Like everyone else, I enjoy books full of action, books portraying astounding characters, books that take me to a foreign place, books that fill me with suspense, and books that put me in situations I will never actually find myself in. However, the books that frequently strike me most deeply do none of these things. Instead, many of the tales that stick to my ribs and leave me full long after I have finished them, portray life as it is lived by the most of us; a process of experiencing, navigating, and learning from both small horrors and more importantly, small wonders. "In Zanesville", a 1970s coming-of-age tale by Jo Ann Beard is precisely one of those books.
A 2012 Alex Award winner, an award given to books that appeal strongly to both teens and adults, "In Zanesville" is indeed so much about the average life, that the main character is never given a name. She could be me, or she could be you. But who she really is, is a watcher and a follower making it through her 14th year of life, the ninth grade, an alcoholic father, and a mother on the edge of meltdown by doing what many of us did during our teenage years. She hangs out with her best friend known as Flea, she babysits, she spys on the neighbors and at the center of this novel, she experiences life's constant but humble wonders and horrors.
These wonders and horrors include discovering boys as well as how wrong one can be; suddenly realizing that marching band is for dorks and quitting right at the start of a parade; getting noticed by the popular crowd and nearly losing one's best friend because of it; and being overjoyed to see your father because his depressive drinking made you worry about suicide.
Yet perhaps the greatest wonder of all, is Beard's ability to make every character full, utterly believable, and true. This is accomplished by a pitch perfect tone, a dry sense of humor, and by the author spending time developing every character readers come in contact with. It is a remarkable feat and it is this as well as Beard's celebration of life as most of us know it, that sets "In Zanesville" apart.
Call it a twist of fate or more likely, call it simple coincidence, but not half way through my last read, Bruce Catton's history of Michigan, our state Library released the 2013 List of Notable Michigan Books. This annual list presents a fantastic mix of adult and children's fiction and nonfiction written by Michigan authors or set in our wonderful state. And in yet another... twist of coincidence we'll call it, it just so happened that one of the listed books that most intrigued me, Benjamin Busch's "Dust to Dust," was currently displayed on our new nonfiction shelf. So I grabbed it. Then devoured it.
And indeed, "Dust to Dust" is a book for devouring, digesting, and breaking down to its elements. For that is precisely what Busch does. His memoir does not simply present the recollections of a life lived according to the strictures of time but instead, bends and blurs a life of memories around a series of elements of his own - arms, metal, water, soil, bone, stone, blood, and ash. Busch uses these constituent particles to tie together his memories but also to get at the core of life and more specifically, the impermanence of life.
For instance, in discussing his childhood in upstate New York, a location and temporal period that a large portion of the book is focused on, he details at one point, his attempt to overpower nature and a river by building a stone damn across it only to eventually watch his days work wash away.
Impermanence, power, and of course nearly all of his elements including dust, blood, and ash are key players in what is another central role in Busch's life and book, that of a Marine serving two tours in Iraq. Much like Busch's childhood that was spent alone digging and building forts in the woods, his adult Marine life finds him doing the same as the ideal soldier yet still isolated and now, wondering what it is all about.
Finally, after his tours and then years spent reprising his combatant role as an actor on shows such as the Wire, Busch brings his family to Michigan and it is here we come to both Busch's final waypoint and our reason for its inclusion on the Michigan Notable Book List. As a current resident of the state, Busch ends his book spending his time cleaning up the detritus from an old farm in the heart of lower Michigan as well as cleaning out the same from his now dead parent's home.
If all of this sounds a tad depressing, it is. Busch's book is truly a pensive rumination on a life slowly returning to its very make-up. But, like many great warrior poets before, Busch spins a story that is as much elegy as memoir and it is this poetic elevation of the basics and decay of life that is "Dust to Dust's" greatest strength.
