At its heart, Under an Outlaw Moon is a love story about two kids trying to escape the Depression. Based on a true story, Dietrich Kalteis breathes life into a couple of real-life outlaws. This is not an easy thing to do. An author needs space to allow the muse to roam. Kalteis has the facts. But newspaper stories and novels are two very different genres. How does he bring this story to life and make these characters, not only sympathetic but our friends?
In his legendary clipped casual style, Kalteis creates personas from facts and those newspaper names: Bennie Dickson and Stella Mae Redenbaugh (soon to be Dickson). They meet on June 12, 1937 at a skating rink. Stella is fifteen, naïve, and impressionable; Bennie is over a decade her senior, experienced and sporting a criminal record: six years’ hard time for a bank robbery in Missouri. Still, this is love. Their romance boils and simmers while Bennie boxes under the name Johnny O’Malley, and Stella endures the pains of being a poor naïve girl in America. When they marry a year later, she’s already hurt, traumatized, and looking to escape with a romantic hero. She finds one in Bennie. An honourable, sociable, robber, Bennie reads philosophy and writes poetry; plus he’s head over heals in love with Sure Shot Stella. Who wouldn’t fall for Bennie?
These two are classically romantic. They want a house with a white picket fence. It shouldn’t take much—a couple of banks ought to do it. If only J. Edgar Hoover wasn’t the kingpin of the FBI.
Things I love about this book. Kalteis’s legendary writing style. He spins us around his short, clipped phrases and keeps us wanting more. Not many authors today write omniscient (given that agents and publishers warn us against it). But Kalteis is a literary rebel. Embracing the omniscient point-of-view, he provides us access to the thoughts of whoever has the most pertinent information at the time. The personalities of the characters shine in the dialogue. Bennie and Stella are constantly sniping at each other. Love banter. And Stella is cheeky. “You gonna call yourself unkillable again, I think I’m gonna throw up.” She loves her man; there’s no doubt about that. But she’s also spending hours and hours on the run with him, stealing cars, crossing state lines, sleeping wherever, and all in the first year of their relationship. I think she’s earned some cheeky rights. The bulk of the story spans two years: 1937-1939.
A few times, Kalteis spotlights the pursuers. Remember, this is the Depression—the days of Bonnie and Clyde, Ma Barker, Machine Gun Kelly, J. Edgar Hoover and his relentless G-men. We know it can’t end well, and yet, we don’t want it to end. Sitting in the back seat of Bennie and Stella’s stolen coupe is too real and we’re too invested. It’s hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys. A good writer is much easier to spot. You’ll find one here. And though he’d tell you he’s writing crime, in Under an Outlaw Moon, Kalteis is also writing a big-hearted romance.
I first read this story back in the early 90s. I say “story” rather than book. A book is a collection of paper glued together with a spine. A story has heart. And this story has a bloody muscle that pulses like the Mother Earth herself.
First published in 1988, The Bean Trees is Barbara Kingsolver’s debut novel. In case you don’t know it, I’m a Barbara Kingsolver fan through and through. Pigs in Heaven, Animal Dreams, The Poisonwood Bible, Prodigal Summer, all are heartfelt stories told with a lyrical literary voice that rings true and takes me so far inside it’s hard to find a way out. Not that I want to.
Like Kingsolver, Miss Marietta Greer, grew up in rural Kentucky and made the move to Tucson Arizona with her daughter. Like me, Miss Marietta Greer, changed her name (to Taylor on account of a street sign) packed up her car (a ’55 push-start-clutch-pop-Volkswagen) and headed west. There’s something about a new identity and the open road that initiates the hero’s journey and this, is a hero’s journey extraordinaire.
While driving through central Oklahoma, Taylor reminisces how her mother used to say they had “head rights” on the Cherokee Nation because her old grandpa was full-blooded Cherokee. Taylor finds her “head rights” in the form of a baby girl who’s pressed upon her by a desperate Cherokee woman outside a bar owned by, you guessed it, Earl. Having encountered the two men who are part of this affair inside Earl’s bar, and hearing the woman’s desperation: “My dead sister’s … This baby’s got no papers. There isn’t nobody knows it’s alive, or cares … This baby was born in a Plymouth,” Taylor accepts the child who clings to her so tightly, she names her Turtle, having never asked the child’s name.
As in any hero’s journey, Taylor and Turtle, find allies, in the form of new friends who offer a job and a place to live in Tucson. Mattie, who hires Taylor at her tire store, is part of an underground railroad for illegal refugees. She introduces Taylor to Estevan and Esperanza, a Mayan couple who managed to escape Guatemala but not before their child was kidnapped by their oppressors. They become family to Taylor and Turtle and aid in solving the legal problems that threaten to pull this mother and child apart.
Turtle, who we discover is actually a sexually-abused-three-year-old, remains mute for ages, but when she does speak she talks vegetables, rhyming them off like she’s reading a Burpee’s catalogue out loud.
This is a story of love, hope, friendship, family, and belonging that will stay with you long after you’ve turned the last page.
The subtitle of Elements of Indigenous Style is A Guide for Writing By and About Indigenous Peoples. I read this book to learn what is appropriate and what is not, as the two fiction books I’m now writing include references to Indigenous Peoples and are set on Indigenous territory. After reading, I made revisions to my manuscript. Younging wrote this edition in 2018, so it may already need updating as, in Canada especially, much is changing rapidly with regard to how Indigenous and non-Indigenous people work together. I highly recommend this book to writers, editors, students, and anyone interested in reconciliation; in fact, we all should read it because we are in relationship with Indigenous People and need to be much more aware. I’m not re-writing the book here, just providing a sampling and speaking to a few key points.
Naming
Merging the name of his Cree mother (Young) and his Chinese father (Ing), Younging forged his own identity. I appreciate this, as I created my own name, Hawkin. It means “kin of hawks” and expressed my need for freedom following my divorce. I was neither my father’s daughter nor my ex-husband’s wife, but was searching for self. I identified strongly with the hawks who lived nearby in Ontario and still identify with birds of prey.
About Gregory Younging
Younging died in May 2019 at the age of fifty-eight, and was posthumously awarded the Association of Canadian Publishers President’s Award. You can read more about his achievements here. He was a member of the Opaskwayak Cree Nation in northern Manitoba, and managing editor/publisher of Theytus Books in Penticton, British Columbia, for many years. Theytus Books was the first Indigenous-owned publishing house in Canada and continues to publish Indigenous authors. Gregory Younging also taught at UBC Okanagan and served as assistant director of research to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.
As I said, I learned much from this book. He includes appendixes, case studies, and twenty-two principles of style. Here are a few key points to consider that struck me.
Characteristics of Contemporary Indigenous Literature
Contemporary Indigenous Literature gives authority to all voices rather than one; as well as the voices of animals, and messages given by spirits and natural phenomenon; and it crosses circular time—ancient past, present, future. These characteristics come from the work of Anishinaabe author, Kim Blaeser (13).
Protocols for working in Collaboration
Non-Indigenous authors, or, Indigenous authors writing about a nation that is not their own, should enter into a relationship with that source nation, get permission, and negotiate mutually agreeable terms. Younging stresses collaboration and the need to always ask in an appropriate way. For example, when I studied at Trent University, the Protocol was to respectfully offer tobacco to an Elder or Teacher if you wanted to ask a question. If the person accepted it, they could help, and you had permission to engage. Younging writes that the Protocol is still to ask respectfully and offer a gift, but tobacco might not be the right gift. You need to find out what’s appropriate by asking around the community or asking the Elder. Then listen. Finally, give them the right to read your text before publication.
Awareness of Sources
I appreciate the chapter on terminology because much of this has changed since I studied in the nineties. Also, in some classes, we used texts written by archaeologists or anthropologists who viewed Indigenous Peoples as static cultures of a distant past. That is not the case. Indigenous Cultures are resilient, adaptive, dynamic, and distinct. If you use content published by anthropologists or historians be aware that the author likely did not follow Protocols, and translations often use stereotypical language and concepts. For example, the anthropological theory that Indigenous Peoples migrated across the Bering Strait to North America is not part of The Oral Traditions of The People.
Terminology to use and not to use
A few words to be wary of using are artifact, band (use the People), clan (unless it’s a particular Clan System, pagan/heathen, land claim (use Indigenous title), legends/myths/tales (use Oral Traditions), self-government (use self-determination). Aboriginal is an adjective only and is being replaced by Indigenous.
Many words in our everyday vocabulary are of Indigenous origin, though we assume they’re English. Here’s a partial list: canoe, hammock, igloo, kayak, potato, raccoon, skunk, squash, tomato. Also many place names have Indigenous origin including the provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Alternatively, explorers and settlers renamed places after themselves or their foreign sovereign (investor) in many cases as a means of claiming territory for the colonizing country.
First Nations, Inuit, and Métis
In Canada, the government recognizes “First Nations, Inuit, and Métis.” First Nations is a political term that refers to someone from a First Nation. Inuit means “The People” and refers to The People who live in the Arctic. Métis is both a noun (she is Métis) and adjective (Métis heritage). The term Métis is complex as it has three possible meanings.
1) Métis means “mixed race” in French and refers to those who were involved in the Red River Resistance and their descendents. They may speak French, English, and/or Michif. Note it’s termed the Red River Resistance, not rebellion.
2) Someone may identify as Metis (without accent) if they are English-speaking people of mixed Indigenous and non-Indigenous ancestry. For example, my great grandfather’s father was Dutch and his mother was Tuscarora (a nation who moved north and were adopted into the Haudenosaunee).
3) Métis (with accent) can also be used by those who do not descend from Red River.
Use of Traditional Names
Use Traditional Names that The People use to refer to their distinct nation—Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, Nuu’chah’nulth, Mi’Kmaq, Gitxsan, and so on. Younging writes: “Names are part of the way we render identity” (91). Be particular and precise. Many of us acknowledge the name of the Traditional Territory on which we’ve settled and use it in our email signature: Settled on unceded Stó:lō territory—Ts’elxwéyeqw (Chilliwack) and Se:máth (Sumas) tribes
Capitalization
Indigenous style uses capital letters where non-Indigenous writers/editors may not—Survivor, Chief, Clan, Elder, Indigenous Voice, the Longhouse as an institution, Midewiwin, Oral Tradition, Seven Fires, Sundance, Sweat Lodge, Vision Quest, Warrior Society, Wampum Belt, Traditional Knowledge. I see this as a positive way of showing honour and respect.
Possession
The Dispossessed: Life and Death in Native Canada by Geoffrey York was one of the first books I read, and it’s always stuck with me. York was a journalist with the Globe and Mail in Toronto. He wrote about the legacy of abuses from land grabs, to diseases, to residential schools, to reserve land that afforded The People little to nothing. They were dispossessed of their land and culture. They are now reclaiming, so when you’re writing, it’s important not to imply Indigenous Peoples are “owned” or “possessed” by Euro-colonial states. They are not Canada’s Indigenous Peoples. Also, use present tense rather than past. The Nuu’chah’nulth potlatch or hold potlatches, not the Nuu’chah’nulth held potlatches.
Younging’s guide is political. It’s complex and much to absorb. As a former high school English teacher, I suggest this book be used in humanities classes. Younging has titled this book with an obvious poke at Elements of Style, an American English writing style guide written by William Strunk Jr. in 1918, that’s still used by high school and university students. It’s time to change it up and expand our awareness of how language informs thought and thought informs language, as both inform culture and cultural prejudices. Even those of a subtle kind.
I stumbled upon this intense crime novel while searching for books set in Minnesota. Why you might ask? My latest romantic suspense novel is set there and I was looking for comparable titles. Is it comparable? In some ways, yes.
Both our stories are set in the wilds of Minnesota on Anishinabe territory and include some references to culture. Both involve romance and mystery. Both involve heroes and corrupt sheriffs. And, in both our books, the landscape is a major character that affects the plot and the behavior of the characters.
But Krueger’s novel is definitely a crime novel, beginning with the murder of a prominent judge, and the story chronicles retired sheriff, Corcoran O’Connor’s obsession to find the killer along with a missing boy, Paul LeBeaux.
I read this book twice as I sometimes do, especially with a crime novel. The first time I need to know what happens; the next time I want to pick up the nuances of how the writer unravels the mystery.
First published in 1998, Iron Lake was Krueger’s debut novel and he won awards for it:
a Barry Award, a Best First Novel (1999), and a Minnesota Book Award (1999). I understand why. Krueger is a craftsman. Unique memorable characters, mythical references, and a setting to die for, all propel the story to a suspenseful climax and resolution.
The story begins with a flashback to a bear hunt and foreshadows the appearance, or at least the involvement, of the mythical Windigo—a powerful monster who devours its victims. In this story, when the Windigo calls your name, you’re destined to die.
Cork O’Connor is part-Irish, part-Anishinabe, while Krueger is not. He credits two Anishinabe people: Barbara Briseno of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe and Alex Ghebregzi who helped with language and culture. And his research includes books by ethnographers, Francis Densmore and storyteller Basil Johnson, both of whom I read back in the nineties when I was studying at Trent.
Iron Lake takes place during a winter blizzard and this unique atmosphere draws you in. The lake is deep frozen, except for an area of open water, snow-covered, and the playground of snowmobilers and ice-fishermen. It reminds me of my time living beside Lake Scugog in Ontario.
This is a book to snuggle with on winter nights, knowing you’re not out on that frozen lake being hunted by the killers you’re trying to catch, or the ravenous Windigo. According to Krueger’s website, there are now eighteen books in the Cork O’Connor Mystery Series. That’s a lot of Minnesota adventure to catch up on. I look forward to coming back to this series time and time again.
J.P. McLean speeds us down a deftly drawn and dangerous new road in Blood Mark, the first book in her new paranormal thriller series. Baby Jane Doe was abandoned at birth at the Joyce Skytrain Station in Vancouver. Perhaps her mother couldn’t stomach the blood red birthmarks that snake around her body from head to toe; the marks that have caused her shame and humiliation and made her an object of study. But why are they there? Who are her parents? And why did they abandon her to the foster care system? Perhaps Jane’s mother had a premonition that her daughter would be gifted with a supernatural power impossible to contain.
Jane is a lucid dreamer. Her nightmares drop her back in time where she’s able to see and hear disturbing scenes: a woman held prisoner, a man murdered. McLean drops new characters into the narrative as Jane’s dreams become more advanced and the introduction of a merciless, narcissistic, psychologist spins the plot into overdrive.
But time travel is always problematic. When Jane realizes she can physically materialize within a dream as a kind of shadow and interact with objects, the stakes rise yet again. She could issue a warning or save a life. Change history. But should she? To manipulate an outcome could create a paradox; a causal loop that would effect the future and hence the past and on and on it goes.
Enter Ethan, a handsome bar manager who sees beyond Jane’s blood stripes to the beauty beneath. Ethan is the man we all pray is good because with Ethan, Jane’s birthmarks began to disappear from the sole up. But is Ethan her chance at a normal life? Her soul mate? Or are his intentions more sinister?
Someone has been trying to murder Jane since she was born. McLean continues to flesh out Jane’s backstory through her lucid dreams even as the blood marks on her flesh diminish. What was their purpose to begin with? What will happen when they all disappear?
McLean’s writing is clear, gentle, relentless, and original. Triple viewpoints interweave— Jane, her best friend Sadie, and Rick, the twisted psychologist—and drive the plot like Jane drives her Honda Rebel 500. The language is gritty casual as befits a contemporary novel where one woman works as a prostitute (Sadie) and the other, in a greenhouse (Jane) and both seek solace in bars. And, this edgy, intelligent, psychological thriller has tantalizing touches of Inca myth that will capture your soul from beginning to end.
Yet McLean’s high octane concepts drive our intellect. We learn of lucid dreaming, cataplexy, and dabble in Inca myth and ritual. These are ordinary characters faced with extraordinary circumstances and the author keeps us guessing until the very end. McLean is the author of The Gift Legacy—a highly praised six-book series about a woman who learns she can fly. Odd are, Blood Mark will fly too … right off the shelves.
A sexy, captivating read, Prodigal Summer is as important now as when it was first published twenty years ago. I read it then and just reread it again. Kingsolver is an artist, poet, biologist, eco-warrior, and extraordinary storyteller. She wraps her words around these intriguing characters like vines on a frontier trellis.
Over the course of one verdant summer, we dwell in the farms and mountains of southern Appalachia with three intensely independent woman who, like Kingsolver, are all enmeshed in an eco-myth. These timeless women take it upon themselves to change their worlds and the disparate men who enter their lives.
Deanna Wolfe is a forty-something forest ranger living alone atop the mountain in her woodsy cabin until a charismatic sheep farmer turns her life around. As sexy and fulfilling as he is, Eddie Bondo has invaded Deanna’s mountain to shoot coyotes–a bane to his existence but treasures to our forester. Deanna does her best to educate Eddie on the perils of killing off predators at the expense of prey.
Lusa marries into the old Widener family then a freak accident leaves her burdened with a farm and no husband. Using her wits, she devises a way to make a living on the farm without giving in to growing fields of tobacco and being puppeted by her brother-in-laws. At the same time, Lusa worms her way into the hearts of the Widener sisters, their husbands, and children—especially her sexy seventeen-year-old nephew, Rickie. Lusa, whose passion is bugs, teaches us about the insect life in Appalachia.
Nannie Rawley mothered Deanna way back when. Nannie tries desperately to convince her neighbour old Garnett Walker to stop spraying his chestnut trees with chemicals. Nannie farms organically and his poisons are killing everything on both sides of the fenceline. A feud turns into something beautiful and we learn all about why it’s crucial to farm organically. While he’s learning a new way to be in the world, old Garnett teaches Lusa how to raise goats. All of the characters are as interconnected as Nature herself.
Kingsolver offers us a feminist tale starring maid, mother, and crone in this charming book. A tribute to Rachel Carson, writer of Silent Spring, Prodigal Summer is a classic with a timely and meaningful message.
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