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BUSHNELL ON BOOKS: Responsibility and humanity come to blows

By Bill Bushnell

HOUSE ARREST

By Ellen Meeropol

Red Hen Press, 2011

201 pages, $24.95

ISBN 978-1-59709-499-3

Emily Klein is a woman with a conscience, and that's the problem. Her profession as a nurse requires her to operate within strict medical and legal guidelines, but an unusual new patient challenges Emily's sense of responsibility and humanity.

HOUSE ARREST is Ellen Meeropol's excellent debut novel about two very different women in a moral and ethical dilemma that transforms them both in ways neither expected. Her short stories have been widely published, and she also has an extensive background in pediatric nursing.

Meeropol deftly combines her medical experience with solid writing talent to produce a suspenseful yet warm and sensitive story that explores right and wrong, the unequal balance between rigid law and common sense, and the decisions people make when faced with tough life choices.

Emily is a home-care nurse assigned by a court to provide pre-natal care to Pippa, a pregnant young woman on probation -- under house arrest and wearing an electronic ankle monitor -- while awaiting trial for the negligent death of her first baby. Pippa is a member of a fringe religious cult named the Family of Isis. Her baby and another child froze to death during an outdoor Winter Solstice ritual. Emily is well aware of the "Frozen Babies Case," and she is not happy with this assignment.

As Pippa's court date nears, she and Emily develop a reluctant bond, two women hiding their own family guilt for events long ago. A friendship slowly emerges, but when Pippa asks Emily to do her a favor that would violate Pippa's probation and jeopardize Emily's career, the nurse is suddenly faced with a terrifying moral dilemma, a conflict of conscience that seems overwhelming.

Emily's decision is surprising, providing an exciting and very satisfying conclusion to a well-crafted lesson in personal responsibility and its consequences.

THE OTHER END OF THE DRIVEWAY:

AN AMATEUR NATURALIST'S OBSERVATIONS IN THE MAINE WOODS

By Dana Wilde

Booklocker, 2011

264 pages, $16.95

ISBN 978-1-61434-245-8

Amateur naturalist Dana Wilde doesn't just enjoy the beauty of nature, he thinks about it, he questions, he explores and he is amazed. THE OTHER END OF THE DRIVEWAY is his self-published salute to the earth, the stars and wonder of life in nature's world.

Wilde is an award-winning journalist, and editor and columnist for the Bangor Daily News, and this is his first book. He lives in Troy, in Waldo County. This is a collection of 65 short essays, most previously published, organized by the four seasons.

These essays cover a wide variety of subjects, from birds, trees, flowers and insects, to animals, weather, science, astronomy and a bit of philosophy. Some essays are hilariously funny, others contain deep thoughts, and a few are downright provocative. Wilde's writing is lucid, painting vivid word pictures of such things as colorful autumn leaves, dirty spring snowbanks and wacky images of toad sex.

The essay "Hummingbirds" describes a tiny bird whose metabolism is "precision biodelicacy," including a remarkable annual migration from Maine to South America. In "Noiseless and Patient," he watches a spider spin an intricate web, wondering about one of nature's smallest, smartest and toughest structual engineers.

Other essays describe the spooky sounds one hears in the woods at night, how he survived a tick infestation on an island camping trip, how a curious skunk interrupted a night of stargazing, how life somehow survives a bitter Maine winter, and how some days it's just him and his lawnmower against Mother Nature.

Best are the essays "Ancient Predators" about dragonflies, "The Inner Life of Spiders" where he wonders if spiders have personalities, and "The Woods and the Singularity" about silence, imagination and spirituality.

-- Bill Bushnell lives and writes in Harpswell.