Dave Eggers’ new novel features a mom on the run in Alaska with two children.
New Eggers novel is both adventure story and social critique
Midsummer is prime time for curling up with a good book. These new releases by Bay Area authors include novels by Dave Eggers, Swan Huntley, Mark A Jacobson and Mary WatersSayer; a memoir by Pushcart Prize-winning poet Kim Addonizio and poetry by Chinaka Hodge.
“Heroes of the Frontier” by Dave Eggers (Knopf, $28.95, 400 pages)
There’s an episode in “Heroes of the Frontier,” Dave Eggers’ captivating new novel, in which Josie, the book’s central character, imagines writing a musical. Called “Disappointment: The Musical,” it would put onstage all of contemporary culture’s wrongs — pay inequity, health care woes, predatory lawsuits and more. Josie, an Ohio dentist and single mom who grew up steeped in American musicals, is on intimate terms with disappointment. She’s lost her dental practice to one of those lawsuits. Her parents, devastated by a medical scandal of their own, have retreated from her life; her ex-husband has moved to Florida and shows no interest in caring for their two children. Sad, broke, and fearful of the future, Josie does the only logical thing: She packs up her kids — Paul, 8, and Ana, 5 — rents a dilapidated recreational vehicle and heads into the wilds of Alaska.
Part adventure, part social critique, the book is occasionally harrowing and often very funny. As San Franciscobased Eggers takes Josie through wildfires, avalanches, lightning strikes and narrow escapes from the long arm of the law, he suggests there’s something a little heroic in all of us. “Heroes of the Frontier” starts with disappointment and ends with a message of resilience.
“We Could Be Beautiful” by Swan Huntley (Doubleday, $25.95, 352 pages) “Be careful what you wish for” might be the message of “We Could Be Beautiful,” the first novel from San Anselmo author Swan Huntley. It follows New York socialite Catherine West, who appears to have it all. “I was rich,” Catherine tells us on the book’s first page. “I owned a small business. I had a wardrobe I replaced all the time. I was toned enough and pretty enough. I moisturized; I worked out. I looked younger than my age.” The only thing missing is the man of her dreams, and when she meets William Stockton — at an art opening, natch — Catherine thinks she’s found him. But something’s not quite right. Catherine’s mother, for starters, seems to hate William from the get-go. Huntley’s crisp prose yields a page-turner, one that paints a sharp picture of loneliness and privilege.
“Sensing Light” by Mark A. Jacobson (Ulysses Press, $15.95, 363 pages) The year is 1979, and a young man, barely able to breathe, stumbles into an ER. That man becomes the first to die of a yetunnamed disease. “Sensing Light,” the gripping debut novel by San Francisco’s Mark A. Jacobson, tells the story of the early days of the AIDS crisis through the eyes of three San Francisco doctors. Jacobson writes from first-person experience: A professor of medicine at UCSF and an attending physician at San Francisco General Hospital, he began his internship just days after the CDC issued its first reports of the fatal form of immunodeficiency that became AIDS.
“The Blue Bath” by Mary Waters-Sayer (St. Martin’s Press, $25.99, 320 pages) Kat Lind comes face to face with herself in “The Blue Bath.” Passing by a London gallery, she catches a glimpse of her likeness in a painting and discovers she’s the subject of a series by her former — now quite famous — lover. The affair ended, but her image continues to appear in his work, in ways that reveal more of Kate’s past than she’s willing to share. Waters-Sayer, who divides her time between Portola Valley and Boston, moves her novel between London’s contemporary art scene and the glowing memories of the lovers’ Parisian heyday.
“Bukowski in a Sundress: Confessions from a Writing Life” by Kim Addonizio (Penguin, $16, 205 pages) In seven volumes of poetry, San Francisco’s Kim Addonizio has always written with grit, honesty and humor. Her new memoir is just as fearless: In chapters titled “What Writers Do All Day,” “Cocktail Time” and “How to Fall for a Younger Man,” Addonizio recalls binges, boyfriends, family catastrophes and crippling writer’s block.
“Dated Emcees” by Chinaka Hodge (City Lights, $13.95, 64 pages) Oakland poet/rapper/playwright Chinaka Hodge, a favorite of Dave Eggers and “Hamilton” star Daveed Diggs, examines her life in this tender and hard-hitting collection of 25 poems. This is autobiography as hip-hop narrative, and it sings.