In need of a friend

A bright, talented, loving child lives grows up with a paranoid father who falls for conspiracy theories about politics, The parents neglect him, argue, scream and physically fight. Estranged from the father, the son leaves the miserable family to attend college and find success in an advertising career while struggling with the various extreme identities experienced with family, co-workers and friends. 

Identifying as they and trans in Make Sure You Die Screaming by Zee Carlstrom, the protagonist yearns for love and understanding. But the family’s and country’s politics are in upheaval. People are angry and unhappy, and life can quickly move from one extreme to another. The character relies on drugs and alcohol, loses the job and endures a head injury after a violent breakup with a lover. The mother calls to report the father is missing, and they heads off for Arkansas in a stolen BMW with a new young friend in tow. 

The road trip is funny and wild as the odd couple philosophize, argue, drink and meet an assortment of characters on the road in the effort to find out what happened to the father. 

Carlstrom tells the story of two of the many individuals in this world who navigate life without real family support or guidance. They have little choice but to go through life relying on scraps of kindness of others who could otherwise walk away. 

In the end, the protagonist confides their love for Yivi like a little sister. “You might not realize this, but you single-handedly got me through the worst weeks of my life. If you ever need anything, I don’t care what it is, I’m here…. And if I never hear from you again after tomorrow, that’s okay. I’ll still be happy knowing that somewhere out there I have a psychic, communist, knife-wielding, drug-dealing, and huge-hearted garbage-goth friend named Yivi.” 

Good people are out there but for far too many, they are hard to find.

Family memories

We manipulate our memories and they also manipulate our behavior far into the future. Things Don’t Break on Their Own by Sarah Easter Collins is about a wealthy, dysfunctional family with a controlling and abusive father. The youngest daughter rebels against the control, refusing to be complacent like her mother and sister. She sees problems and speaks out in ways that challenge family dynamics.

At age 13, Laika abruptly vanishes on the way to school the day after a difficult birthday party for the mother. The older sister, Willa, while remaining compliant with her father’s wishes, continues the search and cannot forget the bond she had with Laika.

Twenty-five years later, Willa and her husband attend a dinner party hosted by a former lover and her wife, joined by a brother and a memory expert, another brother and a woman from France. Liv, the memory researcher, points out that any group is likely to have “wildly differing memories of a single event, when you’d be right in thinking that everyone experienced the exact same thing.”

Willa’s husband is close to her abusive father and joins the man in suggesting that the sister died years earlier. Willa cannot dismiss the concerns, and asks about factors that influence memory of events and Liv points to good health and sleep as well as “state of mind, wish fulfillment, stress. Embarrassment. Humiliation. Guilt.”

Liv also explains how entire communities and consumers will shade certain memories, collectively attempting to forget and put certain difficult people behind. One character notes, “given we’re constantly bombarded with information, much of which comes with a certain agenda attached. We need to know the extent to which our memories are reliable, and, equally, the extent to which memory itself can be deliberately constructed.

The conversation triggers outbursts from two guests and helps Willa discover the truth behind her sister’s disappearance and the father’s role as he attempted to mask evidence of ugly control and abuse.

Families grow together, heal together, form memories together. Family members can break a cycle of lies, control and abuse by reckoning with the truth. Only then can painful memories be set aside, allowing forgiveness and love to thrive once again.

Interruptions

The tale is a familiar one...

Shares of  a small Canadian metals company skyrocket by 250 percent after the US government agrees to support the company's exploration efforts with a road in remote northwest Alaska.   

"The White House on Monday announced a partnership with Trilogy Metals as part of a push to unlock domestic supplies of copper and other critical minerals in the Ambler mining district in Alaska," reports CNBC. "Opponents of the long-debated Ambler Road project, a 211-mile industrial road through the Alaskan wilderness, have said it will harm landscapes that support local communities and wildlife."

The news story recalls the mystery novel Interruptions, set in Sitka and first published more than two decades ago, later released as an e-book in 2009.  

Two teenaged boys enjoy exploring the wilderness near their homes in Sitka, Alaska, and that includes following a mining engineer who is consulting on an unpopular road project. Gavin convinces his best friend to skip school and follow the engineer, intent on gathering evidence to to stop construction of the road crossing Baranof Island.  

The boys steal the engineer's backpack and trouble soon follows. One child is murdered. The other boy's mother, a leading opponent of the road, abruptly goes missing. Mother and son have no choice but to work separately to find the killer and expose secrets behind an unnecessary road that would forever change the character of an Alaskan community.

Back to the news: "The Ambler Road Project is a proposal for a 211-mile industrial access road and is intended to facilitate the development of at least four large-scale mines and potentially hundreds of smaller mines across the region," reports an opposition website. "It would cross 11 major river systems...."

The two proposed roads, one from a mystery novel and the other from the news, are more than a thousand miles apart and yet both have ties to mining exploration and Alaska Native corporations. 

When Interruptions was first published, Sitka was Alaska's fifth largest city with a population of 8,800. Its rank has since fallen to twelfth with about 8,200 people. On the other hand, Wiseman, near the Ambler road project, has about 24 people.