By STEVE PFARRER
DANGER IN THE HOUSE
By Dusty Miller
Levellers Press
dustymiller.com
The late peace activist Frances Crowe of Northampton, who died Aug. 27, inspired many people over the years, and one of them was Belchertown writer Dusty Miller. Miller, who also counted Crowe as a longtime friend, used her and another late Valley activist, Ann Wilson, as inspirations for the composite character of Alice Ott, the central figure of Miller’s mystery series.
In Miller’s three previous “Danger” novels, Alice, an elderly cyber-detective in western Massachusetts who doesn’t let her wheeled oxygen tank slow her down, worked with a number of other unconventional activists to unmask all manner of bad actors — government operatives, nuclear power plant owners, a scheming natural gas company — who were bent on compromising the public good in the name of profit.
In Miller’s newest Alice Ott mystery, “Danger in the House,” Alice and her friends take on some new missions such as defending undocumented immigrants seeking sanctuary from government agents trying to deport them; they’re also trying to help a nurse who’s been victimized by racial profiling.
As the book begins, Alice is actually wondering if it’s time, as her son Ben has suggested, to take a break from her cyber-sleuthing; she’s not certain she has the energy for it after fighting off the company that wanted to build a gas pipeline through area farms and forests.
Alice is also trying to figure out what her French lover, Gerard, is up to, because he seems to be hiding something from her. And then, all alone in her isolated home on night, she hears mysterious noises just outside her back door — is someone trying to break in?
Miller’s books contain plenty of dry humor, as in this case, as Alice wonders how to deal with a possible intruder: “Alice thought fleetingly about her stance on guns. She was too old to change her mind on this issue, but there were times she wished she had pursued a martial art like karate … At the very least, she would have learned a blood-curdling shout to use in times of danger.”
The plot of “Danger in the House” thickens as a seemingly homeless teenage boy, Jackson, pops up in Alice’s life and a possible murder victim is found in the area — and soon Alice has set aside any notion of giving up her activism, and she and her crew swing back into action.
Miller, who draws on local settings and real news as blueprints for her novels, says she’s used the sanctuary movement in the Valley as one touchstone for her new book.
But this will be the last of the Alice Ott mysteries, she writes on her website: “Frances frequently joined me at local book events over the past 7 years, and I will miss her company as I continue without her. I will always treasure our very long friendship, and her dependable wisdom about so many things.”
There will be a book launch for “Danger in the House” on Friday at 4:30 p.m. at the First Congregational Church of Amherst. Miller will also read from and sign copies of her novel on Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley.
UPKEEP
By Sara London
Four way Books
saralondonwriter.com
A poetry volume that begins with a human explaining earthly customs to Martians? In Sara London’s new collection, “Upkeep,” her opening poems evoke both humor and loss as she tries to explain to an alien visitor how she grapples with her father’s death.
In “Martian Twilight,” for example, she writes “In the chapter on human / grief, you’ll find that with dreams // we exhume our dead without the mess / of upturned dirt. It’s a neat trick, // the way the brain draws to the fore / and even salts what’s dissolving // behind.”
London, of Northampton, teaches English at Smith College and previously taught at Amherst and Mount Holyoke colleges. She’s also the poetry editor for “The Woven Tale Press,” an online literary magazine, and has published two children’s books.
In “Braid,” she writes movingly about tending to an elderly woman whose mind has begun to wander: “she descends the stairs, / lips quick in conversation with / shadows, her cumulus hair so / strangely combed out that its / weather confounds—thick / mists of it hovering past breasts, / down eight decades of a still / girlish spine, and she asks / Will you braid it?”
There’s also an ode to the seals along the coast of Cape Cod: “You watch us / through fogged fraternal eyes/ / We walk and talk, blue gams // scissoring a wide swath; / you loll, raising a forefinger / in a yoga pose, whiskers sifting // the day’s contracting sun.”
As one critic puts it, London’s work “embodies what Seamus Heaney called ‘the steadfastness of speech articulation,’ in which her care for language is continuous with her care for people and the world.”
In other writing-related news: The Western Massachusetts Writing Project (WWWP), based at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has received a $5,000 Literacy Best Practices Award from the Library of Congress.
WWWP, whose mission is to expand literacy and promote reading, was one of 15 U.S. organizations recognized by the Library of Congress for such work.
WWWP works with teachers and students to improve writing skills with programs that are designed, as the group’s website puts it, to help people “from diverse backgrounds, paying attention to issues of race, gender, language, class and culture and how these are linked to teaching and learning.”
Steve Pfarrer can be reached at
spfarrer@gazettenet.com.