Books: New Novels From Polly Stewart & Charles Soule

 

The Good Ones

By Polly Stewart

Harper; hardcover, $30.00; available this Tuesday, June 6th

Polly Stewart's short fiction has appeared in Best New American Voices and Best American Mystery Stories. She writes a new monthly interview column for Crime Reads and The Backlist, and her nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times and Poets & Writers.

The Good Ones is Stewart's debut thriller, and it centers on the heroine, Nicola Bennett, who hasn't been home in almost twenty years, since her friend Lauren Ballard didsappeared leaving only tire tracks, broken glass, and a police investigation that led nowhere.

Nicola is back in the small southern town in the Blue Ridge Mountains where these two friends were born. Nicola's mother has died, and it's time to pack up the house and sell, but there is something about home that reignites both the sorrow and the obsession to know what happened that night when Lauren vanished two decades ago.

In order to find out what happened, Nicola enmeshes herself in the community, in Lauren's husband's and daughter's lives, and in the stories of other missing girls. What Nicola also has to reckon with is the Lauren she knew, which was in contrast to the photos in the newspaper alongside the reporting of Lauren's disappearance. 

By all appearances, Lauren lived a perfect life, but Nicola knows Lauren wasn't who everyone thought she was. Their friendship was complicated in ways that still haunt Nicola. This deeply thoughtful novel taps into the complexity of women's friendships, how obsessions changes what you can see and understand, and the dangerous blurring between love, sex, and violence.

In this excerpt, Stewart writes, with the story told in Nicola's voice, "The last time I saw Lauren Ballard, she was scraping a key along the side of a cherry-red Chevy Silverado.

The newspapers and media reports never showed this side of her. They liked to use the photo of Lauren leaning against a stone wall in a gown encrusted with a thousand hand-sewn crystals, or the one where she posed in a field in a long white dress with her train rippling  behind her and a butterfly perched on her wrist. The problem was that the pictures were fakes, relics of the summer she spent modeling for the wedding boutique downtown back in high school. Her own wedding had been small and not particularly joyous, the swags of white tulle decorating the pews hanging limply in the August heat.

It was a familiar small-town story: the girl whom everyone expected to move away and make something of herself had been caught instead, locked down by the familiar forces of inertia and an unplanned pregnancy. The guests seemed puzzled by how things had turned out, and I guessed that no one knew what I knew: that Lauren had gotten knocked up on purpose, having flushed her birth control pills down the toilet in her senior year of college. 

What followed was so predictable that I could have written it myself. Lauren and her new husband bought a starter home on Blue Ridge Road, and he went to work for his father's realty company. After their daughter, Mabry, was born, Lauren got her real estate license and worked part-time. From the outside, they looked like a family in an ad for cereal or stackable washer-dryers. After Lauren disappeared, the police and the media saw what they wanted to see: a young, beautiful wife and mother who had married her high school sweetheart and settled in their hometown. She should have been cable news catnip, the pretty white girl from a good family whom viewers could ogle and pity at the same time. 

But this is what I've learned: the dead or missing girl is never the subject of the story. Sometimes she's not even the object. She is the circumstance, the accident, the nexus through which vectors cross. No one really knows her, not even the people who were closest to her in life. She becomes a stranger when you realize that her last moments were incomprehensible, an abyss you can't fathom.

This is not a story about a murder. It's not the story of what happened to Lauren Ballard in the early-morning hours of August 10, 2001. I can't tell that story, because even all these years later, I still don't really understand the events of that night. All I know is what was left behind: broken glass, a trace of blood on a wet washcloth, tire tracks in the grass.

These details are what matters, whether they're in photos on a truw-crime blog or lying neglected in a police evidence locker. I've arranged them every way I can think of, but it's like trying to play a board game with pieces missing. It's like a dream when you're walking down a familiar street and suddenly you're in a different city, staring at your reflection in a plate-glass window, trying to remember what brought you here."

The Good Ones Book Tour - Virtual Events

Monday, June 5 at 9:00 p.m. - 'Twas The Night Before Book Launch IG Live - @vanessalillie on Instagram.

Thursday, June 8 at 3:20 p.m. - Tell Me About Your Book With Robin Kall - IG Live - @robinkallink on Instagram.

Monday, June 12 at 8:00 p.m. (5:00 p.m.  Pacific time) - Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale, Arizona - Polly Stewart in conversation with Megan Miranda - click here for more information on their calendar of events.

The Endless Vessel

By Charles Soule

Harper Perennial; hardcover, $30.00; available this Tuesday, June 6th 

Charles Soule is a New York-based, #1 New York Times best-selling novelist, comic book writer, musician, and former attorney. He is the author of some of the most prominent comic stories of the last decade for Marvel, DC, and Lucasfilm, including a groundbreaking run on Daredevil, the mega-bestsellers Death of Wolverine and Darth Vader, and a run on She-Hulk that served as inspiration for the Disney+ show.

Soule's new novel, The Endless Vessel, is a timely and muscular exploration of humankind's relationship to joy, the lengths in which we go to obtain it, and the ways we convince ourselves we have it. With a typically inventive narrative that travels from Hong Kong to England to post-Revolution America and across the seven seas, Soule found a way to extend the boundaries of his storytelling art.

There is a piece of impossible technology, and a search for who created it; a centuries-long quest to defeat death; and a woman whose only goal is to bring joy to humanity at any cost; the greatest treasure ever found; and a ship whose voyage will last forever.

Lily Barnes is a materials engineer living in Hong Kong a few years from now, and she stumbles across a device full of secrets that overturn her assumptions about the world. The machine seems to be addressing Lily directly, as it is calling out to her, asking her to follow a path to whatever lies at its end. 

Lily is on a search for the people who built it, leaving her life behind, traveling the world and across the seven seas. For Lily, and to a larger extent, the reader, the question is the same: how far would you go to be happy?

This story will take you from a heart-stopping scene in the present day at the Louvre in Paris, to a shocking and satisfying conclusion in a truly enchanted forest. Through it all, Soule has channeled history, science, and drama to create a story of hope, love, and possibility. 

"My new novel The Endless Vessel - what it's all about" By Charles Soule:

My new novel The Endless Vessel is basically a huge pile of things I'm interested in, from science to magic to sea voyages to happiness to the meaning of life. It's my first book to prominently feature Hong Kong, a place I lived for years when I was younger and still love and miss very much. But there's a deeper core to it beyond just "stuff Charles likes." Everything I write needs a direct connection to my inner self if it's going to be worth a damn, and The Endless Vessel is no exception. My first novel, The Oracle Year, reckoned with my questions (and terror!) about my future. My second, Anyone, looked at marriage and identity. What I'm kicking around with The Endless Vessel, just below the surface: fatherhood, and daughterhood, and what we owe the people we love, and who love us in return. The Endless Vessel is about my relationship with my daughter Rosemary (she's sixteen and amazing), and hers with me.

I wrote The Endless Vessel primarily from the perspective of a young woman, Lily, whose father dies when she is in her mid-teens - he "goes away," essentially, leaving a wide swath of emotional wreckage behind. Lily finds it difficult to connect with people fully after that, because some part of her is sure they'll eventually leave too. The journey in the novel is about Lily's attempts to understand her internal emotional landscape - the 'why' of the choices she makes - and the journey she takes across the world (and beyond) as she seeks new ways to bring connection and love into her life.

(That said, it's also a fantastic adventure with secret societies and an amazing sailing ship and near-magical technology and really smart characters and interlocking stories that are incredibly sad and happy at the same time. I put a lot of things I love into this one.)

With any good story - and I think The Endless Vessel is a good story - there's always a deeper layer. While the book is about my relationship with my daughter, it's also all related to things that happened with my own parents (my mother died quite young, and my father "went away" in his own way after she passed, until he died too about ten years later.) Those losses affected my siblings and me on deep levels we're still reckoning with decades later. I think about how my own decisions might impact Rosemary, I worry about it...and now I've authored a whole book about it. It's all family, all the way down - for me, for you, for pretty much everyone, I think.

The characters in The Endless Vessel aren't me and my daughter. They're a cautionary tale - they represent a path I do not want to walk. This book was a way to send myself a pretty stark message, reminding myself about what's important to me. Did I need to write an entire novel to answer those questions for myself? I'd like to think I didn't. But now that I have, I'm as sure of the truths laid out in The Endless Vessel as I could ever be.

We need other people. We need connection. We can't do it all by ourselves. That's what The Endless Vessel is about. For me, and I believe for everyone who reads it.

Upcoming Events With Charles Soule:

Wednesday, June 14 at 7:30 p.m. - Greenlight Bookstore, 686 Fulton Street, Brooklyn, NY 11217 - Charles will be in conversation with Alex Segura. Click here for more information.

Virtual event - Saturday, July 15 at 2:00 p.m. - Valley Cottage Library in Valley Cottage, NY - Click here to find out how to participate. 

 

After Hall Induction, Mets Suffer Pair Of Heartbreakers To Get Swept By Blue Jays

 

Mets starter Tylor Megill firing one in to Bo Bichette in the third inning of Saturday's game. Photo by Jason Schott.

The Mets Hall of Fame induction ceremony was on Saturday, and a lot of the talk about one of the inductees, Howard Johnson, was about how he was a member of the 30/30 club three times,  as he hit those home runs and stolen base plateaus in 1987, 1989, and 1991.

Mets Hall of Fame Inductees On Their Memories

Al Leiter, Howard Johnson, Howie Rose, Gary Cohen, and Jay Horwitz on Saturday afternoon after their press conference. Photo by Jason Schott.

 

The Mets Hall of Fame has four new members - former players Al Leiter and Howard Johnson; and two long-time announcers, Howie Rose and Gary Cohen, and they were inducted in an on-field ceremony on Saturday before the Mets' game against the Toronto Blue Jays.

Mets Induct Leiter, HoJo, Howie, & Gary Into Team’s Hall of Fame; Horwitz Honored

Al Leiter stepped out from behind his baseball card before heading to the seating area with the dignitaries during Saturday’s ceremony. Photo by Jason Schott.

The Mets inducted four new members - two former players and two long-time announcers - into the team's Hall of Fame on Saturday before their game against the Toronto Blue Jays.

Books: "Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea" By Rita Chang-Eppig

 

Deep As The Sky, Red as the Sea

By Rita Chang-Eppig

Bloomsbury Publishing; hardcover, 304 pages; $28.99

Rita Chang-Eppig received her MFA in fiction from NYU, and she received fellowships from the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the Vermont Studio Center, the Writers Grotto, the Bread Load Writers' Conference, and the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State University. Her short stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories 2021, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Conjunctions, Clarkesworld, The Rumpus, and the Virginia Quarterly Review.

Chang-Eppig grew up hearing stories of the mythical sea goddess Mazu and fierce 19th century Chinese pirate queen Shek Yeung, but as she grew up, she realized that those around her didn't know these incredible tales. As an adult, while she worked in clinical psychology, she read the literature on women in leadership and listened to the family stories of her grandparents escaping the Communist Revolution on a junk ship, she realized she could blend her interests with her childhood stories of fantasy into an incredible historical debut incorporating literary fiction, mythology and ancient figures.

Deep as the Sea, Red as the Sea is her debut novel, and it is a riveting adventure about a legendary Chinese pirate queen, Shek Yeung, her fight to save her fleet from the forces allied against them, and the dangerous piece of power.

When Shek sees a Portuguese sailor slay her husband, a feared pirate, she knows she must act swiftly or die. Instead of mourning, she launches a new plan, that she would immediately marry her husband's second-in-command, and agree to bear him a son and heir, in order to retain power over her half of the fleet.

Shek Young vies for control over the army she knows she was born to lead, but it's not all easy sailing. The Chinese Emperor has charged a brutal, crafty nobleman with ridding the South China Seas of pirates, and the Europeans - who are weary of losing ships, men, and money to Shek Young's alliance - have new plans for the area. 

As Shek navigates new motherhood and the crises of leadership, she must decide how long she is willing to fight, and at what price, or risk losing her fleet, her new family, and even her life.

Rita Chang-Eppig.

AUTHOR APPEARANCE: On Wednesday, June 14 at 7:00 p.m., Rita Chang-Eppig will be at Books Are Magic, located at 122 Montague Street in Brooklyn, in conversation with Anna North. Click here for more information.

A Conversation with Rita Chang-Eppig about Shek Yeung, Mazu, and Inspiration (provided by Bloomsbury):

When did you first hear about Shek Yeung and Mazu? Why are they important figures?

Rita Chang-Eppig: Mazu is a figure worshipped in many parts of East Asia as both a goddess of the sea and as Empress of Heaven. It's hard to overstate how much Mazu is a part of daily life in Taiwan, where I grew up. There are temples and altars to her on every corner, parades that draw both older and younger folks, commercial products branded with her name and image. Every year there are pilgrimages attended by thousands of people in which a statue of Mazu is carried on foot long distance (one of them is approximately 60 miles), making unpredictable detours that are chalked up to the goddess's whims. A few years ago, the goddess supposedly wanted to go into a supermarket, so the entire procession followed the stature into the supermarket. In a sense, Mazu has always been a part of my life.

As for Shek Young, I first read about her in a book. She was barely a blip - the author had dedicated maybe two or three sentences to her - but she fascinated me. I took it upon myself to learn more because I thought there had to be an amazing story behind this woman who came from humble origins and rose up to command the largest pirate fleet in China, some might say the world. The more I read and heard about her, the more I became convinced that she deserved to have her story told. The fact that most people still refer to her as 'Ching Shih' or 'Zheng Yi Sao,' both of which translate to 'Zheng's wife,' tells us everything we need to know, I think, about history's erasure of this woman's life and deeds.

What kind of research did you go to bring this story to life?

RCE: I did quite a bit of on-the-ground research in China and Taiwan. I started by reading about Chinese maritime history and visiting museums, and then after I felt I had a good sense of that era, I engaged in more experiential research, the kind of stuff that's hard to describe in a novel until you've lived it. For example, I climbed around a life-sized replica of a traditional junk ship, participated in Mazu worship ceremonies, talked to the grannies who volunteered at temples (all of whom had vivid memories of what Mazu worship was like back in the day and couldn't wait to tell me about it), and so forth.

What about your family history set you on the path to write about pirates, junks and mythology?

RCE: When I was growing up, my maternal grandparents told some astonishing stories about escaping from China to Taiwan during the Communist Revolution. The one that has never left my mind is of my grandmother as a teenager, several months pregnant, running over a minefield with my grandfather to get to the boats that would take them across the strait, stepping over bodies the whole time. When they got to the shore, there were two boats available: one was large, diesel-powered, and relatively new, whereas the other was an old one-masted junk ship. My grandparents didn't have the fare for the larger boat, so they got on the junk, thinking that was probably it for them. As both boats set sail, people fired artillery at them from land. Shells were falling into the water in front of them, missing the junk ship by a hair. My grandparents looked over at the modern boat and saw that it was sinking - its larger size had made it an easier target for the artillery. So I guess you can say that junk ships hold a kind of mystical significance in my family. Without them, I would not be here.

Shek Young has been portrayed in popular culture over the years (A 1970s movie, and most recently, in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, among others): what was the most accurate, and what do you hope your novel will do to right some of the wrongs of her earlier portrayals?

RCE: Like many people who were alive and watching movies in the early 2000s, I was obsessed with the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie. I watched a few of the sequels more out of a sense of obligation than anything else. I remember getting to the one in which they depicted Shek Yeung, whom they called 'Mistress Ching, and just feeling so deeply disappointed by their portrayal of her as this kind of 'Dragon Lady,' from her styling down to her lines. One of the things I really wanted to do with this novel was to depict her not as a caricature but as a human woman, with all the complexities inherent in that.

What role does Chinese mythology play in your life? How has it shaped how you tell stories?

RCE: I grew up around myths, not only those from China and Taiwan but also from many other parts of the world. As a teenager, I actively sought out books of mythology. Even though they're ostensibly about heroes and gods, they're really about how different cultures have attempted to talk about and create meaning from weighty topics like family, grief, and love. It doesn't matter how far society has come since those early days - the human experience, I believe, still boils down to grief and love. And yes, my book is an adventure tale, but it is also about these real people who lived during a time of immense political and financial upheaval, who loved and lost even as they did incredible, myth-worthy things.

There are many strong female characters (and goddesses) in your novel: what women inspire you?

RCE: I've already mentioned my maternal grandmother and the things she did to keep herself and her unborn child alive, but she continued to be this unstoppable force even after escaping the revolution. After arriving in Taiwan, she and my grandfather lived in poverty for many years. They'd lost all these financial and emotional support because none of their family members, except one of her sisters, had made it to Taiwan. Whatever the family needed, she had to learn how to make or acquire. For example, she scavenged through people's trash to find discarded rice sacks that she then turned into diapers. Living this way forced her to be shrewd, to learn how to stretch a buck and haggle and sweet-talk. To this day she is still the matriarch of the family - no major decisions get made without her approval.

Can you talk about how folk religion and fortune telling have informed your writing?

RCE: As with Mazu worship, fortune-telling is a common practice in Taiwan. My mother took me to a fortune-teller as soon as I was old enough to sit still in her lap long enough for the fortune-teller to read my face. He told her I would (a) achieve some fame and (b) get into a bad accident at the age of 21. Neither has happened, but my mother still worries every time I have to drive long distances. At temples, lots of worshippers use fortune sticks and moon blocks to get answers to their questions. And all the people I know from there, even those with absolutely no formal training in feng shui, have strong opinions about a location's feng shui ever time they enter someone's home or store.

Ultimately, this has to do with worldviews: in many parts of East Asia, the individual is not separate from the environment. Everything is connected in a way that can be hard to explain to folks who don't share that worldview. Even alternative health practices like acupuncture and qigong are based on this idea. So when I say I'm into folk religion and fortune-telling, I mean I grew up with this worldview, and then as I became acculturated to Western practices, I incorporated things like the tarot into my life. And, well, they say you should write what you know, so I found a way to fit it into the novel.

Bassitt, In Return to Citi With Blue Jays, Shuts Out Mets

 

Chris Bassitt rears back and fires one to Pete Alonso in the first inning. Photo by Jason Schott.

Chris Bassitt returned to Citi Field in style on Friday night, as he took a shutout into the eighth inning, leading the Toronto Blue Jays to a 3-0 win over the Mets.

Books: "Swing and a Hit" By Paul O'Neill and Jack Curry

Swing and a Hit: Nine Innings of What Baseball Taught Me

By Paul O'Neill and Jack Curry

Grand Central Publishing; paperback, 272 pages; $18.99

Paul O'Neill had his number 21 retired by the Yankees last season, a recognition of what a key piece he was of their dynasty in the 1990s when he embodied what it meant to put on the pinstripes.

Known for his hard-nosed play and never taking anything for granted, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner called him "The Warrior." 

O'Neill began his career with the Cincinnati Reds, where he won a World Championship in 1990, and then he came to the Yankees in 1993 when the Bronx Bombers were building their way back to being a contender. That season, the Yankees won 88 games and fell short in the race for the American League East crown with the defending World Champion Toronto Blue Jays, and then they were on their way to the postseason in 1994 when the strike cancelled the season. O'Neill flirted with hitting .400 that season. 

The Yankees made the postseason the following year, and then, in 1996, they made it to the World Series against the Atlanta Braves, where O'Neill made perhaps his most famous play when he made a running catch along the warning track in right field to clinch the Yankees' 1-0 win in Game 5, and they won their first championship since 1978 two nights later. That was the first of four championships the Yankees would win with O'Neill, including in 1998, when they won 125 games.

O'Neill collaborated with YES Network analyst Jack Curry on the New York Times bestselling book Swing and a Hit, which is now out in paperback. Curry covered baseball for twenty years at the New York Times, including as the Yankees beat writer in the 1990s, and he is also the author of the new book, The 1998 Yankees, and two other New York Times bestsellers, Full Count: The Education of a Pitcher, with David Cone, and The Life You Imagine, with Derek Jeter. . It will certainly take its place as a cherished baseball book capturing one of its most memorable players. 

In addition to many stories on his illustrious carrer, O'Neill also focuses on what made him one of the best hitters of his era. He reveals how he adjusted to pitchers, how he boosted his confidence, how he battled with umpires, and sometimes water coolers, which Paul gives interesting insights into; and the advice he would give to current hitters. He recalls how he started to swing a bat competitively as a 5-year-old and kept swinging it professionally until he was 38 years old, when he retired after the 2001 season. O'Neill took a lot of inspiration from Ted Williams, who said using a round bat to hit a round ball is the most difficult thing to do in sports, and once received a call from The Splendid Splinter, which was filled with hitting advice.

I recently caught up with Jack Curry to discuss the paperback version of Swing and a Hit:

Jason Schott: How was the reception for Swing and a Hit been since it was released a year ago?

Jack Curry: The reception for Swing and a Hit was excellent. In the first week, we sold about 4,500 books and made it to the New York Times bestseller list. That's every author's dream. After all of the hard work, it was very cool to call Paul and deliver the news to him.

JS: Last year, the Yankees retired Paul's number 21. How much did that drive interest in the book?

JC: Fortunately, Paul told me about his number being retired a few days before it was officially announced so we were able to include it in the book. When Paul mentioned me and the book during his number retirement ceremony I'm sure that helped drive sales.

JS: Did it affirm how beloved he is by Yankee fans? 

JC: No doubt. When I started working on this book, I knew that was true. Once the book was completed and I saw the interest in Paul's hitting philosophies and his career, that emphasized it even more.

JS: It's now been 30 years since Paul came to New York and he was a major part in the leap they took in 1993. How important is that season in the early steps of their dynasty?

JC: It was of vital importance. Don Mattingly has credited O'Neill with being the player who spearheaded that turnaround because he wouldn't accept losing or mediocrity.

JS: How will this complement your new book, The 1998 Yankees?

JC: When I worked on a pitching book with David Cone and a hitting book with Paul O'Neill, I noticed how much reverence they had for the 1998 team. I was already thinking about revisiting that team as a possible book, but their reactions reinforced to me how great an idea it would be and how much interest people would have in that team.

Please check out our interview with Jack Curry when Swing and a Hit was released last year (click here) and his recent interview on The 1998 Yankees (click here)