With any luck, when the summer months roll around, you’ve got a little extra time to take it easy. If that’s the case—fingers crossed—then we’d like to suggest that you take a cue from your kids and get a little reading done. Although the little ones will be nervously trying to get through A Tale of Two Cities and The Aeneid for oddly themed essays or the threat of a first-day quiz, we say the incentive of adult summer reading is personal enlightenment—or at least a competent answer the next time a friend asks what you’re reading. With that in mind, we’ve pulled together a list of fiction and nonfiction written by St. Louis–based authors in the past year.
HEAVEN LAKE
By John Dalton
What it's about: Recently published in paperback, this award-winning debut novel follows a young Christian missionary who experiences a crisis of faith while working in Taiwan and ultimately travels across China to marry a woman he doesn’t know. Dalton succeeds in weaving a tale of love, a travelogue and a coming-of-age story into a single powerful narrative.
Between the lines: Heaven Lake, though not autobiographical, was inspired by Dalton’s own experience living in Taiwan as an English teacher in the late 1980s. A native of St. Louis, Dalton was propositioned by a businessman to marry a woman and then divorce her (to get around bureaucratic red tape so the businessman could eventually marry her). “At 25 years old,” says Dalton, “I had no idea how to write a novel, but I started writing short stories big enough to build a novel around.” Those stories gathered strength in the eight long years he spent working on Heaven Lake right here in St. Louis. “It’s one thing to be a struggling writer in your twenties,” Dalton says, “but when you’re in your midthirties and living in an apartment that’s $350 a month, it’s a different story.” Eventually, he says, people knew to stop asking him how the book was coming. But a good agent and interested publishers turned Dalton’s life around in six days, and since then he’s picked up a teaching job at his alma mater, the University of Missouri– St. Louis. He says the past couple of years— especially since he was chosen to receive the Barnes & Noble Discover Award for fiction in 2004—far surpass the years he pounded away at three different versions of his novel while waiting tables and working in a bookstore. Now he’s hard at work on his next novel. Just don’t ask him when it will be finished.
THE COTTAGERS
By Marshall Klimasewiski
What it's about: Klimasewiski’s first novel explores the lives of the locals when tourist season at a popular vacation spot ends and real life begins. Two couples decide to extend their trip on Vancouver Island, and their fates become intertwined with that of a 19-year-old local. When one husband disappears partway through the novel, the suspense is heightened and the others must find out what has happened to him.
Between the lines: Klimasewiski, a professor in the English department at Washington University, has had several short stories pub - lished in pre stigious publications, yet he says it was this debut novel that taught him new things about writing, including the importance of plot: “I learned how to do things all over again—how to develop setting and character. Ever since then, I haven’t been able to write a complete short story. I can only think in novel size.” As for the tension between locals and vacationers, the author says, it’s a subject close to his heart, having grown up in Connecticut, where many New Yorkers keep second homes. But it wasn’t until Klimasewiski was “on the other side of the equation,” while vacationing in Vancouver with his wife, that the idea for The Cottagers formed. See what he did on his summer vacation?
THE THIN PLACE
By Kathryn Davis
What it's about: Davis’ sixth novel tells the story of a small New England town rocked by the otherworldly gift of a small girl. Unafraid to play with style and delight her readers with magic, Davis endows everything from the young girl’s dog to lichen with the ability to speak. The town is steeped in a rich and haunting history that suffuses the lives of its residents and ensures that their lives will stay with the reader long after the last chapter is read.
Between the lines: A seasoned pro who has taken an every-other-semester teaching position at Washington University, Davis says she wanted to “write about the place where I live without naming it, and the group of people and all the living creatures of one small town.” (That place would be Vermont, where she lives with her husband when she’s not teaching.) One of her underlying goals was to give the reader a sense of Earth’s preciousness—and the delicacy with which everyone must treat it. But she doesn’t take her role as a teacher lightly: “I still think of writing as a luxury,” she says, adding that she aims to fill each of her novels to the brim with enchantment. It’s her ability to tap into the universal conscience that brings the often unbelievable elements of Davis’ books into vivid reality.
DAD’S WAR WITH THE UNITED STATES MARINES
By Peter H. Green
Green is a local architect and writer.
In this memoir, Green recounts his father’s experiences as a low-ranking but resourceful officer in the Marines in 1944. At age 35, Ben Green left behind a wife and two children to serve his country (which often misunderstood him). Illustrated by Ben Green’s drawings, these stories about him and his family back home re-create the world as it was six decades ago.
THE LONE STAR LONELY HEARTS CLUB: A DEBUTANTE DROPOUT MYSTERY
By Susan McBride
A transplant from Texas (and one of SLM’s 2005 Top Singles), McBride has authored several mystery books and frequently speaks at writing conventions.
This third installment in McBride’s mystery series turns the spotlight on Andrea Kendricks’ mother, Cissy, who is spurred to action by the deaths of two friends in a ritzy retirement home. Unable to believe that the deaths were the result of natural causes, Cissy goes undercover, and Andrea must overcome her skepticism to help her mom—clad in rhinestones and animal prints—expose the truth.
THE IDENTITY CLUB: NEW AND SELECTED STORIES
By Richard Burgin
A professor at Saint Louis University, Burgin is also the founder of Boulevard, an internationally distributed literary journal.
The 20 stories in this collection cover vast thematic ground, spanning love and family, betrayal and crime. Readers will become acquainted with a homeless basketball player, prostitutes and a famous young writer, all striving to find truth in the overwhelming anxiety of loneliness. It comes with a CD of 20 songs, their themes equally transcendent.
SKIN
By Kellie Wells
Wells has previously published a collection of short stories, Compression Scars, and teaches writing at Washington University.
In her debut novel, Wells explores the wonder in the ordinary lives of residents of What Cheer, Kan., a Midwestern town teased to life with a masterful use of magical realism. One of our other authors, Kathryn Davis, is quoted on the cover: “Reading Skin is like finding yourself inside one of the great medieval paintings, every last detail perfectly rendered, exploding with celestial meaning.
SINNERS AND SAINTS
By Eileen Dreyer
When she’s not writing best-selling mysteries, Dreyer, born and raised in Brentwood, inhabits her pseudonym, Kathleen Korbel, and enjoys traveling.
On the eve of a hurricane in New Orleans, a forensic nurse struggling to put the past behind her is asked by a brother-in-law she never knew she had to help find her missing sister. Mystery pro Dreyer elevates the typical family portrait to thriller levels as the nurse, Chastity, struggles against misogyny and the mysticism of the city to find answers before it’s too late—and the sister she hasn’t seen for 10 years is gone forever.
A TEMPLE OF TEXTS: ESSAYS
By William Gass
A professor emeritus in the humanities at Washington University, Gass has been publishing short stories and essays since 1959.
Gass again explores his love for reading and words in a collection of essays that is at times poignant, and so well-argued that you’re bound to learn a thing or two. He writes about well-known authors, such as Gertrude Stein and Gabriel García Márquez, and personal favorites, including locals William Gaddis and Stanley Elkin. An esteemed literary critic, Gass writes about his subjects with pure adoration, and although this might not be your typical beach read, it’s sure to get you reading again soon.
PETER AND THE SHADOW THIEVES
By Ridley Pearson and Dave Barry
Dividing his time between here and Hailey, Idaho, Pearson writes suspense thrillers.
Here’s one for the kids—and the kid in you—who have tired of Harry Potter. Pearson and humorist pal Dave Barry have written the second in their series of prequels to the Peter Pan story we all know and love. In this adventure, Peter and Tinker Bell brave the world outside Mollusk Island to find their old friend Molly in London. Together, the three must fight the dastardly Lord Ombra, a mysterious villain with the power to make shadows disappear. The authors answer our questions about J.M. Barrie’s original and ask thoughtful new questions along the way.
THE THIRTEENTH HOUSE
By Sharon Shinn
A local journalist, Shinn is an award-winning fantasy writer and author of 15 books. It’s the social season for the great nobles of Gillengaria, and Princess Amalie is attending all the summer balls. Acting as her guard and escort is an assortment of elite soldiers and magical individuals, including the shape-shifter Kirra Danalustrous. Kirra delights in the social life and edgy political maneuvering—until she realizes someone’s trying to kill Amalie. Also in danger: Amalie’s uncle, regent of the realm—a married man with whom Kirra is slowly falling in love.
AMERICA’S BOY: A MEMOIR
By Wade Rouse
Rouse resigned as communications director for MICDS to devote his time to writing.
Writing in the vein of David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs, this native of the Ozarks shares a childhood filled with equal parts awkwardness, pain and laugh-out-loud funny moments. The antics of Rouse’s family will ring true for some and seem strange to others, but every reader will recognize the picture of a boy who doesn’t fit in and marches ambivalently to the beat of his own drum. If you’re into family vacations with garbage bags serving as luggage and protagonists who style themselves after late-’70s semi-heartthrob Robby Benson, invite yourself into Rouse’s world.
ST. LOUIS SEEN & UNSEEN
By Michael Kilfoy
An award-winning photo editor (and illustrator and designer), Kilfoy moved here from Chicago.
The first new book of St. Louis photographs to hit coffee tables in a decade, St. Louis Seen & Unseen gathers striking and gently revealing images of our city, past and present.
