Stepping in the Write Direction

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver is a big book. It’s about being born, struggling to survive, finding yourself, losing yourself, redemption, family and kin you’re born with and those you choose, being tied to a place on the planet with a fierceness fiction rarely sees, hitting rock bottom, crawling out of a hole of your own making, people who love each other in every shade of loving, and life resurrecting itself like a cold dark mountain ridge as sunrise hits on a spring morning when redbuds and mountain laurel are in bloom. It’s the Appalachian Spring of literature, breaking hearts and lifting them with hauntingly beautiful melodies.   The characters are so vivid they rise off the page,  ready to escape the one dimensional world, testing themselves against the worst and best the world has in store. From wards of the state placed in foster home slave labor farms to those taken in by families for the cash they bring, the system begins testing from early age. Whether it’s ...

The Night Lady by Debra Castaneda is set in  the summer of 1950. A newly hired reporter documents a number of mysterious murders coinciding with two major events in Los Angeles’ Chavez Ravine community, a movie is being filmed nearby, and powerful interests are forcing all homeowners out for a new stadium and a public housing project.  Soon eviction notices are hand delivered to homes, which raises  tensions and emotions:  “Robert only half heard him because he spotted a man from city hall walking up the dirt path. Standing at least six-foot-five, with a gaunt face and grim expression, it was like the grim reaper had exchanged his black robe for a custom-order gray suit, the black leather briefcase he carried instead of a scythe probably full of eviction letters.”   Most of the residents are Hispanic, some lived their whole lives here in homes their parents built; this huge disruption is particularly hard on older people who don’t relish starting over late in li...