Escaping the Summertime Blues

It is no secret; I have the summertime blues. I can’t seem to keep my mind on anything but the heat. And it is hot. Over a hundred here today. And likely where you are as well. There is a little cooling coming. And moisture. Tomorrow will be like a sauna. I tell myself, at least I’m not being evacuated from Rhodes.

Yet, the images from Greece make me consider books I read as a girl that filled me with images of places I couldn’t even imagine. And, yes, I blame books for leading me by the nose and eyeglasses into the world of writing.

Margaret E. Bell’s Watch for a Tall White Sail took me to the Ketchikan Peninsula in Alaska at the end of the 19^th Century. I read it as a pre-teen and have never forgotten it or the ending. I can close my eyes and see the peninsula as it was then, the hardship of the heroine’s life, and her ultimate joy. I checked it out of the school library then and now wish I hadn’t. The book is only available in hardback and is priced over $100 dollars. I do drool on its Amazon page from time to time, then remember the joy of the second of three books, The Totem Cast a Shadow, and wonder if it is available. Not on Amazon, but anywhere. Which is the long way round to say, I’ve been on my way to the Ketchikan ever since.

I fell hard for Australia. What I was doing reading Nevil Shute as a teen is an interesting question. My older sister wouldn’t let me near her copy of Exodus as in her judgment I was clearly too young for the contents of the pages. I snuck my mother’s copy and read it anyway which is why I am certain Paul Newman was the wrong guy to play Ari Ben Canaan in the movie. A bit off topic, so back to Nevil Shute. I read The Legacy before it became A Town Like Alice and have been on my way to Australia ever since, just like the sheriff James Garner played In Support Your Local Sheriff (a truly engaging, funny movie).

Which brings me to James Michener. Until They Sail fed my Australia problem and the movie by the same name did nothing to deter it. (Paul Newman was in that, too.) I’m not as old as it may seem, my parents used to take my older sister and me to the drive-in in our old turquoise and white Nash with the Nash seat. They picked double features expecting us to sleep during the second more adult movie. Fat chance. I still start crying at the mention of Sayonara and have yet to recover from William Holden’s bared chest in Picnic (not a Michener story but a great chest nevertheless). Inspired, I read Sayonara. I cried so hard at the ending that the pages in my copy are still crinkled where my tears dried. The Bridges at Toko-Ri, which I read when far too young, did not inspire a visit to North Korea, but Tales of The South Pacific and later Hawaii gave me the desire to see the islands. And I have. Even Lāna’i.

I pounded my way through From Here to Eternity. Don’t ask how I got my hands on a copy of it when fifteen. But I did. I am still in recovery from that book. And, yes, I have been to the beach. And, no, I did not reenact any scenes that once involved Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr.

All this rambling is to say, that as we write and world-build, we inspire others to travel, we help them see the world more fully, and sometimes we make them cry. And — books are a wonderful, magical way to escape the heat. You don’t have to be trampled on your way to the Acropolis or ferried from fires in Rhodes, rather you can luxuriate on Corfu or Crete or Delphi with the help of Mary Stewart. Or even on Barbados in my book Perfidia .

Check my books out at D.Z. Church – Author, Standalones & Vietnam Era Military Thrillers (dzchurch.com)