A poignant and inspirational love story set in Burma, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats spans
the decades between the 1950s and the present. When a successful New
York lawyer suddenly disappears without a trace, neither his wife nor
his daughter Julia has any idea where he might be…until they find a love
letter he wrote many years ago, to a Burmese woman they have never
heard of. Intent on solving the mystery and coming to terms with her
father’s past, Julia decides to travel to the village where the woman
lived. There she uncovers a tale of unimaginable hardship, resilience,
and passion that will reaffirm the reader’s belief in the power of love
to move mountains.
***
I couldn't put this book down. I read it in just a day or two and I found it to be a beautiful story lovingly told by a talented writer. It is magical and poignant; an amazing, achingly sublime love story. It is a tale of faithfulness, perseverance, hope and trust. When have you ever loved someone enough to let them go without hatred or malice? Have you ever felt that kind of deep emotion that rings true thorough out your life despite the circumstances? Funny how people live lives that they know they were not meant to live simply because it is convenient or the right thing to do. As I read this book my heart ached for the characters but it ached also for myself. There is something in this book that will touch you profoundly, spur you onto greater heights. I know this because one can not read this tale without thinking about one's own life and the trajectory it is taking them on. Are you really living how you want, with whom you want...are you really honoring your soul or are you only marking time until some later date? Perhaps we could all learn the art of hearing heartbeats, beginning with listening to our own.
***
Excerpt
December in Kalaw is a cold month. The sky is blue and cloudless. The
sun wanders from one side of the horizon to the other, but no longer
climbs high enough to generate any real warmth. The air is clear and
fresh, and only the most sensitive people can still detect any trace of
the heavy, sweet scent of the tropical rainy season, when the clouds
hang low over the village and the valley, and the water falls unchecked
from the skies as if to slake a parched world’s thirst. The rainy season
is hot and steamy. The market reeks of rotting meat, while heavy black
flies settle on the entrails and skulls of sheep and cattle. The earth
itself seems to perspire. Worms and insects crawl out of its pores.
Innocent rills turn to rushing torrents that devour careless piglets,
lambs, or children, only to disgorge them, lifeless, in the valley
below. But December promises the people of Kalaw a respite from
all of this. December promises cold nights and mercifully cool days.
December, thought Mya Mya, is a hypocrite. She was sitting on a
wooden stool in front of her house looking out over the fields and the
valley to the hilltops in the distance. The air was so clear that she
felt she was looking through a spyglass to the ends of the earth. She
did not trust the weather. Although she could not remember ever in her
life having seen a cloud in a December sky, she would not rule out the
possibility of a sudden downpour. Or of a typhoon even if not a single
one in living memory had found its way from the Bay of Bengal into the
mountains around Kalaw. It was not impossible. As long as there were
typhoons anywhere, one might well devastate Mya Mya’s native soil. Or
the earth might quake. Even, or perhaps especially, on a day like today,
when nothing foreshadowed catastrophe. Complacency was treacherous,
confidence a luxury that Mya Mya could not afford. That much she knew at
the bottom of her heart. For her there would be neither peace nor rest.
Not in this world. Not in her life.
***
Jan-Philipp Sendker, born in Hamburg in 1960, was the American correspondent for Stern from 1990 to 1995, and its Asian correspondent from 1995 to 1999. In 2000 he published Cracks in the Great Wall, a nonfiction book about China. The Art of Hearing Heartbeats is his first novel. He lives in Berlin with his family.
* I received a free copy from the publisher for purposes of review. I was in no way obligated to write a review much less a favorable one. The opinions stated herein are all my own.
Fiction, Trade Paperback Original
ISBN 978-0-9845105-8-0
6 x 9 in / 224 pages
Publication Date: April 4, 2011
“I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.”
-W.B. Yeats, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”
The Bee-Loud Glade is the story of Finch, a daydreamer whose
job as a marketer of plastic plants consists mostly of updating the
blogs of the imaginary people he creates. Once new management steps in
and kicks him out, Finch slowly lets go of all ties to the outside
world. With both his electricity and motivation shut off, he sinks into a
state of oblivion, holed up in his apartment for weeks on end. But when
his reply to what he thinks is innocuous spam sweeps him into the world
of billionaire Mr. Crane, Finch agrees to live and work—for more money
than he’s ever imagined—as an ornamental hermit in a cave on Mr. Crane’s
estate.
This darkly comic commentary on modern work and wealth thoughtfully
probes deep-rooted questions about the nature of man, the workplace, and
society (and what happens in their absence). Set in a postmodern
pastoral landscape, it brings a playfulness more commonly found in urban
fiction to an outdoor setting. With light and engaging prose, Himmer
deftly unearths the ironies of life and the futility of escape.
***
A while back I wrote a review for a Korean movie called "Castaway on the Moon" (review here). This novel tracks the same premise...disillusioned soul finds himself inexplicably 'trapped' in the center of everything. It is a theme that I personally find fascinating.
Mr. Himmer has written a novel that manages to be sublime and deeply thought provoking simultaneously. Rarely do authors manage the two so deftly. As a commentary on modern life Himmer pretty much nails the essence of our daily existence...and our collective modern way of living has never seemed so inane, so inexplicably ridiculous. Finch is a perfect citizen in so many ways. He does just what he is told to do and if he stops to question 'why' he doesn't dwell on it for very long...he simply follows whatever instruction has been given him to the best of his abilities though he rarely tries very hard.
Now, with nothing but time on my hands, I didn't know where to start and it was simpler to not start at all. I had no more interest in finding a job than I had in anything else
He is in every way a thoroughly modern man. He exists without any particular passion, without any definable goal, no dreams, no real emotions...he is essentially an empty case, vacant and vacuous. And he doesn't even realize that this is a tragedy.
Over the course as his tenure as 'hermit' Finch undergoes a gradual transformation...nothing very dramatic, just a slow, soft ascent into the realm of higher values. At one point in the story Finch is struck by the industry of nature, it's beauty and perfect imperfections he marvels...
All this had been happening every day of my life, while I'd been moving too fast and with too sluggish a mind to take note. While I'd been too busy shitting and showering and shaving myself, trundling myself off to work in a mental fog that lent itself to traffic jam driving but not to being alive.
The nature of his Glade-somewhat manipulated by man, not entirely secluded and sort of dependent on the care of outsiders and it's slow transformation through the years toward total independence tracks the progress of Finch's spirit. He is not so much adrift in isolation as he is cast out of a society that has lost it's meaning, it's soul, it's raison d'etre. Here, in The Bee-Loud Glade a man finds himself and in the process has thrown the world a lifeline out of chaos and maybe back into the Garden.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Steve Himmer teaches at Emerson College in Boston, where he earned his Master of Fine Arts in creative writing and is on the faculty of the First-Year Writing Program. His stories have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Hobart, The Los Angeles Review, Night Train, Pindeldyboz, PANK, Emprise Review, and Everyday Genius. He also is a frequent blogger on writing and teaching, and edits Necessary Fiction, a webjournal from So New Publishing, a press based in Eugene, Oregon.
You can find Bee-Loud Glade at Atticus Bookshere.
The Bee-Loud Glade is his first novel.
* I received an advance copy from the publisher for purposes of review. I was in no way obligated to write a review much less a favorable one. The opinions stated herein are all my own.
fall in love. with yourself. with the person you're with. with the persons in your orbit.
because no one is perfect, but you can let the love be perfect for the both of you.
because everyone -- everyone -- is a doorway to God.
because you can get there from here.
Nazareth, North Dakota: A Novel
by Tommy Zurhellen
Fiction, Trade Paperback Original
ISBN 978-0-9845105-6-6
5.25 x 8 in / 212 pages
Publication Date: April 15, 2011
***
This gem of a novel—a splendid recasting and modern retelling of the
story of the young messiah—is a fast, quirky, dirt-kicking ride through
the Badlands of North Dakota from the early 1980s to the present,
complete with feathered locks, KISS cover bands, and fire-and-brimstone
preachers. It’s an adventurous, irresistible tale about everything from a
31-year-old fugitive mom who escapes a motel shootout with an abandoned
new born to a corrupt sheriff, a kindhearted carpenter, the world’s
oldest man, and the chosen paths of two hell-raising, miracle-bent
cousins.
This incandescent debut is an authentic religious allegory connecting
Lakota history with scripture. It contains plot twists and undeniable
truths as deep and wide as the Little Missouri River, with ideas and
messages so big, so earthshaking, so unmistakably divine, they do more
than transform the little town of Nazareth. They change the world.
***
Nazareth, North Dakotais an imaginative and whimsical retelling The New Testament. Tommy Zurhellen's latest novel tracks the events of the Bible in modern times, his story populated by ever too real misfits, malcontents, lost souls and of course larger than life heroes. It is a tale as old as time and yet presented under a modern context. As such the reader must ask himself or herself just one question...exactly how would we react if Jesus arrived today? Would you believe? What if John the Baptist was planted on the shores of the Rio Grande...would you go?
Waiting around for God! As if God isn't already in every blade of grass and slab of concrete we walk upon, and in the very air we breathe. Waiting around for God! As if the Lord doesn't show us miracles every single day. A miracle is like a big billboard that reads, "Don't worry God's coming." Sometimes we're too stubborn to look up and read the signs.
How could I not truly enjoy this novel? Compelling characters that are familiar and yet brand new, a well known tale wrought anew by a slight twist of perspective. Each day I approached my reading with an eager spirit and, in the end, that is all I could ask of any novel.
***
AUTHOR BIO
Tommy Zurhellen was born in New York City. Nazareth, North Dakota is his first novel.
To find out more about Tommy, his upcoming tour dates and his research for the sequel Apostle Islands, visit his website.
Read a short story written during the evolution of Nazareth, North Dakota.
Learn about Tommy’s many sources of inspiration for the novel at High Plains Reader.
Check out Tommy’s interview at Eleutherophobia, which covers everything from Nazareth to wave-making waterbeds.
* I received an advance copy from the publisher for purposes of review. I was in no way obligated to write a review much less a favorable one. The opinions stated herein are all my own.
On Sale: January 10, 2012
Pages: 240 |
ISBN: 978-1-58246-393-3
I've known it since last night: It's been too long to expect them to return. Something's happened.
May
is helping out on a neighbor's Kansas prairie homestead—just until
Christmas, says Pa. She wants to contribute, but it's hard to be
separated from her family by 15 long, unfamiliar miles. Then the
unthinkable happens: May is abandoned. Trapped in a tiny snow-covered
sod house, isolated from family and neighbors, May must prepare for the
oncoming winter. While fighting to survive, May's memories of her
struggles with reading at school come back to haunt her. But she's
determined to find her way home again. Caroline Starr Rose's fast-paced
novel, written in beautiful and riveting verse, gives readers a strong
new heroine to love.
CAROLINE STARR ROSE spent her childhood in the deserts of
Saudi Arabia and New Mexico, camping at the Red Sea in one and eating
red chile in the other. As a girl she danced ballet, raced through books
by Laura Ingalls, and put on magic shows in a homemade cape. She
graduated from the University of New Mexico and went on to teach both
social studies and English in New Mexico, Florida, Virginia, and
Louisiana. In her classroom, she worked to instill in her students a
passion for books, the freedom to experiment with words, and a curiosity
about the past. Visit her at carolinestarrrose.com.
* I received an advance copy from the publisher for purposes of review. I was in no way obligated to write a review much less a favorable one. The opinions stated herein are all my own.
There is a great giveaway happening over at the New Living Translation Facebook page, and a chance to enter a Tyndale Blog Network exclusive giveaway.
Here are the NLT Facebook page giveaway details: Starting on November 29th until December 24th at the New Living Translation Facebook page they're giving away lots of great prizes and something free for just for singing up. By visiting the giveaway entry
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Everyone that signs up gets a free download copy of the Life Application Bible Study – Book of Luke!
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