Scantlings

Just sat down yesterday at 5:30 pm and read til 10:45, with a break for dinner, and finished a new book by Jeffrey Halvorson, THE MURAL.
I loved it. I could not stop reading and would have read while I ate but I thought my wife might not have liked that. The book is an "art mystery" if I have to categorize it.
It involves a young reporters quest to investigate a large mural that mysteriously appears in a very small Arizona town.

The author is my nephew, an assistant professor of Religeous studies in S. Carolina. Jeff is a Muslim. The book is not at all about religion. It's just a very clever, highly, richly detailed and very well crafted whodunnit.

In fact, I was biased to call BS on the book when I sat down. Jeff and I have had some differences. But his writing skill and imagination won me over.

You are OK Jeff.
For a Muslim.

Our daughter just signed a contract with a publisher to write a book about a LaSalle reinactment by a group of high school kids and their teachers. They spent 9 months retracing LaSalle in period clothing and equipment, including birch bark canoes. Not sure how she came up with the idea but she has an agent and there was a bidding war between a couple publishers to bring the book to market. This weekend she's camping with the reinactment group and will interview each for the book. The book will be published in 2016, the 40 year anniversary.