In which I take Holly Ordway’s Advice
Last November, at the Well-Read Mom annual conference here in Milwaukee, Tolkien scholar and Word on Fire author Holly Ordway spoke to us on “How to be Adventurous, Wise, and Charitable as a Reader.” Among Dr. Ordway’s suggestions was to sample various genres beyond the ones we usually read. This recommendation dovetails nicely with the mission of Chrism Press, which “seeks Spirit-filled fiction in all genres,” including romance, gothic horror, science fiction, and fantasy. I’m especially excited to promote Chrism Press, because in August, they will publish my debut novel, The Bicycle Messenger. I’ll have more to say about that in an upcoming post. But in the meantime, here are three great Chrism Press titles you’re going to love.
Romance: Love in the Eternal City by Rebecca W. Martin
I was first attracted to Rebecca Martin’s writing when I heard her speak on a LegendFiction panel (you can find it here). She just sounded so likeable—and as it turns out, so are her characters. Elena, a young American journalist, has just accepted a public relations job in Rome after her former engagement to Chris goes up in flames. Elena is wounded, of course, but not bitter; she’s fresh and candid and eager to embrace all the potential of her new life—beginning with her friendly landlords, Paolo and Angela, who rent her a charming apartment above their tabaccheria.
Elena isn’t looking for love when she meets Benedikt, a handsome Swiss Guard, in the Campo Santo Teutonico. But Benedikt’s exuberant stepsister Rianna quickly befriends Elena, providing her with a good opportunity to get to know Benedikt too. And soon, they are working together on a major fundraising gala. Like Elena, Benedikt is discerning his future life; his wealthy father wants him to take over the family business, but Benedikt loves being a Swiss Guard and would like to advance. Beni and Elena are surrounded by a delightful cast of mentors-turned-matchmakers, starting with Rianna and going all the way up to the Holy Father himself.
Love in the Eternal City includes a frank and sensitive portrayal of Elena’s struggle to maintain good mental health. Thanks to Martin’s generous authorial voice and the goodness of her characters, we do not fall into depression alongside Elena; instead, we develop our empathy as we read. When Elena’s former fiancé interferes in her life once again, Elena finds herself snapping at Beni almost against her will: “the bitter voice has strangled the true one. … My life is a self-fulfilling prophecy. I’m letting the man who hurt me drive away the man who cares.” Elena really struggles to be loving toward Beni when she’s depressed. It’s here that her attempts are most worthy and admirable, even when she fails. I could easily imagine Christ coming nearer to her in these scenes, sending her people who care.
Meanwhile, Beni protects the pope as he goes incognito to minister to immigrant families at a local children’s hospital. But as it turns out, the one who goes to protect the Holy Father is the one who receives a grace he didn’t even know he needed. Beni is honest with the pope about his trouble with his father. In return, the pope offers a diagnosis: “The anger isn’t his problem; the anger is your problem. You’ve never forgiven him for the piecemeal abandonment after your mother died. Maybe you’ve never even forgiven him for his own grief.” The pope hears Beni’s confession, and he is so insightful that Beni wonders if he was once an intelligence officer. There’s a lively bit spy-craft to enjoy in the book’s dénouement.
Gothic: Wake of Malice by Eleanor Bourg Nicholson
Wake of Malice reminds me of a BBC police procedural featuring a setting like Oxford or a priest turned detective—in other words, someone should option this book for a miniseries, and soon. It’s 1908, and Hugh Buckley–gentle and portly, haunted by the memory of his harsh Irish mother—lives in London and writes for the Pall Mall Gazette. But when a priest is accused of embezzlement, Hugh and his thoroughly English photographer colleague Frederick Jones are sent to the village of Doolin in Hugh’s native Ireland to cover the story. “Could the mere mention of Ireland bring back the nightmares of my childhood?” Hugh wonders. “London had seemed such a safe, impersonal place.” And before they even arrive, the crime escalates to gruesome murder.
The mysterious land of the Burren and the Cliffs of Moher reawakens Hugh’s Catholic faith, which he has long tried to suppress. Some of the locals, especially the women, have been meddling with the occult, grafting superstition onto their practice in a dangerous way. “‘There are some fierce and fiendish women hereabouts,” Hugh says to Freddie. “I’d be afraid to meet Mrs. Gorman of a night, especially if you happened to have squashed her favorite illicit tradition’”—i.e., a pagan festival that is quickly canceled by Father Brendan O’Connor, a stern Jesuit priest who takes over the parish while the local pastor, Father Michael James Walsh, is being investigated.
Hugh knows all the ancient legends, but he still makes the mistake of crossing a wide field, where he is bitten by a tiny, mysterious creature. The wound troubles him for weeks until it comes to the attention of Father Thomas Edmund Gilroy, a smiling, bespectacled Dominican priest who has come from England to support his beleaguered priest friend. Father Thomas Edmund has useful experience dealing with the occult. But at first, Father Brendan O’Connor refuses his help.
Wake of Malice features all sorts of colorful characters, including the haughty and beautiful Doireann O’Hara, granddaughter of the first murder victim; a good crop of local gossips in the pub where Hugh and Freddie are staying; and a group of Romanis who will lend a hand at the appropriate time. More murder victims pile up, some of them fearfully mutilated, their bodies surrounded by gold coins. The two journalists feed copy and photographs to their boss at home in an effort to extend their stay, because both Hugh and Freddie are becoming part of the local fabric. Hugh begins to dream of the farm life he once enjoyed, even delivering a calf for a cow in distress. He eventually admits to Father Thomas Edmund that he stopped going to mass after his mother’s death. “When she died…well, in London, no one woke me or beat me or fretted me anymore. On a Sunday morning, I found I slept well and deeply, and no one roused me. And…well, it seemed a much less frightening existence.” Life became “dull and safe.” But as Father Thomas Edmund assures him, “You aren’t the sum of your poor mother’s fears. God in His graciousness will supply your every need. Stop hesitating and let Him.”
Wake of Malice is a rollicking read that features lots of clever dialogue and even a bit of romance, along with sinister forces that need defeating. Eleanor Bourg Nicholson delivers it all with a good dose of humor.
Fantasy: Misshelved Magic by S. R. Crickard
In Crickard’s debut novel, Adelina is a plucky librarian who often feels overlooked, and Leon is a talented student of magic who needs a topic for his senior thesis. Adelina is assigned to the history department of the library, where she is strictly enjoined to stay away from the barrier of glowing stones that demarcates the spell section. But one little magical book keeps finding its way to her shelves, and when Adelina tries to return it, she finds herself face to face with a cervara, one of a group of magical creatures who protect and defend the spell section of the library. Adelina longs to befriend the cervara; they seem so lonely in there, and she’s a curious person.
But as we soon learn, an epic battle between good and evil is raging in this little place. Crickard has a very light touch, but she draws deeply on rich images from salvation history. Adelina’s visits to the spell section brought to mind Dante’s Inferno—or, rather, Purgatory, with the cervara as the poor souls who must atone for a particular sin they have committed during their earthly lives. The First Spell that has ruined the cervara stands under lock and key in the grove at the center of the spell section of the library, rather like the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the lost garden of Eden.
But just as original sin affects all of fallen humanity, the pull of the First Spell works its way into Leon’s mind. One of the things I love about his book is the way it enacts temptation—specifically, the temptation the serpent poses in the garden: you shall by like gods. Leon is an extremely promising student, but he is plagued all along with feelings of inadequacy, and in a moment of crisis, he is tempted to hubris. Like the cervara before him, Leon believes he can wield the First Spell without succumbing to its danger. “The spell needed him. The king and the college would see his worth. He’d be invincible, and no one would ever question him again.”
But as any good reader of fantasy knows, the solution to the word’s problems is not to be found in magic. This book has profound things to say about the importance of embracing our humanity through literature instead of trying to overcome it through technology or our own strength, represented by magic. As Leon says to Adelina, “I can write spells that alter or conjure things, but your poems bring understanding.”
Joan Elizabeth Bauer 