ALONE: THE JOURNEY of the BOY SIMS by Alan K. Garinger

Published in 2008 by The Indiana Historical Society Press

In the great state of Indiana 4th grade is the year that the social studies classes focus on Indiana history. My youngest daughter is in 4th grade and her entire class read Alone: The Journey of the Boy Sims.

The book is set in 1833 and even though it has been a state since 1816, in many ways Indiana is still a wild frontier, especially in northern Indiana (the Ohio River was often the route that settlers took to Indiana in the early days and it forms the southern border of the state). Road crews are working on building Michigan Road - a roughly built "road" that will connect the Ohio River to Lake Michigan, a distance of more than 250 miles.

While somewhere in the vicinity of what will eventually be Logansport, Indiana a thirteen year old member of the crew is sent to Detroit all by himself for more ink to draw out the maps and keep track of the surveys that the crews were taking. This trip is well more than 200 miles one way and it is already late October...

Photo by DWD

I found the book to be interesting but loosely constructed. Sometimes the plot generated lots more questions than it answered and the book was desperately in need of lots and lots of maps. The author wanted to make the book a learning experience for Hoosier children but the number of people that Sims meets on his trip and their symbolic (or actual) significance to history got a bit tedious to me. The parade of runaway slaves, slave catchers, soldiers, Indians avoiding the soldiers, and even a cameo by Johnny Appleseed (he was a real person and is literally buried in Fort Wayne) made the story move into the range of impossibility.  If I were rating the book as an adult I would give it 3 stars out of 5.

But, this is not a book aimed at adults and my daughter thought it was very interesting. She would recite any number of things that Joshua Sims encountered on his trip as she rode home from school. She would give it 5 stars out of 5. This is a book that is designed to introduce frontier Indiana to school children and it does that quite well.

So, let's split the difference and call it 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon here:  Alone: The Journey of the Boy Sims.

NPR ROAD TRIPS: NATIONAL PARK ADVENTURES: STORIES THAT TAKE YOU AWAY (audiobook)

Published in 2012 by HighBridge
Multicast performance
Duration: 1 hour, 7 minutes

NPR has searched its archives for stories about America's National Park System for this enjoyable collection. These stories don't just tell us about the park but tell us an interesting story in the park.

The stories vary from the humorous (the story about the smallest National Park - Thaddeus Kosciuszco National Memorial in Philadelphia which consists of a single room and covers .02 acre to honor this figure from the Revolutionary War) to the wondrous (Death Valley in full bloom after a once-in-a-lifetime rainstorm). The listener learns about the small city of employees that run Grand Canyon National Park, spooky tales of love at White Sands, an effort to preserve the music of New Orleans and a park employee who charts and maps the roadkill that he finds as he goes about his work. 

The audio quality is, of course, excellent since these stories were originally produced for broadcast on NPR. Besides that, this is an interesting collection - the stories are not repetitive, they alternate in mood and length and come together to make an excellent listening experience.

I rate this collection 5 stars out of 5.

This CD can be purchased on Amazon here: NPR Road Trips: National Park Adventures: Stories That Take You Away . . .

SPIDER-MAN: DROWNED in THUNDER (audiobook) by Christopher L. Bennett

Published by GraphicAudio in August of 2013

Multi-cast performance
Duration: Approximately 5 hours

Marvel Comic's Spider-Man swings into action in Spider-Man: Drowned in Thunder. He is up against a robot attack against New York's Diamond District in a scene that was very reminiscent of the classic Superman cartoon "The Mechanical Monsters." But, Spider-Man always has a different take on things than the Man of Steel. Spidey's comments and tendency to not quite have everything under control give this caper a unique twist.

Of course, J. Jonah Jameson continues his media barrage against the webslinger, Peter Parker and M.J. are working through relationship issues and Spider-Man continues to struggle with his work/superhero/home life balance. But, in this story he faces other issues, including robot attacks from an undetermined source, a messed up Spidey Sense and a non-stop rainy weather pattern that make his webs a lot less effective and make it hard to swing through the city.

This is an interesting story. The partnership Spider-Man forms with an old adversary is entertaining as they try to work together and the GraphicAudio treatment of the story is professionally done and top-notch (as always). They add special effects and have a whole troupe of actors tell the story much like an old-fashioned radio play.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.
This audiobook can be found on Amazon here: Spider-Man: Drowned in Thunder.

CAR TALK CLASSICS: NO FACTORY RECALLS. SO FAR. by NPR

Published by HighBridge in April of 2015.

Multicast Performance.
Duration: Approximately 3.5 hours

After 35 years on the air, there are no more Car Talk episodes being made.Tom has passed on and Ray Magliozzi is retired. But, they still are broadcast on NPR stations across the country. NPR is also going back and searching for great episodes to sell. This is a four episode collection that probably dates from the late 1990s, based on the cars that they were discussing. 

In these episodes Tom and Ray weigh in on the following:

-The lady in Alaska whose truck only goes up hills in reverse (and how she ended up in Alaska in the first place).

-The woman whose husband bought a car to rebuild and restore that only worked in reverse.

-The woman who had 33 different cars in the last 15 years.

-The astronaut who called from the space shuttle and knew Tom and Ray when he used to go to their shop back when he was in college.

-The freshman student who was suffering from intense philosophical malaise. Features Tom and Ray's discussion on adulthood and the meaning of life in the real world.

-The dog that rode on the roof of the cab of its owner's truck as she crossed the country.

-Goats and cars.

If you like the radio show, you will love this collection. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Car Talk Classics: No Factory Recalls. So Far.

I rate this collection 4 stars out of 5.

RESERVOIR ROAD by John M. Spafford

Published in 2009 CreateSpace.


I picked this novel because I am a sucker for books set in my adopted hometown - Indianapolis. The author is a resident (or, he was when he wrote the book) and you can really tell that he knows his way around the East Side of Indianapolis (I am a West Sider but I get all over town).

Reservoir Road starts with a lovely couple who buy a fixer-upper on Indianapolis' East Side (Irvington) and he starts a career as a teacher. They have a baby and then he loses his wife and son in an unexplained double murder in Covington, Kentucky. The surviving husband doesn't even know why they were in Covington and the murder is never solved.

He cannot deal with this and tries to solve the murder himself. He just cannot. But, he is moved to do something. While on the Crime Stoppers website (If you are not familiar with Crime Stoppers, they offer reward money for tips that lead to arrests and convictions) he realizes that there are so many victims like him - and decides that if he cannot solve his own case he will solve another.

So, he prepares himself and heads off to Little Rock, Arkansas to solve a mystery...

A store front in historic Irvngton

(Note: I keep saying "he" because, for the life of me, I cannot find the protagonist's name in the book. I believe that he is unnamed.)

With the exception of the very clunky treatment of the murder of his wife, this book is well done. I realize that the murder of his wife is supposed to be jarring, but this was just confusing. But, I very much enjoyed the rest of the book, including the little details about how he prepared himself, rented his apartment in Little Rock and generally began his re-entry back into society as he hunted for a murderer in Little Rock.

Quote from the book:

"His summer project had suddenly turned very dangerous. This was not the world that he was used to. He was a stranger in this culture of robbery, torture, threats, and murder. Now he was dealing directly with men who were prepared and experienced with using guns in their everyday pursuits. Men who did not hesitate to use deadly force to get what they wanted.

"Men like the ones who had already destroyed his life."

I rate this novel 4 stars out of 5.

This novel can be found on Amazon here: Reservoir Road

AFTER LINCOLN: HOW the NORTH WON the WAR and LOST the PEACE (audiobook) by A.J. Langguth

Audio edition published by Tantor Audio in September of 2014
Read by Tom Perkins
Duration: 13 hours, 29 minutes
Unabridged

Years ago, when I reviewed Doris Kearns Goodwin's monumental history of the Lincoln Administration, Team of Rivals, I noted that it was way too long and that I wished she had made it even longer by continuing to write about this team as they transitioned into the Andrew Johnson Administration. This book is similar to Team of Rivals in that it looks at individuals in the Lincoln Administration (and thus covers a lot of territory covered more thoroughly by Doris Kearns Goodwin) but it does continue on.

Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821-1877)

The book is mostly told through a series of biographies, ranging from Lincoln to Charles Sumner to the conspirators in the Lincoln assassination to O.O. Howard and even to Nathan Bedford Forrest. After Lincoln covers a lot of ground without really coming up with anything new, at least not for this serious student of the Civil War.

Most histories of Reconstruction talk about the Freedman's Bureau and the African-Americans that were sent to Congress and then just kind of drift off to some discussion of carpetbaggers and the Ku Klux Klan and the deal that ended Reconstruction without much discussion or insight into what happened to change the national mood and let Black Americans lose so much of what they had gained.

This book offers no new analysis, either. It does pick a few people, some famous, some infamous and some relatively unknown and follow them throughout the lead-up to the Civil War, through the War and into Reconstruction. Sometimes, their stories are interesting, sometimes not so much.

I listened to this as an audiobook so it is difficult for me to measure exactly how much space was devoted to the three segments of the book that I mentioned before: Before the war, the war itself and after the war. By far the most interesting, and I think the most detailed section was the first one. The end of the book felt rushed and the rich story-telling just was not there like it was in the first part.

Tom Perkins read the audiobook. He did a good job, including actually creating voices for some of the historical personalities.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here:  
After Lincoln: How the North Won the Civil War and Lost the Peace.

BLUE HEAVEN (audiobook) by C. J. Box

Published in January of 2008 by Macmillan Audio

Read by John Bedford LLoyd

Duration: 11 hours, 58 minutes

Unabridged

The first C.J. Box book to make it to publication that did not feature Joe Pickett, Blue Heaven is set in north Idaho. The story can easily be classified as a modern version of a classic western story. 

The story starts with a highly respected local rancher, a lifelong resident of the area, who is in danger of losing his beloved ranch to the bank. Newcomers, including an especially large number of retired police officers from Los Angeles, are moving in and local realtors want to take advantage of his financial troubles and turn his ranch into a series of McMansions with mini ranches so that the new residents can play at being cowboy.       
Meanwhile, two kids get mad at their mom and decide to take her boyfriend's expensive fishing equipment out for a fishing trip that he promised to take him on but "forgot" about. Before they even get to their fishing hole they stumble across a group of older men in a campground who surround a member of their group and shoot him with pistols. The kids run and are pursued but are not caught.

From this point the book becomes a race against time - will the children get caught before enough police and volunteers flood the area and find them? But, if they are found, can their rescuers actually be trusted? 

Of course, the stories of the children and the rancher do intersect and when they do a lot of deeper themes come to play such as old ways versus new ways, city vs. rural and commitment to family and justice. 

This is a good story, but needlessly over-complicated and overly-populated. There are a couple of dozen characters, many of them taking a stint as the lead for at least a chapter or two. It is fairly difficult to juggle that many characters when you are reading the book and it is even more challenging to do so when you are listening to it as an audiobook.

Luckily, the book was read by John Bedford Lloyd, a talented reader who was able to create a number of accents and cadences that were distinct enough that I was able to keep up. 

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found here on Amazon.com: Blue Heaven