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“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed,” Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung wrote in 1933’s Modern Man in Search of a Soul. That idea seems to guide many of this season’s Berkshire authors, who explore how we connect — to each other, to the places we come from, and to the stories that shape us. 'CORPORAL PINGUS' By Andrew L. Pincus. Published by Combray House. 81 pages. $10. Proceeds benefit Tanglewood. Memoirs are funny things, shared with those willing to read, but mostly written for the individual seeking perspective. In what became his final book, "Corporal Pingus: A Snoop in Germany," longtime Eagle music critic Andrew Pincus (who died May 29) reflects on his life, at least the part of it spent in Weimar, Germany: "Oh, Germany. Du bist ein Ratsel. You are a puzzle, even today. I began my encounter with you as a soldier in the Occupation. I ended it 37 years later as a student in Weimar. And I understand no more about you or me than I did at the start." He first arrived in the 1950s, an enlisted man drafted during the Korean War and assigned to a desk in a depot overseeing German citizens doing inventory work. Germany in the 1950s, he writes, was a time "of lingering stench of Nazi evil and innocence and birth," where "shabby people still wandered ruined streets and scurried into patched up hovels like rats entering tunnels." Pincus, called Pingus by some of the Germans he encounters, connects with a colleague, community members through a shared love of music. Though the war has destroyed much, music is played in living rooms where listeners gather. But all the while, Pincus wonders what his place "as a nonobservant Jew — a Jew who isn't a Jew" is in this "country that exterminated Jews." Years later, he returns, first on a 25th anniversary visit with his wife, Kate, whom he married in Germany in 1953, and later, in 1998, at the age of 68, as a student in a two-week immersion class at the Goethe Institute. It is here that he comes to some sort of resolution, if anything is to be understood: "Good and evil, evil and good, intertwined: wasn't that Faust's choice? It goes on, and will go on forever. I am part of it." 'PLEASE WAIT TO CROSS' By Elissa Bass. Published by Archway Publishing. 280 pages. $21.99 Last summer, Elissa Bass flipped the script in her debut romance novel, "Happy Hour," in which K.K. Rinehart — 55, divorced and menopausal — arrived on The Cape in November, seeking solace in her family's summer home. She found love with a man 20 years her junior. In "Please Wait To Cross," Bass takes us back to The Cape. This time, the Rinehart who's returning to the family's summer home is K.K.'s sister, Beth (formerly known as Bitty). "It's probably not a midlife crisis. It's probably more of a mental breakdown," Beth says in the opening paragraphs of the book, seemingly explaining her decision to resign from her job as the CFO of a Fortune 500 company and leave behind her seven-figure salary. She immediately decides to overhaul the family home that she now shares with K.K. and Jay (don't worry, the gang's all here and you'll get an update on their relationship.) Bored, she takes a job as a crossing guard. I'd like to say that Beth meets Mike, the police chief, sparks fly and everyone lives happily ever after. But I can't. "Please Wait to Cross" is a slow burn that explores real-world issues as well as Beth's romantic exploits. When things eventually get going, they heat up fast. And, in keeping true to the first book about a Rinehart woman, everyone deserves a second chance — even if they believe they've got it all figured out (they don't). A fun afternoon read. 'BEADS IN THE RIVER' By Eva Friedner. Published by Outskirts Press. 94 pages. $18.95 Tamar Friedner was an adventurer. She studied climate change in the forests of Belize (during high school), saved animals in danger of extinction off the coast of Georgia, tracked and helped save the Mexican gray wolf population, studied animal and cultural life in Tanzania and worked on a farm in Vermont. When she settled down in an intentional community, Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in Missouri, it was clear to her parents that she had found her community. And then, in 2009, Tamar, 32, was diagnosed with neuroendocrine pancreatic cancer. Her prognosis was terminal with about 12 months to live. Parents are not supposed to outlive their children. Author Eva Friedner now had to face that she would do just that, while simultaneously caring for Tamar, navigating their mother-daughter relationship, abiding by her daughter's wishes and processing her own grief. Eva shares those emotionally frought 11 or so months with us in her beautifully introspective and brutally honest memoir, "Beads in the River: Losing My Adult Daughter to Cancer." By the end of the book, you feel as if you know Eva and her extended family (some of you may, as Eva and her husband, Amos, live part-time in the Berkshires) and have grieved with them during and after Tamar's passing. 'TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER' By Stephen Leon. Published by Stephen Leon. 302 pages. $21.99 Livy Slater, a Williams College graduate student, begrudgingly heads to Pittsfield to investigate the deaccessioning of some 40 artworks, including two Norman Rockwell paintings, from the Berkshire Museum's collection for her first paper. Livy's work should be quick — a few meetings with museum officials and board of trustee members, a stop at the Norman Rockwell Museum — but she soon finds herself becoming part of the community. She's soon dating Pete, a reporter at The Berkshire Eagle and actor in a macabre play about to take the stage in the museum's theater and befriends a trustee, Lindsey, who is opposed to the museum's pending sale. This small city seems to be right out of a Norman Rockwell painting, complete with Anthony, the nosy bartender at Patrick's Pub, and Jinx, the former cop turned private eye, until Lindsey is found dead at the museum. Jinx, who has little faith his former colleagues will discover the murderer's identity, begins his own investigation following a paper trail that speculates the museum director, Fran Steele, and Weezie Shaw, board of trustees president, have something to gain from the art sale. When a second murder, tied to the museum, shocks the community, Jinx uses his connections to solve the crime. But it will take help from Livy and her new group of friends to solve Lindsey's murder. Author Stephen Leon, a Pittsfield native who now resides in Albany, N.Y., brings readers on a tour of the Berkshires as Livy explores the region with stops at Tanglewood, the Clark Art Institute, the Norman Rockwell Museum (where the book mistakenly has the director state it does not own "The Problem We All Live With." It does.) and, of course, the Berkshire Museum, where Phat, the mummy, has a cameo role. There's also a spate of Berkshire businesses visited: Dottie's Cafe, Methuselah, Patrick's Pub and Lenox Coffee, to name a few. There are also appearances by the Save The Art group and thinly veiled references to locals involved in the 2017 deaccessioning. A favorite is an Eagle reporter named Grant Dubrowski, whose name closely resembles that of retired Eagle Business Editor Tony Dobrowolski. For what it's worth, this murder mystery was a hoot. I read it in a single sitting. By Richard Matturro. Published by Livingston Press. 201 pages. $19.95 Stuart, a retired professor of the classics, seems to be drifting through life following the death of his wife, Edwina. He's retreated from the world, save for a daily visit to the Laurel Tree, a local coffee house in a strip mall, and his occasional visits with his friend and former colleague, Larry, to whom he often doles out advice. He seems content in his daily routine until he meets Daphne. An odd duck, Daphne favors riding her bike in all kinds of weather and dotes on her German shepherd, Corin. Stuart finds himself drawn to this mysterious woman, who he is sure is hiding something behind her seemingly simple exterior. When he learns her secret and her true identity, he becomes obsessed with reading her newspaper columns — a life left behind following her husband's tragic death. Enraptured, Stuart begins to court the reluctant Daphne. Loosely based on Ovid's myth of "Daphne and Apollo," Matturro, a native of Rye, N.Y., who now lives in the Berkshires and is a frequent OLLI instructor, delivers a beautifully written tale of second chances, second loves and allowing yourself to love again after the loss of a significant other. 'FIRE IN A WIRE' By Steven Reed Nelson. Published by Massemet Media. 216 pages. $19.99 To assume humans are fully evolved is futile. Just as fire sparked the evolution of prehistoric humans, electricity has enabled the next evolution of Homo sapiens, posits Williamstown author Steven Reed Nelson in "Fire in a Wire: Electricity Empowers Human Evolution Beyond Homo Sapiens." This new evolution, Homo electric, he says, began to emerge 200 years ago when electricity was harnessed and replaced fire as humankind's primary source of energy. While not yet genetically apparent, Nelson argues that human evolution has surpassed the required genetic definition and overrules Darwin's natural selection requirements. Humans are the exception to the rule. While Nelson points out he is neither an academic nor a scientist, he also isn't just "some guy" with an idea. A graduate of Harvard Law School with a long career in communications and technology, Nelson is a founder and emeritus board member of WiredWest, a cooperative formed to bring broadband to Western Massachusetts. His theory is worth reading — whether you or not you agree with him afterwards is another matter.
