Two exciting novels today from Minnesota writers who are also poets. One is a coming-of-age story set during prohibition. The other shows the strength of Ojibwe women.
(Courtesy of the author) “The Last Tale of Norah Bow”: by J.P. White (Regal House Publishing, $19.
95) One of the men conked Uncle Bill with the butt of his gun. Bill slumped and fell out of his chair, blood gushing from his forehead. A moan trickled out of my uncle’s chest.
The man in the middle whipped out a black sack and cinched it over Daddy’s head. I looked at the head in the black sack. I didn’t hear a sound from Daddy.
–from “The Last Tale of Norah Bow.” From the first pages of J.P.
White’s second novel (after “Every Boat Turns South”), we cheer for plain-spoken, almost fearless Norah Bow, a 14-year-old who sets out, somewhat foolishly, to find her dad. It’s 1926, Prohibition is making a lot of people rich, and Norah finds herself in the middle of rumrunners, shady men, assorted odd characters and, most of all, on Lake Erie in the sailboat she and her dad made from the finest wood they could afford. White, who has published six poetry collections, shows his lyrical way with words in this story that is also thrilling when Norah fights a storm that almost swamps her boat.
His account is drawn from his experiences growing up in a sailing family on the lake. ” My poetry and fiction nearly always circle back to elemental forces I was first exposed to as a child,” he writes on his w.