Drifting Into Darien: A Personal and Natural History of the Altamaha River / Janisse Ray

The Altamaha River drains the southern part of Georgia ending in the salt marshes around the Golden Isles near Brunswick on the Atlantic. It is sometimes known as the Little Amazon. Undammed, it still retains a wildness and a relatively unblemished ecology that most “tamed” rivers have lost. There are no major population centers on its banks. There are very few bridges that span it. Of course, there are industrial intrusions, and it is a constant battle to keep development at bay and preserve its unspoiled beauty for future generations. Janisse Ray, the author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, describes it so lovingly that it almost seems like paradise on Earth. To her it is, but she succeeds in imparting its uniqueness to the reader—its nature, its mystery, its allure.

A few factoids I found on Wikipedia that quantify the Altamaha’s extraordinary status: At least 120

Franklin tree

species of rare plants and animals live in its watershed, including eleven species of mussels, seven of which are found only in the Altamaha. The river basin also supports the only known example of old-growth longleaf pine and black oak forest in the US. Other notable species include the shortnose sturgeon, Atlantic sturgeon, West Indian manatee, Eastern indigo snake, greenfly orchid, and Georgia plume (a plant in the Heath family). The unusual Franklin tree (Franklinia alatamaha), now extinct in the wild, was found by John Bartram along the Altamaha River basin in 1765.

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Murder in Passy, An Aimée Leduc Investigation / Cara Black

If you like your mysteries set in European locales, here’s a Parisian detective series that is sure to please. Aimée Leduc is a private eye, born of a French career detective and an absentee American mother (brief hints of angst over this in this installment). She’s appeared in about ten adventures, always set in iconic Parisian neighborhoods : Murder in the Marais, Murder in the Bastille, Murder in Montmartre, and Murder in the Latin Quarter , to name a few. In Murder in Passy (Paris’s tony XVIe arrondissement), Aimée finds herself mixed up in a murderous intrigue involving the French arm of the Basque nationalist movement. The final chase involves the kidnapping of a Spanish princess, a secret torture chamber used by the Gestapo in WWII, and a rooftop escape. The author sprinkles enough French words into the dialogue to either annoy you or make you feel your French 101 was not for nothing— Zut alors! très chic, c’est parfait, désolé, c’est tout! Oh, and Aimée’s frequent stop...

The Silent Patient / Alex Michaelides

A woman viciously murders her seemingly doting husband. We meet up with her several years later in a mental facility, where a therapist tries to get her to speak and to reveal her story. Who is innocent and who is the victim? The answer isn’t straightforward. The resolution to the novel features a real twist that will have the reader questioning the chronology of the different narrative threads in the book. A real page-turner.

Addie Pray / Joe David Brown (more recently published as Paper Moon ) Click here to check for availability at AFPLS This 1971 novel was the inspiration for the Peter Bogdanovich movie Paper Moon . Eleven-year-old Addie and her maybe-father “Long Boy” Moses Pray crisscross the Deep South “ramifying” (scamming) people during the Great Depression. Addie’s street smarts and perceived girlish innocence, along with Long Boy’s cleverness and shrewd business acumen build their operation until they are dealing in millions. The movie remained pretty true to the first half of the book (though it moved the location from Alabama to Kansas), but the adventures continue far beyond where the movie left off. The decades haven’t dimmed the magic of this rollicking adventure, either in the film or the book. ©Ken Vesey, 17 June 2010

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