2022 was an insane year.

We had a baby. Our sixth. And while the baby himself is deeply beloved, I could have done without the pregnancy and postpartum challenges. I’m in my forties. My pelvis torques with every pregnancy. The usual postpartum hormones are complicated by preexisting conditions. Et cetera, et cetera. Plus, one of our autistic children had several rough months in a row. Also, I wrote/revised all 138,000 words of Adrift in the span of six weeks, not long before Christmas.

Insane. Like I said.

I’m still dealing with hip pain, but otherwise things have calmed down. Our happy baby is now a happy toddler, my mental health is stable, the special needs situation has been addressed, I finished edits on Adrift, and I’ve begun writing the next Molly Chase installment. I also stepped back from some commitments. The storm has abated; the ship has righted.

And with that, I’ve discovered reading again. Yes, books. I had no idea how little I was reading until I turned in Adrift and all of a sudden had time and attention for other people’s writing. “I’m free to read…whatever I want!” And I am. And it is glorious.

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Post Captain (Aubrey/Maturin, Book Two)
Patrick O’Brian

I began my first “circumnavigation” of the Aubrey/Maturin series last fall with Master and Commander. (Read my cheeky reflections here.) I started Post Captain not long after, but owing to doing my developmental edits on Adrift, I wasn’t able to pick it back up again until March. So glad I persevered. While Master and Commander is an enjoyable romp, and not a middling or unthinking story by any stretch, Post Captain is a literary achievement. Adding the women to the mix does so much to develop Jack and Stephen as characters—I understand both men better, and I’m far more invested in the story now than I was after Master and Commander.

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Code Name Edelweiss
Stephanie Landsem

I’m a huge fan of Stephanie Landsem’s work (and of Stephanie herself). Code Name Edelweiss is based on the fascinating real life story of the Nazis’ attempt to infiltrate Hollywood and the amateur spies who stopped them. The novel’s central characters are fictional, but several historical persons make their way into the novel, including Leon Lewis, the Jewish lawyer and former Army intelligence officer who formed the spy ring. Plus, Code Name Edelweiss has a love story subplot. History + spies + romance = right up Rhonda’s alley.

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Works of Mercy
Sally Thomas

Works of Mercy is my favorite type of literary fiction: philosophic and beautifully written, yet also unpretentious, with recognizable characters and a recognizable world.

(Especially for us American Catholics. I know Janet Malkin. I may be Janet Malkin.)

No mid-century grotesques here: this is Jane Austen’s “bits of ivory,” the drama of ordinary life. Even the church cleaning lady has a story, and Sally Thomas tells it straight.

While I was immediately invested in Kirsty Sain, not much seemed to be happening, story wise…until something was happening. My husband likened the novel’s arc to the slow cracking of an egg. Crack… Crack… Crack, crack… Crack-crack-crack… Crack. BREAK.

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The Ghost Keeper
Natalie Morrill

Not entirely sure how to describe The Ghost Keeper except to say that it’s exceptional. One reviewer described it as “one long lyric poem, but never self-indulgent.” Like any story about WWII, it delves into darkness, but it also dares to hope. I loved the nuance, the love and care with which Natalie Morrill treats each character, including the antagonist. So well done.

The changes in narratorial point of view (first person, close third person, omniscient) interested me from a craft angle. Jozef questions his own reliability as a narrator several times over the course of the novel, and he also questions Friedrick’s, when we finally have Friedrick’s story. The war skews their vision of the whole, and the narratorial instability underscores this important theme.

Content warning for sensitive readers: In addition what’s obvious from the back cover copy, the book includes a few open door bedroom scenes.

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Next up in fiction:

• H.M.S. Surprise (Aubrey/Maturin Book 3), Patrick O’Brian

• The Metropolitan Affair, Jocelyn Green

• The Songs That Could Have Been, Amanda Wen

• Counterfeit Hope and Counterfeit Faith, Crystal Caudill (enjoyed Counterfeit Love, the first in the series; looking forward to numbers two and three)

• Dear Henry, Love Edith, Becca Kinzer

• And a ton of other titles from Catholic Writers Guild and Christian Mommy Writers authors. Now that 2022 is behind me, the world is my oyster!

Next up in nonfiction and professional development:

• Reach, Becky Robinson (almost finished!)

• The Genesis of Gender, Abigail Favale

• The Four Cardinal Virtues, Josef Pieper

• The City-State of Boston, Mark Peterson

How about you? What are you reading? Contact me here.

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“It’s my house.” Josiah circled the table and kissed Mrs. Robb on the cheek, then jogged off. A moment later, they were treated to a rousing performance of “The Sailor and His Truelove” from the upstairs passage. 

As a young sailor and his truelove one morning in May,
Where walking together in the field blithe and gay;
Says the sailor to his truelove, my dear life for your sake,
I’ll away unto the Indies whatever does betide,
And when I do return, my love, I’ll make you my bride.

— Adrift, Ch. 2

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At the front of the room was the sitting area, comprised of two leather armchairs and a table holding an oil lamp and a large paper booklet—a musical score. Between the armchairs stood a bookshelf, and several miniatures and a pencil sketch hung nearby. Crammed into the corner was a pianoforte, or maybe a harpsichord? The lid was closed, and more musical scores were piled on top. Some of the music was new; other sheets were moldering. One such ancient selection sat on the instrument’s rack. Josiah stepped forward and read the title. Die Kunst der Fugue. J.S. Bach. Never heard of him.

— Adrift, Ch. 10

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Adrift, the second book in the Molly Chase series, features a musician among its many characters. I created a YouTube playlist of all the songs and pieces mentioned in the book. Give it a listen!

Pixabay.

They are strangely immature for men of their age and their position: though, indeed, it is to be supposed that if they were not, they would not be here – the mature, the ponderate mind does not embark itself upon a man-of-war – is not to be found wandering about the face of the ocean in quest of violence. For all his sensibility (and he played his transcription of Deh vieni with a truly exquisite delicacy, just before we reached Ciudadela), JA is in many ways more suited to be a pirate chief in the Caribbean a hundred years ago: and for all his acumen JD is in danger of becoming an enthusiast – a latter day Loyola, if he is not knocked on the head first, or run through the body. —Master and Commander, Ch. 10

“That pilgrim from the English sloop is mad,” the surgeon’s servant told the second cook. “Mad, twisted, tormented. And ours is not much better.” —Master and Commander, Ch. 12

“You do not rate post-captains and admirals very high among intelligent beings, I believe?” —Master and Commander, Ch. 12

Twenty-odd years ago, I attended college in Annapolis, Maryland. No, not that one—the other one, St. John’s College. St. John’s is a small liberal arts school known for its “great books” program, a four-year, nonelective curriculum consisting solely of Western Civilization’s greatest hits. Despite its name, St. John’s is nonsectarian, and between that and its unusual curriculum, the school attracts a motley crew.

View of Annapolis, 1800 (pre-USNA). St. John’s McDowell Hall in the far distance, behind St. Anne’s Church in the foreground. Wikimedia Commons.

Across King George Street is the United States Naval Academy.

Naval Academy Chapel. Those darn bells are LOUD. (Wikimedia Commons.)

Johnnies and mids (we called them middies, which they hated) rarely mixed. They thought we were misfits; we thought they were dunderheads. Our heads were in the clouds; their eyes were on the horizon. Occasionally mids would meander about our campus—perhaps because alcohol was available in abundance—and try their hand at asking esoteric questions. Sometimes Johnnies would meander about the yard: to go jogging, to visit the museum, or to attend Sunday services at the chapel (for the handful of religiously minded among us). And the annual SJC-USNA croquet tournament brought us together every April, forcing us to mingle. Otherwise, we thought of each other as alien species: odd, obtuse, baffling.

We were Stephen Maturin and Jack Aubrey, the Odd Couple, but with more detachment and less goodwill.

American privateer taken by H.M.S. Sophie, 1812. (Wikipedia.)

But there are always exceptions, and my roommate was among them. She loved USNA dances. And I allowed her to drag me to a few. I was a traditional girl who wanted to get married, but I had exhausted my prospects among the least ‘mad, twisted, tormented’ of pasty-faced, priggish Johnnie pedants. Another girlfriend of mine was engaged to a mid, and he was a great guy. Maybe I would be so lucky? (Though they had met in high school, and he entered the Corps after graduation—and became a pilot, no less—so does he really count?) For all my surface disdain, I was not immune to the romance of dancing with officers in uniform. So my roommate and I would get dolled up and head toward Gate One for a night on the yard.

I quickly learned that for some—not all—midshipmen, not only were Johnnies an alien species, but women were alien too. No one has ever confirmed this, but I swear USNA must offer a class titled, “How to Talk to Women Who Are Not Your Fellow Officers and Classmates,” because every dance conversation followed the same outline:

(1) Introduce yourselves.

(2) Ask your partner where she’s from.

(3) Ask her what school she attends. (One question behind this question was, “Are you legal?” High schoolers often went to Navy dances.)

(4) Ask her about her favorite subjects.

(5) Ask her what she wants to do after graduation.

(6) Thank her for the dance.

Which isn’t a bad formula. But with Johnnies, the script always failed at Question Three:

Mr. Midshipman: “What school do you go to?”

Me, after a fortifying breath: “St. John’s.”

His eyes grew so wide that you could read his internal dialogue: “Marxist! Bluestocking! Feminazi! Weirdo! HARD-A-LEE!” Which tells you a lot about my alma mater.

Once he had recovered (“she looks normal”): “Is it true that…?”

I assured him that whatever rumor he had heard was only half-justified.

Awkward pause.

Him: “What’s your favorite class?”

Me: “Honestly, junior year readings are a real drag. Too much Age of Enlightenment flapdoodle—monads, ‘nasty, brutish, and short,’ blah, blah, blah. I can’t wait until we get to Jane Austen, but we have to survive six weeks of Kant first.”

Look of horror.

“I feel the same way. And you?”

“Ship Hydrostatics and Stability.”

My turn to be horrified.

“It’s hard but really interesting.”

Think, think, think, think. “We’re studying Newton’s Principia in our mathematics tutorial.”

Silence.

“Galileo? Descartes? Franklin? Faraday? … Aristotle? Mind you, I understand very little of it. Not a science person.”

“And you’re paying how much for this education?”

“I can’t talk about tuition or school loans while dancing. Moby Dick?”

“I took a literature class once.”

Silence again.

Him: “What do you want to do after graduation?”

Me: “Still figuring it out. Probably something impractical that pays nothing. How about you? What’s your goal?”

“Not to end up on a submarine.”

Pause. “I can respect that.”

Needless to say, I was never asked to dance twice. I did date one midshipman for a few weeks, but we ran out of things to talk about, and his backup plan met with more resistance than he anticipated. So that was that. Still, I wish him well and hope he’s somewhere not-a-submarine. I instead married an academic, had a bunch of kids, and became a novelist. Stephen won, while Jack was left to the annals of, “Mistakes I Wish I Hadn’t Made in College.”

If we had read Patrick O’Brian at St. John’s, now—we would have known to ask Messrs. Midshipmen if they were musical! USNA and St. John’s, sawing away on our violins and ‘cellos, thumos converging with dianoia. Would have been a point of commonality, growth, and friendship.

You're invited!

In Pieces is the featured selection for two online book groups in September, and you're invited to join us for one or both! 📚 Plus, signed copies will be on sale now through the end of the August, here on my site.

Sept. 3rd info and sign up: members.smartcatholics.com/events/chrism-press-book-club-in-pieces-by-rhonda-ortiz

Sept. 27th: Live on Instagram with @faithfulfictionbookclub. instagram.com/faithfulfictionbookclub

Signed paperbacks: rhondaortiz.com/store/in-pieces

Hope you can join us!

Finally, seven months after its release, someone has objected to the religious content of In Pieces. Before publication, I had thought it would be the first complaint I’d hear. That it took seven whole months is proof that I’m small potatoes.

Don’t feel sorry for me. We are all free to like or dislike a book, the religious critique doesn’t bother me, and I am not here to debate a reader—that would be silly. But the fact that I finally did receive that criticism reminded me that I’ve been meaning to blog about religion in fiction generally, and religion in the Molly Chase series specifically. I’ve been thinking through approaches and guiding principles, and I’m curious to know what y’all think.

No one likes “preachy” fiction. The workings of grace are mysterious, and our attempts to describe religious experience often fall flat, especially for readers outside the writer’s denominational soup pot. Authors are instead advised to depict religious experience at a slant, rather than directly, whenever possible. Doing so keeps the themes from reading on the nose.

But what do we do when we have a story about religious people? Who grapple with religious truths? Who experience religious awakenings? Who live within and react to the particularities of their religious culture? Whose beliefs shift or make demands and effect their choices and comprise the story’s plot? Do we ignore these stories all together, out of fear of writing preachy fiction?

Of course not. Many great novels take up religious subject matter. Novels like Brideshead Revisited, Kristin Lavransdatter, The Brothers Karamazov, Silence, anything by George Eliot…

…but I am no Evelyn Waugh or Sigrid Undset or Fyodor Dostoevsky or Shūsaku Endo or George Eliot. Therein lies the problem.

What to do?

Dostoyevsky's notes for Chapter 5 of The Brothers Karamazov (Wikipedia).

Let me pause to lay my cards on the table. I was raised in the Church of God and became a Catholic my senior year of college. While I was in the process of converting, I met my husband, a cradle Catholic and “revert,” or a fallen-away Catholic who returned to the faith. He is now a theologian and professor of Catholic studies at a Protestant college. (You can learn more about his story here.) I am not a bitter convert. I have nothing but love and gratitude for the people who taught me about Jesus and baptized me. I see my conversion as a continuation of the journey I began under their care. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all.

I say this not to downplay the real and painful divisions in the Church, but to emphasize that a person can embrace what is common to all Christians, in the hope of restoration and full communion, while holding to one’s own beliefs.

Despite my background, I never set out to tell a Protestant-to-Catholic conversion story. Conversions are notoriously tricky to write, and I was plenty annoyed when Josiah Robb decided this was his (and consequently Molly’s) path. I understand now why the story itself demands a conversion, but I was and continue to be uncomfortable writing it. In the early draft of what became In Pieces, I tiptoed around the subject, not wanting to annoy or upset future readers—it’s a subplot, after all, so no need to draw attention to it. Right?

This was the manuscript I submitted to WhiteFire Publishing at the end of 2019, several months before they—we—founded Chrism Press for Catholic and Orthodox Christian voices. WhiteFire serves a broad range of Christian audiences, yet I remained concerned that my book was too Catholic for them, even with my soft-shoe approach. Again, I’m a convert. I know both sides, and certain things simply do not translate across the Tiber.

Little did I expect WhiteFire to ask me to lean into the book’s Catholic themes.

Which makes sense! Better to write with boldness than to placate a hypothetical antagonistic reader, right? (I can hear my publisher’s voice right now: “Let the audience self-select!”) Yet I still wanted to write something that engaged, rather than enraged, non-Catholic readers. The Catholic viewpoint is as valid a storytelling viewpoint as any, but I wanted to avoid preaching to the choir. After some back-and-forth (“Are you sure?” “Yes, we’re sure”), I got to work.

These are the tactics I employed:

(1) I reframed the fundamental conflict as personal and familial rather than theological. Know thy genre: this is a story, not a theological treatise. (Zzzz…) I moved most of Josiah’s theological wrestling to the backstory so that he has but a handful of questions remaining when the book opens. The conflict instead centers on his relationship with his devout Congregationalist mother, Sarah Robb. He doesn’t want to disappoint or worry her. A reader may or may not care about the religious stakes, but family conflicts are universal.

(2) I developed Sarah Robb’s character to ensure she wasn’t a straw man. With the help of my writing group—all Protestants—I worked to make sure Mrs. Robb’s side of the conflict read well. I had already determined she was the daughter of a minister; it wasn’t a stretch to show her as educated, well-catechized, and wise. I reworked any dialogue or narrative that smacked of small-mindedness or bigotry. I also legitimized her criticisms of Josiah’s discernment process—she can see his shortcomings. (For the record, I adore Mrs. Robb. She’s one of my favs.)

(3) I brought in other viewpoints, including Molly’s. Molly’s family is Episcopalian, and her late mother had a rich faith life born of redemptive suffering. One of my favorite Molly lines: “Molly never understood why these distinctions mattered. Her mother had taught her that God’s grace was at work in every person who sought Him.” However, Molly’s opinion is decidedly a minority opinion, because…

(4) I set the conversion in its particular historical context. In Pieces opens in 1793, thirteen years after Massachusetts amended its constitution to allow the free practice of religion and two years after the ratification of the Bill of Rights. At the time, once-Puritan Boston was going through a religious upheaval, seen in its new denominational plurality and felt most acutely in the rise of Unitarianism, as church after church renounced “irrational” Trinitarian theology. This was (and is) a big deal. Bostonians of 1793 cared deeply about theological and philosophic principles. We may live in a relativistic age that sees “religion” as antithetical to faith, but not they. That Josiah is an armchair theologian, and that Mrs. Robb is panicking about her son’s unorthodox views, fits the setting.

(5) Finally, I left certain questions unresolved—most importantly, the matter of Josiah’s conversations with his dead father. Was his childhood vision real? Is this wishful thinking, as Mrs. Robb thinks it is? He may very well be delusional. His experience is sketchy even on Catholic grounds, despite Catholicism’s theological framework for private revelation and saintly intercession. The reader is free to interpret things as he will.

Was I successful? Well, at least one reader thought I failed miserably. C’est la vie.

Panning back from my own work, it’s worth asking ourselves what we’re looking for when we read “religious” stories. Do we want to recognize ourselves? Do we seek edification? Affirmation? Knowledge? Understanding? Familiarity? Unfamiliarity? What conflicts and questions are we interested in? Not interested in? Do we like our religion explicit on the page, or kneaded into the story’s dough? Do we not like religion at all? And why are our preferences what they are?

Writers: Are you eager to write about religion, or do you shy away from it? Why? What do you think is the best approach to take?

Have thoughts? Contact me here.