Author Archives: kzmclain

Chickened Out

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The car thermometer showed 98 degrees; my friend Hey Google said it was only 95 degrees. Tomato, tomahto. It was hot out yesterday afternoon here in Mesa.

Thanks to a Facebook feed that I got from Silver Sneakers, I learned that, at least in their opinion, working out via walking outdoors is a better workout than walking indoors on a treadmill. Silver Sneakers doesn’t live in Mesa, AZ! Though I do it, admittedly, walking on a treadmill is about as boring as exercise gets. So I accepted Silver Sneakers’ contention with great joy, and we were out walking early, around 7:30 a.m., to start our day with a bang.

We walked just over three miles, and during the final mile, as I was ready to curl up in a ball and let Bill roll me home, I heard my niece Jessie’s voice in my head saying – as she had when she was 10 years old and taking her aunts for a hike – now don’t wait until you’re tired to turn around. I had done exactly that.

Nevertheless, the three mile walk was about the highlight of our day. That, and a visit to see my sister-in-law Sami who is home after spending three weeks recovering from a broken back and subsequent surgery.  Bill put on his plumber’s hat and installed a handheld extension in her shower so that she can, well, shower. Sitting down, that is, as will be necessary for the immediate future. It’s the little things, folks.

Anyway, we were getting ready to drive home, and Bill asked if I would like to stop at the Superstition Ranch Market and get some more of the crack, er, Stewart’s Diet Orange and Cream sodas. (By the way, I bought a few bottles of Stewart’s Black Cherry soda for Alastair when they visited. As a result, I think I can count on him to care for me in my old age.) Anyway, I, of course, enthusiastically agreed that a stop for my favorite beverage would be great.

I was driving, as Bill (who has the joy of experiencing hay fever here in AZ and then again when we get back to Denver in May) had taken a Benadryl and was sleepy. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that he didn’t install Sami’s shower head upside down, resulting in water spraying only towards the ceiling. Anyway, instead of our regular route home from their house, I headed the car down Main Street towards the Orange and Cream sodas.

“Oh, by the way,” Bill said innocently, “since the Tractor Supply Co. is right on the way, could we make a quick stop there? I want to take a quick look at their work boots. I’ll make it quick.”

I think he used the word quick too many times, and I should have been suspicious.

He, in fact, tried on two or three sizes of two or three different kinds of boots, all of which are heavy and stiff and unbelievably difficult to get on and off your feet, thereby resulting in about a 45-minute “quick stop.”

I was, however, very patient, because I recalled all of the times that Bill has patiently waited while I trolled the aisles of kitchen stores. Well, kind of patiently waited.

But do you know what happens as you are idly wandering around farm supply stores and it’s hot and boring and you’re dreaming of Orange and Cream sodas? What happens is that you actually start considering buying farm supplies. Or chickens…..

…and all of the accoutrements, especially since Tractor Supply Co. is celebrating Chick Days…..

We left Tractor Supply Co. without shoes, since, despite best efforts, he couldn’t find any that fit just right. I’m happy to report we also left without chickens. This is mostly because of a true story about a man who cut my hair for years. He talked and talked and talked about wanting to raise chickens and enjoy fresh eggs. Finally, after talking about this for at least a year, his wife agreed, and they bought chickens and built coops and eventually began getting eggs. And more eggs. And even more eggs. Until he found that there was no way he could keep up with egg production. He gave the eggs away to everyone he knew, but still, eggs, eggs, eggs. Finally, he sold Everything Chicken, and never spoke about it again.

But we did buy our sodas…

Start. Your. Engines.

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NASCAR comes to Phoenix two times a year – once in March, at the beginning of the racing season, and again in November, nearing the end of the racing season. Bill is a NASCAR fan and so is my brother Dave. So the two of them go to both races every year, and have for nearly a decade.

This year, my brother had planned to attend the race with Bill as usual. What no one counted on is that my sister-in-law would have an accident at work that resulted in a broken bone in her back. I know, I know. You all just sucked in your breath. I’m so happy to tell you that she is recovering unbelievably well, and in fact, got out of the hospital a couple of weeks ago and got out of the rehab facility yesterday, and is now at home.

Yesterday – the day of the NASCAR race at Phoenix International Raceway.

My brother, being the sensitive kind of guy he is, decided it wouldn’t be prudent to do either one of these two things: 1. Ask the doctor to keep her in rehab for one more day so that he could enjoy beer and cigars at a racetrack; or 2. Order up an Uber to take Sami home in her wheelchair so that he could enjoy beer and cigars at a racetrack.

Dave took Sami home; Bill went to Plan B, which is me…..

 

Because I don’t normally go, I don’t pay attention to the preparation involved. What I learned is that Bill owns a little table and a little grill (both of which I was unaware) and he brings breakfast food and lunch food and beer and cigars and all necessary items to accompany all of the above. Dave assured me that Bill has everything down to a science, and that was true.

If my mom was the Queen of Picnics, then Bill is the Prince. He even remembered to include a tablecloth for his little table. My mom always had a tablecloth in her picnic basket.

The fact that we awoke with the birds resulted in us getting a superb parking place very close to the entrance of the actual racetrack. Despite the early hour, we weren’t the first, but nearly so. The early arrival also resulted in me having a bloody mary at 8 o’clock in the morning, and not feeling a bit odd about it. It did occur to me that if Bill came out of our bedroom some morning this week at 8 o’clock and saw me sipping a bloody mary, he might be concerned. Something about being at the racetrack makes it alright. In fact, Bill told me by the time I had my first bloody mary, he and my brother would have already downed at least one beer and smoked at least one cigar.

The race was a lot of fun, I must admit. It was hot. Damn hot. So hot that we didn’t stay for the entire race. So hot that despite the fact that we both slathered ourselves with sunscreen, we resemble brown bears. Take a look at this tan line….

Here’s some things I learned about NASCAR yesterday. A. The pre-race festivities (i.e. tailgating) are about as much fun as the race. B. The best things about the race are the flyover by the F-35s from Luke Air Force Base right after the performance of the National Anthem and when we hear the words, “Drivers, start…your….engines. Vrooooooooom. It’s awesome.

But perhaps the most interesting thing I learned is that NASCAR fans are incorrectly described as hillbillies or rednecks. In fact, every single time I, myself, told anyone that I was going to the race, I added the exclamation yeehaw. The truth is very different. Oh, there might be some rednecks at a NASCAR race because the fans comprise a large variety of folks. But as we walked through the area where people park their RVs (most of which cost as much as our AZ house), it became abundantly clear that while they are unwaveringly patriotic as evidenced by the American flags that adorned a large number of the vehicles, NASCAR fans are likely to be bank presidents or lawyers or successful business owners.

Having said that, I must admit to hearing the guy sitting behind us in the stands tell his buddy, “Damn, It just feels weird to not have my gun.”

Whatevah! I like NASCAR.

This post linked to Grand Social.

Saturday Smile: Splash

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The coolish winter has morphed into a pretty warmish spring in the Valley of the Sun. The days are now reaching 90 degrees or more, and at 8 o’clock at night, it’s still in the 80s. It does cool down sometime around 4 o’clock in the morning to the mid-60s, but still, the days are hot.

Since Jen has been visiting, her grands have spent time over at the house. Last spring, Jen dug deep into her pocket and bought a swimming pool. Not a big fancy one, mind you. Instead, she spent maybe 8 or 9 dollars and bought one of those little plastic blow-up pools. It was the best money she ever spent because her grandkids love that pool. I can relate, because almost to the very last ones, my grandkids also love when I blow up a plastic pool in our backyard in the summer. Still, my pool is rather large; this pool is maybe three or four feet across.

Thursday we blew up the pool, and they spent the afternoon doing this, about a million times…….

They couldn’t possibly had more fun even if the water had been 6 feet deep. Giggles galore. Simple pleasures.

Have a great weekend.

Friday Book Whimsy: White Collar Girl

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I graduated from Journalism School in 1977 and immediately got a job as a reporter on a small-town newspaper. Even in 1977, journalism was largely a man’s world. Though my editor was a woman, she was likely editor because her father owned the newspaper. She and I were the only two women in the entire organization.

Given all of this, I was interested in reading White Collar Girl, a novel by Renee Rosen. Rosen is the author of three other books, all of which take place in Chicago, as did White Collar Girl. This novel takes on the world of journalism in the 1950s, when being a woman reporter was nearly unheard of except for the society pages.

The novel’s protagonist, Jordan Walsh, is the child of two reporters-cum-authors, both of whom were quite successful in their own right back in the day. Jordan’s brother had also been a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times, but died mysteriously in a hit-and-run accident that didn’t seem to be very well-investigated by the Chicago Police Department. The Walsh family has never quite come to grips with his death.

So Jordan is proud and pleased to be offered a job with the Chicago Tribune, thinking this, finally, would bring her family out of their depression. She is ambitious, and while she is hired to work on the so-called women’s pages, she is optimistic that she will be able to become an ace general news reporter through hard work and great writing.

Things aren’t going along very well until Jordan finds a confidential source who is feeding her such good information that she finally captures the attention of the editors. Through grit and tenacity, she begins to build her own success. However, the source quickly helps her realize that her brother’s death was certainly no accident, and she might be next.

I wanted to like this book. I mean, look at the cover. It’s beautiful. I loved the period feel to the novel. I think the author totally captured the way life was in the 1950s, particularly for women. I loved her descriptions of the clothes and the city and the cars and the attitudes and the frustrations Jordan met along the way.

I just didn’t love the book. I can’t say it was awful, mostly for the reasons stated above. But the writing was so slow. It seemed as though I would read and read and read and only get through a few pages. The mystery of her brother’s death was fairly predictable, and the ending was abrupt and weird, almost like the author got just as tired of writing the book as I did reading it and just wrapped it up quickly.

Much as I would like, I simply can’t overwhelmingly recommend this novel.

Here is a link to the book.

Thursday Thoughts

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Erin go Bragh
I am preparing corned beef and cabbage this evening rather than tomorrow for several reasons. The first is that I’m not Irish, so I can make my corned beef whenever I darn well please; second, it works better for some of the people who will be seated at my table; third, St. Patrick’s Day is on Friday when Catholics abstain from meat, so Jen and I elected to make the meal on Thursday. Of course, the Phoenix archdiocese announced last Sunday that the no-meat restriction was being lifted for St. Patrick’s Day. I find that funny, but I won’t argue because we don’t have to try to fight the Catholic masses in our effort to find good fish-and-chips, at least for one Friday in Lent.

Fish Fry

Culvers fish-and-chips

And just what do I mean by that last statement? Culver’s offers really, really good fried fish in the form of sandwiches and fish-and-chips. They proclaim – via television commercials – to fly the cod in fresh and bread it themselves right in the store. I have no reason to doubt that Culver employees’ mornings are spent breading fish. All I will tell you is that I believe that every single Catholic in the East Valley over the age of 55 was at our nearby Culver’s last Friday evening. Bill and I arrived early — around 4:30 — and the line to order was out the door. I sent Bill on a futile search for a table while I stood in line. He came back about the time I was getting ready to order and proclaimed not a table to be had. So I ordered our food to go, sad that it would only be marginally warm by time we rolled into our garage, but what’s a Catholic to do? As we were waiting for our food, a table right near where I was standing opened up, and I shot myself like a cannonball into the seat. (The 98-year-old woman that I knocked out of the way got up from the floor almost entirely by herself.) I told Bill that because our order was to-go, he would need to wait for our number to be called. Now here’s where my proclivity for exaggeration is coming to bite me, because you won’t believe what I’m telling you. Bill waited a full 30 minutes to get our order. While he waited up front, senior citizens continued to troll around the store like sharks looking for dinner. The most wonderful thing about this story is that once Bill came to our table with the food (which was piping hot!), he wasn’t a bit crabby. He had spent the entire time chatting it up with another NASCAR fan, and they discussed the upcoming race. My husband has a patient temperament in many ways.

Customer Serviceless
I’m not anti-Walmart; I’m really not. Their prices are lower than other supermarkets and that alone makes me go there once in a while for one thing or another. Yesterday Bill needed some kind of gardening item, and since I needed a few things for tonight’s meal, I decided I might as well pick them up while he did his shopping. One of the things I needed was horseradish, and I find that to be one of the items I have trouble finding in stores, particularly the kind that needs to be refrigerated. So, there was a young man stocking shelves, and I politely asked him where I could find horseradish. He gave me such a blank stare — and for so long — that I wondered if I had inadvertently spoken in German.  That seemed unlikely, however, since I don’t speak German. He sent me on a wild goose chase because he, of course, not only didn’t know where the horseradish was, but didn’t have the slightest idea WHAT it was. Good thing I didn’t ask him for braunschweiger.

Sprechen Sie Deutsch?
And my last comment about not speaking German reminds me of something that happened when Bill and I were on our big European Adventure back in 2008. We were in Germany having lunch, and I needed to use a bathroom. I had taken four years of high school German, but I can’t say I ever really learned the language. Nevertheless, I decided to try speaking German to the food server. “Wo is das badezimmer?” I asked the startled woman. She looked at me with puzzlement, so I repeated my question. Finally, she said to me in PERFECT ENGLISH, “Are you looking for the toilette? It’s right back there.” Now then, a few weeks ago, Bill and Bec and I went to a German restaurant here in Mesa, and while waiting for a table, we sat at the bar. Seated next to me was a very nice woman who was from Germany but lives now in AZ. We got to talking, and I related my story to her. She laughed, and explained that what I had actually asked the woman was, “Where is a place to take a bath?” Ah ha. That explains the German waitress’s puzzlement.

Ciao.

Bargains

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The town in which I spent my youth had a sidewalk sale every year. I guess I should really call it the Sidewalk Sale (with caps), as it was not just a sale, but quite a special event. All of the downtown stores would pull outside their racks of clothes and shoes, or their jewelry cases, or shelves filled with notions or hardware or inexpensive jewelry with markdown prices. That day, the town would fill up with shoppers, both folks from in town and others from nearby farms throughout Platte County and beyond, all looking for bargains.

In our case, we pulled out enormous cases filled with baked goods, but primarily glazed doughnuts. My dad made delicious glazed yeast doughnuts. One of my cousins recently described my dad’s doughnuts as being so light they practically floated. And on the day of the sidewalk sale, we sold our glazed doughnuts, which normally cost 65 cents a dozen for half price.  So you can imagine just how many dozens and dozens and dozens of doughnuts we sold on the day of the Sidewalk Sale. Those doughnuts were not manufactured by any kind of automated system as they are at Krispie Kreme. My dad would cut each doughnut by hand. I remember that with one movement, my dad would cut the doughnut, and throw it up over his thumb, thereby knocking out the doughnut hole, until he couldn’t fit any more on his thumb. I can still hear the thump, thump, thump as he cut each doughnut, one at a time. Once his thumb was full, he would lay them out on the screen to put into the proof box to rise. He could fill a screen full of doughnuts faster than Krispie Kreme ever imagined.

So on the day of the Sidewalk Sale, he and another baker were in the back cutting, proofing, frying, and glazing doughnuts nonstop. At regular intervals, my mom would come out with a new tray of freshly fried and glazed doughnuts, and place them in the showcase. I remember two specific things about working on Sidewalk Sale Day. First, it was a never-ending battle to keep flies out of the showcase. It was Nebraska in the summertime, people. One of the bakery clerks (often Bec or me) was constantly pounding on the outside of the case while another (often Bec or me) was making sure that the annoying insect flew away. No sooner would one be gone than another would sneak in. It was a never-ending battle, but we were quite successful, if relentless.

And the second thing I remember is that, one-after-another, people would ask, “Are those doughnuts fresh?” Are they fresh? Are they fresh? Seriously? Because we can hardly even pick them up to put in a box because they are so dang hot. To the moon, Alice…..

People love a bargain, don’t they? That’s why places like Goodwill and T.J. Maxx stay in existence. I like a bargain as much as the next guy.

My niece Maggie recently told me about a bargain of which I was unaware. It seems Jimmy John’s sells yesterday’s bread for half a buck a loaf. I’m talking those big loaves of bread that are something like 15 or 16 inches long. Maggie uses them when she makes her delicious Cuban sandwiches. The other day, when she included Bill and me in a dinner of Cuban sandwiches, I offered to pick up the bread from Jimmy John’s.  Sure enough, a pyramid of French bread loaves sat on the JJ’s counter, selling for 45 cent each. I purchased 4 loaves. The young woman waiting on me who, up until that point, had been speaking in a normal voice, suddenly said something to me in what the Romans would call sotto voce. She had a surreptitious look about her and I suddenly felt like I was part of a detective movie. “Pardon me?” I said. “Could you repeat that?”

In a bit louder whisper, yet still barely moving her lips, she said, “Take them from the bottom of the pile; they’re better.”

Ah ha. Nice girl. Bottom of the pile it was.

At any rate, it reminded me of the day-old bread rack at our bakery. Each night, at closing time, one of the jobs of whoever was closing the store was to bag up the leftover doughnuts and rolls, and gather up any loaves of bread that hadn’t sold that day, and place the whole kit-and-kaboodle on the day-old rack. The next day, those goodies would be sold at half price to thrifty shoppers, most of whom were farmers because they are eager for a bargain and are the early birds that get the worms.

That brought the 29 cent loaf of bread down to a whopping 14 cents. Imagine…..

Noodles

Posted in Main Course, Recipes, Whimsies by

A couple of weeks ago when our family was visiting us in AZ, we were eating at our favorite pizza restaurant here in the Valley of the Sun. As we ate, I asked a variation of the age-old question: If you were eating your very last meal, what would you have?

I learned several interesting things from that question. The first thing I learned is that if you’re going to try to ascertain the answer to that question from an 11-year-old boy, you’d better phrase the question carefully. I unfortunately worded it as such: Hey Alastair, if you were on death row and they were bringing in your last meal, what would you have ordered? Okay, okay; I admit that perhaps you shouldn’t ask a child any questions that relate to Death Row. Lesson learned. Because Alastair – who loves good food – couldn’t be pinned down to the food part and instead concentrated fully on the Death Row part. Despite my pressing him further and further, his answers continued to be along the lines of a cake with a file in it, or a piece of sausage in the shape of a key.

But the other interesting piece of information I learned, particularly once I rephrased the question to be if you were on a desert island and could only eat one thing, what would it be?, was that my daughter-in-law Jll chose lasagna.

I thought about that conversation the other night when I cooked dinner for my sister Jen – who had arrived that day for a week’s visit – and her daughter Maggie and the family. I had texted the dinner invitation to Maggie earlier in the day, and didn’t know technology could work that fast when her response of YES! came almost before I set down my phone. Such is the life of a mother of two, including a very busy 3-year-old, as she prepares for the arrival of her own mother.  I had some of my red sauce in the freezer, so making lasagna was going to be simple. Or at least as simple as making lasagna can be.

As we sat and ate our lasagna, Caesar salad, and French bread, we learned that Maggie’s husband Mark would also choose lasagna as his last meal. Funny, that. I like lasagna, but who would choose lasagna when you could choose a wonderfully dry and ice-cold Tanqueray martini, a perfectly-cooked bone-in ribeye steak with a dollop of herb and garlic butter, a crisp salad with a mixture of homemade Roquefort cheese dressing and the homemade Italian dressing made by my favorite childhood restaurant Husker House, and crème brulee with that crackly burnt-sugar topping?

As a result of Mark’s proclamation, much of our conversation at dinner that night revolved around making lasagna. I created a bit of a controversy when I admitted that while I liked lasagna, I found it a pain in the booty to make.

Maggie was astounded. She doesn’t share my sentiment. But let me be clear. The most troublesome thing for me when it comes to lasagna is the noodles. Cooking lasagna noodles is flat-out messy. Dripping water, noodles splashing back into the cooking water as you try to retrieve them, noodles sticking together. All-around messiness.

Maggie, however, uses the lasagna noodles that cook as your lasagna bakes. I’m all for convenience, but I fear that any kind of pasta that you put uncooked into a dish soaks up too much of the liquid as it cooks. So despite the ease, I continue to cook my noodles before I begin the layering process.

I will admit that I like my lasagna very much. I use a meat sauce from my favorite Italian chef, Lidia Bastianich. It involves using pork neck bones, which result in the most flavorful sauce imaginable. Of course, no matter how careful I am, a few little bones will make it into the sauce. But the best part of using neck bones is that after a couple of hours, you remove them to cool. I, however, begin nibbling on them almost immediately, always burning my fingers in the process. Lidia’s sauce also involves ground pork and ground beef, so the flavor is delightful. Don’t tell Lidia, but sometimes I substitute Italian sausage for the ground pork. The sauce cooks for a couple of hours, making the house smell like an Italian home on Sunday. It’s pure heaven.

Here is a link to Lidia’s sauce, though it doesn’t come from her website. As for the lasagna, just like dressing for Colorado springtime weather, it’s all about layering.

Include as many layers as your pan will hold, and then eventually this happens…..

And maybe that is worth a last meal.

I’ll Be Your Huckleberry

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If you fellows have been hunted from one end of the country to the other as I have been, you’ll understand what a bad man’s reputation is built on. I’ve had credit for more killings than I ever dreamt of. – John Henry “Doc” Holliday

As Bill and I prepared for our two-day adventure to Tombstone, AZ, we did what any respectable-yet-uninformed tourist would do; we watched the movie Tombstone, Hollywood’s depiction of perhaps the most famous gunfight in the Old West. I had seen the movie before, but needed to be refreshed on the specifics of the Gunfight at the OK Corral. Even if the so-called specifics of the movie are largely exaggerated. Or downright wrong. Still, isn’t Kurt Russell’s Wyatt Earp swoon-worthy, and don’t you just want to be best friends with Doc Holliday as portrayed by Val Kilmer?

Upon entering the town of Tombstone, I realized that the most important piece of misinformation was that the gunfight didn’t actually take place at the OK Corral. Instead, the event for which Tombstone is most remembered took place a block or so away on Fremont Street, in front of a photography studio. Apparently Hollywood just couldn’t get its arms around the Gunfight at C.S. Fly’s Photographic Studio on Fremont Street. Just doesn’t have the same ring.

Call me a dork, but ever since we bought our house in AZ, I have wanted to visit Tombstone. The real wild, wild west. I may be unsophisticated, but I was certainly not misinformed. Entering Tombstone, AZ, is like going back in time. Amidst the folks like us who were clearly tourists, you see, well, cowboys and cowgirls. Undoubtedly, some are for show. After all, while a silver strike is what put Tombstone on the map back in 1877, the gunfight is what keeps it there. But most of the nontourists aren’t folks who are wearing costumes. The duds they’re wearing (and see? one quick trip to Tombstone and I start using words like duds) are not shiny and fancy. They’re wearing dirty jeans, scuffed boots and dusty hats. The mustaches are real and they say howdy and really mean it.

 

The drive between Mesa and Tombstone was pretty, especially past Tucson. The farther south you go, the more pecan trees you see, both in groves and wild along the side of the road.

The vistas were spectacular.

We walked along Allen Street, imagining what it would have been like back in the 1880s, when gambling and prostitution were legal, real men and women drank whiskey instead of water, and the bad guys were called The Cowboys and wore red sashes.

Allen Street, looking not that much different in 2017 than it did in 1881, except for the camera-bearing tourists.

Since that walk didn’t take long, we spent the remainder of the afternoon in Big Nose Kate’s Saloon, wondering why Doc Holliday’s girlfriend didn’t mind being called Big Nose Kate and drinking one or two beers. At some point, the pull of the Old West overcame your favorite Nana, and I ordered something I literally hadn’t had since 1975 – a shot of tequila. I recalled that one of my friends used to occasionally drink a shot of tequila that contained a splash of Tabasco, and it seemed as though any time you are drinking in anything called a saloon, that was the appropriate accompaniment to a Corona. I ordered the drink, and – call it muscle memory – instantly remembered the salt and the lime. Yee-haw. It’s called a Prairie Fire, and remember it next time you’re in Tombstone.

We did find time in the next day or so to see a reenactment of the gunfight and tour the town via a trolley car driven by an old-timer who could answer any question that might arise about Tombstone, including verifying that Doc Holliday was not nearly as charming as Vil Kilmer’s portrayal. Nor is there any proof that he actually ever said he was anyone’s huckleberry. Still, I will be his huckleberry any day of the week.

A stained window such as this is a common sight in Tombstone restaurants…

As for the old-west dentist using the term “daisy,” the Tombstone newspaper that covered the actual gunfight reported that during the shootout between lawmen Wyatt, Virgil, and Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday; and Cowboys Billy Claiborne, Ike and Billy Clanton, and Tom and Frank McLaury, Frank McLaury said, “I’ve got you now, you son of a bitch,” at which time Doc Holliday is reported to have replied, “Blaze away; you’re a daisy if you have.”

I can’t say whether the Tombstone Epitaph was reporting real or fake news. What I can say, however, is that we had a lot of fun in Tombstone, AZ.

This post linked to Grand Social

Friday Book Whimsy: Cancel the Wedding

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Cancel the Wedding, a debut novel by Carolyn T. Dingman, isn’t a book I would have picked up to read without a bit of urging by someone I trusted. A fellow reader who knows I like mysteries recommended it a bit hesitantly, as she knows I am not a huge fan of a strictly romance novels, but assured me that though it had a bit of debut-novelness about it, the writing was good, the story was more than just romance, and the mystery was fun.

So, despite the novel’s title, I dug in. My assessment? I enjoyed the story but I was equally glad I had gotten the book from the library rather than paying hard-earned money for it.

That said, I recommend the book for fairly light reading.

The book’s protagonist Olivia has a powerful job that she hates, a handsome and smart fiancé with whom she is bored, and an interesting life in which she is largely disinterested. The only interesting part of her life is that her recently-deceased mother had left instructions in her will to her two daughters to return her ashes to the small town in Georgia where she grew up but never talked about to her daughters.  Their mother specifically instructed that half of her ashes would be sprinkled in the lake and the other half onto a certain gravesite.

Both daughters put off the task until Olivia realizes how dissatisfied with her life and thinks perhaps a change of scenery would do her good. She and her niece Logan head off to Georgia and a change of pace.

Upon arrival, Olivia comes face to face with the knowledge that there was more to her mother’s life than anyone in her family knew. She takes it upon herself to try and solve the mystery.

The romantic element comes when she meets Elliott, who not only helps her discover the truth about her mother’s past, but actually personally finds the final link.

This is not a terribly meaningful novel that will change a reader’s life. But Dingman’s writing is solid and the story kept my interest, despite being fairly predictable. I do love books that take place in the south, and this fit the bill to a T.

I recommend it for someone looking for a light-hearted novel to distract them from their real-life difficulties.

Here is a link to the book.