Seeds in the Wind: book review

Book Review: SEEDS IN THE WIND by Doris Fleming: fiction, 2012)

Lizzie Van Ankum is a seventeen-year-old Canadian farm girl in Didsbury, Alberta, eagerly anticipating entry into nursing school in Calgary. We meet her as she arrives home, summoned back by an urgent letter from the family doctor. Her mother, Sarah, has been diagnosed as having cancer of her liver, and the family is in crisis. Zachariah, the father, is spending most of his time at his wife's bedside, leaving the farm chores to his older two boys, Willie and J.C. The younger children, twelve-year-old Jake, and Rosie, seven, and Anna, five, are at loose ends.

It is Dr. Martin who meets Lizzie at the railroad station, but who says very little during the eight mile ride to the farm through a blizzard. He wants her to see her mother before he tells her the bad news; Sarah has asked him to give her family the plain truth—Advanced stage, untreatable; she is dying.

She can't die—she is the one who holds our family together! is Lizzie's desperate attempt to deny reality. She looks at her father, who has lapsed into his native Dutch language. At her younger siblings: who will take care of them? And the stark truth hits her, If she dies, I'm trapped. I'll never get off this farm, never be a nurse.

Things get worse. Father hardly speaks at all; eats little. Spends most of his time at the bedside of the woman he loves, or staying up late at night in the barn workshop, alone, building a casket. But Sarah has quietly told him, she wants Lizzie to eventually go to nursing school, and meanwhile to be her own nurse, under the guidance of Dr. Martin's visiting nurse, Nadine. And Sarah insists that Lizzie return now to spend a day at nursing school making rounds with the nurses and doctors.

Lizzie visits nursing school, thrilled not only with her contact with the profession of her dreams, but also by a chance meeting with a young man, Daniel Winslow, whose listening ear and encouragement make her hope to see more of him.

Her mother's death comes soon. Neighbors and fellow church members gather in the rain for her funeral, bringing food to the family. Father Zachariah stays outside, his hand holding onto his wife's casket. Oldest son Willie notices, and comes back to gently pry his father's fingers loose and lead him into the house, where the guests have gathered.

As the days go by, Willie and J.C. take over the the dairy chores and the milk route; Lizzie gradually come to manage the house and meals and the younger children, wondering daily how her mother ever managed all of it. Twelve-year old Jake defies his sister, only five years older than he, and spends more and more time at a neighbor's house. Father rarely come out of his bedroom, eating little, saying even less, and angry at God.

It's early summer now. The two younger sisters, Rosie and Anna are learning to help with the chickens' eggs, and keeping the kitchen stove supplied from the woodpile. Zachariah finally begins to emerge from his prolonged depression, hastened by Lizzie's warning that the neighborhood gossip, self-centered Widow Foster, is asking about him and intends to come over and visit. He vows to be too busy if she comes, and starts paying attention now to the cows and the fence lines.

Another neighbor has concerns of a different sort. Rebecca Bannister has recently moved into the farm she inherited from her late husband. Mother of two pre-teen children, she has met none of the Van Ankums except young Jake, who has offered his services as a hired hand. Not accustomed to farm life herself, she has welcomed his offer, but is now concerned about his longer stays overnight in the barn. She meets Lizzie in church one Sunday, and the two of them agree to coffee at each others' homes some time soon. 

Zachariah has an unfortunate first encounter with Rebecca when she drops in expecting to find Lizzie at home. He is enraged to learn, a few days later, that Jake has practically moved into her house, and he stomps over to her farm to confront her. She has realized, in talking to Jake that he bitterly misses his mother, and resents his father's perpetual anger, and it is she who points out that his reaction to his wife's death is separating him from his son's needs. She turns Zachariah's life around, healing his estrangement from his family.

The healing in the Van Ankum family also changes Lizzie's life when her father and siblings recognize what she has given up in taking on her mother's role. A visit in their home from a traveling minister, Brother Lemont, intrigues her when, after he talks with her brother Willie about his hopes to move north to the new communities in Alberta, he turns to her. “There's someone I want you to meet, Lizzie. Someone who may be able to persuade you to come up north to learn your nursing. They'll be in church tomorrow,” he said, “Don't miss it.”

Author Doris Fleming lives in Wallace, Idaho.

Last Bus to Wisdom: book review

LAST BUS TO WISDOM by Ivan Doig

Ivan Doig's novels are set in western Montana, this one written last year, just before his death.

Donal Cameron is an eleven-year-old boy being shipped off to a great-aunt he has never met. His guardian grandmother, who works as cook for a large Montana cattle ranch, needs major surgery, and will be unable to care for him in these summer months of 1951.

Donal's story opens with him on a local bus to Great Falls to catch the Greyhound, with Manitowoc, Wisconsin his destination. Besides his ratty suitcase and thirty dollars pinned in his shirt pocket, he has only two things he values—his lucky charm arrowhead, and his autograph book. He whiles away his 1,500-mile journey by inviting fellow passengers to make entries in his book, collecting three soldiers bound for Korea, a waitress looking for a new job, a sheriff and his prisoner, and many others, one of whom tries to steal his suitcase.

Things get worse when he reaches Manitowoc. Aunt Kate is a self-centered old woman who has prepared a cot for Donal in the attic. There are no kids his age in the neighborhood; Aunt Kate's idea of summer entertainment is to dump a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle on a card table. She also co-opts him to her ladies' canasta afternoons. Without his knowledge, she has thrown out Donal's shirt with his thirty dollars still pinned in it, and he is dead broke. She argues loudly and endlessly with her husband, Herman, who spends most of his time in a greenhouse in the backyard to get away from her presence. Herman has an intense interest in cowboys and Indians and welcomes Donny's presence as one who has actually lived in the West and can tell him all about it. Herman, in turn can tell of his former job on a Great Lakes ore boat and the storm that sank the ship and disabled himself.

The last straw, for Kate, is when she catches Donny trying to recover his share of the canasta winnings she had denied him. She has him pack his bag and takes him to the Greyhound bus station. Herman has made himself scarce after another argument with her. As she waves goodbye to Donny, he glumly assesses his prospects. His grandmother is only two weeks post-surgery; someone else will have taken her job at the ranch; his options on his early arrival in Montana will be only the county orphanage or a foster home.

The bus seat next to him is suddenly filled by some man changing seats. “Hallo,” he says. It's Herman.

“What are you doing here?”

“Keeping you company, hah? Long ride ahead, we watch out for each other.”

“Does she know you're here?”

“Left her a note saying I am gone back to Germany.” Herman sees this as his own last chance to get out of that house for good. When they change buses in Milwaukee, they will have disappeared. Anywhere, as long as it's in the west.

Guided by Donny, they get off the bus at Crow Indian Agency, Montana, where the 4th of July rodeo and pow-wow of Indian nations is beginning. Herman gets his fill of bucking horses and Indian dances. Their adventures continue at Yellowstone park, where a pick-pocket robs Herman's wallet. To make matters worse, their pictures are among the “Wanteds” now posted at every post office and bus stop. Aunt Kate has reported them missing. They need a place to hide out for the summer until Donny's grandma has recovered enough to make Donny safe from foster homes and Herman, now without any papers, safe from deportation as an alien.

They find that place in a very small Montana town.

Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler: book review

Book Review: VINEGAR GIRL by Anne Tyler   novel 

My first reaction was to this book's cover: no human scalp could possibly grow all that much hair. But an author with twenty novels already published must have something on the ball; and a chick-literature version of Shakespeare in USA teen-speak is a new idea to me, so I'm giving it a try.

Kate Battista, age 29, single, is a teacher's assistant in a pre-school. Her defiant facial expression is only partly hidden by all that hair. The little pre-schoolers love her; their parents do not. Flippant and disrespectful are words frequently appearing on her work record. Tact, restraint, diplomacy, and thin ice are ideas often suggested by her boss. Kate understands that tact means saying things politely, diplomacy means not saying things at all. Restraint? She has

no clear picture of that—just one of those words that people throw into overly long sentences.

Her 15-year-old sister Bunny is a boy-crazy flirt, ending most of her sentences with an upward tone implying a question. Her current boyfriend lives next door. Big sister needn't fret about him, he is just there on the sofa with her to tutor her for Spanish class.

Kate's father, Dr. Louis Battista, a research biologist and widower, is forever just on the verge of success in his laboratory. Always preoccupied, depending on his two daughters to tend the house and the meals. His main worry is that his brilliant lab associate, Pyotr Scherbakov's visa will expire in just a couple of months if he cannot find a way to qualify for an extension. With singleness of mind, Father embarks on his goal: “Would you be willing to marry him?” he asks Kate.

“What? . . . .Please tell me you're not serious. I don't even know him!”

“Now, don't make any hasty decisions. You slightly know him. You'll have to marry someone sooner or later, right? He's a good fellow!”

“You would never ask Bunny to do this,” Kate says bitterly.

“Well, Bunny's still in high school. Besides, Bunny has all those young men chasing after her.”

“And I don't,” Kate said. If she keeps her expression impassive, she might be able to keep the tears from spilling over. She walks out of the room with her chin raised. Slams her bed room door.

Her father won't give up. He and Pyotr are so close to success in their research. He uses every opportunity to get Pyotr and Kate together, documenting events with lots of photos, in case the Immigration Service became suspicious of a sudden marriage. Pyotr is cooperative; he likes Kate, and courts her as best a foreign scientist can do in the face of her opposition. Kate wants nothing to do with him. He tells her at one point that he and her father went down to city hall to get the marriage license. “Fine,” she says, “ I hope you two will be very happy together!”

But gradually Pyotr learns how to get her to talk with him. And he grows able to express himself in terms she can accept.

The word gets around town despite Kate's resistance. Aunt Thelma is thrilled to hear her niece is finally getting married. She begins making all sorts of plans for the wedding, while Kate struggles to maintain control. The teachers at the pre-school throw a surprise bridal shower. They want to see his picture. Kate shows them one on her cell phone, and they exclaim over his good looks. They all seem to see her differently now. She has status. She matters. And she realizes that she reads other people more clearly too. She limits the wedding guests to her father and sister. Aunt Thelma plans an elaborate reception in her own spacious home.

The wedding is scheduled for 11 a.m. on Saturday. Kate drives Bunny and her father to the church; father is too nervous to drive. She is wearing a light blue cotton shift dating from her college days instead of her usual jeans. Bunny wears her angel-winged sun-dress. Father has been persuaded—ordered—to wear his only suit. He has the license; plans to clear Pyotr with the Immigration officials first thing Monday morning. Pyotr is at the lab feeding all the experimental mice and will meet them at the church. 

 

11:20, no Pyotr. Another wait . . . The minister suggests a phone call. Bunny texts Pyotr and waits. Finally, Pyotr texts back: “A terrible event”

Not wanting to spoil the ending, I'll stop there—except to add that author Anne Tyler's command of the English language is superb. She paints scenes with a sentence or two: the reaction of twin four-year-old boys in Kate's pre-school when she shows her ring, “Now who will we marry when we grow up?”

Or her description of Aunt Thelma's palatial house, “In the living room, sectional couches lumber through the vast space like a herd of rhinos, and both coffee tables are the size of double beds.”

In summing up this engaging novel, expect to see many of your acquaintances, and perhaps even yourself, in Vinegar Girl's pages.

Elephant Company: Book Review

ELEPHANT COMPANY by Vicki Constantine Croke Random House, 2014

Most Americans understand what 'horse-whisperer' means. Billy Williams was an 'elephant whisperer', and helped defeat the Japanese army in World War II Burma.

Demobilized with a captain's rank in 1920, Williams got a job with the Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation, harvesting teak logs in the forests of Burma ( now called Myanmar.) Teak wood is highly prized in ship-building for its durability and resistance to rot, but it has never been successfully cultivated. Myanmar's forests produce 75% of the world's supply. There are no logging roads, no bulldozer access. Only elephants to move the two-ton logs to the dry stream beds, where the flash-floods of the next annual rainy season will float them downstream to the big rivers and the sawmills in the cities.

As crew boss of a dozen jungle camps Williams would be responsible for the health and efficiency of the men and their elephants out in the jungles. His own boss, Harding, is a crusty old Britisher who has only contempt for young newcomers. The first evening, the elephants on station line up for daily inspection. Harding has barely spoken to Williams since his arrival and now wordlessly begins examining the huge beasts one by one, making notes in each elephant's record book. No words for Williams until all have been examined. Then, “Those four on the right are yours, and God help you if you can't take care of them.” And Harding walked away.

Physically fit and self reliant, Williams surprised his boss after a few days by offering to start on his solo tour earlier than Harding had planned. “I'd like to start off tomorrow.” Before the old man was awake next morning, Williams and his four elephants, their drivers, a cook, two bearers, and two messengers were silently on their way. Fascinated by the way elephants communicated and cooperated with each other, and with their drivers, he was a quick learner. The elephants followed spoken commands, but only in the Burmese language. He learned the work routine of the timber camp elephants—they work till mid-afternoon, then they cool off and bathe in the river. He examines each daily for any injuries; their drivers turn them loose at night to forage in the lush jungle vegetation. Each driver knew his animal and can call it back next morning.

One of the four elephants was old, weak, always more tired than the others. One morning, her driver found her dead, not far from the camp. Williams did an autopsy there where she lay. Not easy on an eight-thousand-pound animal. He knew he would be held accountable when he returned to base camp, and he was correct. But he learned to argue, and to document his findings, and this pleased Harding. Elephants had been trained by being chained and beaten until their spirit was broken. Baby elephants were removed from their mother's care so she could continue her daily work, and many of the young did not survive. Williams proposed letting the young elephants “go to school” at age five, and be trained by rewarding, not punishing, and this proved to be both efficient and more profitable. Boys in their early teens were recruited as drivers, and grew up with the elephant they were assigned.

Williams rose through the ranks as his management methods gained respect. He even wooed and won a British girl who valued life in the forests as much as he did.

Then came World War Two. The British thought they were far from danger, until Singapore and then Malaya fell to the Japanese; Japan then attacked Burma, occupying its seaports and closing off escape for those in northern Burma with mountain ranges on the east, north, and west.

On January 20, 1942, foreigners were advised to leave, but the only remaining escape routes were over the mountains. Williams and his family and coworkers assembled at Mawlaik, Williams old base camp. From there, 40 women, 27 children, 83 men, and 110 elephants headed northwest on foot. The elephants carried supplies, not people. They reached the small village of Tamu at the border a week later, now crowded with thousands of desperate refugees. Altogether, about 600,000, including about 50,000 British, most of the rest Indian, would cross fifty miles of dirt tracks and mountain trails before reaching level plains in India. It's said that 80,000 died in the attempt.

Two months later, the Japanese controlled the “Burma Road”, the major supply route for China's armies. General “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell and his American staff (with “The Burma Surgeon”, Gordon Seagrave and 27 of his hospital's nurses) also trekked out on foot by a route farther north. China's armies would then receive their supplies, from India 'over the hump' via airplane.

After making sure that his wife and son and others entrusted into his care were safely beyond reach of the Japanese, Billy Williams offered his services to the British command in India. They were eager to commission him—a man by then fluent in Burmese, with a map of Burma in his head in detail, personally acquainted with half the elephants in Burma and their drivers, experienccd in bridge construction--he immediately had the ear of the higher-ups. He wanted a jeep and freedom to act on his own. He got it as part of Force 136, who worked behind enemy lines. Stealing elephants was easy in the night—no headlights or noisy engines betrayed their movements to the Japanese.

The Japanese supply lines were vastly overextended by then. Allied forces defeated them and turned them back at Imphal, but Japanese patrols were still a threat as late as 1944. Williams led another group of elephants and men in a harrowing journey through uncharted Indian territory, led by the greatest elephant of all, Bandoola, with whom he had almost telepathic rapport.

Ms. Croke has done excellent research to tell this true story of “Elephant Bill”; it gives a new view of innovative warfare to veterans, historians, and adventurers alike.

The Magic of Cape Disappointment: book reviewok review

The Magic of Cape Disappointment, by Julie Manthey (a novel of magic, history, and romance)

Kay Baker has just completed medical school at the top of her class, but intends to open an art gallery in New York City before doing her internship and residency requirements. A two-page back-story identifies Kay as a fifth generation descendant of Meriwether Lewis, of Lewis and Clark's 1805 expedition that pioneered exploration of the Pacific Northwest. She has just now been notified that her DNA matches with Lewis's extended family. The only logical explanation would be that Captain Lewis took a wife from the Clatsop Indian tribe while the expedition wintered at the mouth of the Columbia River. Unfortunately, 400 pages of his expedition's journal have gone missing during the ensuing 210 years.

An hour before her art gallery is scheduled to open, her phone rings. Astoria Medical Center in Oregon notifies her that both her parents have just arrived by ambulance after a car crash. “We suggest you get here as quickly as you can.”

Kay catches the first plane to Portland, rents a car for the hundred-mile drive to Astoria on the coast. Delayed by a freak snowstorm, she arrives at the hospital at 2 a.m., finding her 97 year-old Gran asleep in the ER waiting room next to a dozing young man. A doctor tells her both parents died from their injuries soon after arrival. This leaves Kay and her brother Louis as Gran's only living relatives, and Louis is at sea for the next month or more. The young man is a neighbor who found Gran wandering the village of Ilwaco, and had guided her back to her house just before the hospital called. Gran has dementia, requiring almost constant attention. Kay, having made a promise to her now-deceased mother that she would never put Gran in a nursing home, is now morally bound to stay with her for the foreseeable future.

December and January pass. Surrounded by the townspeople of Ilwaco Kay gradually adapts to small town life where everyone knows everyone else, and where many recall that Kay's mother and her failing grandmother are keelalles, legendary medicine women of the Clatsop Indian tribe. Her helpful neighbor Sam comes in for coffee one day and has a letter for her—from her mother. Asked why he waited two months to deliver it, he puzzled her further by saying that her mother told him to “wait until the day after the dog bite. My dog bit you yesterday, so here it is.”

The letter was written the day before her Mom died, and tells her to find John Lane, the Clatsop tribal chief, who can explain the things Kay will need to know about the old ways. “The world needs a powerful healer,” Mom writes, “Embrace your destiny, for you are powerful beyond measure.”

She goes with Sam on his motorcycle to Seaside, Oregon, to meet John Lane and the tribal council, comprised by, in real life, a computer tech, a retired college professor, a retired lawyer and an operator of a bed-and-breakfast.

Tribal lore has it that every tenth generation of medicine women since the powerful

keelalle, Saghalie, will be empowered by the coyote spirit to influence the weather, the power to heal, and the power to know the future. Saghalie protected the people from the great wave of 1700, caused by the Cascadia earthquake of that year. Her fifth generation descendent Tamahna was the last keelalle to have all three powers. “You, Kay, are the fifth generation after Tamahna. The next great Cascadia quake is already overdue; it might come any time now. Your powers are only effective within the Clatsop tribal area. The tribal Council is glad to welcome you home.”

Her mother had often called her the coyote girl. Kay had always thought it was just a nickname describing her independent personality, but now John Lane, the computer tech, says no—the coyote is the animal that has empowered the greatest keelalles down through the centuries. His own spirit is the raven, that of a tribal chief.

Things normalize somewhat over the next two months. Romance proceeds apace; Kay's brother turns up just in time to say goodbye to Gran before she dies peacefully. Free of responsibility for her grandmother, Kay debates returning to a less dramatic life in New York City. But she discovers that she now has an increasing love for all her people in the tribal land. She decides to stay

A few days later, the ground begins to tremble. . . .

Although first-time author Julie Manthey needs to research natural phenomena to make them more believable, there is nothing wrong with the magic of her imagination. She melds love, frustration, Indian tribal lore, history, and a spirit world that almost touches reality just off the coast at the light house on Cape Disappointment. Good writing!

book review # 11 The Party Is Over by Mike Lofgren

THE PARTY IS OVER, by Mike Lofgren Penguin Books, 2013

subtitled “How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted”

Mr. Lofgren's background includes twelve years on the staff of [then] Congressman John Kasich (R, Ohio) followed by sixteen years as a senior analyst for the Senate Budget Committee under Senator Judd Gregg (R, New Hampshire).

He includes in the Republican Party both the formal political organization and its extensions into talk radio, Fox News, the Tea Party, and direct-mail fund raising. He also includes, in the background of both Republican and Democratic parties the very rich, whose self-interest has secured a financial environment they hope to prolong.

His introduction traces the take-over of the party by pressure groups masquerading as tax-exempt 'educational' non-profit organizations. Lofgren writes, “I was in the privileged position to see how Congress works on the inside, when the C-SPAN cameras are turned off. What I saw was . . . an auction where political services were won by the highest bidder. . . . My own party, the Republican Party, began to scare me.”

Mr. Lofgren approaches his subject from the standpoint of tactics, instead of individuals. The Koch brothers, the Mellons, and other multi-billionaires are there in the background, but his emphasis is on the effects rather than the doers themselves. His chapter headings and and their subtitles tell his story. The quote marks after each of his twelve chapter headings below indicate his subtitles:

Chapter 1: The Party of Lincoln, the Party of Jefferson “What is the Republican Party like? What are the Democrats like? Why is there so little difference between them? And how did they get this way?”

Ch 2: Tactics: War Minus the Shooting “The Republican Party has used objection, obstruction, and filibustering not only to block the necessary processes of government but also in order to make ordinary Americans deeply cynical about Washington.”

Ch 3: All Wrapped Up in the Constitution “Like biblical literalists, Republicans assert that the Constitution is divinely inspired and inerrant. But also like biblical literalists, they are strangely selective about those portions of their favorite document that they care to heed, and they favor rewriting it when it stands in the way of their political agenda.”

Ch 4: A Devil's Dictionary “How Republicans have mastered the art of communicating with ordinary people in their own vernacular, while Democrats remain tone-deaf and tongue-tied.”

Ch 5: Taxes and the Rich “The GOP [the traditional Republican Party nickname] cares, over and above every other item on its political agenda, about the rich contributors who keep them in office. This is why tax increases on the wealthy have become an absolute Republican taboo. Caught between their own rich contributors and their voters, Democrats are conflicted and compromised.”

Ch 6: Worshiping at the Altar of Mars “There is no getting around the fact that the GOP loves war more than it supposedly hates deficits. But Democrats are furiously playing catch-up.” “War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. . . . It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.” [This last quote Mr. Lofgren attributes to U.S. Marine Corps General Smedley Butler, who was twice awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.]

Ch 7: Media Complicity “Despite the widely believed myth of its liberalism, over the last thirty years the media landscape has become increasingly wired to favor Republicans. The press's current combination of fake objectivity and campaign fetishization has been carefully exploited by Republican strategists for political advantage.”

Ch 8: Give Me That Old-Time Religion “The religious right provides the foot soldiers for the GOP. This fact has profound implications for the rest of the Republicans' ideological agenda. . . wealth worship, war worship, and the permanent culture war.”

Ch 9: No Eggheads Wanted “Consistent both with its strong base of support among fundamentalists and with its authoritarian belief structure, the GOP is increasingly anti-intellectual and anti-science.”

Ch 10: A Low dishonest Decade “America's political crisis has been brewing for over thirty years. But in the first decade of the twenty-first century, the sickness threatened to become terminal.”

Ch 11: Are the Democrats any better? “As Republicans have grown ideologically more rigid, Democrats have almost entirely ceased to have any core beliefs at all—and their grab for corporate money is as egregious as that of the GOP.”

Ch 12: A Way Out? “What changes are necessary to right the ship of state?”

Mr. Lofgren answers his own question by admitting it will take many changes, but suggests we start with repairing the election process: ban any and all private money involved, substituting a much smaller public allowance equally to each candidate for a limited campaigning season, ( like Britain and Australia, each of which allows less than two months.) He adds that, like most other major democracies we should have our election district boundaries drawn by non-partisan commissions, to minimize gerrymandering.

I have mostly refrained from my own comments up to this point. Published in 2012, “The Party Is Over” performs well in outlining major points in the behavior of the Republican and Democrat parties. If the reader wants more detail on the individuals behind the conflict, I recommend reading Jane Mayer's “Dark Money”, published in March of 2016. It features, inside its hardback covers, a remarkable diagram of the network of “non-profit” (and tax-exempt) organizations, and their spending.

My own experience in politics is limited to watching CNN and Fox News on TV and Mr. Trump's dismaying disregard for truth and consistency. I can witness to one far right organization, The Heritage Foundation, whose leader, ex-senator Jim DeMint, keeps telling me that I want to join the “Tea Party”. No, I do not.

Out of the Silent Planet: book review #10

C.S. Lewis, a professor of English literature at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, is better known as author of The Chronicles of Narnia, and of science-fiction. This present review is of the first novel in his space trilogy.

A British physicist, Dr. Weston, has developed a spacecraft capable of interplanetary travel, and has recently returned from his first journey to Mars. He has brought back gold, and believes he can get untold amounts of it if he can provide a human sacrifice for the the Martians he encountered. He and a colleague have now kidnapped a Dr. Ransom, a hiker on vacation in the English Midlands, and taken off on a second trip to Mars. On arrival after a month-long journey, the two hold Ransom at gunpoint as a group of Sorns, ungainly tall inhabitants of this low-gravity planet, approach through the shallow waters of a nearby bay.

The meeting of the two groups, Sorn and Men is interrupted by the torpedo-like attack of some sort of water creature. Ransom breaks free from Weston and flees into what passes as forest on Mars, running as fast as the uneven ground will allow. He is now alone, exhausted, disoriented, without food or defense in a totally unfamiliar environment, in fear of what the forest may contain, not even knowing what is safe to eat or drink.

He loses track of time; perhaps a day or two has passed when about ten yards away at a river's edge, a black creature emerges, furry, short legs, flat tail, rather like a seven-foot tall beaver. It is making sounds like it is talking, but is not yet aware of Ransom. When Ransom rises from where he had been hiding, the creature leaps backward, stops and watches him. The wariness is mutual, but gradually the two approach each other. The creature slaps its chest. “Hross,” it says. “Hross.”

“Hross,” repeats Ransom and points at it; then “Man,” he says, slapping his own chest.

“Hma—hma—hman,” imitates the hross.

Ransom pantomimes eating. The hross understands, and beckons him to follow it to a small boat hidden among the reeds. It gets into the boat, gets out and points at the boat, an obvious invitation to Ransom, who complies. They travel downstream several miles, finally arriving at a hrossa village,where Ransom is an object of much interest to both the adults and the children. He lives among them for many weeks, learning the customs, the language, the agriculture. He learns that there are three intelligent species on the planet, all living in the deep valleys; the planet's surface highlands lack warmth and air enough to support life.

Ransom's peaceful life changes the day several villages join in a hnakra hunt—the hnakra being the aquatic predator Ransom saw on his first day on Mars, an armored creature vulnerable only through its open mouth. Spear-armed hrossa in a hundred boats are deployed over the water, each hoping to win the prize. Ransom's friend and mentor, Hyoi, sharing his boat with Ransom, suddenly says, “There is an eldil coming to us over the water.” Ransom can see nothing, but he hears a voice coming out of the air just above him:

“The Man with you, Hyoi. He ought not to be there. Bent men are following him; he should go to Oyarsa. If they find him anywhere else, there will be evil.”

Ransom, excited with the hunt, thinks there will be time for going somewhere after the hunt, and indeed it is he and Hyoi who kill the hnakra. While everyone is celebrating, a rifle shot is heard, and Hyoi falls, mortally wounded.

Other hrossa advise Ransom that when Oyarsa summons, one must respond immediately. The way to Meldilorn, the planet's capital, would take five days, going by the valley, but there is a shortcut, they instruct him. It follows a trail over the mountains, where the sorn who live in caves will guide him. Start immediately!

Stricken with guilt over his friend's death, and with fear for his own life knowing that Weston is in close pursuit, Ransom obeys their instructions. He follows the base of the mountain, alone and expecting another bullet at any moment. He finds the beginning of the shortcut and begins his ascent. All his old fears from his arrival on the planet assail him, but he steels his resolve to reach Medilorn on the other side of the heights. The air is much thinner and colder; dark is coming on. Exhausted, he sees a single light in the darkness farther on. Does it mean shelter, or is it an outpost of the Sorns to whom Weston wants to sell him?