Author Mark Munger (Cloquet River Press)

Frozen Hell by William R. Trotter(1991. Algonquin. ISBN 1565122496)

When my old scoutmaster Arnie Erickson passed away, he left a legacy of service to youth, his church, his family, and his community. He also left William Trotter’s scholarly treatment of Finland’s titanic struggle with Communist Russia during the winter of 1939-1940, Frozen Hell, which his daughter Jan passed on to me because of my affinity for all things Finnish and the fact that my current writing project (Sukulaiset: The Kindred) incorporates the Winter War into its storyline. Despite my love for Arnie and the subject matter, I was a bit reluctant to dive into the book, mostly because I’d completed my research, had just finished a couple of non-fiction books for pleasure (I like to switch my reading between non-fiction and fiction to keep things lively), and, to be truthful, I was sort of “finished” with all things Finnish as they relate to the manuscript. But in deference to my friend and her departed father, I cracked the spine on Trotter’s work and I am glad I did.

Similar in tone and pace and authority to Henrik Lunde’s Finland’s War of Choice, a more recent (2011) look at the Continuation War (the war in Finland which followed the Winter War) Frozen Hell is well organized, detailed, and thoroughly researched. Folks who have read Talvisota (The Winter War) Antii Turri’s gripping novel covering the same time period and topic, and who reveled in the exposition of character good fiction allows, will find only small doses of similar revelation in Trotter’s more staid and scholarly work. Trotter does give us a fairly thorough and, despite the author’s obvious fondness for the Finns and their sisu, honest biographical of the leading Finnish military figure of the era, Karl Mannerheim. There are briefer, more cursory histories of minor officers and politicians as well, all of which add flavor and color to the facts of war. One ancillary protagonist who Trotter spends a bit of time discussing near the book’s conclusion is Life Magazine photo journalist, Carl Mydans, a figure I’d come across while searching for a photograph to use as the cover for Sukulaiset. Mydans is a remarkable figure in the history of modern photography. Collections of his work are held by Stanford and other prestigious institutions. Mydans, along with his wife Shelley (also a professional photographer), covered World War II for Life in Finland and China. Intriguingly, Trotter actually ends his rendition of this epic David versus Goliath struggle with a scene where Mydans is identified by Finnish soldiers as an American, who then proceed to confront Mydans. I won’t spoil the ending here but, suffice it to say, Trotter’s treatment of Mydans, as brief as it is in this non-fiction dissection of the Winter War, is so compelling, it begs a full-blown biography of Mydans’s remarkable life and career. Similarly, when the author laments that no one has produced a well-written English language biography of Mannerheim,  (who is, arguably next to composer Jean Sibelius, Finland’s most famous person) I paused and thought:

Hey. You’re an excellent writer. Why don’t you pick up your own challenge and the Field Marshall’s life story?

Trotter is a master of revelation and detail, which, at times, can lead to the reader being inundated with facts, searching for the thread of story. But the author is assertively blunt in debunking the claim that many Finns are prone to invoke: That while Finland didn’t defeat Stalin’s hordes, it certainly did fight the Russian Bear to a standstill, causing The Soviet Union to sue for a less attractive peace. Though he heaps praise on the Finnish fighters, who, with scant air support and virtually no armor, did indeed stand toe-to-toe with a far superior enemy, and, as in the chapter depicting Finland’s greatest victory during the short-lived conflict (the battle of Suomussalmi where small units of Finns on skis encircled and wiped out far larger Russian divisions, leading to the summary execution of the Russian commanders when they fled), Trotter lays down the law with respect to the legends of Finnish victory. The end result of the four months of fighting known as the Winter War was, at best, a dress rehearsal for a larger, more violent conflict that would begin less than two years after the ink was dry on the armistice between the Finns and their neighbor to the east. And the end result of the celebrated Winter War, which saw the Finns reeling back towards Helsinki in near collapse, was nowhere near a military “victory” for the beleaguered Finns. Did the fight prove the measure of Finnish resolve? Surely. Was the Winter War a warning to Stalin that, if he wished to reclaim Finland as part of his empire, more blood would spill? Absolutely. But a victory for the Finns? Trotter debunks that myth with a mountain of evidence in this fine effort.

4 and 1/2 stars out of 5.

Peace.

Mark

PS Unable to obtain permission to use Mydans’s work, I located an excellent repository of war photographs depicting the entire Finnish/Russian conflict from 1939-1944. The Finnish Defense Forces maintain an archive of such work, free and reproducible to the public, at http://sa-kuva.fi/. The photo I finally settled on to be the cover art for Sukulaiset can be found below. I hope you agree it is an extremely powerful image.

MM

Bruce by Peter Ames Carlin (2013. Touchtone (Kindle version) ISBN 9781439191835)

Simultaneously reading biographies of two of America’s most beloved and iconic (and misunderstood) singer/songwriters is a first for me. I generally alternate between fiction and biography, rarely reading two novels or two memoirs in a row. But, for some reason, maybe because I’m slated to MC a musical variety fundraiser in April, or maybe because the stars were aligned, or maybe because I simply couldn’t resist peeking into the private lives of Bruce Springsteen and Johnny Cash, I ended up reading Robert Hilburn’s spectacular treatment of the Man in Black (see below for review) in print and Peter Ames Carlin’s fine depiction of the life of the Boss on Kindle at the same time. And I have to say, between the two books, it’s hard to pick a clear winner. I give the edge to Hilburn’s effort if only because the story, sad as it may be, is complete, whereas Springsteen’s story has yet to conclude. Which, while it makes for a less sensational read, is a very good thing for those of us who love great lyrics and songs.

The Boss is here, looming small and afraid of his father during his early life, to loud and unapologetic as he decides, as an established superstar of rock, to call it quits with the E Street Band. If you’ve never seen a Springsteen concert, Carlin’s depiction of the man in this biography highlights in vivid detail the one attribute of the Boss that will linger with you long after you leave an E Street Band live show: Bruce Springsteen is the hardest working showman to ever pick up a Fender. There is no one, I repeat no one, in the music business who even comes close. That trait, Springsteen’s working class ethic, something as ingrained in the man as his social anxiety and his need to seek solitude, claims center stage in this story.

Much like Robert Hilburn does in Johnny Cash, Peter Carlin builds a fairly traditional linear depiction of Springsteen’s life. The poverty, the angst, the father/son conflict, the familial tragedy of losing a sister at a tender age all form the boy who, after finding solace in music and his innate genius as a songwriter, becomes the Boss. The tortured genius of Van Gogh or Hemingway or Woolf comes to mind when you plow through the interpersonal and professional hallmarks of Springsteen’s life depicted in this book. But whereas the lives of those creative forces all met with sad and bitter ends, at least as of today, the Boss has overcome his internal and external demons to remain an authentic American voice. Much of Bruce’s survival appears to be the product, at least as the story has unfolded to date, of his relationship with his wife and fellow E Street Band mate, Patti Scialfa: the mother of Springsteen’s  three children and, at least at portrayed from a distance by Carlin, the center of the Boss’s mental stability and his universe.

Carlin had enough access to Springsteen and his immediate family, friends, and the band during the research and writing of this book to bring new insights and clarity to one of the 20th century’s truly great artists. And, as pointed out by the success of High Hopes, Springsteen’s most recent album (another quality effort that incorporates Tommy Morello from Rage Against the Machine into the band’s intimate and incestuous fabric to add another layer of musicianship and change to an already excellent discography) the water carrying bucket of the New Jersey Devil has not yet reached the bottom of the well of his creativity.

Give a listen to “American Skin”, a song written about the shooting of an unarmed immigrant to America by four New York cops, and let the music convince you if Carlin and I cannot: The best is yet to come.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nghqjBwZTiE

4 and 1/2 stars out of 5.

Peace.

Mark

Johnny Cash: The Life by Robert Hiburn (2013. Little Brown. ISBN 9780316194754)

Like many kids of the 1950s, I grew up catching bits and pieces of the Man in Black’s life over the six decades he was one of country music’s icons. I remember my pal Bruce Patterson playing an 8 track of Johnny’s Folsom Prison Blues over and over and over again in the early 1970s in Bruce’s 1960s vintage Dodge (back when it wasn’t a classic car; just an ordinary Dodge). But I wasn’t a country music fan and I didn’t stop and listen long enough to appreciate the crossover appeal of Cash’s lyrics and melodies. Despite my fondness for wordsmiths like Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and Bob Dylan, I never placed Cash in that same vein. Hell, up until a few years ago, the only album I owned with Johnny singing and playing on it was the original Highwaymen collection (Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristopherson, Willie Nelson, and Cash).

I do recall, in moments of early teenaged boredom during the Vietnam War, sitting down on the davenport in the den of our tract house an evening or two to watch the old Johnny Cash variety show on television. But I wouldn’t classify myself as a fan. In fact, I wasn’t even mildly interested in the man or his music. That all changed when I saw Walk the Line, the movie made after Johnny and his beloved second wife, June Carter Cash, passed away. That movie compelled me to sit up and take notice of Cash as a man and a musician. Not long after watching the flick, I stumbled onto a discount copy of a CD memorializing a VH1 Storytellers session featuring Cash and Willie Nelson. Just two old stalwarts of the country music scene sitting on stools, plucking acoustic guitars, playing their songs. Magic. I was hooked. So when one of my sons (or my wife, I can’t recall) gave me Hilburn’s quintessential biography of the Man in Black, I dove in. And I am surely glad I did.

The demons that Joaquin Phoenix so expertly brought to life on the screen in Walk the Line, playing opposite to Reese Witherspoon in the role of June (she won an Oscar for her work) pale in comparison to the tortured soul Hilburn exposes in this biography. One was, upon watching the final credits of the film, left with the impression that, once Johnny and June got together, the Man in Black substituted true love for the amphetamines he was popping like M&Ms. In fact, while Cash did manage brief periods of sobriety from the late 1960s forward, he was never able to totally escape the allure and palliative effects of pills. Up until the day he died, folks around him continued to worry over the amount and extent of his reliance on prescription medications to keep Johnny upright and moving forward. This revelation, one quite unexpected given the message of the movie, is aligned with another storyline that Hilburn weaves in contrast to the legend depicted in the film. Again, my view of the Cash/Carter love story was wrapped up in the notion, presented convincingly in the movie, that Cash pursued Carter; that it was his undaunted quest for love that eventually won her over. Not true. June Carter Cash, at least according to the author, despite reservations about Johnny’s drug use, was every bit as interested in leaving her husband for the singer as Cash was interested in leaving his wife and four daughters for his new-found love. The level of anguish and torture that both Cash and Carter, along with their families, went through during the breakup of two marriages, as well as the decades of unproductive session and recording work that followed Cash’s early fame as a Sun Studios artist are detailed here, exposing a pained and flawed, yet humble and God-fearing soul far more complex than a two hour movie could ever hope to capture.

How good is Hiburn’s work in this book? Well, he convinced me, during the last segment of the tale, where he lovingly writes of Johnny’s resurgence as a songwriter and bedrock of folk, rock, country, and crossover music under the guidance of 21st century music impresario and producer Rick Rubin, to immediately buy two of the American albums that Rubin cut with Cash shortly before Carter, and then Cash, passed on. The author’s depiction of the resurgent power of Johnny Cash’s lyricism, and his ability to make other songwriters’ work his own, is best endorsed by the fact that at least two of the records Rubin made with Cash won Grammy awards. In addition, video critics heralded the music video of Cash performing “Hurt” (a tune written by Nine Inch Nails front man, Trent Reznor) as the best music video ever made.

Don’t take my word for it. Watch the video yourself at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aF9AJm0RFc

then buy the book and be prepared for one great read featuring one of America’s most troubled, yet talented musicians.

5 stars out of 5.

Peace.

Mark

The Sand People by Jim Trainor (2013. Up North Press. ISBN 9781490936789)

When an evangelical friend of mine sent me three of Trainor’s books for Christmas out of the blue (we don’t exchange gifts) and I looked at the title of this novel, the author’s background, and the subject matter, I was actually ready to repackage the whole lot and send it off to our local recycling shed. But something intervened. Maybe it was my curiosity. Maybe it was my love for my friend (I’ve known her for over fifty years) or maybe, just maybe, it was the hand of God. I am, in the end, a believer in small miracles-the sort of things that make life sweeter and brighter on an every day basis. That’s likely what happened here. A small intervention from the Creator convinced me to read instead of pitch. And I am pleased that I did.

Karen and Kevin Langford, the protagonists of this tale, are a couple with two kids, careers, a mortgage, and a barely functioning marriage. Life, as it does for many married couples, seems to have gotten in the way of lust and love. Trainor sends the couple to Hawaii for a second honeymoon where the author interweaves Karen’s longing for intimacy and touch with a cast of intriguing locals, including Father Mitch, an Episcopal priest down on himself and his luck. We also meet the earthy Hanna, the devilishly handsome and charming Steve, and Callie, an aging woman who has, in the end, more wisdom than the rest of the cast. There’s enough action and intrigue to keep sophisticated readers interested in the story, and the book, despite being self-published, is well edited. I found nary a typo or mistake over its 300-plus pages. I liked this book. Liked it enough to spend President’s Day finishing it. And yet…

“Write as if your parents are dead.” This quote by American short story writer and novelist, Anne Lamott is one that serves me, I hope, well. I’ve tried, in my fiction, to make sure that, though what I write might be too sexual or violent or disturbing or raw for my parents to enjoy, I do not let my fear of losing their respect and love color my stories. That’s one of the things you must do as a writer: learn to avoid “safe”. Safe is writing like you wrote in high school English. Safe is always hiding the rugged, the ripped, the torn, the blackened parts of human existence in hopes the you don’t offend. Now I know, as an ordained Episcopal priest, Jim Trainor likely isn’t interested in writing a male version of Fifty Shades of Gray. Or maybe he is. But that’s not this book. The author is a decent storyteller and writer who has, in the end, chosen not to offend. The problem with taking such a safe path is, even though a character such as Mitch is exposed as having demons, they are soft and cuddly little buggers with velvet covered pitch forks; not roaring, nostril flaring bastards bent upon causing pain and agony. Had Trainer stretched his writer’s skin just a tad bit more, the characters and story would have rang more true, as Hemingway would say.

Then there is the lack of narrative. I love dialogue, and the exchanges in the book, for the most part, are steady, reliable, and written with veracity. But there is scant little narrative between the spoken words. If I had to guess, I’d say about 10% of the book is narrative and the other 90% is speech. This computation goes against another idiom of fiction writing: Show, don’t tell. Have the characters’ actions, rather than their words, convey meaning. Trainor is an experienced writer who avoids out and out speechifying (think John Gault in Atlas Shrugged). But there is so much dialogue in the book that this reader longed for descriptive passages to break up the constant banter between the actors on the stage.

To be fair, I did enjoy The Sand People and I found myself considering the people I love and how I treat them in my day-to-day life. Do I take them for granted? Am I paying enough attention to the things that really matter in human existence: family, friends, and God? At times, Mitch’s character became a bit preacherly. But it wasn’t to the point of distraction. The story, despite some missteps, affected my heart and mind in memorable and spiritual ways. Since that was Rev. Trainor’s likely intent, I’d say his effort was successful.

3 and 1/2 stars out of 4.

Sycamore Row by John Grisham (2013. Doubleday. ISBN 9780385537131)

Jake Brigance, the down-and-out lawyer who defended African American Carl Lee of murder in Grisham’s debut novel, A Time to Kill, is back on center stage in this novel set in Clanton the county seat of Ford County, Mississippi. Race again features prominently in this story, a will contest between the black housekeeper of a wealthy white recluse who hangs himself in the throes of terminal cancer and the dead man’s estranged daughter and son. What starts out as a powerful drama with an evocative setting akin to Grisham’s best literary effort, A Painted House, quickly descends to a level of predictable familiarity all too common in this author’s more recent efforts. There’s not much deception or surprise in the story line and the characters are the usual assortment of crooked defense lawyers, unscrupulous investigators, and dim-witted hangers-on. There’s enough legal intrigue to interest an attorney-turned-judge in pursuing the tale to the finish line but I seriously doubt if readers looking for suspense or legal tom foolery will find the overall read up to par with John Grisham’s best such as A Time to Kill, The Client, or The Firm.

A major barrier to Jake’s success during the trial phase of the plot seems to be his failure to strike a bigoted white juror whose teenage daughter was raped by a gang of black men. Brigance didn’t ask the embittered man poignant questions about race, which, after all, is the main theme of the litigation and the book. The grieving father is left on the jury as a decision maker and a potential problem. Despite the author setting the reader up for fireworks surrounding this juror, there isn’t even smoke, much less fire as the plot winds to its expected conclusion. The minor character of the bigoted juror simply fades away, never becoming a factor in the jury’s deliberations. This disappearing act, along with a deposition scene in Alaska, along with several other pat legal scenes plopped down in the storyline of the novel, simply don’t ring true.

Had the author continued with the literary style and pace of the first three chapters, this book would be among Grisham’s best. For whatever reason, the plot and writing slid back to the safe and secure patterns of past Grisham novels, making the book readable and somewhat interesting but far from memorable. Fortunately, the novel’s ending returns to the tenor and linguistic accomplishment of the story’s opening chapters but this artistic rebirth is simply “too little and too late” to propel the book towards a solid endorsement for folks who aren’t a rabid fan one of the world’s most prolific authors (33 books since A Time to Kill was published in 1989).

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Time_to_Kill_%28Grisham_novel%29) confirms what I have always suspected: That Grisham drew inspiration for A Time to Kill from Harper Lee’s great literary and legal classic, To Kill a Mockingbird. Grisham obviously tutored himself in the writing process by reading great novels back when he first began his literary career and it showed. Maybe it’s time for John to take a deep breath, read some good books, and attempt  to find the old magic.

This isn’t a terrible read but it was, given the greatness of some of this attorney-turned-author’s past work, a bit of a disappointment.

3 and 1/2 stars out of 5.

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter (2012. Perennial. ISBN 9780061928178)

Italy. Richard Burton. World War II. “The Pitch”. Illegitimacy. A tiny fishing village. Cancer. Punk rock. An aging talent scout/agent. “The Deal”. Each of these concepts/settings/attributes can be found interwoven with a pretty good yarn in Beautiful Ruins.

Pasquale, an aging Italian hotelier, is on a quest to find Dee Moray, a B-list actress he once met in Italy when she was pregnant with Richard Burton’s son, the product of the acting legend’s boredom during the filming of Cleopatra when his one true love, Liz Taylor, is otherwise occupied by her husband, Eddie Fisher. If this tidbit of plot sounds like a soap opera, don’t be fooled. Walter is a gifted writer who throws in scenes from the Donner disaster and a bit of combat writing as well to keep the reader on his or her toes as he weaves a very plausible, if somewhat cliche’ (Michael Dean, the agent, is about as stereotypical a character as they come) tale of familial dysfunction, Hollywood power, and love. The settings, the rugged coast of Italy, the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, the Universal lot, and Seattle all ring true. The dialogue is crisp and believable. I found the meandering storyline and scene changes akin to watching a Robert Altman flick. And emulating Altman at his best, whether it’s Nashville or A Prairie Home Companion isn’t bad mimicry. The scenes featuring Burton at his drunken, tempestuous best, as always, steal the show.

The cover includes a blurb from one of my favorite NPR shows, Fresh Air that proclaims the book to be “a literary miracle.” That’s hype. This isn’t Lonesome Dove or Anna Karenina or East of Eden. But it’s a book well worth reading.

4 and 1/2 stars out of 5.

A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Bighorn by James Donovan (2008. Back Bay Books. ISBN 9780316067478)

I am a huge Custerofile (I made that word up). I visited the battlefield where Custer and over 250 of his troopers perished on June 25, 1876 as a young child, and having grown up in the era when television dramas were primarily exaggerated portraits of the old west (Gunsmoke, Maverick, Have Gun will Travel, Bonanza) or fictionalized tales of World War II, and being a kid prone to dreaming stories, the Little Bighorn loomed large in my youth. I’ve read just about every historical account of the battle placed in print and in fact, my historical research paper at UMD (my senior project) was an exploration of how the portrayal of Custer changed from fallen hero to scapegoat over the decades following the 7th Cavalry’s defeat at the hands of the Sioux and Cheyenne. My favorite account of the disaster (the word is loaded, I know; it wasn’t a disaster for the prevailing force of Native Americans protecting their way of life) is Son of the Morning Star by Evan S. Connell. Why? Because, I think, Connell managed to capture the story from both sides of the conflict, giving the legend of George Armstrong Custer a fresh and respectful analysis that included a reflection of what the Native Americans opposing General Terry’s expedition were grappling with as three columns of pony soldiers and infantry moved against men, women, and children of the Sioux and Cheyenne nations. I was hopeful that Donovan’s book, the latest in a series of investigations into the battle, would follow a similar path, perhaps adding nuance and detail that Connell’s work did not. But such is not the case.

There is precious little discussion of the Plains Wars from the perspective of the leaders of the various bands of Lakota, Dakota, Cheyenne, and other tribes that ultimately gathered along the valley of the Little Bighorn in 1876. Not that Donovan forgets the other side of the equation. He does, from time to time, reflect upon the atrocities committed in the name of land, greed, gold, and progress against the Sioux and Cheyenne from 1860 through Wounded Knee. The book is not completely devoid of such analysis. But the overall tenor of the book is devoted to a detailed inspection of the actions of Custer and his subalterns on the days before, during, and after the great battle. There are only bits and pieces; shards of historical reference to the other side of the conflict. In this way, my preference is for Connell’s earlier effort as a more complete, more literary, more balanced view of the story.

That having been said, Donovan’s writing is crisp and descriptive, his scholarship is exemplary, and in the end, his steady review of the aftermath of what happened to Captain Benteen, called the “Savior of the Seventh”, and Major Reno, often portrayed in film and print as a cowering shell of a man during the battle, is thorough and evenhanded. Not the best of all the many books on the subject but, for someone interested in history, particularly history involving the enigmatic boy general, Donovan’s effort is well worth reading.

4 stars out of 5.