Pickett’s Dream
By Christopher Carlisle
Austin Macauley Publishers

Christopher Carlisle, at one time the Episcopal chaplain for the University of Massachusetts Amherst, later co-founded Cathedral in the Night, a Christian outdoor service and community in downtown Northampton open to all for prayer, discussion, and a meal.

Carlisle, also the executive director and founder of Building Bridges, the nonprofit group that runs complementary meal sites for U.S. veterans in four New England states, has also written and spoken about ways of bringing the church back to the tradition of Jesus preaching in the streets to everyone, regardless of wealth or lack of it.

As he sees it, the traditional church has strayed too far from that mission.

Those themes formed the basis of his first novel, “For Theirs is the Kingdom” in 2021, and he also explores some similar ideas in a second novel, “Pickett’s Dream,” which he notes on this website he wrote 30 years ago and due to the “vicissitudes of publishing,” was supposed to go to print but never did.

Now, though, “Pickett’s Dream” has found a home with Austin Macauley Publishers in Great Britain.

Carlisle conjures a bit of the feel of Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” in setting the story largely in the late 1980s, where the greed of the Yuppie era crashes into the Gilded Age homes and old-money wealth of Newport, Rhode Island. Yet there’s a whiff of decay in the Newport of this modern era, with some old properties now sitting vacant amid overgrown yards.

The story is narrated by Brooke Adams, the last member of a wealthy family; he’s an orphan who’s inherited lots of money but feels rather rootless. He doesn’t need to work, but he needs a purpose in life and at one point moves to France to finance and help run an American newspaper in Paris.

Brooke is eventually drawn back to Newport, where he reconnects with a woman he knows (and had a crush on as a teenager), Athena, another wealthy type who invites him to attend the wedding of her sister, Elizabeth, who will tie the knot in a small church in Ashfield, Massachusetts.

In Ashfield, Brooke is impressed by the Episcopalian priest who’s performing the marriage, John Pickett, a handsome guy who seems a little awkward and lives simply, seemingly deeply committed to his work. He also impresses the beautiful Athena: She’s an old college classmate of John, and now she’s smitten by him.

That’s a problem, since Athena is married (though not happily) to Ted Talbot, a former tennis star who’s an insecure bully and measures success by the size of one’s bank account. He’s kind of a stand-in for the greed and shallow careerism that came to personify the 8os.

“All he ever says,” notes Athena, “is ‘Time is money!’”

So when Athena, the son of a bishop, pulls some strings to bring the penniless John to Newport to become rector of the wealthy Newport parish, and Ted senses the depth of her interest in John, Ted tries to humiliate him, then begins to investigate him with hopes of tripping him up.

And when John improbably becomes the owner of a vacant, million-dollar Newport mansion, the rumors really begin the fly. Is Pickett the priest actually a drug lord? A tycoon who’s successfully hidden his wealth? What does it say about his faith? Or is he genuine, and his detractors the real villains?

In the end, “Pickett’s Dream,” as told by the disillusioned Brooke, becomes a parable about greed, inequity, faith and spirituality vs. religious dogma, and a nation drifting from its purported values.

As Brooke says, “In a polarized world between those who had too little and those who had too much, we had become a disingenuous class of democratic wanna-be’s. Either by God or an adulterated Darwin, we were the ones to rule, and had succumbed to the instincts of the entrepreneurs, and duplicitous presidents.”

 

Like Father, Like Son
Written by Lesléa Newman
Illustrated by AG Ford
Abrams Books for Young Readers

Father’s Day may be a few weeks in the rear-view mirror, but Holyoke author Lesléa Newman’s newest children’s book, a tale about how dads and sons can really connect, is still timely.

“Like Father, Like Son,” a picture book for young readers, is about fathers who find different ways to be role models for their sons — not by playing sports or doing outdoor stuff like fishing (though that can be part of it), but by showing their sons how to be caring and gentle.

With warm artwork by AG Ford, who has illustrated picture books by high-profile authors such as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Sharon Robinson, and Desmond Tutu, Newman’s story depicts dads whipping up cupcakes, growing flowers, and comforting their sons with a hug.

Newman’s fathers also practice forgiveness and calmness.

“The day I broke his favorite lamp / My Daddy said, ‘That’s okay, champ,’” Newman writes. “He didn’t yell or punish me. / He acted kind and lovingly.”

That’s a pretty cool dad, since the illustration depicts a basketball next to the busted lamp in what looks like the family’s living room. No basketball net in sight.

And when one of the young narrators of “Like Father, Like Son” falls off his bike and scrapes his knee, his dad tells him it’s perfectly OK to cry.

Newman’s new book also presents characters of different colors and ethnicities, and it depicts one young boy in a wheelchair, fishing contentedly off the end of a dock alongside his able-bodied father.

 

Sabor Judío: The Jewish Mexican Cookbook
by Ilan Stavans & Magaret E. Boyle
The University of North Carolina Press

Given how much he writes, and variety of topics he covers, it seems inevitable that Ilan Stavans would turn his hand at some point to a cookbook.

But the Amherst College professor and book publisher, collaborating with Bowdoin College professor Margaret Boyle, offers a bit more than that with “Sabor Judío: The Jewish Mexican Cookbook.”

The new title, by the University of North Carolina Press, is in part a celebration of Mexican and Jewish culinary traditions. But it’s also a history of Jewish immigration to Mexico from 1492 to the present, as well as an examination of how flavors and dishes evolved in Mexican and Jewish kitchens and fused to create a distinct cuisine.

For instance, Stavans and Boyle — she teaches Romance languages and literature and directs a program in Latin American and Caribbean studies — describe how the traditional Eastern European staple of pickled herring has been modified in Mexico by fiery chilies and other ingredients.

Huevos Divorciados con Arroz is a playful name for sunny-side-up eggs that are separated on a plate, sometimes by rice, and topped with different kinds of salsa. The authors note that “Divorcidados” is in part a playful reference to a “Mexican Divorce,” which American celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe pursued in the mid 1950s because it was easier to end marriages in Mexico than in the U.S.

“Sabor Judío” contains dozens of recipes, offered for breakfast, lunch and dinner, as well as color and black and white photos of many tasty looking meals.

Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.