Paul Zimmer

Growing old is no fun, or so my Mum tells me. The characters of Paul Zimmer’s The Mysteries of Soldiers Grove might agree, as lives of field, farm, and bar are curtailed, replaced by walking cane and tasteless dining hall dinners. But this is a love story, and there’s freedom in a door left ajar. With forbidden transport parked outside, wonderful ladies maintaining an old book shop just a short drive away, and mysterious threats from a stranger, this novel’s filled with real lives lived larger than the world’s intent.

Old Cyril’s clear voice rings, honed on encyclopedias of youth. His tales of famous lives, and his wonderful observation of detail and scenery, have me wanting to turn to google, but I’d rather turn pages. Because now, that man whose friends were histories has “grown old and require[s] assisted living.” Meanwhile Louise turns her hearing aids up and closes her eyes. Will assisted living deprive her of all her music, life and art? Are her memories of French childhood, and of her Wisconsin husband rolling hay “bales like poems,” all to be lost in the overwhelming emptying of age?

Humor and dialog draw you into this tale, well past pathos to honest fascination, joy and hope. The author enters the minds of both his characters convincingly, telling their parallel lives in first person, switching from one to the other with wonderful timing, and blending honest elderly romance—“I wish I could hold his hand, but we are both occupied with our canes”—with just the right amount of mystery and threat. Old love is indeed “a very, very fine thing,” old age is a mystery approaching its own dark finality, and old lives are well worth reading and remembering in this wonderful tale.

Disclosure: The publisher gave me a free preview edition and it’s possibly my new all-time favorite book!… (mer)