The Mystic Market by Ruth Perkinson

Publisher:       Bella Books

Ruth Perkinson doesn't write books that are easy to read.  She chooses topics that some people find disturbing and she uses words in ways that build images and create thoughts that are one moment crystal clear and then floating on the air in an ethereal manner the next.  She tells a deceptively simple story that suddenly unveils deeper emotions and subjects.  The reader has to concentrate to make sure that she's not missing anything as the plot progresses.  This style makes Perkinson's books rich in content, challenging for a reader and rewarding to read.

The Mystic Market is a combination grocery, bar and tackle shop located in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and run by Diana Tucci and her sister Fannie Crabwell, the town's resident Tarot card reader and general eccentric.  It's also home to Deputy Blair Wingfield and her paralyzed brother Aaron.  They are as much a part of the scenery as the market itself and life goes on at a pretty regular pace until a death rocks the small town.  Mary Louise Martinez is found hanging from the net on the basketball court at the local high school.  The device she used to hang herself was a rainbow flag and she left a note blaming the school and the basketball coach for the bullying that was aimed at her.  When Mary Louise's parents decide to sue the school system, they hire Fannie's daughter Emma Jacobs as their lawyer and Jackson Hole finds itself at the center of a media swirl about gay rights and bullying.  Blair is plunged into her own chaos when Aaron ends up in the hospital fighting for his life after a stroke and she finds herself attracted to Emma, a supposedly straight woman.  Blair is forced to deal with a number of issues she'd just as soon avoid.

The Mystic Market is not as deadly serious as it sounds.  Perkinson manages to inject humor into quite a bit of the book.  In the opening scene a young Blair is listening to a sermon and finds the answer to why God lets bad things happen to good people.  When the priest recites, "Even the hairs of your head have all been counted," Blair finally understands that God suffers from OCD.  He's so busy counting hairs that he can't pay attention to anything else.  There are also warm and caring scenes between Blair and Aaron, aka "The Stephen Hawking of Jackson Hole."  Aaron is the type of character that wraps himself around a reader's heart and makes you wish you really knew him.

Perkinson does deal with weighty issues in this book.  There is constant friction between Blair's atheism and the beliefs of other characters.  The trial revolves around the problem of anti-gay bullying, the religious right and the role that schools need to play in protecting students.  As with many books written by gay people, the issue of how people choose to form families is crucial.  And there is the growing attraction between Blair and Emma, which doesn't make sense to either of them, but draws them together like a moth and a flame.

Perkinson also writes a very dense story.  The book is 171 pages, but contains enough information to feel like it's well over 200.  She chooses her words carefully and they blend together to create a multitude of images all at once.  Sometimes it is necessary to re-read a passage to make sure that everything has been absorbed.  Perkinson never talks down to her readers.  She assumes they can assimilate what is going on without constantly backing up over or explaining the plot points.

The Mystic Market is a thoughtful book.  The story itself can be easily read and enjoyed, but the reader who looks for more will find it.

Vera's Still Point by Ruth Perkinson

Publisher:                 Spinsters Ink


"Have you ever been somewhere or with someone and it was such a wonderful experience that it was like time was not moving forward or backward? You were just standing still, taking in all of the moment's beauty….there is the dance, the dance of life, what we all live for but what most of us don't recognize. We are mired in the past and pulled centrifugally into the future. However, it is the small dancing moments that evade time that we need to touch like a spirit fleshed out before us." Vera's Still Point, p. 104

Vera Curran was living a life where she missed most of the still points. She wasn't completely to blame for this because she was a forty year old lesbian librarian at a public high school in Virginia, a state that unfortunately is well known for being gay-unfriendly. Vera made the decision that the only way to protect her job was to live her life as a complete denial of her sexuality and follow a rather mundane and mind-numbing routine. She thought she was relatively happy living like that, until she met Frankie Bourden. Frankie was a former military pilot who decided to become a teacher with a mission to change the world, or at least her little corner of it. Frankie represented everything that Vera taught herself to be afraid of; she was out and proud and determined to shake up the system. And Vera couldn't resist her. 

Unfortunately, as sometimes happens in real life, the relationship is doomed to be of short duration because the reader learns on page 2 that Frankie dies from cancer, but, instead of being sad, the end of the book is uplifting. It tells the story of two women, how one awakened the life in the other and how the survivor learned to go on without her. The chapters alternate from the present when Vera is telling their story to her nephew Kyle and flashbacks of how the improbable relationship developed, beginning with cryptic questions on Post-It Notes. In the end, Vera would learn from Frankie that it's the still points and the people who make them for you that give richness to your life and she loved her for it.

Vera's Still Point is not a typical romance. There is a love story involved, but it's overshadowed by other themes. The first is the cost of living in an environment that will not let a person be who she truly is. People who do not live in one of the extremely conservative states may have trouble understanding Vera's fear about what could happen to her career if it becomes known that she is a lesbian. Virginia has been dominated for many years by the presences of the Rev. Pat Robertson and the late Rev. Jerry Falwell and was the birthplace of the Moral Majority.

Perkinson, a former teacher, captures the repression of living in such an environment and the destruction it can wreak on a person's soul to be forced to live in the shadows. Vera's fear of discovery is real, which makes Frankie's openness either heroic or foolhardy, depending on how you view the outcome. The fact that Vera is so obviously unhappy in her personal life without realizing it will cause readers who have been in similar circumstances to consider what "still points" they have also failed to experience. There is a certain sadness in wishing that everyone could be as fearless as Frankie and knowing that it sometimes can't be so in real life. 

There is the theme of how family dynamics shape a person's behavior or fail to shape it. Vera and Frankie's mothers make an interesting contrast of people who don't approve of something, but choose to deal with it in different manners. One interesting question that never quite gets answered is why Vera, who appears to have the more accepting family, doesn't have the courage to be more of a fighter for her life. 

Also there is the theme of love discovered and lost. Or is it? The reader will be left to ponder whether the cessation of life has to be the cessation of love. Can love be sustaining when one person is a memory? And what happens if you are the one left behind? It would be expected that Vera, after so many years of cutting her emotions off and then finally discovering the deep joy that love can bring, would become bitter when it's taken away too soon or that she would retreat to her former behavior. Neither of those happens however and the book makes a powerful statement about drawing strength from the past to face the future.

Vera's Still Point is a thoughtful book told with humor and insight. While it tells a love story, it will also lead the reader into reevaluating life and what really matters. Hopefully, it will lead the readers to also be more aware and appreciative of the still points that they personally experience and the people who help to cause them.

Piper's Someday by Ruth Perkinson

Publisher:             Spinsters Ink


The statement of purpose on Spinsters Ink's web home page contains this sentence: These are the books that recognize our commonality, celebrate our diversity, and honor our strength in the face of adversity. That description certainly applies to Piper's Someday by Ruth Perkinson, which represents another lesbian novel that departs from the standard formula to tell an engaging story. 

Piper Cliff has three holes in her heart, one each for her mother, father and brother. The police report says they were killed in a traffic accident, but Piper knows the truth. God took them because she was mean to some kittens. Piper understands the lessons she received in school about cause and effect and believes that is why she lost her loving family and was left to live with her alcoholic, neglectful grandfather. The one bright constant in her twelve-year-old life is her three-legged dog Someday. Someday is her companion, confidant and the only thing in her fairly dismal life that makes the days bearable. Piper can't wait for the day when she turns 18, can get herself a job as a waitress and have her own apartment to share with Someday. 

Things begin to look up for both Piper and Someday when two young women move into the apartment complex and offer their friendship. Jenny and Andrea accept Piper and Someday completely as they are and provide an escape for the child and dog to get away from the grandfather and his sleazy friend Clover. When her grandfather tries to turn Piper against her friends because they are lesbians, all she needs to know is that they love her. As time passes, Piper's home situation becomes more dangerous and she discovers that she has friends she didn't realize existed who are determined to help her. Ultimately, Jenny and Andrea will risk everything to save Piper and Someday when the courts and the state of Virginia are not willing to act in their best interests.

Piper's Someday touches on a number of issues from today's society – child neglect and abuse, discrimination against lesbians and gays and the inability of courts and governments to solve many societal problems properly. Piper shouldn't be perceived as a victim though. She's a tough little kid who has learned to survive in terrible conditions and that she is still open to relationships of any kind speaks to the strength of her personality. Someday may only have three good legs, but she has the courage to come to Piper's rescue at one point and possesses an innate understanding of the child.

Overall, however, the book speaks to the definition of "family" and the reality that a genetic relationship to someone may not make them as much your family as the people who love, protect and nurture you. Piper's Someday is an moving story that will cause you to think while it's entertaining you. It doesn't take long to read, but every moment is worth it.

Breaking Spirit Bridge by Ruth Perkinson

Publisher:                 Spinsters Ink


Breaking Spirit Bridge returns to the two main characters from Perkinson's earlier book, Piper's Someday. After living in Canada for several years with her guardians, Piper and her three-legged dog Someday return to Virginia so that Piper can attend college on a basketball scholarship. Charlottesville provides an exciting environment for Piper, but not one that can protect her from the trauma of her early years in Richmond. Though she tries to focus on her team, new friends and lover, Piper is haunted by old demons. The memories of her families' deaths and the abuse she suffered afterward are resurrected when Piper is called to Richmond to confront her dying grandfather. Piper begins to experience episodes of losing touch with reality and hearing voices and sounds and there is only Someday, the only solid link to her past and her protector, to keep her grounded. Tragedy beyond Piper's comprehension finally drives her into a mental hospital and she will fight to regain not only her sanity, but her ability to view the future with hope.

This is not an easy book to read in the sense that Piper takes the reader on a difficult journey. Bipolarism is an illness that subjects people to extreme highs and lows and trying to live inside their heads is extremely confusing. It is difficult for them to separate reality from fantasy and trying to follow the train of thought requires the reader to focus more intently than many novels. 

Anyone who is familiar with these characters from the previous book also may find it difficult to cope with what is happening to Piper. At times her disintegration into the illness is at best uncomfortable to watch and many times distressing. The reader wants so much for this young woman to finally have a happy life that to have her suffer so badly can be painful. 

This can't have been an easy book for Perkinson to write either. To be able to express these emotions and the depths of this illness in a way that draws the reader in requires knowledge of what bipolarism does beyond what simple research can accomplish. At times the reader will get an almost uncomfortable feeling that she is being given an insight to the author that is almost too personal.

Breaking Spirit Bridge is well written by Perkinson and presented by Spinsters Ink. This isn't a light romance or an engrossing mystery, but it is a powerful character study. It's an intelligent book that requires the reader to contemplate the impact of mental illness on people and those who care about them. If you're looking for easy entertainment, this isn't it, but, if you're looking for something that is enlightening and a good story, you want to try this book.