Book Review: New Jack Rabbit City: Starring the Chicago Hares
New Jack Rabbit City: Starring the Chicago Hares. Mike Evanouski and Gail Galvan. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, Charleston, SC, June 6, 2013. 174 pages.
Listen to ten original songs by the authors and Dan O’Connor at www.newjackrabbitcity.podomatic.com, voice by Gail Galvan.
Reviewed by Caryl Barnes.
On the title page, the reader meets two rabbits, both with enormous ears cocked. One rabbit is doleful, apparently hearing nothing despite those big ears. The other, a super rabbit and no doubt a resident of the idyllic New Jack Rabbit City, wears earphones and appears transfixed by the vibes he’s picking up from the stratosphere.
Beneath this sketch of the two rabbits are three enigmatic words in capital letters: “IT’S THE FREQUENCY.”
That phrase appears throughout the book. The “frequency,” as well as an unexpected artesian well with a will of its own are what make New Jack Rabbit City possible.
Over many decades, jack rabbits had migrated to scrubland at the edge of a huge sand dune outside Bruneau, Idaho. Life was hard in the original Jack Rabbit City: food was scarce, and the water supply unpredictable. The ranchers, whose large herds of cattle overgrazed the area, moved on, leaving the land in ruins. A few jack rabbits barely survived.
Then a miracle occurred, changing everything for the rabbits. An artesian well sprang from the ground, the rabbits drank and grew large, some as tall as six feet, and all were suddenly able to blend into the landscape, invisible if they wanted to be. New Jack City, comprising fifty acres of land, a 470 foot sand dune, two lakes, and a mini-mall, is protected by dense vegetation which ”gives the impression of a maze to the uninvited.” As the Mayor of New Jack City explains to three humans and two dogs he admits to the city, its residents can maintain one hundred percent visibility or invisibility whenever they choose.
Another miraculous event soon occurred. When the world began to switch from analog to digital frequencies, the rabbits, whose two-antenna ears are “wired like no other animal,” began to pick up images, sounds, scenes from strange places and visions. As the Mayor says, “We tuned in, caught on . . . Within months we were up to speed with the human race.”
Rumors of the good life in New Jack City began to spread. The authors, one of whom lives in suburban Chicago, focus on Chicago rabbits to illustrate the story of rabbits emigrating in droves to find their hearts’ desire in New Jack City. The balance of the book is about what happens to the “good” rabbit settlers when some Southside Chicago gangster rabbits visit New Jack City so they can double or triple in size and win gang wars back home. Greedy humans find out about the artesian well and plot to steal the water in tanker trucks. The story unfolds in an exciting, fun to read way, with a convincing magical realism that gives it the quality of a fable. The subtext is the story of immigrants everywhere, with some rabbits working constructively for a better future, a few becoming criminals in their new home, and a few who already live there exploiting the newbies.
Mature readers need not worry that the book might be too cutesy; it isn’t cute at all. The authors convey spiritual wisdom without getting preachy or didactic, and the nuggets sprinkled throughout the book are real gems.
For instance: The wise Mayor invites the gangster rabbits to stay in New Jack City, knowing they will change. After all, he says, the Southsiders “began losing their way many years ago, due to one heartbreak or another.”
A visitor to New Jack Rabbit City reflects: “It was magical, this moment, the last step before turning back, the dawn that’s always rising, the sun that never sets. A spin of reality, the glimpse of what can be—a tunnel into the open mind.”
There are also some wonderful lines in the lyrics of the songs that accompany the book: “If the cards are stacked against you/Buy another deck of cards….” and “Chase life fast, chase life slow/But chase it hard, chase it long/It’s the only way to go.”
Although the style of much of the book is sheer narrative, moving us from one episode to another, there are some beautiful passages. For instance: “Morning breaks early in the desert. Dancing waves of red light race across the horizon as the sun slowly rises. With the sky clear as a mountain stream, the day started fast and furious.”
One criticism of the book – and, for this reviewer, a major flaw - is haphazard copy editing, especially in the last half of the book. A common error is omitting commas before names when one character is addressing another, e.g., “Stay back Rush’ and “No Sis no.” There are spelling errors: “you lousy….I ougta” and “staring out with a peak at the springhouse.” Mistakes like these are frequent enough to become irritating.
All in all, though, New Jack Rabbit City is an enjoyable book with a multimedia approach. The book is available as both a high-quality paperback and an e-book. The original art and graphics are appealing, especially the color portrait of the Mayor on the cover of the paperback; and the ten songs from the book are available on a podcast.
NOTE: Based upon this review, the authors made revisions to the book and the new, revised Kindle version is available on 11/1/13.