Shelf Life

Author: Jane Simon Ammeson

  • May We Suggest: Restaurant Menus and The Art of Persuasion

    May We Suggest: Restaurant Menus and The Art of Persuasion

    Whether we go out to dine, order online or grab a sack of burgers from McDonald’s on our way home, we use a familiar tool to decide what to get. But it’s one we seldom even think about though it ultimately impacts our budget and our food.

                  “We just take menus for granted, that’s one of the things that was so intriguing to me,” says Alison Pearlman who may be one of the few people who doesn’t. She first started collecting them when traveling with her parents and respective step-parents as a teen throughout the United States and Europe. Now Pearlman, an art historian and food aficionado, has written May We Suggest: Restaurant Menus and The Art of Persuasion (Agate 2018; $16), which takes a look at menus ranging from gourmet restaurants to fast food and casual chains and those in between.

                  File it under “it’s a hard job but someone has to do it,” in researching her book, Pearlman visited over 60 restaurants in the greater Los Angeles area where she dined, collected or photographed menus and documented her experiences.

                  “It added up to 77 visits because I visited restaurants multiple times so I could try the drive-thru and the eat-in and I went to Applebee’s in one location and then to a different Applebee’s over the course of my research after the Applebee’s chain started to roll out these tablet menus and so I went to an  Applebee’s that had one of those” says Pearlman, an art historian, who also tried three different versions of a Domino pizza mobile ordering app.

                  As Pearlman views it, menus aren’t just a piece of paper (or a chalk board or sign above the counter), they’re living documents.

                  “It’s a piece of the performance,” says Pearlman. “The servers, the interior design and the décor all amplify the menu, they’re all part of the environment and I think of them as partners in persuasion. The whole theater of the restaurant and what the menu says has a large role to play in that theater.”

                  Pearlman research such subjects as how menus are created and why certain looks are chosen, the use of photos, choices offered, descriptive words, tantalizing hints of exotic ingredients and even ordering items not on the menu—the latter making you feel like a total insider.

    So why not just order instead of trying to understand why a menu is structured a certain way?

                  Pearlman says we should care because menus broker a central relationship in our life—that of eating out.

                  “According to the National Restaurant Association in the United States, restaurants get 48 percent of the money we spend on food,” she says. Research by Toast, a restaurant point-of-sale and management system, indicates that 51% of American diners go out to eat more than once a week.

                  “Crafty, well-designed menus satisfy both diners and restauranteurs, bringing harmony to the relationship,” says Pearlman. “They do this by limiting our choices in what we can buy and how we can dine while convincing us that what they’re offering is what we want. It’s really not too much to say they impact our happiness.”

                  As for Pearlman’s relationship with menus, after writing her book, she says she has lost her innocence.

                  “I look at them in a totally different way,” she says.

  • Book Signings: Lost Restaurants of Chicago by Greg Borzo

    Book Signings: Lost Restaurants of Chicago by Greg Borzo

    For those of us who grew up in and around Chicago, there are names of long gone restaurants that still tug at our heart, evoking memories of foods no longer served, surroundings replaced and aromas we many never smell again.

    Hoe Sai Gai

              For me, that’s the allure of Greg Borzo’s latest book, Lost Restaurants of Chicago with foreword by Dough Sohn, the owner of the now closed Hot Doug’s.

              Borzo, a Chicagoan historian who has written several books about the city’s bicycling, transportation and history including its fountains frequently gives tours and talks for organizations such as Forgotten Chicago, the Chicago History Museum and Chicago Cycling Club. The idea for his latest came about when he and his friends were chatting about the good times they’d had at restaurants over the years and how many were gone. His book goes further back though, starting over a century-and-a-half ago.

    Jacques

              “My list of restaurants to research from at least a hundred people,” he says, noting that he still gets some complaints about places he left out but then with seven out of eight restaurants closing within a few years of opening, the number of those gone are overwhelming.

              I ask Borzo what some of his favorite are “lost” restaurants. Some he had dined at, like The Great Gritzbe’s Flying Food Show, a Richard Melman restaurant that opened in 1974.

    Maxim’s

              “It had a dessert bar and you could get as many desserts as you wanted, like a salad bar,” he recalls about the restaurant that closed in 1883. “There’s also Trader Vic’s which was in the Palmer House. Its décor was completely over the top.”

              When Trader Vic’s, a Tiki bar extraordinaire first opened in 1957, bringing it up to its Polynesian zenith cost $500,000 which included a décor boasting huge Eastern Island carved wooden heads, totem poles, canoes and massive Maori beams. It was part of the Tiki rage that swept the U.S. and Trader Vic’s had its competitors include Don the Beachcomber which featured 85 types of run and 65 different cocktails.

              There are also places he wishes he ate at but didn’t such as Maxim’s de Paris, which was opened from 1963 to 1982.

              “It was a replica of the Maxim’s in Paris,” says Borzo. “I went to it when it later when the building was an event space.”

              Which is another phenomena of Chicago restaurants.

              “Many single locations have been many different restaurants,” says Borzo.

    Indeed, Bistro 110 at 110 East Pearson used to be the Blackhawk, then became Bar Toma Restaurant which is now closed.

    “This book is a history book too,” says Borzo. “It reflects the character of the city through the food and showing the different income levels. Some people were going to diners, others to the Pump Room.”

    The girl on the trapeze at Flo’s Restaurant and Cocktail Parlous

    Borzo and I both share a laugh about the now closed Flo’s Restaurant and Cocktail Parlor which was located at 17 West Randolph, near what is now Macy’s flagship store. I used to see it as a kid when my parents took me shopping in the Loop. It was notable because a woman in a form fitting Playboy-bunny like costume and spiked heels climbed out on a swing on the second floor balcony to advertise the place.         

    Greg Borzo

              “I’ve eaten at a lot of the places I write about,” says Borzo. “And those that were already closed I tried to find people who had eaten there, researched old newspaper stories and searched through vintage photos.”

    Ifyougo:

    What: Greg Borzo talk and book signing

    When, Where and Contact Information:

    Thursday, January 24 at 5 p.m.  

    Cindy Pritzker Auditorium, Harold Washington Library, 400 S. State St., 6-7 p.m. A free raffle will give away more than $1,000 of gifts: trips, tours, food, books and more.

    (312) 747-4300; slpl.bibliocommons.com/events

    Saturday, February 9 at 5 p.m.

    The Book Cellar, 4736-38 N Lincoln Ave., Chicago, IL

    (773) 293-2665; bookcellarinc.com

  • An Anonymous Girl

    An Anonymous Girl

    Writing team Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen’s latest book, An Anonymous Girl (St. Martin’s Press 2018; $27.99), another psychological chiller and follow up to their best selling The Wife Between Us, tells the story of Jessica Farris who, thinking that all she has to do is answer a few questions to earn, some money, signs up for a psychology study. But as the sessions take on a scary intensity, she starts to believe the enigmatic doctor  conducting the study has somehow learned too much about her and the secrets she is hiding.

                  The authors recently collaborated with Times correspondent Jane Ammeson on the following Q&A.

    What was the inspiration for your latest novel?
    It’s tricky for us to answer this because our ideas percolate over a long period of time. Every day, when we are brainstorming our plot, we throw out about a hundred suggestions – and the next day, we reject 99 of them. But there are a few key elements we can point to that inspired part of the foundation of An Anonymous Girl.

    We wanted to create a sense of intimacy for the reader, so, in addition to having Dr. Shields’ voice be in the second person, we structured the ethics and morality quiz that Jessica took in a way that allows readers to consider how they would answer the same questions. This interactive element was really appealing to us, and we’ve heard from a lot of early readers that they loved answering the ethics questions and learning how their friends or book group participants would respond.


    Sarah Pekkanen

    Did you have to do much research in the field of psychology to write An Anonymous Girl?
    One of our favorite parts of writing An Anonymous Girl was researching the psychology experiments we incorporate into the novel. Greer was a psychology major (and English minor) and her mother was a practicing psychotherapist for many years, so this is an area of keen interest for her. And Sarah majored in journalism, with a minor in psychology.

    Greer Hendricks

    In fact, in college, Sarah was actually a guinea pig in a bunch of experiments through NIH (the National Institutes of Health) to earn extra money. At first, she did pretty innocuous tests, but the ones that paid the best were a little more invasive. The final one she did involved being given something that made her super groggy–then her dad found out about it, and that was the end of her time as a guinea pig!

    What’s it like co-writing? I understand you share many of the same interests and talk together all the time about ideas, characters, etc. How does that translate into the actual plotting and writing?
    We absolutely love working together, and we are a co-author team for life. We write every single line of our novels together, which is highly unusual – but we can’t imagine doing it any other way. Perhaps our biggest challenge was figuring out the logistics of co-authoring a book, since we live in different cities. There was a learning curve to setting up our systems – we needed to become familiar with Google Docs in order to write together in real time, and Google Hangouts so that we could simultaneously talk.

    Recently, we added in something new. We now meet in Philadelphia, midway between our home cities, for a 48-hour marathon work session every month or so. We stay in a hotel that has restaurants and a gym and we usually only leave the hotel for one brief walk outside. Otherwise, we work around the clock and through every meal. We bring along giant Post-It notes and cover the walls with them – detailing character notes, ideas for scenes, and the narrative arc of the book.

    One difference between us – Sarah likes the walls so messy that Greer has nicknamed her “Carrie” from the show, Homeland, whereas Greer prefers them to be neat. We get an enormous amount of writing done during our getaways – but as usual, our only enemy is time. We never have enough of it!


    Do you ever have disagreements about which way the novel should go or what the characters would/should do?
    We share strikingly similar narrative instincts, but occasionally we do have different opinions about the direction of the novel or traits of our characters. This turns into a discussion, not a disagreement. We have an important rule: If something in the book isn’t working for one of us, it isn’t working. We talk through it until we find a solution that makes us both happy. The foundation of our relationship is deep friendship, support, and respect, and that lends itself to a collaborative writing process. We have a saying we love so much we had it printed on matching shirts: Better Together. That sums up how we feel about each other.


    Did you scare yourselves at all when writing An Anonymous Girl? It certainly kept me on edge.
    Thank you! We take this as the ultimate compliment. During our brainstorming sessions, one of our favorite phrases is What if… One of us will come up with a chilling idea and then the other one will up the ante. We definitely try to creep each other out and love it when we give each other chills. That “goosebump” moment tells us we are onto something good and scary. Our goal is to create books with visceral, palpable tension.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xnbs1XodQs


    Ifyougo:
    What: Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen talk and book signing
    When: Tuesday, January 29 @ 7 pm
    Where: The Book Cellar, 4736-38 N Lincoln Ave., Chicago, IL
    Cost: Free
    FYI: (773) 293-2665; bookcellarinc.com

  • The Poisoned City by Anna Clark

    The Poisoned City by Anna Clark

    Like an accident in slow motion, Anna Clark, a Detroit-based journalist followed the crisis of toxic drinking water in Flint, Michigan.
    “I had my head in it for years and it’s still there, I talk about it and I can’t get my head about how it happened,” says Clark, who has written for The New York Times, the Washington Post and Politico.
    This obsession with the government’s failure to provide clean water in a once thriving manufacturing city whose population of about 99,000 is largely African American compelled Clark, who was a Fulbright fellow in Nairobi, Kenya and edited A Detroit Anthology, a Michigan Notable Book, compelled her to research and write The Poisoned City: Flint’s Water and the American Urban Tragedy (Metropolitan Books 2018; $30) which was an Amazon Best Book of 2018 . But she didn’t do so as a faraway observer. Clark, who graduated from the University of Michigan’s Residential College with highest honors, double majoring in History of Art and Creative Writing & Literature, and minoring in Crime and Justice and received an MFA from Warren Wilson College, has always been a doer.
    For almost two years, citizens of Flint complained about the water, showing up at meetings with jars of the putrid looking liquid that came out of the faucets and talked about how people were getting ill from drinking it. The GM plant in Flint actually changed their water system because the city water was corroding the auto parts they manufactured.
    “It wasn’t good enough for the machines, but it was good enough for the people?” Clark asks rhetorically. “I wanted to really dig deep. I loved the research and the long conversations with a lot of people. I traveled to Flint a lot, to attend events, meet people and just hang out. I audited classes at the University of Michigan on metropolitan structures, legal issues and water rights. There was so much information to connect. I really couldn’t stop until my publisher said I had to turn in my manuscript.”
    Clark says most of the credit for the crisis being covered by major media sources is due to the city’s residents.
    “They would go to Lansing to meet with legislators and attend meetings, the mapped where the symptoms were occurring,” she says, noting their work propelled the story to a national level which is when the state finally started took action. “I really think many people in positions of power didn’t think the people in the city mattered very much. The clear message is we don’t actually care to do anything sizable about it.”
    But what happened in Flint could happen anywhere. Clark also sees this as an urgent public health care issue and one that is even more important as the national conversation is about dismantling safety regulations.
    “Even people in less disadvantaged cities have lead in their popes,” she says. “At the base level of what a city should do for its citizens, I think safe drinking water is pretty basic.”


    Ifyougo:
    What: Anna Clark discusses The Poisoned City and then will be joined in conversation with Rick Perlstein, the author of several books. A Q&A will follow the discussion.
    When: Thursday, January 24 at 6 pm
    Where: The Seminary Co-op Bookstore, 5751 S. Woodlawn Ave., Chicago, IL
    Cost: Free
    FYI: 773-752-4381; 57th.semcoop.com

  • Brad Meltzer Book Signing: The First Conspiracy

    Brad Meltzer Book Signing: The First Conspiracy

                  It wasn’t easy being George. He lost his father at age 11 and then his mentor and half-brother just seven years later. He was a veteran of the French and Indian War when in his 20’s and then returned home to tend to his estates. But he was a man of duty who put honor first and when the British butchered Colonists who complained about the high tax rate, he showed up at the Continental Congress, the only man wearing his military uniform. Tall and handsome, his posture erect, it was almost immediately decided that he would lead the newly formed Continental Army.

    Barbara Bush Houston Literacy Foundation Gala Writer’s Luncheon at the home of Terri and Jon Havens

                  Though army might be too kind of a word. The troops were masses of men from the colonies—ill-fed, raggedy, without training or even much in the way of weapons (unless you count pitchforks) and given to gambling, cussing, enjoying paid encounters and fighting amongst each other. Not exactly an army to give the well trained, well-armed and smartly uniformed British much pause.

                  Add to that, the former Colonel Washington didn’t have the knowledge or the experience of a general and since there was no You Tube at the time, he would have to learn on the job and by reading the several books he bought on the subject. But probably most problematic, several of his very own Life Guards, hand-selected men who were to personally protect Washington were actively betraying him as part of a conspiracy to preserve British rule.

                  This is the conundrum New York Times best-selling author Brad Meltzer presents us in the opening chapters of his first non-fiction book, The First Conspiracy: The Secret Plot Against George Washington with Josh Mensch.

                  “It’s one of my favorite details,” says Meltzer, who is so enthusiastic about the story says the same phrase more than once about other incidents as well. “Washington wanted the best of the best for his personal bodyguards, called lifeguards and they turned on him. That just totally hit me, this is the best of the best and they turned on him! You can’t write a book like this if you don’t ask yourself what would have happened if they got him.”

                  Fortunately, we don’t need to ask. Washington is more than the man on our dollar bills, wearer of a white powdered wig, said to be heck on cherry trees and wore wooden teeth—the latter turns out not to be true.

                  When two of his men were fighting, Washington rode right into the fray, jumped off his horse and seized each by the neck to break it up.

                  “At the Battle of Brooklyn, he gets his butt kicks, and he could have said let’s just go out in a blaze of glory, but he didn’t,” says Meltzer. “Instead, he commanders all the boats and gets his troops across the East River. The British are coming fast but, in that moment, he won’t get on a boat until all his men are onboard. He’s the last one on. He’s risked his life for them and that’s when the troops really all came together.”

                  He launched this secret society of spies that led to the modern CIA.

    That’s why Meltzer says some stories that are just so good they need to be told the way they are.

                  Anyone who has ever read one or more of Meltzer’s books (The Inner Circle, The Escape Artist) or watched his TV series Brad Meltzer’s Decoded and Brad Meltzer’s Lost History, needn’t worry that this will a long slog into boring history. The story of spy craft, war and the treachery surrounding the Washington reads as quickly as any of his novels or shows.

                  “It was an untold story,” he says. “I discovered it the way you usually discover important things, in a footnote.”

                  That footnote led to ten years of research which Meltzer says he couldn’t have done without the help of writer and documentary producer Josh Mensch.

                  Besides a great read of an almost lost part of America’s history, Meltzer says he hopes readers see this not just as a famous story but a call to the greatness Washington showed.

                  “We’re all capable of humility, heroism and generosity,” he says. “We have to stop creating this environment where everyone who disagrees with us is shallow or stupid, we have to work together and to do that we have to start with ourselves, the only way to change the world is to first change ourselves.”

    Ifyougo

    What: Brad Meltzer with Josh Mensch talk, audience Q & A and book signing

    When: Saturday, January 22 at 1 p.m.

    Where: Community Christian Church, 1635 Emerson Lane, Naperville, IL

    Cost: Ticket for one adult, $34.00 ($36.18 w/service fee). This ticket admits one person and includes one copy of the book. Ticket for two adults              $44.00 ($46.53 w/service fee). This ticket package admits two people and includes one copy of the new book. Ticket price also includes a photo with author. Kids under 13 are free. To order: brownpapertickets.com/event/3914505

    FYI: The presentation is hosted by Anderson’s Bookshops. For more information, 630-355-2665.

  • Seduction, Sex, Lies and Stardom in Howard Hughes’s Hollywood

    Seduction, Sex, Lies and Stardom in Howard Hughes’s Hollywood

    When it comes to the #MeToo movement, Karina Longworth, author of the just released Seduction, Sex, Lies and Stardom in Howard Hughes’s Hollywood, is surprised. But not in the way you might expect.

    “I’m more surprised that people seem to think everything has changed with a snap of a finger,” says Longworth. “Centuries of institutionalized sexism can’t be fixed that cleanly or easily. Especially in Hollywood—although you don’t have to look further than our national daily political drama to see that toxic and dehumanizing ideas about women are still the rule more than the exception.”

    To tell the stories of Hollywood and its famed casting couch, Longworth chose oil magnate, inventor and movie producer Howard Hughes as a way to link the exploitation of women then and now by providing a group portrait of ten actresses who were romantically and/or professionally involved with Howard Hughes, from the late 1920s through the end of the 1950s.

     “Howard Hughes is remembered as one of the great playboys of the 20th century, and when this is discussed, a seemingly endless list of actresses is breathlessly unfurled,” says Longworth. “Reading such lists, I became interested in exploring the very full lives and careers each actress had, and what role being one of Howard Hughes’s girls played in their stardom. I decided to use Hughes as a kind of Trojan Horse through which I could tell the stories of ten actresses, both still famous and forgotten, whose lives and careers were impacted by his interest in them.

    Her research was extensive and turned up some interesting documents including a memo Howard Hughes once drafted about actress Jane Russell’s breasts, a subject he was fanatic about, so much so that he designed a bra to showcase them.

                  Longworth, the creator and author of You Must Remember This podcasts about the scandalous secret history of 20th-century Hollywood which has hundreds of thousands of listeners, is also the author of books about George Lucas, Al Pacino, and Meryl Streep. She’ll be in Chicago on Monday, January 14 for a book signing as well as the screening of Outrage, a 1950 movie directed by the sultry actress Ida Lupino about a woman whose life is almost destroyed by rape.

                  “Outrage deals with a uniquely female situation in a uniquely empathetic way,” writes Longworth about the movie. “After such a violation, it asks, how could a woman learn how to be around men again, to trust them, to let them touch her?”

                  Another goal in writing her book was to create an interest in the actresses on the list of Hughes’s conquests the author of books about George Lucas, Al Pacino, and Meryl Streep the author of books about George Lucas, Al Pacino, and Meryl Streep, many of whom are forgotten.

                  “I hope readers are moved to watch the movies starring some great actresses, fine stars and fascinating women,” she says. “If they seek out Ida Lupino’s directorial efforts, lesser known Hepburn films like Christopher Strong or Morning Glory, or the movies of Jean Peters and Terry Moore, I’ll have done my job.”

    Ifyougo

    What: Karina Longworth will join the Chicago Filmmakers for a special screening of the 1950 film Outrage as well as a talk and book signing.

    When: Monday, January 14 from 7 to 10 p.m.

    Where: Chicago Filmmakers, 5720 N Ridge Ave., Chicago, IL

    Cost: The ticket only option to the screening is pay what you can though a donation is encouraged. For a book and ticket, the cost $37.22 w/service fee. To order, brownpapertickets.com/event/3914967

    FYI: Women & Children First is putting on the event. For more information, 773-769-9299; wcfbooks@gmail.com or womenandchildrenfirst

  • BOOK REVIEW, SIGNING: New author Ma Ling hones ‘Apocalypse Office’ genre in dark comic novel

    BOOK REVIEW, SIGNING: New author Ma Ling hones ‘Apocalypse Office’ genre in dark comic novel

    Candace Chen’s life is so much about chaos and loss that she finds solace and satisfaction in her job coordinating the sourcing of materials and production of Bibles. It’s a job that entails such minutiae as making sure there’s a supplier for the crushed gems which decorate a specific best-selling Bible even though many of the Asian countries supplying the materials have had to close because the crushed stones cause lung disease.

                  But Candace, a millennial who immigrated from China when very young, works through such hurdles with aplomb, simply moving on, over and around any impediment. That’s one reason why she is chosen to stay at the company’s New York office as all the other workers flee, are dying or being turned in zombies by a virulent and unstoppable fungal infection called Shen Fever.

                  Candace’s story—from her early losses to her unplanned but not unwanted pregnancy in a Manhattan that is rapidly falling apart is told in Severance, the first novel by Ling Ma.  

                  Ma, who teaches creative writing at the University of Chicago, writes with a dry wit and keen sense of observation, shaping Severance into a darkly comic novel in a genre that might be best called Apocalypse Office and is unlike any other urban disaster books—or movies—I’ve ever come across. Ma, who has an MFA from Cornell University, was inspired in part by watching movies like those by George Romero, who was known for his satirical but grisly horror films such as “Night of the Living Dead” as well as TV series about Millennials like “Sex in the City.” But even more so her book was honed by working in an office and dealing with office politics which she describes as horrifying.

    “The company I worked for was downsizing, and I started writing this book in the last few months of getting laid off—a kind of fun, apocalyptic short story,” she says about the novel’s origination. “I wanted to be destructive in some ways, and fiction can realize a lot of fantasies. I was kind of angry, but I also felt extremely liberated and extremely gleeful at the same time; it was a strange combination of glee and anger at once.”

    Taking her severance and unemployment compensation, she continued to work on the story—as a sort of therapy. It was also an escape, just like Candace is first able to escape from New York and then from the cultist gang of survivors, freeing herself and going into the unknown.

    Ifyougo:

    What: Talk and signing

    When: January 17 @ 6pm

    Where: Seminary Co-op Bookstore, 5751 S Woodlawn Ave, Chicago, IL

    FYI: (773) 752-4381; semcoop.com

  • Brian Gruley’s Bleak Harbor

    Brian Gruley’s Bleak Harbor

                Life is indeed bleak for many of the town’s residents in Bryan Gruley’s newest mystery, Bleak Harbor (Thomas & Mercer 2018; $24.95). Carey Peters’ autistic son is missing, lured away by the offer of a milkshake and his mother and stepfather need to come up with $5.145 million to get him back.  Carey, frantic about her son, also has other secrets. After receiving a promotion to executive assistant, finance, at Pressman Logistics in Chicago, she ends up in bed with her boss, Randall Pressman, after the two share a celebratory dinner. It gets even more complicated. She turns down future intimate opportunities with Randall– she is married, after all. When Randall retaliates by harassing her at work, Carey steals incriminating documents proving his involvement in illegal activities and blackmails him for their return. 

                But that’s just part of the many ominous doings in Bleak Harbor. Pete, Carey’s husband, runs a medical marijuana dispensary and was buying cheap supplies from a Detroit drug ring. Besides her blackmail scheme, Carey’s mother, the malevolent family matriarch, Serenity Meredith Maas Bleak, has her own hidden past. Yes, Carey is related to the founder of the town which Gruley based upon a darker version of Saugatuck, a lovely waterfront destination in southwest Michigan.

                Gruley, who shared in the Pulitzer Prize awarded to the Wall Street Journal in 2002 for its coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and is now a staff reporter for Bloomberg News and Bloomberg Businessweek, draws upon his investigative journalism for ideas.

                “As a journalist, I’ve written stories from a lot of small towns,” says Gruley. “What I often discovered was that, whatever the larger theme of the story I was writing, be it an antitrust investigation or telecom deregulation, the real story was rooted in small ‘p’ politics—vendettas, rivalries, and grudges between the locals.”

                Gruley took a liking to Saugatuck as a model for Bleak Harbor while reporting a story there for The Wall Street Journal some years ago. Part of the interest is because of the lost village of Singapore, a boom town near Saugatuck during the rebuilding of Chicago after the Great Fire.

    “I learned about Singapore when I was reporting that WSJ story, and it fascinated me. A timber town buried in the dunes—what’s not cool about that,” says Gruley. “As for Pete and Carey, I started from a premise that they each had secrets they were hiding from each other and that those secrets might have put their son in danger. I had no idea at the start what those particular problems might be, but they came to me as I wrote. In Pete’s case, his struggles with the legal marijuana business stemmed in part from my reporting on a medical marijuana entrepreneur for a Bloomberg Businessweek story.”

    Gruley added mystery writing to his resume with his Starvation Lake trilogy (also based in Michigan). His first, Starvation Lake won the Strand Magazine Critics Award and was an Edgar Award nominee and his second, The Hanging Tree not only was the No. 1 IndieNext Pick for August 2010, a Michigan Notable Book for 2011 and a Kirkus Reviews Best Mystery of 2010 but has also optioned for a movie by writer-director John Gray. Even before its December 2018 release, Bleak Harbor became a #1 bestseller through the Amazon First Reads program.

    Gruley, who lives in Chicago, says Bleak Harbor isn’t quite as nice as the Saugatuck he and his wife enjoy visiting.

    “But that’s OK, because I’m writing about dark deeds and dark people, and I think the title should indicate that,” he says.” I don’t think of myself as a dark person–except, perhaps, when the Red Wings aren’t playing well. But I do gravitate to the sad, the brooding, the melancholy, the menacing, in the stuff I read, watch, and listen to: for instance, Lehane’s Mystic River, the film “Manchester on the Sea,” the twisted lyrics of Richard Thompson. I love the Star Wars movies, but my favorite is probably the darkest, “The Empire Strikes Back.”

    Given that penchant and the doings in Bleak Harbor, Gruley says the name Happy Harbor just wouldn’t have worked.

    Ifyougo:

    What: Bryan Gruley book events

    When & Where:

    Book Signing & Meet and Greet

    January 8 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

    Cook Memorial Library

    Cook Memorial Library

    413 N. Milwaukee Ave.

    Libertyville, IL

    (847) 362-2330; cooklib.org

    Authors on Tap

    In conversation with Jonathan Eig

    Wednesday, January 16 @ 7 pm

    The Beer Shop

    1026 North Blvd

    Oak Park, IL

    (847) 946-4164; beershophq.com

    Conversation with Gregg Hurwitz

    Friday, February 1 @ 7:00 pm

    Volumes Bookcafe

    1474 N. Milwaukee Ave.

    Chicago, IL

    (773) 697-8066; volumesbooks.com

  • Dog Gone: A Lost Pet’s Extraordinary Journey and the Family Who Brought Him Home

    Dog Gone: A Lost Pet’s Extraordinary Journey and the Family Who Brought Him Home

    9781101947012

    When six-year-old Gonker, a much loved family pet decided to do some typical canine spontaneous off-site exploring when navigating the Appalachian Trail with his owner Fielding Marshall, he was expected to shortly return. But after a while, though repeatedly calling the six-year old Golden Retriever’s name, Marshall began to worry that his dog was lost.

    To make it even more serious, Gonker suffered from Addison’s—a serious disease that effects dogs and is characterized by a deficient production of glucocorticoids and/or mineralocorticoids. If Gonker doesn’t get the necessary hormone medication needed to control the disease, he will die within 23 days.

    The story of the search for Gonker is told by Marshall’s brother-in-law, journalist Pauls Toutonghi in his compelling book, Dog Gone: A Lost Pet’s Extraordinary Journey and the Family Who Brought Him Home (Knopf 2016; $25).

    It’s a tale of a family’s search to find their dog in time and also of how, after Fielding’s mother, Virginia, sets up a command center, the community and ultimately the country. Indefatigable—she long had mourned the loss of her own dog decades ago, Virginia uses a map and phone book to jump start what will become a nationwide network of those wanting to help find and save Gonker.

    Relentlessly contacting radio stations, park rangers, animal shelters, the police and local retail stores, Gonker’s disappearance and the family’s search gets a write-up in a local newspaper where it is picked up by AP. Before long the nation is offering their help in finding the missing dog.

  • Chicago by the Book: 101 Publications That Shaped the City and Its Image

    The Caxton Club of Chicago, founded in 1895, has dedicated itself to the field of book arts—the creation of volumes using the structural, creative and craft disciplines such as design, typography, printing, papermaking and bookbinding needed to produce books that are more than readable; they’re also beautiful works of art.

    Courtesy of Grove Atlantic

                The little-known organization has grown from the 15 original members to over 300, but its focus remains the same.Over the last 123 years, in addition to sponsoring regular programs and occasional symposia devoted to the book arts, the club has published 60 books,each uniquely lovely—almost sensual in a way. And that is true of its latest, Chicago by the Book: 101 Publications That Shaped the City and Its Image (University of Chicago Press, 2018; $35), Its glossy pages, smooth to the touch, feature beguiling visuals of book and magazine covers, inside spreads, photos, song sheets and architectural plans and perspectives (by such notables as Frank Lloyd Wright and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) spanning more than a century and a half. 

                 “We don’t do a book every year, but maybe a book or two every decade,” says Susan Rossen, editor of Chicago by the Book and former publisher at the Art Institute of Chicago, because, as she explains, the work required is done by members pro bono, and time is needed for fundraising. Rossen became a Caxtonian in the early 1980s in order to meet other book lovers. She collects early twentieth-century volumes for adults illustrated by woodcuts and wood engravings.

    Illustration from Narrative of the Massacre at Chicago courtesy WikiCommons.

     “One of our major focuses is the book arts of the Midwest, and this book is an example.  It’s a book of books about Chicago—101 titles that reveal Chicago and its image as seen through the lenses of many different disciplines.”  The first entry in Chicago by the Book is Narrative of the Massacre at Chicago, written in 1844 by Juliette Kinzie.  The last is Sara Paretsky’s crime novel Brush Back.,published in 2015. In between, there are titles we might expect as exemplifying the city, such as  Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle; Gwendolyn Brooks’s A Street in Bronzeville; Norman Mailer’s Miami and the Siege of Chicago,; Mike Royko’s Boss: Richard J. Daley and David Mamet’s Sexual Perversity in Chicago and The Duck Variations, as well as  lesser knowns—A Portfolio of Fine Apartment Homes and The International Competition for a New Administration Building for the Chicago Tribune.

    Cover courtesy of Amazon.com

    Each title is partnered with a narrative by writers,academics, and book aficionados. For example, Alex Kotlowitz, whose groundbreaking There Are No Children Here is included among the 101, writes the commentary for Nelson Algren’s Chicago: City on the Make. Andplaywright Regina Taylor discusses Lorraine Hansberry’s Pulitzer–prizewinning Raisin in the Sun.

                Amazingly, of all these publications,even those published in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, just a handful are out of print. Most of those  can be found online and at local libraries.The very rare ones are available for viewing at such places as the Newberry Library, the Ryerson  and Burnham Libraries at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Chicago Public Library, and the libraries of local universities. 

    ”Chicago by the Book is less specialized than most of the books we’ve done in the past,” says Rossen. “We believe it will appeal widely to lovers of books and lovers of Chicago. It represents current scholarship, but the writing isaccessible and engaging. And we believe the book’s reasonable price–$35—will be attractive too.  This  is a book you don’t need to read from cover to cover. It’s arranged chronologically, but you can pick and choose what appeals to you. Hopefully, the entries and illustrations will introduce you to new reading experiences and/or inspire you to reacquaint yourself with books your ead long ago.”