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?

Being Mortal book review #9

BEING MORTAL by Atul Gawande Metropolitan Books

Dr. Atul Gawande is a surgeon and professor at Harvard Medical school. Both his parents were doctors and immigrants from India. He has written extensively on improving American medical practice, and this latest of his books, published in 2014, addresses the need for more intelligent care of the very old.

For most of human history, people who reached old age were cared for by their children or grandchildren. For those who had no family, there was, in the 1800's, the “Poorhouse”, which provided bare existence.

Two new developments came in the early twentieth century: (1) The Great Depression, that in USA prompted the creation of the Social Security Act in 1935, and allowed workers to accumulate funds for retirement. (2) The on-going progress in medical education gave doctors and hospitals the tools to prolong life – antibiotics, surgical procedures, better nursing care, etc.

We doctors were taught that death is the enemy, and longer life the victory. How to live that longer life was not part of medical school curriculum. With the illness or injury successfully dealt with, the patient gets discharged from the hospital with a brief list of instructions.

More and more, however, the healed one lives long enough to encounter lasting disabilities that the family is not equipped to handle: arthritis perhaps, or a “weak heart”, or failing memory. Not something that required returning to the hospital, but more than could be treated at home.

Thus came extended care in a “nursing home”, giving the patient time to convalesce, or perhaps get physiotherapy exercises. Those not able to recover (in the doctor's judgment) stayed on and on as permanent residents. Avoiding bedsores and maintaining the resident's weight and safety are worthy goals but the daily routine is usually run like an institution, not like the home the resident had left behind. Independence, privacy, and personal goals are mostly ignored.

“This simple but profound service,” writes Gawande, “--to grasp a fading person's need for everyday comforts, for companionship, for help achieving modest aims—is the thing that is still so devastatingly lacking almost a century later.” Around 1990, a company called Assisted Living Concepts went public and proved so popular that by the year 2000 its number of employees had grown from less than 100 to 3000, operating 184 residences in eighteen states. So popular that developers called almost anything “assisted living”, watered down versions with fewer services. Assisted Living has come to now mean a step between independent living and full nursing home care, with staff efficiency the key theme.

Bill Thomas, an upstate New York family doctor summarized the atmosphere of his town's nursing home as “boredom, loneliness, and helplessness.” He set about to bring in some life.” Green plants in every room. Bring in some animals – two dogs. “New York state code allows only one” his Board said. “And two cats on each floor,” he went on. (“The code won't allow both dogs and cats” said the administrator.)

“Let's just write them down. For discussion. Now about birds. Start with a hundred—at least one per room. Birdsong is the sound of life!”

“ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND!” But the administrator didn't actually say no. With paperwork in hand, Dr. Thomas drove to Albany to lobby the State Board personally. He came away with a permit, waivers, and a small financial grant for this experiment.

A truck delivered 100 parakeets. No cages had arrived, so the delivery man put them in the nursing home's hair salon. 100 cages arrived that afternoon, but needed assembling. The staff spent hours chasing the parakeets through a cloud of feathers. Many residents took amused interest in watching through the windows as the staff struggled. “They laughed their butts off,” Dr. Thomas recalls. But having living creatures to care for brought new life to many of the oldsters. So did an after-school program welcoming children of staff to hang out and spend time getting acquainted with individual residents. Things were becoming more like home. And in the long run, the patients required fewer medicines, and fewer surgical operations

That's the main theme of Dr. Gawande's book. What does the eighty or ninety-year-old want to achieve in his/her limited remaining years? In taking the time to discuss this with his patients, he found that even those with Alzheimer's dementia still have goals. Not all the same goals, but each has his own. “I want to live as long as I can still eat chocolate ice cream and watch football on TV,” said one.

A piano teacher had fought cancer for months, only to have complications of her surgery and chemo bring her closer to her end days. Some at that point might have accepted “death with dignity”. She chose hospice care instead. In her remaining six weeks, she taught the piano students she loved for four weeks. And her old time students from around the country returned to play a concert for their beloved teacher.

In summary, Dr. Gawande does not require huge new government programs. Rather he advises doctors, nurses, administrators—and old folks' children--to pay attention, listen, and allow each person to write the end of their own personal story.

The Edge: book review # 8

In real life, author Dick Francis had a long career as a jockey on the race tracks of Britain, and wrote more than thirty-five mystery novels about horse-racing. This one, “The Edge”, is my favorite:

Brigadier Val Catto is chief of security at the Jockey Club, charged with keeping British horse racing honest. His staff had built up a tight case against a crooked operator, one Julius Filmer, only to have the case dismissed when one witness was murdered and the other four were terrorized into “forgetting” their testimony. One of Catto's agents, Tor Kelsey, has been tailing Filmer's suspected “enforcer” only to see the man drop dead of apparently natural causes.

Now Catto has received a phone call from his Canadian counterpart, about the upcoming “Transcontinental Mystery Race Train” to publicize Canada's race tracks. The train will take Canadian race horse owners and fans on a 10-day excursion from Toronto to Winnipeg to Vancouver. Filmer has just registered as a participant. He is widely known for his temper, his violence and unpredictable ways, and the Canadian Racing Commissioner wants help in preventing any criminal activity that Filmer may be planning.

Catto assigns Tor Kelsey to go to Canada to shadow Filmer on the excursion train, see who he contacts and what he is up to. Kelsey is expert in changing his appearance to blend into any racetrack crowd, an anonymous observer. When he checks in with the excursion supervisor who will be on the train, he learns the “mystery” will be presented by a group of actors, masquerading as passengers to conduct an ongoing murder mystery as part of the excursion's entertainment, acting out scenes in the elite dining car. To keep his anonymity while watching Filmer, he changes his own role from a rich young racing fan to a waiter in the dining car. Only Nell, the supervisor, and George, the train conductor know Tor's true job.

The widely publicized events get off to a magnificent start at Toronto's Woodbine Racetrack, where the featured race is won by a horse named Laurentide Ice, owned by a rich widow on the train, Daffodil Quentin. Tor discovers that Julius Filmer has become half owner of Laurentide Ice. He also discovers that Filmer is befriending Mercer Lorrimore, one of the richest men in Canada, also a racehorse owner, whose family has their own railroad car attached to the train. Filmer can be very charming when it suits his purposes.

The race train leaves Toronto at noon next day with everything going according to plan. The catered food is excellent. Tor's co-workers in the dining car assume he is one of the actor group, but appreciate his help with their own jobs. The drama group begins with an actor discovering another actor's murdered body. The train reaches Sudbury, Ontario on schedule, and makes a brief stop at the town of Cartier during dinner. Lorrimore's teen-age daughter gets up to go back to their private car at the rear of the train and she returns screaming. The car is not there. “I could have been killed,” she sobs, terrified.

The regularly scheduled passenger train is only 35 minutes behind them. In the pandemonium of the dining car, Tor leaps into action, locates the conductor, who stops the race train and radios an emergency message to stop the following passenger train at Cartier and a following freight train behind it at Sudbury. The race train reverses and finds the detached car about twelve kilometers back, no damage to the coupling; All evidence shows it had been deliberately uncoupled from the train in a manner to leave it standing undetected on level track, waiting for the following train to crash into it.

The Race Train makes a longer than scheduled stop in Thunder Bay, to allow a team of railroad inspectors to examine the Lorrimore's car and question the passengers, but they only

conclude that the car was unhitched by persons unknown, probably someone in the town of Cartier.

In Winnipeg, the train pauses for two days to participate in another racetrack event, won by another couple on the train. But the celebration begins to unravel when Daffodil declares in tears that she is leaving the train at Calgary. Her horse's new co-owner, Julius Filmer has nothing to say to her. Her horse's groom has been terrorized by threats from some unidentified man among the racing fans on the train.

The situation goes from bad to worse as the train approaches its final destination in Vancouver, with two more attempts to sabotage the train, followed by a suicide. The surprising outcome leaves the reader on edge until the last chapter. Most of the train's passengers continue to celebrate, unaware of the plot that Tor Kelsey and the Canadian Racing Commission are trying to foil.

There is action on almost every page, yet author Dick Francis delves deeply into many of the characters' fears and behavior, without slowing the story's pace A good read!