Possum Summer

Possum Summer by Jen K. Blom

 

I love possums.  And I do realize that not everyone does.  ("They look like rats," is what most people say -- a comparison that isn't really fair to possums or rats.) When I started volunteering at a wildlife rehabilitation center a couple of years ago, the possums quickly became my favorites.  Sure, the baby squirrels and raccoons are cuter -- but raccoons are hooligans and squirrels can't be trusted.  Give me a quiet, civilized possum any day.

At my volunteer orientation the trainer said something that really stuck with me:  If you see a possum by the side of the road, you should always check, even if it is obviously dead.  Possums are marsupials -- mothers carry their young in a pouch, like a kangaroo.  So a female possum that's been hit by a car, for instance, could still have live babies in her pouch.  I have, more than once since then, pulled my car over to side of the road and braved traffic to check on the body of dead possum.  So far, I haven't found any babies.

So when I heard about Jen K. Blom's new novel Possum Summer I knew I had to read it.   The heroine of the book is eleven year old P (short for Princess, a name she hates), and she does find a baby possum.  When she takes her dad's cattle dog out into the woods without permission the dog kills a possum, and P rescues the surviving baby.  Feeling responsible for his mother's death, she makes a promise to raise him until he is able to live on his own.

But  P's not allowed to have pets.  Her father , who is serving in Iraq, believes that every animal on a farm must pull its weight.  Still, P is a girl who believes in keeping promises, no matter what.  She's already working hard to keep her promise to her father, to take care of the farm while he's away.  So there's no way she's going to let her new little possum friend -- who names Isaac -- down.

In a time when children's fiction seems to be increasingly full of heavy grown up problems on one side and vampires and other supernatural creatures on the other, Possum Summer takes us back to an earlier kind of children's book.  It's the kind of book that I would have loved as a kid and it's a pleasure to discover that I can still enjoy it very much. 

P's world is the farmland of western Oklahoma, and she is the kind of stubborn, tomboyish heroine we expect.  The tone reminds me strongly of books like Old Yeller and Where the Red Fern Grows.  (Even Charlotte's Web -- although none of the animals talk.)

This is the kind of children's story where the children inhabit a world almost entirely their own.  Where every adult is peripheral and long summer days go on forever. (The adults are so peripheral here that their story threads are all pretty much left hanging -- which doesn't seem at all wrong.)

 Indeed that sense of childhood timelessness is so strong in Possum Summer that P and her farm feel more than a little anachronistic.  Though she is surrounded by the modern world, she is not of the modern world.  (I must admit that I have a hard time believing there is a twelve year old anywhere in the developed world who doesn't have at least a workable knowledge of the internet).  Her best friend is a computer geek, but P herself is never even seen watching TV.  Her room, we are told, is littered with books, but she doesn't tell us what they are, and we never see her reading them.  She does have a wonderful Lookbook -- a journal in which she writes and sketches about her day's adventures.  And her passion is totally for the farm, the animals, and the Oklahoma countryside.

But in the best children's fiction that world of childhood is never totally undisturbed.  The tensions and dangers of the adult world run just beneath the surface like one of those peaceful, pleasant dreams where we feel a constant tug of dark anxiety.  In the case of Possum Summer it comes from the financial problems of farmers, an outbreak of rabies that is threatening local animals, and above all from P's father, who has been injured in Iraq and whose relationship with both his daughters is severely strained.  Much of the strength of P's character comes from her struggle to measure up to her father's standards -- to keep the promises she made to him -- and at the same time be true to her own nature, which is very different from his.

I have to say, since this an animal-centered blog, that for animal lovers Possum Summer is both wonderful and heartbreaking. The beauty and harshness of life get equal weight. There are a couple of emotionally wrenching scenes and a climax that is, literally (at least for me) breathtaking.

Ultimately, everyone has to leave the world of childhood.  Not all at once, but in a series of steps, each of which can carry a heavy price.  Possum Summer is about the time in one girl's life when she takes several very large steps toward the responsibilities of growing up.  She meets them in the end with courage and unfailing love.

(Note:  Possum Summer is also wonderfully illustrated by Omar Rayyan.  If I had seen his drawings of the baby possum Isaac when I was young, I would have fallen in love with the species years before.  You can check out more of his delightful work here.)

Readers of Birds and Beasts might also enjoy our sister blog Birdland West, which covers birds and wildlife, mostly in the Seattle Area.

Virals, by Kathy Reichs

 

Virals, by Kathy Reichs

One of the genres I like least on television is the myriad clones of CSI and NCIS.  I'm not overly fond of cop shows and police procedurals anyway, and the CSI-type shows are at the bottom of my list.  Superficially, since I'm a science geek with a great interest in things technological, it seems like these shows might appeal to me, but they don't.  For a lot of reasons that aren't really relevant here.  I'm really bringing all this up as a way of saying that there is one exception to this rule of mine, and it’s a big one. 

I love Bones.

Okay, so part of my fondness for the shows is, I'll admit, Emily Deschanel.    I'm more than a little bit infatuated with her Temperance Brennan character.  (And knowing that Ms. D is, in her personal life, a devoted vegan and supporter of PETA doesn't dampen my affection.)  But beyond the main character's appeal, Bones is just one of the smartest, funniest and most engaging crime shows I've ever watched.  It has a great ensemble cast, good writing, smart use of science and interesting stories.  My few quibbles with the show only highlight how much I like it. 

Bones, of course, is based on the work (and life, according to the credits) of forensic anthropologist and mystery writer Kathy Reichs.   (In one of the TV show's funnier twists, Temperance Brennan is also a mystery writer, who writes books about a character named Kathy Reichs.)  Reichs has been writing the Temperance Brennan novels which inspired the show since the late '90's -- the most recent, Spider Bones (Scribner 2010) -- is the 13th.  The series still seems to be strong, both creatively and in its appeal to readers.

Now, however, Kathy Reichs has done something different.   Virals (RazorBill 2010) is a science fiction action thriller aimed at young adults.  Set in Charleston, S.C. and the islands off the Carolina coast, this book has a tone and style quite distinct from the Temperance Brennan novels.  But Reichs hasn't broken with her familiar world altogether.  The heroine of this novels is fifteen year old Tory Brennan -- yes, Brennan -- the great niece of Temperance Brennnan and a girl very much in the family mold.  Smart, a self-styled science geek, Tory has recently come to the Carolinas to live with a father she barely knows following the death of her mother in an auto accident.  Her father is a marine biologist working for a research facility on one of the islands.  Tory has good friends -- three young men as bright and geeky, in their own ways, as Tory.   And she faces the usual challenges of adolescence -- negotiating the ranks of popularity at an exclusive prep school (which she attends only by virtue of their father's academic position), dealing with the "mean girls", and the confusions of young love (or at least infatuation).  She also has the less common problem of working out a relationship with a caring but sometimes distant father who didn't know she existed until after her mother died.  And she has her scientific interests, including a fascination with the small pack of wolf-dogs that roam free on a nearby island. Plenty of things to keep a smart young woman busy.

But Tory's life is about to get much more complicated.  When she and her friends break into the research facility to use some equipment without authorization, they stumble onto a secret lab where  one of the centers' scientists is conducting unauthorized medical experiments on a wolf-dog puppy captured from the island.  Outraged, Tory convinces her friends to help her liberate the puppy -- who seems to be infected with a form of canine parvovirus-- so they can take him (named Cooper) back to their secret club house and try to nurse him back to health.

And this is where the story takes a hard left into science fiction.  The virus infects Tory and her friends, and alters them genetically, fusing their DNA with Cooper's canine DNA and changing them forever.  It gives  them new abilities -- heightened senses, speed and strength -- that flair unexpectedly.    In addition, it links them all, including Cooper, telepathically. They become a pack -- Virals, as they name themselves -- and their attempts to find out more about what has happened embroil them in a mystery involving a decades old murder, illegal experiments, environmental cover-ups, one of Charleston's most respected and prominent families, and more. 

I was a little put off by the slow beginning of this novel -- there's an information dump in the first pages that I felt could have been doled out more judiciously as the story went on -- but once I got past that I was captured by the story and by the main character.  Virals is the sort of book that I would have loved reading when I was a kid -- very much the descendent of the Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys style of mystery, brought up to date with science and much more modern attitudes.  The kids are smart and funny, and they make a good team.  Tory is a natural leader, as determined and perceptive as her Aunt Temperance (in one scene, where the kids unearth a skeleton and Tory is examining the bones, the resemblance is most striking).  The plot is engaging, the action entertaining, the animal rights and environmental subtext clear but never heavy-handed, and even though I figured a few of the secrets out well ahead of time, Reichs still managed to deal a surprise or two along the way. 

What I really loved about this book though, what it's clearly, unmistakably science fiction. Though the DNA transformation is a little far out (and the "canine" enhanced senses not completely consistent), it is handled well, with some interesting information about parvoviruses thrown in for color.   In a market saturated with wizards and vampires and shape shifters, this is a book about science and about tackling problems with reason, intelligence and knowledge.  That's a very refreshing change. The almost total eclipse of science fiction by fantasy is one of my pet peeves, and  I have often wished  for a really good science fiction series that could capture the imagination of young people the way Harry Potter has.  Something that could really turn kids back toward the excitement of science and the possibilities of the future.    Virals (with sequels obviously in store) is not that book.  But it is a lot of fun, and I look forward to seeing Tory and her friends again.  (And a guest appearance by Aunt Tempe?  Oh boy.)