Should The Tent Be Burning Like That? by Bill Heavey

‘The Professional Amateur’s Guide to the Outdoors’ is a compilation of Heavey’s columns for Field and Stream magazine. And if the title sounds curious, his previous books are “If you didn’t bring jerky, what did I just eat?” then “It’s only slow food until you try to eat it” followed up by “You’re not lost if you can still see the truck.” 

In the book’s introduction, he acknowledges that ‘these pieces have been known to make people laugh, cry, or curse, often in their bathrooms, since that is where many people prefer to read my stuff.” Reminds me of that line from The Big Chill where People magazine writer Jeff Goldblum tells his friends that his writing has length limits – only long enough for one to finish within the length of the typical American crap. 

Translated: short stories most anyone who has ventured beyond their fescue moat can relate.

As with other similar compilations, this is non-fiction. Heavey tells us that in the world of outdoor writing, the high end (the experienced, the knowledgeable, the successful) is heavily populated.

But the other end of the spectrum (the rookie, the downright dumb, the failure who keeps trying bless his heart) is largely ignored. 

This book is for and about 'that guy' . . . 

. . . who has a ‘case of athlete’s foot that would be at home in a leper colony’ whose only saving grace is his ‘deranged perserverance’ in search of ‘a beast with a cow-catcher on its head forever to be known as the Heavey buck’.

. . . who is such a gear head that he lives in a suburban Virginia house ‘with as much of the Cabela’s catalog crammed into his house as possible’ because he knows that ‘new gear solemnly swears to change your life’.

. . . who realizes that, while waiting for the Valium to kick in for his colonoscopy, he needs to inventory his flashlights and head lamps.

. . . whose head shot for his column presents ‘someone who aspires to be a sex offender, but doesn’t have the nerve.’

. . . with sufficient wisdom and understanding to recognize that with age comes a neck that would do a snapping turtle proud.

. . . who, when dressed out for a hunt resembles an ‘outdoorsy transvestite that would be proud to be introduced to parents’

. . . who isn’t the slightest bit concerned about wearing pink lipstick when forgetting the Chap Stick or wearing pantyhose for a 5-day horseback trek to avoid chafing (XL, taupe, opaque, regular not control top; and don’t let the salesperson jerk you around).

. . . who ventures into unpopulated areas of the planet to hunt caribou with a bow, realizing that he is headed into ‘a violent feeding ground for the strongest predators, a trap for the week, a graveyard for the unlucky.” No problem for a DC area resident, because that ‘sounds a little like the Beltway.’

. . . who enters a team event for hunting skills with three other similar guys who know they have no chance of winning. So, they plan to try mightily, but strive to come in last and realize “We failed to fail. Tell me, grasshopper, what more complete failure can a man attain.’

But this book just isn’t about ‘that guy’. It’s also about the steelhead freak who sleeps in his pickup truck cab because the bed is too loaded with gear. The world’s shotgun expert trying to teach the unlearned how to shoot birds. The PharmD who is also the mountain trout guru. Those guides who take the foolhardy into pristine places not to be revealed and opens beer bottles with a Bic lighter.

In short, this book is for all those nerds and rookies who greatly outnumber the cool guys and experts. That’s who this book is for.

In other words, it’s for you.

ECD

-->

Presidential Declarations

Presidential Declarations is the second in a trilogy of novels by Douglas J. Wood in which Samantha Harrison, a conservative Republican and former governor of Virginia, is planning a run for the presidency. As previously reviewed in the blog, the initial novel Presidential Intentions, is used for character introduction and development. It establishes Harrison’s considerable credentials as a bright and passionate candidate who espouses a very conservative agenda. Wood wrote the first novel in 2014.

The second novel published in 2015, Presidential Declarations begins with Harrison having lost the 2016 Presidential election to Hillary Clinton and the 2018 Senate race to Tim Kaine. Harrison was ready to leave public life until she was nominated to fill the seat of a retiring longtime Congressman. Almost immediately, Harrison was summoned by Clinton to the White House for reasons that were not apparent. Sam was totally stunned when Clinton offered her the job of Secretary of State. The job offer came over Bill Clinton’s objections, and both Harrison’s daughter Amanda and longtime confident Zachary Watts advised her to turn down the offer. Hillary claimed that while she and Sam had many differences on domestic issues, that they saw eye-to-eye on most foreign policy and that Sam was simply the best person for the job. Despite being from opposite parties and despite their differences on domestic policy, Sam accepted Hillary’s offer.

Simultaneous with the evolution of his audacious presidential plot, Wood penned a terrorist plot on Washington by Hamas who had control of the Gaza Strip. It was in the capacity of Secretary of State that Sam landed in Israel to make one more attempt to negotiate a Middle East peace pact. At the suggestion of Hillary, Sam also agreed to meet with the leader of Hamas in Gaza, a decision that turned out to be unwise. At the same time dirty bombs were exploded around Washington, Sam’s security detail was killed and she was taken prisoner in Gaza. Held captive with her were her daughter and another American. In the explosions around DC, both the Vice President and Speaker of the House were killed. The President had been having lunch with friends and the restaurant was nearly totally destroyed. Clinton’s body was not initially found, but she was presumed dead. That meant that the fourth person in line for the Presidency, the Secretary of State, was a captive of Hamas.

Clinton’s nearly lifeless body was found, and she recovered while Sam served as the acting President until Clinton c return to the office. They had a cooperative relationship until Sam chose to decline Hillary’s offer to fill the vacant Vice President position. Sam was unwilling to play second fiddle to anyone. Then the competition began in earnest for the Presidential Election in 2020.

Wood’s use of current day politicians is intriguing. He repeatedly used Harrison to attack Obama’s policies on both domestic and foreign matters. Given the timing of the writing of the novel and the evolution of Trump’s surprisingly successful candidacy, Trump was only mentioned once in the book, as someone whose candidacy wilted in the face of Harrison steamrolling toward the 2020 Republican nomination. Interestingly, Sam’s choice of Ben Carson as her running mate was viewed as a brilliant decision. After reading the first novel in this trilogy, I wondered if Harrison’s right wing positions might be softened as the result of the realities of her time in office, but in fact, this was not the tact that Wood chose. The speeches he wrote for Harrison were far better than the kind of tripe I heard on Fox News. Perhaps the eloquence of Harrison’s words did not quite match the eloquence that Aaron Sorkin gives his leftwing candidates, but the speeches and debates were good. I’m curious to see what the author does with his characters now that Harrison has arrived in the Oval Office. He ends the second book on Harrison’s first day in office when Iran’s Grand Ayatollah declared jihad against both the United States and Great Britain. Right now, I’ll start reading book three in the trilogy, Presidential Conclusions.

A Line Intersected

A Line Intersected by David Grant Urban:

Michael Collwood was a young professional, an architect with a great firm in San Diego. He was in love with and married to a wonderful woman. On a warm night, they were enjoying an outing in downtown’s Gaslamp District when disaster struck. They were grabbed at gunpoint and pushed into a dark building where Michael was drugged and his wife was assaulted, raped, and murdered. When Michael unexpectedly recovered from a coma three months later, he learned that he was the prime suspect in his wife’s murder. He was fired from his job and lost his home when he could not pay the mortgage. After two more years of struggling, Michael decided it was time to end his life and he hiked into a remote canyon near Borrego Springs with enough pills and booze to do the job. When a small plane crashed near Michael’s remote campsite, that’s when things changed.

A Line Intersected is a well-told story with strong subplots. Michael thought an old homeless man might have witnessed their kidnapping and could support what no one else believed. The author took us on a deep dive into the homeless population of San Diego to find “Books” who had seen them being taken at gunpoint. In the search, one learns about the size of the homeless population, where and how they live, and the variety of people who have ended up on the streets. Urban humanized a part of our society that often seem to stay invisible. The story also takes the reader into city corruption, the movement of drugs across the border, the gangs that distribute this product, intrigues with law enforcement, friendship, and romance. And, you’ll get an excellent tour of the entire San Diego area.

Great plot, great character development, skilled writing – this book has all of that.

This book was given to me by an author, Aida Afaf (The Shadow of the Profit, previously reviewed in this blog), and she said David Grant Urban is in her writers group. This is his first book, and I’m ready to nominate this one for an Edgar Award. As for the homeless in San Diego, this blog continues to look for book donations (novels, not texts and encyclopedias) that are taken to the homeless via a charity known as “The Burrito Boyz.” When I hand out books, along with breakfast burritos, to the homeless, I’ve been amazed at the knowledge of contemporary authors by the people I’ve encountered, people who are always grateful for the food and books that we provide.

Yesterday's News

-->

All three reviewers at Men Reading Books have favorably reviewed Belsky’s novels. I was particularly enamored with The Kennedy Connection. And, Belsky has done it again with Yesterday’s News. This is a prepublication review, and the book will be released on May 1, 2018. I read this book in a day, could not put it down. I’m only concerned that this brief review won’t do justice to the quality of this story.

My heart sank in the two-page prologue when it was clear the story would be about a missing schoolgirl, 11-year-old Lucy Devlin. But, as the story begins, Lucy has been gone for 15 years. A newspaper reporter, Clare Carlson, had won a Pulitzer for her coverage of the story. At the time of Lucy’s disappearance, it was a story that captured the nations attention. Since then, Clare had moved on from her newspaper reporting gig and had moved up from being a TV reporter to a TV executive. But she had promised Lucy’s mother that she would never let people forget about Lucy. Lucy’s parents, Anne and Patrick had long since divorced, the marriage couldn’t survive the disappearance of their child. Patrick had moved on, to another town, remarried, and had a new family. But Anne continued to hunt for clues and to bother law enforcement about her ideas, some of which were really crazy. It seemed everyone wanted Anne to come to terms with the certain death of Lucy, but she would not, and Clare had given her a promise.

When Anne had a new lead, she contacted Clare who had to get permission from her executives to pursue the story, not on the basis of a new lead, but on the basis of the 15^th anniversary of Lucy’s still unsolved disappearance. Through the first half of the book, Belsky did character development as one would expect, but then the plot really got going. There were a series of twists that I did not see coming and the end was both excellent and realistic. Belsky provides an excellent character study of aspects of the dark side of life that we hope does not ever touch us.

The Craving Mind, From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love – Why We Get Hooked and How We Can Break Bad Habits

-->

Mindfulness and associate professor in Medicine and Psychiatry at UMass Medical School. Last year, he published, The Craving Mind, From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love – Why We Get Hooked and How We Can Break Bad Habits. The forward to the book is by the founder of mindfulness, Jon Kabat-Zinn. Thus, we have two of the world’s heavyweights in mind research teaming up to share their ideas. According to the website for the publisher, Yale University Press, “We are all vulnerable to addiction. Whether it’s a compulsion to constantly check social medical, binge eating, smoking, excessive drinking, or any other behaviors, we may find ourselves uncontrollably repeating. Why are bad habits so hard to overcome? Is there a key to conquering the cravings we know are unhealthy for us?”

Brewer explained reward-based learning, otherwise known as operant condition (positive and negative reinforcement) and how that applied not only to substance misuse, but also various forms of obsessional thinking. For 20 years, Brewer has been using mindfulness meditation as a means of helping his patients overcome various forms of addiction. With the use of fMRIs (functional magnetic resonance imaging), he explained the changes in brain chemistry that occurs with substances, thoughts, and meditation. His research and clinical data is very impressive. There is now ample evidence that meditation is an important element in behavioral change, but I’ll let Brewer convince you about that. If you’d rather watch rather than read, you can search for him in TED Talks. This is impressive data with regard to a very specific way that anyone can heal malfunctioning cognitions. Have a look!

Field of Valor

I can't possibly read all the books that are forwarded to me, so I passed this one to my friend who I'll title "GregGolf of Whispering Palms." He enjoyed the book and gave me a one-sentence review: "If you are into military small arms and the people who use them, this is your book."

East Coast Don has previously reviewed three of Betley's books, and his comments were essentially raves about the quality of his stories.

Firestorm by Solange Ritchie

This is #2. The opener was The Burning Man that I haven’t read. Apparently, a fire nut named Eric was being pursued by Dr. Catherine (Cat) Powers, an FBI forensic pathologist. Based on slivers of clues, Eric had something to with Cat’s husband’s death and the abduction of Joey, her young son. Appears that Eric was never caught and not heard from since.

Firestorm begins roughly a year or so later. Cat and Joey are trying to get on with life. At least until Cat receives an envelope containing photos of when Joey was held captive by Eric. The delivery trail is traced back to Southern California’s Orange County. Cat heads west from DC and rejoins her local cop contact from a year earlier, Jim McGregor, to track down Eric.

Eric’s been busy on a couple fronts. First, he’s had a bit of a makeover courtesy of a cosmetic surgeon, so Cat won't recognize him if she sees him. More importantly, he’s met someone. An Orange County fireman, David, who also has a bit of a thing for fire, occupationally and recreationally. Together they are a formidable team.

Eric’s MO had been to meet up with his victim and after getting the kill, carve the corpse into something nearly unrecognizable. Then set a fire. David likes to set wildfires that start off as property crimes, but eventually graduate to murder.

Cat and McGregor track down one corpse after another, but catch a break (they think) and find Eric standing over his latest victim. Was it good police work or did Eric lead them to him for a suicide by cop?

In a rage, David starts setting a number of fires in the national forests that surround Orange County housing areas. Property losses and deaths mount. His twisted mind starts to take on Eric’s personality and starts killing women, only David doesn’t carve up the victim, he carves Eric’s name into the skin so that Cat knows there is a connection to her past. She thought she was done with Eric.

Thanks to Page-Turner Publicity for a pre-release copy. The author is a Florida attorney. The story is well plotted and paced. But I think it would’ve flowed better (for me) had I read The Burning Man first. Eric’s not in this book for all that long and he seemed to be a more interesting character than David. Only other thing that bugged me was the ending after Cat and her Orange County Police Chief confront David. Thought Cat’s consoling of the Chief seemed contrived. To me, at least. Otherwise, this was decent.

ECD