The Canal House

For those seeking an adventure novel, you could do better to look elsewhere, something by James W. Hall perhaps. This is a book to sink into, not one to rush through with adrenaline pumping. Yes, there is adventure present as well as suspense, in this well crafted novel, as we travel to violent regions Africa and Indonesia. But what makes the book worthy of five stars, in my estimation, is a beautifully told story of two men and a woman whose lives intersect and become entangled. The pace is leisurely as the author creates wonderful word pictures of place, of encounters. The author draws us into the lives of these three characters and one finds oneself caring about what happens to each of them. I appreciate that the author takes us to Africa and East Timor, sharing with us the depredation of oppression and war, but it is his fine eye for detail and for the subtleties of character that entranced me and made the book difficult to put down. If you appreciate good writing, this is definitely a book worth seeking out.

I chose The Canal House by Mark Lee for the June book club selection for all my chapters of The Pulpwood Queens Book Clubs, the largest "meeting and discussing" in America, 13 chapters strong, nearly 300 members. Mostly because I had never read anything quite like this book before. Mark had opened up a world I will probably never experience and in such a way I felt that I was there in his war-torn world. We were lucky enough to have Mark come and visit all the chapters and the stories, oh the stories. In fact, when we did discuss the books the characters were discussed as if they were real people. I highly reccommend reading this book and note that this is one writer to watch. Mark is taking us as readers to places that we have never been before both physically and spiritually. I know The Pulpwood Queens Book Clubs have crowned him KING for the Day. May his books reign on our shelves forever!Tiara wearing and Book bearing,Kathy L. PatrickThe Pulpwood Queen of East Texas andHairdresser to the Authors...

Mark Lee has written an exceptionally involving novel that manages to be both fast-paced and accessible while telling subtle, multilayered, interlinked stories of developing friendship, love, tragedy and the reawakening of human commitment. Confided to us in alternating sections by a male American war photographer and by a female English doctor who both have a fatal attraction for working in the World's war zones, the novel vividly involves us in the lives of bush pilots, peace-keeping troops, American hostages, charity workers, fund-raiser party-planners, news magazine editors, child soldiers, the super-rich, and the wounded, starving poor, and more, while traveling through the Italian and British haunts of war correspondents, the refugee camps and combat zones of East Africa and Indonesia, and the offices and hunting grounds of the wealthy who patronize refugee charities. Both in his simple but evocative language and in his rare ability to convincingly set a story of love and loss against the keenly observed ironies, horrors, fascinations, and tragedies of war, Lee is evocative of Hemingway at his best.

This is a wonderful book. I picked it up, meaning to leaf through a few pages and could not put it down. Not only does the author tell a mesmerizing love story, the reader gets a behind-the-scenes look at what war correspondents actually go through. Do yourself a favor. Buy this book.

(...)I will tell you how much I enjoyed the writing. The sentences run smoothly together and before I knew it whole pages went by. Every once in awhile I would be stopped by a expertly crafted sentence. If it is possible to write a poetic sentence in a book of prose, Mark Lee has done it.After finishing the book I was greatly disappointed to find that none of the libraries in my area carry his first book. I might even have to buy it :)