JANUARY
In American Reich: A Murder in Orange County, Neo-Nazis, and a New Age of Hate, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Eric Lichtblau explores the resurgence of white supremacy in Orange County through the chilling story of a gay Jewish Ivy League student who was killed by a high school classmate—a member of a neo-Nazi group.
Portland author Kathleen Boland’s first novel, Scavengers, is a funny, smart depiction of the relationship between a daughter who’s just been fired from her East Coast job in finance and her madcap mother, who’s convinced that she knows how to find buried treasure in the Utah canyons. Laughter and tears abound. Charles Portis would approve.
Crux, from Mendocino-raised author Gabriel Tallent, is a coming-of-age story about the friendship between two high school seniors in the southern Mojave Desert who join forces on rock-climbing expeditions, only to find themselves separated by class and future prospects as real-life challenges loom.
This roundup appears in Issue 34 of Alta Journal.
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Nina McConigley’s nervy debut, How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder, begins with a confession from an Indian American girl: She and her sister have killed the predatory uncle who joined their family in Wyoming. Their defense: Blame the sordid history of the British occupiers in their homeland. But all is not what it seems, and this narrative takes an unexpected turn.
Vigil, from the always eloquent George Saunders, is set at the deathbed of an oil company CEO who is hurtling through his final hours when a heavenly angel lands headfirst in his mansion to ferry him to the next world. It’s a trip the angel has made repeatedly since her own death. But this time, there’s a critical difference: The mogul professes no regrets for his life of depredation. Saunders’s nimble imagination is at full power in this timely tale.
FEBRUARY
They Kill People: Bonnie and Clyde, a Hollywood Revolution, and America’s Obsession with Guns and Outlaws, by Santa Fe–based author and screenwriter Kirk Ellis (John Adams), probes the background of the classic Arthur Penn–directed film, its famously graphic finale, and what it says, nearly 60 years later, about our founding myths and gun-
crazy culture.
C. William Langsfeld’s Salvation, a neo-noir Western, limns the epic intrigue in a small Colorado town when a man mystifyingly murders his best friend, leading the local pastor to question his faith. An about-to-retire peace officer is thrown into the middle of the investigation. Yellowstone meets Paul Schrader in this examination of faith and sin.
Swirl & Vortex: Collected Poems, by the late Central Valley–raised poet and teacher Larry Levis, is a fitting tribute to Levis’s career, moving from the style of early influences like Fresno bard Philip Levine to more elegiac and political modes. Edited, with an afterword, by fellow poet David St. John, it’s a worthy offering for admirers and new readers alike.
Santa Cruz author Claire Oshetsky’s third novel, Evil Genius, set in San Francisco, is a deliciously twisted send-up of standard mystery fare. For Celia Dent, life seems uneventful: She has an office job and an outwardly stable relationship with her husband, Drew. When a woman she works with is murdered, though, things take a darker turn, as Celia starts visiting a gun range and looking at Drew in ways that should make him (very) nervous.
MARCH
William T. Vollmann’s massive, long-awaited four-part epic, A Table for Fortune, combines American political and cultural history with family drama, recounting the conflict between a CIA analyst whose core values are sorely tested by the aftermath of September 11 and his rebellious son, who descends into addiction. Vollmann’s distinctive voice is always rewarding.
Berkeley-based novelist Elizabeth Rosner comes to terms with her upbringing as the child of Holocaust survivors in a reissue of Gravity, a searching mix of poetry and prose that culminates in a trip with her parents to the sites of the German death camps.
Open Space: From Earth to Eternity—the Global Race to Explore and Conquer the Cosmos, from Arizona journalist David Ariosto, takes a deep dive into the contemporary space race, funded by competing billionaires (Musk, Bezos) and rival nations determined to push the envelope of (and profit from) this new frontier. •
EDITOR’S PICK
Paradiso 17
By Hannah Lillith Assadi
In the stunning literary novel Paradiso 17, Sufien is on his deathbed remembering his lifelong quest for a home. He flees Palestine as a small boy in 1948, staying in a Syrian camp before moving to Kuwait and then Italy. In New York City, he marries a Jewish woman, with whom he has a daughter, before settling in Arizona. Author Hannah Lillith Assadi, who was raised in Arizona, draws on the life of her father for this exquisitely written and elemental meditation on mortality, the weight of a single life, and what it can carry. —Anita Felicelli•
Paul Wilner is a longtime journalist, poet, and critic who lives in Monterey County. He is the former editor of the San Francisco Examiner Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle Style section and managing editor of the Hollywood Reporter. His work has been published in the Paris Review, New York Times, ZYZZYVA magazine, Barnes and Noble Review, Los Angeles Times and many other publications.
