Life and death in Big Ben

Watching the Ken Burns film on the national parks, and noting that former Park Ranger/current novelist Nevada Smith was an advisor, reminded me that I just finished her most recent Anna Pigeon book. Called Borderline, and set in Big Ben National Park in west Texas, it is arguably one of her best, at least partly because Anna's need to protect a newborn even as she is trying to escape bad guys, and extradite herself and others from life-threatening circumstances, gives her a new level of humanity. Her understanding of, among other things, the responsibilities of motherhood, dramatically increase, as she discovers how the first instinct of motherhood -- protect the young -- can limit ones options, and change ones priorities.

"Civilization. Anna longed for it, and the unnaturalness of the emotion registered even as she crept through reeds in shoulder-deep water trying to keep herself and her charge alive. For most of her life she had felt more at home, safer, saner, stronger and more able in the wilderness than she had in towns and houses.

Babies changed that, too. Since she'd taken over the care and feeding of one of the little buggers, Anna had wanted homes and diapers, stoves and sterilizers, warm, dry clothes and washer/ dryers."*

At another point: "When she was a young woman, she remembered wondering why stay-at-home moms...didn't write epic novels, create great paintings, or memorize all of Shakespeare. ...Having spent part of a day and a night with an infant, Anna knew she owed each and every one she'd internally sneered at an apology. It was mind-boggling how all-absorbing caring for an infant was. Cute little aliens who stole ones brain and rendered [ones] body a slave."**

But Barr's basic stance in favor of strong, independent women -- apparent in all of her books -- comes through loud and clear with this passage:

"Standing unarmed with a baby she was responsible for and a large male person of unknown motivation sitting down the hall from her, Ann realized what a terrible disservice America was doing its women -- all its citizens -- in teaching them never to do for themselves but to wait for the authorities to come and save them from whatever dilemma had arisen."*** This was exactly why Micheal and I bought me a gun -- and why Micheal had me out in the back yard, shooting at a paper plate nailed to a tree -- when we were living in southern Louisiana, and I would be alone for weeks at a time while he was working offshore. Somebody breaks into the house in the middle of the night, you can't count on being able to call the police, and their being able to arrive in time; you need to be able to defend yourself. This country is (alas) too full of crazies and creeps for (especially) a woman living alone in a rural area to depend on "the authorities" to protect her.

Barr also has a marvelous, complex character in Darden White, former Secret Service agent turned head of security and substitute father for the female mayor of Houston, a gubernatorial hopeful. The few pages at the beginning of the book where the reader is intro-duced to Darden are a priceless picture into one man's life and psyche. Take the following paragraph:

"Darden had never married. His job didn't lend itself to family life. Sometimes he wished he was gay. Another man would be a better fit for the home life of an agent: sex and companionship, somebody to grow old with, and no worries about who'd call the plumber or shovel the walks or scare away the burglars when you were away on assignment."#

Or there's the telephone conversation with his elderly mother who suffers from Alzheimer's, with whom he lives, but whom he must place in a nursing home whenever he has to be away from home. It perfectly captures how surreal such "conversations" can be:

"The woman on duty told him his mom was agitated and wanted to speak with him...Calls from his mom entailed a dark tunnel down which long conversations trickled as the caregiver reminded Ellen she wanted to speak with her son, and helped her to figure out how the phone worked, and where to put it against her head...

'Hey, Mama, what's happening?'

"Oh, Darden! How nice of you to call."

'Just wondering how you were doing is all.' Darden no longer corrected his mother when she forgot. He didn't explain how life worked, either. That was a rabbit hole he'd gone down a few times when she'd first started losing it. 'You doing okay, Mama?'

'No,' she said. Murmuring at the far end of the tunnel ensued as confusion erupted and caregivers gave care."##

And with all the fine characterizations (and there are others), we get vivid descriptions of rafting down the Rio Grande, scrambling up rocky cliffs while sharpshooters are trying to pick off you and your party, and unlikely rescues of stranded cows and people. I recommend it.

*Barr, Nevada. Borderline. C.P. Putnam's Sons, 2009, p. 383.
** Ibid. p. 281
*** Ibid. p. 345
# Ibid. p. 19
## Ibid. p. 73

Murder, she wrote

I recently read a book that I so enjoyed, I'm reading another by the same author. The one I read was actually the second in a series by the author, Ann Cleeves (no, not Anne of Cleaves). I think of it as the Shetland series, because the books take place on the Shetland Islands, north of the Scottish mainland. Those of you who know me know I have a peculiar fascination with islands, having spent extended periods of time on a Greek island (Santorini), a French island (Isle d'Yeu), and a Scottish isle (Mull). Indeed, I would live on one of the many Maine islands, if I could figure out a way to make a living there.

Thus, a mystery book that takes place on an island is bound to have an allure for me. Also, I enjoy mystery series in which one painlessly learns about the setting, as well as the culture within that setting, at the same time that a mystery unrolls. This was one of the attractions of the Jim Chee/Joe Leaphorn books by Tony Hillerman -- I loved learning about the Navaho culture, within its Northern Arizona/New Mexico milieu. When Micheal and I went to visit the Grand Canyon in 2000, I insisted on our driving back through what I thought of as Hillerman country, delighting in spotting some of the landmarks mentioned in the books, such as Shiprock (which didn't look like a ship to either of us, but rather a huge rock fortress, sitting out there by itself in the middle of the prairie).

I enjoy Nevada Barr's national park ranger series for the same reason: I learn all about the various national parks, while pursuing mysterious evil-doers! In Barr's case, I don't much like her heroine, park ranger Anna Pigeon, whom I find humorless and irritatingly touchy, but the descriptions of and information about the parks are priceless.

But to get back to White Nights. That's the name of Ann Cleeves' second book, and refers to the twilight-like night-time hours of summer, on the Shetlands. Looking at my trusty world map, on the wall of my study, I see that the Shetlands are at almost the exact same latitude as Anchorage, where I experienced "white nights" myself, the two times I lived there. Several characters in the book mention how crazy the lingering light makes them, never seem to get enough sleep, etc. I know that in Anchorage many people have heavily lined curtains, to keep that pesky light out so they can sleep like normal people.

Cleeves' other book, Raven Black, which I've just begun, takes place in winter, when there is the opposite situation: long stretches of darkness, characters setting out for work or school before sunrise. There is frequent blowing snow (apparently the wind blows so constantly on the Shetlands that when it isn't blowing the locals notice; they are struck by the absence, the silence.) and ice everywhere. No tourists now.

In both books you get a nice sense of the people, the older ones hoeing their turnips in their bit of a garden, the younger ones drinking too much (a real problem throughout Scotland), everybody hooked up to the computer now. And there's a terrific police inspector, Jimmy Perez, a native Shetlander, despite the exotic name. He's mild-mannered and courteous, worried about his relationship with his new girlfriend -- is he pushing too hard, going too fast? --and also striving to maintain a good relationship with the detective inspector sent from the mainland, who is impatient, intense and driven. This kind of opposites-working-in-tandem often works well, in the aforementioned Jim Chee/Joe Leaphorn books, for example (intuitive Jim Chee, steeped in Navaho ways and religion, trying to work with rational Leaphorn the skeptic), or in the Inspector Lewis mysteries on PBS, with the old-school, working class Lewis tied to his Cambridge-educated, technically savvy Sergeant Hathaway. Here I like the fact that DI Taylor actually respects Jimmy, recognizes that Perez's methods get results, even though they make him crazy with impatience. In general I like the way Cleeves avoids stereotypes with most of her characters, making them realistic composites of negative and positive attributes.

And I think to myself, maybe Shetland should be my next island.