THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 24, 1994 TAG: 9407150562
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BILL RUEHLMANN
LENGTH: Medium: 80 lines
THE BIBLIOGRABBAG bursts:
Sequels can be skimpy and dog stories can cloy, but not if they carry the byline of veteran Western Virginia writer Donald McCaig on the cover. The former Manhattan ad man, who dropped out of urban commerce to become a successful sheep farmer in rural Williamsville, provided the powerful Nop's Trials in 1984. That savvy best seller, about a surpassing border collie, earned McCaig a Prix Literaire from the Societe Protectrice des Animaux and remains in print as a Lyons and Burford paperback for $13.95.
But now comes Nop's Hope (Crown, 230 pp., $20), which is a rare thing: a heartwarming tale that not only dog lovers will like but that also should win the approval of readers who care just as much about people. McCaig never asks for our emotion; he earns it instead, in the course of an intimate but unsentimental acquaintance with grief-stricken Penny Burkholder, fighting despair at the loss of her family by fiercely following the sheepdog trial circuit. Who is Hope?
A gift.
``When Penny pulled off her boots and went inside with Hope, her shoulders hurt and her feet were wrinkly from the rubber boots and her hand throbbed where she'd punched a ewe. She picked up Hope's empty bowl and opened a can of Old El Paso refried beans for herself. Her walls were painted plywood, her floor was concrete, but so long as Hope lay beside her cot, his head on his paws, this room was home.''
Speaking of the needful feeling that what is wanted can happen, here comes A Consumer's Guide to Hope: Where to Find It and How to Keep It (A.R.E. Press, 199 pp., $11.95) by Virginia Beach writer Ruth O'Lill, an expert at seeking new insights in old virtues. The editor of Virginia's first magazine for singles, First Encounter, and a sometime single parent of three herself, O'Lill turned initial dismay at her second son's congenital brain damage into years of compelling advocacy for individuals with disabilities. Now remarried, she is sponsorship coordinator for Refugee and Immigration Services, a living example of hope in action.
``Hope gives us strength when we need it,'' notes O'Lill, ``it gives us peace, it makes us laugh, and it keeps us humble.''
There is something to be said for anxiety, too, if only in art. Prolific Chesapeake author Wendy Haley, longtime romance writer, departed the passion genre two years back with Shadow Whispers, a suspense novel, and Shadow Vengeance, its tense sequel. She continues to experiment with terror in Dead Heat (Zebra, 380 pp., $4.99), the story of the Fire Man, an arsonist working out an obscure revenge against the world.
Add to that Haley's wry chiller This Dark Paradise (Diamond, 311 pp., $4.99), concerning a sensitive vampire, and you're coming into the diverting company of a woman with authentic skeletons in her closet.
Also of local interest:
Louise Watson Todd, former Newport News English teacher, provides the biography of C. Alton Lindsay: Educator and Community Leader (Brunswick Publishing, 233 pp., $20). Lindsay led the Hampton public school system for many years, and Todd taught when he was superintendent in the 1940s. The book represents a seven-year labor of love from Todd, who once coached debate at Bethel High.
John P. Flemming IV, a civilian statistician with the Department of the Navy in Norfolk, offers The Creation of a Medical School: The Founding of the Eastern Virginia Medical School (Hampton Roads Publishing, 334 pp., $24.95), in commemoration of more than two decades of instruction and service. Flemming's research was the basis of his investigative doctoral dissertation in urban studies at Old Dominion University. Copies of the book may be obtained directly from Flemming at 487-5511.
And Shirley Nesbit Sellers, retired Norfolk teacher and continuing storyteller, observes ``small bug-busy sails skim by great ships'' in her slender volume of verse Where the Gulls Nest: Norfolk Poems (Road Publishers, 26 pp., $5), available at the Chrysler Museum and area bookstores. She celebrates ``the smell of tar and salty tides,/ The sound of slapping ripples on the piles.'' She sings of a surfer ``bourne on a wing of wax and fiberglass.''
Sellers is truly an up tune for a down time. MEMO: Bill Ruehlmann is a mass communication professor at Virginia Wesleyan
College. by CNB