BOOK REVIEW: Hard Red Spring by Kelly Kerney - BONUS RECIPE: Pumpkin Tortellini with Mint Gastrique

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An epic historical novel in the tradition of Norman Mailer and Ken Follett. Chronicling nearly a century of American involvement in Guatemala, Hard Red Spring erupts with authenticity. Beginning in 1902 with the disappearance of the daughter of murdered American farmers, little Evie’s story and influence play out across generations of commercial and religious missionary culture, and highlight the inevitability of Guatemalan life, belief and politics.

We are carried forward to 1954 and an era of direct American interventionism, as the wife of the U. S. Ambassador becomes pregnant by her best friend’s husband. The story then follows a Christian evangelist in the late ’80s, and the return of a young mother and her adopted war-orphan daughter near the end of the millennium. A sense of desperation pervades the book, but throughout, the common denominator is the silent witness of the native Maya: stoic, mystical, fundamentally unchanged by their absorption of the blood, tears, betrayal, and even the seed of their North American would-be overlords.

Richly styled, definitively researched, the book is everything the thoughtful reader of historical fiction could hope for. Enthusiastically recommended.

Review first published in The Historical Novel Review


BONUS RECIPE
Hand-cut Pumpkin Tortellini with Roasted Garlic and Mint Gastrique

For the Pasta:
2 cups flour
1/3 cup pumpkin pie filling
3 egg yolks
1/4 teaspoon salt
Water (a few teaspoons if needed)

Process and knead together to a non-sticky dough.
Roll out on a floured surface to 1/8th inch or thinner.
Cut into 3" to 4" squares.
Spoon up to 1Tablespoon of filling into center, if desired (consider more pumpkin filling, cinnoman ricotta, or cooked ground lamb with seasoned breadcrumbs).
Fold into triangles, pinch edges to seal, circle "arms" and press together.
Cook in large amount of boiling water for 4 minutes and drain immediately.

For the gastrique:
1 cup fresh picked mint leaves plus more chopped for garnish
2 cloves garlic (preferably roasted)
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil (best available)
1 Tablespoon white vinegar
1 Tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
Pinch white pepper to taste

Blend all or mortar well. Squeeze or spoon under and over Tortellini.
Garnish with more chopped mint and grated Parmesan. Serves 3-5.

BOOK REVIEW: Scarpia by Piers Paul Read

Scarpia BY PIERS PAUL READ Best known for Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, Read reprises his renowned journalistic style in his latest novel. Set in the late 18th century, Scarpia is a riff on Puccini’s Tosca, described by Read as the original work of an “anti-clerical Frenchman,” whose “calumny” it is his purpose to redress. No surprise there. As an English Catholic, the enthusiasm Read radiates for this opportunity to defend the papacy while slamming the French is guiltily charming. Scarpia is a villainous character in the opera, showcased in an ethereal duet with Tosca where he deceives her into betraying her tortured Jacobin lover. Read re-imagines him from childhood: son of a disenfranchised Sicilian noble, a reckless military career leaves Scarpia in the service of church benefactors and a rich Roman wife. After a chance dalliance with Tosca, the rock-star soprano of her time, Scarpia flees Rome to avoid Napoleon’s army. The Pope is dethroned, and Scarpia’s wife misbehaves quite publicly. When fortunes reverse, Scarpia returns to serve, unwillingly, as Rome’s chief enforcer, ordered to root out Republican sentiment. The climax is known, and the entire opera is compressed into the last chapter. Scarpia’s motives are not only vindicated – a conflict of loyalty and Catholic guilt – but Read reworks the very storyline. A cheat, perhaps, but Scarpia is not meant to be fan fiction. Read is at his best when applying his skilled realism to deep dive character study. He fails only, perhaps, by rendering Puccini irrelevant. Most fascinating is the omniscient voice of the confessional: the ability of priestly characters to divine the cross-currents of human motive while ignoring their own bias. In it we imagine echoes of Read’s own conscience. A worthy read. First published in Historical Novel Review

BOOK REVIEW: The Attempt by Magdalena Platzova - BONUS RECIPE: Tagliatelle with Broccoli Rabe and Venison Sausage

The Attempt BY ALEX ZUCKER (TRANS.), MAGDALÉNA PLATZOVÁ
The English edition of Czech author Platzová’s latest novel is a condensed and masterful example of experimental literary fiction with historical roots: a nesting of contemporary and generational storylines, epistolary and narrative, personal, political, and social perspective, in the tradition of Prus, Kundera, and Vonnegut. In the wake of a failed marriage, journalist Jan Schwarzer relocates from Prague to New York City during the height of the Occupy Wall Street movement. He is there ostensibly to write a book on the pre-war assassination attempt of a U.S industrialist by an anarchist writer who may, or may not, be his ancestor. But as he investigates, interviews the magnate’s surviving descendants, and pores through the correspondence of the jailed shooter and his lovers and friends, the event foreshadows much deeper interconnections: his personal longings, political mood, the despair and disparity of his own life and time. The politics are murky, and those looking for pure anti-capitalist polemic will be disappointed. But helpless disappointment with political ideals and their aftermath is a core motif – compare the affective tableau of Milan Kundera’s post-war Eastern Europe. Platzová paints a contemporary New York of neo-Bohemian values, slowly, but finally inheriting the sense of lost grandeur long native to European urbanity. Her writing style is varied, sparing, insightful, and at times nothing short of poetic. Enthusiastically recommended.

Review first published in The Historical Novel Review


BONUS RECIPE: Tagliatelle with Broccoli Rabe and Venison Sausage

1 lb. Broccoli Rabe, cleaned and rough cut
1 box Tagliatelli
1/2 lb. sweet venison sausage, crumbled
4  cloves fresh garlic, finely minced
1 tsp. red pepper flakes (or to taste)
1 tsp. salt (large pinch more for pasta water)
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 1/2 cups veal stock
Good parmesan cheese
Half a lemon

Boil the pasta in a large pot of salted water until almost al dente.
Meanwhile, in a large high-sided sauté pan, sauté the sausage over medium heat until crisp, strain, set aside, and preserve the rendered fat.
To the fat add the olive oil, lower heat, add garlic and red pepper, simmering until the garlic barely begins to brown (do not burn the garlic!). Turn heat up to high and add veal stock.
When pasta has one minute left to cook, strain and add to the sauté, and toss broccoli rabe into still boiling pasta water. Stir the pasta in the sauté pan until most of the stock and oil has been absorbed. After three minutes, remove, strain, and quickly cool the broccoli rabe (an ice water bath works best) to preserve the bright green color. Add to the sauté, mix all, and plate in a large bowl. Finish with lemon and sprinkle with grated parmesan to taste.  Pairs well with a good Chianti Classico.

BOOK REVIEW: Rochester Knockings by Hubert Haddad

Rochester Knockings: A Novel of the Fox Sisters BY HUBERT HADDAD
In a laudable project for the University of Rochester’s press, Haddad combines high literary style and unity of effect in this believable and engrossing historical journey. Set at the beginning of the late 19th-century Spiritualist movement in Western New York, coinciding in time and origin with the broader religious Great Awakening which swept the country, the book presents a meticulously researched tableau. The historical Fox sisters –Margaret, Kate, and the much older Leah – interact with the spectral causes of mysterious rappings in their home. Their seeming ability to communicate with spirits launches them to overnight acclaim. Their later confession to fraud is well known, but Haddad imagines a rich inner life in the youngest sister, Kate, which persists in the reader’s mind, just as the Spiritualist movement itself persists today, contrary to common reason. Her anxiety, as the family moves house three times during her childhood, evokes widespread beliefs in the connection of pre-teen angst to psychokinetic phenomena. But it is the book’s resonance with the zeitgeist of our own era that is most compelling. Western New York at the time was a crossroads culturally, religiously and economically. It was a gateway for immigration of European peasants to the rich lands of the Ohio Valley and the West, and the children of its earlier settlers felt disenfranchised. Notable is the character of Marshall McLean as a sort of mediator cum observer of the mix of these influences with Canadian, native, Mormon, and other religious splinter groups. Strongly recommended. Review first published in the Historical Novel Review

BOOK REVIEW: Ophelia's War by Alison L. McLennan

Ophelia’s War: The Secret Story of a Mormon Turned Madam

BY ALISON L. MCLENNAN

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Ophelia’s War tells the riveting life story of Ophelia Oatman, an orphaned Mormon girl coming of age and fighting for physical and spiritual survival on the 19^th-century Utah frontier. Ophelia is at once heartbreakingly vulnerable and heroic as she battles exploitation and abandonment to preserve her social identity and mixed family legacy. At the story’s core is her long-hidden ruby necklace, both treasure and burden. It will ultimately prove to be her very personal salvation.

Each chapter is a jewel in itself, threading through the barren landscape like told beads, presenting a fascinating array of characters: Ophelia’s abusive Uncle Luther, a riverboat gambler; Pearl Kelly, infamous Madam; and the astonishing lone Native woman who saves Ophelia’s life when she is left to die in the desert. Ophelia is an existentialist champion, who navigates all hazards thrown her way, refusing to be victimized. McLennan’s style is reminiscent of Hemingway in its demonstrative elegance, and her historical realism is flawless.

A truly compelling novel of moral exile and self-redemption. Enthusiastically recommended.

Review first published in the Historical Novel Review

BOOK REVIEW: The Secret Book of Kings by Yochi Brandes

The Secret Book of Kings

BY YOCHI BRANDES

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This is the English translation of the latest Biblical fiction offering by a popular Israeli author. Set in the tumultuous Davidic period, young Shlom’am comes of age and sets out to unravel the mystery of his bloodline – a journey that will take him to the very throne of Israel.

Brandes builds upon her flawless historicity with a profound appreciation for scripture as literature. She is unique in her ability to render complex, almost Falstaffian, characters who are themselves conscious of their place in the multigenerational narrative. Rizpah, the concubine of Saul from 2 Samuel, compares herself and her experience to Tamar, the prostitute who “stole” the seed of Judah in Genesis 38 – a mere oral tradition during the reign of Saul. While neatly defining Rizpah’s moral conundrum, Brandes presents a fascinatingly accurate timeline and mechanism of historical influence. This is authoritative scholarship brought to life, without a hint of pious overlay. The reader’s respect for the material, regardless of faith, grows with every page, and Brandes’ dynamic style and vibrant characterization keep the pages turning. The heroic but dangerously ambitious David, the “Mad Princess” Michal – we are treated to a deep dive into their relationships and motives.

The narrator accuses himself of a childhood tendency to “embellish.” A self-criticism by Brandes herself, perhaps? If so, it is charming, but she’s selling herself short. The Secret Book of Kings combines historical integrity with great and approachable storytelling.

First published in the Historical Novel Review