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​Book Santa Fe Blog
​For The Love of Books

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​“Ghost with Two Hearts” Book Review by Carmen J. Otto
The book “Ghost with Two Hearts,” is an absolutely amazing read! The way Michael French wrote this book makes it so easy to pick although very difficult to put down. “Ghost with Two Hearts” has an amazing storyline, and made me feel as if I were a part of Adrian’s trip to Japan. After reading this book I am rethinking the clear definition between right and wrong. You should do the right thing even if it might not benefit you although I think sometimes our human nature convinces us that if it doesn’t benefit us, it can’t be the right thing. I often found myself taking pause to contemplate my own life while I was experiencing Adrian’s adventure. 



I would give this book 5/5 stars because of how interesting the book was and how the plot twists kept me guessing. After reading “Ghost with Two Hearts,” I want to read all of the other books Michael French has written.



I would recommend this book to anyone that loves adventure and who enjoys not knowing what to expect next! 
 
 
Bio for Carmen J. Otto
 
Hi! I’m Carmen and I’m a high school sophomore who lives in the corner of a cornfield in chilly Wisconsin. I love cows and horses and I tolerate all of my siblings (there’s six of us)…kidding, not kidding… I do however love to read and my room is filled with books of all kinds. I enjoy discovering new authors and going on adventures through books. 


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http://bringonlemons.blogspot.com/2023/03/5-star-review-for-michael-frenchs-ghost.html
Michael R. French - Ghost With Two Hearts -- WOW Tour -- 3/23/2023​

"Lemons: In an Orchard" by David John Baer McNicholas (Author)

1/29/2022

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Available on Amazon
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​Dear Reader,

I describe myself as a ghost hunting wizard who lives in a bus. I’m also a student at the Institute of American Indian Arts,
where I study creative writing. It’s an emotional education. When I say that I mean that it’s unnatural to try and separate ideas from
the feelings we have about them. I know that scientific/philosophical r
igor claims to do just that, but positionality informs us that
this is impossible. Moreso, that claiming it diminishes the perspectives of the people we other. Enough didactic introductions, let’s
look at the book and the process of writing it.
Writing Lemons: In an Orchard was a deconstruction of my experience as a white man. It was a meditation on a person I
hated, his entire family seemed a train wreck I had to pour-over every scattered piece of bloody shrapnel. I had to feel his pain and
confusion, and get to the root of it. At its most personal this book is a story of an estranged father, himself a broken boy, whose
comforts of success and privilege dissolve in front of our eyes. How he is transformed by the things he thought he’d put to bed
informs the emotional story of the book. At the beginning of the book, the narrator is described as a pile of human remains torn to
pieces by wild animals. By the end of the book, one has to
wonder if he isn’t more alive than that.
I wrote the novel in Santa Fe, NM, as my first fall here became my first winter. I was living in this Thor El Dorado shuttle
bus built on an E-350 cutaway. I woke up every day and wrote. These were the days of the dwindling public assistance money from
New Hampshire. Work was something in transition. I was writing, but not for an income. I was writing more for the outcome. Dr
Bronner washed me in the Santa Fe river everyday from July to December. That river, or an analog of it, made it into the novel. My
body was a mess when I got here. Years of chronic pain and parasomniac episodes, combined with mid-life collapse, unpacking
themselves. I walked everywhere with a gnarled, vine-twisted walking stick. Slowly. As one pedestrian in Arizona remarked to the
back of my head, “in the middle of the damn sidewalk.”
The inspiration for the novel came from a short drive I took out to San Diego and back. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do
with myself. I came out to Santa Fe to study at St. John’s College, but quickly disabused myself of that notion. I was thinking, ‘do I
go back or do I stay?’ I decided to visit the Pacific Ocean. On the way back to Santa Fe, I drove through massive citrus fields in
California. There were just lemons as far as I could see for miles. I thought, there’s a novel in there.
I ruminated on it for a month until I found my narrator. He’s a sick man, a jerk, although he doesn’t think so. He
monopolizes the text with his travails, lost on the lemon farm, peppering his narration with pseudo-intellectual right-wing bigotry
and personal recollections, the meanings of which he seems almost verging on apprehending. And then there are the dreams. The
fever dreams of a man left to exposure, infection, and starvation.
Of course, he meets some other characters, denizens of the lemon grove who guide him on his path to be re-united with his
soul, which has been searching for him for a long time, as he is an old man. In dreams, we often encounter children. Jung tells us that
these children are manifestations of our inner child. Each time I encountered a child in my own dreams, I felt drawn in by
innocence, only to be murdered in some mythical way. I have been given the death touch by a six year old vampire. I’ve been
stabbed in the neck by a toddler driving a tank. This mysterious child figure plays as gentle antagonist to the narrator.
The reality of the story is a warped construction anchored in the concrete voice of the narrator. From the beginning, you
learn not to trust him. As his story becomes more fantastic, his disbelief reads as a credible account. I wanted his truth to be complex,
told in lies and irony. The magical elements of the story, when discredited by the narrator, feel like the most concrete part of the
story. The physical rigors of the lemon orchard itself, an alien terrain. A dream of nudity.
I hope readers pick up on the humor of the story. It was fun to write and I definitely laughed at some of my own bullshit. I
let the world around me be a part of it. The story would have been incomplete without the conversations I had with friends while I
was writing it. I was parked at the Patrick Smith Park on East Alameda when a drum circle showed up and started making rhythms.
I wrote them into the story and then got out of the bus and danced while they drummed, around my cane, like a magic staff. Music is
healing. Stories are healing. The river is healing.
I could not have written this book without Santa Fe. Even though New Mexico is not mentioned once in the text, the
theme of healing which permeates the subtext is one that I found here. I would love to hear from readers of my novel. You can find a
contact page on my website: ghostofamerica.NET Until then, I’ll be in the bus.
Thanks for reading,

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GUEST POST - "How Long?" by Author Don Willerton

12/1/2020

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Author, Don WillertonAuthor, Don Willerton
Ever listen to a discussion about how long we’ll be wearing masks in public, doing social distancing, or obeying periods of quarantine? We are certainly a pitiful people to have to suffer such trials and tribulations.

In July of 1942, Hitler double-crossed Stalin and launched his invasion of Russia with a three-prong attack. The top line of offense went north toward Leningrad, the middle line was pointed east towards Moscow, and the bottom line of offense headed for Stalingrad and the Crimea.

Romania, and the Ukraine. With a policy of focused racial hatred, Jews all over Eastern Europe were divested of their property, stripped of their rights, and driven into exile from towns where their families had lived for hundreds of years. 

Now, with the goal of invading and occupying Russia, the rush of the Germany Army was accompanied by even more brutal persecution of Jews and other nationalities by the Gestapo. Jewish settlements were devastated, whole populations of towns were captured and carried off to concentration camps or extermination camps, and many people were slaughtered where they lived.

A town near the Ukraine/Romania border, named Korolowka, was in the path of Hitler’s war machine and the Jews living there fled into larger cities or into hiding places scattered around the countryside. In the fall of 1942, a number of families committed to remain together and sought out a nearby underground cave system, a well-known location named Verteba, where they would crawl deep into the caves and hide for the winter when Verteba was closed to the public. In the spring, they would search for another hiding place.

With members of the families periodically stealing out to bring back sacks of potatoes, grain, flour, kerosene, matches, candles, water, and whatever else they could pilfer or buy on the black market, it was a constant state of survival for the thirty or so Jews.

They hid in the darkness of the cave system for about 150 days. 

In the spring of 1943, a few members were discovered and captured by the Gestapo. Those remaining in the cave escaped by way of a secret outlet they had dug during their confinement. Temporarily hiding in the attic of their old houses, in barns, or in other refuges in town, they were eventually led by a hunter to a sinkhole that formed the entrance to another cave system, locally called The Priest’s Grotto because it lay in the field of a local priest. It was not a publicly known or used cave system; later it would be determined to be the ninth largest cave system in the world.   

But it was not spacious and roomy like a Carlsbad Caverns. It was a labyrinth of narrow passageways wandering throughout a hollowed-out layer of limestone. However, the Jews discovered small sinks of water formed by internal springs, as well as circulating air currents that allowed small fires to be lit for cooking. It was quite an improvement over Verteba.

Again expecting members of the families to periodically sneak out to find food, firewood, blankets, and other necessities, Esther and Zeida Stermer, their six children, four relatives, and twenty-six other Jews, on May 5, 1943, fled to the Priest’s Grotto to escape the certainty of the horrors of the Gestapo, the Russians, and the Ukranian police.

Feeling their way down in the darkness, the families lowered themselves through the narrow opening to the chambers below. It would be the last time for many of them to see the sky for nearly a year.

In fact, the majority of that community would live in hiding for 344 days. 

Seventy feet below the surface, in total darkness, at a constant temperature of fifty degrees, these thirty-eight individuals lived in a state of near hibernation. They could not tell day from night and their bodies adjusted until they slept eighteen to twenty-two hours at a time, lying on wooden planks scavenged from above, and stayed awake only to perform the very basic needs of survival – cooking, eating, drinking, going to the bathroom, and trying to make their situation more tolerable.

The youngest girl was three; several women were elderly.

344 days. 

Close to a year after they had descended, a message dropped in a bottle down the entrance shaft by a friend, the thirty-eight survivors learned that the Germans had left for good, and, on April 12, 1944, each of them made the arduous climb out the entrance – jaundiced, weak, their skin covered in mud, about two-thirds of their entry weight, blinded by the sun. 

They were no longer interested in returning to their town. They made their way through temporary refugee camps in Germany, then fled to the United States. Some of them and their children now live in New York City, Florida, and Canada. To hear more of the details of their story and to read the reasons that they gave for their ability to have survived such a remarkable situation, read The Secret of Priest’s Grotto, by Peter Lane Taylor with Christos Nicola. 

Perhaps instead of talking about our extraordinary troubles, we should talk about our opportunities to show extraordinary courage.

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Teddy's War by Don Willerton
Buy Teddy's War
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Book Review - "Burtrum Lee" by Mary Maurice

1/4/2018

1 Comment

 
By Cathy Hansen
-About The Book-
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Coated with a life of lies and deceit, Burtrum Lee Conner is sick to her stomach. Dozens of times throughout her life the feeling of not being who she is has tormented her. But she kept it to herself, believing that maybe it’s just a chemical imbalance of some kind considering she is one of the first artificially-inseminated babies of the nineteen sixties. Now, there’s more though, something much deeper, much more maniacal than she could have ever imagined. She’s not the first test tube baby at all, but the first….
 
Burtrum Lee Conner, born into a world of scientific mystery, discovers that the life she’s been leading for the past forty years, is the wrong one. Her parent’s Jed and Jane Conner, stealing her as an infant, brought Lee up as their own. Even her devoted grandmother, Clair Conner, kept this secret close to her chest until they were found out. And now, Lee Conner’s biological mother, Katie Lee, wants her back, but not before the diabolical Dr. Stone has his say.

AMAZON
GOODREADS

-About Mary Maurice-
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After attending Western Michigan University for two party filled years, I decided to leave academia and explore the real world to learn what life is truly about. For fifteen years I’ve traveled the country working in restaurants, writing and doing readings wherever I was welcome.
 
While living in Minneapolis during my twenties, I was fortunate enough to be tutored by Dr. Jonis Agee, who was at the time head of the creative writing department at St. Catherine’s College in St. Paul. Her lessons were imprinted in me for all of these years, and have influenced my writing ever since.
 
My adventures landed me in San Diego, Chicago, San Francisco, and Oregon, finally leading me tos the Land of Enchantment where I’ve resided since 1994. Living in Santa Fe, and the beauty and isolation that surrounds me, has inspire my creative muse in ways that no other place has. While still working in the hospitality industry, my passion for the craft of writing has never been stronger. And I know with each sentence I write, and every paragraph I compose, my ultimate goal is to find the perfect word.
 Keep on bookin!

You can visit Mary at  marymaurice.com

-Cathy's Book Review-
​I was thrilled to have the opportunity to read Burtrum Lee, by Mary Maurice.  The book is a tale of identity crisis and mystery, with a bit of greed and conspiracy thrown in for good measure.  The twists and turns of this book, as well as shifts between 1960 and 2004 kept me at the edge of my seat and unable to put the book down.  It is a fast read and held my interest throughout, as I just couldn’t wait to find out what happened next, or what the rest of the family secrets were.  

Having lived her whole life questioning who she was and feeling that something just wasn’t quite right, Burtrum Lee suddenly finds herself the focus of attention of a peculiar and potentially dangerous stranger, raising many questions about her birth that her parents and grandmother seem unwilling to answer.  Frustrated by her family’s secretive behavior, Burtrum enlists her new friend Megan to assist her in finding out all she can about her past.  The truth winds up being far more complex than Burtrum Lee ever could have imagined.
-About Cathy Hansen-
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Cathy Hansen is a wife, mom, teacher, independent
beauty consultant, and small business owner. She and her husband operate SeedsNBeans, a local nature store, in Two Rivers, Wisconsin.



1 Comment

Review of Shirley Melis' "Banged-Up Heart: Dancing with Love and Loss"

3/2/2017

1 Comment

 
Buy on Amazon | View on Goodreads | Shirley Melis Website
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This is a memoir about a woman finding love again after the death of her husband of thirty years and to lose that new found love again way too quickly.

I usually do not read memoirs or love stories so I was hesitant to read this one.  But after a couple of chapters I became emotionally invested in this woman.  I am glad she decided to write this book because she is right, women need more books like this to show an aspect of what it’s like to grow older, losing loved ones, and staying strong mentally, emotionally, and physically despite all of that.  She shows the difficulties of still feeling alive while losing someone.

Although I have not been in her shoes, I am appreciative that she allowed me to walk along her side and see her experience.
I feel that death has become a taboo topic in the U.S and we tend to not talk about it enough nowadays. We need more books like this one.  She is definitely a role model of strength and courage and I hope I can be just as strong when faced with these situations in life.  

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ABOUT SHIRLEY MELIS
Shirley Melis is a longtime business writer, travel writer, and newspaper columnist who traveled the world interviewing everyone from busboys to heads of international organizations before launching a career in public relations in Washington, D.C. With Banged-Up Heart, she now takes her writing in a new direction, delving deeply into her own personal story of finding love late, losing it early, and discovering the strength to choose to love again. It is a fascinating odyssey, a journey both creative and erotic as Shirley and John work lovingly together to blend their dreams—until a mysterious bump on his forehead starts them on a tragic struggle against the dark hand of fate.
A graduate of Vassar, Shirley Melis has created an intimate memoir bearing eloquent witness to the kind of wild trust that can grow in the heart of an ordinary woman thrust into circumstances that few others must face. Now retired, she lives in Galisteo, New Mexico.


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Tangalene Dudt served in the Army for eight years and now works as a contractor for the US government. 

She lives in beautiful Arizona with her wonderful husband and loves to read, garden, hike, and run ultra-marathons.

Each year Tange resolves to read 100 books.
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