Crooked River Burning Book Review

January 2007

Crooked River Burning by Mark Winegardner is a book Daniel gave me as a gift in 2006. It sat my old white built-in bookshelf at the Cleveland Heights apartment for nearly half a year before I finally picked it up. And then it took me months to finish, as it traveled with me to my new downtown apartment, to Chicago and even twice to London. Perhaps I should have had the novel stamped at each Passport station that I crossed during its reading? Anyhoo, I finally did finish reading it and have been recommending it to many. Additionally, it has recently received some amazing press.

The book itself is a couple of years in publication and in this January’s Entertainment Weekly, Stephen King picked it as one of his top 10 reads for 2006. “Uncle Stevie” even puts a disclaimer that his list is not about books that came out last year, but books he read during 2006. And he calls CRB “The great American story. About Cleveland? Yes Cleveland!”

It’s really, really good. I have never taken this long to finish a book because, secretly, I did not want it to ever end. Thus I read just a couple of pages at a time. Sort of like watching General Hospital, except on that show, after an hour, (or a week or a month) nothing new happens anymore….

Crooked River Burning is full of historical insight about this city, as well as memorable one-liners. My favorite quote in CRB is: “Every man in Cleveland lives within a mile of his mother. And if not physically, then metaphorically.”

This novel should be the welcome manual for all of us who transplanted into this city, not understanding East vs. West, stagnation vs. progression, Cleveland’s undenying belief that its factories, churches and sports would keep all afloat for much longer than reality would allow, how the political machine ran the town, all from a little restaurant on Vincent street, and basically what happens to people, and a city, when a myopic view takes over and the price future generations will have to pay (or simply leave) to resuscitate life into a once-energetic metropolis while the neighboring and growing suburban fiscal influence snubs Cleveland-proper, except during election time.

Many of you, Clevelanders or not, would enjoy the book and, if nothing else, learn a thing or two about the city that has become my home.

http://Users/SVoloshin/Dropbox/MAMP/creativecadence.amazon.com/Crooked-River-Burning-Mark-Winegardner/dp/015601422X/sr=8-1/qid=1172203976/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-8551678-5928635?ie=UTF8&s=books

note: The book cover image above is not original to Creative Cadence LLC.