‘Great American Road Trips’ by Reader’s Digest. Photo: amazon
Now that summer is here, most people will be taking vacations, including road trips. Reader’s Digest has put together a new book, the first in the Great American Road Trips series, that covers Scenic Drives. Hoping to inspire readers to travel and explore the wide-opens spaces and breathtaking views of our country, “Great American Road Trips – Scenic Drives: Discover Insider Tips, Must-See Stops, Nearby Attractions and More” is a complete guide to making road trips easier.
“Great American Road Trips” begins with a foreword by the editors that explains the purpose of this book “These trips will take you on an odyssey in your car, van or RV.” These drives range from the ones that lead to beaches to the more adventurous, like a trip along North America’s highest paved road, the Mount Evans Scenic Byway in Colorado. Each one is a firsthand experience from travelers and photographers themselves and comes with helpful added tips like length of trip, fun facts, nearby attractions, and “not to be missed” points of interest. All this is highlighted by over 140 gorgeous photos. The information is divided into five parts: West (Seward Highway in Alaska, Big Sur Coast in California), Southwest (Apache Trail in Arizona, Texas Hill Country in Texas), Midwest (Illinois River Road in Illinois, North Shore Scenic Drive in Minnesota), Southeast (Bayou Country in Louisiana, Cherokee Foothills Byway in South Carolina), and Northeast (Cape Cod’s Route 6 in Massachusetts, Vermont Route 108 in Vermont).
Whether taking a cross country trip or planning a staycation, “Great American Road Trips” is the ultimate guide to scenic drives. Even if you are not planning a road trip anytime soon, it still contains exceptional pictures and information about each scenic drive. The first person descriptions make them more realistic. Highlight: each section ends with a quote and being from Texas and having lived near Fredericksburg, I am partial to the one after ‘Southwest,’ “Where flowers bloom, so does hope” by Lady Bird Johnson because it accompanies the picture of a field of bluebonnets near Fredericksburg. Seeing all these flowers along side the road every spring is awe-inspiring. All the pictures are colorful and they make each destination look more inviting. “Great American Road Trips” is an extremely helpful resource for anyone planning a scenic drive or two and might just inspire a bucket list altogether.
*The author received a copy of this book for an honest review. The views and opinions expressed here belong solely to her.
Dawn Fades’ new album Ode is now available for pre-order. Courtesy photo, used with permission.
Los Angeles CA post-metal group Dawn Fades will release their sophomore album Ode, September 10, 2021. Ode will be available on vinyl, CD and all digital platforms via Metal Assault Records. The first single and music video “Taste” premiered June 25, along with the pre-order launch of the album in all aforementioned formats. (Dawn Fades, 2021)
Comprising six songs spanning ethereal experimentation and crushing heaviness, Ode shows a band unshaken by the pandemic induced time away from the stage. The new offering reveals Dawn Fades as now more resolute in their vision and execution. Mixed by heavy music mainstay Josh Newell (Intronaut, Anthrax, Linkin Park), Ode manages to be both more mature and more raw than the band’s critically acclaimed self-titled 2019 debut. While expertly retaining the core elements of their highly successful debut; Dawn Fades takes their musical evolution to even greater heights on Ode, undoubtedly leaving an even stronger impression on listeners.
Frontman and songwriter Sam Sherwood says the album is “a picture of feelings about the trappings of the world we find ourselves in. I believe we are doing a thing that has its own life to it. There is darkness and screaming inner-torment and there are ear-worm hooks.”
LA Weekly describes Dawn Fades as “a mashup of Deftones and Neurosis, with hints of Eyehategod and Enslaved.” Ode is now available to pre-order with the official album release slated for September 10, 2021.
Ode track listing:
Dearth (8:17)
Taste (5:11)
Ode: Part 1 (1:51)
Ode: Part 2 (5:56)
Front (6:57)
Chains (8:36)
Turning (3:23) Total Runtime: 40:11
Dawn Fades is: Sam Sherwood – Vocals Scott Rosenquist – Drums Markus Erren Pardiñas – Bass Nate Hertweck – Guitar
’39 Down’ is book one of the Joseph Schneider, Traitor-Patriot series by Paul Schwartzmeyer. Photo: amazon
Paul Schwartzmeyer is a former Marine Corp radio man. After graduating from college, he worked on oil rigs in the bayous of offshore Louisiana and in Texas. For eight years he worked as an engineer in the Saudi Desert where he was given the highest level security clearance to work with radioactivity and explosives. He also worked in Dubai as well as in the Al Rub Al Khali, one of the most desolate places on earth. His worldwide contacts include soldiers of fortune, oil industry executives, combat veterans, hostage negotiators, madams, and pub owners. He has extensive knowledge in the workings of international banks, trade cartels and the civilian military complex and his books are metaphors for a world few people ever see. He is the author of the series Joseph Schneider, Traitor-Patriot. “39 Down” is book 1 of the series and the story of Paul Trifthauser, who unknowingly inherits an espionage network from his grandfather.
“39 Down” begins with a CIA memo to the FBI director from the Intelligence Division regarding Joseph Gerhold Wendel Schneider that includes his personal information such as date of birth, occupations, and known family members: his grandson Paul Trifthauser, who is the protagonist of this series. The story starts as Arianna, Paul’s girlfriend, is grieving the death of Gregor, Paul’s best friend. He was shot coming out of Paul’s office building while wearing his jacket so Paul assumes he was the intended target, not Gregor. His death spooks them so much that when Paul’s mother calls to say she is selling the family home and that he needs to go and clean out his stuff, he and Arianna do not think twice about leaving town. Paul is newly sober and he fears that if he starts drinking again, he will lose Arianna and he has already lost too much. But Gregor’s death is only the beginning of the drama and chaos that will upend both their lives. When they find Joseph’s stack of crossword puzzles in the family home’s barn, Arianna, who is good at puzzles, goes through them. Together, they begin to unlock the mystery of Joseph’s past which leads to Paul unknowingly inheriting an espionage network so secretive and so lethal that that even the CIA was afraid to confront it. Buried in layers of code, hidden in 3,000 crossword puzzles are Joseph Schneider’s secrets. Now Paul has to figure out the code before his grandfather’s enemies, the world’s massive trading cartels, realize he does not know it. Not knowing who he can trust and armed with nothing but intuition and with the help of a twenty-nine year old Indian prostitute named Alejandra, he races against time in an attempt to stay alive.
The Joseph Schneider, Traitor-Patriot series is based on many composite characters, including Paul Schwartzmeyer’s grandfather Joseph Reeb, who was a former tanner for the Pearce Arrow company, a decorated combat veteran in World War I, and owned a furniture store in Buffalo. “39 Down” has a feeling of authenticity since the author used some of his own background to create the Paul Trifthauser universe, including spies, cartels, and Alejandra, the prostitute/assistant. It is narrated in the first person point of view so the reader has an insight into Paul’s state of mind, especially when everything is falling apart around him. Due to Paul’s extensive character development, readers come to care about what happens to him. The language is easy to understand and poetic at times: “The Rover glided over the sand as if we were floating on a cloud.” Some chapters begin with CIA memos updating the Trifthauser/Schneider case which hints that the CIA really is following Paul, that he is not just paranoid. His grandfather’s code name was Arnus, ‘39 Down’ in correspondence with foreign agents; that is where the novel’s title comes in. It is fascinating when Paul describes what it is like living in isolation and how traumatic it can be going back to civilization: “It takes about a month to internalize it. It’s a process. At night, the silence is so encompassing that your ears ring. The ringing keeps you awake, but when that dies down, your body takes on a calmness that’s quite profound. After just five months, I returned to ‘civilization.’ It was one of the most horrid experiences in my life. I couldn’t sleep inside, choosing to sleep on the roof of my apartment in Dhahran. I drank incessantly, I thought I’d lose my mind.” With action that flows easily through the pages, it is a definite must-read. “39 Down” by Paul Schwartzmeyer is a globe-trotting spy adventure that sometimes keeps readers guessing but does not disappoint. It is recommended for fans of spy thrillers similar to The Bourne series by Robert Ludlam and the Jack Reacher series by Lee Child.
The Kindle edition of “39 Down” appears to be the unedited version because it has numerous typos and grammatical/spelling errors. This does not take away from the quality of the story.
*The author received a copy of this book for an honest review. The views and opinions expressed here belong solely to her.
‘The Hollows’ by Mark Edwards will be out July 8, 2021. Photo: amazon
Mark Edwards writes psychological thrillers in which scary things happen to ordinary people. He has sold 3 million books since his first novel, “The Magpies,” was published in 2013, and has topped the bestseller lists several times. His other novels include “Follow You Home,” “The Retreat,” “In Her Shadow,” “Because She Loves Me,” “The House Guest,” and “Here To Stay.” He has also co-authored six books with Louise Voss. His new book “The Hollows,” a chilling story set deep in the woods, will be out Thursday July 8, 2021 and is available for pre-order on amazon. (amazon, 2021)
“The Hollows” – With his marriage over and his career in freefall, journalist Tom decides to reconnect with his fourteen-year-old daughter, Frankie. Desperate to spend precious time together now that they live an ocean apart, he brings her to Hollow Falls, a cabin resort deep in the woods of Maine. From the outset there is something a little eerie about the place―strange whispers in the trees, windchimes echoing through the forest―but when Tom meets true-crime podcasters David and Connie, he receives a chilling warning. Hollow Falls has a gruesome history: twenty years ago this week, a double slaying shut down the resort. The crime was never solved, and now the woods are overrun with murder-obsessed tourists looking to mark the grim anniversary. It is clear that there is something deeply disturbing going on at Hollow Falls. And as Tom’s dream trip turns into a nightmare, he and Frankie are faced with a choice: uncover the truth, or get out while they still can.
‘We Have Always Been Here’ by Lena Nguyen will be out on July 6, 2021. Photo: amazon
Lena Nguyen is a writer of speculative fiction and fantasy. She received her MFA in fiction from Cornell University, where she also taught courses in English, writing, and zombies. Her science fiction and fantasy have won several accolades, and she was a Writers of the Future finalist. “We Have Always Been Here,” a psychological sci-fi thriller that follows one doctor who must discover the source of her crew’s madness or risk succumbing to it herself, is her debut novel. It will be released on Tuesday July 6, 2021 and is available for pre-order on amazon. (amazon, 2021)
“We Have Always Been Here” – Misanthropic psychologist Dr. Grace Park is placed on the Deucalion, a survey ship headed to an icy planet in an unexplored galaxy. Her purpose is to observe the thirteen human crew members aboard the ship—all specialists in their own fields—as they assess the colonization potential of the planet, Eos. But frictions develop as Park befriends the androids of the ship, preferring their company over the baffling complexity of humans, while the rest of the crew treats them with suspicion and even outright hostility. Shortly after landing, the crew finds themselves trapped on the ship by a radiation storm, with no means of communication or escape until it passes—and that is when things begin to fall apart. Park’s patients are falling prey to waking nightmares of helpless, tongueless insanity. The androids are behaving strangely. There are no windows aboard the ship. Paranoia is closing in, and soon Park is forced to confront the fact that nothing—neither her crew, nor their mission, nor the mysterious Eos itself—is as it seems.
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‘The Killing Hills’ is the new thriller by Chris Offutt. Photo: amazon
Chris Offutt is the author of the short-story collections “Kentucky Straight” and “Out of the Woods,” the novel “The Good Brother,” and three memoirs: “The Same River Twice,” “No Heroes,” and “My Father, the Pornographer.” His work has appeared in Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays, among many other places. He has written screenplays for Weeds, True Blood, and Treme, and has received fellowships from the Lannan and Guggenheim foundations. His new book “The Killing Hills” is a compelling, propulsive thriller in which a suspicious death exposes the loyalties and rivalries of a deep-rooted and fiercely private community in the Kentucky backwoods. (amazon, 2021)
Mick Hardin, a combat veteran now working as an Army CID agent, is home on a leave that is almost done. His wife is about to give birth, but they are not getting along. His sister, newly risen to sheriff, has just landed her first murder case, and local politicians are pushing for city police or the FBI to take the case. Are they convinced she cannot handle it, or is there something else at work? She calls on Mick who, with his homicide investigation experience and familiarity with the terrain, is well-suited to staying under the radar. As he delves into the investigation, he dodges his commanding officer’s increasingly urgent calls while attempting to head off further murders. And he needs to talk to his wife. “The Killing Hills” is a novel of betrayal―sexual, personal, within and between the clans that populate the hollers―and the way it so often shades into violence. Chris Offutt has delivered a dark, witty, and absolutely compelling novel of murder and honor, with an investigator-hero unlike any in fiction.
‘My Heart Is a Chainsaw’ by Stephen Graham Jones will be out August 31, 2021. Photo: amazon
Stephen Graham Jones is The New York Times bestselling author of “The Only Good Indians.” He has been an NEA fellowship recipient, has won the Jesse Jones Award for Best Work of Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters, the Independent Publishers Award for Multicultural Fiction, a Bram Stoker Award, four This is Horror Awards; and has been a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award and the World Fantasy Award. He is the Ivena Baldwin Professor of English at the University of Colorado Boulder. His new book “My Heart Is a Chainsaw” is due out August 31 and available for pre-order now on amazon. On the surface it is a story of murder in small-town America, but beneath is its beating heart: a biting critique of American colonialism, Indigenous displacement and gentrification, and a heartbreaking portrait of a broken young girl who uses horror movies to cope with the horror of her own life. (amazon, 2021)
“My Heart Is a Chainsaw” – Jade Daniels is an angry, half-Indian outcast with an abusive father, an absent mother, and an entire town that wants nothing to do with her. She lives in her own world, a world in which protection comes from an unusual source: horror movies…especially the ones where a masked killer seeks revenge on a world that wronged them. And Jade narrates the quirky history of Proofrock as if it is one of those movies. But when blood actually starts to spill into the waters of Indian Lake, she pulls us into her dizzying, encyclopedic mind of blood and masked murderers, and predicts exactly how the plot will unfold.
Yet, even as Jade drags us into her dark fever dream, a surprising and intimate portrait emerges…a portrait of the scared and traumatized little girl beneath the Jason Voorhees mask: angry, yes, but also a girl who easily cries, fiercely loves, and desperately wants a home. A girl whose feelings are too big for her body. “My Heart Is a Chainsaw” is her story, her homage to horror and revenge and triumph.
‘Chasing the Ghost’ by Leonard A. Cole Photo: google
Dr. Leonard A. Cole is the author of “Chasing the Ghost: Nobelist Fred Reines and the Neutrino.” An expert on bioterrorism and on terror medicine, he is an adjunct professor at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School (Emergency Medicine) and at Rutgers University-Newark (Political Science). At the medical school, he is director of the Program on Terror Medicine and Security. He has written for the The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy, Scientific American, and The Sciences. He has testified before congressional committees and made invited presentations to several government agencies including the U.S. Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Office of Technology Assessment. His new book “Chasing the Ghost: Nobelist Fred Reines and the Neutrino” is a unique combination of memoir and biography and a deeply human story about Fred Reines, one of the 20th century’s true scientific pioneers.
Fred Reines is the winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Physics. In “Chasing the Ghost,” Cole recounts the life of one of the great scientists of our era; from the years spent on the search for the “unseeable” neutrino, to the “Project Poltergeist” experiment, and to the discovery of the mysterious neutrino. It begins with the story of how in the summer of 1963, Fred Reines, Gus Hruschka, an engineer friend, and Friedel Sellschop, a South African physics professor, entered the East Rand South African gold mine with an experiment in mind. Precautions included water-repellent high-laced shoes, hard hats, and even gas masks, in case sensors detected carbon monoxide or methane. But before continuing that story, Cole, who happens to be Reines’ cousin, goes back to 1956 when Reines and his colleague Clyde Cowan discovered the neutrino. Fun fact: “The miniscule particle is commonly described as elusive. More than half a century after its detection, the neutrino is still referred to as a ghost particle”- hence the title of the book. The book is divided into six parts: Beginnings “Language, Science, and the Ghost Particle,” Becoming “Becoming a Physicist,” Discovery “Explosive Ideas,” Moving “Transition Years at Irvine,” Expressions “Classroom Teacher,” and Validation “The Legacy Grows.” The Epilogue sums up the vast amounts of memorabilia currently in the lobby of Frederick Reines Hall at the University of California Irvine as well as how even after he won the Nobel Prize in 1995, Reines continued to learn more about the particle and how interest in neutrino studies continues to grow.
According to Scientific American, “a neutrino is a subatomic particle that is very similar to an electron, but has no electrical charge and a very small mass, which might even be zero.” Cole expertly explains the science, but understanding physics is not a requirement to read this biography because in the Preface, the author explains that the book is a combination of memoir and biography with a focus on a human story. It is mainly about Fred Reines’ personal life and not so much the science of neutrino physics. Any science described is used to support Fred’s story and is meant to appeal to a general audience, which it does. It alternates between sections explaining physics (subatomic particles), the experiments to detect the neutrino, and Reines’ personal life and career. By using pictures, letters, diagrams, and newspaper accounts, readers are offered a glimpse of this wildly accomplished scientist and teacher who became one of the twentieth century’s true pioneers in physics, all while remaining modest. Standout chapters include Chapter 14: Classroom Teacher, which details how involved he was as a teacher and Chapter 18: The Legacy Grows where it breaks down his legacy: “Interest in the ghost particle has soared, as its centrality in the workings of the cosmos has become increasingly evident.” Despite the overall physics theme, the language is easy to understand and follow. Even if the physics sections are too complicated for some readers, they are few and far between and serve to help understand the mind of Fred Reines. “Chasing the Ghost” by Leonard A. Cole is an incredibly interesting portrait of the man and his contributions to physics and is recommended for readers who appreciate biographies with some science mixed in for fun.
“The story of the neutrino is one of scarcely imaginable extremes. The particle is omnipresent yet proof of its existence had long eluded confirmation. Other than photons – particles of light – neutrinos are the most abundant particle in the universe.”
*The author received a copy of this book for an honest review. The views and opinions expressed here belong solely to her.
‘Act of Negligence’ will be out on Tuesday, June 15, 2021. Courtesy photo, used with permission.
John Bishop MD is the author of “Act of Negligence: A Medical Thriller” (A Doc Brady Mystery). Dr. Bishop has led a triple life. This orthopedic surgeon and keyboard musician has combined two of his talents into a third, as the author of the beloved Doc Brady mystery series. Beyond applying his medical expertise at a relatable and comprehensible level, Dr. Bishop, through his fictional counterpart Doc Brady, also infuses his books with his love of not only Houston and Galveston, Texas, but especially with his love for his adored wife. Bishop’s talented Doc Brady is confident yet humble; brilliant, yet a genuinely nice and funny guy who happens to have a knack for solving medical mysteries. Above all, he is the doctor who will cure you of your blues and boredom. Step into his world with the first four books of the series, and you will l be clamoring for more. The following is an excerpt from “Act of Negligence” which will be released on Tuesday, June 15, 2021.
Act of Negligence: A Medical Thriller (A Doc Brady Mystery) Chapter 1 by John Bishop, MD
There was no response from the patient in Room 823 of University Hospital. She was crouched on the bed, in position to leap toward the end of the bed in the direction of yours truly. I could not determine her age, but she definitely appeared to be a wild woman. Her hair was a combination of gray and silver, long and uncombed and in total disarray. She had a deeply lined face, leathery, with no makeup. Her brown eyes were frantic, and her head moved constantly to the right and left. She was clad only in an untied hospital gown which dwarfed her small frame. My guess? She wasn’t over five feet tall.
“Ms. Adams? Dr. Morgenstern asked me to stop by and see about your knee?”
She did not move or speak; she just continued squatting there in the hospital bed, bouncing slightly on her haunches, and staring at me while her head moved slowly to and fro.
I looked around the drab private room with thin out-of-date drapes and faded green-tinted walls. There were no flowers. I judged the patient to most likely be a nursing-home transfer.
I made the safe move by backing out of the patient’s room, and I walked the twenty yards to the nurses’ station. The white-tiled floors were freshly waxed, but the medicinal smell was distinctly different from the surgical wing. There was an unpleasant pine scent in the air that could not hide the odor of decaying human beings and leaking body fluids. It was the smell of chronic illness and disease.
“Cynthia?” I asked the head nurse on the medical ward, or so announced her name tag. She was sitting at the far side of the long nursing station desk performing the primary duty of a nursing supervisor: paperwork. She was an attractive Black woman in her mid-forties, I estimated.
“Yes, sir?”
“Dr. Morgenstern asked me to see Mrs. Adams in consultation. Room 823? What’s the matter with her? She won’t answer me. She just stares, sitting up in the bed on her haunches, bouncing.”
She smiled and shook her head. “You must be a surgeon.”
“Yes, ma’am. Orthopedic. Dr. Jim Brady.”
“Cynthia Dumond. Mrs. Adams has Alzheimer’s. Sometimes she gets confused. Want me to come in the room with you? Maybe protect you?” she said with a smile.
“Well, I wouldn’t mind the company,” I said, a little sheepishly. “Not that I was afraid or anything.”
“She’s harmless, Doctor. She’s just old and confused.”
We walked back to the hospital room together. The patient seemed to relax the moment she saw the head nurse, a familiar face. “Hello, Ms. Adams,”
Cynthia said. “This is Dr. Brady. He needs to examine your . . .” She gazed at me, smiling again. “Your what?” “Her knee.”
“Dr. Brady needs to look at your knee. Okay?”
The patient had ceased shaking and bouncing, leaned back, slowly extended her legs, laid down, and became somewhat still.
“Very good, Ms. Adams. Very good,” Cynthia said, grasping the elderly woman’s hand and holding it while she looked at me. “Go ahead, Doctor.”
The woman’s right knee was quite swollen, with redness extending up and down her leg for about six inches in each direction. When I applied anything but gentle skin pressure, her leg seemed to spasm involuntarily. How in the world she had managed to crouch on the bed with her knee bent to that degree was mystifying.
“Sorry, Ms. Adams,” I said, but continued my exam. The knee looked and felt infected, but those signs could also have represented a fracture or an acute arthritic inflammation such as gout, pseudo-gout, or rheumatoid arthritis, not to mention an array of exotic diseases. I tried to flex and extend the knee, but she resisted, either due to pain—although I wasn’t certain she had a normal discomfort threshold—or from a mechanical block due to swelling or some type of joint pathology.
“What’s she in the hospital for?” I asked Nurse Cynthia.
“Dehydration, malnutrition, and failure to thrive, the usual diagnoses for folks we get from the nursing home. The doctor who runs her particular facility sent her in.”
“Who is it?”
“Dr. Frazier. Know him?”
“Nope. Should I?”
“No. It’s just that he sends his patients here in the end stages. Most of the folks that get admitted from his nursing home die soon after they arrive.”
“Most of them are old and sick, aren’t they?”
“Yes.”
I looked at her expression while she continued to hold Mrs. Adams’s hand.
“Were you trying to make a point?”
“Not really.” She glanced at her watch. “Are you about through, Doctor Brady? I have quite a bit of work to do.”
“Follow that paper trail, huh?”
“Yes. That’s about all I have time for these days. Seems to get worse every month. Some new form to fill out, some new administrative directive to analyze. Whatever.”
“I know the feeling. There isn’t much time to see the patients and take care of whatever ails them these days. If my secretary can’t justify to an insurance clerk why a patient needs an operation, then I have to waste my time on the phone explaining a revision hip replacement to someone without adequate training or experience. One of my partners told me yesterday about an insurance clerk that was giving him a bunch of—well, giving him a hard time—about performing a bunionectomy. He found out during the course of a fifteen-minute conversation that the woman didn’t know a bunion was on the foot. Her insurance code indicated it was a cyst on the back and she couldn’t find the criteria for removal in the hospital. She was insisting it had to be an office procedure, and only under a local anesthetic. Crazy, huh?”
“Yes, sir. It’s a brave new world.”
“Sounds like a good book title, Nurse Cynthia.”
“I think it’s been done, Doctor.”
“Well, thanks for your help. I do appreciate it. Not every day the head nurse on a medical floor accompanies me on a consultation.” “My pleasure. You seem to be a concerned physician, an advocate for the patient, at least. As I remember, that’s why we all went into the healing arts.”
She turned to Mrs. Adams. “I’ll see you later, dear,” she said, patting the elderly woman’s forehead. Still holding the nurse’s other hand with her own wrinkled hand, Mrs. Adams kissed Cynthia’s fingers lightly, probably holding on for her life.
I poured a cup of hospital-fresh coffee, also known as crankcase oil, and reviewed Beatrice Adams’s chart. I sat in a doctor’s dictation area behind the nursing station and looked at the face sheet first, being a curious sort. Her residence was listed as Pleasant View Nursing Home, Conroe, Texas. Conroe is a community of fifty thousand or so, about an hour north of Houston. I noticed that a Kenneth Adams was listed as next of kin and was to be notified in case of emergency. His phone number was prefixed by a “409” exchange, and I therefore assumed that he was a son or a brother and lived in Conroe as well.
Mrs. Adams was fifty-seven years old, which was young to have a flagrant case of Alzheimer’s disease, a commonly-diagnosed malady that was due to atrophy of the brain’s cortical matter. That’s the tissue that allows one to recognize friends and relatives, to know the difference between going to the bathroom in the toilet versus in your underwear, and to know when it’s appropriate to wear clothes and when it isn’t. Alzheimer’s causes a patient to gradually become a mental vegetable but doesn’t affect the vital organs until the very end stages of the disease. In other words, the disease doesn’t kill you quickly, but it makes you worse than a small child—unfortunately, a very large and unruly child.
It can, and often does, destroy the family unit, sons and daughters especially, who are caught between their own children and whichever parent is affected with the disease, which makes it in some ways worse than death. You can get over death, through grief, prayer, catharsis, and tincture of time. Taking care of an Alzheimer’s-affected parent can be a living hell, until they are bad enough that the patient must go to a nursing home. Then the abandonment guilt is hell, or so my friends and patients tell me.
Mrs. Adams had been admitted to University Hospital one week before by my friend and personal physician, Dr. James Morgenstern. I guessed that either he had taken care of the patient or a family member in the past, or that Dr. Frazier, physician-owner or medical director of Pleasant View Nursing Home, had a referral relationship with Jimmy.
Mrs. Adams’s initial blood work revealed hyponatremia (low sodium), hyperkalemia (high potassium), and a low hematocrit (anemia). Clinically, hypotension (low blood pressure), decreased skin turgor, and oliguria (reduced urine output) suggested a dehydration-like syndrome. For a nursing-home patient, that could either mean poor custodial care or failure of the patient to cooperate— refusing to drink, refusing to eat—or some combination of the two. Neither scenario was atypical of the plight of the elderly with a dementia-like illness.
According to Dr. Morgenstern’s history, the patient had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease six years before, at age fifty-one, which by most standards was very young for brain deterioration without a tumor.
“Dr. Brady?” head nurse Cynthia asked, appearing beside my less-than-comfortable dictating chair.
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry to bother you, but might I have one of your business cards?”
“Sure,” I said, handing her one from the top left pocket of my white clinical jacket. “Don’t ever apologize for bothering me if you’re trying to send me a patient.”
She laughed. “It’s for my mother. She has terrible arthritis.” She paused and read the card. “You’re with the University Orthopedic Group?”
“Yes. Twenty-two years.”
“If I might ask, where did you do your training?”
“I went to med school at Baylor, then did general and orthopedic surgery training here at the University Hospital. I then traveled to New York and spent a year studying hip and knee replacement surgery, then came back to Houston to the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
“Is your practice limited to a certain area? I mean, do you just see patients with hip and knee arthritis?”
“Yes. Unless, of course, it’s an emergency situation, like one of those rare weekends when I can’t find a young, hungry surgeon with six kids to cover emergency room call for me.”
“Well, thanks,” she said, smiling. “I’ll be seeing you. I’ll bring my mother in.”
“Thank YOU, Cynthia. By the way, I’m curious. Why me? I would think you see quite a few docs up here, and I would imagine that your mother has had arthritis for years. Why now?”
Cynthia was an attractive, full-figured woman with close-cropped jet-black hair, a woman who made the required pantsuit nursing uniform look like a fashion statement. She looked me up and down as I sat there with Mrs. Adams’s chart in my lap, my legs crossed, holding the strong black cooling coffee.
“You’re wearing cowboy boots. I figure that all you need is a white hat,” she said, turning and walking away.
Not my sharp wit, nor my kind demeanor with her patient, nor my vast training and experience.
My boots.
John Bishop, M.D. Photo: Greg Moredock, used with permission.
“The Personal Librarian” by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray. Photo: amazon
A new month means new books on the horizon. These are some notable new releases for the month of June in my favorite categories: Historical Fiction, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Mystery and Thriller, and History and Biography. If I could pick just one this month, it would be “The Personal Librarian.” (amazon, Goodreads, 2021)
The remarkable story of J. P. Morgan’s personal librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, the Black American woman who was forced to hide her true identity and pass as white to leave a lasting legacy that enriched our nation, from The New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict and acclaimed author Victoria Christopher Murray. “The Personal Librarian” tells the story of an extraordinary woman, famous for her intellect, style, and wit, and shares the lengths she must go to—for the protection of her family and her legacy—to preserve her carefully crafted white identity in the racist world in which she lives.
Fantasy: “The Hidden Palace: A Novel of the Golem and the Jinni” Book 2 of 2 by Helene Wecker Release date: June 8, 2021
This enthralling historical epic is set in New York City and the Middle East in the years leading to World War I and is the long-awaited follow-up to the acclaimed bestseller “The Golem and the Jinni.” Helene Wecker revisits her beloved characters Chava and Ahmad as they confront unexpected new challenges in a rapidly changing human world. Spanning the tumultuous years from the turn of the twentieth century to the beginning of World War I, “The Hidden Palace” follows these lives and others as they collide and interleave. Can Chava and Ahmad find their places in the human world while remaining true to each other? Or will their opposing natures and desires eventually tear them apart—especially once they encounter, thrillingly, other beings like themselves?
Science Fiction: “The Ninth Metal” (The Comet Cycle) by Benjamin Percy Release date: June 1, 2021
It began with a comet. At first, people gazed in wonder at the radiant tear in the sky. A year later, the celestial marvel became a planetary crisis when Earth spun through the comet’s debris field and the sky rained fire. The town of Northfall, Minnesota will never be the same. Meteors cratered hardwood forests and annihilated homes, and among the wreckage a new metal was discovered. This “omni metal” has properties that make it world-changing as an energy source and a weapon. In this gut-punch of a novel, the first in his Comet Cycle, Ben Percy lays bare how a modern-day goldrush has turned the middle of nowhere into the center of everything, and how one family—the Frontiers—hopes to control it all.
Mystery and Thriller: “Survive the Night: A Novel” by Riley Sager Release date: June 29, 2021
It is November 1991. Nirvana is in the tape deck, George H. W. Bush is in the White House, and movie-obsessed college student Charlie Jordan is in a car with a man who might be a serial killer. Charlie has nowhere to run and no way to call for help. Trapped in a terrifying game of cat and mouse played out on pitch-black roads and in neon-lit parking lots, Charlie knows the only way to win is to survive the night.
History and Biography: “Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts” by Rebecca Hall Release date: June 1, 2021
Part graphic novel, part memoir, “Wake” is an imaginative tour-de-force that tells the story of women-led slave revolts and chronicles scholar Rebecca Hall’s efforts to uncover the truth about these women warriors who, until now, have been left out of the historical record. Wake tells the story of Dr. Rebecca Hall, a historian, granddaughter of slaves, and a woman haunted by the legacy of slavery. The accepted history of slave revolts has always told her that enslaved women took a back seat. But Rebecca decides to look deeper, and her journey takes her through old court records, slave ship captain’s logs, crumbling correspondence, and even the forensic evidence from the bones of enslaved women from the “negro burying ground” uncovered in Manhattan. She finds women warriors everywhere.
