Fishwives – Sally Bellerose (Bywater Books)

Buy from

Bywater Books

Sally Bellerose made my cry, but I forgive her. It’s been almost ten years since she did it to me with The Girls Club, so I figure we’re overdue. This time, however, mortality and loss seem to be uppermost in both our minds. Despite this solemnity, her latest novel, Fishwives, also contains joy, compassion, and history—but above all, it celebrates the endurance of love.

Regina and Jackie need to get rid of their old, dead Christmas tree, but as they are eighty-nine and ninety years old, respectively, said task is more difficult than usual. They enlist the help of some neighborhood kids, tie the thing to the roof of their car, and take it to the dump. Yes, that’s the plot—interspersed with flashbacks that send us as far back as how they met in 1955, illustrating the highs and lows of their life together.

The simplicity of the plot is in direct contrast to the complexity of the characters, and Bellerose reaches down deep to come up with two very complicated women. What I loved most about Regina and Jackie—outside of their age, which I’ll get to in a minute—is their extraordinary ordinariness. They scrape by, financially and emotionally. Their health is in danger. They have had trouble in their relationship as Jackie has an eye for the ladies. Yet the same experiences that have left them with no security or stability for their old age have provided them with a wealth of memories and friends. Moreover, they ponder whether or not the tradeoff has been worthwhile, a question that becomes more salient to me as I get older myself.

You don’t often see eighty-nine and ninety-year-olds as main characters, and when you do, they are usually only that age when they are narratively framing the story of a younger version of themselves. Bellerose does indeed use that device as she flashes back to various points in their lives, but I never felt as if Regina and Jackie’s elderly present was given short shrift for their youthful past. I haven’t read anything as age-empowering since Matt Kailey’s virtually unheard-of story of love in a nursing home, Our Day Will Come, by now out of print but well worth searching out used.

Other characters? Sure, there are other characters; chiefly Regina’s sister Lynn and the neighborhood kids who look after the ladies, not to mention the friends and lovers who populate many of the flashbacks, but truth be told, those were secondary for me. Regina and Jackie are the stars of this show, and when the inevitable happens (which is as close to a spoiler as I’m going to get), you will be devastated even though you see it coming a mile away.

Fishwives is a wonderful story with an incredible pair of fully realized and totally successful main characters you’ll remember long after you’ve finished the book. And if you get the urge to chastise the author for such a long wait between books, don’t. Stories as rich as this aren’t written in a year. Highly recommended.

JW

© 2021 Jerry L. Wheeler

Unbalanced Mercy – J. Warren (Queer Space/Rebel Satori Press

Buy from

Queer Space

I have no desire to step in the fanfic argument because it matters not a whit to me where writers come from or how they cut their authorial teeth. I say this so no one will think I’m insulting the compulsively readable Unbalanced Mercy when I tell you its beginning reminded me of X-Files fanfic except Scully is the agent in charge instead of Mulder. What follows is an exciting tale of amateur magicians in over their heads, trying to keep a dangerous entity from breaking through to our world, aided by our two federal agents, a gay bookseller, and a magician out for revenge.

Special Agent Paul Lowe and Special Agent Miranda Burton are investigating The Order, a group of amateur magicians making magical objects. However, Delores Vandecamp, a rogue Order member, has stolen one of the artifacts, gone on a killing spree, and opened up a dark portal. Lowe and Burton will have to pull out all the stops to find and defeat Delores, but they have bookseller Derek Goldman and firebrand Stacey Durand, who has already battled Delores once and seen her mentor killed, along with a few others to try to stop her.

Lowe and Burton have the first part of the book as they begin their investigation and Lowe settles into his new role, so we don’t meet Goldman and Durand until about seventy pages in. The focus then changes from a police procedural to something a bit more character driven. Both Goldman and Durand are great characters: a middle-aged Jewish, bi-racial, cis gay man and a homeless queer teen who helps out at the bookstore while she seeks revenge. And they have a more interesting relationship than the agents do, so it’s no surprise that they carry the book once they appear. Not that the agents are uninteresting or useless. They set up most of the plot elements and introduce us to characters we’ll see again later, but theirs is a working relationship.

 Warren also knows his way around an action scene. He renders both skirmishes and battles with exacting detail, but you always know where the fighters are and what they’re doing. His prose is concise but never skimpy, and his pacing is flawless. He takes advantage of the lulls and valleys to build character, so that when it’s time to fight, the reader is fully invested in the outcome.

Unbalanced Mercy is a corker of a supernatural police thriller, and if that’s your thing, this will be enough to make you join the Malleus Maleficarum.

JW

© 2021 Jerry L. Wheeler