Reading Through Covid

The coronavirus found us here in northern Vermont. Since we were vaccinated, it didn’t put us in the hospital or under the sod. I was sick enough, though, to want to flee to other worlds where I wouldn’t feel so crummy. Naturally, I did it through reading. I raced through the latest Carl Hiaasen novel, Squeeze Me, set in Florida. Satirical and zany, and I tried not to laugh and trigger yet another coughing jag. 

Next was the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith. His main character, Precious Ramotswe, is engaged more in solving people’s problems than puzzling out crimes. Her insights into human nature and her beautiful Botswana homeland underscore just how wonderful it is to be alive.

Then I opted for a deeply familiar book that may be my all-time favorite novel: True Grit, a picaresque historical by Charles Portis. The story takes place in the 1870s. Told as a personal reminiscence, it reads like it’s unfolding in real time. The plucky Mattie Ross sets out to capture or, preferably, kill a coward named Tom Chaney who shot her father to death in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and stole his horse and $150 in cash. It starts like this:

People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father’s blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day.

The language in True Grit is authentic, the dialogue frequently hilarious, the characters lively. And the names! There’s Rooster Cogburn, the one-eyed whiskey-guzzling marshal whom Mattie persuades to help her track down Chaney in the lawless Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) to the west. Columbus Potter, Lucky Ned Pepper (a bandit leader), the Original Greaser Bob, Tom Spotted-Gourd, Pig Satterfield, Polk Goudy, and General Sterling Price (Rooster’s cat).

Critics have cited True Grit and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as deeply revealing of the American psyche. I’ve read both; I like True Grit better. Escaping within its pages, I realized I may have subliminally used Mattie Ross as a model for True Burns Stoltz, the plain-speaking, strong-willed wife of my main character, Sheriff Gideon Stoltz.

Lately True seems to be taking over my novels. In Nighthawk’s Wing she shakes off a spell of melancholy to rescue her husband from death in a dank cave. Then she helps Gideon solve a murder and bust a kidnapping gang in Lay This Body Down (due out next February).

It took me almost a month to get over that miserable virus. Please do your best not to get it. Be well, and keep reading.