2017 Kansas Notable Books, Part One

i know today on kbr present the best new books i can sense or about kansas i'm j mcintyre each year the state library of kansas selects fifteen books as kansas notable winners in the first of a two part series we'll hear from the two thousand seventeen kansas known authors including fiction nonfiction poetry young adult literature and more it's my favorite show of the year a chance to read some good books maybe others and get some books the way we'll start with alex greece in the author of the scotland yard murder squad series last thing on forever is the fifth in that series like this you again alec fisa ck we first met walter day and metal hammersmith in the yard the first in the murder squad series at that point they were both detectives in the newly formed scotland yard in this book while today is nothing and noble hammersmith is off the force yes yes he was fired for just being

to bruce willis basically the plot from there on this book i i never was off looking for walter who has been completely broken down and as an amnesiac in london i'm living on the streets i sowed there's sort of a couple of of parallel plot lines that eventually come together with the search and as usual now with my rambling books there's several other lines going on at the same time including a couple of bounty hunters who come to london you're also supposed to find water he was not only has one real client clear day the wife of the missing detective walter day her role and presence in this book is really expanded to talk to me about that well when i first started these books you know it's the series is about to white male detectives in victorian england

which is great as a white male you know cutting her teeth writing your first book armed but as the series went along i got more and more i felt penned in om i like to see other viewpoints and learn about other viewpoints and so i wasn't any now if my two detectives are a lot of books about detectives in victorian england i am so glad i'm more more interesting the more i read about how women actually lived in victorian england more fascinated became and bigger her character died and she became kind of her own person and honestly a stand in for me because she's an aspiring writer in this series and so her a terrible doggerel her poems and things i wrote all those nfl and doing it so yeah she was she is she's sort of me their bag they're so it's it's really easy to expand her role you've also introduce new characters novel hammersmith past two employees eugenia merlo and happy to

talk about how they bring a different perspective and they also really challenge the role that women played back then you know in the series the goal was always to take the modern sensibilities and put them in a foreign time and place which you know as for and everyone deserves no one still life as a live in victorian england and clarinet being married and with her personality said in the first book i had a little less wiggle room with her and the things i could do with her so i wanted to bring in more women who have different points of view so i can get different slices of society baghdad and heavy armor is very much a sort of a modern woman stock in those times and the goal for me is to eventually sort of spend her off into her own series it's so so she's an amateur detective that she takes up some detective work on her own to help pay the bills at novel's agency right and she's a professional detective at this point because novelist so it's sort of

it was sort of i'm minded i had the he actually doesn't really pay much attention to gender roles in society which i also gave me a lot of leeway to sort of let women get away with more than they would have been able to back this so she's sort of takes over the agency well he's not even paying attention i get you to read an excerpt go and rain i'm very brief bomb an abridged chapter that i wrote on my book tour for this book and it's about the arrival in england of a pair of bounty hunters who have come and they're charged with finding walter day and killing him if they find him so there are dangerous people a two wheeler pulled up to the mouth of a narrow alley in saffron hill to people i get a man and a woman both dressed head to foot in black the men took a bag from the floor of the cabin to the driver sped away as fast as a source could move the couple and

like stepped into the alley and walked slowly along looking all around them at the stalls of stinking fish on yesterday's vegetables the man held his elbow out of the woman whose took her arm and here's a pickpocket circle and came up behind them that the men in black casually song is bad without looking and a pickpocket went down in the deep they walked on as if they had noticed him the alley ordered on and they followed it through the fog their boot heals clacking on broken stones on things above them tripping on the woman's umbrella they did not speak nor did they look at each other but he stops together when they reached a small home with no garden and his stinking garbage piled against the front brakes one shoulder was painted with a notice lodgings for travelers the men lead the way to the front door and without knocking open differs companion she nodded to him as she passed over the threshold inside the place was small and damp and rita volkswagen gin a tiny old woman came rushing from

some backroom to greet him hearing like she said her voice was thick with liquor of two beds left will take a room to ourselves them and said oh you'd be on a posh a place in the sun which goes by the mattress here and you'll be furnishing ourselves when it comes to lean against a room the men said again his companion did not speak nor did she look at the landlady she stared straight ahead and worried her thumb along the handle of her umbrella that conjures or your woman said i can be given ample room for just two people can now that american ton of money the men seemed to relax he smiled for the first time and when he did the landlady shivered will give you forty week for the room two weeks in advance and will take our meals elsewhere forty a week the old woman leans toward him and shook her head i hate to say it i do but you can get a better places for forty weeks or yes well then i'll take your money when they want it like on the register nine gonna put some down

for the inspectors very well with tom parker ms jen this is done if that suits you can in our soda caught a room with the mattresses off the beds to sort of florid are no beds we get proper beds here good symbol around for new mattresses clean mattresses will pay for those two new mattresses and linens new never used have them on the beds when we return no mattresses newman staff costs are the man smiles again an old woman backed away from him he reached into his pocket and drew out three coins he took the land lady's hand turn that overlaid the coins on her palm i trust i will suffice tillman jewish our breath your nose and nod the man nodded in return never seen a lady were a men's clothing is before the old lady dropped her thumb in the woman's direction don't you talk he wanted to talk to me and said and the light on he took his companions are and the two of them left the house without

another word or a back or block them and hold the door quietly shut behind them what she was sure they were gone the old woman clutch to restore the man had touched her the reason reading from lost and gone forever if the fifth in his popular scotland yard murder squad series today on k pr presents we're talking two winners of the two thousand seventeen kansas notable book awards let's stay with another suspenseful story i heard people is the first book by lawrence after cody smith the year is nineteen eighty eight the place leavenworth kansas it's about two young brothers to kid brothers who live in leavenworth kansas which has a prison pallor haram who they encounter a stranger at their apartments pool while the same time a prisoner has just escaped from one of the local prisons that's the set up and so it takes off

from there the present is everywhere in the book the mom or first to their neighbors is the guard the warden you yourself grew up in leavenworth how close to home does the fed in terms of the way i describe it the actual setting details that's pretty close to the leavenworth i remember the mood that the book creates about the north is different so growing up i wasn't scared as the kids they're kind of scared or least there's this ominous feeling looming over if that happens the book that wasn't my experience because it was your time that i knew i never been outside of leavenworth i didn't know that it was sort of abnormal for a town to have so many prisons so how that houses tried i think best actor to what i knew but the mood it's certainly a lot more intense which helps for the book i think you talked to me about the mirrored her people have had deeply creepy feel to

it even on that dated a normal interactions when nothing disturbing is going on you still have a feeling that something's not quite right right on that's intentional eye so part of it is a reading device to increased attention to pull the reader along and also to sustain the mystery so on the surface that the book can be viewed as one about family about the fracturing of the family about brothers about friendship and relationships on but there's always that a mystery intentionally throughout he and i think that helps pull the reader along in addition to the setting one of the themes that runs through the book is the relationship between the two brothers and how they navigate their relationship with their mom they're constantly pushing the antelope older brother is canceling prison on though in terms of what can they get away where they're left unsupervised for long periods of

time and there's a lot of exploration of their freedom and this is probably the best way to put it yeah i mean it really helps set the book is set in the eighties it feels like an eighties in before seen before what people calling a helicopter parenting whether you want to call it any smart parenting arm so they have the freedom to explore the world to make both good and bad decisions ray so what i think we talk about the city of leverage itself but also the time period of the piece and a surly essential i got about thirty pages into the story before i realized that the protagonist does not have a name what you did that i think initially i was putting it off it you know what i won the maine and then the more i played with it the more i liked it basically arm and so i think i like it for a few reasons one the main ones is a lighted intimacy it

creates not necessarily for the narrator himself but how he refers to his brother your says my brother my brother my brother because in many ways he's very possessive of his brother you know so and the stranger starts to intervene or intercede he does not take that well he and thus begins a sort of fractured relationship so i think it works really well for that get an image can think of our community and it also really adds to that sense that's there's something you look creepy going on here that is something a little unsettling maybe is the better way to put it right yeah i like that you use in the word creepy so much faith that i never thought of it that way oh it is a suspenseful gritty out the creepy works you know whatever gets you to turn the page that's fine yeah i think so too and maybe also it helps with like their universality of it so the brothers could be any brothers annie kid brothers and not the name them to understand who they are what they want and if you haven't older

sibling you probably can relate to identify some the things that come up in the book so that idea that your older sibling is exploring his or her freedom and ended as the younger sibling you know that mom one like that you're breaking the rolls and so i do about that i don't wannabe a tattle tale yuan go along with them as they're basically a train this new world and that this new stage of life i would say earlier summit talking about how they of this expiration two ounces of rome leavenworth without that as tradition that's when the strikes response ive has lead the people we just get so mad at the parents because the boys are continually putting themselves into danger or others are putting themselves into danger here people are saying where that after the parents are but at this point the creepiness recanted to read a passage i'm sure somebody read a passage that's really on that's describing the setting of leavenworth so when i talk about the book at the

cannes book fest for going to talk about how writing the setting not only help me understand the characters and store itself but when i return to leavenworth explored some of the settings that these scenes are based on it also help me understand the setting in a deeper way which was really cool and like a different reaction going back to these places that i hadn't visited him in quite some time if we are quiet the drive home my brother wrote up front in a minivan and purple and great for eurostar there was the last big purchase we made as a family i sat back and silent star and out the window smashing myself a serious thinker really i just watched the city passed by with no deep thoughts we cut through the heart of downtown which was designed to echo a time known i knew could remember the streets were narrow built out of brick and had names like delaware and cherokee in honor of the people the settlers have captured and killed there are dotted with the same old life the first that the city when it was the city when i was just a

nice town growing fat with hope on each side there are small time shops in the occasional bank and when the streets were empty like they were this morning i like to imagine them as the site of a showdown an old western gunfight i could almost see the all time not lost horizon the town until my dad wrote in the new sheriff and put every troubled to bed once out of downtown we drove past the city's park it was windy ingrained in there are no kids playing their men in orange jumpsuits however prisoners spearing trash as armed guards looked on the source i was an uncommon whenever we drove through the city i can count to ten without seeing some sign of a prison that big billboard at the end of the city that read come do some time in leavenworth the guards in uniform who crawled out of their houses at all hours in a locked or cars with countless keys attached to the hip that teary eyed out of towners you asked for directions to a given prison where they would visit their locked up loved ones it was all part of where we lived still common as it was sometimes without brother and i had been bad

that a warning for the day before a mother my still that thing and down plant the men in jumpsuits say something like see that's why you do what i tell you you want to end up like that do you today she drove by without a word that's hurt people by listener lawrence congratulations again funding in the chances of water medicine but when you hear the term wild places what do you think of unexplored mountains the desert you probably don't think of kansas but maybe you said george frazier of lawrence is the author of the last wild places of kansas thanks for joining us towards thank you for having me what is a wild place so that's a good question and one that i ask myself when i was in graduate school here in words because even though i was born in kansas and i was in love with the american wilderness and you know i spent summers hiking in the

western and doing things like that i always thought of kansas as a place to come back and study bow but like a lot of other people one day i woke up to the place around me i said why would like to experience that feeling that i get looking for welders in the west right here in my home state and that led me to the quest and some answers are sort of difficult about what as wilderness mean in the context of a state like kansas what this wilderness mean one we don't have any wilderness is like we have our west in terms of spatial extent ok so we'll have a yosemite national park or anything like that but we do have a wild place a matter because kansas played a significant rolling the environmental history of this country and people forget that year and so to me there are two things first of all what is a wild place and second of all how do you get to them and let's take the second one first kansas is ninety percent

privately owned think about the first like ninety eight percent of our lands our private property i'm not saying that's a bad thing at all and certainly in terms of the preservation wild places it's not because our private landowners are the best stewards of our wild places cause they have such a great connection to the land but because the demographics of kansas changing and because even though we think of ourselves as a rule people now over fifty percent of kansans live in just five urban counties if you wanna get out and experience you know the bio regions and the wild places around you there's only two percent of public land and it creates a frustrating and palin and a strange situation if you wanted to build a sense of place so in that context i try to avoid using the term wilderness in kansas instead you know a chinese driver has said that space plus culture equals place and so i started just using his term while place and so to me a wild places is a place that may have an unusually high

levels of bio diversity unusual or threaten plant or animal species exclamations of topography but more than anything these places for some reason or another they told stories so you might go in fine to say a spring and chase county in and it's a really magnificent pristine side with watercress and urgent prayer around it and if you know say for example your grandmother live there she may have stories about the place from when she was a girl and it turns out that oftentimes they're even native american stories that predate it so these stories span generational and cultural boundaries and it's fascinating and there are so many places like that in kansas but they're not for the most part in our state parks for public roads wars many are on private property and many are in places you and expect to look to the places that you explore are not out in the middle of nowhere there in suburban kansas city take a fair yeah so i grew up in oval park and i was amazed to find that there are two

springs in a why can see kansas and one in johnson county there have been associated with association with shiny traditionalist leaders that a relatively unknown and when i was growing up completely un marked one of them is the grave of the shoddy profit at the white feathers spring in argentine history can see kansas so the shiny profit was to come says brother and together they lead a pan indian confederacy to resist american settlement in their homelands in ohio and indiana and then eventually skipping the details the profit came to kansas when the shah nice were you when the shot used it to the indian territory in kansas as it was ten square park to show a profit and that he set up his final sort of prophets town above an ancient spring that we know has existed from the time of the kansas and back hundreds and hundreds of years in the nineteen thirties it was the only spot that in dry up during the depression in that region some people came in the war from

an aunt why did he pick a side above this beautiful spring i don't know but a dead ends today even amazingly go see the spring still running and it's it's in it you know a very settled part of can see kansas and thirty eastern china tribe and they had the details wrong but says some of the shoddy goods now purchase this land and are you doing some work to kind of improve the site where the grave probably owes but you know this is a place that's been there for a long time locals know about it but i didn't and that it's a wild place because you note and chinese sources here with the site and it's been there for hundreds of years and it's amazing if perhaps the least wilderness here in the whole book but you can go then twenty seven miles away in southern johnson county is another spring an amazingly it's associated with another shiny traditionalist black bob and then you know like

people drive on black bob rose nearly what the heck is that or maybe they only think about it turns out he led a very secretive klan and chinese to kind of just want to keep to themselves and keep things going like they were before they are moved to the west and when they are in johnson county day probably the history so if you hear the associated around this cave called a black bucket on private property the huge spring runs out of a cave its it looks like the ozarks when you're there and it's almost impossible to believe that if you walk a few feet out you're surrounded by these large anti tie thousands and the history is fantastic and interesting ron mckay but but it's just an example that if you know how to look you can find wild places anywhere to read an excerpt from her book i am so this is at the end of a chapter where i talk about old growth forest and the amazing pecan grove at fort leavenworth the woods on whether it fits or national self image or not much of american history is gathered in the grass strewn haphazardly behind old barns and

fields cashed in undiscovered archaeological sites impose townsend harbored in the little clumps of wilderness that still remain our american identity as an oil painting on a canvas of wilderness the fort leavenworth woods is still remarkable while place the pass beneath these because for the first to feel the footsteps of cans explores yet they remain past the parking lots the lives of the oldest trees span i'm at that period of cultural environmental change no lesson revolutionary when taken as a whole the ground under the four letter edwards has harbored many lines that divide clashing forces lines dividing civilization from indian country dating coaches like the nez perce in the cancer from the onslaught of manifest destiny wasp easy such as the carolina parakeet from extinction the abolitionist fervor of leavenworth lorson priest a kansas from the stubborn clutches of slavery in western ancient wild ecosystems from the rest of the mode down plowed under railroaded drywall urbanize suburban atlanta dominate kansas today a few trees at fort leavenworth and the cross timbers are older than the entire written history of

kansas born in a time when people still spoke languages that involved to describe the landscape of prairie enforced and sky unlike the wailing wall or the temple mount or vatican or stonehenge iconic monuments made from bricks stone timber this force is an actual living thing although virtually unknown to most people live near it it remains a no man's land for both sides of those dividing lines i hope it stays that way that's george frazier of them aren't reading from the last wild places of kansas journeys into hidden landscapes i'm kenny macintyre today on tv our percents it's the two thousands seventeen kansas notable books the best new books by kansas or about cancer's selected by the state library of kansas kansas noble others will be honored at the kansas book festival on saturday september ninth in topeka you can find out more about the festival on their facebook page or at kansas book festival dot com you're listening to katie our

prisons on kansas public radio judith fertig of overland park is the author of the memory of lemon tina thank you so much for coming in today as greta uk cleared an e lee davis is a pastry chef who owns a bakery called rainbow kate tell us about claire and her own unusual knack for helping people find just the right flavor well aa in researching the book i was intrigued with the idea of synesthetes year and it sap pouring configuration in which i have a lot of fat musicians have this where they might hear music as color or and i thought with europe pastry chef what if you sensed feeling as flavor and you know just like when a song comes on the radio and you have that feeling that you were back in junior high in your first love you know that feeling is that a hyperlink to a story so she's able to kind of sit with somebody she gets the flavor in her mind she

incarcerate tasted that's the link to the feeling that someone has amassed the entree to this story that they have that big she needs to help them with much really start isn't just making its juggling the conflicting ideas that brides and their mothers have about what makes the perfect wedding well it's it's innate conflict and so that's always kind of fantasy and howard how this gets resolved and i think if you've ever been involved in planning a wedding at it there's plenty of drama that i bit it just comes out of the blue although my own daughters wedding i think was that was a very fun thing to plan but but it's not always that way you know you have to it in this case the mother has very strong months awaiting a certain way and her daughter wants to complete the city completely different and so finding that common ground where it still going to be beautiful and lovely and meaningful

is part of really stop to let the you come by your knowledge of baking and food quite honestly as author of several cookbooks are you write about food and you describe yourself as a self proclaimed barbecue queen buffalo bit more about yourself that well hey it started off as that this is how high school english teachers go astray and then i taught at the college level and then when i was married we moved around a lot and i had to have a portable career and so writing was that thing so then i really enjoyed getting have to specialize in something so i specialized in food after writing about food for a long time i thought well what is what is the next frontier for me as i was gonna keep me interested in this and i thought why white fillet ever does inside your your brain what flavor does what what meaning does that have word how does that make you feel and and so the best way to do that whereas was

in fiction which as an english major i had always wanted to do anyway and so that's how that all came together to serve evolved from what i had done before i was writing a cookbook do not letting yourself go you're here staying to task in your ear writing specific instructions in your testing recipes your kitchen space like clear when you write a novel it to cook up a good at a a a could i get you to read an excerpt from the memory woman sure and this is from and this is not a spoiler alert be this is from the end of the novel but it's not a spoiler alert i am and this is after idiot contentious wedding ii has drawn to a very satisfying close so i and she's set in the cabin and she wakes up in the middle of the night and she wraps herself up in in a quill pen and comes downstairs i actually stayed in the cabinet where it this was said in kentucky with the x

marks on the logs it was in a i imagine what the scene was going to be like but i will start with this time i had started the day with the homeless father whose reasons for leaving her family had been a mystery and a grandmother so lost in the fog of dementia but she couldn't tell me more now i had seen as i let the stories wash through me i began to understand all the difficulties with this quote hillbilly wedding had been necessary to get me to this place so i could connect with the past i didn't realize i had it was up to me to find a way forward the memory of lemon had given me clarity such sadness such loss but such love that was where it remained loved was the current that ran through every story i wanted to read through the time and space and tell my father that it was all about love i sat back down in a rocker

feeling my body polls with energy unlike the women who had lived in this haven't i had no violent i had no song to call my loved one to me that i had the memory of lenin the flavor that was send the signal for me a beacon of hope and comfort from my father i held it on my tongue in my mind the flavor he would recognize as love i close my eyes and spread open my heart i said i guess i'm a message he was loud it was safe to remember the typhoon the helicopter crash the girl with blue hands the little boy with a goat the dark had the smell of urine what happened in the deep end in tonight that swallowed him whole it was time to bring that story out of the darkness hold it up to the light and tom hall that's the memory of lenin read by just fertig and overland park today thank you so much i think a

how explain their inspiration in many places nature love our next canvas notable either found hints at mcdonald's and as ethel is the author of fast food son it's a collection of forty seven poems all about fast food dennis welcome to kansas public radio thank you katie thank you for having me tell me the story of the inspiration for a fast food science right so i worked at mcdonald's very much my own formative years when i was sixteen and i left when i was twenty three so i've had several years i mean seven years of working at mcdonald's and as a poet you know we do things as poets i like drawing on our experience is in a poetry always feel is about the human experience at that it's it's more difficult to write about something that you don't know about than it is to write about something you don't know about and so actually the poems in

this collection i started back in two thousand three when i was a student at washburn beginning our second undergrad degree at washburn and those were the some of the first poems were about the mcdonald's experience thinking about being a mcdonald's and what it meant to work at mcdonalds as well as have this secret life of writing poetry as i thought ok i'm going to write the poetry about working at mcdonald's and so that's where this came from and so i just had worked on them over the years you know writing here and there and there's a publisher his name's brian gall course he's also a teacher character you and he has the call city review press and call center of beauty and i've always sent some of these rebels porn stickles interview and he just loved them he printed them in your publisher man he really became kind of that cheerleader for this collection and i thought okay i'm going to really try to work hard on getting

brighter more more poems and finally get this book what makes a really you know yes i'd like you read several poems from her collection but i want to start with the very first one indication of what a great way to do this the poetic tradition of writing to the news often the old roman poets would say oh sing news in this one it starts with well read this poem invocation oh saying ronald clown with oversized hips painted smile and floppy shoes that don't fit through doors that continue to easily close as saying of your friends the boy who takes after his father the burglar steal words call on the mayor of verse with his head like a cheeseburger out purple monster named after his grimace scare them with lists into a mixed bag to go i write sits on a plastic bench come close i listen for you

whisper like static through drive through speakers the strain of years it dig under the vote the name a variety of song to task to sing out from a styrofoam casket built up fab applaud it it's the perfect heartening baggy read today assigned to the news thank you so much i yeah i just wanted to really have fun with these palms deadly i write about a lot of the things about the strife about the struggle of working fast food there was a time in my life even where i was working at mcdonald's but in my soccer school college and living out on my own and so it really meant a really big struggle of like back then you could put yourself through college working amid the plots now i'm not so much because of the really the higher expenses but it really meant a lot of that you know that strong of really make dolls was kind of my number one food source so we're poems are like that line both very humorous and yet and they do talk about the struggle and

there's a little touch of anger in some of them we know about some of the frustrations that and that people have working in the fast food industry or in any industry where it's a minimum wage job can you share another poem or to witness sure i'll actually share one about that about the frustration of have working because when you are me you are wanting to make a better life for yourself but also that is senior working you have a job so this one's called closing the store on summer nights the closing our turns to cleaning turns to leaving at two in the morning as night employees stretch out on the grass beside their parked cars as the automatic like shut off like they are told to do commands given by the manager each faced turns to the stars those wishes to find a way out of this job the hands that touched burgers to rap and rappers fixed cold drinks now smell of greece and french fries now dig to replace those chromosomes

with grass and flower petals fingers pushing deeper into the earth so i really wanted that really i love that verse the image i am now that i think about some of the things that grow like the fleet of the potatoes for french fries come from there he i think that's another poem companies get out your pen the guy and you know that's the thing i love about poetry is the ability to express these things in placing these images together in a way that and you wouldn't normally think about that you're going into the place of memory and trying to figure out what's there that you can pull back out so when you are working at mcdonald's way back when did your fresh air andy if your poems with your co workers and now i did and i did not i do i do believe they knew i was going to college and there were several there are two other managers who are also going to college and they knew i was why wasn't going into computer programming and those decades bubble but the

poetry part was really a hidden part of my life and it was actually a part of trying to learn how to become a better writer i was given the advice to keep a journal and then those journals became poland's so again it was really a kind of a hidden part of who i was in it you know it just takes i think a lot of people are the way i've always heard from others that why write poems but i don't really show them to others and in a mask on a buying curse the most traction with somebody really because it is that's i think becoming a better poet is also being able to let go of those poems into the world of others and then when you're like go it creates that space to write even more pockets having said that could you let go of another one of those palm sugar ok that this is another humorist palm ants and it's about when you basically in trouble by a manager if you're working in mcdonald's and they decide to put you on the french fry station

that's when you know you've really done something wrong and you have to work a french fry station for an entire shaft so this is for all those bastard employees have to work the french fry station it's called small fry as pie this meant after being called out as lazy you were placed on the station for bagging french fries knowing anyone can pick up the handle place containers on the end with a flick of the wrist since escaped fries falling down off the pile think of how the son feels outside compared to the heat lamps reflecting off the black mirror how the beach feels as saul gets stuck under your nails with the frying oil people come in and check you out looking hot in uniform as of glowing from the fluorescent raise with the power to make many servings just by request dennis at sort of the other of fast food sonnets dennis thank you so much for coming in today

thank you so much terry it was great to speak with you if you're just joining us today on tv are presented with the kansas notable books two thousand seventeen were visiting with many of the kansas notable others including robert consul of shawnee he's the author of a nest of hornets bob thank you so much for coming in today and nest of hornets is the third in the gideon harp trilogy tell me about the protagonist gideon hock who is he and what do we need to know about him the most important thing to remember as they did in iraq is an ordinary young man living in extraordinary times how and when we met him in the first book i he was fifteen going on sixteen living in lexington massachusetts and he was struggling with a lot of the issues that young men in trouble with her he was an

orphan and being raised by his hour and for his uncle matt's guardian his uncle has some pretty specific ideas about what get into do his life and gideon's not certain that he's onboard with that plan so he's trying to figure out you know who is we want to do it starting the trouble was we know who we love all the changes on april nineteen seventeen seventy five when the british march to lexington on their way to conquer giddiness caught up in the fighting and nixon in common and he decides to take up his late father's rifle in and join the fight against the ground and he becomes one of the small core of soldiers you stay with the colors through thick and then so by this third book in the trilogy and massive hornets he's really in the thick of it tells a little bit about the plot of this story what set in the winter seventeen seventy seven it is right after the american victories in trenton and princeton so from a historical perspective

as the british have sort of withdrawn from new jersey into a small couple small enclaves and in new jersey into new york and they have this huge supply line across the atlantic that is incapable of feeding all the mouths they have defeated south both from you know men women children horses so they have to go out into the leaders the countryside to forage for supplies and the new jersey militia and accountable army or mild feel pretty good about themselves and they are not going to let the bridge go unchallenged so drought that winner there's almost constant fighting as the british go out to get supplies and they're constantly under attack by by the militia and that the cavalry out one british officer the time described before into the yemeni countryside as walking into a nest of orange that's the title you ari yourself a retired army officer and a veteran of iraq afghanistan and the

balkans what did your own military experience bring to the writing of this story i think you we are floral products or experiences in that for pretty much my entire adult life minus alaska pierson i'm i was now a soldier and so i've been around a lot of soldiers and i had the upper tunisia work with some some really amazing people both and out of uniform from a number of different countries now you know i spent i spent pretty visceral time with three soldiers then with the german soldiers so now it's being in this band my series the so steeped in syria against second thing i can extend them a little bit better now my eyes and fought in wars that were far from home there were nicer partner they're against pushing him play by the rules so i can sort of see from the bricklin of the time but i think that now the them saying that i don't care about the most with this is that hey

i'm i don't want to glorify war because i've seen it now my seen the aftereffects here that stands now this is about my mom there's a cost so you know when ideally for me one way young men are wanted for this book and reads about it they think a little bit about the cost more than i do think that there are some things are worth fighting for and i think that this guy like to think that if i was right that time out of here i would have been an indirect with gideon i am but daya its seed that's that's very important to me i also try to bring out the third the toll that the war takes on the individual i know a lot of folks myself included who support for extras and our dean's over some posttraumatic stress you know there's some there's some debate in literature about whether or not that was a thing back then their human it took a toll and i think it manifested itself always there were different and it was recognized as such but there you

know has if you read the entire hall the stories you'll see that over time getting gets it takes a toll as well it workable there are still a number of manifestations start to take it on on his compatriots and i'm robert as well but crystal is the author of a nest of hornets not can i get you read a passage from your book you surely can disease after gideon's first experience with other thing called and scott who's in austin and endures a militia and that a skirmish mom your most of new jersey at a place called the nest knowles getting witnesses that her girls got basically execute the prisoner who was eyad new jersey loyalist and given his is really shocked by this calm and this is his he's now gone back to camp and he's meeting with with chris

monroe and it shared with her what happened is the refugees to overthrow unionist chanting join to talk about the two more slowly side by side we're starting i'm sure you heard about the scrap of the most though yes i assume you're a little that we're deathly little of everything right we snuck around the flying can cut them by surprise well and how the fired the militiamen most of the dirty work in fact again very very dirty how so justin jones took a prisoner new jersey lowest just a private fears only the militia was grabbed him from us and well to kill him right there for me it happened so fast i couldn't stop at that horrible to your reporting that clinton turned report what commander shadow was a lieutenant colonel a field officer and it was only his men around really a belief

that you are suppose right to be inside russo been fighting for a long time and i've been pretty angry british but i've never seen it like this some of them will just awful good it felt insulting overcome by emotion he struggled to maintain control risk later on to get him to rest your hair shoulder a boyd was so scared he must've known what happened of the militia hold of them but i have no idea if i've known you couldn't stop a suit maybe maybe not lose hope i never see them tackle again that's bob crimes all of shiny reading from a nest of hornets it's the third book in his series of historical fiction featuring gideon hot a soldier in the american revolution our last kansas notable book for today is ghost sign poems from white buffalo it's a collection of verse from four poets and i'm shamus and melissa fight johnson and jt can all all of pittsburgh and our

orval on a formerly of pittsburgh and now living in the kansas city area our ally stomped into the kb our studios to talk about their book without the title goes nine poems from white buffalo well many years ago back in the early eighties in fact probably nineteen eighty two for a call and jt can all end on bush opened the coffee shop in pittsburgh in the old hotel still well in the coffee shop was going to be a place for artists musicians poets writers to come and have coffee and talk the place to meet and they did just that and the problem was it didn't just that ending the the artists and the poets would come into my cup of coffee and settled it and it was hard to pay the bills with only guys buying cups of coffee jt and on fontenot for a long time it was called of the white buffalo calf an important business

folded but the idea of the white buffalo which was we were told by our that that was a sign of spirituality among native americans i speak without any experience on just word of mouth it hearsay but nonetheless jt put together this group of sort of troubadours who would good forgery and none and sing songs give readings around me on around here and so he asked me to go with them i think are first read suicide problem can see it was not a part of the group at the point and then after that i was within minutes and went to the joplin for really and we sort of melded so we were called white buffalo the gate the title a book ghost sign is a reference to

the science center on buildings that were painted in today bygone here that have all but faded away and and yet they're up there you can still see them and i really appreciate those store owners and business owners who keep the sun you now as sister archaeological evidence of nothing else that there were others before it's you know we i think we could we begin to see our connection to our ancestors to the past and i think that special end up and yet another interesting thing for j t n i n and then probably the others the other two other younger jt and i can remember for instance when a lot of those businesses are now in depicting go sides are once thriving and so that for us that sort of symbolic of our own you know passing time in our

lives to slipping away and we wanted to to hang on to that set became sort of the really the metaphor of the entire book how can i get to the raid a couple of your poems from ca sein kann i don't know that this is the best poem in the group it does tell a story and it's about me and now i'm a boy in nineteen sixty one hand cams is having in south centennial year and so the great schools or asked to do projects and our class project was to the wellhead that the teachers are said gulf learn about cannes is basically i don't remember what we performed in front of the school but imam earl what all the kids did some of the things you know from the various grades and the neighbor lady took me and my neighbor lady jon schock

took me out her son out into the graveyard and we found the oldest grave in the cemetery kay sly calls pole hugging the oldest grave in the town's cemetery humming the oldest grave in the town cemetery was acclaimed as one among many grade history lessons completed by the third grade class during the kansas and toenail the class way to oman headstones drown them fescue and crawled below the juniper stitch newsprint with charcoal classmates visitor the old fort and balanced on the ramparts kitchen the faraway cries of stragglers from the skirmish on cow creek others and tilling the garden turned horseshoes between palms tomatoes unearthing a bit more of the iowa city blacksmith north of the natural ford some searched the unplugged pastures for buffalo was a military trail wagon rides the class but the whole below the

flagpole and painted planted a time capsule with their full names signed in pencil on a scroll of big chief they would each be one hundred and nine when they dug it up except for the new kid from missouri had been held back a grade he'd be one hundred and ten one of the memos that was pretty much happened around the teacher's saying now and hung in and hundred years were holding this up or i'll would be sure your shoes and you'll be hundred and nine no idea why i think that hit later is like wow hundred and nine and we can remember the other guy he be older versus those walls moments can i make a request how that another tornado warning you know that sense that that's the one open to first so here we are just off of tornado alley maybe were in a you know i don't know but i notice

that kansans and some kansans don't scare easily with tornado warnings care my mother and mother in law and father in law dante and they simply didn't cause it i've seen kansans know when the when the storm sirens go off instead of going to the basement to go on the porch how aware is that what's coming out there so this is another tornado warning in and i think you'll see that grandpa puts grandma in the closet with a flashlight and bottled water and a video poker game by and by he joins year ago yes to sit on a step ladder he closes eyes and listens to larry the white cop approve whimper below ground last year as the stew arm builds grandpa opens the closet door that television casts a pale blue eye across the living room

grandma sleeps and larry shivers with each roll of thunder the st louis cardinals are up by two runs and albert pools as stepping to the plate committee to pick out a poem that is one not written by you know here is yours one by mosul and it sets about her husband are watching my husband cook paula does most of final read this the way you learn watching my husband cook he moves down the length of the counter piano spitting left on the bench to play the lower notes three steady notches in the cutting board a bad russell's the fridge door opens and shuts i offer to help answer is no he's a cook i sit in the living room write poetry which is pretty and all

but we wouldn't starve without it the caps a turret of steven with the pots lived he pours water and elicits the magicians puff of smoke that's our or aligning reading from a ghost sign poems from white buffalo a white buffalo poets and many of today's kansas notable authors will be on hand for the kansas book festival saturday's september ninth in topeka you can find out more at kansas book festival dot com or on their facebook page we have several kansas notable books to give away if you'd like a chance to win it all our website k pr that kay you that edu under extra available giveaways i'm j mak entire k pr prisons is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas