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The Master Butchers Singing Club, by Louise Erdrich

The Master Butchers Singing Club is a mouthful of a title. But read closely, and you’ll see how the role of songs is critical to the book’s message. This is a book about a community in which music is a connector, bringing together people who have grown up in the town, but nevertheless are outsiders, immigrants who are building businesses and relationships, and native Americans who live nearby yet worlds apart.

The traumas of two world wars and of Wounded Knee, of family loss and community estrangement permeate the ground. Songs heal. Songs of patriotism, of war, of love and belonging pervade the book as this engaging cast of characters seeks belonging and a sense of home, not always sure where that is.

The book starts after WWI, as Fidelis Waldvogel leaves Germany for the United States, planning to take a train to Seattle, paying his way selling sausages. He runs out of money in Argus, North Dakota, and ends up making a life there. When his can afford it, he brings his wife Eva and her son Franz to join him. Fidelis and Eva run a successful butcher’s shop and he leads the men’s singing group, which includes Roy, the town drunk, a competing butcher, the sheriff, a doctor, and poor Porky Chavers whose singing might have gotten him killed.

While the men are singing, the women are talking. Eva, by now the mother of four sons, nurtures Delphine, who grew up a motherless misfit in the town, but left for a brief stint as a table in a balancing act with Cyprian, her gay unmarried husband with whom she shares a strong emotional bond. Delphine is close friends with Clarisse, the town undertaker, who is shunned by men because of her occupation. Hock, the sheriff, thinks he’s a prize because he wants her no matter what. The “no matter what” wasn’t what he was expecting. Franz’s girlfriend Mazarine lives in poverty, which makes her the butt of jokes until Delphine helps her with a new wardrobe. And Step and a Half keeps walking and watching, helping from the sidelines.

Fidelis and Eva’s sons are vital to the story as World War II looms and Franz learns to fly, marries Mazarine, and heads to Europe to be a hero. Markus becomes bookish and leans on Delphine to fill the void left by his mother’s death, either trapping Delphine or offering her sanctuary—Delphine’s not too sure. And the twins, Emil and Erich, move back to Germany with their stern aunt, Tante, becoming Hitler youths ready to fight their American brothers.

Then there’s the mystery of the bodies in Roy’s basement—and the beads embedded in an odd sealant that kept the cellar door shut. What was Roy’s role in their deaths? Was Clarisse involved? How did the beads get there? And why won’t the sheriff move on and acknowledge it was a tragic accident?

Erdrich explains some of this, but not all. She leaves crumbs for us to find in careful reading. But she isn’t there to answer all our questions, or to leave all plot points neatly tied up. That’s neither real life nor a good book, and she masterfully gives as both.

— Pat Prijatel

River of the Gods, by Candice Millard

In the prologue to River of the Gods, Candice Millard tells us how the arrival of the Rosetta Stone in England in 1801 triggered a keen interest in Egypt and Africa and the treasures of the ancient world. The Royal Geographical Society, which sponsored exploration of these relatively unknown lands and rivers, thought the best way to learn about this part of the world was not to sail up the Nile—which had been tried without much success—but to travel inland from Africa’s east coast and search for the White Nile’s headwaters. This called for sailing to Zanzibar and there buying supplies and finding guides and workers to support long, arduous, and dangerous journeys, directed by little more than tales of snow-capped mountains and vague reports of large bodies of water somewhere.

Millard tells the story of three of these expeditions. The findings of the trips were tentative and controversial for years until, finally, Lake Victoria (Nyanza) was confidently declared to be the source of the Nile. And that is nice to know.

But the real pleasure of the book comes from Millard’s talent as a storyteller. Although quotation marks are everywhere, and there are fifty pages of notes and bibliography at the end, the story flows like a novel with fascinating, flawed characters, high stakes, and a sense of being there with the characters.

As one reader in our group pointed out, the subtitle is a key to the “real” story. River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile. The real story is about the darker, the brighter, and the more ambivalent sides of humanity as shown through three very complex and diverse men and one fascinating woman. We come to care about and forgive these brave, striving people, despite their flaws.

There’s Richard Burton, only technically an Englishman, with dark hair and black eyes and long canine teeth, expelled by his own design from Oxford. An adventuresome traveler fascinated by other cultures, a linguist speaking many languages and dialects. A writer, poet, and translator (especially of erotica). A supremely confident man.

There’s John Speke, English aristocrat to the bone, a skilled hunter with a longing to explore and map. A brave, determined, would-be leader who struggles in Burton’s shadow.

There’s Sidi Mubarak Bombay, kidnapped as a child, sold in the infamous slave markets of Zanzibar, and taken to India. Eventually, as a free man, he returns to Africa and serves as a guide on all three of the expeditions. He goes on to become one of the most respected guides in Africa and, by the time he dies, is said to have travelled six thousand miles across the continent and back, mainly on foot.

And there’s Isabel Arundell, eventually Burton’s wife. Chafing under Victorian constraints on women, she writes, “I wish I were a man. If I were, I would be Richard Burton. But as I am a woman, I would be Richard Burton’s wife.”

The story begins with a breath-holding scene as Hajj pilgrims paw through Richard Burton’s possessions. An Englishman in disguise in Mecca, he watches, knowing that “A blunder, a hasty action, a misjudged word, a prayer or bow, not strictly the right shibboleth, and my bones would have whitened the desert sand.”

Because he is such a talented and adventuresome man, the Royal Geographic Society chooses him to lead the first expedition into the interior, with Speke second in command and Bombay as a guide. The challenges of the expedition form the characters, test them, pull them apart, throw them back together, foster friendship and loyalty, nurture jealousy and resentment, breed pettiness and revenge. And finally, on the eve of an important debate about the true source of the Nile—the Nianga or the Tanganika—causes the untimely death of one of them.

The story is so vividly told that the reader can (almost) feel the torment of a beetle trapped in one’s ear, of having a javelin pierce through one’s jaw, of convalescing for many months from hunger, exhaustion, and disease. The sheer courage of the characters to undertake long expeditions to who-knows-exactly-where is a celebration of the human spirit.

A wonderful, engaging book about complicated people living in interesting times. Readable and discussable.

— Sharelle Moranville

The One-in-a Million Boy, by Monica Wood

Ona is 104 when she first meets the boy, who comes on Saturdays to work for her as part of a Boy Scout project. He fills her birdfeeders and does odd jobs around her house. She is impressed that he always shows up and does what he says he’s going to do. But then he disappears.

Three weeks later, his father, Quinn, comes over to help finish the boy’s job. He offers no explanation for the boy’s absence. He has seven more weeks of work to do for Ona, which he does competently but distractedly at first. But Ona charms him with card tricks, animal cracker treats, and honesty; the two develop a relationship that fills a need neither have had the courage to face before.

Quinn never tells Ona the boy has died; she learns through a newspaper story. The boy got up very early one morning, went on a bike ride, and his heart gave out because of long QT syndrome. But the boy, who is never named, remains ever present in this beguiling story of belonging; of memories lost then regained; and of people picking up the broken pieces of their lives and gluing them together with one another into a messy but marvelous collage.

The boy is 11, small for his age, and has no friends. He’s anxious, and counts actions, plans, and thoughts off on his fingers in groups of ten to calm himself. He is obsessed with The Guinness Book of World Records. His mother, Belle, knows he’s not like most other boys, and has sought treatment for him. Rather than seeing him as odd and labeling him as having a disorder, she sees him as one-in-a-million. The reader might conclude that he has OCD, but author Monica Wood presents him not as a diagnosis, but as a treasure.

Quinn, who is in his 40s, has made a living as a roving guitarist, always with his eye toward his big break. Several years before, he’d provided guitar backup one magical evening to musician David Crosby, who had said, “Look at this guy!” while Quinn played. He was sure Crosby saw him as a rare talent. But working through the boy’s death helps Quinn see more clearly and he realizes that he completely misunderstood Crosby‘s comment. It was a starry night, and Crosby had said, “Look at the sky!” He was in awe of nature, not Quinn. Finally, Quinn can face that he is a good, not great, guitarist and he needs to face reality and grow up.

Belle shows the grief Quinn can never face. Quinn and Belle have been married twice—they truly appear to love one another—but Quinn is just not up to marriage and fatherhood. Music is more vital to him. He has been an absent father, and Belle has had to shoulder the responsibility of raising the boy. Only after the boy dies does Quinn realize he loved him.

Throughout the book, Ona tells the story of her life through a series of interviews with the boy. When the boy learns how old she is, he begins his quest to get her into The Guinness Book of World Records. But she is not old enough, plus she doesn’t have the documents to prove her age. This sets off a quest in which Ona faces her own life while Quinn grows into his. Bit by bit, words from her native Lithuanian start coming to her, vestiges of long-buried memories of a brother, her two sons who died, and a third son who is now in his 80s. And she unearths the truth of people who loved her, disappointed her, and betrayed her.

Wood tells us the story with one exquisite scene after another falling together precisely and often unexpectedly. She breaks the narrative throughout with parts of the boy’s interview with Ona and with random snippets from The Guinness Book of World Records, both presented in lists of ten. His presence is especially palpable in these interruptions, which also serve as connections. When the boy gets to Part 10 of the interview and realizes he has more story to tell, he simply calls it “also Part Ten.”

Included in the lists of world feats: largest gathering of clowns (850); harriest family (the Gomez family of Mexico, with 98 percent body hair); fastest time nonelectric window opened by a dog (11.34 seconds); and heaviest bus pulled by hair (17,359 pounds).

Throughout the interviews, the boy searches for ways to get Ona into the Guinness book. Ona calls him “my steadfast little fellow” for his efforts. Maybe she could be the oldest person to fly in an airplane? he asks. Ona scoffs—prematurely, as it turns out. Or she could be the oldest person who still drives, a record currently held by “Fred Hale.109. Country of USA.” Ona has a car but no license, although she nevertheless drives to the store weekly. The boy sets out to help her pass her driving test. He doesn’t finish, but Quinn does.

Also making appearances are a Christian boy band and their hard-driving manager Sylvie, who offers Quinn a chance for a different life and another way of belonging; Ted Ledbetter, the upstanding Scout leader who woos Belle, gives her comfort and offers Quinn a glimpse into a responsible relationship; Ona’s first husband who wrote a song she considered a failure, but which the boy band loves and which shows he loved her; and Quinn’s local band, which consists of manager-level childhood friends who envy him while he envies them.

The ending is heartbreaking—and uplifting. While Quinn thought he and the boy never connected, the boy saw him as the one person who could bring beauty and music back into Ona’s life. And he was right, although it happened differently than he expected. His loss is tragic, but he remains alive in these beautiful, lost characters who discover themselves through one another, and create a makeshift family because of him.

He was one in a million. Maybe that should get him into The Guinness Book of World Records.

— Pat Prijatel