Steve Lindahl

Well I've been in New England, late 19th century London, and China during the Han Dynasty, having read White Horse Regression. What a trip! Truly suspenseful, the novel begins with a horrible murder and subsequently, the woman's girlfriend, Maggie, begins hypnosis with Glen Wiley, who is able to transport patients to their previous lives. This is where the novel's complexity and wonder begins.

Author Steve Lincahl has created several characters who learn they have been connected in previous time periods, their souls being reincarnated repeatedly. Three main characters, Maggie, Stuart and Glen, “regress,” seeking answers to the reason for the repeated murders, torture and kidnappings.

Fascinating to experiences the establishment of Buddhism in China, the Whitechapel murders, and the violence and despair of Vermont's dark side along with the characters. But I had to re-read earlier passages, sometimes, to keep the characters and events straight in my mind. I

These experiences are interwoven, including a white horse appearing in each time period, with the murder investigation in the present. Maggie, Stuart and other characters are desperately searching for a way to stop the tragedy in any of the time frames, for this will stop it in all of them.

I received a copy of the book from the publisher. This is an honest review.… (mehr)

This isn't the type of novel I usually grab up, and I was pleasantly surprised by how much this one caught me up in the tale. It's an intriguing read which brings history to life.

While this is based on the life of a well-known and wealthy performer during the gold rush era, Lotta Crabtree, it's not written from her point of view. Rather, a close friend of hers, Walter, is the star of this book. It begins with his difficult life as a child, growing up with a drunk father, who wanted to make his fortune in mining, and their best friends, another father raising his son alone. Walter has happened to run across Lotta a few times as her career starts with performances at saloons and the camps. Later, he meets her in San Francisco, and their story develops from there.

The author has definitely done his research on this one. While the story flows and grabs with the constant problems and trials Walter and his friends face, the life of living during that time comes across clearly and with quite a bit of detail. Each character and situation hits naturally, and it was easy to fall into the time period and experience the events as they took place. It's hard not to like Walter and root for him as he tries to help his friends as best he can.

All along, the life of Lotta unfolds. By placing her as a side-character, the author allows her life to take shape while still capturing the world around her. Due to differences in wealth and backgrounds, her and Walter's lives are quite different, but yet, both angles gain richness and hit home. Of course, this also allowed a wall to be built when it came to Lotta's emotions and thoughts. But I appreciated this, since the author doesn't try to presume to know her inner-workings, but rather allows her life to play through another's eyes.

This was an intriguing story, one I ended up reading in one sitting since I didn't want to put it down.… (mehr)

A Tough Look at the Clash Between Life and Religion in Medieval Britannia

People didn’t live long in medieval Britannia, Ireland, and Scandinavia. If you were lucky enough to survive birth and a childhood filled with hard labor and poor living conditions, you could look forward to adulthood when disagreements between individuals and states were often settled with a whip to the back or a battle axe to the skull. Under a Warped Cross covers all those forms of ‘conflict resolution,’ some several times. But the aggression at the heart of the story is the inhumanity inflicted in the name of organized religion. It was a time when religion would condone any and all means to ‘correct’ the thinking of the masses. And its heavy hand often fell on women. In fact, as the story begins, priests have just made an example of Abigail, one of the main characters of the book, by cutting off her nose because she was suspected of incest. The violence in the book, while not graphic, is intense and frequent.

In the simple dichotomy of plot-driven vs. character-driven books, Under a Warped Cross is primarily the latter. The plot is simple. The priests’ punishment changes the lives of three siblings, as Goda and Abigail run off together while Waso begins a quest to find them. This storyline is completed well before the end of the book. Character development, on the other hand, continues to the end, as author Lindahl does an admirable job depicting the characters’ courage and determination, as well as their distrust and superstition. In particular, I found the latter interesting, as “signs” were everywhere, but their meaning was never clear and often contradictory.

To go beyond traits that are shown through action, the author occasionally includes thoughts or dialog that deviate from character, e.g., “Jolenta wondered if her choice had been a revenge of sorts, for all the times Coventina had chosen her wards over her own child. That thought made Jolenta worry about her own soul as much as she worried about her mother’s.” That’s a complex concept for a ten-year-old (Jolenta). But even though these out-of-character thoughts interrupt the story’s flow, they’re useful for the depth they provide.

Overall, Under a Warped Cross is an engrossing look at the people of the Middle Ages and their suffering at the hands of organized religion. It can be tough reading in places, but then, that was their life.… (mehr)