fairness, unlike Jordan Baker, Cummings was never suspected of cheating.

The book notes that Jordan and Nick are both “bad drivers.” Jordan admits her mistake in connecting with Nick. Daisy, on the other hand, apparently never tells Tom that she was driving the car when Myrtle was hit. She sacrificed Gatsby. (328) Tanner would say that Daisy was the Judas of the tale.

Is Nick an unreliable narrator? Perhaps, but according to Churchwell, not because he is factually wrong, but that “he cannot always be relied on to narrate.” He presents many things in vague or unexplained terms. (186)

Nick keeps silent, for example, about what he knows when he attends the inquest. He is impressed with the way Myrtle’s sister Catherine lies at the inquest. “Given that Daisy is his second cousin, some might think Nick chose to protect the honor of his family in covering up a double murder” (303).

“Daisy and Tom will stay together. Every other couple will be destroyed or divided, but old money survives intact, untouched and untouchable” (264).

The clock at Nick’s tea becomes a symbol. Gatsby bumps it and tries to catch it, as if he is attempting to go back in time or hold onto time. But he can’t (175).

Before 1931, the phrase “American Dream” as we know it did not exist, but in that year a popular historian named James Truslow Adams wrote a book called The Epic of America, which spoke of “the American dream of a better, richer and happier life for all our citizens of every rank, which is the greatest contribution we have made to the thought and welfare of the world. That dream or hope has been present from the start…” Adams’ book sparked a great national debate in the early years of the Great Depression about the promise of America, and the idea of the American Dream has become as familiar as the novel that is held to exemplify it, but actually helped prophesy it into existence. (344)

Young Gatsby’s Schedule and Resolves do remind us of the list from Franklin’s Autobiography. But Franklin also included things to improve his character like truth, humility, and asking What Good shall I do today? “Gatsby does not try to improve the inner man…Gatsby is a modern Faust, who makes a fortune and loses what once would have been called his soul.” (304)

The loss of illusion is harder to bear than the loss of love. (142)

Even more than Joyce and Eliot, Fitzgerald loved Keats. He would say:

“The Grecian Urn is unbearably beautiful with every syllable as inevitable as the notes in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony or it’s just something you don’t understand. It is what it is because an extraordinary genius paused at that point in history and touched it. I suppose I have read it a hundred times. About the tenth time I began to know what it was about, and caught the chime in it and exquisite inner mechanics.” (337)

So it is with Gatsby. There are thousands of stories about those whom we would call the rich and the rotten. Fitzgerald himself wrote many others. Careless People shows us why The Great Gatsby still stands out.

Jason Sobel. Aligning with God’s Appointed Times. RJS Publishing, 2020.

Aligning with God’s Appointed Times presents an overview of the main Jewish festivals from the perspective of a rabbi who believes in Jesus. It is different from and complementary to A Prophetic Calendar, a book we reviewed on the same subject. A Prophetic Calendar, as its title suggests, looks at the feasts more in terms of Bible prophecy. As we noted, it takes a somewhat controversial historical perspective.

Aligning with God’s Appointed Times covers the same holidays: Sabbath, Passover, Pentecost (Shavuot), Rosh Hashanah (Trumpets), Yom Kippur (Atonement), Sukkoth (Tabernacles), Chanukah, and Purim. Since Jewish holidays are based on lunar calendars, Sobel includes an appendix with the dates of each holiday for the years 2020 to 2030. The book also avoids most controversy.

Sobel’s main thesis is simple. The book is written for a Christian audience, Jew and Gentile, to explain each holiday and to encourage Christians to celebrate the holidays and, when appropriate, connect them to the corresponding Christian holiday (Passover with Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter; Shavuot with Pentecost). A key argument or approach he makes is that most of the holidays are fun. Even the two more reflective and serious holidays, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, are worth observing for both serious introspection and for a better appreciation of the atoning sacrifice of Yeshua (Jesus in English). My own experience with a Passover Seder was a great blessing as noted in my review of A Prophetic Calendar.

Another Jewish friend used to put up a shelter in his yard for Sukkoth. That was fun in a different sort of way. He would decorate his “tent” with things that reflected his personality. He explained that Sukkoth was idiosyncratic that way.

Each chapter on each individual holiday discusses the origin and commandments, if any, concerning the holiday. It explains why it is still significant to observe the festival. When relevant, it explains how Jesus celebrated the holiday. Each chapter ends with an outline of things the reader can do to celebrate the holiday. Most of those things come from the Bible and Jewish tradition and include physical objects (e.g. candles or noisemakers), songs, Scripture readings, and food.

Rabbi Sobel’s observations are profound in many cases but clear and uncomplicated. His observations on Purim were particularly interesting. Purim is not mentioned in the New Testament, and it comes from Esther, the one book in the entire Bible that never mentions God. He notes that even the casting of lots in this story was ultimately set up by God. People today will sometimes maintain that the universe came about through random events. Sobel notes:

Chance is the ultimate insult to purposeful design and intentionality. (184)

God has a plan. Though not as prophetically oriented as A Prophetic Calendar, Aligning with God’s Appointed Times still notes that God presides over His creation. He gave mankind free will (e.g., see Genesis 2:16 NIV or Psalm 115:16), but He has a plan. As Hamlet noted, “There is a divinity that shapes our ends/ Rough hew them how we will” (Hamlet 5.2.10-11).

Even though God is not mentioned in connection with either Esther or how Purim came to be celebrated, He is acting even if we cannot sense His hand.

When you cannot see the hand of God, you have to trust the heart of God. (190)

Haman descended from the king of the Amalekites, next to the Philistines the most strident enemy of Israel. He wanted to do away with all the Jews. That came from both a personal grudge and an inherited animus. But God has always promised to preserve at least a remnant of Jews because the Messiah of the whole world would come from them and because He honored Abraham.

Clearly there is a lot more, but each holiday has similar observations. Sobel’s main thesis about Gentile believers trying out the holidays is worth looking into. It’s not a requirement (see, for example, Acts 15:23-30 or Colossians 2:16) but it could be fun.

Max Lucado. 3:16: The Numbers of Hope. Nelson, 2022.

Anyone at all familiar with the Gospels probably has come across John 3:16, the familiar summary of God’s purpose in Jesus:

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16 NIV)

This relatively short book breaks down this single sentence. It gives the reader hope.

Lucado may be the most popular Christian nonfiction writer in English today. I can see why after reading 3:16. It is direct and clear. It is brimming with encouragement. And it presents its case much of the time in story form.

He reminds us that, like most of the Bible, this verse was not spoken in a vacuum. A Jewish religious leader named Nicodemus had come to talk to Jesus about what Jesus was doing. Jesus had performed some miracles and was teaching from the Hebrew Scriptures with authority.

Unlike some of the religious leaders who felt threatened, Nicodemus was curious. He wanted to find out more. He came to Jesus to find out if he really was a wise and anointed rabbi or a charlatan misleading the people.

That sentence was one of the things Jesus said to him. Lucado breaks it down for us.

It tells us something of God’s intention: including His love for His creation. It tells us something of who Jesus was. Jesus was unique. Lucado shows why.

It also tells us something specifically of God’s intention towards mankind. Jesus’ promise was not limited to Jews or religious leaders. Jesus says it applies to “whoever believes.” That leaves things wide open, and gives even those who perhaps feel unworthy a chance.

It also thwarts the devil’s plan from the beginning. The serpent seduced Eve so she would die. Jesus said elsewhere that the devil’s intent is to steal, kill, and destroy (see John 10:10). But Jesus tells us that because God sent Him into the world, those who believe “shall not perish.”

So His promise is just the opposite of dying. Jesus speaks here and in many other places in the New Testament about eternal life. At one point Jesus actually says to emphasize his point about this promise, “If it were not so, I would not have told you that” (John 14:2).

3:16 tells stories. Yes, there is a story about a golfer as well as one about a religious leader. But mostly it tells the story of why Jesus came and did what He did. It may be the most important story to share. and Lucado does it in such an elegant way, that it is easy to see why readers would gain hope.

This revised 2022 edition includes a collection of forty two-page stories called “Forty Days with the Son.” It could perhaps be used for Lent or for the period between Easter and Pentecost. They very briefly give an overview of Jesus’ ministry. It is Lucado’s way of clearly and simply telling that great, great story of salvation. This book has potential for blessing many people. I suspect it already has.

Jay Seegert. Creation to Christ. Starting Point, 2022.

Creation to Christ is an easy-to-read summary of the history recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures or Old Testament. As the title suggests, it begins with the account of creation and takes us through all the highlights of Hebrew history through Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament to be written. It ends with a chapter about the so-called “years of silence” or intertestamental period, what happened in the Holy Land in the time between Malachi and the coming of Jesus of Nazareth.

The book is written for a Christian audience that may need some background or reminding of what the Old Testament tells us. The author laments that too many Christians focus exclusively on the New Testament and miss out on its historical and literary context because of ignorance of the Old Testament. Seegert does this in a somewhat lighthearted and self-deprecating manner. Seegert may be better known as a podcaster, and his entertaining verbal tone comes through.

Creation to Christ highlights the major events and characters, especially those emphasized in the New Testament. We go through the creation, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Flood, the Tower of Babel, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and the Exodus, King David, the division of the Kingdom, the attacks by the Assyrians and Babylonians, the return from Babylon. It briefly summarizes each of the prophetic books.

This is a good tool for churches and teachers. It does fill a need as the author suggested.

Because of the scope of the Hebrew Scriptures, readers and critics can easily become distracted. What about evolution? The Flood? Where did Cain’s wife come from? Why circumcision and dietary laws? Is the world thousands of years old or billions of years old?

Seegert does not want his reader to lose focus. This is his solution: The first two hundred pages summarize the Old Testament as we described here. They is followed by a 144-page appendix that deals with questions that might become distractions. The appendix contains seventeen sections handling those distracting or controversial questions that could lead the main text down rabbit trails the author is trying to avoid. There is even a short section on the Nephilim (for what it is worth, Seegert’s position is similar to that of Giants, a book we recently reviewed here).

The chapters are short. There are timelines and numerous illustrations. Even people who are not fond of reading or of reading theological tomes would be comfortable with the presentation and approach of this book.

Benjamin J. Chase. Here to See It. Kelsay Books, 2022.

We do not very often review poetry books. There are a few reasons. Except for anthologies, few come to our attention. A lot of contemporary poetry is either morally or politically crass. The features of one’s partner’s body or the vagaries of whoever is in the White House are truly ephemeral.

The title and the poems reminded this reader of Garrison Keillor’s homey book Happy to Be Here. Here to See It is a typical small volume of about thirty short poems. Some have a sense of humor. Most have effective imagery. Like many lyric poems, Chase takes a simple event or image and does something more with it.

It can be something as simple as buying an iced coffee on the first day of a spring thaw. It can be a simple image of the poet’s father, one who is always there, perhaps taken for granted, like Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays.” Chase teaches high school, and both teachers and students can appreciate the “isosceles triangle” created at a parent-student-teacher conference, and seeing who is going to be the good cop and who the bad cop. Echoes of Taylor Mali’s middle school poems.

Three poems really stood out that perhaps indicate something of the poet’s motivation or inspiration. “Love for Emily D” is a quatrain punctuated with dashes like Emily Dickinson. It is a lighthearted homage to the Belle of Amherst. Two poems meditate on paintings by Edward Hopper. Hopper’s paintings tend to be stark, even lonely, but with striking images that suggest more than meets the eye. Peggy Noonan recently wrote “We weren’t meant to be a Hopper painting.” Ah, but we get it, don’t we? Isn’t there primal beauty in basic colors and stark images? So it is if we are Here to See It.

Many thanks to the friend who gave me a copy of this.