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Contributing Writer

Articles by Joe Martin

Lord of the jungle

By Joe Martin | June 4, 2014

“Arise my child, and take your rightful place among the living!” Thus commands the charismatic preacher to the girl named Trina who lies still in her coffin. Only moments before he had invited some of the people in the large gathering to come close to inspect the child and bear witness to the lifeless body. The scene is fraught with anticipation and drama: “A gasp escapes the crowd as Trina jerks awake. She rises staggeringly to her feet. People faint. ...

Red-letter day

By Joe Martin | April 23, 2014

A writer who had run afoul of Cuba’s guardians of propriety, Ivan Cardenas Maturell now plies his thwarted literary ambition as a proofreader for a veterinary magazine. It is the 1970s. Sufficiently intimidated and wishing to avoid more serious retribution, Cardenas pursues his meager living. In so doing he has picked up considerable knowledge about veterinary medicine and about dogs in particular. One day on a quiet beach he has a chance encounter with an older man accompanied by two striking borzois, also called Russian wolfhounds, rare in Cuba. ...

The lie of the tiger

By Joe Martin | March 6, 2014

A modest house sits on a sandy, windswept bluff on the coast of Australia with a fine eastern prospect of sea and shore. It’s a remote area south of Sydney. This is the home of Ruth Field, a woman in her mid-70s. She and her husband, Harry, had retired, and it seemed a pleasant spot to lead a quiet life in their latter years. Harry died one morning while on his daily walk to a nearby town to purchase the newspaper. Now Ruth’s two cats are her only company. She has two adult sons who live afar and have their own lives, Jeffery in New Zealand and Phillip in Hong Kong. ...

Red, white and blue notes

By Joe Martin | February 14, 2014

As a snow storm blanketed Pennsylvania, the 27-year-old balladeer Woody Guthrie stood unsheltered on a roadside alone, caught in winter’s fury. He was hungry, broke and thought he might well freeze to death before he would ever make it to New York City. A kindly forest ranger picked up the desperate hitchhiker, gave him hospitality for the night and helped to ensure that Guthrie would make it to the Big Apple. ...

O, mother, where: In a novel set in Seattle in the 30s, a young Chinese orphan searches for a parent

By Joe Martin | January 2, 2014

A child abandoned is at the mercy of indifferent adults, cold institutions and rigid regulations far beyond the young one’s control or comprehension. Such is the cruel dilemma of 12-year-old William Eng, who was born in Seattle’s Chinatown in the early 1920s. Orphaned, he feels a deep sense of loss, of having little or no worth to anyone. Pensive and precocious, William is the only Chinese kid in Seattle’s Sacred Heart Orphanage, run by an order of strict Catholic nuns. His fellow orphans share the pain and frustration of having been tossed aside and forgotten. ...

Sister acts: Two siblings nurse those injured in WWI and suffer their own emotional wounds

By Joe Martin | December 6, 2013

In the early phase of the First World War the Gallipoli Campaign proved a colossal, blood-soaked disaster. An invading force of British, French, Indian, Australian and New Zealand troops tried to penetrate the elevated terrain bordering the strait of the Dardenelles in Turkey. They were pitted against an already battle-hardened Turkish foe ensconced strategically on high ground. The intent of the invasion was to take pressure off Russian forces on the Eastern Front by luring the Turks west, defeating them and then taking Constantinople. From the start Gallipoli was a doomed venture. ...

Fifty years after his assassination, JFK’s death is still cloaked in secrecy

By Joe Martin | November 21, 2013

Three days before John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as the 35th president, outgoing President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his farewell address to the nation. He issued a warning: An emerging labyrinth of power involving the military and big business had become a ubiquitous presence in America. ...

Home truths

By Joe Martin | October 2, 2013

Earlier this year in a disturbing essay in The New Yorker, writer George Packer reflected on a once great city: “At the bottom of the American economy lies Detroit. In 1931, it was the temporarily paralyzed dynamo of industrial capitalism. In the nineteen-fifties, it was one of the richest cities in the world. Half a century later, it had been left for dead. Then came the financial crisis, and the collapse of the auto industry, and Detroit’s spectacular decay became a symbol of the country’s distress.” ...

Inside out: Activists arrested for nonviolent protests give the low down on being locked up

By Joe Martin | August 28, 2013

John Dear is a Jesuit priest and peace activist who has done serious jail time for nonviolent civil disobedience. In his book “Peace Behind Bars” (1995), Dear asserts that imprisonment can be arduous: “Jail is awful. Nelson Mandela emerged from 27 years in a South African prison to offer his nation and the world the hope of reconciliation and healing. Gandhi, King, and Dorothy Day urged young people to ‘fill the jails’ in opposition to war and injustice. Thoreau wrote that the only place for a just person in an unjust society is in jail. ...