Welcome to Fred

Fred is a small town in Texas and our main character is a preacher’s kid named Mark.  Mark’s family has moved around a lot, but now ends up in Fred.  Brad Whittington writes with a lot of humor as Mark navigates the turbulent waters of 1968 adolescence, trying to be a hip, bell-bottomed teenager who is plopped suddenly into a plaid-shirt-and-blue-jeans redneck community.  He muses about his peers:

With graceless effort they shot deer, snagged perch, played football, and rattled in pickups down dirt roads.  George Jones and Tammy Wynette oozed from their pores like sweat…. They dipped snuff, spitting streams like some ambulatory species of archerfish…. They split logs and infinitives, chopped wood and prepositional phrases, dangled fish bait and participles– all with equal skill.

When he would mention Alice Cooper to his friends there, they would respond with “Who is she?”

Mark’s dad, the preacher, is hilarious too.  His kids are used to his tongue-in-cheek biblical-styled expressions.  Even when pushed to limits of his seemingly endless patience by lug nuts which won’t budge, his “swearing” went like this…

A pox on the miserable cur who in a drunken frenzy of iniquitous pride ever blasphemed the Name of all that’s holy by inflicting the innocent and unsuspecting saints with such a diabolical device as the impact wrench.

Throughout the story, Mark searches for spiritual truth.  He doesn’t want to blindly accept the faith he’s been taught throughout his life, but also doesn’t want to offend his parents by expressing his doubts (or suffer their wrath!).  But when he finally has the courage to speak to his father, he finds grace and wisdom.

I enjoyed this book so much, it’s exciting to know there are more books in this series and quite a few penned by this witty author.

Leota’s Garden

This Christian novel explores issues concerning the elderly: the problems they face, how they feel, what kind of care the want, don’t want, and need.  It also explores a lot of relationship dynamics.

Leota is the elderly person in question.  As the story opens, she is lonely, abandoned, declining, fearful, and wants to die.  She doesn’t see the point in living anymore.  Her neighborhood has decayed and changed:  she no longer knows anyone.  She can’t drive anymore and even getting groceries has become an insurmountable obstacle.  Her family has abandoned her due to festering bitterness and lack of understanding of events from many decades previous.  In desperation she calls an agency to send her someone to help her get groceries.  Francine Rivers does a masterful job of setting up the story and letting us feel the abject loneliness and fear of this once-vibrant woman.

Then Corbin enters the scene.  He is the privileged, arrogant college student sent by the agency to help Leota.  In reality, he only signed up to “help” in order to do research for a paper.  He had no compassion, just selfish motives which Leota saw immediately and went on the attack to let him know it.  He kept coming back and that developing relationship was quite interesting to watch throughout the book.  Corban’s views on the elderly in general, and Leota in particular evolved throughout as he came to know her.

Leota’s family dynamic was the other big theme.  Her daughter, Nora, felt abandoned by Leota as a child because of her childish misunderstandings of family events that had occurred way back then.  Unfortunately, she never tried to understand her mother and Leota failed to try to explain.  This aspect of the book was my least favorite, simply because it was so overdone by the author.  I got tired of going over and over and over the same territory as Nora continually ranted about her mother, her daughter and everyone else whom she thought had let her down.  Here’s a typical exchange:

“I’ve always been there for you,” her mother said in a choked voice. “Every day of life, only you never understood.  You never even tried.”  Nora turned on her furiously.  “When were you ever there for me?  Name once!”  Her mother didn’t respond to her attack.

And so it went over and over.  But, in rides Annie on her white horse.  Annie is Nora’s beleaguered daughter who finally escaped her mother’s controlling grasp when she left home after high school, moving in with a friend instead of going to the college for which her mother had groomed her.  Annie is a great character, but just way too perfect.  She is a Christian and is the kindest, most compassionate, gentlest, most “good” person ever.  Rather unbelievable.  Nora has always kept Annie away from Leota, but when Annie leaves home, she decides to finally get to know Leota for herself.

Leota’s garden is abandoned at the beginning of the book, a symbol of Leota’s life.  By the end of the book, Annie has brought it back to life, just as God has worked to heal and restore many of Leota’s relationships.  There is quite a twist toward the end, but no huge surprises in a Christian novel of this kind.

I first read this book in the 1990s shortly after it was written and I loved it at the time.  This time around in 2016, I am in my 50s and intimately involved with elder care of parents and in-laws, so it hit much closer to home.  Uncomfortably so at times.  I appreciated seeing the world through Leota’s eyes, but I didn’t appreciate the sentiment that the worst thing in the world is to put your elderly relatives in a nursing home.  Sometimes that is the best choice even though it’s painful for everyone involved.

Gerald Ford

Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. became the 38th President of the United States in 1974 and our only President who was never elected as either Vice President or President. Richard Nixon appointed him VP in 1973 after Spiro Agnew’s resignation in the midst of a criminal scandal a mere 10 months before Nixon himself would resign due to his own scandalous and criminal involvement in Watergate.  He certainly felt the awkwardness of his situation:  at his swearing in as President he stated,

I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as your president by your ballots, and so I ask you to confirm me as your president with your prayers.

Prior to being catapulted into the highest office in the land, Ford had served as a U.S. Congressman from Michigan for 25 years, spending 9 of those years as the House Minority Leader.  During his years in Congress, and indeed during the course of his whole life, Ford was well-known for his friendly, can’t-we-all-just-get-along nature which uniquely suited him to preside over the country during the tumultuous aftermath of Watergate and the agonizing end of the Vietnam War. Even as a teenager he was described as being agreeable, uncomplicated and likable.  He told a high school classmate that

If you accentuate the good things in dealing with a person, you can like him even though he or she had some bad qualities.  If you have that attitude, you never hate anybody.

No wonder Nixon wanted him to come on board during his dark moments.  He knew Ford would stand loyally with him. Unfortunately for his own career, Ford believed in Nixon’s innocence longer than anyone else.

Douglas Brinkley, the author of this biography aptly entitled Gerald R. Ford, did a great job of encapsulating the entire life and career of Gerald Ford in a very readable style providing enough detail for me to become acquainted with the man and his work without trivialities becoming ponderous.  I was intrigued by Jerry’s childhood and the fact that he was born Leslie Lynch King, Jr.  His mother had to flee from his abusive father and she later married Gerald Rudolff Ford who gave the young boy his name without ever formally adopting him.  He excelled in playing football and even turned down two NFL spots because he didn’t want to be diverted from his goal of attending Yale Law School.

Ford joined the Navy after Pearl Harbor.  A couple of years after the war he married Betty who was a model and dancer as well as being previously married. Her less than “proper” background for that era did not seem to hurt his prospects as Gerald was elected for 13 terms as a Congressman.

One of the more notable events of his tenure as Congressman was that he served on the Warren Commission investigating the assassination of John F. Kennedy.  Later, when he was in his 90s, he was absolutely incensed over Oliver Stone’s movie JFK because of what he knew to be gross misrepresentations of the actual events.

After taking office as President he was much maligned for pardoning Nixon for his role in the Watergate affair.  Ford felt he did the right thing to allow the country to move forward and not be bogged down for years in court cases about the matter.  People saw the pardon as a statement of Nixon’s innocence.  On the contrary, Ford had done his research and knew that a pardon contained an imputation of guilt.  He says that he would not have pardoned Nixon without believing that Nixon knew that he was guilty of crimes.  Many years later some journalists and historians finally agreed that Ford had indeed made the right decision for the time. His role in the mid-1970s was that of a healer of great national wounds involving issues such Nixon, Vietnam, and economic woes.

Ford did run for his “own” term as President, but alas, his bid was unsuccessful.  He was a Christian but also pro-choice centrist which didn’t really mesh with the Republican party’s platform.  He was also pegged as being a bit of a bumbler with the media hyping every trip and stumble. So, it was not to be.

At the end of his long life though, people recognized him for being a healer and conciliator.  Betty says he “loved God, his family, and his country.”  As I finished this biography I genuinely liked Jerry.  He seemed to have no hidden motives.  He tried to do what was right.  He was loyal to a fault.  I hadn’t looked forward to reading this presidential biography but I’m very glad I did.

 

 

Not Tonight, Josephine

Oh, George!  I do love George Mahood’s books.  They are hilarious, though irreverent, accounts of the author’s own escapades. I could quite do without the vulgarities, although some of them are so British in nature that fortunately I didn’t know what they all meant. This Mahood memoir was particularly interesting to me because it was about a road trip he took through the U.S. (I am American) in a Dodge Caravan minivan which he named Josephine (I used to own a maroon Caravan just like his- except for the fact that my four tires were all the same size).  My husband also enjoys George’s books but since he hadn’t read this one yet, he had to put up with my continuous hoots and snorts of laughter while I was reading.  And all too often, I couldn’t resist telling him what I was laughing about.  He’ll have a few less surprises when he reads it for himself.

George, Mark (his friend and traveling companion), and Josephine get into one difficulty after another.  Josephine breaks down a lot, the guys try to sleep in the van, they meet hilariously-characterized strangers, they are pulled over by cops and park rangers (once for driving too slowly), and try to figure out small-town America.  He takes us along on the whole trip from the East Coast to the West and back again.

One of Josephine’s idiosyncrasies was that her windshield wipers didn’t work– and the guys didn’t bother to get them fixed.  This could be problematic at times.  A rain storm hit as they reached Houston.  And it was no longer daylight.

As the rain hit us the visibility was reduced to zero in a split second.  It was like we had driven into a carwash.  But without those big blue brushes…. I instinctively wound down the window and stuck my head out, squinting into the rain to try and keep my eyes on the road.  It was surprisingly effective.  My hangover and lack of sleep from the night before had been lingering, but I was instantly revitalised.  The wind and rain attacked my face like an extreme form of acupuncture…. It was incredibly invigorating… I had never felt more alive.

The two young men were intent on experiencing middle-America, not the cities they had constantly see on American TV and movies.  And they sure did see the heartland of the U.S.  They experienced national parks and convenience stores, hostels and cheap motels, diners and dives.  George even stayed in Colorado for the winter to work and snowboard.

By the end of the trip, George was able to rhapsodize about the America he had experienced during the course of eight months in Josephine:

My travels across America had exceeded all of my expectations.  Its cities were bigger, its mountains higher, roads straighter, rivers wider, lowlands sparser, buildings taller, lakes greater, winters colder, gas cheaper, portions larger, canyons grander, badlands badder, deserts desertier, desserts dessertier, taxis yellowier, Halloweens scarier, bears grizzlier, corn palaces cornier, ski slopes snowier, Brians greasier, prairie dogs dafter, walks hikier, bacon crispier, green salads beefier, park rangers speedier, mechanics wackier (and sometimes grease-you-up-and-screwier), crazy golf crazier, drive-thrus noisier, and its people friendlier than I could have ever possibly imagined.

And yes, there’s even romance.  You’ll have to  read the book yourself to find out all about Rachel.  Enjoy the ride– and the laughs!

Behave

Adromeda Romano-Lax penned this intriguing novel based on the lives of early-20th century behavioral scientists Rosalie Rayner Watson and John B. Watson.  I have a degree in psychology– from a looonnng time ago– and I do remember those behaviorists.  What I didn’t remember was just how unscientific and unethical some of those early studies were.  This book weaves together the thought behind those experiments and the tumultuous personal lives of Dr. Watson and his graduate assistant Rosalie Rayner within the moral laxity of the Roaring Twenties.  This sounds dry, but this novel is anything but dry.

John Watson is portrayed as a womanizer with a tremendous ego and insatiable sexual appetite.  He thinks his behavioral ideas will transform society and is willing to do anything to make sure his studies support his ideas.  Much of his work is based on studies involving babies, and particularly experiments done with ONE child over his first year of life. It’s incredible to see how much stock he put in the results he got from little “Albert.”  Years later, a disillusioned Rosalie reflected:

He’d [John] be remembered for little Albert.  For his experiment with a single infant, which formed his views on conditioning, which informed his views on parenting, which informed his– our– authoritative book n the psychological health of all babies, all chidren, our own and millions of others.  One infant.  One ‘perfectly normal’ infant, but only one.

But the book is mainly about Rosalie, an ambitious student with a scientific mind who plans to use every new freedom that women had gained her day.  But then she met John Watson.  He was 40, she was 20 and she was honored to be chosen to be is grad assistant at Johns Hopkins.  She was quickly brought under his spell, both with the work they were doing and personally.  The two of them began a racy, “secret” affair which also involved Rosalie’s parents becoming entangled with John’s first wife.  Scandal and divorce ensues.

Rosalie and John get married although the scandal surrounding their affair cost them their jobs at Johns Hopkins and their professional cachet.  John gets a job in advertising and Rosalie becomes a stay-at-home mom.  Her privileged upbringing and John’s strict views on child-rearing are almost her undoing.  John expects her to uphold a strict schedule for the children’s sleeping, eating and even toileting at under two weeks of age, while he is out wining and dining every night.

John had always talked about three powerful drives:  fear. love, rage.  Rage was something I’d never yet felt in its fullest exppression (time enough for that, in later years)…. Maybe my own malaise now was the same fear I’d always had.  A fear of disappearing,  from the world,  from myself.  And now, from John’s affections.  I had to swim harder.  I had to keep my head up.  I had to be useful.

John had said that the only reason a baby should cry would be if he was stuck with a diaper pin.  She was under incredible pressure to do everything right.  Her errant husband also believed that affection ruins children, so the most affection he allowed for his sons was a handshake or ruffling of their hair.

He insisted upon scientific parenting but wasn’t around to actually do it.

As a story about people who wanted to make a lasting mark on the psychological health of large populations, this becomes a sad story indeed.  The Watson’s own unsatisfactory open marriage, their strained relationships with other family members, and above all their own sons’ damaged psychological health demonstrated lives full of dysfunction, instability and pathos.  It was a page-turner indeed… rather racy… and full of human drama.  It is a graphic portrayal of John’s outsized ego and Rosalie’s unravelling sense of her own worth.

 

The Kitchen House

This is an absolutely chilling story, by Kathleen Grissom, of generational abuse and slavery with  horrifying consequences.   ***many spoilers below***

Lavinia is a small Irish girl separated from her brother and sold into indentured servitude in Virginia after her parents die in 1791 on the boat coming to America.  She is housed with the African American slaves on the plantation who become her erstwhile family.  She considers Belle, who works in the kitchen house, to be her mother.  Belle is the daughter of the master and a slave woman, although the white community thinks she is the master’s mistress rather than his daughter.

The book chapters alternate between Lavinia’s voice and Belle’s as they recount one horrific event after the next.  The master’s son is abused by his tutor and his father fails to noice and won’t listen to what his slaves know is  happening.  This son grows up to be a monster, raping Belle (not knowing she is his own half-sister) and thusly fathering her child.  He later marries Lavinia who has no idea of the cruelty and depravity of which he is capable.  She soon finds out.

The story slowly builds in anguish for almost every character in the story.  Evil is so pervasive that it is oppressive for the reader.  As Belle notes,

I don’t see nothing but trouble coming every way I look.

By the time events explode at the end of the story, relief is in sight although it is by no means a happy ending.  The reader is just glad that the suffering is finally over.

Would I recommend the book?  Yes, if you’re prepared for the emotional agony the story contains.  It is certainly powerfully presented and well-crafted.  In the author’s note, she maintains that the book practically wrote itself after she became strangely pulled toward thoughts of what tragedies may have occurred on “Negro Hilll” located near a plantation tavern she and her husband had purchased in Virginia.  And even she found events of the story to be disturbing although all too plausible as she researched this era of history.

Saffire

James Holt didn’t know why he had been summoned from his Dakota Territory ranch to the Panama Canal Zone in 1909 and I didn’t either.  Not for the longest time.  I ended up really enjoying the book although it felt like I was in the dark for way too long.  My favorite relationship of the book was that between Holt and T.B. Miskimon who was assigned to work with Holt while he was in Panama.  The banter they exchanged was a lot of fun once I caught on to their personalities.  The historical background of the Panama Canal building era was fascinating and Brouwer’s writing makes you feel the heat, humidity, dust and danger of the area.  Holt’s personal story unfolds very gradually throughout the book as we eventually are clued in to the origin of his crooked nose, his beloved daughter, and even the scar on his chest from a Sioux warrior.  My advice is to stick with this book– your questions will be answered as you go, although the final piece of the puzzle seems almost anti-climactic within the entire web of intrigue built up throughout the story.  (I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review).

Rainwater

Rainwater.  The title refers to a Mr. Rainwater.  Mr. David Rainwater, to be exact.  He enters the scene in the middle of the 1934 Dust Bowl in Texas like a breath of fresh air.  No wait!  Like a tall, cool drink of water on a hot, dry day.  He comes to refresh the community which is parched by drought, poverty and racism.  He also comes to refresh one Ella Barron who is living a grueling daily grind of running a boarding house and caring for an autistic child who is a total mystery in the 1930s world in which they live.

**Spoiler alert!**

One big problem, though, is that Mr. R. is terminally ill.  Now that doesn’t prevent him from working on fixing all the ills of the community or from thawing out Ella’s hardened heart, or from infiltrating her son’s locked-up mind.

It’s a good story.  The gritty descriptions of the government culling farmers’ herds of starving cattle was heart-rendingly portrayed.  Unfortunately, the simmering sexual tension between Ella and Mr. R. was melodramatic at times.  During a thunderstorm in the middle of the night they are both running around shutting windows and become acutely “aware” of each other:

Their eyes stayed locked.  Ella’s heart felt on the verge of bursting.  She said hoarsely, ‘The storm finally broke.’ He held her stare for several moments longer, slowly shaking his head, ‘No.  It didn’t.’

My my.  I think we see where this is going.  I’ve not read any other books by Ms. Brown, but I understand that this one is pretty tame in the romance department compared to her other novels.

Mr. Rainwater takes on the town bully, defends the downtrodden farmers and shanty-town residents, seeks justice for a lynched black pastor, finds a way to reach an autistic child, and breaks through Ella’s staunch reserve to love her and be loved in return.  In short, he is a self-sacrificing champion of the underdog.  There are a couple of surprises at the end and the epilogue is needed to tie up loose ends.

Do I recommend the book?  Well, yes.  It’s a good read.  The characters are engaging.  It’s not great literature by any means, but it is a fun read and my book club enjoyed discussing it.

 

 

Going Home to Glory

General and President Dwight D. Eisenhower is the subject of this very personal memoir penned by his grandson David Eisenhower.  It details Eisenhower’s post-White House years spent in Gettysburg, PA (I used to live next door to their farm!).  Young David was 12 years old when his grandfather left office in Washington D.C.

He intertwines tales of living next door to his famous grandparents and growing up in Gettysburg, with accounts of the current events of the time period (1961-1969).  It was interesting to me to see how Ike was often consulted by John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson even though they were from the opposite political party.  Eisenhower’s political and especially his military expertise were valued during conflicts with Cuba, Vietnam and Russia during the Cold War period.

But the stories I found most fascinating were those about David working for his grandparents on their farm in the summers, receiving lots of advice and admonitions from his grandfather and the evident affection among the family members.  Despite constant visits from various dignitaries, they still maintained a quiet and down-to-earth lifestyle for the most part.

Interestingly, Ike didn’t have a driver’s license when he moved to Gettysburg.  He had to take the in-car test and passed despite the trepidation of family members.

Granddad took corners sharply; the squeal of rubber against concreate and gravel roads never ceased to surprise him, or unsettle me.  Each time we screeched, pitched, yawed, and lunged all the way out [to the golf course] and back.

David often spoke of the high moral ground his grandfather took on matters of state and home.  He believed that our country should “take the offensive on moral and ethical questions.  One of the General’s favorite quotes was from his respected colleague, John Foster Dulles concerning the U.S. as “the brotherhood of man under the fatherhood of God.  He believed that the “great ideas of the West” and “our cardinal concepts of human dignity, of free enterprise, and human liberty” would always overcome and demolish the currents of Communism, which was the great threat of the day.  Ike was brought up in a strong Christian home where the Bible was read daily.  He was often heard to say, “To read the Bible is to take a trip to a fair land where the spirit is strengthened and faith renewed.”  In a letter to his grandson, Ike encouraged David to uphold the family values:

Your dad has taught you to take your own part but never to be arrogant; to be polite and courteous but never servile; to value true friends above material things, and to be honest and loyal to all those poeple and those teachings that command your respect.

Ike loved his grandson dearly.  He named Camp David after him (and his father was named David also).  David worked on Ike and Mamie’s farm during the summers when he was growing up and Ike actually fired him once for goofing off.  He rehired him later the same day saying, “I allow all my associates one mistake a year.  You‘ve had yours.”  They always enjoyed the time they spent together.  They played golf and discussed politics, baseball, current events and David’s girlfriends.  Even though he liked Julie Nixon, Granddad urged David not to become too involved with
her while he was still in college lest she become a distraction from his studies.  David chose to ignore that piece of grandfatherly advice and married Julie in 1968 while they were both still in college and just a month before Julie’s father took office as the President of the United States (Richard Nixon was also Dwight D. Eisenhower’s vice president which was how David and Julie met as children).  David was terrified to tell his grandfather that they had gotten engaged against his wishes, but Ike wrote a very sweet letter to David to set his mind at ease in which he noted,

I am more than delighted that the two of you feel such a deep mutual affection.  You are both the kind of people who will, throughout your lives, enrich America.  Moreover, a love, shared by two young and intelligent people, is one of heaven’s greatest gifts to humanity…. I’m not only proud that you are my grandson, but my friend as well– to whom I give my deepest affection.

Eisenhower had a soft heart in many ways.  He struggled to make sure he said the right thing in a speech delivered 20 years after D-day.  He wanted to show respect for the families who lost loved ones there and to emphasize that those losses served to help preserve freedom for others.  He also labored for a long time over a speech to eulogize his friend Winston Churchill whom he considered one of the greatest men of the 20th century.

I am so glad to have read this endearing and human portrait of Dwight D. Eisenhower.  I lived next door to his Gettysburg farm for many years, but I picked up this book while visiting his boyhood home and site of his Presidential library in Abilene, Kansas earlier this year.  Reading it has left me with a much better understanding of this General and President and indeed of the decade of the 1960s.

 

 

The Last Jihad

Joel Rosenberg penned this novel before the events of September 11, 2001.  Somehow the terrorist attacks he imagined are uncomfortably close to reality.    In the Author’s Note at the beginning of the book, Mr. Rosenberg gives us the theme of his book:

To misunderstand the nature and threat of evil is to risk being blindsided by it.

Indeed, this scenario is evident throughout the book.  The story unfolds as an alternative to the actual events of the post-9/11 world.  But reality or fiction, the author’s ideas have merit.  He posits that Americans underestimate the nature of evil in the world and the evil intentions of truly wicked people.  We haven’t always believed that people can and will follow through with horrific plots and plans.  If we know anything at all about history or current events, we should know about the presence of evil in the world, yet somehow many of us still seem to be surprised by the next onslaught in one part of the world or another.  I guess Rosenberg’s point addresses that very mindset:  we should never be surprised by each next Evil Empire’s plots and actions.

The Last Jihad is about a possible scenario that could have evolved had Saddam Hussein survived and carried out more diabolical plans involving weapons of mass destruction.  The story does not lose its relevance for 2016, though, because as stated above, there is always a new dire threat to the peoples and nations of the world.  The story’s action begins some years after the 9/11 attack with a spellbinding description of new terrorist attacks on the sitting U.S. president and other NATO heads of state around the world.

I found the book to be exciting and interesting, if not always believable.  The president of the United States wielded incredible and largely unchecked power in this novel.  There is an abundance of people to try to remember and keep track of, but they fall into place eventually.  For me, it took a while to become engaged with the characters, but eventually those personalities were developed enough to make me care about or dislike them– but it was rather a case of “too little, too late.”  This is a first book in a series of four, so I assume that a lot of time needed to be devoted to setting the scene in this one.

There’s plenty of action though.  Terrorists.  Financial wizards. Intrigue.  Possible moles.  CIA.  FBI.  Missiles.  Israel.  Russia.  Iraq.  Nuclear weapons.  Fighter jets.  Air Force One.  Secret bunkers.  War rooms.  You get the idea.  There’s even romantic potential.  Keep your eye on Erin McCoy and Jon Bennett.

I’m afraid that I’m not quite willing to recommend– or discourage the reading of  this book yet.  Maybe after I read book two, I’ll decide.  If you try this one, let me know what you think.  I’ll leave you with a paragraph I particularly found to be thought-provoking.  The head of Israeli intelligence (Dr. Eliezer Mordechai) believes that the U.S. underestimates Hussein’s willingness to follow through on his threats.  A character with “inside” knowledge says:

…the only difference between Dr. Eliezer Mordechai and the top leadership of the U.S. government was that Mordechai took Saddam Hussein at his word, and we didn’t.  Or, to put it in his words; ‘I believe Saddam Hussein is both capable of and prone to acts of unspeakable evil, and you don’t.  I’m right, and you’re wrong…. I believe that evil forces make evil men do evil things.  That’s how I anticipate what can and will happen next in life.  That’s how I got to be the head of the Mossad, young man.  And why I’m good at it.  It’s going to be a horrible August, and my country is going to suffer very badly because your counry doesn’t believe in evil, and mine was born out of the ashes of the Holocaust.’

 

This little guy greeted me when I turned a page in my used book.  Is he the child who will turn into the next good or evil mastermind of the world??  I think I’ll leave him there for the next reader.