(Courtesy of Lake Union Publishing)

“The Probable Son”: by Cindy Jiban (Lake Union Publishing, $16.99)

Cindy Jiban (Courtesy of Lake Union Publishing)

It’s hard to believe this accomplished novel is Cindy Jiban’s debut. It’s part mystery, part parental love and part middle-school angst.

Teacher Elsa Vargas and her husband, Ham, were excited about their first pregnancy, but their daughter lived only a short time and Elsa went into a mental tailspin that alarmed her family. Elsa eventually came out of her grief and waited happily for her second child to be born. But from the moment this baby boy was put into her arms she was sure there was a mistake. This was not her baby. Fearful her family would think she was coming unglued again, she finally accepted and loved the child nicknamed Bird and never said another word about a possible hospital mix-up.

For 14 years, Elsa kept her secret even though Bird was not like the rest of the family. Then Thomas walks into her eighth-grade math class. When she realizes Thomas and Bird have the same birthday, she is sure Thomas must be her long-lost son.

Elsa cannot keep her eyes off Thomas, attending his soccer games in the rain and paying so much attention to him that the other kids notice. Soon there are allegations against her of inappropriate behavior with Thomas. Meanwhile, she knows she loves Bird, too, and has to grapple with what will happen to him if Thomas is really her son. How will Ham react to learning this boy he loves is not his? And she has to deal with Thomas’ mother, who understands she may lose her boy if the secret is revealed.

Then the story is turned on its head when Elsa sends in a DNA sample and gets unexpected results.

This novel is much more than a story of a possible hospital mix-up of babies. It’s a psychological study of a woman torn between a mother’s love for two boys. It’s obvious Jiban has taught in middle-school classrooms. Her dialogue between the students and Elsa is spot-on and sometimes very funny.

Jiban has a doctorate in educational psychology and was, like her protagonist, a middle-school teacher, whom she refers to as “the Navy SEALs of the education world.”

She will launch her novel at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Lake Monster Brewing, 550 Vandalia St., St. Paul.

Teaser quote: “She stared into the too-dark blue eyes while Ham called him their son, his words drenched in love. She wanted this for Ham, wanted to feel what he felt. Eventually, she echoed him.

‘Our son’ she said, and the chorus of humans outside her filled with relief and rejoicing.

That was the beginning of pretending to believe.”

(Courtesy of Severn House)

“Dark Humor”: by Matt Goldman (Severn House, $29.99)

Matt Goldman (Courtesy of the author)

In the fifth installment of his crime series featuring Minneapolis private investigator Nils Shapiro (after “Dead West”), we accompany Nils to Europe where he chases the drug kingpin who was responsible for the murder of his wife, Gabby, Minneapolis chief of police. He dotes on his daughter, Evelyn, whose mother is his previous wife.

It’s two years after Gabby’s death, and Nils is still grieving when he visits in prison Anna, the daughter of Sammy Sykes, the drug dealer who’s responsible for the deaths of dozens of teens who worked for him until they weren’t needed. Anna is a “dirty cop” who was convicted while her father got away. Nils, a quiet and thoughtful guy, is as tenacious as a terrier with a bone, and he sees something at the prison that gives him the first clue about where to find Sammy.

Following his hunches and some leads, he traces Sammy through Amsterdam, Munich and Austria, a trip that worries stoic Anders Ellegard, his partner in their Stone Arch Investigators P.I. business; Jameson White, a 6’7″ nurse practitioner who took care of Nils when he was injured in a previous book; and a woman friend in the police department.

On the plane to Amsterdam Nils he meets a Canadian woman looking for her husband, with whom he becomes friendly and is an unexpected ally as she joins him in sleuthing across Europe. Will she help him lessen his grief?

Goldman is an award-winning television writer (“Seinfeld,” “Ellen”), so it’s no surprise narrator Nils’ dialogue and inner speculations move the plot along gracefully and, sometimes chillingly, but also with humor. A discussion about taking a tourist bus in Salzburg to see sites where “The Sound of Music” were filmed fills Nils with horror.

The most entertaining part of this plot is Nils’ clever use of disguises that turn him into two people, one of whom the bad guys trust and one they want to kill. His scheme for finding Sammy works until his daughter is threatened and then he has to decide whether he can kill someone.

Goldman will launch his book with a free reading at 6:30 Tuesday at Comma book shop, 4250 Upton Ave. S., Mpls.

Teaser quote: “Again, I feel danger on the back of my neck. I reach for it but my hand never finds my neck. It’s grabbed from behind, a black sack is pulled over my head, and I’m pulled off my feet. My back hits the hard metal floor of what I realize is a cargo van. And then everything goes blank.”

(Courtesy of the University of Minnesota Press)

“Mysterious Tales of Old Minneapolis”: by Larry Millett (University of Minnesota Press, $24.95)

Larry Millett (Courtesy of the author)

In this companion to “Mysterious Tales of Old St. Paul,” Millett gives us three loosely connected novellas set in the 19th century.

The first story, “Murder at the Falls,” is about murder among rich owners of lumber mills lining the area beneath St. Anthony Falls. We meet Peter Nichols, night watchman at a mill where the owner’s body is found. Nichols’ mother, Sophie Westerly, is a strong woman who takes up the challenge of clearing her son’s name and has clever ways of doing so.

The sparkling second story, “A Wilde Night at the Nicollet House,” is a romp in which Oscar Wilde, touring the United States to talk about beauty, helps the night detective at the fancy Minneapolis Nicollet House solve a murder. In a story narrated by the detective, who admits the Irish writer was the most fascinating man he has ever known, the pair strike up a friendship over the murder in the hotel that takes them to bordellos and mean streets. Throughout, the Minneapolitan’s reaction to Wilde, who is famous, varies from incredulous to intrigued. Although the plot is involving, the real centerpiece of this story is Wilde, who did stop in Minneapolis on his 1882 tour. Millett’s depiction of the key figure in the emerging Aestheticism movement offers readers a fully realized portrait of one of the century’s colorful visitors.

The Nichols family returns in “The Death Committee,” in which a rich man who is murdered had instructed his lawyer to stage a lottery to form a committee that will investigate his death. Three people, including Anna Nichols, win the lottery, but Anna, another woman and a man realize the event was rigged and they “won” the lottery for reasons they don’t understand. The man on the committee, who is up to no good, is wary of the strong-minded women who are supposed to be his colleagues, and it is up to these women to solve the puzzle.

Millett is a St. Paul author of 10 mysteries that feature Sherlock Holmes and St. Paul detective Shadwell Rafferty.

Teaser Quote: ‘”No scandal?’ said Oscar, as though he’d been refused butter on his toast. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. My dear Mr. Vale, scandal is a wonderful thing! It is the shortest route to fame. and I highly recommend it to any man who wishes to be in the public eye, as I most assuredly do.’”

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We ply our trade with words and we like to think they have weight. But the wild Donald Trump-Zohran Mamdani news conference at the White House a week ago almost convinced us of the opposite. When it comes to saying what we mean, or not, America has gone totally bananas.

Consider: Mamdani has often said Trump is a “despot who betrayed the country” and a fascist. Hitherto, if you were called a fascist and you were not either the person or a follower of Benito Mussolini, that generally disinclined you to invite the name-caller for a cozy chat.

Consider: Trump had called Mamdani “a communist lunatic.” The same disinclination would normally apply.

But there the two of them were, offering up sweet nothings, the one to the other. Reporters in the room were incredulous. On social media, some people even suggested this was the dawning of a new populist coalition of left and right.

May God protect us from that.

“I think, hopefully, you’ll have a really great mayor,” Trump said of the man who was that communist lunatic about five seconds ago.

“I appreciated the time with the president,” Mamdani said. “I appreciate the conversation, and I look forward to working together …”

Why do you think a “communist lunatic” would make a great mayor for New York, Mr. President?

You appreciated your time with a despot with a fascist agenda, Mr. Mayor? Why would you appreciate such time spent? Did you not fear the fascism would rub off on you?

Americans, of course, knew what was really going on. As insulting as those terms were, they were the words of two transactional men. Trump is one of the great flip-floppers of all time, a man without any evident moral core who simply says and does what serves him in the moment, even if that means making nice with his “little communist.”

Mamdani, who would not have been caught dead near Trump prior to winning his election (“I’ll be his worst nightmare,” he promised), clearly now has decided that the White House contains the king of malleable men, someone who he could flatter and thus win over to snag some goodies for New York City, and maybe simultaneously avoid the arrival of some baddies, such as the Border Patrol cowboys who caused such distress here in the Second City.

This is a very reasonable tactic on the part of the mayor. We just did not expect it from Mamdani, who convinced so many folks of his ideological purity, openly embracing the socialist monicker and all, and we sure did not expect it to happen so quickly.

If all it takes is to show up at the White House and say that you appreciate time with Trump, where is Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson? Why did the New York mayor-elect do this, but the mayor who presides over Chicago, a city in which we have to stare at the “Trump” name atop a hotel downtown, has not hopped a plane to D.C. and made nice for, oh, the 30 seconds it apparently takes? Where for that matter is Gov. JB Pritzker?

Leading the resistance, of course.

Certainly that plays well with the progressive wing of the Democrats, but it’s also very striking how little that progressive wing has criticized this cozying up with Trump on the part of Mamdani.

Why has he gotten away with this?

Simple. Trump’s transactional approach is everywhere now. Mamdani’s followers know he is playing the game and doing what he has to do to get those free buses, that rent control and all the other nice, shiny things that will need someone else to help foot the New York bill.

Please forgive our cynicism. That’s not our entire message here.

The reality is that mayors and governors need a productive relationship with the federal government, however odious they find the duly elected president. They can huff and puff for political gain, or even out of genuine moral conviction or outrage, but the price then paid is years of resource limitations and interventions only of the unwelcome kind.

We respect our readers who believe there must be no compromise with Trump. We even sympathize. But in the end, it’s not the right call. A sworn enemy in the White House can do too much damage.

Meanwhile, that “little communist” from New York just schooled us on how to go about getting what we need, too, from Trump.

One last thought, though. Does a great country not better thrive when people mean what they say and then act accordingly?

— The Chicago Tribune

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Americans used to be nearly universally proud of their country. In January 2001, 90% of Republicans and 87% of Democrats said they were extremely or very proud to be American. Now the situation has changed. Today, 92% of Republicans still say they are very proud to be American, but only 36% of Democrats say that, according to a recent Gallup survey.

Members of the two parties have different sorts of pride in their country. Republican pride is unconditional. Democrats like Barack Obama and Joe Biden can get elected to the presidency, and it has almost no effect on the pride Republicans feel for America. Democratic pride is more conditional. It dropped a bit during George W. Bush’s first term, then began to gradually decline during the Great Awokening around 2014 and really collapsed during each of President Donald Trump’s two terms.

The trend is especially strong among the young. More Generation Z Democrats say they feel little or no pride in being American than say they feel very proud.

I don’t side much with the party of MAGA these days, but my patriotism is more like the Republican kind — unconditional. My love of country this Thanksgiving season is not based on what this or that politician does, but on what America has always been.

Its ability to arouse ambition

Let me put it this way: Through most of Western history, leading thinkers regarded ambition as an unmitigated sin. For much of civilization, people have lived in societies with feudal pecking orders; everybody had the station they were born into and would die in — peasant, merchant, aristocrat. To be ambitious was to try to rise above your station and thus disturb the whole system. Children who showed hints of ambition were told the story of Icarus, the man who tried to fly too high above his station and crashed to Earth, to his death.

Even a great man like St. Augustine argued that Adam and Eve were cast out of paradise because Adam “hungered for more than should have sufficed.” Centuries later, John Calvin was also warning about people who were so overly ambitious that they lusted to eat from the tree of knowledge: “We all daily suffer under the same disease, because we desire to know more than is right, and more than God allows.”

Ambition’s reputation in Europe didn’t begin to shift until the discovery of the New World. Suddenly there were new continents to explore; it wasn’t a zero-sum world anymore. From the start, America aroused great dreams, great energies, great ambitions. J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, a Frenchman, came to America to fight in the French and Indian War in the mid-18th century and then settled on a farm up the Hudson River from New York. “A European, when he first arrives, seems limited in his intentions,” he wrote, “but he very suddenly alters his scale; two hundred miles formerly appeared a very great distance, it is now but a trifle; he no sooner breathes our air than he forms schemes and embarks in designs he never would have thought of in his own country.”

That’s what I love when I love America — its ability to arouse ambition, energy and activity. But here’s the catch. When you love America for its raw energy, you are loving it for a force that also produces crassness, materialism and, from time to time, immaturity. That is to say, the same cultural winds that propel the noble aspirations of an Abraham Lincoln also propel the gaudy display of a Donald Trump and the occasional recklessness of an Elon Musk.

America’s most faithful lovers have always seen that America’s spiritual greatness is intertwined with its embarrassing materialism. In his 1871 book, “Democratic Vistas,” Walt Whitman acknowledged Americans’ “almost maniacal appetite for wealth.” He lamented, “Never was there, perhaps, more hollowness at heart than at present.” Yet America’s striving ethos nonetheless serves as “a training school for making grand young men. It is life’s gymnasium” that produces “freedom’s athletes.” Whitman never stopped celebrating the nobility of regular working people: “Popular democracy, whatever its faults and dangers, practically justifies itself beyond the proudest claims and wildest hopes of its enthusiasts.”

Lincoln was regarded by Whitman, and by so many of the rest of us, as the embodiment of the American creed. His ambition, his law partner William Henry Herndon once said, was an engine that knew no rest. “I hold the value of life is to improve one’s condition,” Lincoln himself declared. It was precisely this same sense of possibility that Franklin Roosevelt loved about America, its capacity to encourage what his cousin Theodore called the “strenuous life.” Happiness, FDR argued, “lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.”

These days it can seem that most Americans have lost faith in all that. A recent Wall Street Journal-NORC poll found that only 31% of Americans believe in the American dream — the idea that you can get ahead by working hard. Nearly half of Americans say they used to believe in it but no longer do, while 23% say they never did.

Maybe that state of demoralization explains why Americans watch passively as China leapfrogs us in one scientific and technological field after another. More papers in the elite scientific journals are now written by Chinese scholars than by American ones. Why are we not doing everything we can to preserve our status as the nation of futurity?

And yet …

And yet I don’t quite believe that the American spirit has been as thoroughly trampled as it can sometimes appear. Yes, the country is in a low mood. But a nation’s cultural DNA is not something that gets rewritten in a decade.

If you probe more deeply you find that Americans still hold on to the values that have for centuries defined us most clearly.

According to a July Pew survey, nearly 80% of Americans say immigration is “a good thing” for America. Only 30% of Americans want immigration levels to decrease.

A survey this year sponsored by the Reagan Institute found that 83% of Americans believe America should stand up for human rights and democracy around the world. A large majority believe that America should take the lead in international events, including 69% of Republicans and 73% of self-identified MAGA Republicans.

A study done by Seamus A. Power, Richard A. Schweder and others and published this year in the journal Ethos, found that Americans still love diversity. Two-thirds of them want a more ethnically and racially diverse nation than exists even now. A majority of white Christians have a multicultural conception of America. Only a tiny percentage believe in the “great replacement” theory. Only 1.1% believe that America should be ethnically and racially homogenous.

Political lunacy

Some Democrats like Gov. Gavin Newsom of California seem to think they can win the White House by behaving more like Trump, by thinking more like Trump, by adopting that dark American carnage vibe. This strikes me as political lunacy.

Look at history. Americans lost faith in themselves in the 1970s, after the failures of the Great Society, the retreat from Vietnam, the corruption of Watergate, the impotent presidency of Jimmy Carter, the rising crime and divorce rates, the awful stagflation, the decay of our largest cities. But was this loss of faith permanent? No, Americans elected Ronald Reagan president in 1980. They elected optimism, patriotism and hope. There is still, deep inside the nation’s core, a little engine that knows no rest.

David Brooks writes a column for the New York Times.

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