The author of this critically acclaimed novel keeps an office just up the street, and occasionally drops by to sign stock. He's a nice guy, let me just mention. The book, though, is brilliant, brutal writing, set partly in and around Portland Meadows, the horse track in that industrial area not far from Jubitz and Lowe's. Where he had me is where his young protagonist, a boy who spends his summer days alone while his dad works, is looking for a place to see a movie. ...the guy told me to walk two miles down the same road and so I did. The theater was in a part of town called St. Johns. It was lined with stores and bars, and there were a couple of taquerias and a pharmacy that had an old-fashioned diner in it. There was a bike shop, a dollar store, and a workingman's clothing store. I went into a used bookstore and a Salvation Army thrift store, then I bought a couple tacos and sat down against the wall of a closed-down office and ate. That's the St. Johns we opened up in 5 years ago, when Sally Army and Value Giant and Jowers were still around. This little word picture is the jewel unexpected, a surprise found in the pages of a beautiful, serious novel.

Zach Dundas' sharp, snarky, funny writing will be familiar to readers from years of columns in Portland Monthly and Willamette Week.  This book is in the same vein, but deeper and funnier, and true to the high weirdness that is sometimes Portland.  Where it bursts into actual glory, though, is in chapter 10:

On the corner of a block on Portland's far north side, a greasy spoon called Patti's [sic] Home Plate serves fountain shakes, broadcasts old-timey pop songs through sidewalk loudspeakers, and hosts weekly meetings of the Western Bigfoot Society.  On the opposite end of the block, there's a Starbucks.  In between stands a fencing club. 

Dundas spent several months taking fencing lessons with St. Johns' own Roquelaure Beach at Salle Trois Armes.  Nestled between a chapter on roller derby and one on bike polo, you'll find Rocky inviting Dundas to imagine himself walking out of a pub and getting mugged in 17th-century Paris.  His advice: to drive the blade forward "like it's a long steel thumbnail."  Tournament-winning fencers spar and study here in our neighborhood, guided by the lanky quiet guy in the old sweats.  It's a real delight to see my neighbor appreciated, and to be able to say I know that dude.