New novels by Ayelet Waldman, Heather Brittain Bergstrom and Jessica Levine and poetry by Matthew Zapruder and Viola Canales are among this month’s new releases by Bay Area authors, as is a collection of short novels by the late Gina Berriault.
“Love and Treasure” by Ayelet Waldman (Knopf, $26.95, 368 pages) Waldman’s novel starts with a promise. When Natalie Stein, a recently divorced New Yorker, goes to the coast of Maine to visit her grandfather, Jack Wiseman, he gives her a rare necklace and asks her to find its rightful owner. Natalie agrees, and thus begins a fascinating journey back through the 20th century. The novel begins in 2013 but quickly shifts to 1945 Salzburg, Austria; Jack’s a young lieutenant in the U.S. Army, charged with guarding the Hungarian Gold Train. Its cars are filled with riches — jewelry, fur coats, beautiful carpets and Shabbat candlesticks, all confiscated from Hungarian Jews by the Nazis. Jack, who sincerely believes the contents will be returned to survivors, is shocked when his superior officers begin carting off the spoils. When he meets Ilona, a Holocaust survivor living nearby, his commitment to guarding the treasure acquires a new dimension. Eventually, the story moves to the early 20th century, with Waldman adding suffragettes, a comically rigid Freudian analyst and a theatrical troupe of singing dwarves to her list of characters. It’s an ambitious novel, but the Berkeley author never loses sight of her central themes — love and destiny, art and war, theft and redemption. Like the necklace that Jack hands to Natalie in the book’s first pages, “Love and Treasure” is exquisitely crafted and filled with secrets.
“Steal the North” by Heather Brittain Bergstrom (Viking, $27.95, 336 pages) Heather Brittain Bergstrom’s debut novel tells the story of Emmy Nolan, a teenager living in Sacramento with her mother, Kate. Unaware of her family history, Emmy sees her world turning upside down when an aunt she didn’t know existed suddenly surfaces. Kate and her sister, Bethany, were teens themselves when Kate — unmarried, pregnant and scorned by their father and the members of their fundamentalist Baptist church — fled their small town in Washington. She’s kept her past a secret, but as the story begins, Kate asks Emmy to travel north, meet Bethany and help heal the family rift. Bergstrom, who grew up in eastern Washington and now lives in Chico, evokes the beauties of the landscape as well as the conflicts between its Native American and Christian populations. “Steal the North” introduces a large family of well-drawn characters, all seeking enduring ties.
“The Geometry of Love” by Jessica Levine (She Writes Press, $16.95, 292 pages) Berkeley author Jessica Levine also introduces her first novel this month. Aptly titled, “The Geometry of Love” recounts a love triangle that takes shape in New York in the 1980s. Julia, a poet who has all but given up writing, is shopping at the Barnes & Noble on 18th Street when she runs into her old friend Michael. The encounter calls into question her stable yet stifling relationship with her boyfriend, Ben, an English professor at Princeton; suddenly Michael, a composer, reminds her of the creative life she’s set aside. The story jumps ahead in time to Northern California, with the triangle becoming a square; if the story meanders a bit, it’s worth following Julia as she works out the math.
“Three Short Novels” by Gina Berriault (Counterpoint, $19.95, 340 pages) Longtime Bay Area readers will welcome this collection by the late, great Gina Berriault, a California native who lived and wrote in San Francisco and Marin until her death in 1999. Included are “The Son,” “The Lights of Earth,” and “Conference of Victims,” all of which were originally published as separate editions and have been out of print for years. Berriault wrote movingly from a woman’s perspective, and these short novels are illuminated by her insights; when it was first published in 1984, Andre Dubus praised “The Lights of Earth,” saying, “it involves the hearts of all of us seeking the lights of earth, the soul’s blessing in its long, dark night.”
“Sun Bear” by Matthew Zapruder (Copper Canyon, $17, 120 pages) Award-winning poet Matthew Zapruder, an Oakland resident who teaches at Saint Mary’s College, publishes his fourth collection this month. His poems are well worth reading: rich in imagery, direct in their use of language, dreamlike, humorous and profound in their depth and reach.
“The Little Devil and the Rose: Loteria Poems” by Viola Canales (Arte Publico Press, $16.95, 133 pages) Palo Alto’s Viola Canales evokes childhood memories and moments from small-town life along the Texas-Mexico border in this beguiling volume of poems, printed in English and Spanish.
Contact Georgia Rowe at growe@pacbell.net.
