Something for everybody today — a magical novel, Japanese resettlement, Bob Dylan and Harmon Killebrew, and two kinds of poetry.
“Down Here”: by Sherry Roberts (Osmyrrah Publishing, $20)
(Osmyrrah Publishing)
In 2023 Sherry Roberts introduced readers to Ariel in her novel “Up There.” Ariel has the gift of levitating and riding the wind. After an accident she turns her back on her powers until she returns to her Minnesota hometown of Cosette. “Down Here” is a sequel as magical as the first book. Ariel has stayed in Cosette, married nice, caring Ruddy and has a daughter who carries the same gift of wind riding as her mother. Ariel remembers how she was considered a freak in school because she wore weighted shoes that kept her grounded. Now, she is trying to keep her daughter Meri from the same problem while also training the 5-year-old to ride the winds that Ariel, sometimes, can summon. Ruddy hates it when his wife and daughter step into the sky, but he can only be their steady rock when they come down.
Meri is good at following her parents’ rules about not going Up There alone, but she can’t resist the lure of her mother’s impulsive cousin Trouble, who has certainly earned her name. Trouble is obsessed with finding the farm home where matriarchs of Ariel’s maternal Hamilton family lived. Roberts takes us deep into the Hamiltons’ background, including which women had the gift, which chose to use or not use it, and how difficult is was for Up There to be understood by the men in their lives.
There are lyrical passages taking us with Ariel and Meri as they drift on breezes at night. And when a terrible storm hits, it’s up to Ariel to make a big decision.
Roberts writes contemporary fiction and cozies. “Up There” won the Minnesota Indie Author Project.
Teaser quote: “Standing with Ruddy on the edge of the meadow, she buzzed with excitement, energized by the swirling air. Here she felt the ultimate connection with Up There — her name for the wind and sky that swept her out of this world and into another. In Up There, Ariel could be strong and fearless, the complete opposite of how she felt on land.”
Enmity and Empathy: Japanese Americans in World War II”: by Ka F. Fong (Minnesota Historical Society Press, $34.95)
This is an in-depth history of Japanese-Americans and their allies fighting discrimination in wartime Minnesota and the lesser-known narrative of resettlement that followed the internment camps, highlighting how diverse groups stood together amid turmoil. Resettlement efforts included college education and military service, leading Japanese-Americans from western states to the Upper Midwest, markedly increasing their numbers in Minnesota. The author is professor of Asian Studies at St. Olaf College in Northfield. He is producer, director and writer of the film “Beyond the Barbed Wire: Japanese Americans in Minnesota.”
“Bob Dylan: Things Have Changed: A Kind of Biography”: by Ron Rosenbaum (Melville House, $32)
Rosenbaum, a longtime journalist and columnist for national publications, draws on his history with musician Bob Dylan to discuss a side of the Minnesota native that is often ignored — his various religious conversions. What did Dylan’s Jewishness, his mysticism, and his visits with psychics have to do with it all? The author also offers a key to reading Dylan’s late-career lyrics, which some have called unintelligible. Rosenbaum was a young journalist in the 1960s when he encountered Dylan and his music. He was one of the few to interview Dylan in those years, doing a long interview in 1978 for Playboy magazine. This is a dense book, probably best appreciated by Dylan fans who want to go into the man’s psyche as it relates to his music.
“Remembering Harmon: A Tribute to Harmon Killebrew”: by Jim Bark (Outskirts Press, $14.95)
(Outskirts Press)
The author, who’s written books about the Minnesota Twins and Roberto Clemente and Henry Aaron, gives us statistics and anecdotes about the player Bark calls “one of the greatest home run hitters of all time.” Killebrew, who died in 2011, played for the Minnesota Twins from 1961 to ’74. This slim paperback pays tribute to his talents with chapters about his career statistics and comments about him from other MLB players. For instance, Dave LaRoche, a Killebrew teammate in 1972: “(Harmon) was a total gentleman and soft spoken. He had a short quick swing with a big follow through… Solid player, teammate, and family man.”
“Phoenixbirds”: by Jane Dickerson (Calumet Editions, $19)
(Calumet Editions)
In her second poetry collection, St. Paulite Dickerson writes of climate change, birds, and the heartache of losing her daughter (“I’m supposed to die before her, my forty-year-old deaf daughter who/hopes to join the dogs & other pets in heaven…”) and salutes avians as in the poem “Robin’s Egg Blue”: “It’s a luxury to write/about a bird, any bird, when the world is full of anguish,/especially this bird, so fearless or feckless that it will build a nest/anywhere, even in plain sight…”
Dickerson’s previous collection, “The Orange Tree,” was a finalist for the Midwest Independent Publishing Association award. She is a mentor for the Minnesota Prison Writers workshop and a freelance editor.
“Humor, the Wonder Drug”: by Ken Mogren, illustrated by Joella Goyette (MSI Press, $16.95)
(MSI Press)
Ken Mogren, who is retired from a business career, offers humorous poetry such as “Joint Custody” (about who gets the dog), “Grumpy Grandpa’s New Tattoo,” and “Small Town Cafe in the Morning” (“A guy who always has a joke to tell/Gets full attention when he has the floor./Alas, he can’t remember very well/And might tell the one he told the week before.”)
Mogren, who lives in Winona, got the idea for the book after a reader of his previous Spunky Grandmas humorous collections told him she sometimes ran out of conversation while visiting her mother in a nursing home. Reading funny stories filled the gap, brightening her mother’s day. Goyette’s cartoonish illustrations are big and bold.
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