If you are like me, you looked around at all the Halloween decorations that appeared in August, a full 3 months before the holiday, and you knew the world has officially lost its mind. Then, even before the spooks and ghouls have gone, Christmas will take over the aisles at Costco. It’s September 19th today. It’s just a titch early, ya think? Maybe corporate America should let us moms get the school year underway, before they hide the glue sticks under festive wrapping paper and snow globes.
This brings me to the perfect thing to buy right now: a YA space story about live turkeys escaping from a cargo hold, set free by a bunch of drunks. Karina Fabian’s hilarious book, Calling on a Bad Day: A Rescue Sisters Story will absolutely need to be read after Thanksgiving dinner. Out loud. Slowly.
The pilot of the Lucky Charms, one Rae Marie Martingale, is a feisty young woman who specializes in short haul cargo runs. When her company asks her to take a cargo of live turkeys from Waylaid Port to Ceres for an eccentric billionaire’s Thanksgiving dinner, Rae has no choice but to roll with it. When a bunch of men in fezzes run up and beg Rae to take them, too, she reluctantly accepts their generous offer…which turns out to be not enough money to put up with all their drunk shenanigans. Rae’s only other competent passenger is Fr. Kyle, who also ends up as a turkey wrangler after he says Mass on the bridge.
With fowl play going on and the ship breaking down, Rae is at her wits’ end. The only thing that could make it worse is, of course, pirates. And lo and behold, there are pirates. And today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day, so what could be better? Will the pirates eat all the turkeys? Will Rae and her inexperienced chief engineer outsmart them with mag boots and artificial gravity removal?
For the Catholic parents out there who haven’t thrown in the towel yet, one spoiler is necessary: Rae has to make a decision on whether to become a Rescue Sister. Yes, an actual nun who pilots ships and rescues people in distress, in space.
Karina Fabian is more than just a witty author with a penchant for space stories and Star Trek spoofs. She is the founder of the Catholic Writers Guild, and I owe a decent percentage of my sanity to her. She has brought together an international group of writers, editors, graphic designers, and publishers for the express mission of renewing Catholic Arts and Letters. It is such a relief to be a member of an actual guild that promotes our faith in fun and honest ways. We are the last bastion standing against the tsunami of video games, anime, and manga that have almost completely captured the imagination of today’s youth. (I like some anime, but most of it is actual porn, so fair warning!) Fiction is still meant to tickle our imagination while teaching us something, and I have made it my mission to promote good books for as long as I live.
So, grab a copy of Calling on a Bad Day: A Rescue Sisters Story and ditch the politics at Thanksgiving dinner. Everyone will thank you for the laughs! This story is G-rated, except for the mention of alcohol, so I recommend it for ages 9 and up. And please call corporate and tell them that we insist that they celebrate our national holiday in between Halloween and Christmas. Don’t give the pirates the last word…Rae certainly did not!
