Two exciting novels today from Minnesota writers who are also poets. One is a coming-of-age story set during prohibition. The other shows the strength of Ojibwe women.
“The Last Tale of Norah Bow”: by J.P. White (Regal House Publishing, $19.95)
One of the men conked Uncle Bill with the butt of his gun. Bill slumped and fell out of his chair, blood gushing from his forehead. A moan trickled out of my uncle’s chest. The man in the middle whipped out a black sack and cinched it over Daddy’s head. I looked at the head in the black sack. I didn’t hear a sound from Daddy. –from “The Last Tale of Norah Bow.”
From the first pages of J.P. White’s second novel (after “Every Boat Turns South”), we cheer for plain-spoken, almost fearless Norah Bow, a 14-year-old who sets out, somewhat foolishly, to find her dad. It’s 1926, Prohibition is making a lot of people rich, and Norah finds herself in the middle of rumrunners, shady men, assorted odd characters and, most of all, on Lake Erie in the sailboat she and her dad made from the finest wood they could afford.
White, who has published six poetry collections, shows his lyrical way with words in this story that is also thrilling when Norah fights a storm that almost swamps her boat. His account is drawn from his experiences growing up in a sailing family on the lake. ” My poetry and fiction nearly always circle back to elemental forces I was first exposed to as a child,” he writes on his website.
Norah lives in Rye Beach, close to Sandusky, Ohio. One night she is surprised to see her dad helping load a boat with booze. This is not the Daddy she knew. A few days later, in the middle of dinner, three men burst into the family’s home and abduct him. Nora’s dad always told her they shared a “demon switch” that pushed them to action and Norah’s switch is turned on when she takes her boat onto Lake Erie at night, aiming for an island where she thinks her dad might be held. In the middle of the lake Norah finds Ruby, wet and shivering, who says she had been on a boat with some men.
Enigmatic Ruby is fascinating to Norah: “There was more rough than tender with this woman, a hard shine to her skin and a shrouded depth, her hair red as sundown, a beauty spilling out of a dress that would turn a priest into an eyeball sinner. Red hair, green eyes, something of the martyr turned gypsy. Her fingers rolled over her lips like she was looking to snag the right words to win me over to her cause.”
Norah, who is telling her story as an old woman, spends time traveling with Ruby, but the beautiful woman leaves with a man and Norah is on her own for a while. She leans that her dad is most likely in Detroit, where the “whiskey river” begins and ends as illegal booze is shipped from Canada to Detroit under the guise of being sent to foreign countries
As Norah looks for information about her father she gets into some situations she doesn’t know how to handle. She talks tough but she’s still a teenager. That’s when Ruby, who has experience on the seamy side of life, helps Norah make sense of what’s going on. But Ruby has secrets of her own that will tangle Norah’s search for her dad even more.
In the middle of the story Norah meets a boy who lives on the river. They only kiss and aren’t together very long, but White manages to tell an entire love story in just a few pages with the skill of a poet who knows how to convey emotion with a minimum of words.
Besides sailing as a youngster, White worked in the early 1980s delivering sailboats up and down the Eastern seaboard, to the Bahamas and the Caribbean. He sails a Cape Dory 25D out of St. Louis Bay on Lake Minnetonka. He is an award-winning writer who in the last 30 years has published essays, articles, fiction, reviews, interviews and poetry in more than 100 national publications.
White will launch his novel at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 27, at Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls., in conversation with Steve Berg, journalist and fiction writer who lives in Asheville, N.C., and Minneapolis. Registration required: magersandquinn.com/events.
“Where They Last Saw Her”: by Marcie R. Rendon (Bantam, $18).
She felt anger on the verge of rage that pipeline workers were invading her rez. Making her woods and roads unsafe places for her to be, to live her life. Building a pipeline that would surely break and contaminate the water around them for generations. Abducting women, which left the community always on the edge of fear. There were generations of women raped and children stolen. — from “Where They Last Saw Her”
After writing three popular mysteries featuring Cash Blackbear, Marcie Rendon returns with a stand-alone novel that highlights her continuing concern about abducted/killed/sex-trafficked Native women and children and the strength of Ojibwe women. (Rendon is a citizen of the White Earth Anishinaabe Nation.)
Quill has lived on the Red Pine reservation her entire life. She’s happily married to Crow, a mechanic who keeps the community’s old vehicles running. Both adore their children, 10-year-old Niswi Anang, named for one of the three sisters of the sky, and Jackson “Baby Boy,” who’s 3.
When Quill was 9, she saw one of her friends die by suicide by jumping off a railroad bridge. She started running as fast as she could for help, but it came too late. Since then she has lived with acute anxiety only relieved by running. As the story begins she is training for the Duluth and Boston marathons. Running through the woods surrounding the reservation she hears a woman screaming. Later, she returns to the place where she heard the cry and finds tire tracks and a beautifully beaded earring.
A sense of dread runs through the reservation when it’s discovered a woman is missing. Then two women are abducted from the casino under mysterious circ*mstances. What is happening in their once-safe little community? Quill and her best friends and running partners, Gaylyn and Punk, are ready to help. Gaylyn is “a woman of few words” whose temper is boiling below the surface. Punk has a green mohawk haircut that matches the green of her contact lenses, facial piercings and tattoos.
Quill sometimes makes unwise but brave decisions, much to the consternation of her husband, who keeps reminding her that she is a wife and mother and should leave the investigations to the tribal police and state law enforcement. As Quill puzzles over the missing women, she’s concerned about Punk, who she knows is in a new relationship with a just-hired member of the police department. But when Punk doesn’t return phone calls, and her house is dark and empty, Quill begins to unravel the mysteries and puts herself at such risk that Crow leaves her and takes the children with him.
Why is a big, black vehicle following her? Why is she threatened by a bearded man in the casino parking lot? Will Quill pay the price of losing her family to find out what happened to her friend and the missing women?
When Quill becomes a target herself, she needs all her brains to save herself and another woman.
There is so much to like about this story, from well-drawn secondary characters to how Quill is torn between family and her perceived obligation to her community. There is a lot of love for Ojibwe women, too, especially when Quill and the women elders show solidarity by arranging a run from the reservation to a small town, all wearing red ribbon skirts (except for Quill who doesn’t have one) because red is the only color the spirits can see. Quill’s anger at what the pipeline workers have done to her reservation is palpable. The men bring in a lot of money for local restaurants and motels known as “man camps,” but they have no wives or girlfriends with them. So some loiter at the casino, fight a lot and harass the Indian women.
After writing three mysteries about Cash Blackbear, Rendon has imagined a very different character in Quill. Cash is a single, 19-year-old pool hustler who “sees things” in visions and dreams. Her stories are set in the 1970s. Quill is a wife and mother who has created a loving home with her husband. “Where They Last Saw Her” could be the beginning of a new series. We’ll have to see where multi-talented Rendon goes from here.
Rendon will launch her book Tuesday, Sept. 3, at Once Upon a Crime, 604 W. 26th St., Mpls., and visit bookstores in Duluth, Northfield and Bemidji in September.
