For a bunch of years, I’d abandoned Craig Johnson’s Walt Longmire series. I’m three books into catching up with about five more to go. And it took a book or two to remember why I’d ignored them for a while. Which was the same reason, I could not read Sara Paretsky’s Chicago-based series about V.I. Warshawski in one straight go.
I love a book series. I love living inside the characters—so that as I fall asleep they are the company I keep. I love living in their landscapes. And with Johnson’s books (NOT the TV series), I felt so much at home in his Wyoming and Montana acreage. And issues. I could feel Johnson living HERE. I would relish the opportunity to talk to him.
But, in years gone by, I couldn’t manage another book where the heroes—in these cases V.I. and Walt—all but died again. And again. Sometimes more than once in a volume. Surviving by the thinnest margins and then, of course, abandoning doctor’s orders to recuperate carefully. This woman and this guy were more than tough as boots. Or brave. They were invincible, indomitable. They didn’t have just a cat’s nine lives (although the authors found space to include that justification). They were immortal. And they tried my credulousness.
They were helped to that immortality by incredible calm under fire, quick-as-a-whip ingenuity, physicality far beyond the bounds of even fit middle-aged people. Making, of course, for high drama. For breath-holding reads.
But here’s the kicker, I am relearning that V.I. and Walt fight for the downtrodden, the abused, the frail. And they do so from a frame-of-reference that matches my Midwestern, 60s liberalism. They live the kindness and rationality that is all but gone in our world now. No bone in their unbeatable bodies would stand for racial discrimination or dominance over someone’s personal decisions about marriage, pregnancy, lovers, religion. Nor would they do anything but fight for those who need food and shelter and medical care.
Here in 2023, I’ve become willing to accept Walt and V.I. as my idols, as the super-people they are—just to spend time with true heroes. Who employ their bionic, godlike abilities for good. For human good. For human kindness. For a planet and all its living beings. Sanely, thoughtfully, rationally, wisely.
Think where these heroes might serve as migrants cross our borders or the Mediterranean. Or in the midst of fires and floods. At the moments where someone armed with an AK-47 that shouldn’t be on the street steps out of his car. For goodness sake, in the halls of our Congress.
The singer Adam Lambert is another of my current heroes. And within the last couple years, he’s covered Bonnie Tyler’s Holding Out for a Hero. So here, in the middle of these years where deeply cruel, selfish people have hijacked much of the world, I’ll keep reading about true heroes. Even slightly improbable ones. We need them now. ©
Where have all the good men gone And where are all the gods? Where's the streetwise Hercules To fight the rising odds? I need a hero I'm holding out for a hero 'til the end of the night He's gotta be strong, and he's gotta be fast And he's gotta be fresh from the fight I need a hero I'm holding out for a hero 'til the morning light He's gotta be sure, and it's gotta be soon And he's gotta be larger than life Larger than life . . . .
