Reading Two Books About My Place

Cover images of two books, both from Amazon.com.

This summer, I’ve read two novels that offered more than the usual pleasure that any novel does of taking you out of the everyday world into someone else’s vision of the world. One reason I liked them is because these two summer reads were both set in my part of the planet.

“The World of Pondside,” by Mary Helen Stefaniak, is an interesting novel, part mystery, part suspense, about a death at an Iowa City fictional nursing home, and the slightly shady back story of a computer game that is set at that nursing home.

“Motel Sepia,” by Dale Kueter, is more of a crime drama, set in Cedar Rapids in the 1950s at a real motel, although the crime is fictional.

In “The World of Pondside,” Pondside Manor, a long-term care facility and nursing home, is recreated in a computer game in which residents and staff can have their own avatars and live their best lives. The administrator becomes a hot New York fashion designer. Long ago dances and events live again through the memories of some residents, brought to life in the game partly through digitized photos.

Image I made of Mary Helen Stefaniak when she was a visiting writer at Mount Mercy University one day in fall 2022.

A kitchen helper, Foster Kresowik, has helped Robert Kallman, a younger resident affected by Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), commonly referred to as Lou Gehrig’s disease, bring his vision to life via the game. And, at the start of the book, Kallman is discovered dead in the pond and the computer server that runs the game is gone. Was it suicide? Murder? Was there something about the game tied to Kallman’s death?

One thing that’s great about “Pondside” is Stefaniak paints interesting portraits of contrasting characters. One of my favorites was Erika Petersen, a U of I nursing student who gets a job at Pondside Manor. She’s young, she’s a sorority sister, she’s pretty—and she’s very bright. Besides studying nursing, she also studies computer science. And thus, she offers some of the more interesting twists and at times takes a leadership role.

To me, the idea of a nursing student studying computer science is an unusual combination, but not beyond reality. I teach at a university with a large nursing school, and I know some of our brightest students study nursing—they have to be bright, nursing is a demanding field of study. And, now and then, I’ll encounter one with enough transfer credits and gumption to add some unexpected other field. So, Erika, to me, seemed like a familiar kind of driven young woman.

Two of Stefaniak's books for sale at MMU last fall.

In the book, Stefaniak kept me guessing, and I was not expecting many of the plot twists. It’s a unique, timely book, firmly set in today’s world.

“Motel Sepia,” in contrast, draws from a world that was rather than the world than is. It is set in a motel in Cedar Rapids established by a Black couple who run several successful businesses. Early in the book, there is a brutal murder in Illinois, and somehow you know that the murder and some crimes in Cedar Rapids (a “kissing bandit” is politely robbing local establishments) will collide.

In the meantime, Roy and Lillian Sanders are busy, very busy, running their motel. And Roy is concerned about race relations. The motel is one of the few stops along Highway 30 in the 1950s that welcomes Black guests, and the motel becomes an unusual place where White and Black people sometimes come together.

Dale Kueter also wrote a nonfiction book about the Vietnam War and spoke at MMU in 2015 during a series on Vietnam. Image I made of him then.

It was fun reading about Cedar Rapids of the 1950s. The businesses and other settings are of a bygone time but still familiar, too. I was not alive when the book was set and I never had been in Cedar Rapids before the 1970s, so it is not a time I have any memories of. Yet, I liked seeing my town of the past spring to life.

I enjoyed both and would recommend both. It was fun this summer to read two diverse works of fiction set in places nearby.