We were all about hot comfort food tonight. We sizzled chicken to a perfect brown. We tossed mushrooms around in hot butter. We smothered mashed potatoes in quite a bang-up sauce.  20150118_185757Adding in a salad full of tart surprises and some Chocolate Marshmallow Cookie Pie, it made for a respectable Sunday dinner.

CHOCOLATE MARSHMALLOW COOKIE PIE
2 cups miniature marshmallows
2 TB milk
2 1/2 cups thawed Cool Whip
2 cups cold milk
2 pkgs (4-serve size) instant chocolate pudding mix
1 chocolate pie crust
14 vanilla wafers

Directions
Microwave marshmallows & 2 TB milk in medium bowl on high, 45 seconds. Stir (marshmallows will be partially melted.) Refrigerate 15 minutes to cool. Stir in 1 cup of the Cool Whip

Pour 2 cups milk into large bowl. Add pudding mixes. Beat with wire whisk 2 minutes. Let stand 1 minute or until thickened. Stir in remaining 1 1/2 cups of Cool Whip. Spoon into crust. Arrange cookies over pudding mixture. Spread marshmallow mixture over cookies.

Refrigerate 4 hours or until set. Drizzle with chocolate topping just before serving, if desired. Store leftover pie in refrigerator. Serves 8.
Good thing I followed all the directions. Good thing I didn’t decide that, since mushrooms are tasty and so are marshmallows, why not stir them all together in the same dish?

If I had, it would have had some of the same problems as today’s book.

The Region of Lost Names by Fred Arroyo contains all the ingredients of a pretty good story: two lovers, Ernest and Magdalena, come together long enough to produce a child. Then they break apart. Oh, they long for each other. But neither knows how much the other cares.

Yep, this ought to make a gripping saga. I think it just got cooked wrong.

Now, what is the big problem between Ernest and Magdalena? Is it work schedules? Undelivered letters? Bad cell reception? Interfering mothers?

You know, it’s really hard to tell. We float, without warning, from present to past and back again. It gets a little floaty place-wise, too. One moment, we’re in Michigan, where these Puerto Ricans pick cherries, or can mushrooms. And then, just like that, we’re back in Puerto Rico, and everybody’s drinking cane whiskey. Then there’s the scene where Ernest relives conversations with his father’s friend Boogaloo and, halfway through, we wonder: is this a flashback? Or is Ernest talking, right now, to Boogaloo’s ashes, which Ernest carries around in a box?

Just to give you an example of how many cloverleaf ramps pile over each other, here is the information handed to us in a couple early pages:

Ernest has been studying in Chicago, but he reminisces of former years when he left his family in the fields of Michigan, to make his own way in South Bend, Indiana. Which brings up further memories of a trip to Spain where, while sitting on some plaza, he thinks about his parents, who have invited him to visit them in Puerto Rico, where they are now, having abandoned Michigan.

Got all that?

No doubt, Arroyo’s ambitions have been nursed along by those who tell him his writing is beautiful. His prose is full of shivering birch leaves; of hisses, screeches and swoops of birds; the colors of the sea and the sky; the yummy picnic food and the grease dripping down his characters’ chins. He can grab you by your senses, yes he can.

I gave it a good try. Arroyo piqued my curiosity, introducing me to a cast of friends and relatives trying to make it in America, to two people who might be happy together if only fate and rumor would get out of the way. But the missteps and the plot holes added up. I found myself staring across the room at the library books I hadn’t cracked open yet.

I’ll bet Ernest and Magdalena are just fine without me. They’re probably scanning things into their wedding registry as I write this.