Nevermore: Eva Gates,Stuart Turton, Ariel Lawhon, Robert Kennedy, Octavia Butler

Reported by Kristin

By Book or by Crook by Eva Gates was declared to be a “cute little cat mystery” with a heroine named Lucy working in a lighthouse turned library. These stories never stay idyllic, so when a valuable book is stolen and a board member murdered, Lucy finds that her job turns from librarian to sleuth (other duties as assigned?) all too quickly. Our Nevermore member found this first in series book to be a light, fun read.

The same reader picked up The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton and had a bit of a harder time with it, as the story is told from so many different viewpoints. Nevermore reviews have been mixed on this bestseller which is a dinner party murder mystery, but with a twist—Aiden, one of the guests, lives the day of the murder over and over but in the body of a different person each time. It’s up to Aiden to solve the murder, or die trying.

Flight of Dreams by Ariel Lawhon is another return to an earlier time, 1937 when the dirigible Hindenburg begins its final flight. Told from the viewpoints of a cabin boy, a newspaper reporter, and a stewardess, the days leading up to the disaster are revealed. Our reader thought that the author definitely had her own theories on what caused the airship to burst into flames. This book comes highly recommended and our reader is eagerly seeking out other books by Lawhon.

All This Marvelous Potential: Robert Kennedy’s 1968 Tour of Appalachia by Matthew Algeo touched our next reader in a personal way. Kennedy had come to the heart of eastern Kentucky, an area close to our reader’s home. She exclaimed that she learned so many things by reading this book, and empathized with the people in those poorest communities visited by the Senator. She also noted that even though people in that area were in deep poverty, most of them still had a roof over their heads even if it was just a tar paper shack.

Finally, another reader was intrigued by The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. Written in 1993 but set in the futuristic 2025, this dystopian novel tells the tale of empathetic Lauren Olamina, a young woman who feels others’ pain in a dangerous world of walled communities surrounded by near anarchy. Lauren must depend on her family and her neighbors in a world where water is scarce, police and fire services must be paid by the individuals, and where bodies are all too often found in the surrounding foothills. Another reader chimed in saying she enjoyed Butler’s writing, and planned to seek out more.

Nevermore: Little Tree, Nightwoods, Judge Crater & How Not to Be Wrong

The ever-lively Nevermore opened with a discussion of The Education of Little Tree by Forrest Carter.  The book was first published in the late 1970s as a memoir of a part Cherokee boy growing up in the Smoky Mountains region during the 1920s and 30s. Orphaned at a young age, Little Tree was sent to live with his grandparents who taught him how to live simply, respecting the Earth and its creatures.   It was a warm and loving story laced with humor, mountain lore, and more than a dash of spirituality.  As the book grew in popularity, it was claimed that the author was actually Asa Carter, a segregationist who wrote speeches for George Wallace.  This brings up all sorts of questions.  Can a reader separate the author from the work?  Who has the right to tell the stories of a minority? Does knowing that the story is fiction and not memoir change the work itself? And what of Asa himself—was this his way of conning the public or did he have a true conversion?  As usual, there were plenty of answers but no consensus but then that’s the fun of Nevermore!

Another book with a mountain setting is Charles Frazier’s Nightwoods.  Set in North Carolina in the 1950s, it’s the story of a solitary woman who is living in an abandoned lodge as a caretaker.  Her life is upended when she becomes the guardian of her sister’s children after the sister is murdered.  The book was compared to Lee Smith’s but the writing is darker.  In short, this isn’t a happy book but then not all good books are happy ones.  Frazier is best known for the novel Cold Mountain.

The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress is a debut novel by Ariel Lawhon.  It’s a fictionalized version of  the Judge Crater case which mesmerized the nation back in 1930 when the famous (or infamous) judge got into a cab and simply disappeared.  Like the Jimmy Hoffa case decades later, theories abounded as to what happened. (No one ever dug up Giants Stadium looking for Carter, however.)  Lawhon spins an intriguing tale of political corruption, scandalous affairs, and the streets of New York in the Jazz Age.  Our reviewer enjoyed the book, especially the author’s notes as to what was factual and what was speculation.  

How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking by Jordan Ellenberg really impressed one of our Nevermore readers to the point that he brought in visual aids to illustrate some points.  The idea is that mathematics is being taught incorrectly.  Instead of making it all about memorizing formulas, it should be about the philosophy behind math and how math actually touches our lives in many ways every day.  The book is fun and thoughtful, showing us how much math is real and not an abstract concept.