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China: Portrait of a People became a book by accident. Tom Carter did not fly to China to be a photo journalist or to become an author. Enticed by Ads that said “Teach English in China—No Experience Necessary”, Carter packed his bags and left San Francisco.
When Carter arrived in China, the school that accepted his application turned out to be a nickel-and-dime operation run out of an apartment by a guy in his bathrobe. Cater had traveled across the Pacific for a job and found himself out of work before he even started.
On the other hand, Carter isn’t the type to give up easily. In short order, he found a position and salary more attractive than the one originally accepted. However, the work load was a challenge. He found himself teaching thirty classes a week and spending most of his free time planning lessons. He was often up at the break of day and didn’t return home until after ten in the evening.
After several years of teaching English to Chinese students, Carter decided to take his hard earned savings and become a tourist. He wanted to see all of China first hand.
Most tourists travel by jet or bus and spend nights in four or five star hotels sleeping on plush beds. They eat at the best restaurants. Only a few visit countries like Sir Richard Francis Burton, the famous nineteenth century explorer and adventurer. Tom Carter is one of those few. Imagine backpacking for two years and walking 35,000 miles to capture the heart and soul of a nation. That’s what Tom Carter did. The result became China: Portrait of People
The consensus among ‘backpackers’ is that China is probably the single most challenging country in the world to visit on foot. That by itself should say a lot.
There are more than 1.3 billion people in China. Besides the majority Han Chinese, the population includes fifty-six ethnic groups numbering over one hundred million. Carter saw them all from the teenage girl living in Chengdu dressed like an American punk rocker to the soot covered coal miner in Southern Shanxi.
Tom Carter’s metamorphosis from an English teacher into a guerrilla hit and run photojournalist with a camera instead of a grenade launcher took place over a few months. To take the up-close and personal pictures in China: Portrait of a People, Carter risked jail; almost froze on the way to Tibet; faced exhaustion and hunger; was beaten by drunks; plagued by viral infections, and risked being shot by North Korean border guards. The photos in ‘Portrait’ are priceless. I doubt if there will ever be another book about China like this one. From Inner Mongolian nomads to newlyweds in Hong Kong, Carter saw it all.
There is an old saying that a picture is equal to a thousand words. Great pictures tell stories. In China: Portrait of a People, each picture is worth ten thousand words. Carter’s portrait of China stands alone in its genre as it focuses expressly on the Chinese people. Carter backpacked to remote areas to visit China’s minorities like the thousand year old Phoenix Village perched over the Tuo Jiang River or the seventy-five year old Pai Yao minority farmer in his red turban.
To reach some locations, Carter had to travel on foot through rugged terrain. To get an idea what I’m talking about, consider that China, almost the size of the United States, uses only sixteen percent of its land for growing crops. The rest is either mountains or deserts.
Inside “Portrait’, you will see what happens when a modern day Sir Richard Francis Burton spends two years backpacking through China’s thirty-three provinces and autonomous regions, not once but twice. During this odyssey, Carter discovered a friendly, open hearted people.
If you plan to visit China, buy this book before you go. On the other hand, if you are an armchair tourist that never strays far from home, Carter’s Rembrandt ‘Portrait’ of China will not disappoint. You will chuckle when you see the twin boys walking out of the river after a swim or watch an eight year old student acrobat at Wuqiao bending herself like a folded sheet of paper.
Between the covers of ‘Portrait’, you will start on a vicarious journey visiting China like few have done even among the Chinese. You will travel on this 35,000 mile journey without leaving your house, bus or jet seat.
There is no way that this review can do justice for a book like China: Portrait of a People. To try would require millions of words. Seeing is believing. What are you waiting for? Take that first step.
Book review by Lloyd Lofthouse, author of My Splendid Concubine
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(2 of 2 readers found this comment helpful)
Bringing the Wild Rivers and Wilderness Campfires Home
Reading “It Takes One to Catch One” by Steven A. Knutson, was like being in the high Sierras near the John Muir trail under stars spread across the bowl of night like a crowded field full of blooming flowers sitting around a camp fire chased by wisps of smoke swapping stories with friends now gone. I’ve done that and more. But I haven’t hunted and fished like this author has. I haven’t been close to a grizzly with two cubs--so close that Knutson felt the touch of death as he tensed waiting for the claws and teeth to slash and bite.
The author of “Catch One” will tell you that this is fiction. It’s not fiction. It’s captured memories that are like a wild beast, and the story meanders as the author travels back through the years. Sure, there are flaws, but those flaws make this work perfect in the way it captures a wild, dying world most of us will never experience as we are tamed and conditioned to fool ourselves that we are free in noisy, crowded, smelly cities shared with graffiti, gangs and gray CO2 skies. What most of us breathe is not the pure air of Knutson’s world.
Every sentence; every fragment and every run-on or intended, misspelled word along with happy or unhappy faces in places of periods, sculpt a unique image of the author and the world he grew and lived in—a place most of us will never see as corporations and greed pave nature and turn it into a parking lots surrounded by condos, casinos and strip malls.
Knutson’s style is like ‘sitting around a wilderness campfire’ with bears, moose, dear and bobcat lurking nearby in the brush waiting. As you read, you might find yourself wondering what kind of rifle or pistol you have or should have and is it ready. If you want the rivers and mountains and forests of this world to stay wild, don’t tame this book. If you love to fish, Knutson’s stories will send you places you may only dreamed about.
To tame this precious beast that Knutson calls “It Takes One To Catch One” would be a crime. I’m sure some editor or grammar maven with a corn cob stuck up his ‘you know what’ would do it because of short sighted stupidity. If you are one of those ‘stuck in the mud’ editorial types, you might not like what a home-spun, wilderness artist does with the written word. To bad, your loss--our gain. Before I go any further, I want to point out that I taught English grammar and literature for thirty years. I also edit my wife’s novels (printed and sold in more than thirty languages and countries) before her manuscripts go to her publisher. I feel strongly that a style that goes with the character and voice of the artist are more important than a missing comma or quotation mark; fragment or run-on sentence.
I love to read books that take me places I have not been. “It Takes One to Catch One” was one of those books. I watched Knutson fish and trap not only wild animals for food and fur along with criminal types that would ruin what’s left of nature for a profit but also the car of a neighbor trying to run down another neighbor’s dog.
If you are a Bambi lover (a person that doesn‘t know what living in the real world means), someone that thinks squirrels and bears and deer are cuddly and cute creatures created by a Disney cartoon, this book is not for you. It will probably give Bambi lovers nightmares. On the other hand, if you miss being out in the wilderness and understand that ‘wild’ means danger of another type and you embrace that danger, don’t miss out on the adventures in “It Takes One To Catch One”. There are two-hundred-and-seventy-eight pages of laughter and ‘seat-of-the-pants’ adventure waiting.
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(4 of 6 readers found this comment helpful)
My father loved opera and classical music. I grew up listening to Bach, Beethoven and Mozart. Not until Mozart’s Wife did I put a face on one of the men that wrote that music, and he turned out to be bigger than life.
I started writing the review in my head for Mozart’s Wife by Juliet Waldron before I was halfway through reading the novel. In my opinion, it’s that good—a strong six stars out of five. This is no Hollywood stereotype with a happy prince charming ending although that also happens—sort of.
This is a get-in-the-gutter with the rats kind of story that hides nothing. There are no devils here. There are no angels either. There are only real, flesh and blood people. If you want an entertaining trip to discover Mozart, the man behind the music, your journey ends here. This novel delivers. Mozart’s Wife is a story that had me laughing, shuddering and exhausted but satisfied by the end.
Mozart’s Wife paints a convincing picture of Mozart as the first superstar with all of the dangers that title entails. Today, the tabloids would have had a field day with Mozart. The paparazzi would have chased him everywhere. Cameras, action, lights and freeway car chases would have been daily fare for this man and his family.
Then, in the beautiful white-and-gold Tyl Theater, I witnessed something I’ll never forget. The delirious passion of Prague for the ‘Marriage of Figaro’ had been but a prelude.
By the time the old commendatore lay dead at the feet of the wicked Don Giovanni, the audience had gone completely mad. The applause, the shouts of “Bravo!” were ear-splitting.
In the box where Josefa and I sat, we could feel the building tremble. Clouds of hats and handkerchiefs flew into the air after each ‘aria’. Confetti rained into the orchestra and onto the stage. There was encore after encore.
Mozart was a wild man. He drank. He partied. He seduced endless women that threw themselves in front of him like doorstops. He didn’t have brakes, and it was his wife that suffered and was corrupted. She was the one that starts out as an innocent beauty with visions of prince charming and ends up wounded like so many that have followed in her footsteps since with other superstars. Pretty Konstanze is the flower that opens, changes color and almost wilts in the process
Then I’d remember Elise, or worse, Magdalena.
“You liar!” I’d scream and push him away. “You broke my heart!”
Mozart doesn’t have much of a character arc in the novel, but that does not detract because the novel opens up Mozart and dissects him as the story goes along. Mozart is the same man from beginning to end. Nothing changes him, but you will have to read Mozart’s Wife to find out what that means. Slowly, we discover his moral corruption step by shadowy step as it is revealed inches at a time. The cost of his fame eats him like a malignant cancer from the inside out and like his wife, we are in the room standing beside her experiencing Mozart’s decline in all its tragedy. Mozart’s superstar status across Europe makes him the bell of the ball until he ruins his reputation and loses his welcome in cultured society. Even that is not enough to stop him.
“How could you! How could you! In our own house! Pig! Taking advantage of your own poor, wretched servant!”
He has his followers, both parasites and sycophants, along with a handful of real friends that support him and his wife until the end.
When we meet Konstance, his wife, as a young girl, Mozart is busy seducing her older sister. After the older sister, Aloysia, gets tired of waiting for Mozart and marries another man, Konstance becomes the consolation prize for Herr Kapellmeister. Her innocence captures his heart and there is no doubt that he loves her through the entire novel to his bitter end.
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(4 of 9 readers found this comment helpful)
The Confederate War Bonnet, A Novel of the Civil War in Indian Territory, by Jack Shakely should be required reading in America’s public schools. Not only is War Bonnet entertaining; it is educational as well. The reader gets a peek into the dark side of greed and corruption with American Indians as the not-so-helpless victims.
I’ve always been interested in history (including the Civil War), not the dry kind that puts you to sleep in the classroom, but the kind that keeps you riveted because the characters ride off the page shooting and shouting..
Jack Gaston, the main, real-life character of War Bonnet is in his third year at Harvard University when the Civil War starts. His closest friend and blood brother arrives with bad news. Jack’s father has been murdered, and the Creek Tribal Council has elected Jack as a chief in the House of Warriors. Half of the Creek nation has decided to join the Confederacy in the War Between the States, and Jack is to become a Captain in the Southern Army.
Not only does Jack go to war but he falls in love with a half Apache nurse tending to the Creek people and warriors wounded in battles. War Bonnet helps reveal a little-known part of the Civil War where American Indians sided with the Confederacy because of the way the tribes had been treated by corrupt Union politicians and bureaucrats full of false promises. The Indian leaders are tired of being lied to and cheated. The Confederacy has promised to treat them as equals and with respect.
The Creek nation divides between the South and the North. Near the end of the Civil War, Jack is called before the Principal Chief of the tribes that sided with the North.
“All of our destinies may be in the dust, unless we do something now,” Micco Hutke said in the same soothing voice he had used earlier. “To heal our wounds and bring us together as one people is something we must strive to achieve, and we give you our thanks for offering your hand in peace. But are we to become a Nation without a nation, like the poor Sac and Fox? The (northern) government tells us that even though we remained loyal, we are now ‘renegades’ and all of our treaties must be rewritten.”
I spent thirty years as a teacher in the public schools teaching English literature, and if we are to continue to be a great nation, at least the kind of nation many of us will be proud of, we have to know about the darker chapters in our history. The Confederate War Bonnet is more than a story about the trials and tribulations of war and love. War Bonnet delves into the war between the forces of evil and good.
To find out if good prevails, I recommend that you buy and read The Confederate War Bonnet. If you are a student of the Civil war and the American west, this is a novel that will not disappoint.. Jack Shakely is a fourth-generation Oklahoman of Creek descent. In The Confederate War Bonnet, Shakely has done a service to two nations.
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(4 of 7 readers found this comment helpful)
Some movies bring tears to my eyes; books seldom do.
High Spirits starts with the haunting of Hydesville in 1848. It follows the real life adventures of two sisters, Maggie and Kate Fox. Maggie starts the story by telling us that she began the ‘deception’ when she was too young to know right from wrong. Kate, the younger of the two, regrets her sister’s use of that word. To Kate, the dead are real, and the spirits talk to her.
I have well over a hundred books sitting on bookshelves in my study. Some of them I’ve already started. Since I lost interest in most of them, the bookmarks are still waiting between early pages for me to return. Many of the books I buy end up neglected orphans in need of foster parents.
Books on the best seller lists seldom satisfy me, because they are shallow or seem like a story I’ve already read. It’s almost as if most of them were chosen by those politically correct people we know are out there monitoring what we say and think and learn—people very much like a ‘few’ of the characters in High Spirits.
However, when I find a novel worth reading, it’s like walking into an undiscovered country. High Spirits was one of those.
High Spirits is about the lives of the Fox family and two sisters that are devoted to each other. Kate and Maggie are credited with starting the spiritualist movement as a prank. When I first picked up High Spirits, I thought I was going to be reading about ghosts and romance.
To my surprise and satisfaction, I soon discovered that High Spirits offers much more. High Spirits turned out to be a story told on many levels. At times I found myself chuckling. At other times I found myself sitting on the edge of my seat wondering if one of the characters I liked was about to suffer a horrible fate.
High Spirits is also about a dysfunctional but loving and loyal family surviving in a cruel world. On a more personal note, they are like us. It is easy to identify with them. When danger looms from skeptics that threaten Maggie’s life, her older sister Leah Fox rescues her in a daring and risky escape that leaves Maggie in heart-pounding terror. Just thinking about myself in the same situation under the same circumstances had me breaking out in a cold sweat, and I’m a combat veteran that served in Vietnam. Maggie was a young girl.
The romance in High Spirits arrives later in the story. Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, the most widely celebrated American adventurer of the day, eventually walks on stage and fall “madly” in love with Maggie. What turns out to be a complex relationship stands equal to Romeo and Juliet; Tristan & Isolde, and Tony and Maria of West Side Story. That’s as far as I’ll go. My lips are now zipped shut. Hollywood, pay attention. Stories like this are rare, and Maggie and Elisha were real people.
In High Spirits, the harsh lines that separate the privileged and powerful from the working class show that dysfunctional people come from all levels of society. However, those at the top have the power to do more damage. What they are capable of doing to hurt others is more like a tidal wave washing over distant shores and leaving nothing but destruction and misery in its wake. When Elisha’s mother interferes with his love for Maggie, horrible consequences are set in motion.
Although High Spirits reveals that most of us are human at heart, a few inhuman monsters populate our world and wreck havoc wherever they can for selfish, egotistical reasons.
If you are looking for adventure, romance, heartbreak, a bit of history, and a story that will touch you, I recommend this novel. Reading High Spirits will be a journey of discovery that might squeeze out a tear or two like it did for me.
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(6 of 9 readers found this comment helpful)
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China: Portrait of a People by Tom Carter
lflwriter, April 12, 2010
China: Portrait of a People became a book by accident. Tom Carter did not fly to China to be a photo journalist or to become an author. Enticed by Ads that said “Teach English in China—No Experience Necessary”, Carter packed his bags and left San Francisco.When Carter arrived in China, the school that accepted his application turned out to be a nickel-and-dime operation run out of an apartment by a guy in his bathrobe. Cater had traveled across the Pacific for a job and found himself out of work before he even started.
On the other hand, Carter isn’t the type to give up easily. In short order, he found a position and salary more attractive than the one originally accepted. However, the work load was a challenge. He found himself teaching thirty classes a week and spending most of his free time planning lessons. He was often up at the break of day and didn’t return home until after ten in the evening.
After several years of teaching English to Chinese students, Carter decided to take his hard earned savings and become a tourist. He wanted to see all of China first hand.
Most tourists travel by jet or bus and spend nights in four or five star hotels sleeping on plush beds. They eat at the best restaurants. Only a few visit countries like Sir Richard Francis Burton, the famous nineteenth century explorer and adventurer. Tom Carter is one of those few. Imagine backpacking for two years and walking 35,000 miles to capture the heart and soul of a nation. That’s what Tom Carter did. The result became China: Portrait of People
The consensus among ‘backpackers’ is that China is probably the single most challenging country in the world to visit on foot. That by itself should say a lot.
There are more than 1.3 billion people in China. Besides the majority Han Chinese, the population includes fifty-six ethnic groups numbering over one hundred million. Carter saw them all from the teenage girl living in Chengdu dressed like an American punk rocker to the soot covered coal miner in Southern Shanxi.
Tom Carter’s metamorphosis from an English teacher into a guerrilla hit and run photojournalist with a camera instead of a grenade launcher took place over a few months. To take the up-close and personal pictures in China: Portrait of a People, Carter risked jail; almost froze on the way to Tibet; faced exhaustion and hunger; was beaten by drunks; plagued by viral infections, and risked being shot by North Korean border guards. The photos in ‘Portrait’ are priceless. I doubt if there will ever be another book about China like this one. From Inner Mongolian nomads to newlyweds in Hong Kong, Carter saw it all.
There is an old saying that a picture is equal to a thousand words. Great pictures tell stories. In China: Portrait of a People, each picture is worth ten thousand words. Carter’s portrait of China stands alone in its genre as it focuses expressly on the Chinese people. Carter backpacked to remote areas to visit China’s minorities like the thousand year old Phoenix Village perched over the Tuo Jiang River or the seventy-five year old Pai Yao minority farmer in his red turban.
To reach some locations, Carter had to travel on foot through rugged terrain. To get an idea what I’m talking about, consider that China, almost the size of the United States, uses only sixteen percent of its land for growing crops. The rest is either mountains or deserts.
Inside “Portrait’, you will see what happens when a modern day Sir Richard Francis Burton spends two years backpacking through China’s thirty-three provinces and autonomous regions, not once but twice. During this odyssey, Carter discovered a friendly, open hearted people.
If you plan to visit China, buy this book before you go. On the other hand, if you are an armchair tourist that never strays far from home, Carter’s Rembrandt ‘Portrait’ of China will not disappoint. You will chuckle when you see the twin boys walking out of the river after a swim or watch an eight year old student acrobat at Wuqiao bending herself like a folded sheet of paper.
Between the covers of ‘Portrait’, you will start on a vicarious journey visiting China like few have done even among the Chinese. You will travel on this 35,000 mile journey without leaving your house, bus or jet seat.
There is no way that this review can do justice for a book like China: Portrait of a People. To try would require millions of words. Seeing is believing. What are you waiting for? Take that first step.
Book review by Lloyd Lofthouse, author of My Splendid Concubine
(2 of 2 readers found this comment helpful)
It Takes One to Catch One by Steven A. Knutson
lflwriter, August 28, 2008
Bringing the Wild Rivers and Wilderness Campfires HomeReading “It Takes One to Catch One” by Steven A. Knutson, was like being in the high Sierras near the John Muir trail under stars spread across the bowl of night like a crowded field full of blooming flowers sitting around a camp fire chased by wisps of smoke swapping stories with friends now gone. I’ve done that and more. But I haven’t hunted and fished like this author has. I haven’t been close to a grizzly with two cubs--so close that Knutson felt the touch of death as he tensed waiting for the claws and teeth to slash and bite.
The author of “Catch One” will tell you that this is fiction. It’s not fiction. It’s captured memories that are like a wild beast, and the story meanders as the author travels back through the years. Sure, there are flaws, but those flaws make this work perfect in the way it captures a wild, dying world most of us will never experience as we are tamed and conditioned to fool ourselves that we are free in noisy, crowded, smelly cities shared with graffiti, gangs and gray CO2 skies. What most of us breathe is not the pure air of Knutson’s world.
Every sentence; every fragment and every run-on or intended, misspelled word along with happy or unhappy faces in places of periods, sculpt a unique image of the author and the world he grew and lived in—a place most of us will never see as corporations and greed pave nature and turn it into a parking lots surrounded by condos, casinos and strip malls.
Knutson’s style is like ‘sitting around a wilderness campfire’ with bears, moose, dear and bobcat lurking nearby in the brush waiting. As you read, you might find yourself wondering what kind of rifle or pistol you have or should have and is it ready. If you want the rivers and mountains and forests of this world to stay wild, don’t tame this book. If you love to fish, Knutson’s stories will send you places you may only dreamed about.
To tame this precious beast that Knutson calls “It Takes One To Catch One” would be a crime. I’m sure some editor or grammar maven with a corn cob stuck up his ‘you know what’ would do it because of short sighted stupidity. If you are one of those ‘stuck in the mud’ editorial types, you might not like what a home-spun, wilderness artist does with the written word. To bad, your loss--our gain. Before I go any further, I want to point out that I taught English grammar and literature for thirty years. I also edit my wife’s novels (printed and sold in more than thirty languages and countries) before her manuscripts go to her publisher. I feel strongly that a style that goes with the character and voice of the artist are more important than a missing comma or quotation mark; fragment or run-on sentence.
I love to read books that take me places I have not been. “It Takes One to Catch One” was one of those books. I watched Knutson fish and trap not only wild animals for food and fur along with criminal types that would ruin what’s left of nature for a profit but also the car of a neighbor trying to run down another neighbor’s dog.
If you are a Bambi lover (a person that doesn‘t know what living in the real world means), someone that thinks squirrels and bears and deer are cuddly and cute creatures created by a Disney cartoon, this book is not for you. It will probably give Bambi lovers nightmares. On the other hand, if you miss being out in the wilderness and understand that ‘wild’ means danger of another type and you embrace that danger, don’t miss out on the adventures in “It Takes One To Catch One”. There are two-hundred-and-seventy-eight pages of laughter and ‘seat-of-the-pants’ adventure waiting.
(4 of 6 readers found this comment helpful)
Mozart's Wife by Juliet Waldron
lflwriter, July 13, 2008
Reviewed by Lloyd LofthouseMy father loved opera and classical music. I grew up listening to Bach, Beethoven and Mozart. Not until Mozart’s Wife did I put a face on one of the men that wrote that music, and he turned out to be bigger than life.
I started writing the review in my head for Mozart’s Wife by Juliet Waldron before I was halfway through reading the novel. In my opinion, it’s that good—a strong six stars out of five. This is no Hollywood stereotype with a happy prince charming ending although that also happens—sort of.
This is a get-in-the-gutter with the rats kind of story that hides nothing. There are no devils here. There are no angels either. There are only real, flesh and blood people. If you want an entertaining trip to discover Mozart, the man behind the music, your journey ends here. This novel delivers. Mozart’s Wife is a story that had me laughing, shuddering and exhausted but satisfied by the end.
Mozart’s Wife paints a convincing picture of Mozart as the first superstar with all of the dangers that title entails. Today, the tabloids would have had a field day with Mozart. The paparazzi would have chased him everywhere. Cameras, action, lights and freeway car chases would have been daily fare for this man and his family.
Then, in the beautiful white-and-gold Tyl Theater, I witnessed something I’ll never forget. The delirious passion of Prague for the ‘Marriage of Figaro’ had been but a prelude.
By the time the old commendatore lay dead at the feet of the wicked Don Giovanni, the audience had gone completely mad. The applause, the shouts of “Bravo!” were ear-splitting.
In the box where Josefa and I sat, we could feel the building tremble. Clouds of hats and handkerchiefs flew into the air after each ‘aria’. Confetti rained into the orchestra and onto the stage. There was encore after encore.
Mozart was a wild man. He drank. He partied. He seduced endless women that threw themselves in front of him like doorstops. He didn’t have brakes, and it was his wife that suffered and was corrupted. She was the one that starts out as an innocent beauty with visions of prince charming and ends up wounded like so many that have followed in her footsteps since with other superstars. Pretty Konstanze is the flower that opens, changes color and almost wilts in the process
Then I’d remember Elise, or worse, Magdalena.
“You liar!” I’d scream and push him away. “You broke my heart!”
Mozart doesn’t have much of a character arc in the novel, but that does not detract because the novel opens up Mozart and dissects him as the story goes along. Mozart is the same man from beginning to end. Nothing changes him, but you will have to read Mozart’s Wife to find out what that means. Slowly, we discover his moral corruption step by shadowy step as it is revealed inches at a time. The cost of his fame eats him like a malignant cancer from the inside out and like his wife, we are in the room standing beside her experiencing Mozart’s decline in all its tragedy. Mozart’s superstar status across Europe makes him the bell of the ball until he ruins his reputation and loses his welcome in cultured society. Even that is not enough to stop him.
“How could you! How could you! In our own house! Pig! Taking advantage of your own poor, wretched servant!”
He has his followers, both parasites and sycophants, along with a handful of real friends that support him and his wife until the end.
When we meet Konstance, his wife, as a young girl, Mozart is busy seducing her older sister. After the older sister, Aloysia, gets tired of waiting for Mozart and marries another man, Konstance becomes the consolation prize for Herr Kapellmeister. Her innocence captures his heart and there is no doubt that he loves her through the entire novel to his bitter end.
(4 of 9 readers found this comment helpful)
The Confederate War Bonnet: A Novel of the Civil War in Indian Territory
lflwriter, May 10, 2008
The Confederate War Bonnet, A Novel of the Civil War in Indian Territory, by Jack Shakely should be required reading in America’s public schools. Not only is War Bonnet entertaining; it is educational as well. The reader gets a peek into the dark side of greed and corruption with American Indians as the not-so-helpless victims.I’ve always been interested in history (including the Civil War), not the dry kind that puts you to sleep in the classroom, but the kind that keeps you riveted because the characters ride off the page shooting and shouting..
Jack Gaston, the main, real-life character of War Bonnet is in his third year at Harvard University when the Civil War starts. His closest friend and blood brother arrives with bad news. Jack’s father has been murdered, and the Creek Tribal Council has elected Jack as a chief in the House of Warriors. Half of the Creek nation has decided to join the Confederacy in the War Between the States, and Jack is to become a Captain in the Southern Army.
Not only does Jack go to war but he falls in love with a half Apache nurse tending to the Creek people and warriors wounded in battles. War Bonnet helps reveal a little-known part of the Civil War where American Indians sided with the Confederacy because of the way the tribes had been treated by corrupt Union politicians and bureaucrats full of false promises. The Indian leaders are tired of being lied to and cheated. The Confederacy has promised to treat them as equals and with respect.
The Creek nation divides between the South and the North. Near the end of the Civil War, Jack is called before the Principal Chief of the tribes that sided with the North.
“All of our destinies may be in the dust, unless we do something now,” Micco Hutke said in the same soothing voice he had used earlier. “To heal our wounds and bring us together as one people is something we must strive to achieve, and we give you our thanks for offering your hand in peace. But are we to become a Nation without a nation, like the poor Sac and Fox? The (northern) government tells us that even though we remained loyal, we are now ‘renegades’ and all of our treaties must be rewritten.”
I spent thirty years as a teacher in the public schools teaching English literature, and if we are to continue to be a great nation, at least the kind of nation many of us will be proud of, we have to know about the darker chapters in our history. The Confederate War Bonnet is more than a story about the trials and tribulations of war and love. War Bonnet delves into the war between the forces of evil and good.
To find out if good prevails, I recommend that you buy and read The Confederate War Bonnet. If you are a student of the Civil war and the American west, this is a novel that will not disappoint.. Jack Shakely is a fourth-generation Oklahoman of Creek descent. In The Confederate War Bonnet, Shakely has done a service to two nations.
(4 of 7 readers found this comment helpful)
High Spirits: A Tale of Ghostly Rapping and Romance
lflwriter, April 3, 2008
Some movies bring tears to my eyes; books seldom do.High Spirits starts with the haunting of Hydesville in 1848. It follows the real life adventures of two sisters, Maggie and Kate Fox. Maggie starts the story by telling us that she began the ‘deception’ when she was too young to know right from wrong. Kate, the younger of the two, regrets her sister’s use of that word. To Kate, the dead are real, and the spirits talk to her.
I have well over a hundred books sitting on bookshelves in my study. Some of them I’ve already started. Since I lost interest in most of them, the bookmarks are still waiting between early pages for me to return. Many of the books I buy end up neglected orphans in need of foster parents.
Books on the best seller lists seldom satisfy me, because they are shallow or seem like a story I’ve already read. It’s almost as if most of them were chosen by those politically correct people we know are out there monitoring what we say and think and learn—people very much like a ‘few’ of the characters in High Spirits.
However, when I find a novel worth reading, it’s like walking into an undiscovered country. High Spirits was one of those.
High Spirits is about the lives of the Fox family and two sisters that are devoted to each other. Kate and Maggie are credited with starting the spiritualist movement as a prank. When I first picked up High Spirits, I thought I was going to be reading about ghosts and romance.
To my surprise and satisfaction, I soon discovered that High Spirits offers much more. High Spirits turned out to be a story told on many levels. At times I found myself chuckling. At other times I found myself sitting on the edge of my seat wondering if one of the characters I liked was about to suffer a horrible fate.
High Spirits is also about a dysfunctional but loving and loyal family surviving in a cruel world. On a more personal note, they are like us. It is easy to identify with them. When danger looms from skeptics that threaten Maggie’s life, her older sister Leah Fox rescues her in a daring and risky escape that leaves Maggie in heart-pounding terror. Just thinking about myself in the same situation under the same circumstances had me breaking out in a cold sweat, and I’m a combat veteran that served in Vietnam. Maggie was a young girl.
The romance in High Spirits arrives later in the story. Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, the most widely celebrated American adventurer of the day, eventually walks on stage and fall “madly” in love with Maggie. What turns out to be a complex relationship stands equal to Romeo and Juliet; Tristan & Isolde, and Tony and Maria of West Side Story. That’s as far as I’ll go. My lips are now zipped shut. Hollywood, pay attention. Stories like this are rare, and Maggie and Elisha were real people.
In High Spirits, the harsh lines that separate the privileged and powerful from the working class show that dysfunctional people come from all levels of society. However, those at the top have the power to do more damage. What they are capable of doing to hurt others is more like a tidal wave washing over distant shores and leaving nothing but destruction and misery in its wake. When Elisha’s mother interferes with his love for Maggie, horrible consequences are set in motion.
Although High Spirits reveals that most of us are human at heart, a few inhuman monsters populate our world and wreck havoc wherever they can for selfish, egotistical reasons.
If you are looking for adventure, romance, heartbreak, a bit of history, and a story that will touch you, I recommend this novel. Reading High Spirits will be a journey of discovery that might squeeze out a tear or two like it did for me.
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