All the Right Places : Traveling Light Through China, Japan, and Russia by Brad Newsham (Vintage)

Some men may cry, some may get violent, while others may calmly accept the situation, however when Brad Nesham’s wife asked for a divorce, his response was to buy a one-way ticket to Tokyo, and head east from there. 

Brad Nesham shares his adventure in the Far East in what would become All the Right Places. It is a journey of self-discovery as Newsham tries to sort out his marital woes and come to grips with the reality of his life’s problems. Some may think he is just running away and avoiding the truth. His wife had been asking for a divorce for months, she moved into her own apartment, and even mentioned that she was seeing someone else. 

Newsham believes that what his marriage needs is another journey. His wife was his former travel companion, going to places such as India and Nepal. He strongly feels that his wife will join him eventually and things would resolve themselves, but life isn’t all that simple. The year is 1985, a time that is slightly ahead of Japan’s bubble economy era and when the Cold War was a cold reality. Still, Newsham finds himself in Okubo House in Tokyo, Japan.

Okubo House is a relatively cheap inn popular with budget travelers and backpackers. It is located near Shinjuku in Tokyo. The start of Newsham’s journey was less than auspicious as he “cursed himself for not having researched Japan, for having come on the spur of the moment armed only with a budget traveler’s guidebook and a half-read copy of Shogun.”

In Japan, Nesham is reluctantly baptized by a Japanese Christian, hits the batting cage with another guest from Okubo House, is approached by by a horny housewife who says to him, “Zex wiss you”, which he refuses as he still believes this trip may save his marriage. 

He cycles his way to Mount Fuji and spends about ten days around the Japanese Alps. He cycles all the way to Kyoto, stays at a place called Tani House and experiences zazen, a Buddhist meditation practice, at a nearby temple. Newsham then hitchhikes to Hiroshima, visits the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum where he is moved and saddened by what America did to Japan to end a war. 

On his way to Hong Kong, Newsham has a telephone conversation with his wife which still rings in his head. He kept going over in his mind the words he heard, “I think we should just tear up the divorce papers.” followed by “I want you to come home now”. And yet, Newsham chooses to stay on the road. 

Newsham checks into a monstrosity called the Chungking Mansions, located on the mainland side of Hong Kong Harbor. “Chungking is highly regarded by the sort of budget traveler who is unworried by pawnshops and girlie shows and men on nearby corners and in doorways, hissing, ‘Hash! Coke! Smack!’”. 

On his way to the mansions, Newsham meets Amy, an American girl, on the bus. Unbeknownst to Newsham at the time, Amy would become his traveling companion in China. Amy had been waiting for her boyfriend Dylan, who she said was a former junkie but could kick the habit anytime. As Dylan never showed up or left a message, Amy decides to travel with Newsham…as buddies, not lovers. 

For the final leg of Newsham’s journey, he boards the Trans-Siberian Railway alone and will make his way to London, traveling through Mongolia and Russia, which was still known as the Soviet Union at the time. He would meet and have adventures with a host of characters also riding on the same train. One of them being the epitome of the “ugly American” tourist. 

Newsham’s travels to mend his broken heart and to resolve the possibility of divorce is always at the back of his mind. He constantly writes affirmations in his notebook reminding himself that he is “in the right place, at the right time”. 

As much as I understand taking a trip to get away from your problems, I don’t believe it will help to solve anything. Yes, you may forget about them while traveling but the problems will still be there when you return. His divorce papers went through and although he and his wife still love each other, they decided to have an “amicable” divorce and continue to be great friends. 

Traveling after having your heart broken is quite common and is something I have done myself. Although I didn’t spend as much time as Newsham did on the road, I did decide to go to Shanghai, China for a week’s stay without any plan whatsoever. It may not have healed my broken heart but it was worth it for the experience of really traveling on my own. ~Ernie Hoyt

The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa, translated by Louise Heal Kawai (HarperVia)

Rintaro Natsuki is a teenage orphan whose grandfather, the man who brought him up, has recently died. A reclusive boy, Rintaro is well on his way to becoming a hikikomori, a hermit who clings to solitude and is deaf to social cues. He spends almost all of his time in the secondhand bookshop that his grandfather owned and nurtured, a place where Rintaro is able to hide away and burrow into the pages of a book. Now that he’s alone in the world with only an aunt whom he barely knows offering him a home, Rintaro stays in the bookshop, ignoring both his school and the classmates who try to lure him back outside. Although he knows he needs to close Natsuki Books, he refuses to leave its walls until one night a visitor shows up--one who’s too unusual for even Rintaro to ignore.

“I need your help. There are books that have been imprisoned.” This statement borders on madness, especially because it comes from the voice of a large plump tabby cat.  

Not only is this a feline with the power of human speech, it’s one that’s mastered the art of sarcasm and quotes Antoine Saint-Exupery. Rintaro, despite his natural misanthropic inclinations, lets the feline draw him into four separate adventures, each involving the future of the printed word. 

There aren’t many writers who can bring adult readers into a world of youthful fantasy and keep them there, riveted and captivated. Sosoke Natsukawa’s The Cat Who Saved Books takes its place beside C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia and Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time as a work of imagination that knows no age barriers. 

Much of this, at least at first, is due to the sardonic, sarcastic cat who keeps Natsukawa’s book from falling into an overload of sweetness and whimsy. This feline is no Disney character. It’s mean.

As he lures his teenage comrade into missions that are impossible for Rintaro to refuse, they sweep up anybody who loves bookstores, books, and the act of reading. The threats that the cat urges his follower to combat are ones that imperil the literary world right now and the weapons that Rintaro finds within himself to combat them will resonate with every reader.

Whether he encounters the speed-demon who believes the importance of reading is found in he number of books consumed rather than in the act of rereading, considering, and savoring them, or the man who tears books apart to distill them into one or two easily read sentences, Rintaro is able to point out the flaws in these beliefs. More difficult and more dangerous are the final two opponents that the cat brings to light.

The publisher who believes the only books that should survive are the ones that will sell in huge numbers brings to mind trends in current publishing houses and slows this break-neck plot into one that evokes into thought and terror. Not only could this happen, it is happening. Then comes the soul of a book that’s survived for almost 2000 years but realizes it’s losing its power. What can keep it from being “just another bundle of paper?” 

“I’m showing you the gap between idealism and reality,” it tells Rintaro, who feels the lure of cynicism and defeat. His response is one to remember and to reread, one that will shape young readers and hearten those who are older.

This quiet little book is one that will become a classic for everyone who treasures the art of reading, the solace of a bookstore, and the dazzling power exerted by pages that have been printed, bound, and brought to life.~Janet Brown

The Applicant by Nazli Koca (Grove Press, release date February 2023)

A prose poem that serves as a preface gives a misleading cast to Nazli Koca’s smart and enigmatic novel, The Applicant. “I will do whatever you ask…For Free.” Although this is the stereotypical image of immigrants who hope to come to the West, this isn’t Leyla.

Leyla is what used to be called “a slacker.” She comes to Berlin from Istanbul to gain the MFA that will give her credibility as a writer. Now after six years in a city that she’s allowed to intoxicate her, her thesis has been rejected and she’s lost her student visa. She’s spent all the money that was left to her from her father’s depleted wealth, wasting it gleefully on living a vagabond life, but Leyla still clings to the idea of privilege. Educated in international schools that gave her fluent English and an American point of view, she always knew she’d leave Turkey for Europe--she deserved it. Now she fights to remain in Berlin, on a temporary visa while waiting for her thesis to be reevaluated and approved.

Sharing an apartment with an expat from Cuba, Leyla works as a cleaner in a hip hostel, a clandestine job that she can skate through while concentrating on her real life-- the one that gives her the freedom to be high and drunk, while dreaming about writing. She drifts into an affair with a Swedish “good-hearted giant from a Grimm’s fairy tale.”, a man who’s never smoked a cigarette nor taken a drug, a right-wing conservative whose favorite food is “American cuisine.” The Swede takes her to his country, introduces her to his family, and wants to marry her. As Leyla’s dream of having her thesis approved seem less and less conceivable, she begins to cling to this man as her “antithesis,” not a dream but a pragmatic possibility.

It would be easy to dismiss this novel as a rehash of the sex, drugs, and rock and roll novels of the cocaine-fueled 80s as told by Jay McInerney, Brett Easton Ellis, and Tama Janowitz, but Nazli Koca is far too smart to fall into that category. Framing Leyla’s narrative in the form of her diary, she dissects the varying degrees of privilege, where all the winning cards seem to be held by “journal-published, MFA-holding, successfully employed” American men. She shows the exhilaration that comes from the freedom of living in a place where the only forbidden speech is the two words that come as a pair, both beginning with the letter h, along with the hope that comes with that freedom--and its accompanying threat of self-destruction. Most of all, she reveals the inequities that come with a passport--where some are allowed to travel as they wish while far too many others are caught in bureaucratic regulations and restrictions. 

“I’m so tired ot the anxiety that’s attached to my passport,” Leyla complains, but she learns her Turkish passport is one that might only be good for pulling her back home. “Mastering the art of escape” is as much of an illusion as her belief that the life she’s adopted has given her the protection of invisibility. 

“A poor immigrant who wants to create art is irrelevant,” she says, but Leyla’s immigrant status is tentative, despite her background, her education, her fluency in English. “My weapons never stood a chance against death or life,” she says, as she discovers there are no easy solutions. Wisely Nazli Koca doesn’t offer any, concluding only with uncertainty and the uncomfortable truth that when it comes to immigration, the dice are loaded and the game is rigged.~Janet Brown

Kenji Miyazawa Picture Book Series by Kenji Miyazawa (International Foundation for the Promotion of Languages and Cultur

Kenji Miyazawa was a Japanese novelist and a writer of children’s books. He was born in Iwate Prefecture in the town of Hanamaki. He is known internationally for his novel Night on the Galactic Railroad which has also been published in English with the title of Milky Way Railroad, Night Train to the Stars or Fantasy Railroad in the Stars.

Kenji Miyazawa Picture Book Series consists of ten  books published by the International Foundation for the Promotion of Language and Culture (IFLC). The mission statement of the IFLC is “to translate and introduce Japanese literature to the world: to translate and introduce outstanding literature of other countries: to aid and encourage excellent translators of various languages: to provide scholarships to students of all nationalities: to sponsor seminars for language learning; and to conduct translation-proficiency examinations.”

To put it more simply, the aim of the IFLC is “to further linguistic and cultural exchange and mutual understanding throughout the world” and is authorized by the Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science of Japan. 

At the time of writing this review, the local library in Aomori Prefecture carried only three of the ten titles in the series. I will be featuring Books 1, 5, and 7. The titles of the books are [The Shining Feet], [The Bears of Mt. Nametoko], and [Crossing the Snow]. 

The Shining Feet - originally titled Hikari no Hadashi was published in 1997 and is translated by Sarah M. Strong with illustrations by Miyuki Hasekura. This story centers on three characters. Ichiro, his younger brother Narao, and their father. The setting is the cold harsh winter of northern Japan. The father is making charcoal in the mountains as an extra means of earning income for the family. The boys are visiting their father for the weekend. As Miyazawa was a devout Buddhist, this story is all about karma and the enduring pain and suffering while still holding compassion for others. A little heavy for a picture book if you ask me. 

The Bears of Mt. Nametoko - originally titled Nametokosan no Kuma was published in 1998. It was translated from the Japanese by Karen Colligan-Taylor and illustrated by Maso Idou. This story is about matagi culture. Matagi are traditional winter hunters of Japan’s Tohoku region. They mostly hunt deer and bear. In this story, Kojuro is a matagi and is about to kill a bear, but the bear begs Kojuro to spare her life for another two years as she is pregnant. In return, the bear will willingly sacrifice itself to Kojuro after the two years are up. 

Crossing the Snow - originally titled Yuki Watari and was published in 2000. It was translated from the Japanese by Karen Colligen-Taylor and illustrated by Maso Ido. This story is about the relationship between humans and animals. However, in Miyazawa’s story, it is only children who are less than twelve-years-old as they are still considered quite innocent and pure. Crossing the snow is a metaphor for leaving the human world and entering a world where humans and animals live harmoniously together. 

I always find that children’s books are not only for children but can be enjoyed by adults as well. As a resident of the Tohoku area of Japan since 2016, I have become more interested than ever in the writers from this area. Whenever I find their publications are available in English, I can’t help but buy them or check them out from the library. I believe local writers often give you insights to their hometowns and if you decide to move and live there, what better way to get to know your neighbors if you can discuss stories they are most likely familiar with. ~Ernie Hoyt

Cave in the Snow by Vicki Mackenzie (Bloomsbury)

Vicki Mackenzie was taking part in a month-long Buddhist meditation course in Pomaia, Italy when she first laid eyes on a woman’s whose life story she would eventually write about. “A somewhat frail-looking woman in early middle age, with fair skin and a rather rounded back. She was dressed in the maroon and gold robes of an ordained Buddhist nun and her hair was cropped short in the traditional manner.”

It would be late in the evening at dinner when a man sitting next to her at the table pointed out the woman again and said, “That’s Tenzin Palmo, The Englishwoman who has spent twelve years meditating in a cave over 13,000 feet up in the Himalayas.” 

It would be a few months later when Mackenzie would pick up a Buddhist magazine and found an interview with Tenzin Palmo. What Tehzin Palmo said in that interview would change Mackenzie’s life as well. Palmo had stated, “I have made a vow to attain Enlightenment in the female form - no matter how many lifetimes it takes.” 

Mackenzie felt that female spirituality was seriously lacking in role models. “The lamas who taught us were male; the Dalai Lamas (all fourteen of them) were male, the powerful lineage holders who carried the weight of the entire tradition were male, the revered Tulkus, the recognized reincarnated lamas, were male, the vast assemblies of monastics who filled the temple halls and schools of learning were male; the succession of gurus who had come to the West to inspire eager new seekers were male.” 

Mackenzie wanted to know, “Where were the women in all of this.” Now here was a woman who said she was going to change that. From that article in the Buddhist magazine, Mackenzie would seek out Tenzin Palmo to find out more about her - Where did she come from? What had she learnt in that cave? What made her take the vow. 

Cave in the Snow is Tenzin Palmo’s story. It is about how an Englishwoman, formerly named Diane Perry, had become an ordained Buddhist nun. It is the story of Palmo’s spiritual journey which takes her from her small town in England, to finding a guru in India, then making a vow to meditate in a cave high up in the Himalayas. 

Tenzin Palmo spent twelve years meditating alone in the cave, dealing with the harsh weather, wild animals, near-starvation and facing her own personal demons, all in the name of following the path to enlightenment. 

It is the story of her overcoming many obstacles along the way - people telling her it was too dangerous, monks saying women would not be able to survive the harsh conditions or cope with the solitude. But Tenzin Palmo is no ordinary woman. She proved all her detractors wrong. She’s very modest about saying what she has gained from her near isolation but her determination to help women on their spiritual path has not waivered one bit. 

I, for one, am a skeptic about the mysticism and seemingly supernatural powers of spiritual leaders and gurus but I find the spiritual journeys people take to be inspiring and admirable. It isn’t anybody who can give up their comfortable life, their family, their friends, and move to a foreign country whose language you don’t know or don’t understand to find the answers to your own question about “Who am I?” or “Why am I here?”. Tenzin Palmo is definitely an interesting individual. You will be moved by her courage, admire her perseverance, and you may even be inspired to take on your own spiritual journey. ~Ernie Hoyt

Ghost Music by An Yu (Grove Press, release date January 2023)

Even before the pandemic came to change the world, every body contained a city of ghosts, one that got rid of dead cells, facilitated the departure of those that were dying, and formed new replacements. Physically we’re all mixtures of what was, what is disappearing, and what is new. Mentally we struggle to reconcile memories of what’s past with the memories we make of a confusing present. In our external environments we’re faced with the same predicament each time we walk outside, working to make sense of death and flux. Seeing how quickly the memories of what once was in place fade away, we’re confronted with the inevitable question: When we’re gone will we be remembered? How can we ensure that we’ll survive in the memories of others?

Song Yan, a young urban housewife, is disturbed one night by a lucid dream, so vivid she can’t find her way out of it. Confronted by a small orange mushroom that has the power of speech, she asks it whether it’s real or a dream and is told “Sometimes these two things are not so different.” 

“I’d like to be remembered,” the mushroom says before it vanishes.

At one time, Soon Yan was once a gifted pianist.  Now she’s a piano teacher, a woman, still young,  who believes she has turned her life over to her husband. It takes a series of mysterious gifts, boxes of fresh mushrooms, to reawaken her curiosity, especially when a letter arrives that reveals the giver. The boxes have been sent by a legend from her past, China’s most famous concert pianist, who disappeared so thoroughly years ago that he’d been given up as dead.

The letter contains Bai Yu’s address and a request that she come to visit. When Song Yan musters enough courage to grant this wish, Bai Yu tells her, “Help me find the sound of being alive.”

Together the two pianists search for what lies within the cave of a musical composition and slowly Song Yan discovers a depth in her life that extends beyond the routine she’s fostered. Then Bai Yu goes away once more and the orange mushroom returns, larger and more invasive than when it first showed itself.

An Yu has written a novel that’s is as haunting and elusive as a musical composition played on a piano. Is Bai Yu dead or alive? For that matter, is Song Yan truly alive after submerging her musical talent in a life over which she has no control? And what the hell is that mushroom and its attending crop of orange fungi that eventually cover an entire room--plus the piano that stands within it?

In a story that’s both eerie and revelatory, dabbling in magic realism and yet firmly rooted on a real street in a real neighborhood in a real city, An Yu posits that to be remembered after death, it’s necessary to live a life of joy and purpose. Song Yan slowly recovers her authentic self in a process that’s both painful and exhilarating, a survival story for our time.~Janet Brown

Meatless Days by Sara Suleri (Penguin)

Sara Suleri Goodyear was born in Karachi, Pakistan. She is the daughter of Z.A. Suleri and Mair Jones. Suleri was a Pakistani journalist, author, and was also an activist for the Pakistan Movement, a political movement whose aim was to create an independent Muslim nation from British India. Mair Jones was from Wales and was an English professor who taught at a university in Pakistan. Suleri herself taught English at Yale University.

Originally published in 1989, Meatless Days is Suleri’s memoir. A new edition was published in the Penguin Women Writers series in 2018. However, this book is not just a biography of her life, it is about the people and nations that shaped her life. It is about living and experiencing life in the newly created nation of Pakistan, having an early education in the United Kingdom, and dealing with the mystery of the American Midwest. It also reads like a soliloquy on what it means to be a woman. 

In her discourse, Suleri says leaving Pakistan was the same as giving up the company of women. She goes on to say that “the concept of woman was not really part of an available vocabulary: we were too busy for that just living, just living, conducting precise negotiations with what it meant to be a sister or a child or a wife or a mother or a servant”. 

In her numerous autobiographical accounts, she starts off with talking about her Dadi, the mother of her father - her grandmother. It seemed to Sara that her grandmother had a special relationship with God. “God she loved, and she understood him better than anyone.” Sara’s Dadi could also be greatly moved by food. Sara and her sisters “pondered but never quite determined whether food or God constituted her most profound delight”. 

One of the most interesting chapters is about Suleri’s friend Mustakori, a woman who had an array of nicknames - Congo Lise, Fancy Musgrave, and Faze Mackaw. Suleri met Mustakori at Kinnaird College which she was attending. Her memory of Mustakori, although humorous, sometimes verges on the disrespectful as when she and her friend Dale were talking about her. Dale says, “That girl is amazing because…” to which Suleri responds, “Because…she was born stupid and will die stupid. And that’s the end of that.” What a thing to say about an innocent friend. Suleri and her older sister Ifat and other friends found Mustakori’s innocence confounding.

However, Suleri’s most profound chapters focus on her older sister Ifat. Early in the novel, we are told that Ifat was killed in a similar way as her mother. They were both the victims of being hit by a rickshaw. The rickshaw driver who hit Ifat never stopped and looked back and was never caught. The incident happened just two years after their mother died. The love for her

sister is evident in the way she wants to avoid the tragedy and to focus on how her sister had such a big impact on her life. Ifat was four years her senior. She was born beautiful, according to Sara. It was one of her casual friends that told her she had to write about her sister’s death. She responded with a loud “Nonsense”, but after getting home she recalled the conversation, Suleri comes to the conclusion, “Ifat’s story has nothing to do with dying; it has to do with a price the mind must pay when it lives in a beautiful body.”

Suleri’s memoir does not follow convention as we learn of her mother and sister’s death, only to have them come to life in later chapters telling the reader how each of them has shaped her lives. Her prose is flowing and full of metaphors and at times are quite hard to decipher. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if she was actually talking about a person or some object of her imagination. And as Suleri jumps from one relative or friend to another, we find ourselves in Pakistan, Great Britain, the American Midwest, Kuwait, and back to Pakistan. Sara Suleri had definitely lived a full and interesting life so I was a bit sad to hear of her passing this year in March. I hope one day to be as passionate about my family and friends and all those who shaped my life as well. ~Ernie Hoyt

The Betrayed by Reine Arcache Melvin (Europa Editions)

The story flowing from the pages of The Betrayed has the thickened, sweet darkness of freshly drawn blood. Reine Arache Melvin has created three main characters who could easily take center stage in a Greek tragedy. They inhabit a place that everyone has heard of, during an unnamed time that many will think they can identify. But the portraits of the two sisters, Lali and Pilar, along with Arturo,  the man they both long for, reveal only enough of what takes place around them to create skillful traps. One quick snap and all that seems to be understood becomes a lie.

The death of their father brings Lali, Pilar, and their mother back from a U.S. exile to their home in Manila. “The General” has been ousted but politics are so convoluted that even the new female leader must honor his godson, Lali’s husband Arturo. As new alliances are forged, Lali and Arturo’s marriage weakens. Arturo fell in love with a seductress. Now she’s soon to become a mother, a truth that shakes them.

Confused and floundering, they both take refuge in old habits. Arturo becomes attracted to his wife’s younger sister and pregnant Lali gives Pilar permission to comfort him. Lali, horrified by her changing body that no longer rivets the male gaze, comes across a foreign man in a shopping mall and decides he’ll become her prey. She fascinates him, but not for the reasons she expects.

Then both sisters are ensnared in the brewing revolution that lurks beneath the surface of the Philippines. Their story swiftly encompasses a burning village, a public decapitation, a dinner party with a man who would cheerfully see everyone at the table dead at his feet.

“I was wrong about Lali. People surprise you,” Lali once heard her father tell someone over the phone. She and everyone around her continues to surprise, going against easy assessments, right up to the conclusion of their stories. 

So does the novel’s setting. Arcache Melvin, in tactile detail, shows Machiavellian cruelty, casual corruption, and wealth that makes all wishes come true. Her trio are aristocrats, born into privilege and comfort that’s denied to the majority of Filipinos. Yet even with the insulation provided by their birth and breeding, both Lali and Pilar understand more about the people who surround them than does the foreigner Lali picked up in the mall, an investigative photographer who has steeped himself in places the sisters have yet to see, or the foreign missionaries who have made their homes in the middle of a revolution.  

“You don’t go deeper, “ Lali tells her photographer, “It’s all one-sided.” Yet within the kaleidoscope of violence and shifting loyalties of the Philippines, going deeper is like being hacked with a machete. The pain is excruciating and unfathomable.

Aracache Melvin takes her readers deeper. With skillful twists of her kaleidoscope, she shows one side, then another, with vertiginous speed and clarity. The Betrayed splits open a crack into a hidden world, quickly showing its brutality, its tenderness, its ghosts, and its darkest corners--and still by the end, readers will find themselves for answers to the enigmas they’ve been shown. “In the end, life gave more than it took away,” but for whom?~Janet Brown

Nuclear Blues by Bradley K. Martin (Great Leader Books)

Martin K. Bradley worked for decades as a foreign correspondent. He was mainly based in Asia. When he worked for Bloomberg News he was chief North Korea watcher. He gained his reputation on being a North Korea expert after writing the nonfiction bestseller Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader : North Korea and the Kim Dynasty. It was a comprehensive history of the country under the leadership of  Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il.

In Nuclear Blues Bradley has now turned to the world of fiction and has created a unique murder-mystery set in the Hermit Kingdom under the new leadership of Kim Jong-un. Included in his story is a Korean-American journalist-turned blues musician, suspicious men from the Middle East, and a Christian college in North Korea, credit-default swaps, Russia, nuclear missiles, and a mysterious woman who may or may not be related to the current leader. 

Heck Davis is a photo-journalist but has decided to give up the profession and become a blues musician. He still takes on the occasional story and finds himself at the Korean Demilitarized Zone, also known as the DMZ. It is a strip of land that runs across the Korean peninsula separating the countries of North Korea and South Korea and was established as a buffer zone between the two warring countries.

Davis was on assignment for an Internet-based news agency called AsiaIntel. He was with three other cameramen visiting the Joint Security Area (JSA) located in Panmunjom. His journalist friend Joe Hammond was also scheduled to show up at the JSA. But because Pyongyang has a strong distaste for foreign journalists, Joe had come to North Korea as a member of an ordinary sightseeing tourist. Davis timed his schedule to coincide with the tour group so he could see his friend. 

Davis’ current assignment was to take video for AsiaIntel. His editors want him to “gather military-themed footage from the southern side of the Cold War border relic.” Heck spotted his friend Joe but he felt there was something not quite right about him. “There was something wild in his eyes, something coiled and edgy about his posture.” 

Davis focuses his camera on the friend when said friend crouched, bent forward and rammed his head into one of the North Korean guards. As Joe was making a run toward the South Korean side of the J.S.A., he flashed his passport and yelled, “U.S. Citizen! U.S. Citizen” and looked at Davis and shouted “Sixty-seven twenty” before he was shot down and killed. Davis also noticed three letters scrawled on the palm of his friend’s hand - “CDs”. 

With the death of his friend, Heck Davis journalist instincts take over. He is determined to solve the mystery of what happened to Joe. He also needs to know what “Sixty-seven twenty” and “CDs” mean. But first, he must find a way to get back into North Korea. 

Thus begins one of the most original stories involving Kim Jong-un and a host of other characters. The further the story takes you inside North Korea, the more interesting and surreal the plot. Highly implausible but extremely entertaining, I for one couldn’t put this book down. It may not be the true essence of North Korea but with Martin’s background as a North Korea watcher, he makes it as real as it can possibly get. You may even want to visit the world’s most isolated country just to see for yourself. ~Ernie Hoyt