The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett

Patchett is a connoisseur of imperfect characters who are compelling mixes of the saintly, the clueless, the wise and loving, the selfish and manipulative—characters the reader can’t help but care about because they are just so human.

In The Dutch House, Patchett uses the grand VanHoebeek’s mansion that came on the market after World War II as the spine of the multi-generational story. When Cyril Conroy buys the Dutch house (with all the VanHoebeek’s personal possessions and three servants included) as a surprise for his wife Elna, it is a cruel gift to the quiet, would-be nun. 

The changes brought about by moving into the Dutch house eventually send Elna fleeing to Bombay to work with Mother Teresa (who is actually in Calcutta). After she leaves, the Conroy children, Maeve and Danny, are in the capable, loving hands of the housekeeper, the cook, and the nanny, Fiona (aka Fluffy), who is a warm, humorous presence from before the beginning of the story through the end, three generations later.

Danny, as the narrator, shows us life in the Dutch house. After their mother, who has been disappearing for increasingly long spells, seems perhaps not to be coming back ever, he and Maeve wonder if she is dead. Probably, their dad tells them. She probably died in India. Information which is neither comforting nor edifying. 

 

Then young and attractive Andrea begins to come and go in the Dutch house. The children are left on their own to figure out what this means. Maeve becomes suddenly and seriously ill with diabetes. Despite all this, young Danny still feels secure and loved by the servants and especially his sister, who has taken on a quasi-motherly role. 

 

When their dad marries Andrea, she brings two little girls, Norma and Bright, into the Dutch House. Maeve and Danny come to love the little girls, but Andrea—in a vein of casual cruelty, gives Maeve’s room to Norma when Maeve goes off to college. And when Cyril dies of a heart attack shortly after Maeve graduates, Andrea calls Maeve and says of Danny: “Come and get him.” Thus Danny and Maeve are summarily banished from the Dutch house and Norma and Bright.  Equally shocking, Maeve and Danny discover Andrea now owns everything: the Dutch house and all of Cyril’s real estate and investments. Danny and Maeve are left with Maeve’s car and a foundation established for the education of Cyril and Andrea’s four children.

 

Thus begins Danny and Maeve’s period of watching the Dutch house and plotting. In Maeve’s car, they take up posts, smoking and talking, with Maeve planning ways for Danny to use up the foundation money by the longest, most costly education imaginable. And from this revenge plot, Danny eventually and unwittingly becomes a doctor, when all he wants to do is get a little money together so he can start investing in real estate and follow in his dad’s footsteps.

 

Danny’s girlfriend, Celeste, in training to be the best doctor’s wife ever, discovers she has married a landlord instead of a doctor—repeating Elna’s pattern of discovering her husband was not who she thought he was. And Danny ironically repeats family history too by surprising Celeste with a beautifully restored brownstone in Manhattan not at all to her taste.

 

Over the years, through various bits of information, Danny and Maeve gradually come to understand their mother is still alive, living and doing good works among the homeless in the city. Danny struggles with how to feel about this, but Maeve embraces the woman she still calls Mommy. 

 

Near the end of the story, Elna convinces her children, as only she could, to go with her to visit the Dutch House.  This causes a tectonic shift among the characters. Now demented, Andrea is enormously comforted by Danny, who she believes is Cyril returned to her. Ever compassionate (except perhaps to her young children) Elna moves back into the Dutch house (unchanged all these years) and works with Norma (who actually did want to become a doctor) as Andrea’s caretakers. Maeve, who feels abandoned by her mother once again, dies of what is surely meant to be taken as a broken heart. 

 

As the story ends, Danny and Norma become siblings of sorts (“a half-sister from a second marriage,” as Danny cautiously puts it). Elna begins to disappear among the poor again. Danny finally gives up his rage at his mother and replaces it with “familiarity.” Danny and Celeste divorce. Fluffy visits the Dutch House now and then and sleeps in her old room above the garage. And May—Maeve’s namesake—gains fame and fortune as an actress and ultimately buys the Dutch house and brings back parties reminiscent of the VanHoebeek era. And the portrait of Maeve, originally painted to stare down the VanHoebeck’s portraits hanging across the room, looks to all the world like May. There’s a sense of rightness about this ending. Finally, the Dutch house has come into its own as the Conroy house.

 

The Dutch House is a rich and conversation-provoking story showing us the human condition in fascinating particulars. — Sharelle Moranville

The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession and the Natural History Heist of the Century, by Kirk Wallace Johnson

Is this book autobiography?  Memoir?  Is it the story of a quest for the answers to an absorbing crime story with an uncertain ending?  Is it scientific history?  Answer: All of the above!  In weaving together these several strands, this non-fiction tale led to provocative discussion. 

Kirk Wallace Johnson opens his tale autobiographically:  He’s suffering from PTSD in the aftermath of the war in Iraq.  His current work, seeking to resettle Iraqi interpreters in the US, meets with limited success and constant frustration.  To relieve his depression, he takes up fly-fishing.  From his guide, he learns about fly-tying, the creation of beautiful works of art that are ostensibly for use as hooks to attract salmon.  In reality, these salmon flies are almost never actually used to fish.  They are bought and sold and hoarded as the works of art they are.  Trouble is, however, that the “best” require the use of rare and expensive bird feathers, many from extinct or near-extinct birds. 

As the author enters the world of the fly-tiers, he starts to hear of a theft from the British Museum’s ornithological collection held at the Tring Museum outside London.  This theft was accomplished by a young man, barely out of his teens, named Edwin Rist.  To explain not only the lure of the beautiful bird feathers that drew Rist to the heist, but also the scientific value of the birds taken, the author discovers the work of naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace, who in the middle years of the 19th century, traversed the Malay Archipelago where he gathered and catalogued over 125,000 specimens of rare birds.  His meticulous efforts to tag the date and location of each skin, as the bird carcasses are called, led him independently from Charles Darwin to arrive at the theory of evolution via natural selection.  

But what of Edwin Rist?  Rist is an American young man studying flute at the Royal Conservatory in London, hoping to be selected to play with a major European orchestra when his studies are completed.  He is also an up-and-coming expert fly-tier, featured in the fly-tying world’s website as “the future of fly-tying.”  He needs money to purchase the exotic bird feathers to use in tying his flies.  His visit to the Tring museum awakens him to the possibilities of securing a supply of rare feathers for his own fly-tying and of a steady source of income from feather sales to other fly-tiers.  

The subtitle speaks of obsession and there are many to examine in this book.  There is, first, the scientific obsession of Alfred Russell Wallace, the collector of the specimens, who from his lower-class origins sought academic recognition that was at the time only granted to upper class Britons.  There is Edwin Rist’s obsession with tying classic fishing flies that motivates the theft.  And there is the author’s own obsession with the crime and with recovering feathers for the museum, an obsession that has therapeutic value in alleviating his PTSD symptoms.   

Fly-tying with exotic feathers has exerted an obsessive pull on anglers and on pure hobbyists, with an upsurge of interest in the late 20th century.  With that enthusiasm comes the obsessions that fuel an underground market in rare and often illegal feathers.  Edwin Rist fell into this obsession as a young teenager.  He was later arrested and tried for the theft, was found guilty but lightly punished with a short period of probation after pleading incapacity due to Asperger’s syndrome.  

Many of our discussions were prompted by the judicial treatment of the case.  Could the system do justice to all the interests of society?  The police were essentially done when Rist was identified and tried.  The prosecutor and judge felt limited by prior decisions on the Asperger defense.  The museum’s interest waned when the specimens that were recovered were missing their sourcing tags or had been cut into marketable parts.  The general silence of the “feather underground” made it more difficult to track the fate of the specimens.  What do we think should have been a just punishment or a restorative action imposed on Edwin Rist?  And could he have pulled this off alone?  

Where does the value of the specimens to the scientific community collide with the value of the birds as objects of true beauty that the public might want to see?  Fly-tiers ask:  “Why does the Museum need so many examples of the same bird anyway?”

The Feather Thief is a good read, provocatively posing questions to which different readers might well derive different answers. — Jeanie and Bill Smith

Virgil Wander, Leif Enger

This quiet, gentle story is remarkable for the artistry of it words, the realistically oddball characters, and its touch of Northwoods magic realism. The main character, Virgil Wander, almost drowns when his car slides off the road and into Lake Superior. The accident damages his brain and, as a result, he quietly and gradually reinvents himself, leaving behind his hesitant, staid self—the “former occupant” of his apartment, clothes, and life. In his place is a man willing to take a few risks.

Comparing his flight into the lake with his new life, he says: 

“A person never knows what is next—I don't anyway. The surface of everything is thinner than we know. A person can fall right through, without any warning at all.” 

Virgil owns a down-on-its-luck movie theatre, the Empress, and is also Greenstone’s city clerk. (When he explains this latter job, he addresses the reader directly asking, “Did you think I made a living at the Empress?” It’s a delightfully engaging moment.)

After his plunge into the lake, Virgil has a unique mental quirk: He cannot remember adjectives. But no matter, Enger demonstrates the power of all parts of speech, in quote-worthy paragraph after paragraph, as Virgil creates a new life from the leftovers of his old one. The language alone makes the book a wonder to read.

For example, when Virgil first meets the mystical Rune, he describes how the old man smoked his pipe: “The smoke ghosted straight up and hung there undecided.” Who needs fancy adjectives when you can create an image so economically and so powerfully?

And when Virgil finds the ominous Adam Leer burning clothes behind his house, he again evokes the smoke-in-need-of-direction image, this time using an adjective in a way that makes the reader wonder why other writers haven’t used this description: “Tendrils of tea-colored smoke uncurled to explore the immediate region.”

Some lines are laugh-out-loud funny, as when Virgil observes, “The evidence of my life lay before me, and I was unconvinced.” 

Virgil, who narrates the book, introduces us to his community in the bad luck town of Greenstone, Minnesota, north of Duluth. Residents have landed there by chance, as Virgil did, lured by a lake view and cheap real estate; others were born there, as was the mysterious and sinister Leer; and then there's the elfin Rune, who shows up on the shore of Lake Superior flying kites. 

But these are no ordinary kites—they're so mystical that people passing by stop and wait their turns to fly the giant dog, or the bike with wheels that turn, a burning fireplace, or even an anvil. Rune is in town looking for stories of his son Alec, whom he never met, and who flew out over Lake Superior one day in a tiny old plane, never to return.  Nadine, Alec’s widow, takes over his neon sign business, creating pieces of art she sells nationally; Virgil loves her from afar, assuming he has no chance with her, until he does. When the two finally connect, he observes, “She kept looking away then back to me, as though at a nice surprise. This was maybe best of all. I never once expected to be someone’s nice surprise.” 

Two fatherless boys, Bjorn and Galen, help pull Virgil toward himself and away from the previous tenant, aided by Ann and Jerry, married but not really, who are trying to move beyond the margins of their lives.  Then there’s a giant sturgeon, a bomb, a festival called Hard Luck Days, and a cameo by Bob Dylan, who wrote a song about Greenstone, but Virgil can’t remember which one. And a priceless set of old movie reels Virgil refers to as imps in a jar, and which get the Empress a new roof.

Like the kites, the characters’ lives move with slow precision and eventually reach a conclusion that ties the story lines and loose strings together. A few bits are left hanging (What actually did happen to Leer?) and some are tied up with a bit of sadness (Jerry’s luck gets harder, although he might have left the city better off).

Toward the end of the book, the community comes together for Virgil, who does not expect it, and he says, poignantly, “Your tribe is always bigger than you think.” 

At the very end, in Rune’s city of Tromsø, Norway, Nadine and Virgil face an unknown future, but with a fresh outlook that mirrors the theme of the book:

“We all dream of finding but what’s wrong with looking? When the sun rises we’ll know what to do.”

                                                                                                                                    —Pat Prijatel 

In The Garden of Beasts:Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin, by Erik Larson

This solidly researched account of Germany and the U.S. before World War II reads like a novel full of intigue, love affairs, disloyalty, honor, dishonor, evil, and power. Erik Larson tells the story from the unique perspective of the American ambassador from 1933-1938, William Dodd, and his family. Dodd was a scholar who was looking for an ambassadorship simply because he wanted to finish his three-volume book on the Old South. He ended up in Berlin because nobody else wanted the job—a fact he didnt realize until he was committed to the position.

Dodd was a Jeffersonian Democrat who chose to live on a budget and walk to work instead of being chauffered about in a giant gas guzzler, as was the custom of ambassadors.He remained a misfit during his entire time in Germany because he was not one of the wealthy elites who normally fill such posts. Initially, he argued away the threat of Hitler and the Nazi party, but ultimately he tried to warn the Roosevelt administration of the reality of Hitler's danger to Germany and to the world. He was deemed an alarmist by his "colleagues" in Washington, and his warnings were dismissed as the work of an academic unqualified for diplomatic work.

Larson demonstrates how America and the German people might have stopped the pure evil that descended on Germany, but they chose to leave it to others, thinking it would get better on its own. Worse, many Americans at the time excused Hitler's most despicable acts, reasoning that Jews caused their own problems.

Larson researched hundreds of books, artices, and newsreels, but relied heavily on Dodd's papers and on his and his daughter's autobiographies. The daughter, Martha Dodd, was a notorious partier who had affairs with Germans, Russians, and anybody in between. She was blindsided by Nazi charm, until their crimes became too obvious for her to ignore. Her story is a juicy counterpoint to her father's more staid approach.

Larson shows the complexities of the era, creating in Dodd a character who has the guts to publicly decry Nazi policy, but who remains somewhat naive about the political web he's caught in.  Likewise, Larson makes clear that, while many Germans remained complacent and complicit in Hitler's evil, some even within the Nazi hierarchy tried to work against Hitler.

After Dodd was replaced as Ambassador, he toured the country, warning Americans of the true evil of Hitler's regime. Even then, he was often seen as exaggerating. —Pat Prijatel

Fiction to Consider, July 2020

OUT OF THE EASY, BY RUTA SEPETYS

It's 1950, and as the French Quarter of New Orleans simmers with secrets, seventeen-year-old Josie Moraine is silently stirring a pot of her own. Known among locals as the daughter of a brothel prostitute, Josie wants more out of life than the Big Easy has to offer. She devises a plan get out, but a mysterious death in the Quarter leaves Josie tangled in an investigation that will challenge her allegiance to her mother, her conscience, and Willie Woodley, the brusque madam on Conti Street. 

Josie is caught between the dream of an elite college and a clandestine underworld. New Orleans lures her in her quest for truth, dangling temptation at every turn, and escalating to the ultimate test. 

With characters as captivating as those in her internationally bestselling novel Between Shades of Gray, Ruta Sepetys skillfully creates a rich story of secrets, lies, and the haunting reminder that decisions can shape our destiny.

Reviews:

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/books/review/out-of-the-easy-by-ruta-sepetys.html

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11178225-out-of-the-easy

THE OVERSTORY, BY RICHARD POWERS

The Overstory is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of - and paean to - the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.

Reviews:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/richard-powers-the-overstory/559106/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/the-most-exciting-novel-about-trees-youll-ever-read/2018/04/03/bb388a4e-3686-11e8-8fd2-49fe3c675a89_story.html

VIRGIL WANDER, BY LEIF ENGER

The first novel in ten years from award-winning, million-copy bestselling author Leif Enger, Virgil Wander is an enchanting and timeless all-American story that follows the inhabitants of a small Midwestern town in their quest to revive its flagging heart.

Midwestern movie house owner Virgil Wander is "cruising along at medium altitude" when his car flies off the road into icy Lake Superior. Virgil survives but his language and memory are altered and he emerges into a world no longer familiar to him. Awakening in this new life, Virgil begins to piece together his personal history and the lore of his broken town, with the help of a cast of affable and curious locals--from Rune, a twinkling, pipe-smoking, kite-flying stranger investigating the mystery of his disappeared son; to Nadine, the reserved, enchanting wife of the vanished man; to Tom, a journalist and Virgil's oldest friend; and various members of the Pea family who must confront tragedies of their own. Into this community returns a shimmering prodigal son who may hold the key to reviving their town.

With intelligent humor and captivating whimsy, Leif Enger conjures a remarkable portrait of a region and its residents, who, for reasons of choice or circumstance, never made it out of their defunct industrial district. Carried aloft by quotidian pleasures including movies, fishing, necking in parked cars, playing baseball and falling in love, Virgil Wander is a swift, full journey into the heart and heartache of an often overlooked American Upper Midwest by a "formidably gifted" (Chicago Tribune) master storyteller.

Reviews:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/leif-engers-fans-have-waited-10-years-for-virgil-wander-was-it-worth-it/2018/10/01/93afd8ae-c512-11e8-9b1c-a90f1daae309_story.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/02/books/review/leif-enger-virgil-wander.html

LOCKDOWN, BY LAURIE R. KING

Career Day at Guadalupe Middle School: a day given to innocent hopes and youthful dreams. A day no one in attendance will ever forget. 

New York Times bestselling author Laurie R. King is an award-winning master of combining rich atmospheric detail with riveting, keen-edged mystery. Now, in her newest standalone novel of psychological suspense, King turns her sharp eye to a moment torn from the headlines and a school under threat. 
A year ago, Principal Linda McDonald arrived at Guadalupe determined to overturn the school's reputation for truancy, gang violence, and neglect. One of her initiatives is Career Day--bringing together children, teachers, and community presenters in a celebration of the future. But there are some in attendance who reject McDonald's bright vision.

A principal with a secret. A husband with a murky past. A cop with too many questions. A kid under pressure to prove himself. A girl struggling to escape a mother's history. A young basketball player with an affection for guns. 

Even the school janitor has a story he dare not reveal. 

But no one at the gathering anticipates the shocking turn of events that will transform a day of possibilities into an expolsive confrontation. 

Tense, poignant, and brilliantly paced, Laurie R. King's novel charts compelling characters on a collision course--a chain of interactions that locks together hidden lives, troubling secrets, and the bravest impulses of the human heart.

Reviews:

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/laurie-r-king/lockdown-king/

https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-804177-93-1

LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, BY GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUES

In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor, Florentino is heartbroken, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career he whiles away the years in 622 affairs—yet he reserves his heart for Fermina. Her husband dies at last, and Florentino purposefully attends the funeral. Fifty years, nine months, and four days after he first declared his love for Fermina, he will do so again. Marques won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982. Love in the Time of Cholera was published in 1988

Reviews:

https://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/06/books/books-of-the-times-garcia-marquez-novel-covers-love-and-time.html

https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Reviews/2009/1101/classic-review-love-in-the-time-of-cholera

Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, by David Epstein

In Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, David Epstein began with a theme that resonated strongly with the liberal arts folks in our group.  Our schooling was based on the traditional notion that diverse strands of a broad education strengthen each other.  For some of us, that theme has been borne out by diverse and even checkered work histories.  We were pleased to have Epstein explain why our bias may be valid.

Epstein begins by contrasting Tiger Woods’s early specialization in golf with Roger Federer’s dabbling in many sports until he settled rather late on tennis.  Specialization and repetitive practice leads to positive results in what Epstein calls “kind” learning environments.  In these environments, patterns repeat and feedback is usually rapid and accurate.  Quick recognition and response is enhanced by practice.  Examples he cites are flight crews and surgical teams.  By contrast, “wicked” learning environments have a greater number of variables and are less predictable.  These environments value more intuition and judgment, which are developed better through a broader range of experience.  

Epstein dissects the learning process, showing that our learning skills have evolved to keep up with the shifting nature of the problems we deal with.  Over generations, we have become better accustomed to abstract and conceptual problems, “wicked” learning environments, as shown by improved IQ test scores.  He shows that slower learning may be deeper learning – with implications for both kind and wicked environments.  He expands this thought through varied examples of musical and artistic development and unconventional career paths in other fields such as video game design, economic forecasting, and work team configurations.  

He also shows how the accumulation of wider-ranging experiences can lead to changes in work directions and ultimately to better vocational “fit.”  Military service academies provide a well-documented basis for this discussion.  The early specialization of the academies does not lead to officers with longer service tenure, but rather produces mid-level officers ready to try other professional directions.  Other recruiting sources bring people into the officer corps with more diversity of experience and whose later choice of this career path often leads to longer tenure.  Epstein gives a related discussion of how “grit” adds or subtracts from performance.  Persistence can be a virtue, but so can jumping to a new career track which other experiences now support.  These “sampling” experiences also change problem-solving skills, with consequences in invention, incident management, and other areas.

Epstein’s writing is based on extensive review of scholarly work on learning and development, but presented in highly readable prose and laid out in engaging flow.  His conclusions are more like realizations that emerge from a review of the academic research and historical examples he marshals to demonstrate the points.  I never felt he was pushing me to agree, but simply showing me his way of view and inviting me along.  — Bill Smith

Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel

Emily St. John Mandel’s novel, Station Eleven, begins with famous actor Arthur Leander’s real-life death as he plays the role of King Lear on stage. At the same time, outside the theater, people are beginning to sicken and die of the Georgian flu as it sweeps the planet. 

In the opening pages, the reader is tossed into a compelling post-apocalyptic world. Who will have the luck, grit, and skill to survive? How will they survive? How will they travel? Eat? Find shelter? Keep their sanity? Form communities? Move on? 

The novel has an ensemble cast (a nod to The Traveling Symphony and the troupe of Shakespearian actors): Arthur, Clark, Miranda, Elizabeth, Tyler, Kirsten, and Jeevan—with Arthur as the connection among all the other characters. Clark is his best friend. Miranda is his first wife. Elizabeth is his second wife, mother of their young son, Tyler (who becomes the cruel, Calvinistically-bent Prophet). Kirsten is a child actress, cast as one of Lear’s young daughters. Jeevan is the person who rushes the stage in an effort to save Arthur. 

Mandel pairs Kirsten and Tyler in a very Shakespearian way. They are both eight years-old when the flu wipes out almost everybody. Both are children of Arthur (he is Kirsten’s stage father). Both have copies of Miranda’s comic book, Dr. Eleven—which is a graphic expression of the pull between good and evil, awake and asleep, life and death, love and hate, beauty and ugliness that runs throughout the story. 

As a grownup, as the Prophet, Tyler has become a cruel and terrifying cult leader in the name of God. Kirsten, on the other hand, before the company’s performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, describes the world thus: “What was lost in the collapse: almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such beauty. Twilight in the altered world, a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in a parking lot in the mysteriously named town of St. Deborah by the Water, Lake Michigan shining a half mile away.”

Near the end of the novel, inevitably, Kirsten and the Prophet must face off.

To weave her tale, Mandel uses a rich and flexible narrative structure sort of like crochet, where there is a string of linear yarn, but the story is told in a series of interlocking loops that often go back to the beginning and start again—growing richer with each pass. She does playful, clever things to make connections. Lots of Shakespearian allusions; four different dogs named Loki; a paperweight which is a hostess gift to Miranda at a dinner party years before Arthur’s death, which Miranda gives back to Arthur, which he gives to his lover du jour, which she gives to Kirsten, which she gives to Clark for the Museum of Civilization. And everything, big and small, supports in some way awakening into a brave new world.

Jeevan, in the old world, was a paparazzi in a relationship with a shallow, indifferent woman. In the new world, twenty years out, he lives in a settlement in Virginia practicing primitive medicine. The end of the day finds him drinking wine amidst “the gentle music of the river, cicadas in the trees, the stars above the weeping willows on the far bank. . . . He was overcome at his good fortune at having found this place, this tranquility, this woman, at having lived to see a time worth living in.”

Mandel shows us a new world which is a slow and painful work in progress. We get our parting look through the eyes of Clark who “has no expectation of seeing an airplane rise again in his lifetime, but is it possible that somewhere there are ships setting out? If there are again towns with streetlights, if there are symphonies and newspapers, then what else might this awakening world contain?”

And the Traveling Symphony is going on the road again, taking a new route, perhaps to find the far southern town with the electrical grid. The first horse-drawn truck in the procession, as always, bears the creed: Because survival is insufficient.— Sharelle Moranville