‘Thieving Forest’ is tense tale of survival in historical Ohio
Cleveland native Martha Conway’s extraordinary new historical novel Thieving Forest returns to the earliest days of Ohio’s statehood, before the Great Black Swamp of Ohio had been drained and the Thieving Forest cut down, replaced by the towns of Defiance and Bowling Green.
The five red-haired Quiner sisters are alone in their trading post, two weeks after their parents have died of swamp fever. As they bicker about whether to return to their original home of Philadelphia, Susanna steps out to feed the pig.
While she stands in the yard, she sees half a dozen Potawatomi Indians approach the shop. This doesn’t worry her, as the family often trades with the local tribes, but these men aren’t customers. Susanna watches in horror as Aurelia, Beatrice, Naomi and Penelope are hauled off into the woods.
Susanna runs for help, but finds a surprising lack of interest among her neighbors, so she sets off herself with the best of the household goods, hoping to barter for her sisters’ freedom. What follows is a harrowing ordeal of survival, involving a treacherous journey and shifting loyalties. At a Moravian commune, Susanna meets Meera, an Indian girl determined to return to her home. Together they make their way through the snake-infested marshes, starving and looking desperately for the Maumee River.
As Susanna transforms herself from shopkeeper’s daughter to fierce frontierswoman and learns that savages come in all colors, the reader may be put in mind of Mattie Ross, another resolute teenage girl who pursues justice through 19th-century Indian Territory. Though Thieving Forest does not have the language quirks of Charles Portis’ novel, Susanna Quiner too has true grit.
Thieving Forest (407 pages, softcover) costs $14.99 from Noontime Books. Conway’s debut, 12 Bliss Street, was nominated for a 2003 Edgar Award for Best First Novel. She lives in San Francisco.
‘Shattered Secrets’
A little town named Cold Creek, somewhere around Chillicothe, is the setting for Shattered Secrets, a new thriller by prolific Columbus author Karen Harper. The town has been beset by the kidnapping of young girls, the first 20 years before, when little Tess Lockwood disappeared while running through a cornfield near her home. She reappeared eight months later, remembering nothing about her ordeal, and her family eventually moved away.
Now an adult, Tess is back in town, hoping to sell a house she’s inherited, and learns that another girl had been kidnapped four months before. The girl’s mother is certain that Tess remembers more than she’s claiming and can help find her daughter, and soon another girl vanishes. The sheriff, whom Tess knew as a child, is obsessed with the case.
Harper salts her plot with so many suspects that it seems every character must be a possible criminal. There’s a creepy cult set up on the outskirts of town, drawing in Tess’ relatives, and Tess and her cousin follow the ancient practice of water dowsing.
Shattered Secrets (392 pages, softcover) costs $7.99 from Harlequin. It is the first book in an announced trilogy; the other books will feature Tess’ two sisters. In addition to books set in rural Ohio, some among the Amish, Harper also writes many novels set in medieval and Tudor England.
‘Monty Python’ essay
University of Akron history professor Kevin F. Kern contributed a chapter to Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition: Cultural Contexts in Monty Python, a collection of papers presented at a 2010 academic conference in Poland. Titled “Twentieth-Century Vole, Mr. Neutron, and Spam: Portrayals of American Culture in the Work of Monty Python,” the essay reminds scholars to remember that the main goal of the series was “its writers’ desire to be silly and make people laugh by any means necessary,” a sentiment endorsed by Python member Terry Jones in his foreword. The 121-page hardcover book costs $45 from Rowman & Littlefield.
Events
Cuyahoga County Public Library (South Euclid-Lyndhurst branch, 4645 Mayfield Road) — The Local Author Book Club discusses The Story Hour by former Beacon Journal reporter Thrity Umrigar from 2 to 3 p.m. Sunday; Umrigar will join the discussion at 3 p.m., moderated by writer and editor Lee Chilcote.
Cuyahoga County Public Library (Parma-Snow branch, 2121 Snow Road) — Steven Pressman, author of 50 Children, will sign his book and present his companion documentary film about a Philadelphia couple who went to Germany to save Jewish children from the Holocaust, 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday.
Learned Owl Book Shop (204 N. Main St., Hudson) — Food blogger Jessica Merchant (howsweeteats.com) signs her debut cookbook Seriously Delish: 150 Recipes for People Who Totally Love Food, 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday; Michael Garriga, instructor in creative writing at Baldwin Wallace University and author of “flash fiction” The Book of Duels, appears at 1 p.m. Saturday.
Akron-Summit County Public Library (Tallmadge branch, 90 Community Road) — Tallmadge author Amanda Flower signs Murder, Simply Stitched, second in the Amish Quilt Shop Mystery series she writes under the name Isabella Alan, 7 p.m. Monday.
Cuyahoga County Public Library (Berea branch, 7 Berea Commons) — Brimfield Police Chief David Oliver, author of No Mopes Allowed, appears from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Monday.
Akron-Summit County Public Library (Richfield branch, 3761 S. Grant St.) — Richfield Friends of the Library offers “pop-up author visits” from Jim Burkett (Learned Principles of Management: How to Make the Right Things Happen), noon Friday; Susan Busch (Yearning for Normal), 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. Friday and 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday; and Terry Gordon (No Storm Lasts Forever: Transforming Suffering into Insight), 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday.
Akron-Summit County Public Library (Green branch, 4046 Massillon Road) — Former Beacon Journal columnist David Giffels talks about The Hard Way on Purpose: Essays and Dispatches from the Rust Belt, 11 a.m. Saturday.
Cuyahoga County Public Library (Maple Heights branch, 5225 Library Lane) — Ruth Pollack of Garfield Heights talks about and signs her memoir Everything I Need to Know I Learned in a Dysfunctional Family, 2 to 3:30 p.m. Saturday.
Mac’s Backs (1820 Coventry Road, Cleveland Heights) — Poets Susan Grimm and Carly Sachs, whose work is included in the new collection Prairie Gold: An Anthology of the American Heartland, read from 7 to 8 p.m. Saturday.
— Barbara McIntyre
Special to the Beacon Journal
Send information about books of local interest to Lynne Sherwin, Features Department, Akron Beacon Journal, P.O. Box 640, Akron, OH 44309 or lsherwin@thebeaconjournal.com. Event notices should be sent at least two weeks in advance.