Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic by David Frum - Preface - Why Didn't America Pay Attention?

David Frum is senior editor at the Atlantic. He is the author of nine books, most recently Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic (2018). In 2001-2002, he served as speechwriter and special assistant to President George W. Bush. You can read him at https://www.theatlantic.com/author/david-frum/ and on Twitter @davidfrum

Preface

The book in your hands was first published at a time
of comparative hopefulness about the then-new Trump administration. Power seemed to have been centralized in the hands of an “axis of adults,” instead of the “Star Wars bar cast” of characters of the administration’s first six months. John Kelly, Gary Cohn, and H. R. McMaster had imposed a semblance of order on the West Wing. The president’s access to articles from Breitbart.com and the Gateway Pundit had been restricted; his tweeting temporarily curtailed; fewer weird people wandered at will in and out of the Oval Office. In that mood, some critics contended that my then-new book had overstated the emergency presented by the Trump presidency. 

Paraphrasing what they argued: The system is balking Trump and grinding him down. Normal Republicans are winning the arguments on trade and Russia. We’re even sending arms to Ukraine! Trump is a weak president, not a dangerous one, more farce than menace. None of this is good, but nothing irreversibly terrible has happened either. That all seems like a long time ago. The “axis of adults” has now itself mostly departed. Chaos is whirling wilder and wilder inside the White House. Chaos is spreading outward to the nation and the world. Honorable professionals are purged from government service; mediocrities and fraudsters replace them. The evidence of corruption and collusion accumulates—yet Congress supinely fails even to oversee, let alone take corrective action. The system is not balking President Trump. It is yielding to him. As president, he is simultaneously farcical and menacing: “Like Heath Ledger’s Joker, but without the operational excellence,” a senior official of an allied government described him to me. 

As this paperback edition heads to publication in mid-summer 2018, President Trump has: 

• launched devastating trade wars not only against China, but also against close US allies. Trade wars, Trump tweeted, “are good and easy to win.” That’s proving unsurprisingly wrong. Prices for US corn, soybeans, and milk products are tumbling as US farmers lose markets in China and Mexico. 
• Automakers are relocating operations outside the United States to escape tariffs on steel and aluminum. Even the price of Chinese-manufactured red “Make America Great Again” baseball caps are spiking. 
• Over dinner at the G7 summit in June, he excused the Russian invasion of Crimea to horrified heads of government. 
• At the NATO summit in July, he described the alliance as a burden to the United States and threatened to quit. 
• He insulted friendly leaders in Canada and Germany and abused the European Union as “a foe.” 
• He inserted himself into Britain’s Brexit debate on the side of the most extreme anti-EU politicians.
•  His ambassador for religious liberty lobbied the British government on behalf of a white nationalist race-baiter sentenced for disrupting a trial to incite anger against people not yet convicted of a racially charged crime. 
• Trump struck a sucker’s deal with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, suspending US military exercises in the peninsula as provocative and misrepresenting a temporary cession of missile testing as a halt to North Korean nuclear development. 
• Asked by Fox News’s Bret Baier about the dictator’s killings and tortures, Trump replied, “He’s a tough guy. Hey, when you take over a country, a tough country with tough people, and you take it over from your father I don’t care who you are, what you are, how much of an advantage you have. If you could do that at twenty-seven years old, I mean, that’s one in ten thousand that could do that.” 
• On the eve of a meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin, Trump blamed the United States for the deterioration in the relationship with Russia. He declined to challenge Putin either on the 2014 Russian downing of a civilian airliner over Ukrainian territory that killed all 298 aboard or on the Russian interference in the 2016 election that helped elect him. 
• Days after an indictment by Special Counsel Robert Mueller detailed the direct responsibility of Russian intelligence for hacking Democratic Party communications and stealing Democratic Party voter data, a Trump tweet explicitly absolved the Russians for the crime and instead fixed blame on the Democratic National Committee for falling victim to the hacks. 
• Trump also repeated his use of the phrase “enemies of the people” to describe independent journalists on his way to meeting with the world’s leading murderer of independent journalists. 
• Most amazing of all, Trump denounced the probe into the 2016 Russian attack on US democracy—while literally standing on the same stage in Helsinki, Finland, with the Russian autocrat who ordered that attack. 
• Trump’s brutal version of immigration enforcement separated hundreds of very young children from their unauthorized border-crossing parents, with no plan for reuniting families even after deportation. 
• Very young children have been held in cells and dosed with psychiatric drugs. 
• Yet the flow of illegal immigration has been unabated in 2018, after dipping in 2017, because the Trump administration still declines to seek or apply sanctions against employers of illegal labor. 
• But not every business gets treated with such solicitude: Trump pressed for months to rewrite postal rates to punish Amazon’s Jeff Bezos for unwelcome coverage in the Bezos-owned Washington Post—an unprecedented form of government retaliation against a business owner for exercise of First Amendment rights. 
• Instead of the Republican party restraining Trump, Trump is remaking the Republican party. “We are the party of Donald J. Trump,” declared Katie Arrington on the night she bested former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford for a Republican nomination to the House of Representatives. 
• Who will tell her that she is wrong? Some Republican senators snark and grumble. Sometimes they sarcastically subtweet him or use sharp words in television interviews or speeches on the Senate floor. Yet even though any three of them could together, with 48 Democrats, hold him to account in that body, it never happens. 
• A neo-Confederate has won the Republican US Senate nomination in the state of Virginia. Oddball and extremist candidates are proliferating in the US House and state legislative races. 
• The pace of the president’s lying is accelerating: an average of 4.1 false statements a day in 2018, up from 2.9 per day in 2017, according to Daniel Dale, the Toronto Star reporter who keeps the most reliable tally. 
• Trump’s media apologists at Fox News and elsewhere have become even more shameless. They sank to a new low of self-abasing deceptiveness by presenting Trump’s utter capitulation to Kim Jong-un as a triumph equivalent to the breach of the Berlin Wall—but of course they will sink lower still in the months ahead. 
• President Trump is defying legality ever more openly. In June 2018, the Trump legal defense team released a letter they sent Special Counsel Robert Mueller a year earlier. The letter asserted that it was definitionally impossible for the president to obstruct justice in any case arising from his Article II authority. 
• If a president had the right to fire the FBI director for abusing an expense account (as President Clinton did in 1993), then a president had an equal right to fire the FBI director for investigating crimes by the president’s political allies. 
• The president’s lawyer-defenders join that claim to an even bolder one: under his constitutional duty and power to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” the president (they said) had power to direct the FBI to start or halt any criminal investigation—a terrifying power that none of Trump’s predecessors ever used or even imagined that a future president might. Richard Nixon fabricated an imaginary CIA mission to dupe the FBI into dropping its investigation of the burglary at the Watergate offices of the Democratic National Committee. It never occurred to him that he might just order the FBI to stand down. 
• But this power beyond Richard Nixon’s fantasies is now ascribed to Donald Trump by his lawyers and talk show proxies. The Trump Team argues that the president cannot be indicted for any offense—at least not for any federal offense—during his time in office. “I don’t know how you can indict while he’s in office. No matter what it is,” Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani told S. V. Date of the Huffington Post. “If he shot James Comey, he’d be impeached the next day. Impeach him, and then you can do whatever you want to do to him.” Many lawyers might agree with Giuliani on that one specific point: impeachment and removal must precede indictment. 
• But Team Trump is arguing for a more total immunity. On June 4, 2018, President Trump himself tweeted, “I have the absolute right to PARDON myself.” In which case, to continue the Giuliani hypothetical, the president could shoot dead James Comey and then (provided only that he took care to fire the weapon on federal property) immediately pardon himself. 
• Together, the president’s legal arguments present a claim for executive impunity unlike anything seen in the English-speaking world since the overthrow of the Stuart dynasty in 1688. In the year following, the 1689 English Bill of Rights—the document that would inspire the American Founders a century later—confirmed that even monarchs must comply with the law of the land. George III himself would never have dared the claim that Donald Trump and his apologists now nightly advance on cable news talk shows. 
• Another Congress could have passed a motion disputing the right of self-pardon. Although the ultimate determination would belong to the courts, such a caution might have warned the president against testing the constitutional limits. This supine Congress has lain down instead—and Trump interprets their silence as his tacit permission. 
• President Trump has already put this permission to ample use. In the months since publication of the hardcover edition of this book, the Trump presidency has extended its lead as the most corrupt in US history, with any runner-up dropping farther and farther out of sight. 
• The fiction that Trump has separated himself from his businesses grows ever more laughable. 
• As of the 540th day of the Trump presidency, Trump had spent 169 at a Trump-branded property: a presidency as marketing exercise. 
• Trump continues to receive payments from foreign business partners, and those payments certainly appear to influence US foreign policy. A Chinese state-owned company invested $500 million in an Indonesian project that included a Trump-themed hotel just at the time Trump decided on a light punishment for China’s law-breaking, sanctions-busting telecom giant, ZTE. 
• China recorded more Ivanka Trump trademarks that same week. 
• Trump’s own party has internalized Trump’s demand for payments. 
• As of the end of the first quarter of 2018, Republican Party entities have spent a cumulative total of more than sixteen million dollars at Trump-branded properties, according to OpenSecrets.org. People who seek the president’s favor will Instagram their expensive meals at the Trump Hotel in Washington—and then tag the social media accounts of the president and his children. 
• Trump has effectively won the fight not to release his tax returns. That default, once so contentious, has now dropped from view, and with it, the answer to this mystery: Trump was once so cash-desperate that this supposed billionaire marketed steaks, vodka, and a fraudulent university. 
• He accepted fifty thousand dollars an episode to host a TV series, demanding one million dollars to renew his contract—and settled for sixty thousand dollars. 
• Then, suddenly in 2006, Trump had access to so much liquidity that he could pay all cash for golf courses and other properties. Where did this money come from? Perhaps Robert Mueller will answer that question. 
• Until then, the American people will be kept in the dark about the most salient of all Trump questions, “What does the president owe and to whom does he owe it?” 
• Individual Trump appointees abuse the public in their own individual ways. Former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has set a land-speed record of corruption and abuse. 
• Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price resigned after spending more than one million dollars on improper government jet travel.
• Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin nearly equaled Price, but survived. 
• Veterans’ Affairs Secretary David Shulkin left office for taking his new wife on a personal trip to Europe at taxpayer expense. 
• Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke mingled official and personal business while traveling on government aircraft and helicopters. 
• The son of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson does business with people who do business with his father’s cabinet department. 
• That pattern repeats itself at the subcabinet and staff level too. Maybe the most important single case of corruption involves Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen. Cohen handled payoff payments to women with a grievance against Donald Trump, work that continued after Trump assumed the presidency. At the same time, Cohen shook down more than four million dollars in no-work consulting contracts in the opening months of the administration. Cohen’s other business activities look even worse. 
• The bad smell emanating from the Trump-Russia connection reeks ever stronger. We have learned more and more about the scale of Russian intervention to help elect Trump—and about the eagerness of the Trump campaign to receive that help. 
• We have learned that Donald Trump personally dictated the message signed by his son Donald Trump Jr. to deceive the public about the first meeting between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence operatives. 
• We have learned more about Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s alleged money laundering and tax evasion over recent years, although the exact connection between Manafort’s personal business and his work for the Donald Trump presidential campaign remains murky as I write. 
• Through the murk, the core truth of Trump-Russia remains what it was when I wrote the main text of Trumpocracy: this is a story still with many secrets, but with no mysteries. The Russian leader has some hold upon the president of the United States. We can only begin to discern the nature of the hold, but we can all witness its power. 
• Donald Trump was dealt the easiest hand of any president since Calvin Coolidge in 1923. 
• Barack Obama inherited the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression; Ronald Reagan, the second worst. 
• Bill Clinton stepped into the job of rebuilding a new world after the collapse of the Soviet Union. 
• Jimmy Carter faced an energy crisis; 
• Gerald Ford, Watergate and Vietnam . . . 
• I could go on. Even the presidents who inherited prosperous economies—Herbert Hoover, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush—were all smacked by global crises within months of entering office: 
• the Crash of 1929, German unification, the 9/11 attacks.
•  Only Trump inherited an already growing economy, a low pace of combat operations, and a world that stayed mostly quiet through his first year in office.
• There were grave challenges facing the new president. There always are. But in 2017, the problems in the president’s inbox were almost all chronic, not acute. 
• Trump could (as he did) more or less ignore them without immediate policy consequences. At the time I finished the hardcover edition, Trump had not yet enacted much of a domestic agenda. 
• As of summer 2018, more has been accomplished—typically to the harm of the very people he purports to champion. 
• About four million Americans have lost health insurance coverage since Donald Trump won the election, according to surveys by the Commonwealth Fund. Among self-identified Republicans, the percent uninsured has climbed from 7.9 percent in mid-2016 to 13.9 percent in the spring of 2018. 
• Trump has plunged into nearly trillion-dollar deficits with unconcern, feeding an inflation that by mid-2018 had wiped away all income gains for most US workers. 
• Between May 2017 and May 2018, the average hourly wage, adjusted for inflation, increased 0.0 percent. 
• The gains of the Trump economy, like the benefits of the Trump tax cut, flowed to the top. Much has been said about the obdurate loyalty of the Trump base, the one-quarter of the country that strongly approves his presidency. 
• But maybe the more important fact for the future is the equally obdurate rejection of this presidency by the anti-Trump base, the 40-plus percent who strongly disapprove of him. That plurality of the country has irreversibly determined that Trump is a liar, bigot, and crook. They have taken his measure and will not untake it. 
• But we have to reckon with the consequences for the nation of the president’s untrustworthiness. 
• Donald Trump has decapitated the government of the United States, leaving a distrusted and disrespected void where the head of state should be. 
• He never can and never will speak for the whole nation, as George W. Bush did after 9/11, as Barack Obama could do during the worst throes of the economic crisis of 2009. 
• In any genuine emergency the nation may face in the next few years, it will be effectively leaderless. 
• Donald Trump is at most the president of the largest faction within white America, and oftentimes not even that. This truth enrages the Trump White House. Trump’s circle, Trump’s aides, Trump himself: they feel the contempt of a large majority of Americans, and they chafe and rage. They angrily complain that this president and this First Family do not receive the same respect that other presidents and their families have received—and they are of course correct in that. 
• What they fail to perceive is any connection between their own actions and the disrespect they incur. As I write, the New York attorney general has just referred to the Internal Revenue Service and other law enforcement bodies a complaint of fraud and self-dealing in the Trump family foundations. The attorney general has recommended that not only President Trump but also his three older children be barred for a period of time from serving on the boards of charities. Edmund Burke remarks that vice can lose half its evil if it loses all its grossness. But what about vice that redoubles grossness? 
• The hardcover edition of this book was written before Stormy Daniels had entered her stage name into the annals of politics—but it has been inscribed there now. Americans should always respect the office of the presidency of course. But Americans are entitled to expect that the office will also be respected by the officeholder, and that is sadly not the case in the Trump years. He defiles the Oval Office, and then he and his people act outraged when anybody notices the smell. 
• Yet noticing the smell has bad consequences for the public welfare as well as Donald Trump personally. It figures among what I’ve called the autoimmune disorders of the Trump presidency. 
• The US president wields many powers. Yet his ultimate power is not contained in any law or article of the Constitution: his ultimate power is his authority, the prestige he commands, the weight and credibility of his words. If he squanders that authority, the whole constitutional system, the whole Western alliance suffers the blow. 
• Of all the institutions Trump has harmed or disabled, the most damaged is the one for which he is most responsible: the office of the president. The best people in the Trump administration try to manage the US government as if the president were some antique and unnecessary feature—as if the words and acts that mattered most were those of the Secretary of Defense or the Assistant Secretary of State, not the words and acts of the temporary occupant of the White House. Oh, pay no attention to that, you know how he is. Now, let’s get back to serious business . . . 
• But the US government cannot function like that. The crisis is hurtling upon us, nearer and nearer every day. Perhaps it will have arrived by the time you open this paperback edition. Not an optimist by temperament myself, I have become ever more confident that the country will prove itself equal to that crisis. I keenly remember the mood of fear that gripped the national majority in the first weeks and months of the Trump presidency. As I have traveled since the release of the hardcover edition of this book in January 2018, 
• I have noticed a change: the fear has dispelled. In its place, I see a gathering will to act. It’s not noisy, not rhetorical. It does not often gather in the streets, it does not have slogans or songs. Perhaps the bombast of the Trump White House—the president manically exhorting the country to rise and sing patriotic songs whose words he cannot remember—has disillusioned Americans with such theatricality. 
• In Soviet days, the hysterical vituperation of the official Communist media—“Hyenas! Jackals!”—impelled dissidents to a cool and understated style. They titled their leading publication The Chronicle of Current Events. They published confirmed facts in the plainest words. So many Americans seem to have decided that the way to be a decent person is to monitor the sayings and doings of Donald J. Trump—and then do exactly the opposite. 
• The question I have been asked most often since the release of this book is, “What can we do?” 
• The first thing of course is to be registered to vote in November 2018, and then to use that vote to support those candidates who can gain the broadest possible support to check this presidency. 
• I am not a Democrat or a liberal. Those who belong to those categories may not wish to take advice from me. But whether you want it or not, here it is: nothing would do more to preserve Donald Trump in power than for Democrats to emulate the savagely destructive purity politics of the Tea Party.
• If you are trying to restrain a dangerous president, the politicians to support are those who can win the most support from the widest range of people. To say, “Yes, I want to save the country from Donald Trump, but Michael Pence is just as bad, and oh, by the way, the country isn’t worth saving unless we have Medicare for all, and a universal basic income, and a government job guarantee, and abolish the ICE agency, too, while we’re at it”—is to say that saving the country from Donald Trump ranks nowhere near the top of your priorities. 
• If I could, as I did, vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 to save the country from Donald Trump, you can vote for the candidates with the most realistic shot at doing the same in 2018 and 2020, whether or not you approve every detail of their platforms.
• The next thing you can do is to be a responsible news consumer. As we have experienced since 2017, anti-Trump constituencies are not less vulnerable to fake news (in the true meaning of “fake news”) than pro-Trump constituencies. Remember, you are one “share” away from being not only a news consumer, but a news distributor. Use that power responsibly. Don’t share before you have clicked the link and confirmed for yourself that the exciting breaking story in your feed originates from a reputable source. 
• Adopt the motto, “Let the fake news stop with me.” Do not share what has not been authenticated. 
• Join something, especially something local, especially something that might at first seem even boring: a parent-teacher association, a neighborhood advisory committee, a fund-raising effort for a cause that will make a difference in your community or your town. 
• Trump arose in the disconnected interstices between Americans. Help to reconnect them. 
• Stormy Daniels’s lawyer Michael Avenatti has urged Americans to have a drink with someone they might disagree with—and then posted on social media a photo of himself grinning alongside Anthony Scaramucci. That kind of mutual celebrity-mongering is not constructive. We do not overcome differences by discussing our differences. We overcome them by working alongside people who are different to achieve a purpose we hold in common: to repair a roof of a library, to buy a new machine for the hospital, to furnish a shelter for victims of domestic abuse. 
• For those readers outside the United States, I implore you: remember the United States you respected and trusted—and believe the best spirit of the United States remains unprofaned underneath the wreckage strewn by Donald Trump. I was born in Canada and viewed the United States from the outside for most of the first half of my life. What the United States was then, it can be again. It must be. It will be. 
• Above all, readers abroad and at home, please stay engaged. You sometimes hear the expression, “news fatigue” or “Trump fatigue.” It can be fatiguing to keep informed and to keep caring. It is even more fatiguing to care for someone sick. Yet if our child is ill, we overcome those fatigues to watch over her until she is well. 
• Thus, let it be for this ill country. Those who love their country will remain on duty until the danger has passed. We hope that time is coming soon—when those who kept faith with America’s best self will deserve and enjoy, in Winston Churchill’s phrase, “the sleep of the thankful and the saved.”

~~~

Folks, I am not sure whether I will review this book. Once I realized that it had been published in 2118, most of what the writer had brought to us--who, by the way, has the right credentials to create such a book--will have already been overshadowed by the years since then... On the other hand, I found the Preface, written by the author, to be an excellent reminder of all that had been changed during Trump's first presidency--and even finding issues that I had not earlier known about... I also found the last few paragraphs of value as we continue to deal with Trumpocracy... Note that I added bullet points to divide each of the items addressed to make it easier to consider each item as a truly separate "problem" that came out of this administration...

As we now know, the second term has already proven to be much worse than any of us could have imagined. Mainly because a group of people (Project 2025 book contributors) had created a monumental plan of action which is being spoon-fed to Trump as well as the nation... Executive Orders are being created based upon the writers of that book, presented to Trump as "done deals" and are bypassing all laws, policies and procedures that have existed for hundreds of years... The Republican Party, in one way, finally got its act together...BUT it was a plan created by the richest and most powerful  people who had seen what "could" happen with a lawless president, set on retribution and riches and financially bought the presidency through the money, such as from Musk, who was "buying" votes, among other activities...

But I cannot ignore that the democratic party, in my opinion, had become more reactive rather than to continue an ongoing planning program, so much so that, with pressure, age of the president became a last-minute factor that was forced much too late into the process. Nevertheless, of the all parties, as David Frum said above, we must look at the goals of the two major parties--especially that of the republican party which is clearly wanting to destroy our democracy--and ensure that we all work together to maintain the rule of law, our Constitution, and America as a Democracy!

The following videos are just to highlight some of the major concerns that are being felt across America from citizens from all states. They are presented here to not identify those issues in particular, but rather to confirm that people are protesting over who is known by historians and others as the worst president ever... If you have not heard that, check out, especially, the second video where an American historian is speaking to one of the major protest groups during the past week...

And let's not leave out the most important issue for the World!

God Bless 

Gabby

From the Author of The Ethical Assassin Now Comes The Pope of Atlantis by William Ferraiolo - A Timely Story!

Cataclysm... “What the hell just happened to Greenland, Nicholas?” a voice crackled over the speaker. “It is shifting dramatically to the southeast. The rate of change in its position is astonishing.” “Jesus, the Yellowstone Caldera just blew,” stammered a small, balding man as he stared at a large screen directly in front of him. “What?” “The whole Pacific Northwest is going to be impacted.” “Impacted? That’s putting it mildly, isn’t it?” “Yes. Impacted…as if it had been hit by a meteor. The devastation is going to be off the charts. There was no time to evacuate...”

The Tower of Babel... “Okay, what really happened at the Tower of Babel, with the confusion of languages, and all that? Are you telling us that really happened?” Barry asked. “I only saw the tower from a distance, and I did not join any of the groups that formed after the confusion of the languages. That is another part of my curse, I suppose. God will not allow me to live in fellowship with anyone for very long. Over the centuries, I have, of course, learned many languages, but I was excluded from the partitioning of humanity into linguistic communities. Everyone else, however, found themselves speaking in tongues that they had not previously known, and in which they had not previously spoken. Many spoken languages simply ceased to exist on that day. I seem to have maintained the language that I spoke with my mother, father, and brother, but that language has disappeared from the face of the Earth, apart from myself, as far as I can tell,” Cain said somewhat sadly. “Can you still speak it,” Barry asked. “Sure, but you would not be able to understand it,” Cain replied. “We just want to hear what it sounded like,” Mike sneered. “As you wish, brother,” Cain said. 

He then launched into a lengthy utterance that sounded like a cross between birdsong, the howling of wolves, and a cacophony of other sounds of the animals of the forest. Mike and Barry stared at each other in amazement. Cain “spoke” for a long time, and then lowered his head and looked again at his hands folded on the table. “What did you just say,” Barry asked excitedly. “It was a morning prayer of gratitude to our Creator,” Cain replied. “Much of it is not translatable into any current human language, but look out that window,” and he pointed to his left. The tree that was visible through the window had become full of what seemed to be hundreds of birds. All of them were looking in the same direction. They were all staring at Cain through that window. Suddenly, they all seemed to burst into chirping and singing, as if they had become excited. Just as suddenly, they all departed in unison. Mike and Barry looked from each other to the tree, to Cain, and back to each other again. “I haven’t seen anywhere near that many birds in one place since everything went to hell, Mike,” Barry said with wonder in his voice. Mike waved away his comment dismissively. “Can you tell us what any of it meant in English, Pope?” Mike asked. “Part of it says, roughly, ‘To you, Lord, we freely submit, and we gratefully embrace this life you have offered us,’ or words to that effect,” Cain said raising his eyes to the ceiling. “Most of the rest of it is praise in the voices of the animals that surrounded us in those days. All of the natural world declares the majesty of the Lord in one way or another. 

People today cannot understand most of these declarations. That is sad, I suppose. In the early days, we always knew when we were speaking to God. We were just aware of God receiving our prayers and our expressions of gratitude. We felt it, for lack of a better expression,” Cain said bowing his head again. “I have not felt that in many, many years.” “Can you still understand the animals now,” Barry asked. “No,” Cain said without looking up. “No, I hear them in much the same way that the two of you hear them. God’s curse does not allow me even to commune with the natural world in the way that I once did. My banishment to the land of isolation and wandering is quite thorough. Even at this moment, I am not experiencing this very conversation in the way that you are, my brothers,” he stated with a shrug. “It is difficult to explain, but I am, at all times, beset with the understanding that I will probably never see either of you again after I leave this place. Thus has it been with me for all these centuries. I always return to wandering alone.” The three of them were silent for some time. “By the way, a man of Brian’s tribe, one of the camps of the ‘outsiders,’ as you call them, struck me with the back of his hand. Immediately after he hit me, I looked into his eyes and saw that he was terrified. To strike Cain is to summon the Angel of Death to one’s own door,” Cain said pointedly. “I assure you that man if he is not dead already, will be dead very soon. His death, I am confident, shall be indistinguishable from any other man’s death. It will appear to everyone else that he died of disease, or injury, or some other natural cause; but that man actually died, or will die soon, because he struck Cain. I have seen that same terrified look in the eyes of many men and women who have attacked me over the centuries. They immediately feel death rushing at them, welling up inside of them. I tell you this for your own benefit. You cannot kill Cain, but you can strike him. Thus far, nobody has ever struck Cain twice. The first blow fills my assailant with paralyzing fear. So, my brothers, I beseech you, please do not lose your temper and strike me. You will not survive long after doing so. Although I will not kill you myself, there is nothing I can do to forestall the consequences. Even if I forgive you immediately, your fate is sealed nonetheless,” and he waved one finger as a warning. Mike and Barry looked at each other with wide eyes. “Do you really expect us to believe that?” Mike finally asked. “Brother,” 

Cain replied, “I do not expect you to believe anything I have told you – at least, not yet. Please do not try to test this claim for yourselves, though,” and Cain pretended to strike himself with his right hand, balled up into a fist. “I would prefer not to watch either of you die. For my part, I have seen far, far too much of that kind of thing. Please do not die on my account, my brothers. More than enough people are dead because of me.”

“Well, I am not suggesting that there is anything wrong with the Bible,” Cain said reassuringly, “but I have experienced a lot of things that are not mentioned in the Bible, and there are a lot of events in the Bible for which I was not present, so I do not know much more about some of the events in your Bible than you do. On the other hand, I can tell you about some of my experiences that did not make it into that book.”

~~~ 

Author William Ferraiolo is proving to be a writer that is, perhaps, the most unique I've personally encountered... After reading thousands of books, I had thought no new writer could surprise me. I was wrong... You may recall that I declared The Ethical Assassin, perhaps, Ferraiolo's first fictional book... Almost immediately, I received info about his latest book, The Pope of Atlantis. Yes, I got it and read the first half the first evening... Needless to say, I was once again surprised... I can only conclude that William Ferraiolo is a writer that writes what he wants to write, regardless of genre, title, or shock value... This book was well written and written in a normal format... But, the Plot is simply extraordinary as well as mystifying... Is it Fantasy, Dystopian, Religious Fiction Historical, Adventure, Alternative History... there is NO WAY to fit this book, again, within the normal range of genres... Let's make it, simply, Multi-Genre... And then I realized that there just might be--yes--philosophical fiction is an established genre! And that's what makes it exceptional... Very, exceptional... Not to say that I'm "well-read" in the normal sense of the word, but, in fiction, I had never been even asked to read a book that was so clearly based upon a philosophical approach:

Philosophical fiction is a genre that builds its narratives on intellectual inquiry, using story and character development to explore fundamental questions about existence, morality, and human nature.

As I think about The Ethical Assassin, I don't think I would change anything I provided on that review; however, this latest book proves to me that this author is a new writer in fiction to watch closely!

For instance, the title of the book is created within the dialogue between two main characters.  You know, "I'm Mike--What's your name buddy?" 

But let's start at the beginning, shall we, because the World is in the midst of being destroyed...some countries are sliding into the oceans; some are simply being buried upside down, perhaps by an earthquake or something similar... The book begins with the news announcing what is happening--at least until there is no more news... We then discover that there are only two small areas in all the world that has some semblance of normalty--except for lack of food and all the things we would normally have immediate access to. As we learn more, it appears that about Eight Billion People are dead... (Now, I think it was very important, to me at least, that later in the book Cain talks about God "disappearing" people; that is, moved off the planet--I happen to believe there are more good people on earth or those who do not deserve to die, than the number saved at the time of the Great Flood where only Noah's family, and animals, were saved--personal opinion, of course, and not questioning God's decisions... well, maybe, sometime my mind wanders...LOL.

“I will tell you, my friend,” Cain said as if Mike had asked him a question, “over all the centuries, I have never ceased to marvel at the inclination among the people to delude themselves and to believe what they want to believe, no matter what the evidence suggests.” Mike looked at Cain until he raised his head to look Mike in the eye. “What makes you say that just now, Pope?” “Although I sense that you may be coming around to taking my story seriously, at least somewhat,” Cain replied, “you still cling to the belief that I simply cannot be Cain. I simply cannot be Adam’s son. You will not allow yourself to believe that you could not pull the trigger on that revolver,” and he motioned to the gun that was positioned across the room, “because God has made it impossible for any man to kill me. You have no viable alternative theory to explain what you experienced, but you resist the one theory I have presented, nonetheless. Whether you believe it or not, I will live until God allows me to die, but you may never come to accept the story I have told you about my curse. Is the idea that God is watching so frightening to you? Is scripture really more implausible than any other explanation you may have entertained?”

(in my lifetime, this issue has never been more of an issue than ever...At least millions are protesting, now seeing the lies and violence that smothers our lives daily...)

Now is the time to introduce our main character, whose name is... Cain... Yes, that one... And if some of you may not know the Biblical story, here's a short refresher...

My only point is that the two of you gentlemen,” and he paused to look from one man to the other, “know what men are capable of doing to one another. Yet you ask me what I know about the devil? I know mankind. That, it seems to me, is enough.”

Now recognize that Cain and Abel were two of the sons of Adam and Eve. In fact, the writer declares that he is positive the first creation chapters of the Old Testament were literally true. And that they were kicked out of the Garden of Eden after disobeying God.... And, God, as an all-knowing God, already knew that Cain had killed his brother and put a curse upon Cain to wander the earth until God saw that Cain had changed.

However, the author takes this opportunity to point out that Cain was indeed the first person to have committed murder on Earth. And then shares all that he did in defiance of God's curse, so that, more or less, those who murder or use violence in today's world are actually descendants of Cain... For me, and many of us who want to know why, this seems to be a simple logical reason to explain those we call the good and bad people... At least for purposes of considering a logical discussion...

So, where did the title of the book come from? Well, God had brought Cain to the only two places that still existed on earth. The first leader refused to even consider what they were told. Mike on the other hand happened to be where he was in Alaska because there was a military outpost he commanded there and when the world started disappearing, Mike had brought his troop and moved into the one community that survived, and took control. Because there were already cannibals living there... Yes. Truth... In any event, Mike and his second in command greeted their visitor and welcomed him--mainly because guns had not been able to be used to kill him. So Mike wanted to know more. But both of the military leaders refused to believe that Cain was still alive and wandering the earth since being born near the Garden of Eden from which Adam and Eve had been forced to leave... So, while refusing to accept Cain's real name, Mike threw out something like that he might as well claim that he was Pope of Atlantis... and then decided Pope would be Cain's name while they figured out who he really was...

In addition to the cannibals, which were surely people who were starving and turned to eating their neighbors when food was gone, there were also a group of Inuit indigenous people who had lived in the area as well. An elder of this group was involved in an exciting God Incident that took place as days went by. Days when they were working to figure out, and hopefully learn as much as they could from Cain, as to whether this was the end of Planet Earth... And while that occurred, readers will learn about the historical events to which God had directed Cain in order to observe what was happening to God's people... (See above re The Tower of Babel, for example...) All of these stories were fascinating...by the way... But, no matter what, time was moving on...

Cain indeed had changed and was trying to follow God's ways, but he was lonely and had not, for many years, been permittd to develop any type of relationship with humans. Until now... But nobody knew what that meant... And knowing that there was also a feeling of distrust by those surrounding him, did not really match his desire to again hear God's voice... Thousands of years had passed, Cain was still a young man, invincible, but totally controlled by the curse that he now knew he had deserved...

“I am on the path again,” he said much more quietly than he had spoken just a bit earlier. “There must be others. There must be something else coming. If God is willing, then I will do His bidding as long as He permits me to remain in His service.”

I can only tell you that I wish this book had not ended... So, I've done the next best thing... William Ferraiolo has agreed to participate in a discussion here on Book Readers Heaven to expand upon what was covered in the book, as soon as we can get it put together... So do watch for the announcement!  This book is, in one way, heartbreaking, but also very inspirational. It is informative  as the author's research has undoubtedly been used in the Bible, Qur'an and other religious and philosophy books to pull together this amazing story... But, do not think it is an ordinary story, a fantasy... unless you read it yourself... Personally, I found that the premise that Cain being th first murderer, and that he had many wives and children, was a logical basis upon which to discuss the "why?" of all the violence experienced on Earth... We may not like it but...it is worthy of explortion... Especially NOW when religion has been brought and used as a tool in the political chaos now happening... Highly recommended!

GABixlerReviews

In the early days, we always knew when we were speaking to God. We were just aware of God receiving our prayers and our expressions of gratitude. We felt it, for lack of a better expression,” Cain said bowing his head again. “I have not felt that in many, many years.”

God Bless

Gabby

Reading Words from Prolific Poet John Herlihy - The Sadness of Our World and Mirror Poems Plus Responsive Poem, The Time of A Two-Sided Mind

The Sadness of Our World

John Herlihy

The sadness of our world is not to be believed;
The happiness of our world there to be deceived.
Two lamb ewes abandoned with the mother dead;
Their little legs wobbly, their eyes filled with dread.
A piece of the heart lost with every final goodbye;
The air is quiet, yet the breeze utters a timid sigh.
All the things left unsaid with every word spoken;
All the hurtful things said our misery to betoken.
The hopes left behind that once our dreams filled;
The promises broken that once our minds stilled.
A love once flourishing that deadened as love lost;
An emptiness to face that our future days accost.
The happiness of our world there only to deceive;
The sadness of our world we must face and believe.
- - - - - -

Copyright © John Herlihy

MIRROR POEMS

Forgiving and Unforgiving

By John Herlihy

The unforgiving knot untied within the mind,

A most stubborn suitor of the sternest kind.

The refusal to forgive another burns as fire,

The voice of refusal turns humility into a liar.

Anger boils hotly within the outraged blood;

Jealousy drowns darkly in its raging flood.

Cruelty blinds our hearts to another’s pain;

Indifference sets us free of another’s gain.

The unforgiving harbors a heart of stone;

Never to understand, and never to atone.

***

Forgiving lies bridled within the open mind,

The most tender emotion, unique of its kind.

The impulse to forgive soothes as a balm;

The voice of forgiveness echoes as a psalm.

Generosity opens the gate to mutual return;

Love stirs the restless heart into a slow burn.

Kindness makes us realize another’s sorrow;

Interest in others leads to a joyous tomorrow.

The forgiving person understands true misery;

In forgiving, they find a way to sure discovery.

***

Even if you are unforgiving, I will never tell;

I forgive your trespasses and fare thee well.

***

Copyright © John Herlihy

The Time of A Two-Sided Mind

GABixler

Always been a natural planner

In my head, I'd know my To Dos...

Always been a fact gatherer

Based upon facts, made decisions...

But getting older

In this time of turmoil

Different than every before

Often leaves me moving, thinking

from two sides of my mind!

Good or bad

That's where I am!

I can be sad for the world as it is

But I can be mad for who is causing

such sadness...

I can be forgiving of just about anything

for my friends

But refuse to forgive when somebody

says I backstabbed her for what I did not do

I can believe in God Almighty

Yet still want to ask, "Why?"

But even the Why is not as demanding as once

For I know, now, this is my life

And I am God's Child, no matter how old

For there is so much I'll never know

Even in death...

And it no longer matters,

I do the best I can...

And remembered I'm loved as I am

And the End has begun...

Thank You John for Again Sharing

 at Book Readers Heaven!

Gabby

Another Personal Favorite of All Time - How We Disappeared by Jing-Jing Lee - Sensitive Treatment of War...

That day, at the hospital, he wanted to tell her that he understood, that it took time, gathering courage, finding the right words. But what a pity it was that they hadn’t started earlier. What came out instead was this: flutter flutter. A whisper that crumpled in the air half heard. “What did you say, Old One?” “I said you should finish your story. From yesterday.” She nodded to mean yes, yes I really should, but her hands were shaking...

October–December 1941 

If Auntie Tin had arrived at our door an hour earlier, I might have found myself married off right before the turn of the year. As it were, her rickshaw driver was new to the island and kept taking one wrong turn after the other. “Honestly, they should know where they’re going, don’t you think?” she whispered as she dabbed her temples with a handkerchief, trying to explain her fluster. I didn’t yet know who she was, or what she was there for, but I was already on her side. Anyone who had to meet my father’s steely silence that day deserved to be pitied. I wanted to tell her that it was not her fault, that she had simply come at the wrong time. My parents had been having the same fight every few months for over a year now. This evening, it had begun as it always did, with my mother brandishing a letter. I heard my father curse under his breath, promising that he would take her earnings away to stop her from bringing any more letters to the letter reader in town. My mother was the only woman in our village who kept the money she made, hiding coins under floorboards and within the hems of her clothes. My father closed one eye to it, and to the fact that the other men in the village mocked him for being soft. “They’re starving,” she cried, “the people in my old town. My home.” It was only when the Japanese captured Shantou that my mother started calling it “home.” Until then, she only mentioned her birthplace occasionally, each time with a voice steeped in relief and guilt. Relief at having escaped the oppressive poverty and the natural disasters that swept through much too often. Guilt, of course, at having left her family behind, and how easily she had done it. When news came through about the Japanese navy’s arrival on the Southern Chinese coast via motorboats, then of the city’s quick capitulation in mid-1939, my mother wept openly and called out for her da ge and er ge, her nai-nai—her two older brothers and her grandmother. I could only stand by and watch, my stomach heavy, churning. Later that day, I went to the outhouse and almost tipped into the hole at the sight of fresh, red blood in my underwear. When I told my mother that I just had my first bleed, her face lifted in a half smile and cracked again into sobs. For many nights after that, I dreamed about ships and blood. All of it silent, backdropped by the sound of my mother’s weeping. I was fourteen. For the next two years, she’d continued talking about her large extended family and the crumbling, gray-tiled building that they shared with a number of other households. The inner courtyard where they would gather to share a pot of tea on a clear day. Her pet geese. How she used to take dips in the river in the peak of summer. Her parents had betrothed her to my father as soon as she was born, and when she was fourteen (and he, eighteen), they got married. My mother moved out of her parents’ home and into my father’s ancestral home in the next village up, only to wave farewell to him a few days later. It was a full day’s journey before he got to the port of Guangzhou and almost two weeks in a junk before it docked in the promised land—Singapore. There, amid the babel of languages (other Chinese dialects he could just about comprehend, plus Malay, Tamil, and English, which he could not) and a quay teeming with bobbing sampans, he stopped, breathing in the hot air, smoky from the exhaust of idling trucks and the long pipes of foremen directing their laborers between boats and warehouses. Even then, through the lingering vestiges of seasickness, my father could smell opportunity in the air, a riotous mixture of rice and chili and tobacco, and realized that he would never again see his family’s roaming tracts of barren farmland. Never again see his mother, though he had promised to return once he had made his fortune. Out of the depths of the ship’s hull and away from its sweating, sickly masses, this simple act of walking across land almost made him break down in regret and gratitude. By the time he arrived at the address he had been given—a Hokkien clan house—he was so euphoric from the bustle and color and temple music coming from every lane and corner of Chinatown that he said yes to the first job he was offered. The next day, he bussed up north to a part of Singapore dense and dark with rubber trees. A different world, he marveled, though he soon realized that he had exchanged the onerous farm work back home for similar work that paid him only a few cents more and required him to rise at two in the morning instead of five. By the end of his first day, his face and arms were mosquito-stung and his hands scored from multiple accidents with his tapping knife. His fellow workers quietly laughed as he stumbled over tree roots. Rubber tapping paid badly but it doesn’t break your back, they reminded him. In a few weeks, his skin had stopped reacting to insect bites and his eyes had grown used to the gloom and depth of the rubber grove. He sent money home every month. Along with the money, my father included a letter inquiring after his parents’ health, and then his young wife’s, in that order. They wrote back, his eldest brother’s slashing script seeping through the paper in spots, telling him that his parents’ health was good but for the usual aches that came and went with the rain; that his wife was readying herself for married life learning to sew and cook; that his six siblings were busy trying to coax something out of the leached soil. It took my father years of scoring veins into the trunks of trees and years of living in an eight-to-a-room dormitory before he could afford a house. A little wooden house in Hougang, a village notorious for the stench of its pig farms, but a house all the same. It was several months before he could send for his wife. By the time she set foot in her new country, they had been apart for four years. My mother was the one who recognized my father. Went up to him and tapped him on the shoulder. For in the space between their first and second meeting, she had changed—child to woman—the milk fat on her cheeks had vanished, tapering down to a pointed chin. She was all but unrecognizable. To her blank and unwavering gaze, all my father could say was, “Lao Po, you have changed!” “Lao Po,” my father now said. Wife, old woman. He only called her this during the height of an argument, or when he was trying to plead with her. “We already send money home every Lunar New Year. We can’t afford boat fares for anyone, much less the entire family. Look around us. Do you think we have anything to spare?” I followed the sweep of his arm as he directed it around our attap hut, pointing at the one rattan chair that no one ever sat in because they were afraid to wear it out; at the one bedroom where all of us slept, my brothers and I sharing a single bed, sleeping head to foot to head; at me. I was standing at the dining table, chopping up kong sin vegetables and making sure there were no snails hidden among the deep green stalks when he nodded in my direction. “We can’t even afford to send her to school.” “Are you telling me you’re going to let them starve? Is that what you’re saying?” “I’m saying we are barely making ends meet. I’m saying that the boys can’t read or do their homework after sunset because we’re rationing the candles. I’m saying we have nothing to give. Look, look.” He turned out his empty pockets, flapped the hem of his shirt to show how thin the cotton had become from years of washing. 

“One of my brothers is thinking about coming over.” “What are you talking about? You think the boats are running? There are Japanese ships in their harbor. The whole of Guangdong province has been under Japanese rule for two years. What do you think they’re going to do if anyone goes to the port looking to leave? This is madness, this is—” “If no one is allowed to leave, how did this letter get to me? Maybe there is a way, if they travel inland.” “And what then? Even if they manage to cross the South China Sea without getting captured by the Japs. What then? Who’s going to give them jobs?” My father was almost heaving. His back curled like a cat’s backed into a corner. The rubber industry had collapsed a few years ago. With it went the plantation and my father’s job. Now he did what work he could: poorly paid odd jobs for a furniture store in town, and manual labor in the pig farms in our village sometimes, only to make ends meet. “What, do you want to sell one of the children to pay for the upkeep of your family? Maybe the girl?” 

That was the moment Auntie Tin rapped on the door. I smelled her perfume before I saw her, a floral note amid the deep musk of farm animals and earth around us. “Hello, hello, Mr. Ng, Mrs. Ng. I’m Mrs. Tin,” said the visitor, smiling. My parents, caught mid-quarrel, folded their arms across their chests. The visitor continued smiling and held out a paper bag with both hands. “Pastries. Tangerines.” My mother passed the paper bag to me and said, “Go. Finish making dinner out back.” Out of sight, I tried to eavesdrop on their conversation but they were whispering, their voices drowned out by the cries of children playing outside and the chatter of our neighbors relaxing before their evening meal. The smell of tangerines filled the kitchen as I finished washing the vegetables and I was trying to start the fire underneath the wok when my mother called for me. “Wang Di! Bring us some tea.” Her voice like a crack of a whip, making me wonder what I had done this time. When I brought them the tea, my parents were sitting on the kitchen stools and the woman was deep in our one good rattan chair, making the wicker stretch and creak as she looked me over from top to bottom and up again. The curls in her hair were freshly set and there was gold on her arms and on her earlobes, little yellow hoops that she rubbed every now and then between finger and thumb as if to make sure that they were still there. She nodded as I handed her a cup. “Good girl. Call me Auntie Tin.” Then to Ma, “You have just one daughter, yes?” “Yes, just one.” “And did I hear you say ‘Wang Di’? Is that her official name?” My mother nodded and Auntie Tin turned to me, the perm wobbling on her head as she did so. “Girl, do you want to know what your name means? Would you like a husband? I have just the man for you in mind.” It was only then that I realized that I didn’t know what my name meant. The realization dropped like a stone down my throat, into my belly. Confused, I nodded, then shook my head. Yes. No. My father said nothing but started agitating the spoon in his cup, as if he were ringing a bell. “Wang, meaning hope or to look forward to. Di, little brother.” She turned and gestured outside with her hand, as if she knew that my brothers were out playing and might step through the doorway any moment. “Wise name. And good girl—” she nodded at me “—for bringing your parents good luck. Two brothers, this is something I can tell potential suitors about.” 

My father dropped the spoon with a clatter. “She’s too young.” “Oh, it doesn’t have to be today. I’ll just put her name down and you can let me know whenever you’re ready.” She drew out a palm-sized notebook from her bosom, bloodred and pulsing with all the names and potential it held within its pages. “Ng. Wang. Di,” she said as she wrote, the fortune mole above her lip leaping with anticipation. I had never heard my name spoken so many times in one day and I hadn’t seen it written before. I leaned forward to watch the characters appear on paper, admiring the way she did it, as easily as brushing crumbs off a table. 伍 望 弟 “You are, what, seventeen this year?” she continued, pencil hovering above a line. “Sixteen,” my mother corrected. “Ah, good. Just right.” “She’s too young.” “Lots of girls get married at this age.” “We’ll need time to talk about this.” My mother turned toward my father, who looked away, out of the door, as if he were expecting someone else to arrive. “Of course, of course. But don’t take too long ah... People get nervous during times like these—they start to think about families, babies, making a home of their own. A lot of women back in China got married before the start of the occupation, you know, just to make sure that they don’t get taken away to be dancing girls, or worse...” I heard my father muttering below his breath in dialect. “Another one. Another woman who cannot let go.” “Mr. Ng?” My father cleared his throat and switched to speak in Mandarin. “That has nothing to do with us. That war is all the way across the sea.” “You may think that but I’ve heard differently.” My mother was nearly in tears. The letter, I knew, was still tucked up into her sleeve. “What? What have you heard?” The woman now lowered her voice and leaned toward my mother. “Oh, that they’re getting close, spreading out. You know that they’re planning to attack Malaya, right? And once they have Malaya, they will come down south. And then it will only be a matter of weeks, if not days—” “Hu shuo ba dao,” my father muttered. Nonsense. “The British are here. They have ships and planes and cannons protecting our island. A few Japanese soldiers aren’t going to defeat the British.” “Then why do they keep sending soldiers here? Why do they tell us to dig air-raid shelters? To go to the hospitals and donate blood?” Auntie Tin’s voice was low, her matchmaker’s charm put on hold for a moment. She had walked past the bomb shelters, of course. The ones my father had dug one morning along with four other men as the village elder gave instructions from outside the trench, his hands behind his back. For a few hours, the air had been filled with the chink of metal hitting earth and dry rustles as earth landed back on the ground. When the village elder retreated into the shade, the men started to talk, laughing at a joke I couldn’t hear. My father was back before lunch, the shovel tipped carelessly over his shoulder. He didn’t know why they bothered at all since no one was going to use it—it was going to fill up with rainwater, he said as he took a drink of water. The bomb shelters didn’t look fortuitous. They looked like trenches. Like rectangles of carved-out ground, waiting for coffins to be lowered into them. Auntie Tin opened her mouth again, caught herself, and turned her unspoken words into a wide smile. I saw a silver tooth in the back of her mouth. “All I’m saying is, Mr. and Mrs. Ng, all the good matches might get snapped up if you wait too long.” There was something in her eyes that hinted she was prepared for anything that might happen, almost; that it was this ease of adapting, her flexibility, that had given her all she had. Her jewelry, her cotton samfu with its silky knotted buttons. “So yes, discuss this among yourselves. I will visit again after the new year.” Then she beamed, eyes crinkling, patient, like a snake that has just swallowed a fat brown hen. She had gotten what she had come for: tea, a friendly exchange, the beginnings of a guanxi—a connection—to another young woman in the village. “That woman didn’t know what she was talking about.” My father had been bristling all day ever since the visit from the matchmaker, but my mother ignored him as she gave everyone, except him, a bit of the salty radish omelet. “We’re not going to get her—” he pointed his chopsticks at me “—married off just because of some silly rumor. Anyway, we need her at home.” He had said the same thing when I was ten and a teacher from the neighborhood school came to ask if I was going to be enrolled that following term. “It’s brand-new and only half an hour away. Ten minutes, if she has a bike,” she had added, looking around to see if there was one. Her eyes went left and right, right and left, to the open door and the windows until she saw the one my father used for work, the front and back carriage rusted over and strewn with metal parts, a spare bicycle tire. She cleared her throat and sipped the tea my mother had given her. Even the sounds she made drinking were delicate. Her hands were pale, almost white, small and as perfect as a doll’s. “Uncle, please think about it. Times are different. We might still live in the kampong but everyone sends their children to school now—” But my father had simply waved his hands in front of her. “She has two brothers. One is in the third year of primary school, the other will go when he’s older. That’s already two sets of uniforms. Plus the books. The shoes. We can’t afford to...” “Oh, please don’t worry about that. People donate things all the time, I can help you with—” “No. No help. We don’t accept charity.” “Nearly everyone receives an education nowadays, even the girls. She’s already a few years late but we can—” “She’s a girl. What can she gain from going to school that her mother can’t teach her? We need her at home,” he said, pointing into the front yard, where the chickens were, and then into the wild, open backyard that extended into the trees. While my father cycled around the city doing odd jobs for a furniture store (deliveries, mostly, and bits of light carpentry) and my mother went around the village collecting laundry, I went to the market every morning with a basket of eggs and sweet potatoes. Once there, I would lay out sheets of newspapers and spread out what I had. Sometimes all the produce went in an hour, sometimes I had to take everything home again with me, and the weight of it slowed me down so that I arrived home later than normal. I would see my mother watching from the window, knowing that I had made no money that day but she would say nothing and I would say nothing. The feeling of it would pervade all throughout dinner so that my throat closed up and I would have to swallow again and again to keep my food from rising from my stomach. I nodded. When the woman looked at me, it was with a look that made me feel watched—the way an animal might feel watched. She was cautious with my father like that, as if he were a large dog, tame enough, but which could still pounce. “I don’t want to go to school,” I said, even though no one had asked me. My father nodded as I hoisted Meng onto my hip. Look at this, I wanted to say, to shame her, to remind her that there were needful things—and then there were things that people wanted, that anyone could want, but could live without. Meat and fish for dinner more than just twice a year. New clothes. An education. I had stared back at her, unblinking, wanting to sound older than I was, wanting to be on the side of my family because they were the only thing I knew. “I don’t need it,” I’d added, reveling in a sour satisfaction as the teacher got up to leave. My mother, still sore about my father’s refusal to send money to her family, refused to speak to him throughout dinner. Every now and then, as she moved to pick up morsels of food to put into her bowl, I heard the crinkle of paper under her blouse. A few days later, I saw her wrap her jade pendant, a pale green stone that she had always worn on a loop of string around her neck, in cotton and slide it into an envelope. I imagine that the jade was still warm when she brought it to the post office. For the next few months, I would catch her in the middle of reaching for it, her hand going to the dip in her throat, and finding nothing. My father never noticed. I imagine, too, that she was already thinking about sending her family the pendant that evening. The matchmaker’s warning about the war was ringing in my ears but the only thing I could think about then was my future husband—what he might look like, where we would live, whether he would be kind.

~~~

A voice rang out, high-pitched, despairing. “They’re not letting us in!” “It’s only for the ang moh,” someone else cried. “It’s no use.” 

It was her scream which kept me up. The sound of it spoke of everything no one dared to talk about: what the soldiers were doing, young and afraid and separated from their families. It spoke of the things everyone was to keep silent about all through the three and a half years we belonged to the Japanese, and of the decades after.

~~~

We all watch across the world as violence and wars are initiated by those who decide they want to control more...more of anything they want--riches, land... and... people... There has never been a time in my life when I have been able to accept any reason for war... Except, of course, when we see that war takes two sides...even if one doesn't want to be at war. Take, for instance, Ukraine. They were invaded and had no choice but to fight their attacker.. But, is this really what we as the human race, is all about?

Jing-Jing Lee lives in Singapore, writing in English which I was thankful for, as I started to read this book. It was a war that I had specifically not identified since it was around the time of WWII. Perhaps this war preceded the world-wide war that later spread... In any event, from the standpoint of the characters in this fascinating, yet, terrible book in many ways, war is war when somebody enters your homeplace to take over your lives...

It was at a time when the British was supporting the island of Singapore. So that, when Japan started their move against other countries, those living in Singapore believed that the British would not allow them to overtake their small island. This proved to be incorrect. The story, you will learn, is much more detailed and open in facts. At the same time, the author has proven that her empathy and sympathy for both the story as well as her characters is totally in control. Terrible facts are presented; the result of those facts on the main character, in particular, will be shown to last a lifetime. Kudos to the author for this extraordinary book which, while fiction, reveals the horror that can be worse then death, within those lives affected by war...

May we fight to ensure the United States' present leader will be terminated before more than what is happening now with the military in our streets, will be stopped!

I continue to have mixed feelings related to movement within a book that is not chronological--perhaps when I have become personally invested as I did with this book, it is harder to be in the middle of a dramatic scene and then moved into an entirely different scen-- I want to know what happens quickly! Thus, readers will be moving both into the past as well as into the future of characters, as normal... We begin when the main character, Wang Di is just 16 who has recently gained the ability to consider marriage and beginning a family...

Kevin is another main character, but is much younger so his family drama is quite different and, is the individual who the author creates to bring about the full storyline that is only presented at the very end...

As mentioned earlier, ultimately, the Japanese had moved on to overtaking the small island of Singapore, where Wang Di lives with her family--parents and two brothers... Her mother has been looking toward a meeting with Auntie Tin, the local and rich woman who arranged marriages--her father opposed her leaving home. Auntie was full of doom and gloom sharing what she had learned about the movement of the Japanese and their affect on marriageability... So it was delayed for more discussion...

Which never occurred because the Japanese was now arriving in groups, claiming everything they saw or wanted... And that soon meant the people living on the island... Before her father could even act, Wang Di had been taken away, just as many other young children of all ages. No information was provided to the families as to where they were being taken, even when settled and years past, her family didn't know what was happening to her...

An older Japanese woman soon introduced herself. Wung Di, as many others had been placed in small private rooms, their clothese taken away and they were forced to wear dresses, used... On the first day they were told about bodily cleanliness and showed where they would go each morning upon waking... Small amounts of rice or soup were the only food they were given...

And then they were told why they were there. In helping the Japanese Troups as they fought the war, they needed comforted and the girls would provide that on a daily basis... Even for special serenades...

The average interaction was 30 men a day for each girl, sometimes going up to 40-50 on weekends... This was the part that was terrible to read... Cruelty, violence and even death could be coming through their door at any given time and they had no help from any of the Japanese watchers... One girl of 12 didn't make it... Another teen from Wung Di's community became a close friend, but didn't make it through the four years where their lives was "servicing" soldiers... Slowly each girl lost weight, lost identity and aged daily as their bodies could not deal with what was being done to them... I have to ask, are women better off than in the 1940s??? Not under an authortarian leader who places money and power over people...

Remind you of the Streets in California?!!

Though nobody would talk about it, when the war was won and Wung Di and others left, some chose not to go home. Wung Di had no options; she went back home where even her parents and brother would not speak to her, thinking she had chosen to marry a soldier and lived with him... The Truth, far worse, was to be kept secret no matter what... And then Auntie, who now had few riches came to see if she could be placed on the active list again... She had found a man whose wife had been killed, quite older, but somebody who promised to care for her... It was arranged...

Readers may find it difficult to understand what happens then... The one thing we learn is that Wung Di cannot read or write, and, is afraid to share anything with her new husband for fear he would throw her out... Fortunately he was kind and gentle and willing to wait so that we are soon reading that he had died and Wung Di was being forced to leave their home and she to move into a tiny place for singles--by law!

Kevin was a very special boy, perhaps so special that his parents didn't realize that he was intelligent beyond his age. An inquisitive boy by nature, he oftn found that his parents didn't understand his desire to learn and know more. At the same time he was bullied at school, especially when a neighbor shared that he lived in the same room as his grandmother. This may have been unusual, but it provided a companionship that fulfilled his need to talk and learn... Until his grandmothr was growing old and had to be taken to th hospital where, that time, his parents had gone out for a short while, leaving Kevin, who was the only one there when his grandmother awoke and started talking quickly, incoherently, in a different language that he only came to recognize the words, "forgive me."

Kevin's father had been in a war and came back with PTSD, so that when his mother died, he once again withdrew from the family into a dark place and would not even listen as Kevin tried to share what his mother had said--for he had researched and deciphered the words and created a complete transcript--a confession to her son...

Soon Kevin was finding things that his grandmother had left in their room. And, several times, he had watched her, while dreaming, when she returned to allow him to see where other letters had been hidden. Whether it was her ghost, or that he dreamed seeing her in the secret places at one time or another is not explained. What we do know is that he put together exactly what his grandmother had once done during the war and Kevin began tracking, hoping he could find family that they didn't know about...

Is this fiction based upon some documentation? For me, it really wasn't important. This author weaved a time of pain and sorrow and loss into the lives of an entirely new and different family, decaded later, that renewed a feeling of family that had been slowly destroyed during a war that achieved nothing but death and much worse for those civilians deprived of their lives. Having stories like this is the only way we who have faced the unknown with fear, can find joy and peace that somewhere, perhaps soon or in the future, all that we have suffered will be lost from our memories as those thoughts are replaced with new happiness... This is what Jing-Jing Lee offers to us at a time when most of the world needs to know there is an end and Peace and Joy will surely come in the morning...

GABixlerReviews