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Four books to kick off your summer reading
Summer is typically the season to sit back, relax and pick up a good book. It’s also a good time to explore books by authors or on subjects that may be new to you.
Here are some suggested titles for your summer reading pleasure.
‘Stealing the Hopi Snake Dance’ by James C. Wilson
“Stealing the Hopi Snake Dance” is the newest in a series of mysteries featuring the character of Fernando Lopez, a retired Santa Fe police detective who is now doing some occasional private investigation work.
He’s looking into the death of Santa Fe photographer Jeff Walker. Walker had surreptitiously videotaped the Hopi Snake Dance at First Mesa. The dance is off limits to outsiders, and filming the dance violates Hopi customs.
Walker is being paid $10,000 for the videotape and it is planned for eventual use in a movie.
After leaving the dance, Walker is driving home when his car plunges off a cliff.
Arizona cops think Walker’s death was an accident, but Lopez thinks otherwise. Then Walker’s widow is murdered.
At the back of the novel is a reader’s guide and what James C. Wilson calls a “special bonus,” and it is D.H. Lawrence’s famous account of a 1924 Snake Dance that he witnessed. At that time, outsiders were permitted to observe the dance.
Wilson, the author, lives in Albuquerque.
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‘Trees Dream of Water: Selected and new poems’ by Leo Romero
Joy Harjo, former U.S. poet laureate, wrote the foreword to Leo Romero’s poetry collection. Harjo recalls having Romero over for Thanksgiving dinner in Albuquerque in 1971 with her, her toddler and her then-partner Simon Ortiz.
“I first read Leo Romero’s poetry in pages, in drafts. They were typed by typewriter on white paper and handed to me to read. Each of those early poems was rooted in the mythic, earthic realm of that hometown village of Chacon where Romero was born and went back to, either physically or in dreams,” Harjo notes.
Chacon finds its way in some of the poems in “Trees Dream of Water.”
“Romero’s poems,” Harjo adds, “are the essence of northern New Mexico, influenced even subtly by the local Native Pueblo cultures — as illustrated in ‘Way of the Falling Rain.’”
That poem is in the first section of the book titled “During the Growing Season.”
Harjo refers to the book as “a classic collection, by one of the most important poets of his time and place.”
Romero is the owner of the Santa Fe bookstore Books of Interest.
‘Follow Me’ by Elizabeth Rose Quinn
Elizabeth Rose Quinn says her debut novel is not an Agatha Christie and is not a John le Carré thriller. Rather, “Follow Me” is a thriller that is in Quinn’s very own voice.
And what is that voice?
“Get ready for this bonkers, unhinged, off-the-wall thriller that’s both an addictive horror flick on the page and a deeply astute satire of today’s mom-influencer culture,” said the book’s publisher, Thomas & Mercer, in a news release.
The novel’s premise has Chiara struggling to be a mother. She gets invited to a mom-influencer weekend where she meets other moms. But Chiara doesn’t come home.
A year goes by and police still don’t have a clue where Chiara is.
Chiara’s twin sister, Adrienne, decides she’s going to find her.
She goes undercover and heads to the last place where Chiara was seen, and it’s also the last place where she, Adrienne, wants to be — a woman who doesn’t want kids at the mom-influencer weekend retreat at a remote ranch in northern California.
Adrienne goes on gut feelings and chases a wild theory that her sister did come here but never left. She’s determined to find the truth before the women there figure out who Adrienne really is.
Quinn has said that the film rights for “Follow Me” have been optioned by Amazon MGM Studios and that Adele Lim, who wrote the screenplay for “Crazy Rich Asians,” is in negotiations to write and direct “Follow Me.”
Quinn has for years worked in production and written for television. She lives in Albuquerque.
‘Trini’s Magic Kitchen’ by Patricia Santos Marcantonio
Patricia Santos Marcantonio’s tender, original coming-of-age novel, “Trini’s Magic Kitchen,” opens with a bittersweet scene.
Trini, a seventh grader, is living in a small Denver apartment with her mom. Her mom is laid off from her job at a tortilla factory, though she soon lands a lower paying job.
To save money, the mom moves in with a cousin, where she sleeps on the couch. Trini is asked to move in with her maternal grandparents, Grandma Lydia and Grandpa Frank, who reside four hours away in Alamosa, Colorado.
For Trini, it’s about a new school, new friends and a new town. And the anxiety of no mom at home.
Slowly, inexorably, the bittersweet dissipates and the sweet begins to fill Trini’s life, thanks, in part, to young-at-heart Grandma Lydia and Grandpa Frank. They welcome Trini to their home.
She learns from her grandma how to cook traditional Mexican dishes such as breakfast burritos, chile rellenos and calabacitas. Trini is so into cooking with her grandma that she writes down the recipes. (Wouldn’t you know it, 17 pages of recipes appear at the back of the book.)
Grandma Lydia teaches Trini about her “cultural education,” too, like explaining the Mexican tradition of the Day of the Dead.
Trini likes to draw and her artistic interest dovetails with Grandpa Frank’s love for making crafts.
Grandpa Frank shows Trini how to gather eggs from the backyard chicken coop without getting poked by the mean rooster, Señor Satan.
At school, Trini makes friends with Isabelle. Trini is taken with Joseph, a shy boy. He becomes her first boyfriend, and he’s the first boy she kisses.
Marcantonio resides in Boise, Idaho.
