As a P.T.S.D. Person, I sometimes (often) have trouble falling asleep, so some nights I create little mental games to disengage my brain. A few weeks ago I started making lists of a representative novel (or two) for each state, beginning with Maine, and fell asleep before I got anyplace near the Mississippi River!

I very QUICKLY decided that for our Empire State, I needed a book or two for each region! So just for fun, here’s what I came up with… though there’s plenty of others that would qualify. Feel free to “comment” your additional choices!

FOR WESTERN NEW YORK: City of Light, by Lauren Belfer (1999). City of Light revolves around several poles, one of which is the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. With an inexhaustible supply of power from nearby Niagara Falls, the “Pan-Am” lit up the night like no place on earth had ever been lit.

But there are several other poles as well: the place of women in society; the power and/or vulnerability of women; the evolution of race relations; the proper basis of charity; and the changes foreshadowed in the new industrial-technical age… all mixed into a matrix of crime and mystery.

FOR ROCHESTER: Yobgorgle: Mystery Monster of Lake Ontario, by Daniel Pinkwater (1979). We read this comedy juvenile at home, shortly before we learned we’d be moving to the Rochester area! We quickly (and perhaps baselessly) assumed that Fred’s Fat Pig was a stand-in for Tom Wahl’s. There’s plenty of local color (including the Secret Room at the library), lots of pop culture, a seasoning of folklore, and a dollop of cryptozoology – classic Pinkwater daffiness.

FOR THE SOUTHERN TIER: Genesee Fever, by Carl Carmer (1941). Centered on Bath, Genesee Fever makes Charles Williamson and Jemima Wilkinson major historic players to counterpoint the fictional leads. It’s set in the 1790s, during the first white exploitation of the area, including the downstream traffic by river arks. There are some geographic howlers, about which western New Yorker Carmer surely knew – the protagonist rides horseback round trips between Bath and Jerusalem twice a day; three men set out from Bath on foot at dawn, arrive near Mount Morris by early afternoon, and have enough energy left for a major brawl – and these jar with us who know the land so well. But presumably he “edited” the landscape for dramatic purpose, and whatever his motive, he left us an engaging and loving story about our home and its history.

FOR THE FINGER LAKES: Hocus Pocus, by Kurt Vonnegut (1990). Eugene Debs Hartke lives on the smallest and coldest of the Finger Lakes… on one shore a private college for the dyslexic children of the rich, on the other a for-profit prison for the children of the poor. Fired (for pessimism) from teaching at the former, physics teacher Hartke crosses the lake to teach basic literacy at the latter… to glumly learn that the main consequence of this increased literacy is an increased circulation of anti-semitic tracts. After a mass breakout destroys the prison, the COLLEGE becomes the prison… Hartke becomes the warden… Hartke becomes an inmate… hocus pocus.

FINGER LAKES RUNNER-UP: Ithaca Falls, by Steve Thayer (2015). Retired police detective John Alden pursues a serial killer across the bridge at Ithaca Falls, crashing though time into the life of Cornell University in 1929. He now has obligations, and tragedies, in both time periods, set against the backdrop of men who have dedicated their lives to the education of the young.

More to come! We’ve still got most of the state to cover!