Where The Crawdads Sing, Owen - B +

                                               I join everyone else in America praising and lauding this book. The life of Kya Clark, the 'Marsh Girl', involves abandonment by her family at six. She deals with the challenges of living alone,  utterly lonely, in a primitive state in the 1950's and 1960's in North Carolina's Great Dismal Swamp. The fact that she triumphs and we have a happy ending is a pure delight.

Bearskin, McLaughlin - B

                                                Last year, this book won the Edgar Award for a debut mystery novel.  Rice Moore is on the run from the Sinola cartel and has found a nice gig as a mountain topcaretaker in Virginia. He watches over some land in a preservation trust and can go weeks without talking to or seeing a soul. Unfortunately, poaching bears for body parts is an issue he faces, and one thing leading to another involves him with the local police. He knows the second his name is in the system, someone back in Arizona will find out where he is. He begins his preparations and is ready when the avenger shows up. Classic beach read material.

The Secret Lovers, McCarry - B +

                                                This is the third book by this author I've read this year. It was written in 1976 and is set in 1960-1961. It is a story about the operation to publish a smuggled Russian novel with the potential to rock the world.  I'm not certain if the author, named Kamensky, is based on Pasternak, or Solzhenitsyn, although I'm leaning toward Pasternak's. Because a German courier died smuggling out the book, all are concerned that the western services have been compromised and the mole hunt is on in full force.  The CIA tasks Paul Christopher to use his contacts in the Parisian White Russian community to have the novel published. Word leaks out and soon the Soviets are rolling up the courier network and Kamensky is dead. Christopher's life is further complicated by the fact that his one year old marriage is falling apart. The traitor turns out to be a long-term agency asset, an important part of the French resistance during the war, but who the KBG has been blackmailing since the Spanish Civil War.
                                                 For those inclined, these three are worth the effort, but not in the order published. I'd recommend they be read in the order of the timeframe they cover: Miernik, Lovers and Tears.

Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America, Griswold - B +

                                                This book has just won the Pulitzer. Amity and Prosperity, PA lie just north of the West Virginia line, due south of Pittsburgh in Washington County. From 2005 to 2015, the fracking revolution prospered in southwestern PA.  It was not virgin territory for its lands and streams were laced with the detritus of a century of oil, gas and coal extraction residue. Fracking in PA has become a great political, Republican v. Democratic, rich v. poor, urban v. rural point of contention. This is the story of one family and the consequences of fracking on their lives.
                                                  Stacey Haney, a nurse at Washington Hospital, lived with her son, Harley, and her daughter, Paige. She owned eight acres of land near Amity and signed a lease with Range Resources in the waning days of 2008. Soon, hundreds of trucks passing each day wrecked the roads, and bridges, destroyed the house's foundation, and filled her house with dirt. In late 2009, a well on the next farm pumped over 3 million gallons of water and chemicals and 4 million clay pellets into the earth. Soon thereafter, her seventh grade son became seriously ill. A toxic pond of chemical sludge up on the rig site began to reek. Their pets began to die and Harley was diagnosed with arsenic poisoning.  Range  replaced their well water with trucked in potable water that made a major difference in all their lives. But they were far from healthy and Stacey began to worry about what they were breathing,  just 1,000 yards downwind from the sludge pond. She arranged for a series of extensive blood and urine tests. Among other toxins, they all had glycol in their bodies in alarming amounts.
                                                   In the spring of 2011, Stacey engaged a local Washington PA law firm and moved out of her house. She and Paige moved in with her parents in Amity. She had Harley stay with her boyfriend in Eighty-Four. He was so ill that the physician said he had to be beyond a
 10-mile radius of their home. Stacey's neighbor sued the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection to try to compel them to do their job and the attorneys began to prepare for the much larger job of suing Range Resources on behalf of a number of the locals. John and Kendra Smith, the husband and wife team representing the plaintiffs, were soon spending an extraordinary amount of time and effort on the case. As the Haney's all continued with varying and different ailments, the Smith's filed Haney v. Range in May, 2012. They cast a wide net, suing Range, the suppliers of every component in the process, water test labs, and individual executives. Concurrent with the Haney case was their writ of mandamus directed at the DEP and a lawsuit that successfully had most of a law passed to assist the drillers declared unconstitutional. The suit dragged on as the defendants relied on the time-honored corporate defense of wearing down the plaintiffs and their lawyers. In June of 2014, a chink in the defendant's armor appeared when the industry friendly DEP fined Range $4.15 million for five leaking waste ponds, one of which was the one next to the Haney's home. It proved to be the highpoint of the battle with Range. The grind went on and on and reached an undisclosed settlement in early 2018 that left the plaintiffs dejected.  Obviously, this is a well-written, excellent book, but one without the requisite positive ending. The deceit evidenced by the industry in this instance and the willingness of government to look away and do anything for jobs and tax revenue is quite discouraging.                                             
                                                 
                                               

Europe: A Natural History, Flannery - B-

                                               Europe is described as less a continent and more "an appendix-an island ringed peninsula projecting into the Atlantic from the western end of Eurasia". It emerged about 100 million years ago.  Salamanders, newts and toads, all of which still live in Europe, first appeared at this time. These amphibians survived the nuclear winter caused by the meteorite strike 65 million years ago that killed every creature on earth larger than a few kilograms. The shape of today's Europe emerged about 50 million years ago.  Around about 34 million years ago, Europe and North America were connected by a land bridge. The first songbirds entered the continent 25 million years ago. "By the end of the Miocene about five million years ago, mountain-building, dramatic drops in temperature and lowering sea levels had created a Europe that was topographically broadly similar to the Europe of today."  From 2.6 million years ago to about 12,000 years ago, ice dominated Europe.  It is believed that a slight variation in the Earth's orbit caused the changes. Sea levels were 120-150 meters below today's. Britain was connected to the continent. Permafrost extended as far south as Provence. Approximately 400,000 years ago, Neanderthals came to Europe. They later would exist side-by-side with modern humans, with whom they share 99.7% of their DNA. There were probably never more than 70,000 Neanderthals at any point in time, and by 39,000 years ago, they were gone. Although humans had existed in Africa for hundreds of thousands of years, homo sapiens came to Europe as the Neanderthal was passing, although there was an overlap and a sharing of genes. It is believed the hybrid human with as much as 6% Neanderthal DNA* dominated the continent until 14,000 years ago. The arrival of humans on the continent meant the extinction of all the Megafauna already there, including the wooly mammoth about 10,000 yeas ago. Thirteen-thousand years ago, the population of Europe is believed to have been 410,000 and would have expanded from there because of animal husbandry, agriculture and the stabilization of the climate, i.e. the end of the Ice Age. As the population expanded throughout the continent, humans caused the extinction of all large mammals, leaving only the bison and moose to survive (barely and with considerable help) to today. Over the centuries, Asians on horses and invaders from the steppes spread throughout Europe. In time, every patch of ground was under the suzerainty of mankind. With Europeans discovering the sea route to America and sailing into Asia, a new era was begun. They began their role as colonizers of the planet. The French philosopher Montaigne summed up the consequences, "So many godly cities ransacked; so many nations destroyed and made desolate; so infinite millions of harmless people of all sexes, states, and ages massacred, ravaged, and put to the sword; and the richest , the fairest, and the best part of the world topsy-turvied, ruined, and defaced for the traffic of pearls and pepper." After a millennium of war on the continent, post-WW2 Europe is a more tranquil place and one where native indigenous wildlife are returning. There are more bears and wolves in Europe than in America. Today's continent is focused on taking better care of itself, after centuries of industrialization.
                                               The book is well-written, but let's face, it's also very boring. For me, the Montaigne quote above has been worth the effort.




* today's percentage of  neanderthal DNA in the modern European is just over 2%

Warlight, Ondaatje - C

                                                Once again, the attraction of one of last year's notable books has eluded me.  This is a story told by a teenage, and then a decade or so older, man. His mother was a noted SOE agent during and after the war.  Abandoned and left with protectors, he and his sister live apparently aimless lives in London. His sister despises their mother; he idolizes her. After retiring, 'Viola' partially reconciles with her son and waits in the lonely English countryside for the revenge from the continent that she knows is coming.