The Great Unknown by Peg Kingman

It was a time of social turmoil.

The working man wanted his voice heard in government. The Chartist movement was met with a violent reaction from the powers that be; the leaders were imprisoned or they fled the country.

It was an age of science.

Gentlefolk became amateur naturalists, collecting specimens of life living and dead. Fossil discoveries caused great wonder. Theories were created to explain the fossil records, some contorted to fit the Christian idea of time and history. Scandalous books were published suggesting a natural history that upset the Christian hegemony.

In natural law, Constantia knew, there is no justice. Suffering does not matter at all...We have a better idea than that despicable one. We can imagine something far better. We have imagined it; do imagine it; and we call it God.~from The Great Unknown by Peg Kingman

My Victorian Age professor had our class read pivotal books published in 1859, including The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. The professor told us that the ideas behind Darwin's book had been around; Darwin's genius was to put the puzzle pieces together, grounded in sound scientific research. Darwin dragged his feet publishing his theory, knowing the havoc it would bring.

The Great Unknown by Peg Kingman is set in 1846 when people were beginning to think about the questions Darwin finally, publicly, addressed in 1859.

There is a mysterious woman at the heart of the novel who goes by the alias Mrs. McAdams. She left her husband and traveled to the city to give birth to twins, one of whom died a month later. She is enlisted to be a wet nurse to a brilliant family who warmly welcomes her.

Mrs. McAdams struggles with issues of identity. Her mother's early death left clouded her true paternity. And she wonders about the big questions: are we ruled by chance, nature, or God? What does it mean to be human? What separates us from other creatures?

Several books are central in the novel, books that arouse deep thoughts from the characters. One is the 1845 best-selling, iconoclastic Vestiges of the National History of Creation. Another is the 1831 On Naval Timber and Arboriculture, which sounds like a yawner, but its appendix included a discussion of natural selection.

Vestiges became a best-seller. It appears and reappears in the novel, traveling from hand to hand.

They were dangerous things, book; best locked safely away in cages, like fierce beasts in a menagerie. ~from The Great Unknown by Peg Kingman

Mrs. McAdams's backstory is slowly revealed. Her quest to find her natural father takes her on an interesting and surprising journey. She questions many things--why a baby with extra digits is not embraced as an evolutionary improvement; whether things happen by chance or design; if humankind has the power--clearly, it does have the will--to reverse the spinning of the galaxies. 

The Great Unknown is an idea-driven story, and I found myself intrigued to read on for the questions posed are timeless.

As a quilter interested in quilt and fiber history, I was interested in Mrs. McAdam's vocation creating 'bizarres', designs for roller-printed cottons that were popular in the 1840s. Her designs were inspired by the minuscule life she discovered under the powerful new microscopes. Science had even invaded fashion! Colors, too. The newly discovered aniline dyes replaced the plant-based dyes, and new colors rose to popularity: mauve and purple, chrome yellow and orange, and greens that did not fade to blue or tan or rely on arsenic.

1830s-40s prints. 

Our heroine's journey takes her into her past to discover her true family roots before she returns to her husband. All their hopes are realized in a strange and circular way in a satisfying resolution.

In the 19th c, science was embraced as a panacea to society's ills, a way to reverse the natural order. Science disturbed the status quo and challenged Biblical authority, upended humanity's place in the universe and scheme of things.

But as Mrs. McAdams and we know, it appears that chance is what really rules the universe.

I was granted access to a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

The Great Unknown
by Peg Kingman
W. W. Norton & Company
Pub Date 18 Feb 2020
ISBN 9781324003366
PRICE $26.95 (USD)

If Anyone Asks, Say I Died From the Heartbreaking Blues by Philip Cioffari

If Anyone Asks, Say I Died From the Heartbreaking Blues by Philip Cioffari is a nostalgic journey into a specific time and place. A novel this personal can be limiting for the reader, but Cioffari's hero's transformative experience is moving and universal.

The day Hunter turns eighteen is also the night of his Senior Prom. His date is the girl of his dreams. Beginning in the morning as his job takes him across the hot beach sand, fearful his date would see him hawking orangeade, he holds huge expectations that it will be a very special night.

Little did he know it would be a night of rejection and of finding love, of fear and heroism, an episodic journey from childhood to manhood.

Music and movies ground the novel in a specific period. I loved, for instance, his description of the sound of the sax in Harlem Nocturne as "the hollowed-out echo of a soul's longing."

Poetry is a part of Hunt's life. He is friends with a homeless man whose academic career was lost to "wine and Irish whiskey." Hunt stops by to hear the man's latest rewrite of T. S. Eliot's Hollow Men. Hunt and Johnnie Jay banter phrases of The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock while wandering the nighttime city streets.

I noted similarities to The Catcher in the Rye: the New York setting, the teenage protagonist's episodic encounters across a varied landscape, hanging out in bars and getting a beating, the deceased brother. But whereas Holden is unable to act on his vision of saving children from the realities of adulthood, Hunt takes selfless risks to protect others several times over.

I was intrigued to know more about Cioffari's motivation for his novel and invited him to contribute his thoughts.

*****

Nostalgia and its Benefits
by Philip Cioffari

One way of looking at nostalgia is that it is a strategy for whitewashing the past, of remembering only the good things. The way, for example, folks of a certain age talk about the good old days. Of course the truth of the matter, if we take a sober look, is that the good old days were in fact a mixture of good days and bad days. Each moment we live through has its share of stress, struggle, highs and lows. We can select which side of the equation we want to emphasize. To some extent, it’s a matter of conscious choice. But not, I think, completely so.

When I look back upon the period of the late fifties/early sixties, the time period of my novel, If Anyone Asks, Say I Died From the Heartbreaking Blues, I have a generally warm feeling for both the age and the setting, the Bronx, where I grew up. But if I step back a moment, I realize that the era was also an emotionally turbulent one for me. I mean that in the sense of the growing pains we all suffer through in the process of figuring out who we are and what our place is in the world. So to write a truthful book I knew I had to present both the joys and sorrows of coming of age at that time.

Childhood (including adolescence) is a flame that throughout our lives, no matter to what advanced age we live, burns inside us. I choose the verb burn advisedly because I don’t think any one of us makes it through that period of our lives without experiencing a significant amount of hurt. The extent to which that affects the way we live thereafter varies with each of us. I know, for me, it colors a lot of what I do and think. It works its way into my writing in various ways, sometimes pushing my stories to the darker side. With this novel, however, I wanted to take a lighter approach, to present our growing pains in a more amusing, if not outright comical, manner.

So I chose senior prom night, which also happens to coincide with my main character Hunt’s eighteenth birthday, making the day and the event doubly significant. The story unfolds over that twenty-four hour period. Romance, heartbreak, recovery, new beginnings—all make an appearance.

Among the many influences on the story I would mention the music of that period as one of the strongest. I spent a lot of time listening to old records, each with its particular memories attached, and I chose song titles for the novel’s four sections: Try the Impossible; In the Still of the Night; Shake, Rattle and Roll; and Earth Angel. 

The movies of that era were another influence. Rebel Without a Cause, The Wild Ones, East of Eden, Some Came Running, King Creole (an early Elvis film), Singing in the Rain, Marjorie Morningstar—to name but a few. I loved the strength of both the male and female characters—their ability to rise above adversity, their hope and resilience.

Perhaps the strongest of my influences, though, were literary ones: the passion of the Beats in their poems and essays, the works of Tennessee Williams and Graham Greene and Carson McCullers, among others. But if I had to choose one particular work it would be, most assuredly, The Catcher in the Rye. It’s a novel I cherish as much now as when I first read it. What strikes me most about it is the way Holden offers help to those he encounters throughout the story. Though he is trying to manage his own problems, which are significant, though he has this tough exterior that he shows to the world, he never fails to extend a helping hand to those in need. That ability to rise above one’s own burdens to help others is what I see as my main character’s strongest virtue.

Which brings me to that other side of nostalgia I alluded to earlier—the unconscious side of it. As a species, we are continually drawn back to the past. Whether it is a disguised yearning to return to the warmth and safety of the womb, an anchor to hold onto during unhappy periods in our lives, a way of enhancing the present moment, or simply a chance to relive our experience with people and places no longer available to us, nostalgia serves many purposes.
In the most positive light, it’s a way of bringing our lives full circle, of preserving and relishing our most significant experiences, reminding us of all the good things that have made us who we are.

*****

I love a good memoir, fictional or nonfiction. Cioffari's is rooted in a specific time and place, and yet readers will recognize the timelessness and universal human experience so beautifully rendered.

I received an ARC. My review is fair and unbiased.

IF ANYONE ASKS, SAY I DIED FROM THE HEARTBREAKING BLUES
by Philip Cioffari
Livingston Press/University of West Alabama
Pub Date 14 Feb 2020
ISBN 9781604892383
PRICE $24.95 hardcover (USD)/$17.95 paperback

Inland by Tea Obreht

At the turn of the century, deep in the middle of the Arizona desert, Nora waits for her missing husband to return with water. Racked with thirst, Nora talks to her dead infant while tending to her vision-impaired son and her husband's superstitious niece. Two older sons are getting into trouble instead of running their dad's newspaper.

At the same time, a haunted immigrant Muslim 'Turk' and his comrade camel recall their many adventures with the army and running from the law.

This wild and original idea for a Western tale delves into new territory filled with desert and thirst, lawmen and murder, secret desires and secret liaisons, ghosts, and alien monsters.

Obreht is a masterful stylist and Inland is brimming with quotable lines from descriptive to insightful.

Stowaway burrs dimpled her hem. ~from Inland by Tea Obreht

The longer I live, Burke, the more I have come to understand that extraordinary people are eroded by their worries while the useless are carried ever forward by their delusions.~from Inland by Tea Obreht

Life's happiness is always a famine, and what little we find interest nobody. What use is it, the happiness of some stranger? At worst, it driver onlookers to envy; at best, it bored them. ~from Inland by Tea Obreht 

Where did Obreht come up with the idea behind this unusual story? History.

Red Ghost terrorized the wilds of Arizona

Obreht was inspired by real people and events. The U.S. Army did have a plan to employ camels and camel drivers, feral camels did roam the west after the plan fell through. Hi Jolly in the novel was one of the camel drivers.

Wedding photo of Hi Jolly/Hadji Ali

Read about the Camel Corps and Hi Jolly
https://armyhistory.org/the-u-s-armys-camel-corps-experiment/
https://military.wikia.org/wiki/United_States_Camel_Corps
https://truewestmagazine.com/hi-jolly-camel-corps/
https://chicagomonitor.com/2016/03/the-story-of-hajj-ali-hi-jolly-and-the-u-s-camel-cavalry-corp/
https://www.thenationalherald.com/145342/legends-lore-red-ghost/

What a masterful handling of material and plotting! What gorgeous prose!

I won a copy of the book on LibraryThing. My review is fair and unbiased.

Courting Mr Lincoln by Louis Bayard

I reread Courting Mr. Lincoln by Louis Bayard in conjunction with its paperback edition blog tour.

On this second reading, I again was again impressed by Bayard's handing of Mary Todd. I love her outspokenness, her willingness to stand up to convention and assert herself. She has a stubborn streak, and yet is vulnerable.

"There had to be, in her soul, there lay some rebel contingent."~from Courting Mr. Lincoln

Mary has come to Springfield to live with a married sister. She is escaping an unhappy relationship with a stepmother but it is also intended that she find a husband, being twenty-one and on the threshold of spinsterhood. She can not settle for the available men hoisted upon her as suitable. Lincoln is unsuitable, but Mary sees his gentleness and kindness and relishes their political talk. She grew up on politics in her home.

Mary Todd Lincoln

"The man how wishes to woo me will send neither flowers nor chocolates but elections returns."~from Courting Mr. Lincoln

Lincoln describes her, and himself, as broken birds, people who have suffered and carry the scars from childhood.

"But those are the ones that turn out the toughest, arent' they? The broken ones." ~from Courting Mr. Lincoln

Courting Mr. Lincoln with Mary Todd Lincoln on
my quilt Remember the Ladies

Lincoln is self-effacing, acutely aware of his shortcomings in social status and origin, his bleak prospects as an itinerant lawyer. He does not want to drag Mary down to his level.

Abraham Lincoln c. 1946

"El Greco frame stretched beyond sufferance. A mournful well of eye. A face of bones, all badgering to break through.~from Courting Mr. Lincoln

Joshua Fry Speed

Joshua Speed, Lincoln's lifelong intimate friend and soulmate, jealously watches his friend's courtship of Mary. They had pledged to avoid marriage, remaining eternal bachelors. Bayard's Speed educated Lincoln in matters of social niceties, from apparel to dancing. Lincoln is described as brilliant but rustic to a fault.

The novel is well-grounded on historical events, from Mary's idea of making a pathway to walk into town by tossing shingles ahead to Lincoln's deep depression and indecision that caused him to leave Mary and Springfield.

Bayard wisely skirts detailing the nature of Speed and Lincoln's intimacy in sexual matters. One can read between the lines as one wishes.

Bayard's writing is wonderful, I love his descriptions and language. He brings these characters to life.

I was given a free ebook by the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Courting Mr. Lincoln with my Presidents Quilt

Courting Mr. Lincoln
by Louis Bayard
Algonquin Books
February 11, 2020
ISBN-10: 1643750445
ISBN-13: 978-1643750446

The Light After the War by Anita Abriel

Inspired by her mother's story, Anita Abriel's The Light After the War takes readers across the world following the paths of girlhood friends Vera and Edith from Budapest to escaping the Nazis and hiding out in Austria, to Italy and Venezuela.

Believing they had lost their families and loved ones, the girls try to move on with their lives after the war. Edith dreams of becoming a fashion designer and Vera had hoped to be a playwright but settles for copywriting.

The background of Jews migrating to more tolerant societies was new and interesting. There is referred violence and death relating to the Holocaust and the girls must resist predatory men, but there is nothing graphic in the story. The concentration is on their determination and friendship, and the charmed luck their beauty brings in the form of helpers and aides along their journey.

Easy to read and easy to digest, with star-crossed lovers and jealousy, the novel felt more like a romance than heavier WWII-era historical-fiction fare. The resolution will satisfy those who believe in fate and true love.

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

The author has published under Anita Hughes with several books becoming Hallmark Channel movies.

The Light After the War
by Anita Abriel
Atria Books
Pub Date 04 Feb 2020
ISBN 9781982122973
PRICE $36.00 (CAD)

Things in Jars by Jess Kidd

If Charles Dickens and Neil Gaiman and Conan Doyle had devised a Victorian Era Gothic mystery with a female detective partial to 'medicinal' tobacco who is hired to find a kidnapped girl who is perhaps not quite human, aided by a dead man and former circus freak, it would not be outdone by Jess Kidd's Things in Jars.

The coal smoke and fog of London, complete with its olfactory smorgasbord of industry and market, the filthy Thames and its dung-filled streets, the miasma blamed for cholera and other deadly diseases is vividly described. 

The novel is Victorian in writing style, with Dickensian descriptions and sensational penny dreadful worthy murderous villains. It is populated with Resurrectionists, mudlarks, people with false identities, and avid collectors of curiosities--things in jars.

Sir Edmund has an extensive collection of aquatic life--aberrations--things in jars, including the Winter Mermaid, the Irish merrow specimen that went missing long ago. The fishy merrow could take on female human form, beautiful but dangerous killers. Sir Edmund's reclusive, 'singular daughter' has disappeared, along with her nurse and the doctor. Sir Edmund won't share details, but he is desperate to find Christabel.

Here is time held in suspension. Yesterday picked. Eternity in a jar. ~from Things in Jars by Jess Kidd

Sir Edmund has called detective Bridie Devine to find the missing girl.

Bridie's early childhood was spent with a resurrectionist--once a man of science before ruined by drink and gambling--who taught her how to determine how long a body had been dead. Then a gentleman doctor took her from the streets to groom as his assistant. Now, she helps the police, "working out how people died." She failed to find her last kidnapped child case, and perhaps that failure was why she was chosen for this case.

Bridie is a wonderful character. Like Sherlock Holmes, she dons disguises, she is identified by her choice of hat, and smokes a pipe. She is also quite modern, railing against societal restraints on women, the 'market price' of their value. Middle age is creeping up--is it too late for a lover? Ruby Doyle's ghost has been following her, claiming they had a history; there is an affection between them. Who was he?

Kidd captures a time when Darwin's theory is breaking news and science and pseudoscience is all the rage. I love the novels and era that inspired this novel, and I love this novel, too.

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

Things in Jars
by Jess Kidd
Atria Books
Pub Date 04 Feb 2020
ISBN 9781982121280
PRICE $27.00 /$36.00 (CAD) hardcover

Lady Clementine by Marie Benedict

Wrong book--wrong time--There are many reasons for me to walk away from a book. 

Marie Benedict is a best selling author who writes historical fiction about remarkable women. I had previously read her novels The Other Einstein and The Only Woman in the Room. I am not a huge fan of her writing style, but commend her for bringing the women she writes about to a public who might not know their stories.

Lady Clementine is about Winston Churchill's wife, usually portrayed as long-suffering and anxious for Winston to put aside politics and enjoy his life--and give her more of his attention. Benedict shows a woman who understood what she was taking on in marrying Winston.

"In that moment, I knew with utter certainty that I could make a life with him. It would not be an easy life--no, it would be one of striving and ambition--but it could be an important and purposeful one.~from Lady Clementine by Marie Benedict

Twenty-three-year-old Clementine married the thirty-four-year-old Winston, with wanting to "write my own chapter." The novel takes their story through WWII, told by Clementine, in episodic scenes.

I just did not feel compelled to pick up the book, and half-way through decided to move on.  It just couldn't compete with the other books I was reading at the time.

Read an excerpt and judge for yourself:
https://www.sourcebooks.com/uploads/1/1/5/5/115507011/9781492666905.pdf

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

from the publisher:In 1909, Clementine steps off a train with her new husband, Winston. An angry woman emerges from the crowd to attack, shoving him in the direction of an oncoming train. Just before he stumbles, Clementine grabs him by his suit jacket. This will not be the last time Clementine Churchill will save her husband.
Lady Clementine is the ferocious story of the ambitious woman beside Winston Churchill, the story of a partner who did not flinch through the sweeping darkness of war, and who would not surrender either to expectations or to enemies.

Lady Clementine
by Marie Benedict
SOURCEBOOKS Landmark
Pub Date 07 Jan 2020
ISBN 9781492666905
PRICE $26.99 (USD)

Cesare: A Tale of War-Torn Berlin by Jerome Charyn

They would embroider, multiply, manufacture, until I was their Caligari with his slave, Cesare, who strangled enemies of the Reich at will and then returned to his coffin at Tipitz-Ufer. ~Admiral William Canaris in Cesare by Jerome Charyn

From the beginning, I knew I had entered a noir world of tales and terror where fantasy and fact spun a deeper journey into the known, for surely nothing can convey truth better than fiction.

Reading Cesare by Jerome Charyn I knew I had to see The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari again, for the imagery of the doctor and his sleepwalking murderer is central to the novel. It is set in a world gone mad and filled with madmen. Yes, I am talking about the movie--and I am talking about the novel.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a 1920 German film in which horror builds upon horror, the action set against contorted Expressionist Art sets. A doctor is monomaniacally obsessed with controlling a somnambulist, Cesare, who in his sleep murders on command. In the end, we are unsure who is really mad.

We were all madmen at the Abwehr. We had to be. How else could we have survived the Furher's fiery wind day after day? ~ Admiral William Canaris in Cesare by Jerome Charyn 

In Jerome Charyn's Cesare, we met the orphan Erik Holdermann, raised by whores who pool their money to send him to school. There he is discovered by a benevolent department store baron who sends Eric to his an estranged uncle--only to be treated like a household slave. But the Uncle's daughter, the imperious Lisalein, bewitches the boy. Lisalein is fierce and beautiful, a cruel Estella toward men; under the Nazis she becomes a crusading angel for the Jews.

While at cadet school Eric unwittingly saved the life of Admiral Canaris, the head of the "asylum called the Abwehr," the German Military Intelligence. Canaris brings Eric into the Abwehr to eliminate their enemies, becoming Dr. Caligari to Eric's Cesare.

Dr. Caligari's will controls Cesare in his coffin

Eric is Admiral Canaris' liaison with the Nazi Gestapo and SS; the Abwehr was at odds with them, hiding and protecting select Jews, one Jew at a time. Eric was protected and feared by his reputation, for the enemies of the Abwehr disappeared.

Hitler's mad dominions meant nothing to Erik. He was loyal to Uncle Willie and played Cesare for him. ~ from Cesare by Jerome Charyn

To rescue Lisalien, Eric enters the contorted reality of Theresienstadt, a PR facade constructed to hide the truth of the Nazi death camps.

The book reads like a twisted dark fairy tale, stepped in the details of a time in history so chillingly horrific some deny it ever happened. And like all good horror stories, it will disturb your sleep.

I was given access to an egalley by the publisher through Edelweiss in return for a fair and unbiased review.

Cesare: A Novel of War-Torn Berlin
Jerome Charyn
Bellevue Literary Press
Publication January 7, 2020
ISBN: 9781942658504, 1942658508
Hardcover $26.99 USD, $35.99 CAD, £19.99 GBP

Love That Moves the Sun by Linda Cardillo: Vittoria Colonna and Michelangelo

The story of a poetess and one of history's greatest artists, Love That Moves the Sun by Linda Cardillo drew me into an age I knew little about--16th c Italy.

Vittoria Colonna left her family as a girl to live with the family of her betrothed, a politically advantageous arrangement. Vittoria flourished under her future mother-in-law's education, finding in Costanza's large library books that "lit a fire, a conflagration that burns in me to this day." And she and Ferranti's childhood friendship blossoms into passionate love.

Ferranti was raised to be a warrior and spent most of their married life fighting in the continual wars as alliances shifted between kingdoms, the Pope, and the Holy Roman Emperor. Vittoria enjoyed the freedom this allowed her while agonizing over the growing distance between her and her beloved husband.

After Ferrante's death, Vittoria retreated from the world, nursing her grief and growing her faith rooted in the Catholic Reformation. When her poetry was shared with the world, she became doubly famous as the finest poet since Petrarch and as the virtuous widow who gave up worldly pleasures and stellar marriage opportunities.

When she meets Michelangelo they become soul mates, their relationship deepening as they commune over how art fuels faith. As the artist works on The Last Judgement mural in the Sistine Chapel, Vittoria writes a volume of poetry for him.

I have no army. I have no ambassadors. I have no weapons other than my pen and my brain.~ from Love That Moves the Sun by Linda Cardillo

Vittoria wrote deeply felt poems, confessional and passionate, never meant for public distribution. Influenced by the Reformation, Vittoria's theology challenged the status quo of the Catholic church.

Although rooted in history, Vittoria's story touches on eternal themes: The position, power, and struggle for self-determination of women of intelligence and ability; Vittoria's progressive atittude toward personal faith that challenged authority; and the timeless anguish of women whose beloved husbands and sons go to war.

His home was elsewhere now, in the company of his fellow soldiers, and defined by his sword, his armor and his horse.~ from Love That Moves the Sun by Linda Cardillo  

I learned much about Italy's history and the cycle of shifting power that fueled endless war as well as the history of Catholicism during a time when John Calvin and others were fomenting the Protestant Reformation.

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

Love That Moves the Sun
The passionate bond between Renaissance poet Vittoria Colonna and famed artist Michelangelo
by Linda Cardillo
BooksGoSocial
Pub Date 12 Dec 2018 
ISBN 9781942209553
PRICE $5.99 (USD)

Sample of Vittoria's poetry found at https://www.hwlongfellow.org/poems_poem.php?pid=209

VITTORIA COLONNA, on the death of her husband, the Marchese di Pescara, retired to her castle at Ischia (Inarimé), and there wrote the Ode upon his death, which gained her the title of Divine.

Once more, once more, Inarimé,
  I see thy purple hills!--once more
I hear the billows of the bay
  Wash the white pebbles on thy shore.

High o'er the sea-surge and the sands,
  Like a great galleon wrecked and cast
Ashore by storms, thy castle stands,
  A mouldering landmark of the Past.

Upon its terrace-walk I see
  A phantom gliding to and fro;
It is Colonna,--it is she
  Who lived and loved so long ago.

Pescara's beautiful young wife,
  The type of perfect womanhood,
Whose life was love, the life of life,
  That time and change and death withstood.

For death, that breaks the marriage band
  In others, only closer pressed
The wedding-ring upon her hand
  And closer locked and barred her breast.

She knew the life-long martyrdom,
  The weariness, the endless pain
Of waiting for some one to come
  Who nevermore would come again.

The shadows of the chestnut trees,
  The odor of the orange blooms,
The song of birds, and, more than these,
  The silence of deserted rooms;

The respiration of the sea,
  The soft caresses of the air,
All things in nature seemed to be
  But ministers of her despair;

Till the o'erburdened heart, so long
  Imprisoned in itself, found vent
And voice in one impassioned song
  Of inconsolable lament.

Then as the sun, though hidden from sight,
  Transmutes to gold the leaden mist,
Her life was interfused with light,
  From realms that, though unseen, exist,

Inarimé!  Inarimé!
  Thy castle on the crags above
In dust shall crumble and decay,
  But not the memory of her love.

Sketch of Vittoria Colonna by Michelangelo

See the trailer at
https://youtu.be/O1JrGveVYOc

Read an interview with the author at Book Club Babble

“. . . a sweeping historical epic and a sensitively observed exploration of the passionate friendship between Colonna and Michelangelo . . . .  While Colonna and Michelangelo’s friendship forms the emotional center of the novel, the poet’s story and her journey as a woman and a writer are dynamic and multilayered. . . . A stirring and emotionally resonant portrait of a pivotal relationship in the life of Michelangelo.” – Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Temptation Rag by Elizabeth Hutchison Bernard

Temptation Rag is the story of the people who brought Ragtime to the mainstream, fueled its epic rise, and for a while glided on the coattails of faddism until the next big thing came along--Jazz.

It is the story of racism and Anti-semitism, the quest for fame and the fickleness of the public, the entertainment industry's birth, and the growing power of women over the early 20th c.

In the Gay Nineties, no one knew how big Ragtime would become, how Tin Pan Alley would be filled with white songwriters cashing in, appropriating African Americans' music that sprang right out of the rhythms of Africa.

Southern and white, Ben Harney was credited as the originator of Ragtime. Tom Strong gave Ben his talisman ring; soon afterward Ben saw Tom hanging from a tree. Ben took the sounds he heard and brought them to Tony Pastor's New York City vaudeville house where respectable white audiences soon embraced this new sound.

"Said I was the only whitey he ever knew who could play music to stir a black man's soul." ~from Temptation Rag

When classically trained, nineteen-year-old pianist Mike Bernard was hired as Pastor's music director and heard Harney perform he imitated his sound and perfected it, his fame eventually outshining Harney.

Mike always wanted Harney's ring. Sure, he was the Ragtime King, but he knew he copied from Harney. Mike wanted everything Ben had--his girl, his career, his fame, and that ring.

Readers met the forgotten stars of a hundred years ago, like Will Marion Cook, a classically trained black violinist. "No black man ever got what he got on account of luck," Cook tells Strap who is hoping to ride Harney's coattails to fame. J. Rosamond Johnson's African American operas caused rioting in the streets. Mentioned are the early sheet music publishers like E. T. Paull and Waterson, Berlin, and Snyder (Yes, THAT Berlin--Irving). Scott Joplin, today famous, was only known by a few musicians as the  authentic 'real deal.'

Then there are the women who loved these men, who were betrayed by these men. The wealthy May who loved and lost Mike and went on to become a suffragette and to challenge racism. The Ziegfield star Dolly who slept her way to the top. The long-suffering and loyal Jessie.

Elizabeth Hutchison Bernard has written a terrific read in terms of plot and characters that also incorporates the great American themes of class, race, and the fleeting nature of fame.

And if you love music, it's a must-read.

"...the first thing you need is a good, strong, left hand. That's important, 'cause the bass is what draws the listener in, makes him feel that powerful rhythm all the way down in his bones."..."The Melody accents fall between the beats" ~from Temptation Rag

I purchased an ebook.

Temptation Rag
by Elizabeth Hutchison Bernard
Publisher: Belle Epoque Publishing (December 3, 2018)
Publication Date: December 3, 2018
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
Language: English
ASIN: B07HYJMTXX

Mercy Road by Ann Howard Creel, a Story About Volunteer Female Ambulance Drivers During WWI

Ann Howard Creel's books are inspired by history and her female characters face life-changing challenges.

Her newest novel Mercy Road was inspired by a photograph of a female ambulance driver in France during WWI. Female doctors and nurses were banned from serving in the U. S. Army so they formed the American Women's Hospital and raised funds to send a volunteer team to France.

Creel's novel begins with a tragedy that leaves Arlene Favier aware of how life can change in an instant. A fire takes her home and father and the family's source of income. Desperate to find a job to support her mother and brother, and with dreams of rebuilding her father's stud farm, Arlene stumbles into an opportunity that will use her few employable skills--as a chauffeuses driving an ambulance for doctors volunteering in France.

With most French doctors serving at the front, there was a lack of medical services for civilians and refugees. With her command of French and experience with machines, Arlene is the perfect volunteer. With the lure of a cash bonus at the end of the war which would allow her to rebuild the family home, Arlene joins the American Women's Hospital service, formed to aid citizens and refugees.

To go to France in May 1918 required great courage and fortitude. The war had destroyed the land and the infrastructure. By September 1918, there were 1.85 million refugees. Food shortages and the lack of housing and clean water contributed to illness including typhus, tuberculosis, dysentery, and influenza. The Hospital Service also assisted men wounded at the front. The women were exposed to the horrors of battlefield wounds, the dead, and the dying.

Now I not only knew death; I knew the shade and scent of human blood and the charred appearance and stench of burnt human bodies. I knew the look of what lay beneath our skin. from Mercy Road by Ann Howard Creel 

Arlene was excited to arrive in Paris, her father's birthplace. With restrictions against seeing soldiers, she rebuffs the attention of the handsome but oversure Captain Brohammer. He takes it as a challenge, pursuing her throughout the war even though Arlene makes clear she is not interested. But when she meets up with a childhood friend once employed by her father, her hesitancy to become romanticly involved is challenged.

Hospital 1 in Luzancy . Note the uniforms of the female ambulance drivers.

The plot involves intrigue, accusations with devastating implications, and personal growth that challenges old ideas and the embracing of possibilities.

I received a free ebook from the author in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

I read Creel's previous novel The River Widow. Read my review here.

Read more about the American Women's Hospital Service here.

Mercy Road
by Ann Howard Creel
Lake Union Publishing
Publication Date: November 21, 2019
$3.99 Kindle, $10.99 paperback, $14.99 Audio CD

From the author's website: 

When I stumbled upon a story of truly unsung female heroes during World War I, I knew I’d found the inspiration for my next historical novel.  Banned for service in the US Army, a group of female physicians and surgeons formed the American Women’s Hospital and independently sent an all-female team of doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers, and aides to war-torn France in 1918.  Soon after I’d discovered this almost unknown piece of history, a character began to form and take on shape and dimension in my mind. 

Arlene Favier, a young French-speaking horsewoman from Paris, Kentucky, joins the first team of the American Women’s Hospital as an ambulance driver, passes through Paris, France, and ends up serving soldiers and civilians alike on the front lines.  Amid the chaos of war, she never expects to find romantic attention from two very different soldiers, and not only does she find herself in physical danger every day, her heart and belief in the human spirit become endangered, too.  Because even during the days of life and death, things are not always as they appear to be, and not all soldiers are heroes. 

Cilka's Journey by Heather Morris

"What you are doing, Cilka, is the only form of resistance you have--staying alive." ~from Cilka's Journey

In 1974 when I was twenty-two I met a woman who had come from Russia after World War II. I was new in town and not even half her age. In the morning when she saw my husband had left for work she would run across the street to my door. She asked why I did not have children yet, whispering that I should ask my husband--he'll know what to do. And she puzzled over my husband's job as an assistant pastor, asking "why two priests?"

One day, in broken English, Nadya told me that when she was a teenager she volunteered to go to a German work farm in her father's stead. She told me she never could have children and thought that she had been sterilized at that camp. When the war ended she was given the choice of three places to go and she chose New Jersey in America. On the ship, she met a man who had also been in a camp and had no family left and they married. She could not read English or drive. I am now surprised she even told me this much of her story.

I was ignorant of the details of modern history at that time. I knew about Nazi Germany and the concentration camps from books I had read such as Anne Frank's Diary. Still, I had little appreciation of the horror Nadya had endured. I later realized that Nadya was perhaps was Polish or from another country taken over by the Nazis and not Russian. That the work farm was a prison camp. That she had no family or home to return to after the war.

We are surrounded by people with stories that they keep to themselves for many reasons. Sometimes because the stories are too painful to speak. Perhaps they don't have the words to express their experience. Sometimes people fear that their past will bring judgment from those who weren't there.

When Heather Morris talked with Lale Sokolov, listening to his story that would become her best-selling novel The Tattooist of Auschwitz, he told her that Cilka Klein saved his life. Morris knew she had to learn about Cilka and write her story. How did this teenager survive years in prison camps? Not only survive but have the strength to help others survive?

The people Morris interviewed gave conflicting stories about Cilka's character. She was a collaborator. She slept with the Nazis for favors. She helped them, saved them, sacrificed for others. Which was the real Cilka?

Cilka was only sixteen in 1942 when the Nazis rounded up Slovakian Jews and she was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. She was young and beautiful and soon slated to become a sex slave.

At the end of WWII, Russia rounded up people they feared had collaborated or spied for the Nazis and sent them to Siberia. Cilka had 'slept with the enemy' and knew several languages. Deemed an enemy of the state, she was sent to a prisoner camp near the Arctic Circle where mistreated prisoners mined coal by hand.

In Cilka's Journey, Morris recreates life in the Gulag interspersed with flashbacks revealing Celia's life before and during WWII. The book is filled with memorable characters, women who have lost everything and yet strive for a sense of order, community, and even beauty. They bond over the hope represented by a baby and forgive each other's frailties.

"History never gives up its secrets easily," Morris writes, but Cilka's story needed to be told. It is the story of a girl cast into the unimaginable, not once but twice in her young life. And it is the story of courage, the pragmatism needed to survive, the shame of survivor's guilt, and the empathy that spurs personal sacrifices to help another.

Lale never forgot Cilka. Thanks to Morris, neither will we.

I received an ARC through Bookish First in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Cilka's Journey
by Heather Morris
St. Martin's Press
$27.99 hardcover
Publication Date: Oct 01 2019
ISBN: 9781250265708

Kopp Sisters On the March by Amy Stewart

As a 2019 member of the Kopp Sisters Literary Society, I received an advanced copy of the fifth Kopp Sisters novel by Amy Stewart, Kopp Sisters on the March.

It came with lots of swag!

Stewart was unable to discover stories about the Kopp sisters during 1917 and 1918 so she let her imagination fill in the blanks. She decided to intertwine the National Service Schools into their story. She also brought in Beulah Binford, a notorious figure who had crossed paths with vaudeville manager Freeman Bernstein, who appears in Miss Kopp's Midnight Confessions.

Stewart realized the storylines were all about reinvention. Constance has lost her position as deputy and jail matron. Norma desperately wants to insert pigeons into WWI war communications. The women who join the National Service Schools hoped to find a life with purpose and meaning. And Beulah wanted to put her sordid past behind her.

This book in the series felt different than the previous ones because Constance's story is not really the one that grabs readers attention, but Beulah's. Constance is continuing to learn her strengths and at the end of the book has determined to present herself for a war-time position. But it is Beulah's slowly revealed back story that impels readers.

Beulah Binford

Once again, Stewart uses historical fiction to present women's ongoing concerns: double standards, child sexual abuse, substance abuse, poverty, abandonment, motherhood, the vilification of female sexuality.

These women prove they have the strength, will, intelligence, and self-belief to achieve their dreams.

I can't wait for book six, which will take place during WWI!

I received a free ARC in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Learn more about the National Service Schools
https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/satin-khaki-women-join-military-preparedness-movement-1916

Read my review of the first Constance Kopp book, Girl Waits With Gun
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2019/03/girl-waits-with-gun-by-amy-stewart.html
Read my reviews of the second, third, and fourth Miss Kopp books
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2019/05/catching-up-with-miss-kopp.html

Kopp Sisters on the March
by Amy Steward
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Hardcover: $26.00; ebook $14.99
ISBN-13/EAN: 9781328736529
ISBN-10: 1328736520
Publication Date: 09/17/2019

This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger

Set during the summer of 1932, This Tender Land is a story that embraces tragedy and cruelty, kindness and love, murder and salvation. Most of all, it is about hope. Hope that we can find home, hope that we will find love, hope that life offers more than terror and injustice and cruelty. Hope that we can forgive and be forgiven.

This mythic story is a combination of Huckleberry Finn for its river journey and episodic adventures, with characters and events encountered from The Odyssey, and the darkness of The Night of the Hunter with children under threat fleeing downriver. And it recalls to mind the Book of Job as Odie grapples with the nature of God.

In 1932 Minnesota, orphaned brothers Albert and Odie are sent by their aunt to a Native American school, where she believes they are being well taken care of. The Brickmans run the school, siphoning off funds for themselves and allowing cruelty and abuse to reign. The boys befriend the mute Native American boy Mose. Albert and Mose are hard workers, but Odie rebels and is often punished. They have a friend in the teacher Voght, and the kind, widowed music teacher who offers to take the boys into her home to help run her farm. But a tornado takes her life, leaving her daughter Emmy in the hands of the cruel school headmistress. 

The 'tornado god' wrecks more disaster in Odie's life, leading to an accidental death. The children together flee down the Mississippi River in a canoe, pursued by the headmistress of the school and the police who believes the girl Emmy was kidnapped. 

William Kent Krueger writes, "I love this book every bit as much as I loved Ordinary Grace," and that offering this book he is "offering his heart." I, too, loved it every bit as Ordinary Grace, if not more.

It's a big 400-page book, engrossing and beautiful and heartbreaking. There is a lot of 'God talk' between Odie and the people he met who help him understand the timeless problem of why God allows evil in this world. 

I was given access to a free egalley by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Read my review of Ordinary Grace here.

This Tender Land 

by William Kent Krueger

Atria Books 

Publication September 3, 2019

hardcover $27.99

ISBN13: 9781476749297

Out of Darkness, Shining Light by Petina Gappah

"This is how we carried out of Africa the poor broken body of Bwana Duadi, the Doctor, David Livingstone, so that he could be borne across the sear and buried in his own land."~ from Out of Darkness, Shining Light (Being a Faithful Account of the Final Years and Earthly Days of Doctor David Livingstone and His Last Journey form the interior to the Coast of Africa, as Narrated by His African Companions, in Three Volumes) by Petina Gappah

Truth is often stranger than fiction, for who would imagine that the body of Doctor David Livingstone would be carried 1000 miles across Africa, under threat of dangers including kidnapping into slavery, so he could be shipped back to England and rest in his native land? It seems the stuff of legend. But it happened in 1873. Petina Gappah spent ten years researching this journey, then imagining the forgotten people whose dedication to the Doctor spurred their journey.

I had hoped for a great adventure story and found a journey that vividly recreates late 19th c Africa with its clash of cultures, religions, and power. It is filled with unforgettable characters, culminates in an explosive late revelation, and brings to light the impact of colonization.

The Doctor's missionary zeal abated while his anti-slavery zeal and respect for the Africans grew. He became obsessed with discovering the source of the Nile, believing its discovery would bring him the status and power to advance his ideals. When Stanley found the missing Livingstone he was already ill but would not return to civilization. The mixed group he had gathered, Africans, Muslims, manumitted slaves, and mission-trained Christian blacks, were left with the responsibility for his remains. They buried his heart and organs, dried his body, and proceeded to walk 279 days to Zanzibar.

Gappah tells the story in two voices. The appealing Halima was documented as Livingstone's cook, bought from slavery and freed by him. Halina's mother was a concubine in the house of a servant of the Sultan. Halima was a bondswoman passed from man to man. She dreams of the house Livingstone promised her. Then there is Jacob Wainwright, bought from slavery and sent to the mission school, a devote Christian who quotes The Pilgrim's Progress. Jacob's tale is stilted in language and filled with religious concerns, he is dislikeable and arrogant. He struggles with his passions and questions of faith. And yet, this faithful, educated, ambitious man's hopes are dashed because of his color and ethnicity.

The journey is rife with conflict and even death as the men vie for power and control and importance--and women. They face enemies and famine. They see hopeless villages devoid of their youth by the slavers. And everywhere, dry bones tied to trees, kidnapped Africans left by the slavers to die. Instead of welcome and assistance, the Europeans confiscate essentials.

"...this was no longer just the last journey of the Doctor, but our journey too. I was no longer just about the Doctor, about the wrongs and rights of bearing him home, or burying him here or buying him there, but about all that we had endured. It was about our fallen comrades." ~from Out of Darkness, Shining Light by Petina Gappah

How did this one man, this Doctor Livingstone, manage to inspire such loyalty? He was beloved because of his acceptance and respect for those he met, his understanding of human nature, his commitment to ending slavery--liberal Christian values out-of-sync with his time.

"But out of that great and troubling darkness came shining light. Our sacrifice burnished the glory of his life." ~from Out of Darkness, Shining Light by Petina Gappah

I was given access to a free egalley by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Out of Darkness, Shining Light
by Petina Gappah
Scribner
Publication: September 10, 2019
$27 hardcover
ISBN13: 9781982110338

The Doll Factory by Elizabeth Mcneal

The Crystal Palace was built to house the first International trade fair. Championed by Prince Albert, the exhibition hall was a showcase of the Industrial Age's newest inventions. The art displays impacted Victorian taste and inspired an interest in Japanese and Moorish art. Objects included the rare, like the Kooh-N-Nor diamond, and the commonplace, like three Kentucky-made bed quilts. Then there were the curiosities of which the Victorians were so enamored. Fourteen taxidermists had displays like stuffed kittens sitting at a table having tea.

The Crystal Palace is at the center of Elizabeth Macneal's novel The Doll Factory.

It is Dickensian in its sweep of characters.

There are the enterprising street urchins Albie and his sister, children who take up any work to provide for themselves--including prostitution and providing dead animals to the taxidermist Silas Reed.

Silas, damaged, unloved and unloveable, is one of the most interesting and chilling villains, more complicated than Bill Sykes and less self-aware than Uriah Heap. Silas is most drawn to curiosities, things both grotesque and lovely.

Silas is fixated on the girl Iris, whose collar bone was broken at birth, leaving her with a marred beauty.

Iris works painting porcelain doll faces with her sister Rose. Iris longs to escape the drudgery of her work, secretly painting with dreams of being an artist. Rose's gorgeous beauty was ruined by smallpox, leaving her bitter. Albie earns a bit by sewing simple skirts for the dolls.

And into this mix we have Louis Frost, a bohemian artist in the new renegade school of art called the Pre-Raphelite Brotherhood.

Louis needs a model for his painting. Iris longs to escape the drudgery of doll faces, secretly painting with dreams of being an artist. A pact is made: Iris will model for Louis and he will teach her to paint.

Iris blossoms under Louis's tutelage. But a jealous Silas fantasizes she really loves him. We are taken into a horrifying descent into Silas's sick world, with a Gothic plot twist, and a climactic ending.

I loved this journey! As a devotee of Victorian Age literature and art, and for the page-turning thriller ending, it was perfect.

I was given access to a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Doll Factory
by Elizabeth Mcneal
Atria Books
Publication August 13, 2019
$27 hardcover
ISBN13: 9781982106768

ISBN

The Women of the Copper Country by Mary Doria Russell

Few people outside of Michigan know anything about our Upper Penninsula (UP). As a matter of fact, a recent Mt. Dew ad featuring a map of America drew Michigander's ire when the UP was colored to be part of Wisconsin!

The UP has its own peninsula jutting into the deep inland ocean of Lake Superior, the Kewanee Penninsula. And a short distance from the top of that arm is Calumet, Michigan. Today it is a village of about 800 people. But in the late 19th c when the UP was a center of copper mining there were 40,000 souls there.

The copper was mined for 120 years. It was break-backing, dangerous work. Waves of immigrants found their way to Michigan's lumber and mining industries. The UP was particularly attractive to immigrants from Finland but drew from across Europe. These unskilled laborers were put to use with a sledgehammer and shovel, and cheaper than mules, used to push the loaded cars.

Mary Doria Russell's new novel The Women of the Cooper Country recreates Calumet in 1913 in rich detail, drawing on actual people and events.

Women and children of Calumet, MI

Called the Paris of the North, Calumet had grown into a modern town, built by the wealth from the Calumet & Hecla copper mine. But profit-driven capitalism meant management rejected workers demands for a shorter workday, a living wage, and safe work conditions. A new drill allowed a miner to work alone instead of in pairs. It was cost-saving but put the men at higher risk.

Miner with a single-man drill, cost savings that came
with increased danger to the miners.

The workers debated unionizing. An unusual labor leader arose, Annie Clements, a miner's wife born in Calumet to Slovakian immigrants. She had seen too many families with maimed men and boys, too many funerals.

What is the price of copper? It was men's limbs and lives. It was men too tired to live, self-medicating with drink. It was widows and orphaned children. If the men would not organize, the women would lead the way.

Journalists made Annie the Joan of Arc of America.

Annie

Annie is helped by Eva, who over the nine months of the strike grows from a dreamy girl to a woman. Nationally known union organizers come to help, including 'the miner's angel' Mother Jones and the Socialist labor organizer Ella Bloor.

The mine is under the management of John McNaughton, and Russell's portrait of him as a cold-hearted capitalist fixated on the bottom line is chilling. McNaughton is a xenophobe whose anti-immigrant slant hardens his heart even more. In his view, Europe is gleefully exporting its 'wretched refuse' to America, and Washington has done nothing to stop the continual labor strikes across the nation. It won't happen here, he vows.

The novel had a slow start for me but picked up later. At times, I felt some distance from the events. A critical scene is off-screen when the emotional impact would have been greater through Annie's eyes. The story builds to a horrendous tragedy, describing a real event, with great emotional impact.

The changing role of women and their broadening choices is shown through the characters.  And there is romance, from infatuation and unhappy marriages to illicit affairs and true love.

It was interesting to learn more about this slice of Michigan history and the history of unionizing in Michigan.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Women of the Copper Country
by Mary Doria Russell
Atria Books
Pub Date 06 Aug 2019
ISBN 9781982109585
PRICE $27.00 (USD)

The Quincy Mine 

We Are All Good People Here by Susan Rebecca White

The members of SMASH believed it was better to die in honor than to live as their parents did..."~from We Are All Good People Here by Susan Rebecca While

How do we change society? Can we change society? Who are the 'good people' and can 'good people' do bad things for the right reason and still be 'good'? Can people really change?

I was interested in the questions posed by the novel.

The story begins in the early 1960s when two girls meet in a private women's college in the South and become best friends. Their rising awareness of social racism makes them question the values of their society. Decisions are made that take them in different directions. One girl works within the system while accepting the social expectations for a rising female lawyer. The other girl follows a charismatic radical into ever more violent protests and when she has lost everything she seeks out her old friend to help her return to society.

The novel is filled with historical detail and events. Medgar Evans and Fannie Lou Hamer, Bob Dylan and Dr. Strangelove, the murders of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman, "Hey! Hey! LBJ how many kids did you kill today" are mentioned.

It was very hard to follow Eve into the very dark place she ends up in. I nearly set the book aside as her life became quite disturbing. But I did pick it back up.

Babe, you opted out of a normal life a long time ago.~ from We Are All Good People Here by Susan Rebecca White

Can we keep our pasts a secret? Can we completely change? In the end, Eve became the very person she had sought to avoid becoming. And yet--she still needed a man to guide her. Daniella may have 'sold out' and but she gives it up for important work that better fits her values.

I spent many years not thinking about the 1960s. The cultural and political changes that were the background of my teen years were too depressing to remember.

In 1963 when President Kennedy was assassinated I was in Sixth Grade. By the time I graduated from high school in 1970 I had seen the murders of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the Viet Nam body count on the daily news, and the rise of the anti-war movement and hippie counter culture. Music went from I Want To Hold Your Hand to Sympathy for the Devil. The elegant full-skirted dresses became sheaths became Mod became Psychedelic became bare feet, bell bottom jeans, and T-shirts. Green Beret pins became iron crosses became Give Earth a Chance pinback buttons. The 1967 Detroit Riots happened a few miles down the road.

I was just trying to grow up, figuring out who I was, and the whole world was telling me to look elsewhere because things of real importance were going on. I resented that. I wanted to be allowed to just deal with my own stuff. Instead, I joined the Political Action Club and read the Detroit Free Press, Newsweek and Time instead of Seventeen.

But I never strayed from my core values. I knew who I was and what I wanted for myself. I felt that the character Eve lacked that internal compass.

Warren St. Clair was a charismatic and idealistic man who is also misogynistic and self-absorbed. Eve knows his reputation, but can't resist him, following him from place to place. When Warren escalates to violence against the system, Eve follows him underground.

Meanwhile, Daniella marries a 'reformed' Republican, a good man who believes that social change happens slowly. Daniella pushes the envelope as a lawyer, working twice as hard to break into the old-boy network.

Justice does not simply show up on it own, gliding in on the wings of platitudes and the promise of prayers. ~from We Are All Good People Here by Susan Rebecca Smith

In mid-age, both women shift, the radical Eva embracing safety and surety and marriage that brings prosperity, and the widowed conformist Daniella chucking it all for non-profit work helping men on death row.

The book could have ended here, but instead, we see how the women's decisions impact the next generation.

Eve and Danilla each have a daughter. Eve's daughter Anna has everything and more, dressing in Laura Ashley clothing and driving a new car. Daniella is financially well off, too, but she insists on a lifestyle in keeping with her values. Used clothing, no conspicuous consumption.

Daniella works and Eve is a housewife, so Daniella leaves her daughter Sarah with 'Aunt Eve' under the care of the maid. Sarah is envious of Anna's life and she worries that her mom is economically insecure.

Eve has a secret that is exposed. When Anna has learned the truth about her mother, it creates a rift.

There is an interesting theme on religion through the novel that is not central to the plot but takes enough space to show the author's concern.

Early in the novel Eve and Warren St. Clair and have a discussion about the value of the church in society. Warren believes the cathedral is a waste of space better used for affordable housing. Eve thinks there is nothing more useful than a church. Warren mentions the German Lutheran Church was complicit with the Nazis, and Eve retorts, not Bonhoeffer's church. Sure, Warren replies. But Bonhoeffer was executed by the state which proves the church either is complicit or martyrs.

Near the end of the novel Daniella and her daughter Sarah have a talk about religion. Eve has joined a right-wing evangelical church led by a charismatic preacher--still drawn to those charismatic men.

Sarah asks Daniella, what if one must hit 'rock bottom' to be saved? Daniella believes in the social gospel, God's will for "the reconciliation of all people" as opposed to God daming some and saving others.

But Sarah understands that her Aunt Eve is searching for stability and family. Daniella only sees that Eve jumps from one "dogma" to another.

Again, a juxtaposition between two choices arises. Is changing the world better than saving souls? Do we need to become completely powerlessness before we can accept God? Is doing justice and showing mercy the mark of walking humbly with one's God?

The book is summed up in one sentence:

We are all good people here, all trying to muddle through this the best we can. ~from We Are All Good People Here by Susan Rebecca White

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

We Are All Good People Here
by Susan Rebecca White
Atria Books
Pub Date 06 Aug 2019 
ISBN 9781451608915
PRICE $27.00 (USD)