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Book Review

By Kris Lomedico

Best read in a long time:  A Thousand Years over a Hot Stove, by Laura Schenone. 

Much more than reminiscence, Schenone explains the long and fascinating relationship between women and food, beginning with the first stone age cook to enhance that boring mammoth stew with a few special herbs, to the oft guilt-ridden modern mom presenting the family with gourmet boil-in-a-bag meals. 
Cooking has been creative, enslaving, liberating, stereotyped, exalted, necessary, and as influenced by economics and politics as by nourishment and joy in eating. Historic recipes, illustrations, and quotes make this very readable and educating.

Northwest mystery writer Kate Wilhelm's  A Wrongful Death implicates her lawyer/sleuth Barbara Holloway right into the middle of a stranger’s murder, not once but twice. 
On vacation at the Oregon coast Barbara aids a distressed young boy and finds his mother lying unconscious in the rainy woods. Back in the city she agrees to meet the woman, but finds her dead instead, beside a hysterical sister. 
Extricating  herself and her client will require all the wily legal step dancing and supportive back-up Barbara can muster as she faces a powerfully vindictive  family who has a persuasive media, and bottomless pockets on its side.

Smart, president of the Young Republicans, Leo has great plans that include Harvard. When his hopes for a scholarship unjustly evaporate, and his mother refuses to speak of her mysterious past affair, he snaps. 
He always knew he had a wild dark side, but discovering that King Maggot, the angriest rock legend ever, is his birth dad confirms and justifies his anger. Wilder yet, King Maggot invites him to come on the summer revival tour! And so begins his gritty, eye-popping life as a roadie. Born to Rock, by Gordon Korman (Y fiction).

Being half Icelandic I felt that someday I must read Independent People, by famous Icelandic author Haldor Laxness.  He should have called it Grimsaga, and true enough I'll never forget it.
Bjartur of Summerhouses had a dream, after 18 years of working for his freedom, to own his own land (though legend said it was cursed) and raise sheep and a family (in that order) there. Fiercely independent, callously indifferent to his family’s needs, Bjartur is strong enough to ride a reindeer down a raging river, then walk 15 miles though a blizzard.

Dumb enough to leave his very pregnant wife alone to give birth with only the company of his faithful dog. She dies in childbirth, though the dog saves the child.

 And so it goes, generally from really bad to much worse, as the family tries to survive on dried cod, blood sausage, bread, and coffee, slaving through the summer to cut enough hay to get the sheep through the winter. There is always the flavor of Icelandic hospitality where visitors are always welcome for coffee and talk (or poetic recitals) at any time.

And apt descriptions like that of the Bailiff, who though wealthy enough, is too stingy to spit out his wad of tobacco, and so must maneuver it carefully about before speaking. Laxness weaves into his story a descriptive historical and political background of Iceland as it changed from a barter economy to a more monetary system, and entered the early twentieth century.   He makes Iceland in the springtime sound beautiful.