Literature Award 2019 - Other Books We Loved (But Couldn't Award) This Year

by Literature Committee Members
May, 2019

The Literature Awards Committee was lucky to receive many wonderful entries for our awards this year. These books generated excited discussion and created ardent fans among us. While we couldn't give every such book an award, we'd like to make you aware of some that provide a fine reading experience.

Virgil Wander by Leif Enger

Enger's third novel shows us a small, tightly connected Minnesota community on the shores of Lake Superior. Greenstone has essentially folded up after the nearby iron mine was depleted. Its remaining inhabitants are quirky and the plot nearly magical. Heroes appear and so do better natures.

Virgil, orphaned suddenly and forever asking life's big questions, opens the story as he is rescued after his car leaves the road and plunges into the frigid lake. His concussion causes memory loss, especially his ability to use adjectives.

Enter Rune, a Norwegian kite designer looking for his lost son and descendants. Virgil needs a housemate and Rune a place to keep warm, so the two settle in together.

Virgil owns the local movie theater that becomes the town's focus for entertainment and gathering, especially when he shows films from an illegally held collection. Everyone shows up: Rune's grandson and daughter-in-law, the ambitious local real estate agent, Virgil's Samoan friend and his pet raccoon, and the town's snowplow contractor.

The author's strength is in his portrayal of the setting — the numbing cold, the treacherous roads and the dying small town trying its best to rally. His language is lyrical, yet it captures the terse commentary typical of Scandinavian Midwesterners. The characters are almost all likeable, all with their flaws. Even the antagonists have their sympathetic sides. As Virgil's doctor Finn, who "had the heartening bulk of the aging athlete defeated by pastry," predicted, our protagonist regains his adjectives and carries on.

Enger's first novel, Peace like a River, was published in 2001 and gained literary acclaim. Virgil Wander finds him fully emerged as a serious writer.

Karen Pulver

The Distance Home by Paula Saunders

One of the rewards of being a reader on an awards committee is the opportunity to read wonderful books you never would have known about otherwise. My "discovery novel" this year was Paula Saunders's beautifully written debut entitled The Distance Home, which is the single best book I've read during my eleven years on the adult literature awards committee.

A family saga based on her own South Dakota child-hood, The Distance Home opens in the 1960s as Eve and Al are adjusting to married life in the basement apartment of Al's parents. After Leon and his sister, Reneé, are born, the family moves from one isolated prairie town to another, where Eve holds down the fort while Al, a cattle broker, spends most of his time on the road.

Each parent has a favorite child. Al dotes on René, a precocious and competitive girl who succeeds at everything she tries; while Eve favors Leon, a gentle soul who stutters and is somewhat awkward. He also has "olive skin and from some-where buried deep in the silence of the genetic line, the beautiful high cheekbones and broad nose of the Sioux." As if this weren't enough to set him apart, Eve, in an attempt to alleviate his clumsiness, enrolls him in a ballet class. To her surprise and his, Leon excels at dance. This makes Al very uncomfortable, but when René starts dancing too, he is thrilled with his little ballerina. And from here on out, the paths of the two siblings diverge in achingly painful ways.

As the only boy in his dance class, Leon endures brutal teasing, and it's no better at home where his father's withering disapproval is a constant. In one heartrending scene, dinner guests watch as Leon proudly shows off the tricks he's taught his dog, Chuck. Eve laughs and applauds, and even Al seems pleased, but then Leon accidentally knocks his plate onto the floor. "Chicken, bones, peas, bits of potato, and cranberry fly into the air, then fall and spill over the carpet" as Al, "his face on fire," chastises Leon, calling him a "damn dumb Indian." Leon is then sent outside to the patio, where he sits "on the ledge, his legs hanging down to nowhere, his arm around Chuck," while René takes over, entertaining the company with a one-handed cartwheel, a headstand, the splits, and other gymnastic feats.

Eventually Eve decides to open a dance academy of her own, and to advertise it she has a photographer take some publicity shots of 14-year-old Leon, not realizing until it's too late that the man is a predator. The next day Leon tells her, while 'wiping tears from the naked red rims of his eyes,' that he's quitting ballet. After that, it's downhill for Leon, who starts flunking his classes, preferring instead to drink whiskey or smoke pot with friends.

In the wake of Leon's collapse, 'the mantle of improving oneself, of reaching one's potential, of attaining some increasingly mysterious lofty height settles solely on René's shoulders," and she leaves home while still in high school to study dance in Phoenix. Though the regime is a lonely and strenuous one, René grabs this opportunity and, just like Saunders herself, makes it to New York City where she dances professionally.

Saunders, by giving each of her characters a voice, is able to present a searing yet sympathetic portrait of one dysfunctional family. Her larger and more universal concern, however, is what happens to both "winners" and "losers" in a culture where striving and power dominate.

Roberta Gates

Samuel Johnson's Eternal Return by Martin Riker

Rarely, do you read a book that challenges your perception of what you believe and interjects a new paradigm of thinking into your mind. Do I believe in any form of re-incarnation? Not really. But in this novel, new father Samuel Johnson dies, and finds himself in a journey through an American half-century, inhabiting others' lives. Whenever Sam's lost soul's host body dies, he immediately inhabits the live body closest by.

This circumstance may sound improbable, but it comes across as a testament to human will. Sam has a mission: to reunite with or at least check up on his son who was 4 years old the first time Sam was killed.

In his early life, Sam grows up in an off-the-grid community, and the arrival of a television in Unityville, his home-town in central Pennsylvania, frames a major theme. Samuel becomes increasingly addicted to the television. The television is a symbol of observing the world without being actually in it, of being trapped in front of a screen with no ability to participate. Yet though Sam doesn't have much of a story of his own, he develops an incredible need to live by any means possible.

Some of the bodies that Samuel Johnson inhabits are not what we might expect in our own visions of reincarnation: a nearly comatose elderly woman, a belligerent alcoholic, a heroin-addicted young woman with terrible taste in men. But the adventures of Sam in these beings are captivating, over time illustrating changes in society, the media, consumerism, and Samuel's ability (or inability) to control the bodies that he inhabits for short periods of time, a power that inevitably furthers him on his quest to find his way home.

The book is ingenious, often humorous. It shows people as slaves to their selfish vices. But, it is provocative, and you may consider time and death in a way you haven't before imagined.

Karen Burnett

Something Wonderful:Rodgers and Hammerstein's Broadway Revolution by Todd Purdom

While the author is already way too successful to win our prize for newish authors, we did fi nd this book a trove of gossip, nostalgia, and fun—a very well researched book into the times and lives of the men behind the musicals we love...

Already well known in the field of music, both Rodgers and Hammerstein were each at a critical juncture when they decided to work together. Rodgers was coming to the end of a highly successful but increasingly tumultuous working relationship with Larry Hart. And Hammerstein, despite numerous past triumphs, had endured more than a decade of misfires, with some wondering if he had lost his touch.

Each was looking for a story with substance for their next project. This they found in Lynn Riggs's play Green Grow the Lilacs, which became the basis for their first joint effort, the 1943 Broadway musical Oklahoma!

While perhaps not deliberately setting out to reinvent musical theater, with Oklahoma! Rodgers and Hammerstein did just that. They seamlessly integrated music and songs into the story to move the plot along, chose to begin the show without an overture, and incorporated dance as a central part of the plot. Oklahoma! wasn't the first stage work to make use of these techniques, but, as the book points out, it was the first show to use them all.

Purdum covers the entire Oklahoma! gestation period, paying particular attention to the processes by which each man would create and then modify his various musical contributions. The creative process for the lyrics and libretto is covered more extensively for each of the Rodgers and Hammerstein projects, as the mechanics of composing don't work as well in a written narrative (though Purdum does do a good job describing how Rodgers found bits of inspiration for his scores).

After two initial chapters, respectively chronicling each man's career prior to working together, the succeeding pages detail their various projects as a team. For example, the two often explored controversial subjects in their work: among them, spousal abuse for Carousel (Rodgers's personal favorite of all the shows he worked on), cultural differences for The King and I and Flower Drum Song, and interracial romance for South Pacific. Purdum notes that the duo's solution to these topics doesn't always wear well in the #MeToo era.

The author is also quick to avoid laying the entire credit for their successes directly at Rodgers and Hammerstein's feet. The contributions made by other members of each show's creative team—from Agnes de Mille to Joshua Logan—and the professional ups and down with each are all carefully explored.

Just as fascinating are the sections devoted to the Rodgers and Hammerstein shows that did not do as well as the team had hoped. Allegro was a work Hammerstein always thought deserved another chance. The show's main character, a young doctor, finds he has so many demands on his time that he can no longer practice medicine.

This issue resonated with the men, for as their successes snowballed, neither seemed to have time to do what they loved. In the wake of Oklahoma! and Carousel, Rodgers noted that "there was just no letup. ... Every day required an unending stream of decisions," from business and marketing concerns to casting problems, which left little time for the actual creative process.

And both deeply distrusted Hollywood. Due to their often hands-off approach when it came to the filming of their stage works (other than Oklahoma! with which they were intimately involved), the film frequently ended up a pale imitation of the stage version. Coupled with this was the fact that by the time their final collaboration, The Sound of Music, opened on Broadway in November of 1959, critics were beginning to see Rodgers and Hammerstein as old-fashioned and increasingly out of step with the world. Rodgers would battle this perception in the years after Hammerstein's death, in his subsequent works with other collaborators.

Yet existing as a sort of through-line in the book is an examination of the Rodgers and Hammerstein relationship, and the lack of one. The two apparently decided early on to present a united front in public. This is why no record exists of any disputes between them, at least as presented in the book. Their good front to the world went so far as giving no explanation for a nearly yearlong split in the early 1950s, and similarly, no reason for their reconciliation.

It's also why, when evidence of hurt feelings actually did come to light, it seemed that much more significant. One time, Hammerstein exploded and shared his feelings with a third party about how Hammerstein felt Rodgers wasn't respecting his work on a particular lyric; another was when Rodgers felt slighted because Hammerstein and his wife were planning a trip and didn't invite Rodgers and his spouse along. Perhaps most telling of all is Purdum's comment that "to the end of their days, each maintained that he'd never been sure whether the other really liked him."

Something Wonderful offers a fascinating look at two men who produced some of the most enduring classics in the history of musical theater. Whether you just have a general interest in the genre or you're a hard core devotee, this book is definitely a worthwhile read.

Tammie Bob

Oranges by Gary Eldon Peter

A good book is one that improves with subsequent readings. Oranges by Gary Eldon Peter is such a book. It is a series of closely linked short stories about a gay man struggling, as we all do, to make sense of his life. The book gives us a realistic glimpse into this young man's life and work. In the first story, Michael, the narrator, describes how he recalls the names of Academy Award winners in order to fall asleep. That is his coping method for insomnia. This original character trait piqued my interest. Michael goes on to describe how he met his boyfriend Kevin and the struggles in their relationship, which are significant. Kevin is HIV positive.

Michael works as a "psychiatric counseling associate." His description of the patients and his work are visceral. I had the sense of a curtain being pulled back to see what it would be like to work with severely depressed patients in a hospital.

Oranges won the New Rivers Press Many Voices Project, and it is easy to see why. It has the ring of authenticity. The writing is spare and subtle. The drama is low key, but this is appropriate for a story of this gay man growing up in the midwest. When I picked up Oranges again to write this review, I enjoyed it even more than my first reading. It really gives us a chance to walk in someone else's shoes.

Ida Hagman