A new middle-grade novel by award-winning Pete Hautman, two mysteries and a horror anthology. Who could ask for anything more on an autumn Sunday?
(Courtesy of Candlewick Press)
“Answers to Dog”: by Pete Hautman (Candlewick Press, $18.99)
The summer before Pete Hautman started fourth grade, everything he read was about dogs and boys. Now a National Book Award-winning writer, Hautman passes his love of dogs to middle-grade readers in his new novel “Answers to Dog,” a tender story featuring Evan, a mildly depressed eighth-grader, and the escaped border collie humans named Sam but answers to Dog.
“I wanted to write a book for 9-year-old Pete Hautman,” the author said during a phone conversation from the Golden Valley home he shares with poet/mystery writer Mary Logue, who was at their other house in Stockholm, Wis.
The inspiration for “Answers to Dog” goes back to Hautman’s childhood in St. Louis Park and Jim Kjelgaard, who wrote more than 40 novels. One of his most popular, “Big Red,” is about an expensive Irish setter that bonds with an orphan boy. Published in 1945, the book was made into a 1962 Walt Disney film.
“A few years ago an editor asked me to write the introduction to the 75th anniversary edition of ‘Big Red.’ This was huge for me. It was the first chapter book I ever read,” Hautman said. “Then I looked up various dog books. There are thousands, some good, some not so good. It’s like a genre within a genre. The ones I was most interested in had a substantial animal point of view.” That’s the kind of book Hautman wanted to write but without anthropomorphizing the dog too much.
After researching border collies, an intelligent breed that needs lots of exercise, Hautman imagined the dog coming out of nowhere to run beside Evan. They bond but become separated, and Hautman puts readers into Sam’s head as the dog journeys to find the human he thinks of as the Boy:
Pete Hautman (Courtesy of the author)
“He did not think he was lost. The dog did not think in those terms. He had been in new places before. Every place was connected to every other place. Sooner or later he would find his way back. He would find the kennel. He would find the Boy.”
And here we meet Evan, the Boy:
“He scrunched down in his seat, wondering how he had ended up being best friends with a morbid bald kid and an undersized sarcastic wuss. Not that there was anybody else he really wanted to hang out with. It was just hard sometimes.”
After Sam escapes the kennel, Evan and a girl in his class take on caring for the other dogs after the drunk owner falls off a ladder and is injured. When Sam shows up at Evan’s house his sad mother, who won’t say why she gave up her nursing career, cares for Sam’s injuries.
In the end, “Answers to Dog” could be considered a book about freedom. Sam has the border collie’s need to be free and never kept within walls. Evan is free when he runs with Sam, and Evan’s parents are freed from their preoccupations by everything that happens to their son and the dog.
Hautman and Logue share their homes with two small dogs. Gaston is a poodle and Baudelaire is “a mystery rescue who looks like a little white fox,” Pete says.
Logue and Hautman met at the Loft Literary Center when Logue was teaching a class and Hautman was her student. They have collaborated on young adult books including their three-book Bloodwater Mysteries and “Skullduggery.” Logue just sent to her publisher “The Wasp and the Beehive,” third in her 19th-century series featuring Irish immigrant Brigid Reardon, and her new middle-grade fantasy “Dreki” will be out next year. (Dreki is the Icelandic word for dragon.) She and her sister Dodi, a painter based in Delano, self-published “Terra Incognita,” made up of Dodie’s abstract paintings and Mary’s poems inspired by the artwork.
Hautman will be joined by foxy Beaudelaire at the launch of “Answers to Dog” at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Red Balloon Bookshop, 891 Grand Ave., St. Paul. Free. Seating is limited, reservations appreciated at redballoonbookshop.com.
“Shanghai Murder”: by Jessie Chandler (Bella Books, $17.95)
The dim glow from the bar stained a three-by-five-foot rectangle on the lumpy dirt floor. Above, a trapdoor swayed slowly back and forth. Then with a whomp! it somehow snapped up and shut tight, leaving me all alone, deep in the dark. — from “Shanghai Murder”
Minneapolis Rabbit Hole coffee shop owner Shay O’Hanlon spends a lot of time locked in a basement and wandering creepy adjacent rooms trying to escape in the sixth installment of Chandler’s series. This one is set in Portland, Ore., where Shay and her lover JT, a woman police detective, are attending a convention looking for new flavors to be served at the Rabbit Hole. They’re joined by Eddy, her senior citizen landlady and mom to all, who’s not been her peppy self lately, and young, full-of-facts savant Rocky and his wife, Tulip.
When Shay is walking behind a booth at the convention she trips, knocking over boxes that are not filled with coffee beans. With a gun at her throat she’s kidnapped and tossed through a trap door while her captors figure out when to kill her. Meanwhile, Tulip and some friends head for the Witch’s Castle in a park and she, too, disappears. When it’s clear Shay is not returning to the coffee show, JT and Shay’s best friend Coop track her on their phones, but when they get to the bar where she was taken, she isn’t there.
Chandler, who lives part time in Minnesota and worked at Once Upon a Crime bookstore in Minneapolis, writes such well-drawn characters that she’s able to keep all these plot lines going without confusing the reader. Shay’s appealing, if not always wise in her decisions, and her posse makes this series a lot of fun.
“Pike Island”: by Tony Wirt (Thomas & Mercer, $17)
The house was musty, dusty, and had a weird smell that Jake couldn’t place. But for a house that had been abandoned half a century ago, it was remarkably intact.
And that was the most unnerving thing about it. — from “Pike Island”
The postcard was blank, addressed to Andy Leonard. That was a name Andrew Harrison “Harry” Leonard hadn’t used for years. Why would someone from his past contact this Minnesota man when he was on the cusp of running for U.S. president with the support of Krista Walsh, his steely, ambitious chief of staff? When Leonard refuses to talk about the postcard, Krista uncovers a secret involving her boss and three buddies who spent a weekend at a lake cabin and found an old house that led to murder.
Wirt has a talent for dialogue, especially in scenes with the young men ready to party with no adults around. Unraveling the mystery of what happened to them that long-ago weekend is interesting, but the real question is what will Krista do when she learns the Pike Island secret? If she reveals all, Leonard’s career will be over and so will hers. Has she invested too much time and talent in Leonard’s campaign to go public with his secret?
“Good Night, Sleep Tight”: by Brian Evenson (Coffee House Press, $19)
His face rubbed along the floor and through the dust, and then there the other face was, right beside his own. It had not finished a face yet, or had gone about it wrongly. Where one would expect features there were only a gash for a mouth and two divots for eyes, the surface otherwise smooth and bled of color. — from “Good Night, Sleep Tight”
A man paralyzes a friend and buries him alive to get his possessions. Another man learns as a boy that there can be a monster under the bed. Another boy is baffled as he half-dreams about a door, and a robot oversees sleeping people in a space ship. These are some of the 19 horror/sci fi stories in this collection by an award-winning author described by National Public Radio as “one of our best living writers – regardless of genre.” If you enjoy this genre, you’ll love Evenson’s writing.
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