Cross-over

As I crossed-over from 2016 to 2017, I read three books that crossed-over each other as well; their content and stories flowing in and out of  violence: its nature, its cruelty, its doggedness, and its failure, still, to conquer hope, kindness, and compassion while in its midst.

I began with Mark Kurlansky’s Nonviolence, one of those cogent accessible Penguin Chronicles books that underpin my nonfiction collection. He marches through history plotting the continuum of moments when nonviolence emerges and illustrates a path to resolution before falling to one of the “25 lessons” he postulates that devolve our better natures into violence, again and again.

Then I read the current YA novel, Salt of the Sea, by Ruta Sepetys which weaves together four lives caught up in the final brutal days of WWII as refugees and armies raced to escape the cauldron of a collapsing Third Reich and a punishing Russian Army converging on the massive evacuation into the Baltic Sea. At every turn the reader grasps at moments of kindness before they are stricken once again by the over-riding engines of violence. It brings those historic trespasses to a very personal level.

And lastly, I read Colin Whitehead’s  novel, The Underground Rairoad, which buries us, like his railroad, beneath the incomprehensible hopelessness that was slavery’s enduring cruelty and challenge. The possibilities of respite or hope are so slight (in that world, in this world?), yet so profound that we are humbled by cruelty and kindness alike.

The cross-over between these books occurs in me, the reader; distilling from facts and storytelling a personal perspective on hope and possibility or inevitability and surrender. It is the reason to read widely, reflect often, and reach for another book.