Drowning: The Rescue of Flight 1421, a novel by T. J. Newman, is rich with suspense in the face of almost certain death.

When Flight 121 takes off from Honolulu’s Daniel K. Inouye International Airport, it carries passengers with hopes and dreams. Included in the passenger list are Will Kent and his eleven-year-old daughter, Shannon. Will is accompanying his daughter to summer camp on the mainland. Will and his wife, Chris, have separated. They’ve never healed after the tragic accidental death of their oldest daughter six years earlier.

Six minutes after takeoff, the plane malfunctions, one engine catches fire, and the aircraft crashes into the ocean, just off the rugged coast of Molokai. Some people manage to exit the aircraft, only to be met with fire from burning fuel. Those remaining in the aircraft close the doors, but it’s too late. The plane quickly sinks to the bottom with twelve passengers and six crew trapped inside.

More than two hundred feet below the surface Will and Shannon and the other passengers and crew are struggling with rising water with a limited amount of air, fighting panic. As an engineer, Will is acutely aware of the danger they’re in, but he fights to concentrate on helping solve their dire situation.

On shore, an elite rescue team led by professional diver Chris Kent is desperately at work to save the passengers and remaining crew. Chris’s company is known for their expertise in fixing large metallic vessels. To make the situation even more harrowing, Chris is Will’s ex-wife and Shannon’s mother. She must fight the panic and terror she feels for her family and concentrate on her expertise to save them.

Drowning:The Rescue of Flight 1421 is a gripping novel from beginning to end. Author T. J. Newman, a former flight attendant, writes with authenticity. I especially appreciated the rescue scenes and the expertise of the team to save the passengers and crew of the downed aircraft. Both my husband and I are certified Open Water Divers and are familiar with much of what this rescue operation, using Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus (SCUBA) would entail. I thought the passengers’ angst realistic and the rescue teams’ expertise believable. I would highly recommend this novel, though if you plan to travel by air any time soon, you might want to read this one after your trip.

Dances with Wolves, a novel by Michael Blake (1945 – 2015) is a fast-moving story of bravery in the face of abandonment of one’s own culture. Most of the story takes place in the Black Hills of South Dakota, 1863.

Lieutenant John Dunbar is ordered to Fort Sedgewick in South Dakota. Much to his amazement, when he arrives he finds the Fort abandoned. The place is a mess with scattered garbage, piles of human waste, collapsing buildings, and no sign of humans, soldiers or otherwise. He has his powerful buckskin horse, but otherwise no living beings seem to exist. But then a wolf comes sniffing around and the two, Dunbar and the wolf, form a sort of friendship, albeit from a distance.

Dunbar cleans up the fort, thinking that soon it will again be an occupied, working fort. But days pass, then weeks, and no one comes. Dunbar begins to explore the surrounding territory. He loves the prairie and watching the buffalo grass sway in the breeze, alive as the ocean. In the distance he sees a thin trail of smoke, follows the origin of the smoke and finds a Comanche camp. The people seem as curious about him and he is about them. He notices a young woman who looks different from the others, a woman with red hair who is called Stands With A Fist. He learns that she is recently widowed and still mourns the loss of her husband. Stands With A Fist is the foster daughter of a prominent tribal medicine man, Kicking Bird.

Communication between the Lieutenant and his new acquaintances is difficult, but perhaps Stands With A Fist will remember enough of her childhood English language to bridge the gap. Much to Dunbar’s surprise, he has much respect and admiration for his new friends and their way of life. He learns how important buffalo is to them, how buffalo are considered the life of the prairie, and how much of Comanche life is centered around these amazing animals. He sees for himself how industrious the Comanches are, how they make themselves a part of nature. But what of his dedication to his profession as a U.S. Army officer?

I loved this book. I have seen the Oscar-winning movie, Dances with Wolves, and found the two very similar. Having seen the movie first gave me the advantage of picturing the various characters. The novel does a remarkable job showing Native culture and the surrounding landscape. Whether right or wrong, it also puts forth a negative view of the United States Army in that time period. Both the novel and the movie provide memorable entertainment.

You Can Stop Humming Now: Stories of Life, Death, and in Between by Daniela J. Lamas is an enlightening book about the impact of making choices of how we live, the consequences of life-saving devices, and the cost of survival.

Dr. Lamas is an attending physician in the intensive care unit (ICU) in the hospital where she was born. I found the title of the book interesting. It refers to a chest examination of a patient where she asks the patient to hum which will decrease the pressure in his chest.

Chapter by chapter the author goes into the true stories of individuals who require medical decisions that may affect the rest of their lives. For some it was a condition they were born with. Others might suffer from trauma due to an accident. Or perhaps the emergency is from making bad choices, such as the consequence of using illegal drugs, smoking or excessive drinking.

Although You Can Stop Humming Now is about serious, often harrowing health conditions, Dr. Lamas tells various stories with compassion and gentle humor. She has her moments of dread, of sorrow, or even questioning the wisdom of further treatment. Is the treatment worth the outcome? Will treatment result in better quality of life?

Unlike some physicians, Dr. Lamas frequently follows through with her patients, even visiting them at their homes, making observations about on-going care. She observes their attitudes about the care that enabled them to survive, but at what cost? Does on-going, never-ending care result in a worth-while life? In many cases once the condition has passed, life goes on as usual. But in others, the patient has on-going, life-long treatments, affecting other family members, often requiring assistance of another person, or the need to live in an acute-care facility, often at tremendous cost.

Dr. Lamas tells her story in easy-to-read cases, with explanations of what various treatments involve. She listens to her patients and their families, helping weigh the different possibilities that will affect them for the rest of their lives. Will modern technologies that allow patients to live longer lives mean those lives will be worthwhile, or just existing? I found You Can Stop Humming Now informative and insightful. Her explanations of various conditions are clear and understandable. Many would benefit from reading this book with its easy-to-understand language. I think this volume would be of interest to anyone, but particularly to those facing the possibility of life-long treatments.

Maritime Seattle by the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society, from the “Images of America” series, is a well-illustrated chronicle of Seattle’s waterfronts, beginning in 1850 through today’s thriving shoreline.

In 1851 the Denny Party, ten adults and twelve children, arrived in the schooner Exact landing at Alki Beach on the shores of Puget Sound at what is now called West Seattle. As the group grew in numbers and intentions, Seattle’s waterfront moved in the 1850s from Alki to its current location in Elliot Bay. The city developed and expanded along Elliott Bay with the primary focus on shipping and trade.

Seattle was named in honor of Chief Si’ahl, a prominent leader of the local Duwamish and Suquamish tribes. The name was officially adopted in 1853 when the town’s first plats were filed.

The book is rich with maritime and local history. In 1889, an exploding glue pot started what is known as “Seattle’s Great Fire” which consumed buildings, piers, warehouses and trestles. Aid came to Seattle from all over the nation, and people stayed. Slowly Seattle’s waterfront developed into a bustling port, its waterfront evolving from a marsh to a prosperous complex of industrial sites.

Seattle’s waterfront played a crucial role during the Klondike Gold Rush in the late 1800s as it served as a major embarkation and supply hub for gold seekers heading to Alaska. This activity transformed Seattle from a small town into a flourishing city.

Settlers to the Seattle area wanted an easy and cheap way to move logs, coal, and other resources directly from the east side of Lake Washington to Elliott Bay. The Lake Washington Ship Canal began operation in 1917 and links the fresh water of Lake Washington to the salt water of Puget Sound. The Hiram M. Chittenden Locks accommodate the approximately twenty-foot difference in water level between Lake Washington and Puget Sound.

Through photographs, illustrations and explanations of Seattle’s growth, Maritime Seattle features its early days, the war years, the depression years, it’s bitter labor disputes, to today’s Port of Seattle, one of the largest container ship terminals on the West Coast. The Washington State Ferries system, officially formed in 1929, is the largest auto/passenger ferry system in the United States. The Port of Seattle also operates a booming cruise ship business taking passengers north to Canada and Alaska, and south to California.

I was delighted to see a ship featured in the book that was familiar to me. The MS Explorer, built in 1904, originally served for the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. In 1976 I was the purser and ship’s diver on the Explorer that sailed from the Pacific Coast, through the Panama Canal and on to New York for the Bicentennial Tall Ships parade. As the purser I managed the ship’s finances. The MS Explorer was an old wooden vessel, so as the ship’s diver I performed underwater repairs. Serving on this ship was one of the highlights of my life.

Maritime Seattle is an engaging book that would be enlightening to those interested in Seattle’s colorful maritime history and its struggle to become one of the country’s premier centers for global trade.

Theo of Golden, a beautifully crafted novel by Allen Levi is a heartfelt contemporary story that will remain with me for years to come.

Theo, a quiet man of 86, comes from New York to the small city of Golden, Georgia. While there he happens to stop at a coffee shop and is entranced by a wall featuring 92 portraits of local citizens. The portraits are displayed in three different sizes, are drawn by pencil on white paper, and obviously done by the same artist. Theo learns that the portraits are drawn by Asher Glissen who lives right there in Golden.

Theo is so taken by the portraits that he begins to purchase them, one at a time, to be given to the person depicted. In return, he asks only for the person’s story. He decides that the meeting place for the recipients will be at the town’s center, a little park along-side the Chattahoochee River, graced by a fountain, with benches to sit and enjoy the view. Over the course of a year, he writes to each person to invite them to meet with him, with instructions for the recipient to look for a man wearing a green cap sitting on a bench.

One by one they come, always questioning why this man is giving them such a strange, but wonderful, gift. They open up to Theo who listens to stories of dreams, accomplish- ments, even heartaches. One of the first Theo beckons happens to be Minnette Prentiss, the artist Asher Glissen’s niece. Then Simone, a young university student who plays the cello, followed by Ellen, a strange young woman who arrives on her bicycle, Frankie, Kendrick, Basil—over a period of time they come, share their stories, and are blessed by an avid listener, a man generous with his time who might make gentle suggestions. Theo makes other friends, too, including Tony, who owns a bookstore, and has a heart-rending story of his time in Vietnam, but who is still able to joke. And he meets the artist himself, Asher Glissen, and they also become friends.

Theo of Golden is an amazing story written by first-time novelist, Allen Levi. The story depicts common people with a variety of stories of struggle, heart-break, and deeply felt love. It depicts a man who is intensely interested in people, who in his own quiet way shows them tenderness and love. The story has surprising and sometimes regrettable turns. I’ll never forget this book, a gift given to me for my ninety-first birthday. It’s a deeply moving story to cherish.

The Sweet Blue Distance by Sara Donati is a well-researched novel that takes place on a journey to and in Santa Fe, New Mexico Territory, beginning 1857.

Through mail, Carrie Ballentyne accepts a nursing/midwife position with Dr. Markham in Santa Fe, New Mexico Territory. It’s a long journey from New York, and it’s important she arrive as soon as possible as her future employer’s wife is expecting a baby. Through correspondence, Carrie is aware that Dr. Markham is an exacting person, but Carrie is well qualified for the position. Carrie’s brother will escort her on this long journey.

It’s a long way to Santa Fe, first by train, followed by a paddlewheel ship down the Missouri to Kansas, then stagecoach, and finally by horseback to Santa Fe. Along the way she meets interesting people, including one in particular, Eli Ibarra, a native of Sante Fe and a surveyor by trade. They find mutual attraction as they learn about one another. Carrie finds Eli easy to talk to and is fascinated by stories of his native Santa Fe. Eli is obviously impressed with Carrie, her background, and her courage facing the challenges of the final two-week horseback journey.

Once Carrie arrives in Santa Fe, she learns that the doctor’s wife has already given birth. But not all is well. The baby was still-born, and the mother is suffering from puerperal insanity, known today as postpartum psychosis. From appearances, Dr. Markham is not well. Carrie worries about Lulu, their little girl, and what will become of her with both parents so severely affected. Carrie is very busy with her nursing duties at the clinic, consulting with pregnant women, as well as serving as midwife at their homes.

Carrie and Eli Ibarra continue their relationship and it becomes obvious that it could be permanent. But there are those who would object to a mixed marriage. Although Carrie is considered white, she also has Mohawk ancestry. Eli is Mestizo, a Spanish term for a person with European and Indigenous American ancestry. But their attraction for one another will not be denied.

I enjoyed The Sweet Blue Distance. It is quite long. While the average novel is around 250 to 350 pages, this book’s print length is 800 pages. However, the story line is intriguing and abundant with New Mexico Territory’s history. I also learned the meaning of many Spanish words such as gaucho (a person who understands a horse’s mind, heart and soul) and vaquero (a person who manages livestock on horseback, but who is not as expert as a gaucho). Through this engaging novel I gained a sense of attitudes of the period, and knowledge of different ethnic backgrounds, making the book interesting on many levels.

The Home and Garden Emporium: A Novel of Resilience, Friendship and Second Chances by Carolyn Niethammer captures the essence of life just before and during World War 1. The story is written in first-person and begins in 1917.

As an Irish immigrant, Ellie has fought prejudice throughout her life. Her bitter, widowed mother works at her brother’s laundry shop in New York, and after graduating from high school Ellie works there, too. Later, she finds satisfying work in a haberdashery and learns that she is adept at selling goods to satisfied customers. At the age of twenty-six she meets and soon marries a handsome bachelor, Edward Smithfield, who works at a bank. They live in Edward’s lovely New York townhouse.

Shortly after they married, Edward receives word that a favorite uncle in Tucson, Arizona is ill and his aunt needs Edward to come. By the time Ellie and Edward arrive in Tucson the uncle has died and his wife, Aunt Clara, needs assistance. In the meantime, the world is becoming aware that Europe is threatened with imminent war, that German soldiers are marching through Belgium. Edward is especially alarmed because he has close childhood friends in Belgium. He feels he must go to Europe to help them, and enlists in the Allied Forces, leaving Ellie in Tucson to deal with his newly widowed aunt and his uncle’s hardware store.

When Ellie goes to the hardware store, she finds a dirty, neglected closed-up store with a calendar dated 1914. Edward is off to war and Aunt Clara, a demanding and standoffish woman, is no help at all. Ellie feels compelled to do what she can but hardly knows where to begin. She isn’t familiar with hardware, the building is filthy, and funds are short.

Good things start happening in Ellie’s life when she meets and befriends multi-ethnic people. She also benefits from meeting some of Aunt Clara’s neighbors. From one she learns the art of gardening, the tools needed and the value of sharing this knowledge. From another, she receives encouragement and friendship with the woman and her handsome son, Anton Lincoln.

The Home and Garden Emporium is a lovely story of new beginnings and the courage it takes to make a giant leap from the familiar to the completely unknown. I enjoyed reading about pre-war and World War I attitudes and living conditions. Many of the customs, attitudes and moral values we now take for granted weren’t common to people in the early Twentieth Century. But the qualities that mattered then, such as friendships, loyalty and innovative hard work, are still worthy traits in our lives. This novel emphasis the worth of those values.

Hang the Moon, a novel by Jeannette Walls is an exciting, heart-rending story that takes place in Claiborne County, Virginia during Prohibition-era (1920 – 1933).

Sallie Kincaid, is the daughter of the well-known, wealthy Duke Kincaid. She idolizes her father, but remembers little about her mother who died in a violent argument with the Duke. When Sallie is eight years old, Duke marries his third wife and has a son, Eddie. While Sallie has many of her father’s traits, Eddie is more like his mother, timid and intellectual. Duke encourages Sallie to help Eddie be more masculine, and while doing what she thought would help her little brother become bolder, an accident occurs that sends Sallie away to her mother’s sister, Aunt Faye.

Although Sallie loves her Aunt Faye, they live in hardship conditions, the opposite of how Sallie has been raised. She helps her Aunt Faye hand-wash sheets for a living; they scrimp to meet their bare needs. After Eddie’s mother dies, and after nine years away, Sallie is brought back home. She is almost eighteen. Her father wants her to help Eddie, now 13, become a man. The boy is frail, has no friends or pets, doesn’t play sports, but he is very bright and shows talent playing the piano. The two become close, but Sallie soon understands that she’s not going to change Eddie.

Duke Kincaid is involved in many enterprises including a store, warehouse, lumber mill, hauling company, and rental properties. The store, Emporium, is the “go to” place in town. It carries a huge variety of goods, including a large inventory of contraband whiskey. Sallie convinces her father that she should work for him, and he reluctantly agrees. When Prohibition comes to Claiborne County, people’s livelihood drastically change. As the local citizens reason, Claiborne County citizens don’t break laws, but just follow a different set of laws. It’s true moonshine whiskey can ruin people, destroy families, even get people killed, but it’s been going on for years. Now, with Prohibition, it’s obey the law and starve, or break the law and eat. It’s the only work many of these people know. Sallie finds herself in the middle of the conflict and becomes involved trying to save the family business, and that of her fellow citizens.

Hang the Moon is a well told, exciting read, and an eye opener for me regarding the challenges of Prohibition. I could have used a cast of characters—many people are involved in this exciting story. I loved the author’s memoir, The Glass Castle, and consider Hang the Moon another winner.

Among Canyon Shadows: An Eastern Artist in Western Colorado by Joyce Lohse is an interesting biography featuring two colorful characters: Flora Beatrice Farnham and John Otto.

Beatrice Farnham, born in 1876, an independent Boston artist, visited western Colorado in 1910 to paint landscapes of the southwest. Impressed with indigenous artwork, she based many pieces of artwork of that culture. She was a self-confident woman who didn’t care if others thought her eccentric. Riding astride a horse, Beatrice wore a split skirt of her own design, not worrying about what people might think. While in Colorado, Beatrice met John Otto and they struck up a friendship.

John Otto, born in 1871, was thirty-nine when he met Beatrice Farnham. On his own time and with no pay, John built trails to enable residents of the area to view the majestic scenes of what is now Mesa Verde National Park. John Otto was the first park custodian at Colorado National Monument, and its most fervent promoter. It is largely through John Otto’s efforts that the public is able to enjoy the unspoiled natural grandeur of the Colorado National Monument.

During Beatrice Farnham’s visit, John was her trail guide showing her amazing views, canyons and rock formations. Beatrice loved the rugged area, respected John’s trail-blazing work, and decided to stay. In 1911 Beatrice and John married at the base of Independence Monument (later renamed Wedding Canyon).

But not all was well. John loved the rugged life, didn’t need the comfort of a solid roof and walls, was perfectly content to live in a tent, or with no shelter at all. That wasn’t a life Beatrice wanted, or needed. Could these two strong-willed people find a compromise?

In Among Canyon Shadows Joyce Lohse captures the essence of a part of Colorado’s colorful history and its majestic scenery, as well as stories of two notable people, one from the east, and one from the west. I have read other works from this fine author and have been impressed with her thorough research and captivating presentation. The book also features a Timeline, and an extensive Bibliography which emphasizes the author’s thorough research. I enjoyed Among Canyon Shadows and highly recommend it.

“….independence is not simply the ability to go places, but the courage to keep stepping into a wider life.”
From Hedy After: The first four years with a Guide Dog

Hedy After: The first four years with a Guide Dog, a memoir by Carolyn Wing Greenlee, continues from the story begun in Steady Hedy, and moves beyond the life-changing experience of receiving her first guide dog, Hedy, a little black Labrador Retriever. I have had the pleasure of knowing the author for several years, so I freely call her Carolyn. In fact, I also know Hedy as we’ve encountered one another at Women Writing the West Conferences on several occasions.

Carolyn discusses the transformative experience of learning to live with and handle a guide dog. It wasn’t always easy. When she was accepted into the program at Guide Dogs for the Blind, Carolyn was still working through her devastating loss of vision. Acquiring a guide dog isn’t like just getting a new pet in the house. It involves almost every aspect of day-to-day living. It means working as a team, and meeting each other’s needs. Their team of two experienced many challenges as they moved through a busy life of household routine, church, family, meeting with friends, travel, public speaking and author/book-related events, often involving confrontations with strangers. Guide Dogs for the Blind gave their little team valuable training, but Carolyn and Hedy had to fine-tune those skills into what would be workable for them.

Hedy is a small dog who can be strong-willed, or hard-headed as Carolyn sometimes refers to her. Both handler and guide dog have had to learn to trust one another to gain the courage it takes to step into the unfamiliar.

The author gives much credit to puppy handlers, those generous-hearted people who raise puppies for fourteen to sixteen months, training them basic skills before they are turned over to Guide Dogs for the Blind.

Among many topics, Carolyn discusses the law that allows guide dogs into restaurants and other places that otherwise would not allow dogs. This can be challenging and not always well-received.

Carolyn writes candidly about bonding with a strong-willed black Lab, learning to trust her, defending her, listening to her, and discovering a rich life with a trusted companion.

Hedy After offers insights into the world of the visually impaired, and the opportunities having a guide dog offers. It takes trust and patience for both human and dog. In addition to her experiences with Hedy, the author graces her story with poetry that enhances her and Hedy’s relationship and emphasizes Carolyn’s strong Christian faith.