Roaming & Reading Issue 10  July 9th 2023

...

Read to Roam Book for July: The Trackers by Charles Frazier

When I'm choosing a "Read to Roam" book for the newsletter I run a dozen or so titles through a kind of place and time gauntlet:

Is the setting immersive in a way that gives the book texture and depth? Are the characters influenced--compelled, even-- by the setting, not just moving through it as if it's a backdrop on a stage.

Are there details and descriptions about that place that surprise and delight me? Am I learning new things about the era and the place in which the book takes place?

Unlike many readers who rhapsodized about Charles Frazier's bestselling "Cold Mountain," I didn't find the novel compelling enough to finish. Could've been that the book came to me at the wrong place and time in my reading life. Could've been I'd read my fill of Civil War era novels. I can't quite remember.

But I knew from the opening paragraph of Frazier's new book, "The Trackers," that this time it would be different.

Set in the years between the Depression and World War II, when struggling Americans were living rough in "Hoovervilles" and young people were "moving like a rain cloud all around the country, hungry and dirty and scared" the book unfolds at the foot of the Wind River Mountain range in Wyoming and then on a cross country road trip.

Our narrator is a young WPA artist, Val Welch, who has been hired to paint a mural at a Wyoming post office. He's been advised by a mentor to do the work and move on.

But Val's friendship with the town's wealthy Big Boss, John Long, and the boss's wife, Eve, will set him on a mission that will test his ideas of who he is and what he wants.

We enter the humid swamps of interior Florida, the half-lit night clubs of San Francisco and the foggy reaches of Seattle with Val as he encounters eccentric and sometimes violent characters who speak in the kind of rugged poetry you find in a James Lee Burke novel.

Frazier's descriptions are vibrant and bright, detailed and memorable.

He confides in his Author's Note that he turned to the American Guide Series, WPA-sponsored guidebooks written by esteemed authors like Zora Neale Hurston and Ralph Ellison, for a sense of what it was like on the open in the late 30's.

One more thing: Frazier has one of the best answers I've ever read to the New York Times' By the Book question: "Describe Your Ideal Reading Experience?"

"A tiny navy-and-yellow nylon tent. Twelve thousand feet elevation in the Cordillera Blanca, Peru. Warm light from a brass candle lantern. James Wright's "This Journey/" 1982.

Who's Up for an Adventure to Antarctica??

I recently read Sara Wheeler's "Terra Incognita" and it galvanized me to move from dreaming about a SirenSojourn to the White Continent to actually planning one.

Target date: Jan/Feb, 2025.

Likely a 10 to 12 day cruise with a pre-trip extension in South America.

Okay, who wants to come along???

Fragrant Forests, Finca Vigia & Afternoons with Cuba's Writers & Artists

This is the adventure I've always wanted to do in Cuba. The full itinerary is up and the April departure is almost sold out. Openings are available for our March 30th departure.
https://www.sirensojourns.com/cuba

Email me at SirenSojourns@gmail.com.

Far From Card Catalogs & Story-Time

I've written about what it's like to be a librarian in the age of book bans. Here's an excerpt about a librarian who tangled with book banners and what it cost her. To read the full story, go to NextAvenue.org. later this month.

Amanda Jones has a book deal. She’s the recipient of a national award from school librarians for intellectual freedom. Her Twitter handle reads “Defender of Libraries and Wonder.” A documentary crew is making a film about her experience.

But she’s been on medical leave. She’s in therapy. She was on anxiety medication for a while. Her hair fell out. And when I catch her for an interview at the American Librarians Association meeting in June in Chicago, where she’s been received with warm applause, she wrings her hands for a long moment before she stops.

The vitriol, the violent threats and the relentless targeting on Facebook from parents who excoriate Jones for opposing bans on books in public and school libraries in her hometown of Livingston, Louisiana have left an indelible mark.

“When it first happened last July and August, I was a shell of the person I had been. I didn’t go out in public, I’ve got groceries delivered, I bought Mace and a taser, we’ve got security cameras.”

Jones also obtained a license for carrying a gun “for when I have to travel in back roads because I live in a rural area.”

“They wanted me to be silent. I’m going to do the opposite. I’m going to speak out.”