National Poetry Month: Detroit Poetry

For National Poetry Month I purchased poetry books that had been on my 'wish list' for some time. 

I was interested in reading several poets with Detroit roots and who had written about Detroit.

Although I am not a native Detroiter, my family moved to Metro Detroit in 1963 when I was ten. My father found work with Chrysler in Highland Park where he was an experimental mechanic.

The poems in Made in Detroit by Marge Piercy are very accessible. The early poems recall an impoverished childhood: "rummage sales were our malls," "the furnace had been fed coal," "we survived on what no one else wanted." In another poem, she recalls job hunting, warned by her mother, "just don't put down Jew."

Her title poem, Made in Detroit, is forceful in language.

My first lessons were kisses and a hammer.
I was fed with mother's milk and rat poison.
I learned to walk on a tightrope over a pit
where snake's warnings were my rattles.

Her poem Our neverending entanglement struck home, for I had written a similar poems after the death of my mother in 1990.

We mourn our mothers till
we ourselves are out 
of breath. That umbilical cord between us, never
really cut no matter how
hard we tried in adolescence
to sever it.

I was older when I tried to sever the tie to my mother, but always in returning home I felt diminished back into the girl she still saw in me. With her death, I realized I was more tightly bound to her than ever.

I am still reading this book. Learn more about the poet at
https://margepiercy.com/bio

*****

The poems in Philip Levine's book The Last Shift are also accessible, "human centered poetry" as the Forward states. He writes about growing up and working at the Hamtramck Chevy Gear & Axle.

In an article about the book, Thomas Curwen of the Los Angeles Times wrote,

...Levine’s poems — with their pictures of the industrial Midwest animated by despair, yearning and love — suggest a more troubling truth. The working class has always been hard to see because seeing would mean confronting the struggle of their lives, a struggle of race, inequity and inequality.

“I think the writing of a poem is a political act,” Levine told an interviewer in 1974. “The sources of anger are frequently social, and they have to do with the fact that people’s lives are frustrated, they’re lied to, they’re cheated, that there is no equitable handing out of the goods of this world.”

My father never worked on the line, but I had an uncle and cousins who did work in assembly plants in the 1970s and later, and my husband worked as a welder for two summers at the Flint Buick plant during college breaks. Levine captures the experience for an earlier generation.

...Remember
at eighteen, brother, at Cadillac 
Transmission how no one
knew what we were drilling holes into or why except
of course for $3.85
an hour.

More Than You Gave is filled with images that were very real to me."An ordinary Tuesday in ordinary times," he mentions psoriasis, which my mother suffered from. And notes "the teenage Woodward Ave. whores;" one once tried to get into my dad's truck while he was waiting to pick up a work friend. And White Owl cigars, my dad's brand in the 1960s. "It could be worse," he writes, they could work "at Ford Rogue where the young get old fast or die trying."

I recall the obligatory annual school trips to the Rouge River forge, described by Levine:

One spring day 
the whole class went by bus
to the foundry at Ford Rogue 
to see earth melted and
poured like syrup into fire. 

A Dozen Dawn Songs, Plus One looks back across "2,000 miles and fifty years" and ends,"Oh/to be young and strong and dumb/again in Michigan!" 

And in Godspell he writes, "A lifetime passes/in the blink of an eye/ You look back and think,/That was heaven, so of course it had to end."

And in the final poem, The Last Shift, he sees the Packard Plant in the moonlight, the 1903 Alfred Kahn complex that spread over forty acres. After it closed in 1999, and scrappers stripped it, the Packard Plant came to symbolize Detroit's decay.

Levine was Poet Laureate in 2011. Read more about Levine's poetry and the Gear & Axle factory at https://detroitartsculture.wixsite.com/detroitstudies/chevy-gear-and-axle

*****

The poem I wrote after my mother's death appears below

A Mother's Love

        I had thought, once, that death
would finally free me.
No more hand- me-downs, no more
the worried call to see if I was home safe,
no more being a child.

I was wrong.
For in your dying, mother,
I am imprisoned more deeply than ever.
I am made, finally and again,
completely thine, like the baby
you loved beyond all understanding.

Your continual habit of giving
made me want to shake free.
It is the discomfort of those loved
too dearly to bear.
It is the knowledge of never being
good enough to deserve it.

And so I discover I am not freed,
but bound more tightly in the cord
of your love.

   

Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead

As a reader I am inspired by stories that set my imagination afire, bring chills to my spine, tears to my eyes, and comfort in this baffling world. Great Circle is that kind of novel. 

As a genealogist, I am fascinated by the hidden stories of my ancestors. I can never learn enough to fully flesh out the details of their lives. What it was like to leave their homes and reinvent themselves in a new land? What lead to the seduction that left them unmarried mothers? How did they face the devastation of a child drowning in the canal they had to pass every day? I only know that they survived, for a while, and then they died, taking their secrets with them. As someday, I will, too.

Life throws us into despair--all of us. We give in and give up, or we resist and struggle to the surface of the water, take another breath, and reinvent our life in the after-world. Sometimes there is freedom in reinvention. Sometimes it saves us.

Great Circle is one of those massive reads that sweep us across time and history, a long journey into character's entire lives. They are orphaned or neglected and unprotected by unreliable adults, and make their way as best they can. They lose loves and are loved by monsters. Dreams are fragile and come with a cost. Again and again, they must reinvent a life with a new name or in a new place or with a new love or the end of a love.

First, there is the story of orphans Marian Graves and her brother Jamie who run wild with neighbor boy Caleb, their adult caretakers unreliable. When barnstormers pass through, Marian becomes obsessed with the idea of flying. Caleb cuts her hair so she can pass as a boy to earn money towards flying lessons by secret moonshine deliveries.

Barclay was a criminal, and he was rich, and he was used to getting what he wanted. And he wanted Marian from the first time he saw her as a girl. She entered into a dreadful bargain: he would pay for her flying lessons, and she understood the unspoken agreement that someday she would be his.

Trapped into an abusive and controlling marriage, Marian escapes, disappears into Alaska, reinventing herself as a bush pilot. When WWII broke out, she volunteers for the British Air Transport Auxiliary, ferrying warplanes. She meets Ruth, who becomes her great love, and Ruth's gay husband Eddie. But it is Caleb she still turns to when broken.

After the war with its many losses, Marian is offered financing to fund her dream of flying around the world, pole to pole, she only trusts Eddie to be her navigator. After Antarctica, they are believed to have been lost at sea.

Then there is Hadley, also an orphan and abused by her uncle, who became a beloved child actress, and has a breakdown at age 20. Now, she has a change to reinvent herself in a movie about Marian's life, based on the journal Marian left behind at Antarctica before she disappeared.

Hadley goes on a quest to learn about Marian, discovering the truth of what happened on that great circle trip from pole to pole.

Marian's story gives Hadley a sense of freedom and control. And, and it can free us, too, showing us how to live with courage even in the darkest of times. How we must know what we want, and to always work for our dreams.

This past year has been a horror show of death and fear of death, political clashes and unimaginable chaos, outbreaks of hate and violence. We know full well the disappointments and pain of this world.  

A story can help us to heal. To know we are not alone, that there is a way to get through the hell and live into a moment of joy and moments of grace that can be enough to live on. This is the gift of literature. 

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Great Circle
by Maggie Shipstead
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Pub Date May 4, 2021  
ISBN: 9780525656975
hardcover $28.95 (USD)

 from the publisher

An unforgettable story of a daredevil female aviator determined to chart her own course in life, at any cost—Great Circle spans Prohibition-era Montana, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, New Zealand, wartime London, and modern-day Los Angeles.

After being rescued as infants from a sinking ocean liner in 1914, Marian and Jamie Graves are raised by their dissolute uncle in Missoula, Montana. There--after encountering a pair of barnstorming pilots passing through town in beat-up biplanes--Marian commences her lifelong love affair with flight. At fourteen she drops out of school and finds an unexpected and dangerous patron in a wealthy bootlegger who provides a plane and subsidizes her lessons, an arrangement that will haunt her for the rest of her life, even as it allows her to fulfill her destiny: circumnavigating the globe by flying over the North and South Poles.

A century later, Hadley Baxter is cast to play Marian in a film that centers on Marian's disappearance in Antarctica. Vibrant, canny, disgusted with the claustrophobia of Hollywood, Hadley is eager to redefine herself after a romantic film franchise has imprisoned her in the grip of cult celebrity. Her immersion into the character of Marian unfolds, thrillingly, alongside Marian's own story, as the two women's fates--and their hunger for self-determination in vastly different geographies and times--collide. Epic and emotional, meticulously researched and gloriously told, Great Circle is a monumental work of art, and a tremendous leap forward for the prodigiously gifted Maggie Shipstead.

Buses Are A Comin': Memoir of a Freedom Rider by Charles Person

Look around. What injustice do you see? What change needs to happen? Get on the bus. Make it happen. There will be a cost.~from Buses are a Comin' by Charles Person

"We intended to be the change," Charles Person writes in the prologue of his memoir Buses are a Comin'. 

Sixty years ago, Person walked away from a college education, walked away from the safety of his family's love, and boarded a bus headed for the deep south. He and his companions, black and white, old and young, male and female, were determined to challenge the illegal practice of segregation on the buses.

Person wanted the dignity, respect, and the privileges that whites took for granted. He could have chosen safety. But he heard the call to "do something" and answered it. The Supreme Court had ruled against segregation on the buses, but Jim Crow ruled the south. 

He was eighteen when he donned his Sunday suit and joined the Freedom Riders. Over the summer of 1961, four hundred Americans participated in sixty-three Freedom Rides.  Four hundred Americans put themselves into harm's way because they believed that "all men are created equal."  

Person mentions the well-remembered leaders of the Civil Rights movement, but they are not the only heroes. This is the story of the people who did the hard work, whose names are not on city street signs. The students, ministers, homemakers, writers, social workers, people from across the country who believed in E pluribus unum.

One of the heroes in the book is Jim Peck, a wealthy, white man who was severely beaten by white supremacists and still got back on the bus. It baffled Person how a man with everything would give so much for the rights of another.

Person's voice and personality come through the memoir. It is the story of a young man finding his purpose, committing himself to nonviolence, knowing he would face jail and beatings and death. 

I have seen the documentaries and I have read the history. But a memoir brings something new to the story. Person's first hand account is moving, his words have  rhythm and lyricism, his story takes us into hell, and finally, into hope. 

If they could stand up to power, we can, too. Every generation has its purpose.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Buses Are a Comin': Memoir of a Freedom Rider
by Charles Person; Richard Rooker
St. Martin's Press
Pub Date: April 27, 2021 
ISBN: 9781250274199
hard cover $26.99 (USD)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Charles Person is one of two living Freedom Riders who remained with the original Ride from its start in Washington, DC to New Orleans. This historic event helped defeat Jim Crow laws in the US. A sought-after public speaker, Person maintains active contact with schools, museums and the activist community. He lives in Atlanta.

Richard Rooker is an English and history educator, writing coach, and longtime personal friend of Person. He is an active board member of the Indiana Historical Society.

from the publisher

A firsthand exploration of the cost of boarding the bus of change to move America forward—written by one of the Civil Rights Movement's pioneers.

At 18, Charles Person was the youngest of the original Freedom Riders, key figures in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement who left Washington, D.C. by bus in 1961, headed for New Orleans. This purposeful mix of black and white, male and female activists—including future Congressman John Lewis, Congress of Racial Equality Director James Farmer, Reverend Benjamin Elton Cox, journalist and pacifist James Peck, and CORE field secretary Genevieve Hughes—set out to discover whether America would abide by a Supreme Court decision that ruled segregation unconstitutional in bus depots, waiting areas, restaurants, and restrooms nationwide.

The Freedom Riders found their answer. No. Southern states would continue to disregard federal law and use violence to enforce racial segregation. One bus was burned to a shell; the second, which Charles rode, was set upon by a mob that beat the Riders nearly to death.

Buses Are a Comin’ provides a front-row view of the struggle to belong in America, as Charles leads his colleagues off the bus, into the station, into the mob, and into history to help defeat segregation’s violent grip on African American lives. It is also a challenge from a teenager of a previous era to the young people of today: become agents of transformation. Stand firm. Create a more just and moral country where students have a voice, youth can make a difference, and everyone belongs.

The Life She Wished to Live: A Biography of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Author of The Yearling by Ann McCutchan

I went into this biography only somewhat familiar with Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings--mostly from the movie version of The Yearling and the movie Cross Creek based on her life. As I read, my interest was held and then I was riveted. By the end, I was moved and a fan.

Rawlings was one of the 1930s writers whose career was benefited by Max Perkins of Scribner, the legendary editor who worked with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe. I had read the biography Max Perkins by A. Scott Berg--forty-plus years ago!--but did not recall Rawlings. 

I spent my teen years reading 20th c writers, including those Perkins mentored, but I don't remember finding women writers listed on the 'greats.' Where was Rawlings? Likely, relegated to the children's section, represented by The Yearling.

Rawlings's mother had hoped for more from life. She determined her daughter would achieve what she had not. When no musical ability was displayed, but Marjorie won a prize for a story, her mother supported—and pushed her—into writing.

Cross Creek, Edward Shenton illustration

After college, Rawlings became a hack writer and journalist until she felt ready to assume her life's real work as a writer. 

She and her husband, also a writer, purchased a Florida orange grove in a backwater community, setting up in a ramshackle house without electricity or plumbing. 

Running a business took much of their energy and time and money, but the Cracker and African American neighbors also gave her material for her work. 

Rawlings’s research brought her to live with neighbors to experience their lives, and she went on crocodile and snake hunts. 

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings book Cross Creek (1933 ed.)
and The Yearling (Grosset & Dunlap movie tie-in edition)
from my personal library

Rawling's life held many disappointments and challenges. Her first marriage failed, her husband jealous of her success. She struggled with alcohol use and continual health concerns. Her personal relationships were tested, including an extended lawsuit. She suffered from doubt. She also achieved the Pulitzer Prize and a second marriage with a supporting and loving husband.

I had moments of discomfort with Rawling's language of white supremacy, referencing her African American friends and servants by what we today would consider derogatory terms, but which represented typical white mores at that time. 

McCutchan takes readers on a journey into Rawling's transformation from accepting her inherited values to becoming friends with Zora Neale Hurston and raising her voice for equal rights.

Edward Shenton illustration for The Yearling

Rawlings also became involved with environmental groups. 

A study in contrasts, Rawlings could tap into her society background and was friends with writers and publisher's daughters, but she could be bawdy and rowdy, toting a gun on a hunt. She even went into the scrub wearing a silk nightgown to rescue an animal. I loved her esteem for Thomas Wolfe and her heartbreak over his early loss before he could reach his artistic maturity.

This is terrific biography.  

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

The Life She Wished to Live: A Biography of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of The Yearling
by Ann McCutchan
W. W. Norton & Company
Pub Date April 26, 2021   
Hardcover $35.00
ISBN: 9780393353495

from the publisher

A comprehensive and engaging biography of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of the classic The Yearling.

Washington, DC, born and Wisconsin educated, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was an unlikely author of a coming-of-age novel about a poor central Florida child and his pet fawn—much less one that has become synonymous with Floridian literature writ large.

Rawlings was a tough, passionate, and independent woman who refused the early-twentieth-century conventions of her upbringing. Determined to exist outside her comfort zone, she found her voice in the remote hardscrabble life of Cross Creek, Florida. Between hunting alligator and managing an orange grove, Rawlings employed her sensitive eye, sharp ear for dialogue, and philosophical spirit to bring to life an unknown corner of America in vivid, tender detail—a feat that earned her the Pulitzer Prize in 1938. 

The Life She Wished to Live paints a lively portrait of Rawlings, her contemporaries—including her legendary editor Maxwell Perkins and friends Zora Neale Hurston and Ernest Hemingway—and the Florida landscape and people that inspired her.

About the Author: 

Ann McCutchan is the author of five books of memoir, essay, and biography. The founding director of the University of Wyoming's MFA in creative writing program and former editor of American Literary Review, McCutchan grew up in Florida and now lives in Wyoming.

The Engineer's Wife by Tracey Enerson Wood: Based on the True Story of the Woman Who Built the Brooklyn Bridge

 

When engineer Washington Roebling's father died, it fell to him to build the Brooklyn Bridge, an unprecedented engineering feat. Luckily, Wash had married a woman of intelligence and strength, because when he fell victim to caissons disease (decompression sickness), Emily became his link to the outside world. Eventually, her understanding of engineering brought her to be the de facto engineer in charge of the bridge.

Tracey Enerson Wood's historical fiction novel The Engineer's Wife imagines Emily's story from girlhood, as a young wife, and finally as an engineer. 

Wood does a splendid job of incorporating how the bridge was literally built and the risks it incorporated. That alone is an amazing story that sweeps across the heights and depths of human emotion and scientific progress. 

Wood makes the story universally appealing by turning it into a romance as well, with Emily's love for Wash turns to despair when his illness leaves her without his support, emotionally and intimately. She struggles to find confidence, leaning on P. T. Barnum, their fictional relationship not based on history, but delineating how the real Emily may have struggled without an involved husband. 

I would have been kept interested strictly by Emily's personal growth and ability to meet challenges usually given to men. But the romance angle will appeal to many historical fiction readers.

It is an absorbing and interesting novel. 

I received a free book from the publisher. My review is fair and unbiased.

The Engineer's Wife
by Tracey Enerson Wood
Sourcebooks Landmark 

Publication Date April 7, 2020
ISBN-10 : 149269813X
ISBN-13 : 978-1492698135

Covid-19 Life: A Quilt Finish, New Books, a Walk in the Woods, and The End of the Rainbow

I finished machine quilting the Water Lily quilt! I intend to wash it and the fabric and cotton batting will shrink some, giving it an antique look. I bought this Mountain Mist pattern early in my quilting life, almost thirty years ago. It was time I finally made it.

I hand appliqued it and machine quilted it. I should not have machine quilted it. It was a very bad idea. But, when I read that the quilting was to be echo quilting I did not want to do all that hand quilting. It is what it is.

Book mail from The Book Club Cookbook and St. Martin's Press included the paperback edition A Good Neighborhood by Therese Anne Fowler. 

I reviewed the galley when it came out. I wrote,

Foreshadowing began with the opening sentences, narrated in a voice that brought to mind Rod Serling introducing a Twilight Zone episode, setting up the story.

A girl sitting beside a swimming pool behind her newly built home. The neighbor boy welcoming her to the neighborhood. A typical day in a typical good neighborhood, upscale and friendly, a place where women gather for book clubs and teenagers can safely run in the local park.

But underneath the 'tenuous peace' simmers the possibility of fracture, the conflict of class and money and race and values. For some, conspicuous wealth is the goal. For another, environmental concerns are primary.

And probing deeper, there are secret desires and blooming love and the blindness we hold on to for self-protection.

Lives will be destroyed. A Good Neighborhood is a reflection of the social turmoil of our time.

New on my NetGalley shelf is

• Classical Crossroads by Leonard Slatkin, director laureate of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, on ideas for the classical music world to meet the challenges of the 21 st c. Slatkin blogged about these ideas over the pandemic as orchestra concerts were shut down. We had season tickets for concerts that never happened last year. But we did enjoy accessing online concerts!
• Zero Waste Gardening:Maximize Space and Taste with Minimal Waste by Ben Raskin. We took a class in organic gardening in 1973. I am interested to learn about new techniques that address zero food waste.

From Goodreads giveaways is coming 

• The Ground Breaking: An American City and its Search for Justice, about the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre by Scott Ellsworth. I have read books that reference massacre, now I will learn more about this tragedy. 

And from The Book Club Cook Book I won

• A Hundred Suns by Karin Tanabe, historical fiction set in 1930s Colonial Vietnam

A snow was followed by temps into the high 20s, but our flowering fruit trees seem to have survived! I am thrilled since this is the year for a high apple yield from the Northern Spy trees. It is filled with buds ready to bloom.

I brought in the tulips. They were closed but opened with the warmth indoors.

April 22 was Earth Day. I was still in high school that first Earth Day. Students from a university had tables set up in the hall to educate us. I bought a pinback button still in my collect. Give Earth a Chance. Fifty-one years later,we still are hoping for changes that will protect our one and only home.

On Friday we went to Tenhave Woods in Royal Oak, Michigan to see the early spring wildflowers. The woods is next to the high school I attended and my biology teacher was instrumental in preserving them. 

Trillium are beginning to bloom, trout lily predominated in a yellow cloud, and we saw spring beauty and wild geranium. The may apples were budding. And we spooked a garter snake sunning himself.

We have visited the dentist and eye doctors, appointments we skipped last spring.  Last week we made some shopping trips into several local specialty stores, but are still using Shipt and pick up and social isolating. After all, these amazing vaccines are not 100% effective and we don't want to be the 5% who contract covid or pass it on.

I purchased masks with filters from Vera Bradley last summer and have been very pleased with them, plus they are pretty! I love the adjustable ear straps. They are now only $5.

Here are my obligatory fur grandkid pics. First up, Gus the kitten.

Sunny and Ellie go to Dogtopia where this  cute photo was taken. Apparently, the idea of a picnic did not appeal to the pups.

My brother and his girlfriend have been walking the North Country Trail across Michigan. Last weekend as they drove home, Martha caught this rainbow coming out of my brother's truck! 

Tom noted he was at the end of the rainbow, so perhaps was Martha's "pot of gold," but I suggested he also might be her leprechaun. 

Stay safe. And here's to finding the rainbow's end!

Who is Maud Dixon? by Alexandra Andrews

 

I was lucky to be able to still grab a galley of the much talked about thriller/mystery Who is Maud Dixon? I needed a plot-driven, page turner to get my reading mojo back. And this clever, twisted debut novel did the trick. I stayed up reading past my bedtime!

Florence had been raised to believe she was special and would accomplish big things. She did leave Florida and her single mom for New York City and the world of publishing. But, instead of being a big name writer, she works for an editor who has just sold her first book. Florence is frustrated and imagines another life, the life she *should* have, the success she deserved.

After sleeping with her boss's boss, she becomes obsessed with the man's family, stalking his wife and studying her, imitating her. It lands her in hot water, and without a job.

Then an opportunity arises for her to be the assistant to the best-selling author whose book was a major influence in her life. Maud Dixon was a pen name, and only one person knew who the real person behind the novel was...until Florence is hired to become her personal assistant.

Maud is really Helen Wilcox, only six years older than Florence. Helen is not a nice person. She is blunt, self-centered, cold-hearted, and sarcastic. Florence manages Helen's finances, correspondence, and types her work in progress which arrives in indecipherable handwriting so Florence has to insert her own words. It is also damn poor writing; Florence could do as well.

Helen makes the sudden decision for them to go to Morocco for research. When Florence wakes up in the hospital, a policeman calling her Ms Wilcox, she learns there was a car accident she can't recall--and Helen has disappeared. Florence does not correct the assumption of her identity, and hatches a plan to take over Helen's life for herself. 

Florence becomes embroiled in far more than she expected, and with several more plot twists, instead of gliding on Maud's fame and riches, she must escape prison and death.

The success of the novel rests on plot. Helen and Florence feel like 'types' and even the idea of assuming another's identity is not original. It took me more than half the novel to be hooked into that late night reading to finish the story. Still, it is a fun read. And, truly, there are few of us who never fantasized about the life we believe we are owed, or were jealous of another's success. 

I was given a free egalley by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Who is Maud Dixon?
by Alexandra Andrews
Little, Brown and Company
Pub Date March 2, 2021
ISBN: 9780316500319
hardcover $28.00 (USD)

from the publisher

Florence Darrow is a low-level publishing employee who believes that she's destined to be a famous writer. When she stumbles into a job the assistant to the brilliant, enigmatic novelist known as Maud Dixon — whose true identity is a secret — it appears that the universe is finally providing Florence’s big chance.

The arrangement seems perfect. Maud Dixon (whose real name, Florence discovers, is Helen Wilcox) can be prickly, but she is full of pointed wisdom -- not only on how to write, but also on how to live. Florence quickly falls under Helen’s spell and eagerly accompanies her to Morocco, where Helen’s new novel is set. Amidst the colorful streets of Marrakesh and the wind-swept beaches of the coast, Florence’s life at last feels interesting enough to inspire a novel of her own.

But when Florence wakes up in the hospital after a terrible car accident, with no memory of the previous night — and no sign of Helen — she’s tempted to take a shortcut. Instead of hiding in Helen’s shadow, why not upgrade into Helen's life? Not to mention her bestselling pseudonym . . .

Taut, twisty, and viciously entertaining, Who is Maud Dixon is a stylish psychological thriller about how far into the darkness you’re willing to go to claim the life you always wanted.

One of the Most Anticipated Books of 2021

GoodReads * LitHub * CrimeReads * Town & Country * New York Post * Wall Street Journal

about the author

Alexandra Andrews has worked as a journalist, editor and copywriter in New York and Paris. Who Is Maud Dixon? is her first novel. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and children.

Why She Wrote: A Graphic History of the Lives, Inspiration, and Influence Behind the Pens of Classic Women Writers

Why She Wrote lifts up the stories of women writers of the 19th c., highlighting the contributions they made and the challenges they faced. In these pages, the women become super-heroes of their time, breaking down barriers. 

Presented in groups of three writers under a specific theme, the authors share a brief biography followed by an illustrated episode from their life. A full reading list is offered that includes each author's works and books about them for further reading.

It is a combination of a traditional biographical sketch with the graphic novel form, which I expect would appeal to younger readers. 

I wholeheartedly approve of any venture that brings classic writers--especially women writers--to the attention of readers.

I was given a free egalley by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Why She Wrote: A Graphic History of the Lives, Inspiration, and Influence Behind the Pens of Classic Women Writers
by Hannah K. Chapman and Lauren Burke, Illustrated by Kaley Bales
Chronicle Books
Pub Date:  April 20, 2021   
ISBN: 9781797202099
hardcover $19.95 (USD)

from the publisher

In Why She Wrote, dive into the fascinating, unexpected, and inspiring stories behind the greatest women writers in the English language.

This compelling graphic collection features 18 women—including Jane Austen, Louisa May Alcott, Alice Dunbar Nelson, Anne Lister, and more—and asks a simple question: in a time when being a woman writer often meant being undervalued, overlooked, or pigeonholed, why did she write?

Why did Jane Austen struggle to write for five years before her first novel was ever published? How did Edith Maude Eaton's writing change the narrative around Chinese immigrant workers in North America? Why did the Brontë sisters choose to write under male pennames, and Anne Lister write her personal diaries in code?

Learn about women writers from the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, from familiar favorites to those who have undeservedly fallen into obscurity, and their often untold histories, including:

• The forgotten mother of the gothic genr
• The unexpected success of Little Women
• The diaries of the ""first modern lesbian""
• The lawsuit to protect Little Lord Fauntleroy
• The personal account of a mastectomy in 1811
• Austen's struggles with writer's block
• And much, much more!

Why She Wrote highlights a significant moment from each writer's life and retells it through engaging and accessible comics, along with biographical text, bibliographies, and fun facts. For aspiring writers, literary enthusiasts, and the Janeite who has everything, this new collection highlights these incredible women's hardships, their influence, and the spark that called them to write.

The Souvenir Museum by Elizabeth McCracken

The stories in The Souvenir Museum  are a delight. Elizabeth McCracken's cleverness had me laughing out loud, but her quirky characters also elicit emotional investment and deeper reflections on life and love. One paragraph, I would be laughing and quoting lines to my husband, and another paragraph I felt my heart tugged. 

McCracken's characters struggle with love, finding it or losing it, committing or running away.

A woman with a broken heart checks into a hotel and meets a well-known radio personalty who dealt out terrible advice. He suggests that she is young and that she must 'change her life, and to be kind, even when life is cruel. 

A father takes his river-loving son rafting at a theme park, embarking on a fearful journey, imagining "The Raft of the Medusa at the Waterpark." 

A boy runs away to study with a ventriloquist. The story gave me my 'Sunday Sentence' on Twitter:

His body hadn't changed yet, but his soul had: this year he had developed delusions of grandeur and a morbid nature and a willingness to die for love; next year, pubic hair and broad shoulders.~ from The Souvenir Museum by Elizabeth McCracken 

A children's program actress imagines suicide, and on a cruise falls for a man who makes balloon animals. 

What could be sadder in a marriage than incompatible feelings about bagpipes? Ought they still marry?~from The Souvenir Museum by Elizabeth McCracken 

You can read one of the stories, Two Sad Clowns, published in O the Oprah Magazine here. It begins with the the marvelous sentence, "Even Punch and Judy were in love once." The story is the beginning of Jack and Sadie's love affair; the couple appear in four of the stories.

Who can predict the vicissitudes of life?~ from The Souvenir Museum by Elizabeth McCracken

Twenty years into their relationship, Jack convinces Sadie to marry and they honeymoon in Amsterdam. Discovering they are going the wrong way through a museum, the reluctant bride asks, Do you think we should start at the beginning?  Her new husband answers, no; let's fight the current. Stick to your mistake."

Perhaps that is the best way to live. Own your mistakes. Own going against the current. Why question things we can not change? Love the unsuitable. Embrace our imperfect life.

Entertaining and thoughtful, these stories are wonderful.

I received a free galley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

The Souvenir Museum: Stories
by Elizabeth McCracken
Ecco
Pub Date: April 13, 2021 
ISBN: 9780062971289
hardcover $26.99 (USD)

from the publisher

A Most Anticipated Book From: OprahMag.com * Refinery 29 * Seattle Times * LitHub * Houston Chronicle * The Millions * Buzzfeed

Award-winning author Elizabeth McCracken is an undisputed virtuoso of the short story, and this new collection features her most vibrant and heartrending work to date

In these stories, the mysterious bonds of family are tested, transformed, fractured, and fortified. A recent widower and his adult son ferry to a craggy Scottish island in search of puffins. An actress who plays a children’s game-show villainess ushers in the New Year with her deadbeat half brother. A mother, pining for her children, feasts on loaves of challah to fill the void. A new couple navigates a tightrope walk toward love. And on a trip to a Texas water park with their son, two fathers each confront a personal fear. 

With sentences that crackle and spark and showcase her trademark wit, McCracken traces how our closely held desires—for intimacy, atonement, comfort—bloom and wither against the indifferent passing of time. Her characters embark on journeys that leave them indelibly changed—and so do her readers. The Souvenir Museum showcases the talents of one of our finest contemporary writers as she tenderly takes the pulse of our collective and individual lives.

Things I Never Understood #2: Great Rooms

The Great Room 

A dozen years ago I found myself arguing with a church committee in charge of designing and building a new church parsonage. They had planned for the front door to open into a great room that encompassed the living, dining, and kitchen area.

I was appalled. No parsonage family wanted a parishioner to come to the door and be able to see their private living space. And parishioners did sometimes come to the door to see the pastor. Sometimes strangers with needs came looking for the pastor.

I imagined myself snuggled down in my robe and slippers for a long evening's quilting when the doorbell rings. I would have to scurry into hiding before the door opened, and remain in hiding until they left. What about the toys scattered about, or the dog fur that still needed to be vacuumed up? I would be open to judgement. 

No, I explained, a door opening to show the entire house was against parsonage codes requiring privacy for the pastoral family. They changed to plan to include an entry hallway and a french door to the great room.

Today's Detroit Free Press has an article by Carol J. Alexander about housing trends to come, and she wrote that "open floor plans are out." The pandemic has people working at home and she notes that 

"This year, expect to see homeowners spending less time knocking down walls to open up shared areas, and more time transforming spare rooms or nooks into dedicated spaces. That might mean adding a home office or home theater, for instance, or transforming a nook into a space for distance-learning.Closets have been turned into offices, and extra bedrooms, and basement nooks. People need a room of their own to work in." 

Will the pandemic knoll the end of the Great Room trend?

For most of history, people lived in a shared space, and in many cultures and social strata, shared one bed. The idea of a room of one's own came much later in history. "Privacy was an eighteenth-century innovation," Fernand Braudel wrote in The Structures of Everyday Life. Houses became divided into receptions rooms for entertainment, a public room for show, and private family rooms. Samuel Pepys had his closet where he wrote his diary and kept his books, which he often mentioned in his diary. The concept of privacy gave us houses with many rooms.

So why the Great Room trend? According to television reality show home buyers, it's so that mothers can work in the kitchen and see what the children are doing.

Golly. When I was a tot, Mom set me into a chicken wire fenced area in the yard, gave me some toys, and went back inside to do whatever she was doing. When I became tired and complained, she threw a baggie of crackers out the window. (Of course, those were also the days when parents spanked kids for whining and being defiant and I don't recommend this.)

Me in the yard

When our son was playing outside in the sandbox, I kept an eye on him from the window or the enclosed porch. But when we were indoors, I generally could tell what he was up to without seeing him every minute. And if need be, I set him up with Mr Rogers or Reading Rainbow or Mary Popkins for a while. The hyper-vigilant 1990s Moms thought we were awfully lax. 

And so, open spaces became listed as the number one must for all home buyers. You could watch the kids. You could visit with company while preparing the meal. Women were not isolated in the kitchen while everyone else socialized.

But, all I could think of was the noise! The echoing, endless noise! 

I grew up with walls and rooms in houses built in 1900 and 1920. Our current 1966 home has a living room separate from the eat-in kitchen, which is open to the family room with doors to the patio. This is as 'open concept' as we can tolerate. Hubby complains he can't hear the TV in the family room over the electric tea pot boiling. 

My office is in the largest bedroom, furthest from the television room, with several walls and a hall between me and the kitchen. I can look out the front window and see the pear tree in bloom, watch for deliveries and the mail. And I can write in peace.

What a luxury! To have a room of my own. (And note the colorful walls, also on trend!)

Covid-19 Life News

The weather has cooled again, but the chard and spinach we planted is coming up. The pear tree is in blossom and the apple trees are in bud. We have been busy with yard work. 

Covid cases in Michigan are the highest in the nation, and Oakland County has been in the 'red' zone. Our small town of under 12,000 has had over 200 cases in the last month...out of 600 total cases! And most of those are school related.

Meanwhile, people all over the state are acting irresponsibly. 

After being vaccinated, we donned masks and did a few errands, but now are back to delivery. One errand was to mail the First Lady signed handkerchiefs to the presidential libraries. 

Another poetry book I purchased arrived. Made in Detroit by Marge Piercy.

I 

Algonquin Books sent early reviewers a print of the cover of Libertie by Kaitlyn Greenridge. Isn't it a beauty! The book has been much touted and I recommend it.

There is an eagle in town! People have been reporting it lives on a high apartment building downtown. We have seen it on our walks.

This spring, the Mourning Doves have been hanging out in our yard. One particularly likes to sit on the edge of the bird bath! Years ago, when dad had a platform bird feeder, they were constantly in the yard. They liked sitting in the apple tree when the heat pump blew warm air in the winter. But we have not seen them in our yard for quite a few years.

Sunny the Shiba Inu and Gus the cat have really bonded. Sunny loved to play with kitten Gus, and now they are cuddle buddies. Gus was in a tunnel toy and Sunny tried to figure out how to join him!

No bed is too small to share.

Goggle is ending feedburner so anyone who read my blog via email will no longer get it! Goggle+ ended a few years back. I need to find a new way for email following but it is all very complicated. I wonder if its time to just give up on Blogger and blogging, and share via social media. I started blogging in 2008. It's a different world, now.

I have until July 1 to figure it out.

Stay safe. Find your bliss.