Celebrate the holidays with gifts for your mind—books! Whether shopping for yourself or others, you’ll find a selection of locally powered titles here. Bonus: all of these are available free in the Monroe County Library System. Don’t have a library card? Get yourself that greatest gift today.
By Patrick M. Scanlon
RIT Press, 2022, paperback, $29.95
Veterans with PTSD. Women diagnosed with breast cancer. People fighting addiction. While these groups have different sources of pain, they all are offered a similar source of comfort: fly fishing. Through the focus it takes, the connection with nature, and by being with others who can relate, healing is possible. Learn about some amazing nonprofit groups offering this experience.
Scanlon interviews participants and shares their stories, from how they felt before, during, and after a fly fishing retreat. Just reading the book gives the feeling of casting one’s challenges into the river to be carried away. This book straddles academic and leisure reading, and the color photos humanize the stories even more.
If this book sounds familiar, it may be because Scanlon wrote a (585) article, “Casting and Healing,” for the November/Dec 2020 issue. He has taught at RIT for more than thirty years and published articles on Elizabethan literature and fiber optics among other topics. Scanlon volunteers with Casting for Recovery, where he puts his fly fishing skills to use helping women with breast cancer on their retreats. Catch Scanlon with or without some bait at castingforrecovery.org.
Catch the Sparrow: A Search for a Sister and the Truth of Her Murder
By Rachel Rear
Bloomsbury, 2022, hardcover, $27.00
One summer night in 1991, twenty-seven-year-old Stephanie Kupchynsky went missing. Thirty years later, her step-sister Rachel Rear seeks out old case files to learn about the sibling she never met. She discovers how the criminal justice system failed Kupchynsky, yet some law enforcement officials worked hard to find the truth.
For anyone who doesn’t know how the mystery is solved, read this book without internet spoilers first. Rear acknowledges the lack of DNA evidence, the nonexistence of a sex offender registry, and the discombobulation of the Greece Police Department in the 1990s, which gives it historical perspective. This true crime story touches on the long-standing effects of abuse and trauma, as well as how to always be aware of one’s surroundings.
Rear lives in Brooklyn, but given her relationship to Rochester, she is a fitting addition to this article. Catch the Sparrow is her first book, and she has published work in the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and Huffington Post. Rear also teaches, has appeared in films and TV series, and is sometimes an aerialist. Whether on the ground or in the air, she can be found at rachelrear.com.
By Jane Hopkins
Headstone Press, 2022, paperback, $44.95
Grave markers, statues, and wreaths from the northeast and southern United States are just some of the color photos in this book. The combination of images and words make statements about what burial grounds offer the living, how humans cope with loss, and different thoughts about the afterlife. Epitaphs and quotes from literary works are included along with Hopkins’ own poetic vignettes.
This book contains an overview of the imagery one may find in a cemetery, from angels to skulls and crossbones as well as more personal expressions, like flowers, specific information about the deceased, and quotes about the end of life. It is a beautiful, reflective book to read.
Hopkins, a Webster resident, studied and practiced social work and has been taking photos and making prints for decades. She has visited more than 200 cemeteries and says, “I wanted to create something that made death and grief softer and more approachable than it felt as I was growing up.” Her website has an up-to-date blog and more hauntingly lovely work: cemeteryreflections.com.
Black Rose Writing, 2022, paperback, $22.95
In the fall of 1962, twelve-year-old Willie panics behind his couch, afraid of nuclear war. It doesn’t help that his older brother has left for college and he doesn’t know the truth about his parents’ death. Meanwhile, his Pop, friends, and neighbors have their own challenges and successes that tie into the tale.
There are a lot of characters and points of view in this novel, yet the reader connects with each one, and they all inform the others. The plot is well paced, with a quiet, soothing tone despite the characters’ fears. It is a story to be read slowly while thinking about the meanings of shelter and how we both give and receive it.
If a format exists, Seaburn has probably written it: novels, articles, plays, songs . . . He has a background in community mental health, education, and ministry, and he has an affinity for Cool Hand Luke. He and his wife live near Rochester, where they raised two daughters and now have five grandchildren. As to whether or not he has anything else interesting to add: “I got nothing, zilch, nada, bupkis.” Check out his website and judge for yourself: davidbseaburn.com.
By Edward Ashton
St. Martin’s Press, 2022, hardcover, $27.99
Mickey is on a crew whose mission is to colonize a frozen planet. His job? An Expendable, the person assigned deadly jobs. After he dies, his body is regenerated in a tank, complete with his downloaded personalities and memories. Mickey is on his seventh iteration when Mickey8 accidentally gets created. Mickey7 must now share his food and apparently his girlfriend with the secret Mickey8 while battling the planet’s native creatures.
Mickey’s dry wit creates the perfect voice for this novel. The relationships between the characters are great, and there is much to explore in the sequel that came out in March 2023, Antimatter Blues. Both titles will get a popularity boost when the movie comes out in March 2024 starring Robert Pattinson.
Rochester-area author Edward Ashton is many things, including an electrical engineer, cancer and neurology researcher, quantum physics teacher, and whittler. He is also the author of four novels and numerous short stories. He writes in his cabin in the woods where he is kept company by his wife, daughters, dogs, cat, and such woodland creatures as barred owls, a giant woodpecker, and Philip the angry raccoon. Seek him out at edwardashton.com.
