(September 2007) They say that confession is good for the soul, so let me confess something. I was feeling pretty smug about In High Places; it's gotten some stellar reviews, gets consistently great reader mail (thanks, everyone!) and had gathered not a few accolades from my friends in the novelist world. The feedback was so good that I'd mentally picked out a place to put the 2008 Christy Award on the wall of my office. But now I've decided to just put a picture there, instead, because I just finished reading Athol Dickson's The Cure, and I'm fairly certain that he has blown me -- and just about anybody else writing general fiction and suspense -- completely out of the water. It's the story of Riley Keep, former small-town pastor and educator, who had hit rock-bottom and then dug a little deeper, still. Once a family man and a man of God, he has decended to homelessness, alcoholism, and deceit and, disguised in his poverty, he journeys back to his hometown in search of the antidote to his condition. This makes The Cure sound like an issues-driven book, but it's not. It is a charcacter study, a love story, a mystery and a suspense novel, all rolled into one and delivered with the attention to language and art that has become Athol Dickson's hallmark. If you know me, you know that I'm not much for novels that deliver pat answers and imply that accepting Christ automatically makes the rest of your life a bed of roses. And this is absolutely not that kind of book. It is a novel about brokenness and weakness, and it shows Jesus as the answer that He is, without sounding like a fairy tale. The true test of a book, I think, is the resonance of its ending; two weeks after finishing The Cure, its ending is still sending ripples through my every thought. This book is, like River Rising (below) and In High Places, part of a Bethany program in which the novels are being released initially in hardcover and then re-released in trade paper the following year. But if I were you, I would buy the hardcover now; this is one of those novels that you'll want to read several times. It's Athol's best yet. And as for that Christy Award -- well, let's just hope I write something good for 2009 ....

(December 2005) It's not often that a book makes you think of William Faulkner's Gulf-Coast fiction and C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia, both at the same time. But Athol Dickson has done that with River Rising, his brand-new novel that has, happily enough, been released in hardcover by Bethany House Publishers. Although it can be read as allegory (a la Narnia), River Rising is so well-written, and has such amazing and original characters that it more than stands on its own as a novel ... enough so that I believe a new category ("litallegory") should be created to contain it. That is why I say "happily enough" about the hardcover release; this is one of those books that you are going to want to read again and again. The writing is absolutely amazing, and it has enough depth and texture for you to discover fresh new levels each time.

The central character of River Rising is Hale Poser, an African-American pastor who  visits Pilotville, Louisiana, a fishing village in the deep South. He becomes a modernday Moses and a modernday Jesus, both at the same time, to his racially mixed community, which is ahead of the times for its era (1927) but still far short of true equality. Hale has the ability to restore dead birds to life and to banish a young woman's birth pangs, but he limps from a chronically bad hip of his own. And he inspires in others the faith to persevere, even though he struggles with his own doubts ... an element of realism that helps give this story flesh-and-blood relevance.

I've long said that, 100 years from now, Athol Dickson is going to be one of the few contemporary writers that people will still read and enjoy. His work has that sort of resonance. River Rising reinforces that belief, and I trust that it will get the reception it deserves. This is a modern classic from one of the quiet, below-the-radar, giants of contemporary literature.

(July 2005) I just finished reading the preliminary galleys of Angela Hunt's new book, The Novelist. This is Angela's first hardcover novel. It's the story of how popular suspense writer Jordan Casey opens a new door in both her writing life and her family life when she takes up a challenge offered by a student in her creative writing class. The book is everything I've come to expect from this author: a heartwrenching relationship-based story, laid down with wit (Jordan Casey's dog, a mastiff, is named "Dubya"—which just knocks me out), great pacing, and polished, solid writing. I think Angela is going to do very well with this book, and I'm very happy about that. She's not only a tremendous writer; she is a great ambassador for this industry. Look for The Novelist in bookstores in January 2006, right about the time that Dark Fathom, the next Beck Easton Adventure, hits the shelves (see that? now you've got a shopping list!). And take a look at the website Angela built for the protagonist in her book (I especially like the the hit-counter): www.jordancasey.com .

(June 2005) I've always admired Elmore Leonard. He and I used to be copywriters at the same Detroit-area advertising agency. True, he moved on two or three decades before I got there, but it was comforting to know that some other guy had once done the same thing I did while I was there, which was to come into the office early and work on fiction until it was time to go to work. He only lives about 90 minutes from me and I have visited with him and talked writing, which is a rare treat and grad-school, all rolled into one. He is one of the most careful readers I've ever known (he will sit there and study a semicolon for several minutes, trying to figure out why the writer didn't use a comma or a period), so when he had good things to say about Yucatan Deep, my first novel, I was on Cloud Nine. The Hot Kid is a crime novel set in the West of the early 20th century, so it crosses over between Leonard's two canvases, Westerns (which he started out in) and crime (in which he is the acknowledged American master). For a writer, this book is—like all of Leonard’s books—worth reading just to see how he handles the dialogue. Whenever my wife is at a loss for gift ideas, she swings by the bookstore and gets me an Elmore Leonard novel. This guy is one great writer.

(May 2005) Okay. I admit it. When I got this book, I thought it was by Frank McCourt (the author of Angela's Ashes). That mistake turned out to be in my favor. Frank Delaney, a very familiar name to BBC listeners, has created nothing less than an epic in this, his story of a boy who decides to devote his life to a search for the seanchai (a traditional Irish storyteller) who visited his home for three evenings in the 1950s. Along the way, you get a 2,000-year history of Ireland, from prehistoric myth through the Irish Revolution. Ireland: A Novel is well worth the reading, but do yourself one better and get the audiobook, which is read by Delaney himself in a manner so warm that you can practically smell the peat flaming on the hearth.