From a Rocky Hillside

I have been away on vacation and will try to get back around soon and catch up with folks. I’ll tell you more about my travels later, but let me catch up on my readings…

Karen Russell, The Antidote A Novel 

(New York: Alfred P. Knopf, 2025), 422 pages, some photos and notes. (Audible, 16 hours and 55 minutes). 

This novel is set in Uz, Nebraska in 1935, at the height of the Dust Bowl. The story takes place between two well-known events, the Black Sunday dust storm and the flooding of the Republican River. The town of Uz is fictional, borrowed from the home of Job in the Bible. The book of Job comes up frequently in the novel as the people in this town struggle and many leave in response to the drought and dust. Job ends with God speaking through a whirlwind. In The Antidote, near the end, a tornado sweeps through Oletsky’s property. While God doesn’t speak from the storm, the message is clear. 

Russell tells the story of Uz through several characters. There is Harp Oletsky, a bachelor farmer whose crop seems immune to the dust storm destroying everyone else’s fields. Harp lives with his niece, Asphodel Oletsky, an orphan high schooler, who loves basketball.   In town, there is a Prairie Witch, later identified as Antonina Rossi. She can take memories from people, saving them from their unpleasant past. The Sheriff uses her skills at the jail, which in time we learn is a means to cover up misconduct. Her talents allow people to forget the past and avoid being haunted by their deeds.  Another important character is Cleo Allfrey, an African American woman sent by the government to photograph the disaster on the plains. When her camera is stolen, she buys another which has special abilities she only learns after the film is developed. The camera captures views from the past. And finally, we have Harp’s scarecrow and the Sheriff’s cat. Both observe and become involve in that which happens

During the months in which the novel takes place, the Uz girls’ basketball team, even after their coach leaves, wins the state championship.  The sheriff is in a political race. He thinks he has the election in hand because he solved a serial killing of women in Nebraska, one in which the killer places a rabbit foot on the victim’s body. But then, the killings continue and the man convicted of the murders sits on death row with people wondering if he was guilty. 

When circumstances bring together Harp, the prairie witch, the photographer, and his niece, things come to a head. They learn not only the truth of the evil sheriff, but also of their past. Harp retrieves his father’s memories, long stored with an old witch of another town. Learning the truth of his past bothers him. He knows how his family who were forced out of Poland by the Germans in the late 19^th Century, But now he’s haunted for they did the same thing, taking land from Native Americans. They also learn of modern racial tensions with African Americans.  Harp envisions a new society addressing the evils of the past. Of course, this vision almost leads to Harp’s murder by those who want to hold on to a mythological view of pioneer families taming the wilderness. 

This is a great book which I almost gave up on because of the supernatural elements in the story. I’m glad I stuck with it. Russell uses language beautifully. Her work raises questions as to how we remember the past and what role it plays in the present. She also provides insight into racism. In an age in which we want to sanctify the past mythologies, she reminds us of that we’d like to forget, and the loss it will be if the past can be whitewashed.  There are other themes, too, within the novel including how people handle loss and face difficulties.  I recommend it and hope to discuss the book with others who have read it. 

For those interested in a non-fiction book on the Dust Bowl, I highly recommend Timothy Egan’s The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl.

Erik Larson, The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz 

(Crown: New York, 2020), 584 pages with sources and index.

May 1940 was the worse time to be asked to convene a new government. The nation was at war. British soldiers sent to Norway to fight against the German invaders needed to be extracted. The British Expeditionary Force in Europe faced a German onslaught through the Low Countries, as they attempted to outflanking the French and British armies.  And it kept going downhill as France fell back and many, but not all, of the British soldiers on France soil found themselves with their backs to the sea at Dunkirk. And then France surrendered and the United Kingdom had to deal with their large and modern navy in the hands of the Germans. Shortly after France fell, the bombings began. Tragedy filled Winston Churchill’s first year as Prime Minister.

Larson focuses on this year in his usual detailed style, drawing on the life not only of Churchill, but others around him. We learn about the capable men, such as Lord Beaverbrook, whom he recruited to increase aircraft production. We also learn about his enemies such as Herman Goring, the head of the German Luftwaffe and Rudolf Hess, who attempted an unusual means of diplomacy.  

The reader is also drawn into Churchill’s family and personal life. We learn about struggle with personal finances, his unique relationship with his wife, and the struggle with his children. Churchill had many weird habits such as regular baths from which he worked as the bathroom became crowded with advisors and secretaries. Like Stalin, he also seemed unable to sleep till long after midnight. He enjoyed good food and drink, but he also felt a connection to the people of the nation. Often, after a major bombing, Churchill visited the burning cities and connected with those suffering. This endeared him to the nation. 

Of course, Churchill needed rest and a respite from the trials he faced as a leader in war. Friends stepped in to provide him with various retreats, such as Chequers, which became his home away from home on weekends. 

The reader also learns of Churchill’s hope throughout this dark period that America would enter the war.  He kept in constant contact with American diplomats in Britain, as well President Roosevelt. But America, at this time, attempted to remain in isolation. Congress tied Roosevelt hands. The American President struggled to gain approval to provide Great Britain with old and obsolete navy destroyers through what would become the Lend-Lease act. Of course, that would change in December 1941, with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. But in 1940 and most of 1941, no one saw the attack on the horizon.  While that attack brought America into the war, the German attack on Russia in June of 1941 helped reduce the pressure on the British Isles. 

This book provides an interesting history lesson, reminding Americans World War 2 started over two years before Pearl Harbor. The book should also provide thoughtful readers a warning of the danger of American isolationism. 

Kyle Meyaard Schaap, Following Jesus in a Warming World: A Christian Call to Climate Action 

(Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2023), 200 pages including notes. 

I heard Meyaard-Schaap at the Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin University in April and picked up his book right afterwards.  Coming from a conservative Christian background, he takes on the evangelical wing of Protestantism for ignoring the issues of environmentalism. He even challenges this attitude as failing to live up to their “pro-life” rhetoric.  

Much of the book involves Meyaard-Schaap recalling the “Big Story” of scripture. Moving from Genesis to Revelation, he interprets the Bible as God’s love story for the world. He challenges, with scripture, those who believe God will destroy this world and create a new one. As he points out the passage at the end of Revelation about a new heaven and earth should be translated as a restored heaven and earth. The word used here isn’t the same word we might use for a newly built house. Instead, John in Revelation uses kainos, a word implying that God doesn’t start over but restores his masterpiece (page 59). Just as the world is transformed, so will we. We see this promise in Paul as well as in Revelation. 

Another area of scripture which Meyaard-Schaap focuses is on the meaning of “good news.” He makes the case that Jesus’ message of hope is for the poor in the world, who face the blunt of challenges with climate change. This is true in our own country as the poor often live in the most dangerous places such as next to freeways with exhaust or by chemical plants which spews pollution. But such a crisis becomes greater by those living in places where sea level rise creates a life-threatening challenge. This is another reason for us to be concerned about the environment and pollution. 

In addition to providing reasons for Jesus’ followers to be concerned over climate change, Meyaard-Schaap provides ways that individuals and groups of Christianns can become involved in the debate. He encourages others to join in telling stories of the dangers and of redemption. Finally, he encourages us to be joyful even amidst the tragedy around us. After all, God loves this world and those of us in it, which is indeed good news. 

Tony Horwitz, Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War 

(New York: Henry Holt, 2011), 365 pages including notes, indexes, and photos. (Audible, 11 hours and 5 minutes). 

This book sat on on my TBR pile for a while. Reading Horwitz’s wife book on his death brought the book back to my attention. Unlike most of Horwitz’s books I’ve read, this book is void of humor. The books I’ve read by Horwitz (Confederates in the Attic, One for the Road, A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World, and Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide), he travels to learn about history and places. While the subject matter may not be very funny, his encounters as he travels can be funny and delightful. With Midnight Rising, he sticks to writing straight history as an academic exploring what some suggest is America’s first homegrown terrorist and others saw as a well-meaning but misguided fighter to end slavery. 

John Brown was a complicated man.  Coming from a strict Calvinist background, he broke with his father’s pacifist views and later moved to Kansas just for the purpose of fighting the spread of slavery. Steeped in the Old Testament stories, he saw himself as a modern-day Gideon, leading a small group of freedmen and slaves to strike a blow against the slave economy of the South. I was amazed Brown had pondered his vision of an insurrection starting in Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) for so long. He even discussed his plan with many other people including Frederick Douglass. While Douglass desired an end to slavery, he felt Brown’s plan foolish and refused to join him. 

But Brown and his sons were gained some support, both from northern abolitionists who financed his operation and a few followers who joined in the raid. They set up in a house in Maryland, north of the city and scouted out the city and countryside before they began their campaign. Many of those who joined Brown knew they would likely give their lives to the cause. Ironically, within Harpers Ferry lived many free blacks. The first death at the railroad bridge at the beginning of the raid was a free black who worked for the railroad.  Brown was able to surprise Harpers Ferry, but the raid began to quickly fall apart as townsfolks took up arms and fought back. Brown and most of his men found themselves pinned down in a firehouse. Their capture came when a contingent of Marines under the command of Robert E. Lee rushed the building. Wounded, Brown was tried while resting on a cot in the courtroom.  Brown and several of his men were executed for their role in the attempted rebellion in nearby Charlestown.  Before his death, Brown predicted the upcoming war between slaveholding and free states, which erupted in 1861. 

This book provides a good study into Brown’s plans and the fatal attack in 1859 in Harpers Ferry.  The next time I visit the town, I will have a better understanding of what happened there so long ago. While the fire house still stands, much of the industrial machinery was removed during the Civil War, leaving the sleepy town without evidence of its industrial past. 

Edward Abbey, The Fool’s Progress: An Honest Novel

 (1988, New York: Avon Books, 1990), 513 pages.  

This is my third time reading The Fool’s Progress, but it’s been 35 years since I last read it. I had felt it was Abbey’s best novel, but I am no longer sure. I do plan to reread The Monkey Wrench Gang. This time through The Fool’s Progress, I found myself repulsed by the narcissistic, misogynistic, xenophobic, and racist views of the protagonist, Henry Holyoak Lightcap. The harsh language, especially in the first 40 pages, turned me off. I almost quit, but glad I didn’t. The book, in my opinion, gets better and many of Henry’s extreme views seem to taper especially after his marriage to Claire.  Warning Spoilers: If you want to read this book, you might want to skip my review as it contains spoilers.

This novel is somewhat autobiographical. There are many parts of the novel which Abbey drew from his own life including military service at the end of World War 2, serving as a MP in post-war Italy, tramping around the country during a summer in high school, his time working seasonal jobs as a ranger and a fire lookout, and his relationship with a plethora of women. But it’s also fiction. After all, Abbey is from the coal country of Western Pennsylvania, not the coal country of West Virginia.

As the novel begins, Henry’s latest wife has left him. He goes into a rage and then decides to head across country, from his home in Arizona to Stump Creek, West Virginia.  He wants to see, one more time, his brother Will. Driving a dilapidated old truck with a dying dog riding shotgun, he heads across country. Henry mostly sticks to backroads. He stops along the way to see friends. To finance his trip, he sells a gun to one friend who is in the pawnshop business. But he’s also not above using his defunct credit card (in the days before the internet) to buy gas. And if that fails, he has another “gas credit card,” a long flexible rubber hose.  

As he travels, we learn more about Henry’s life and the country through which he drives. We sense his love for this country. Abbey often makes lists for his protagonist, of the trees, the flowers, the animals, music, books and authors, etc.  Henry is a lover of creation. About halfway through the book, Abbey begins to drop hints that the dog and the truck are not the only thing dying in this novel. But it’s only near the end that we learn of Henry’s serious illness. The end of the book leaves the reader wondering how much of what happens is real or is a vision in Henry’s mind as he dies. 

While Henry flunked at becoming an academic, he continues to read philosophy and poetry. His musical taste varies from “country” and “western” to classical. Henry also has a keen sense of vision of what goes on around him. We see bits of both of his parents in Henry. His mother, the Presbyterian organist, and his father, an agnostic anarchist. Henry carries on a debate with a deity he can’t seem to believe in. But also can’t cast away.  Henry could be modelled on Mark Twain. As Edgar Lee Masters said of Twain:: “he threw out the Bible, but it seemed to be attached to a rubber band and was likely to bounce back into his lap at any time.” 

Another character I found myself pondering in this story is Henry’s older brother, Will. Two years older, Will found himself fighting in Europe in the Second World War. When he came back to West Virginia, Will insisted on farming (and living) the old way. He shunned electricity and indoor plumbing and preferred to use horses for farming. I found myself comparing Will to the author Wendell Berry, who also prefer to live a simple farming life. Both Abbey and Berry studied under Wallace Stegner at Stanford University. 

The big change in the book comes with Henry meeting Claire. He’s a middle-aged seasonal ranger in Arches National Park and she is a 19-year-old music student. After Henry’s crazy courtship, they marry. In the story, both appear incredibly happy.

Then, a truck crash in the mountains, claims her life. While the grieving Henry recovers in the hospital, her monied family takes their newborn child. His mother-in-law protects the girl from Henry with an army of lawyers. Henry now lives knowing he has a daughter he will never see (except, perhaps, in dying visions).  This part of the book doesn’t seem to come from any real-life experiences of Abbey, but it does hint at his idealism. It also, too me, seems to draw his earlier novel, Black Sun. Love, for Abbey is fragile and can be easily lost. Often, he was to blame. At the death of Claire, I found myself wondering what would have happened if the two of them settled down as a family. In a way, her death was convenient for Abbey, an unconventional anarchist with a romantic streak. 

If you want to read this book, I encourage you to first read Desert Solitaire, which I reread last year. 

Malcolm Guite, The Word in the Wilderness: A Poem a Day for Lent and Easter 

(Norwich, UK: Canterbury Press, 2014), 192 pages. 

Every day through Lent to Easter (and the week after), Guite provides a poem along with a couple pages of reflection. The style is like a later book of poems he collected for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany..  Guite wrote many, maybe half, of the poems. Other authors include George Herbert, John Donne, W. B. Yeats, S. T. Coleridge, Dante, Czeslaw Milosz, John Davies, G. M. Hopkins, among others. The commentary links the reader to scripture and theological understandings behind the poetry.  The commentary also provides insights into the style of poetry. I enjoyed these readings and recommend them for anyone looking to grow deeper in poetry and the meaning of Lent and Easter. 

Eric Goodman with Kaveh Zamanian, Mother of Bourbon: The Greatest Whiskey Story Never Told 

(New York: Post Hill Press, 2025), 298 pages

Mary Murphy married John Dowling when she was just 14 and he nineteen years her senior. Mary’s parents made the arrangements. John was a successful cooper (maker of barrels) and was beginning to invest in Kentucky’s infant bourbon business. Mary, who had finished the third grade, worked at her father’s store.  Both were children of Irish immigrants who had moved to America to escape the potato famine. In the pre-Civil War years, America wasn’t friendly to Irish Catholics.  

It shocked Mary, at first, that she didn’t have a say in the marriage. She also didn’t like the idea of moving away from her family but consented. In n time Mary and John become partners in an expanding whiskey industry.  Their main distillery was Waterfill and Frazier, but they also own part of a distillery with John’s brothers.  And their family began to grow.

John Dowling died in 1903. Upon his death, Mary inherits the business, but soon it’s in threatened. The bank refused to supply the credit and suggested they sell the business. Also, the broker for the business quit. Mary quickly reorganized, takes her business to another bank. She also found another broker, Henrich Hiensohn, a German Catholic who continued to work with Mary until prohibition. 

After the war (World War 1), the Midwest experienced the second rise of the Kul Klux Klan. This group not only went after African Americans, of which Mary was suspect as she employed and treated them fairly, but also Catholics.  Mary reached out to a relative of one of her employees whose son was lynched. Prior to the Klan’s rise, Mary’s namesake (Mary Bond, who had married a Protestant) became a prominent leader within women in Kentucky who attempted to get revisionist books on the Civil War into the school system. Mary and her daughter fell out, but with the rise of the Klan, her daughter admitted to being wrong. The Klan activity also played into Probation as many distillers were Catholic. 

Prohibition presented another challenge. Not being granted a medical exemption, Waterfill and Frazier ceased operations.  Working with Hiensohn, they sold most of their barrels before prohibition. She also had many barrels moved into the basement of her large home, paying taxes on the liquor before prohibition took effect so that it was legal. But this didn’t stop their troubles. After a few years, Mary’s youngest son, Emmett, came back from school at Harvard. He loved to party. He also, unknown to his mother, sold some bottled whiskey to a man in town who was a known for selling illegal liquor. The revenuers raided the family home one night and everyone who living there arrested. They were all released on a $5000 per person bond. 

Much of the book centers on the trials which took place. The book was hrown at the family, with charges not just of bootlegging but conspiracy. The first trial ended in a mistrial, with 10 jurors voting for conviction and two for acquittal. The second trial resulted in a conviction which was appealed but overruled. At this time, the sisters were fined $100. Mary Dowling’s received a fine of $10,000. But most troubling was her two boys living at home, Johnny and Emmett, who received a prison sentence. 

Mary certainly felt the revenue agents took advantage of her. While it later came out that Emmett had sold a few bottles of liquor, this didn’t rise to a conspiracy, nor did it involve the entire family. Everything had been done legally in her eyes. Furthermore, not only had the government confiscated her liquor, but the warehouse where they stored it burned. Rumors circulated that government agents sold the liquor. The fire covered their tracks. She couldn’t help but to feel that they were after her because she was a successful woman and Catholic. 

During this time, she decided to get back into the liquor business by setting up operations in Juarez, Mexico, across from El Paso. She could legally make liquor there.

Interestingly, Mexico didn’t allow its grain to be distilled. Mary had grain shipped in from the United States. Waterfill and Frazier used 50% corn with a mix of rye and barley.  She found a Mexican partner who provided the land and hired local workers. She hired a descendant of Jim Beam to oversee the running of her distillery.  While she went into prohibition financially well off, she made another fortune with Waterfill and Frazier, SA. This distillery did a large business around the border where bars which were filled with Americans (especially soldiers from Fort Bliss). She also allowed those running the business to sell booze to bootleggers who would bribe the border guards to transport the liquor to sell to speak-easies in the America. 

The employees of the Mexican distillery gave Mary Dowling the title, “Mother of Bourbon.”  That distillery continued to operate until 1984, but after Mary and Emmett’s death, the family ignored its operation.  Oddly enough, the American government had a hand in its demise as it outlawed the sale of bourbon made outside the United States. 

After prohibition took effect, Mary continued to experience sadness. Ida, a daughter who didn’t marry until she was almost 40, died. Then, the next year, John and Emmett died way too young, the same year in which Mary Dowling died.  

I enjoyed this book. The story flowed smoothly. Woven into the last half of the story was a rosary given to Mary by her liquor wholesaler,. Late in their business partnership, he expressed romantic interests. Mary wasn’t interested. The authors used the rosary beads to link to Mary’s own sorrows with her children. This nice touch displayed the importance of Mary’s faith. However, I found myself wondering if it happened or was it just a detail made up by the authors. While Mary Dowling was a real woman who achieved and endured much, with the book being a novel instead of non-fiction, I know the authors had to create a framework and dialogue to make the story more readable.  

I have now read three books by Goodman. In 2019, I read a baseball novel, Days of Awe. In 2020, I read his novel, based on his wife’s parents, Cuppy and Stew.

wBruce M. Metzger, Breaking the Code: Understanding the Book of Revelation 

(Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1993), 144 pages. 

I first read this book in early 2004, when I last taught a class on the book of Revelation. Metzger, an outstanding Biblical Scholar from Princeton, spent part of my last year in seminary on Sabbatical at Pittsburgh. I got to know him a bit during this time as his apartment was next to mine.

Metzger approach is strictly Biblical. He shows how much of Revelation was written in response to was happening within the Roman Empire in the second half of the first century. Even the number of the beast (666) works out to a title of Nero.  A variant number (616) found in some ancient manuscripts matched a variation in Nero’s title.  I used this book as the base for my class, but also drew on a more detailed commentary by Robert Mounce along with Eugene Peterson’s literary commentary, Reversed Thunder: The Revelation of John and the Poetic Imaginaton. 

Alan Gurney, Compass: A Story of Exploration and Innovation

 (New Yor: W. W. Norton, 2004), 320 pages including index, notes, and bibliography.  

I’ve used and felt myself competent with a compass ever since my grandparents gave me one for my 11^th birthday, when I was old enough to join the Boy Scouts. Taking the compass for granted, I had no idea one could write a history of the compass that stretched out to 272 pages of text! Gurney manages to do this by primarily focusing on the use of the compass by the British Royal Navy and commercial ships. I knew that even in the ancient world, it was known that a suspended lodestone was known to point north/south. But I was shocked that it was only recently (last 150 years) that the compass as we know it was perfected. 

The original compass was a dry one, often suspending a thin piece of metal that had been magnetized so that if was free to move and point to the north. Below the pointer, a papers stock which could be moved to correct the heading. This “dry compass” was the main compass of British mariners until early in the 20^th Century. Such a compass had a difficult during rough weather or on a ship firing canons broadside.  This led to use of compasses with the lodestone floating on water (or alcohol). Another problem discussed is magnetic deviation. Interestingly, at one time, sailors hoped that correcting the deviation could help them know their latitude. Later problems arouse as ships used more iron in their construction. Earlier, such problems were noticed as the housing of the compass might use nails which affected the needle.  When the who ship was iron, the problem magnified. 

While this book primarily focuses on the British use of the compass, toward the end the author acknowledges the American Navy to be ahead of the British in the late 19^th Century. American adopted the floating compass for its navy 30 years before Britain. Through this book, we learn of the various individuals whose work with compasses to increase their efficiency.  While there were interesting parts of this book, I realize it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. The book is only about the role of the compass while on water, nothing about its use on land as in orientating. A good companion to this book is Dava Sobel’s, Longitude, which I read in 2017.