Review by Linda Lappin As Bruce Chatwin relates in Songlines, our remote ancestors revered features of their landscape: mountain, rock, river, tree, cave, imbuing them with spiritual meaning and celebrating them in…
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Razor Wire Wilderness by Stephanie Dickinson
Review by Walter Cummins While the incarceration of Krystal Riordan dominates the pages of Razor Wire Wilderness—along with the ongoing miseries of her life since the day she was born—the…
Stealing Home: Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and the Lives Caught Between by Eric Nusbaum
Review by George Yatchisin If there were any justice, the names Palo Verde, La Loma, and Bishop would be as well-remembered a baseball triumvirate as Tinker, Evers, and Chance. But…
Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia
Review by Clara Oropeza From what corners of our lives do we summon the will to survive the wickedness of life? This seems to be a central question in Of…
The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrim’s Progress by Mark Twain
A Fresh Look by Paul Willis Unlike many of my friends in Santa Barbara, I have never been to Europe. So, when I recently received an invitation to teach a…
Beeswing: Losing My Way and Finding My Voice, 1967-1975 by Richard Thompson with Scott Timberg
Review by George Yatchisin When my physical therapist saw the book I brought to PT, asked what I was reading, and looked totally nonplussed, I have to admit it hurt…
Duplicity by Peter Selgin
Review by Linda Lappin In this darkly unsettling farce, Duplicity, novelist Peter Selgin lures the reader into the eerie parallel universe of doppelgangers, impostors, and multiple selves, while musing on the nature…
Black Writers, White Gaze
by Jinny Webber Yaa Gyasi’s essay in the March 20, 2021 book section of the Guardian throws out a challenge. Author of the new novel, Transcendent Kingdom, Gyasi describes her…
Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss by Margaret Renkl
Late Migrations is an elegantly-crafted collection of brief essays, many less than a page long, that focus on Renkl’s family history and the way she sees reflections of that history…
Still Life with Timex by Elisabeth Murawski
by Walter Cummins Poets have written about the death of children, the saddest and most intimate of griefs, from Ben Jonson’s “On My First Son—”Farewell, thou child of my right…