Keeping up with the Joneses
The lawyer-turned-writer is no rarity as bestselling authors John Grisham, Scott Turow (Presumed Innocent), Meg Gardiner (the Evan Delaney Series), and Erle Gardner (Perry Mason) well illustrate.
Some of their ilk are nonfiction authors; others, journalists. Many are both.
Idaho has one of those. Gracing this newspaper in print and online as a guest columnist is former state Attorney General and Supreme Court Justice Jim Jones. He’s a respected constitutional scholar who writes about current issues.
But that’s not where I’m headed.
Instead of going on about intellectual accolades, or the fact that he and wife Kelly Jones (also an author) are just nice people, what I like best about Justice Jones is his straight talk.
No high-fallutin’ attitude here. No cumbersome big words to obfuscate (had to toss that in for irony), confuse or bore. No gratuitous pathos to tug at your emotions.
Jones writes simply. He gets to the point quickly and doesn’t make the reader work hard. If you caught his column last week about the impeachment process — its steps, authority, secrecy vs. transparency — you know what I mean.
What Jim writes about is complex. Theory. Politics. War. Taking readers directly to the heart of such muddy topics with ease takes skill.
His latest book offers a frank look at a difficult, complicated topic many local veterans can relate to. Fifty years after Jones returned from the Vietnam War, his newly published account, “Vietnam … Can’t get you out of my mind,” tells the story of his 407-day tour of duty with a heavy artillery unit in Tay Ninh Province, and how that experience affected his life.
Parts of this story are unlike other first-hand accounts. Stationed with the South Vietnamese army, his unit adopted an orphanage.
The book has been described as honest, insightful, and — not a typical association with war memories — heartwarming.
Did you know today’s Vietnamese call this war “the American war?”
Jim’s wife, Kelly Jones, is the author of five published novels. I happened upon one before knowing anything about her, a mystery called “The Woman Who Heard Color.”
Yes, there really are rare people who swear they can hear color — a notion I find fascinating. But Kelly’s book isn’t just about that; I’d describe it as historical fiction. An aspect of Europe under Nazi rule and how Hitler politicized art — its theft, destruction, and one woman’s secret efforts to save the greats — discovered decades later. It was a fun journey which had me Googling paintings and Gustav Klimt.
And wishing I could hear color.
I’m just starting Kelly’s latest novel, “Bloodline and Wine,” a mystery set in Tuscany. Both the Joneses’ books are available on Kindle, but it’s more fun and economically sustainable to get paperbacks through our charming local bookseller in Riverstone, The Well-Read Moose.
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Sholeh Patrick is a columnist for the Hagadone News Network and yet another former attorney whose love of writing shrunk the family budget. Contact her at Sholeh@cdapress.com.