Fabulous Fiction Firsts #810 - Her Father's Secrets

Sun, 07/03/2022 - 7:08pm by muffy

The Catch by Alison Fairbrother (also in downloadable eBook and audiobook).

24 year-old Ellie Adler, a reporter at a D. C. news website, is devastated by her father’s sudden death at 52.  A minor poet, James Adler was charismatic and beguiling, father of 4 from three different marriages, he “celebrated holidays out of season” during summer custody.  Being the eldest and shares his writerly interest, Ellie always believes her to be his favorite, until at the reading of the will. Ellie learns that instead of leaving her his prized possession - a baseball that holds emotional resonance for them both, he has left it to a total stranger. Angry and hurt, Ellie sets out to track down this L. M. Taylor. It turned out not to be the mysterious woman lurking at the funeral.  

“Meanwhile, Ellie begins questioning her relationship with her boyfriend, an older, married man… She also parlays a work assignment into an investigation of (L. M.) Taylor's osprey conservation on the Chesapeake Bay to learn more about him,” (Publishers Weekly) and his relationship to her father. 

“The importance of the baseball is linked to James’s most famous poem, “The Catch.” And in both the poem and the novel, the title’s meaning mutates as the truth about the baseball, and therefore her father, continues to unfold. “ (The New York Times)

BONUS FEATURE

The Cartographers * *  by Peng Shepherd (also in downloadable eBook and audiobook) is “wildly imaginative and totally mind-bending in the best possible way.” (BookPage)

It has been seven years since cartographer Nell Young spoke to her father Dr. Daniel Young after he fired her from The Map Collections at the New York Public Library where he was director, inexplacably over a cheap gas station highway map. Her reputation tarnished, Nell spends her days reproducing historical maps for collectors. But when Daniel is found dead in his office after hours, Nell discovers the same “junk” map hidden in a secret compartment, meant for her to find.  Online searches reveal that this particular map of an area in Upstate New York is not only rare (numerous copies lost & destroyed under mysterious circumstances) but is also extremely valuable and sought-after. She suspects the map is somehow related to her father’s death. For help, Nell turns to her ex, a fellow cartographer who now works for a tech giant. Over time, Nell also connects with the talented group of cartographers who were friends of her father and long-dead mother. 

"Cleverly imagined.... With an elaborately realized plot, fanatic cartographers, maps with surreal powers generated by phantom settlements (intentional errors), and many-faceted suspense, Shepherd contrasts science and art, obsession and love in a bedazzling metaphysical tale of lost and found." (Booklist)

 “Readers will be hooked and find their imaginations sparking as they turn the pages…A shimmering delight, full of wonder, danger, and marvel. Suggest to readers of Erin Morgenstern, who has a similar ethos, and Natasha Pulley, who, like Shepherd, well knows how to end a story.” (Library Journal)

 * *  = 2 starred reviews