All Shall Be Well; and All Shall Be Well; and All Manner of Things Shall Be Well

November 19, 2007
A man displaced anchors Wodicka's funny, poignant and historically canny debut, previously published in Britain. With the death of his beloved wife, Kitty, 63-year-old Burt Hecker sells the Queens Falls, N.Y., B&B he and his wife ran and heads to Germany to reinvent himself as a medieval re-enactor with a troupe of chanters for the 900th anniversary of the birthday of Hildegard von Bingen. Burt, a dedicated member of the Confraternity of Times Lost Regained, never strays “Out of Period” (OOP), wearing a tunic and drinking homemade mead; derailed emotionally, he is estranged from his two grown children—June, who is on the verge of single motherhood and wants to return home but doesn't know her father has sold the inn, and Tristan, a brilliant Juilliard dropout who moved to Poland to reattach himself to the Lemko roots of his emigrant grandmother and now headlines at a Prague jazz club with a group of folk musicians. With the help of family lawyer Lonna Katsav, Burt attempts a détente with his resentful children. Burt's cutting wit and intelligence comprise the novel's intellectual center, while his unfettered love for Kitty gives it its massive heart.

January 15, 2008
Burt Hecker lives in 1256 C.E. At least, that's what he tells the police who arrest him in upstate New York on a DWI. Actually, most of Wodicka's first novel takes place in 1998, but Burt, wearing tunic and sandals and participating in the Confraternity of Times Lost Regained (CTLR), a group of historical reenactors, has been inhabiting the past for much of his 63 years. His wife, Kitty, didn't seem to mind, though, and ran the Mansion Inn B&B without his help. But now Kitty is dead; their son, Tristan, is in Europe and no longer performs Burt's beloved medieval music; and their daughter, June, won't speak to Burt from her home in California. Burt, it seems, has landed in the historical soup. He sells the inn and travels to Europe (his first time ever on an airplane) in hopes of reconciling with his 22-year-old son, thought to be living with Kitty's mother, Anna Bibko. A bit of a fossil herself, Anna has sought worldwide acknowledgment of the genocide of her Lemko people immediately following World War II. Anna hates Burt; Burt hates Anna. Immersing oneself in the past has no value if one is unwilling to learn from it. This dysfunctional family will bring the reader to tears, from frustration as much as from sorrow; however well crafted, the story line won't satisfy anyone looking for answers. Recommended for literary fiction collections. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 10/1/07.]Bette-Lee Fox, Library Journal

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2007
All is well, indeed, in this assured debut novel, whose hapless protagonist recalls Alfred Lambertof Jonathan Franzens Corrections (2001). Sixty-three-year-old Burt Hecker, amedieval reenactorwhose most visible form of dedication is his reliance on mead, accompanies a female chant workshop to Germanyin celebration ofthe nine-hundredth birthday of St. Hildegard von Bingen. But he soon makes his escape in a desperate bid to see his estranged son, Tristan, currently living in Prague.He is shocked todiscover, however, that his gifted musician son has abandoned the handmade instruments and folksongs of his Lemko ancestors for the electronicguitars and discordant music of a progressive jazz band. In addition, his strident daughter is insisting that he return to thefamily-run bed-and-breakfast in Upstate New York. As the family converges in Prague for a long-overdue powwow, Burt revealsthe horrific circumstances surrounding his late wifes protracted illness and his subsequent estrangement from his children. Like Franzen, Wodicka specializes incrafting a particularly devastatingform of dark comedyinthis tenderhearted story of awounded family struggling to heal itself.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)