One of the fall season’s most anticipated thrillers, a novel about a man who might be Bob Dylan’s son, and food meets the Beat writers. Eclectic topics for a fall Sunday.
(Courtesy of Atlantic Crime)
“The Whisper Place”: by Mindy Mejia (Atlantic Crime, $27)
Even when she’d thought about her husband lying facedown in a trough of dirt and dead leaves, it was fractured pieces of memory. Hands bleeding on a shovel handle. Sweat dripping from her forehead to the corpse. A frantic hug, pulling her daughter close as they both trembled with shock and exhaustion. Darkness and short, heaving breaths. — From “The Whisper Place”
Mindy Mejia (Courtesy of the author)
Meet two of the most intriguing new crime thriller partners — former police officer Max Summerlin and psychic Jonah Kendrick — business partners in a startup private detective agency specializing in finding people, some of whom don’t want to be found.
That’s the case when Charlie Ashlock hires the partners to find his missing girlfriend. The problem is he doesn’t know her name or anything about her. Not much to go on, but Max and Jonah take on the case in the third of Meija’s Iowa Mysteries series (after “To Catch a Storm” and “A World of Hurt”). Mejia is known for her twisty plots, and this is the twistiest. Every time you think you’ve got it figured out, she throws something new into the plot.
The story’s told in the voices of Max, Jonah and an on-the-run woman who calls herself Darcy and finds a new home at a bakery, where the woman who owns it becomes her best friend. As Max and Jonah follow the few leads they have, there are cracks in their relationship that need mending. Max is too quick to make decisions without consulting his partner and Jonah feels Max treats him as though he needs protection. While Max follows specifics in their cases, Jonah dreams about people they are seeking and where they are being held prisoner.
Max and Jonah find Victoria Campbell, mother of the missing woman. From there, the story is too exciting to reveal, except to say that someone presumed dead makes a menacing appearance.
Mejia has a degree from the University of Minnesota and an MFA in creative writing from Hamline University.
She will be a guest reader at Minnesota Mystery Night at 7 p.m. Monday at Lucky’s 13 Pub, 1352 Sibley Memorial Highway, Mendota, in conversation with Cary J. Griffith, who writes nonfiction and the Sam Rivers mystery series (“Rattlesnake Bluff”). $13. Reservations at mnmysterynight.com. Mejia will launch her book at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Wooden Hill Brewing Company, 7421 Bush Lake Road, Edina, in conversation with Joshua Moehling, presented by Once Upon a Crime mystery bookstore. She reads at 5 p.m. Oct. 4 at Barnes & Noble, 828 W. County Road 42, Burnsville.
(Courtesy of Penguin Random House)
“The Boy from the North Country”: by Sam Sussman (Penguin Press, $29)
In my reflection I saw my mother’s features and Dylan’s merging into mine. She seemed to have known him. Strangers who weren’t aware of this insisted I looked like him. My mother wouldn’t talk about him. This couldn’t be happenstance. I could feel Dylan within me. We understood one another even if we had never met. His songs had given me a way to feel and live. He was the father I was meant to have. — from “Boy from the North Country”
There are two boys from northern places in this widely praised debut novel. One is Bob Dylan, who grew up in the north country of Hibbing, Minn. The other is protagonist Evan Klausner, from upstate New York’s Hudson Valley. They come together in this autobiographical story of 26-year-old Klausner’s return to the home of his beautiful mother, June, who is dying of cancer. June raised her son virtually alone, and their tender relationship is at the heart of the story. Klausner has a striking resemblance to musician Dylan, and he always wondered about his paternity, something his mother refused to talk about.
The novel was inspired by the author’s own uncertain paternity, which he wrote about in “The Silent Type: On (possibly) being Bob Dylan’s Son,” published in the May 2021 issue of Harper’s Magazine and available online.
In the novel, June and Evan eat healthful foods from the garden, enjoy the outdoors, discuss art and reminisce as Evan does all he can to care for his mother. June slowly unravels her secrets, including her yearlong relationship with Dylan in mid-1970s New York, when he was working on the album “Blood on the Tracks.”
Although critics’ reviews of the novel focus on Evan and June (Kirkus calls it “the most beautiful and moving mother-son story in recent memory”), Sussman’s imagining of June’s early life is compelling as he writes of her acting career and how she met a silent and moody Dylan at a painting class. Dylan, who is married, eventually ends up at her apartment at odd times during their affair.
Sussman is a graduate of Swarthmore College and the University of Oxford. He’s taught writing seminars in India, Chile and England. He lives in the Yorkville neighborhood of Manhattan and his native Hudson Valley.
“Dharma Butcher”: by JD Fratzke (Liquid North Publishing, $24)
Jack’s voice was a warm hand on my shoulder and a strong affection — the older brother he was to me then looking into my eyes to simply remind me that nothing ever matters or has ever really meant anything. I would let go and whirl in the dharma tornado, let it take me for a ride. — from “Dharma Butcher”
JD Fratzke (John Autey / Pioneer Press)
JD Fratzke’s new book is an eclectic collection that is part poetry, part autobiography, part recipes, part homage to the Beat poets. “Dharma” is for Jack Kerouac and the other Beats; “Butcher” is the author’s private life.
Fratzke has been prominent on the hospitality scene for more than 30 years as a high-profile chef, a consultant and a writer whose thoughts on food and challenges of cooking have been published in the Pioneer Press. His 2024 debut, “River Language,” was about his love of the wilderness, but his new book is wider-ranging. His aim was to write about the Beats in a way that would bridge generations.
Running through the book is Fratzke’s commitment to Buddhist practice: “I sit lotus/at the edge of a sylvan pond/In a lush grove of poplars/And I take refuge in/The Buddha/And/The Dharma/And/The Sangria.” He shares thoughts about the relationship between humans and animals they eat as he cuts up a duck. And he tells of moving to Minneapolis at age 19 when he was looking for “… a lifemaking, watching and listening to loud rock and roll. Minneapolis laid the opportunity to do so at my feet. I worked in record stores and nightclubs. I was asked to join a band as their singer and lyricist.”
The final quarter of this paperback is about how deeply the Beats affected Fratzke as a young writer. He gives us a “book report” comparing Kerouac’s books “On the Road” and “The Dharma Bums” and recalls his emotions seeing an exhibit at Walker Art Center that included a 1959 clip of TV host Steve Allen welcoming Kerouac reading from “On the Road.”
It ends with haiku and Zen poems: “I slurp my buckwheat noodles/And watch the new snow/A bird pauses to warm itself/On the neighbor’s chimney.”
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