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Written by Our Reviewer
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Saturday, 15 November 2008 |
Recovering Charles: Loss In the Backdrop of KatrinaReviewed by Stuart Nachbar
I was intrigued to read Jason Wright’s Recovering Charles because I have lost my mother as a teenager, and I worked in Newark, New Jersey, a very challenging urban center, in a public affairs role. At the time I worked there, I occasionally saw scenes through my camera and through my car window that were not unlike those seen by Katrina victims in New Orleans. Only Newark has never been hit by a Category 5 hurricane.
 Recovering Charles
Recovering Charles’ main character Luke Millward is an up and coming photojournalist in a serious and loving relationship with Jordan, his girlfriend, who has moved from law into real estate. Luke has lived in New York for his college and adult life, while his father Charles had after he had moved to Texas. He did not know that his father had moved again, this time to New Orleans, became a musician, and was missing in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Charles’ friends in New Orleans call for Luke, and seek his help to find him. And Luke travels to New Orleans with considerable reluctance. Because he remembers his father only as a man who couldn’t keep a family together, and became a drunk after his wife died. Charles’ drunkenness also led Luke to forsake drinking. At first Luke has his doubts that his father might not be a man worth saving.
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 15 November 2008 )
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Thursday, 23 October 2008 |
What It Takes to Fight WildfiresBook Review by Stuart Nachbar
Kurt Kamm’s One Foot in the Black is a novel of firefighting with very realistic details of the training and hazards of fighting wildfires. I only knew of wildfires from television, so I appreciated learning about the people who fight them.
 One Foot in the Black
I learned more about the character of firefighters in One Foot in the Black than I did about adventure, but that was fine. I could not imagine that someone who fights wildfires for a living, and put his life into situations far beyond his control, would not be a unique character. Before I started One Foot in the Black I would have believed that such a person would be like a soldier; he’d put the mission before his life. However, he is fighting an enemy that is not human; it is nature turned into a destructive force. That battle might play different tricks on the mind than a military skirmish.
Greg Kowalski, Kamm’s main character, and the son of a fireman, did not originally plan on being a firefighter himself. He was presented with a seasonal opportunity by his father’s boss, which was a bus ticket to escape from his father’s abuse. While his father had enjoyed the camaraderie that goes along with being part of a fire company, he doesn’t seem to enjoy the work and takes his frustrations out on his family, except for Greg, whom he merely ignores. He takes his son on a father-son outing then abandons him in a hotel to pursue extramarital companionship, then later when Greg is of high school age, he is conspicuously absent during his son’s hockey championship games. |
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 23 October 2008 )
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Thursday, 12 June 2008 |
Unholy Domain: Where Science and Religion Go to WarReviewd by Stuart Nachbar
Dan Ronco’s Unholy Domain is a science fiction story that is very much a mix between George Orwell’s 1984 and Philip Dick’s Minority Report.
 Unholy Domain
I loved the movie Minority Report, so I was anxious to read Domain, and it did not disappoint. While the author is a technologist himself, he doesn’t get the reader lost in technical and computer jargon; that is often a distraction with similar “intelligent” science fiction novels that assume the reader already knows most of the science before he opens the book. His descriptions of robots and PeaceMaker, the killer app were quick and to the point and made me want to continue reading the story. |
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 12 June 2008 )
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