The Travels of Ibn Battutah (1958) edited by Tim MacKintosh-Smith

 

Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Battutah was a legendary Berber explorer from the Maghrebi (western) region of North Africa. In the year 1325 at the age of twenty-one, having completed his education as a Qadi (Islamic legal scholar), Ibn Battutah set off from Tangier, Morocco to fulfill his Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. He would not return home again until 1354.

After completing his pilgrimage Ibn Battutah then continued on to wander across much of the known world, as far east as China. The Travels of Ibn Battutah is an English translation of The Rihla, a travelogue of his journeys, dictated later in his life. Ibn Battutah’s travels were four times longer than those of Marco Polo, who traveled to China via the Silk Road from 1271 through 1295; and it would be over a century before Christopher Columbus would leave port in 1492. Importantly, both Polo’s and Columbus’ travels were for trade development purposes; Ibn Battutah’s travels were for personal exploration.

In addition to Ibn Battutah’s geographic explorations, his studies/observations of cultural differences are extensive. One will learn a great deal about Islam the religion and how it relates to the geo-politics of the time.

As the story progresses from one place to another, there are descriptions of day-to-day living, manner of dress, diet, family structure, variety of slavery situations, architecture – from mosques to cathedrals to shuls to Hindu & Buddhist temples -- agricultural economics, shipbuilding (this perhaps being the first western exposure to Chinese junks), diplomacy via marriage, diplomacy via tribute, and much more.

Places visited include Iberia, north & east Africa, Mali, Egypt, Jerusalem, Damascus, Constantinople, the Arab gulf states, Persia, Afghanistan, Turkestan, the Dihli Sultanate (Hindu India), Moslem India, Ceylon, the Maldives, Sumatra, and Canton.

Recommendation: This is not general reading, one needs to be a history buff and somewhat of a geek. The edition I bought is beautiful, gold leaf pages, tissue thin paper, 6 X 4 inches, miniscule font but extremely hard on the eyes. Go for larger font!

The Life We Bury (2014) By Allen Eskens

 

The Life We Bury is the debut novel published twelve years ago by writer Allen Eskens. He has been rather prolific since then, penning an additional ten novels mostly following the careers of various characters first introduced in the debut book.

Blogging on mystery books is always difficult because I don’t want to divulge the ending, and I will not with this book. That said …   

The main character in The Life We Bury is a college student at the University of Minnesota. His name is Joe Talbert and this semester he has a writing class. His assignment for the class is to write a biography of a living person – the premise being that every person’s life is an interesting story, whether they are a rock star or a house painter, and a good writer ought to be able to find that story. Running out of time to find an interview subject, and write the assignment, Joe goes to a nursing home in a last minute search of an interesting person.

The resident he settles on is a convicted rapist and murderer named Carl who has been transferred from prison to the nursing home for hospice care to live out the final two-three months of his life sentence before he dies from cancer. Believe me, this is by no means a Tuesdays with Morrie kind of story but is perhaps as compelling.

To prepare for the interview, Joe begins researching the court records and news clippings of the trial from 30 years ago. Informed, Joe meets with Carl, who denies the rape and the murder, but seems uninterested in clearing his name before his pending death. Joe thinks he’s guilty but continues his assignment.

Each step of the writing project takes Joe deeper into the case, to the point he begins to believe Carl is actually innocent.

There are a number of subplots that are vital to this story. One is Joe’s family situation, which consists of his alcoholic mother, and a brother with autism named Jeremy. Joe’s need to escape this environment for his own sanity by going away to college, is counter balanced by his overwhelming feeling of guilt for doing so, his pain is real. Inadvertently, Jeremy will play a critical role in the story. Another subplot of importance is Carl’s military service during the Vietnam “Conflict.”

Recommendation: Good read. I will read more of Eskens’ novels.

The Little House Books - Volume One (collection, 2012) By Laura Ingalls Wilder

 

In a quest for a return to simpler times Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the Little House series of American classics, seems to be having a resurgence. There were nine little house books in all, my winter reads the past few weeks have been the first four, Volume One of the Library of America’s collection of her works.

A key character in the semi-autobiographical books is a young girl named Laura and her life back in pioneer days of the country as the nation expanded west of the Mississippi River, times gone by in other words, though I’m not sure about the “simpler times” theme, other than to note they predate social media, plumbing and electricity.

The first of the novels is House in the Big Woods (written in 1932). In the story Laura is a young girl living on a farm in Wisconsin. The farm is in the stage of agriculture when “clearing” woods to make room for crops was a challenge, while hunting and trapping were the norm. It covers a one-year cycle on the farm reminding me of Aldo Leopold’s 1949 novel A Sand County Almanac which was also set in Wisconsin.

In the second novel, Farmer Boy (1933), Laura’s family is not part of the storyline, though it runs in parallel time. It’s about a young boy growing up on a farm in upstate New York. He will eventually set out on his own, moving west (think Manifest Destiny). He'll reappear in the later novels.

The third novel Little House on the Prairie (1935) is the best known of the novels. In it, Laura’s family will join the trek west relocating to Kansas, which at the time was “Indian Land” per treaty. They chose Kansas because it was treeless with rich soil and they had heard it was about to be opened up to pioneer settlers. Laura’s family along with many others, chose to arrive early and settle on it without legal standing before a new treaty had been negotiated – but it wasn’t their land to settle. Eventually the U.S. government had to evict them until such times as a new treaty was forced on the Natives.

The fourth novel, On the Banks of Plum Creek (1937) explains how Laura’s family, tired of moving, backtracked north to the State of Minnesota, near established towns founded by Norwegian immigrants to America, with such luxuries as stores, churches, and schools.

Written as childrens/young adult novels, the entire series offers folksy tales and could be used as a survivalist’s how-to guide for farming, log cabin building, and multiple other Farmer’s Almanac type information. Surprisingly, considering the time period of the novels, particularly the Little House on the Prairie, it includes different perspectives on the Native American “problem.” While total advocates of Manifest Destiny as the new nation’s birthright, Laura’s father provides at least an acknowledgement of the unfairness of the lopsided treaties formulated by Washington DC.

Wilder’s novels were the basis of the Little House on the Prairie hit television series spanning nine seasons for a total of two hundred episodes running from 1974 through 1983. It starred Melissa Gilbert as Laura with the role of her father being played by Michael Landon -- a.k.a. Little Joe of Bonanza, another hit television series from that time period. I wasn’t a Little House fan, but loved its genre equal, The Waltons.

Recommendation: Yes, they remain relevant as childrens/young adult books and are definitely necessary reads for students of American Literature.

Kinfolk (2023) By Sean Dietrich

 

Within the first chapters of Kinfolk, author Sean Dietrich had me, introducing his main character, nick name of Nub. The setting is smalltown Alabama. Nub is the town drunk. He works odd jobs for the county, one of which was painting the water tower. When he finished, town folk realize he painted PAPK as the name of the town, accidentally leaving off the “lower leg” of the second P in PARK, Alabama. Drunk driving home from the Legion Post that snowy Thanksgiving and trying to lose a police chase, he crashed into the water tower causing a water outage in town, destroying his truck, and landing himself in the hospital.

Sharing the hospital room with him is a teenage girl named Minnie who had fallen at the diner where she works, knocking her head on the floor. The fall was a result of fainting when she was told her mother had just committed suicide, her father is in prison, she’s never met him. Her unconscious singing annoyed Nub.

Nub, age 62, is divorced, with an adult daughter named Emily he has a hostile relationship with because he was either never there, or embarrassingly drunk throughout most of her life. He was not a good father, and they both know it.

Minnie was relentless teased at school because she is awkward, a “jolly green giant,” poor, and worked to support her dysfunctional mother. With the death of her mother, and the incarceration of her father, Minnie is about to become a ward of the State.

Long, but great, story short, Nub works to become her foster parent, freaking out the social workers, not to mention his biological daughter. He’s a misfit, she’s a misfit, and they share one particularly important bond: his father committed suicide when he was a kid, and her mother committed suicide while she is still a kid. The relationship is heartbreaking and heartwarming.

The story of these two unlikely people is priceless. As are some of the other main characters in the novel: his daughter Emily; Benny, Nub’s cousin, drinking buddy and best friend; LeighAnn, the bartender at the Legion Post who becomes his AA support buddy; and Burke, the town’s Mayberry-like cop.

There are three substories going on in this novel. First, is the small-town norm Baptist atmosphere it takes place in (observations not a religious critique). Second, are country & gospel music and the Grand Ole Opry. Third is a crime subplot, why Minnie’s biological father was in prison.

Sean Dietrich is an author I discovered only recently. He is primarily a short story writer, though he has a few novel length books to his name. He’s also a musician. He has a Facebook page called Sean of the South, which is how I came across his work. It covers historical tidbits on American folk music, as well as his short stories. He performs live several times a year.

Recommendation: Yes, book and his Facebook page.