American Copper by Shann Ray

I won a copy of American Copper by Shann Ray from The Quivering Pen blog by David Abrams. When his review of the book posted, extolling the beauty of Ray's language, I set it on the To Be Read Next pile. Abrams wrote, "If I said just one book can, however briefly, change the way you look at both the natural world and human nature--if I said all that, you'd want to read this book, wouldn't you?"

American Copper is a story of racism and the evil in men, and it is a love story.

In the first decades of the 20th c, automobiles are seen in the Butte, Montana streets but rodeo competitions still run the circuit. Native Americans and Chinese are considered sub-human, and gangs are free to deal out punishments to those who step out of line. Copper has made immigrant Baron Josef Lowry not only rich but the most powerful man around, his arm reaching to Washington, D.C.  He is obsessed with wealth and controls everyone in his life, especially his son and daughter. After losing his wife he commands his children to never marry; he needs them he says, and he intends to pass his copper mines and wealth to their care.

His daughter Evelynne is given everything she physically needs. Her father teaches her about the natural world and gathers her poetry for publication back east. After her brother's death, Evelynne's grief turns her into a recluse. Reaching womanhood, Eve longs to escape her ivory tower and searches for a man strong enough, or audacious enough, to stand up to her father and take her away.

The evil that inhabits men, and the capacity for love is explored in eloquent prose.

I am glad to have read this book.

The book cover blurbs include the marvelous Andra Barrett, whose historical short stories in Ship Fever and Servants of the Map I adore, wrote, "This grave, unusual novel unfolds with a beautiful evenhandedness, balancing the outer world and inner life, Cheyenne and white experiences of early 20th-century Montana.  Ray's feel for the heart and soul of Montana and its people--all its people--graces every page."

And Dave Eggers, author of the memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and  A Hologram for a King, called the book "Lyrical, prophetic, brutal, yet ultimately hopeful."

Others compared this first novel's writing to Cormac McCarthy's Cities of the Plains.

American Copper
Shann Ray
Unbridled Press
ISBN: 978-1-60953-121-8

1957: Men in Red

The December 1957 Good Housekeeping magazine featured fashions for men with a Christmas flare--all in bright red!

 Matching fashions for father and son.

 

Brothers love red

  My husband says the caption below is, "It was this big!" The fish, that is.

 One boy, five men. Who is that train set up for?

 Dad also needed a classic coat that wouldn't preclude money left for gifts.

 Women and men alike wanted those wool plaid shirts. Red, I am sure.

A Pink and Blue Christmas Circa 1957

The December 1957 Good Housekeeping magazine is full of Mamie Pink--and light blues. So perhaps Pantone's colors of the year for 2016, Serenity blue and Rose Quatz pink, represent a desire to return to the Eisenhower years! Consider their two page spread, "Our Christmas Table" featuring pink walls and curtains, and a pink table cloth and chair seat covers!

"We believe that a Christmas table is as important a part of the holiday season as the tree or the presents or the food. So each year we create a table setting to serve as a dramatic background for your loveliest silver, china, and glass. This year we chose a pink theme. For the cloth, we used two length of pink felt (72 inches wide), seamed together in the center and cut into a circle. We cut out green leaves and berries of green and red felt, glued them in a border around the skirt, and wreathed each plate with them. Then we made pink-felt seas covers for the chairs and tied the pale-green napkins as though they were gifts. A wreath of real holly and a tall mound of little gifts in an epergne form the center piece. On the sideboard, as a bright finishing touch, we used real fruit, colorfully wrapped."

Pink and blue show up in the ads.

Note the pink tree on the upper left of the ad, the pink bathroom on the lower left, and the pink drapes and couch on the lower right.

Pink dresses for little girls abound in the fashion ads and in product ads. Photo at right: (Left dress) :Daisies, velvet, and lace deck the pinafore that covers a sweet pink party dress of nylon; about $9, Youngland; (Right dress) Pleasantly Victorian, with its bell sleeves and lace ruffles, of washable bates cotton satin, also in blue; about $9, Sunny Lee. At Best & Co, New York." 

Photo below: (Left dress) "Blooming with bright flowers, this dress is festooned with a frill of lace, beading, and a black-velvet tie; of Pacific Mills polished cotton, also in champagne and blue, about $5, Tiny Town, New York. (Right Dress) A perfect bon-bon of a dress, attractively tucked at front and henline, is decked with dyed-to-match lace and has an attached organdy petticoat. Of Stevens wrinkle-resistant cotton. Also in lavender, about $8, Cinderella."

Photo below: "Girls and dolls are pretty little party-goers in matching dresses with gay side sashes in a contrasting color. Simplicity Pattern 2292. We used pink cotton organdy by William Lind." 

Photo below: Left dress: "An enchanting concoction of crisp pink, trimmed with creamy lace, has a gathered skirt and scoop neckline. Simplicity Pattern 2323. We used washable "Dacron" and silk by Mallinson." Right dress: "Richly garlanded with yards of dainty lace, this sentimental little dress has a Peter Pan collar, push-up sleeves, and a Bouffant skirt. Simplicity pattern 2322. We used pink cotton organdy by William Lind."

A lone blue dress!

A brighter pink dress, and blue, nearly turquoise in the table and chairs.

This pink kitchen is not as bright a pink, but it is paired with blue.

A blue vacuum.

This vacuum color is more turquoise. 

Bing Cosby has a pink and blue kitchen. Somehow I doubt he really spent any time in it.

Pink and blue, with brown and white, predominates this vintage fabric.

Mamie Eisenhower's inaugural ball gown, 1953, featured 2,000 rhinestones.

Breaker Boys to Break Your Heart: Coal River by Ellen Marie Wiseman

Author Ellen Marie Wiseman knew she had a story that needed to be told. Her new novel Coal River takes readers on a journey back a hundred years ago, revealing the brutal life of children who worked in the coal mines. It was before worker's rights, unionization, and the establishment of the Department of Labor in 1913. Read Coal River and see if your heart doesn't break over the life of the Breaker Boys.

For ten or twelve hours a day these lads sat on a wood plank over conveyor belts, With bare hands they reached down to pick the slate and impurities out from the passing coal. The coal was washed, creating sulphuric acid which burned their flesh. The boys' fingers bled, their backs ached, they breathed in the coal dust. And too often the children tired and caught body parts in the belt and lost a hand or an arm, a foot or a leg. Or maybe they fell in and were crushed.

Breaker Boys at work

The story is about Emma who at age nineteen is an orphan. She has come to Coal River to live with her maternal aunt and family. Her uncle works at the coal mine. The mine is a looming presence that is inescapable: mountains of slag, pervasive coal dust, the burning culm banks lighting the night. The workers' houses, company owned, are filled with impoverished and distraught families with children missing body parts. The women can't find enough money to feed the family. And when the breadwinner is killed in the mines the family loses their home.

Emma has citified, modern ideas and is used to nonconformity and independence; her parents worked in theater. She also has bad memories of her only other visit to Coal River, for her younger brother Albert drowned in the river after a run-in with the local kids. She disdains her relations' old fashioned values based on fitting in and their wealth made on the backs and blood of the workers.

Emma is moved by the injustice she sees and becomes a (figurative and literal) underground activist, culminating in entering the mines as a breaker boy to photograph the illegal conditions and underage workers. She sends the photos to the New York Times. She becomes involved with a pro-union mine worker and is courted by the local sheriff--who is in the mine owner's pocket but hankers for Emma's love. The climax involves a mine accident, a murder, and Emma's incarceration.

Most readers will be riveted by Emma's story and the descriptions of life in a coal mine before government oversight and unionization. I commend the author's bringing the breaker boys to attention. Readers learn about how the mine owners controlled every aspect of the workers lives, holding them in near slaver. The writing is competent, especially the visual descriptions.

Emma will appeal to modern readers who like their heroine feisty, headstrong, and fearless. Like most contemporary historical fiction, she is not a woman of her time (1912). But she does share traits with muckrackers like Ida Tarbell and Nelly Bly (Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman). Lewis B. Hines makes an appearance in the story. I wish he'd had a bigger role. Hine's photographs of working conditions for children spurred national interest and the establishment of laws to protect children. His work clearly informs the character of Emma.

Lewis Hines photograph of boy mine workers

The portrayal of the mine owner and bosses, and the good ole boys in the owner's pocket, was one sided: totally evil, despicable, and immoral. They take the law into their own hands, dealing out 'justice' that supports profits and the power structure. Emma's uncle is not only mean, a miser, abusive, and a drunk, he also goes after young girls. (Remarkably, the girl LIKES him. Must be his power.) The resolution was forced and too clever. Talk about deus ex machina. I was disappointed. But romantics will love it.

Read about the Breaker Boys and other children mine workers discussed in the novel, and see photographs by Lewis W. Hines, at the Department of Labor website Little Miners here.

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

Coal River
Ellen Marie Wiseman
Kensington Books
Publication Date: November 24, 2015
$15 paperback
ISBN:9781617734472

Winter with the Fairies

Lady Winter

Lady Winter clothed in ermine
On the North Wind gallops in,
Over crystal bridges bright,
Over carpets snowy white.

See the North Wind, snorting, prancing,
Scare the leaves that, romping, dancing,
Cease their merriment and play
And hurrying, scurrying, run away.

Winter Sports

The children's coats are downy white,
And ruddy winter berries bright
Are tam-o-shanters warm and red
Upon each little golden head.

On sleds of holly leaves they coast,
Of silver skates they proudly boast
And snowball fights with tiny forts--
These are their jolly winter sports.

Mother Earth's Lullaby

Sleepy little flowers, cuddle down to rest,
Soft and warm and loving, close to Mother's breast,
Drowsy little flowers, snuggle close to me,
Whispering Winds, come hither and croon your melody.

Sleep, my little children, through-out the long cold night,
You shall be tucked under blankets snowy white,
Dream, my little children, in slumbers soft and deep,
Whispering Winds, come hither, and croon my babes to sleep.

*****

I hopes you enjoyed a year with the fairies!

The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle by  Michael Coren is a good introduction to the man behind Sherlock Holmes. It is a brief biography that is cogent, succinct, accessible, and complete.

The preface states this is not a literary biography, but he does an admirable job covering Doyle's literary achievements from conception to public response. We learn about the men who inspired his characters and how he came to write The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Doyle's life is more adventurous and passionate than one would have supposed. He was a vital man who enjoyed challenging sports. Bored with his medical studies he signed up on a whaling expedition to the Arctic before he'd completed his degree. He had trouble establishing his medical career and tried his hand at writing stories. He discovered a facility in story-telling that was salable. Coren notes Doyle's strengths and weaknesses as an author.

Doyle was a champion of causes. Although a conservative, some of his causes were remarkably forward thinking such as his work toward fair divorce laws for women. He himself never considered divorcing his own wife when he fell in love with another woman; Doyle gave his ailing wife constant and loyal support, marrying the woman he loved after her death. Raised Catholic he later rejected religion but became deeply interested in spiritualism.

It is interesting to learn that in his later life he himself was involved with solving several crime cases.

The biography is a nice introduction.

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

Endeavor Press is the U.K.'s largest digital publisher.

The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
by Michael Coren
Endeavor Press
Publication Date October 9, 2015
Ebook
ISBN: 9780747526681

Read my blog post on The Immortal Sherlock Holmes here.

Thanksgiving with the Fairies

The Brownies' Thanksgiving Turkey

"Gobble, gobble," sang the turkey

Just before Thanksgiving Day,

Never did that turkey gobbler

Sing another gobbing lay.

"Goggle-Gobble, " sand the Brownies

As they viewed their vast repast

"This we know, that best they gobble

Who can gobble-gobble last."

The Chieftain's Song of Thanks

Ye rulers of the Year,
who do my tribe befriend,
To you, most plenteous givers,
my messengers I send.
Accept their songs of thanks,
their caroling of praise,
For summer and its aftermath,
the Indian summer days.

Our autumn crops are garnered,
our Indian corn is yellow,
Beneath the harvest moon
our harvest fruits are mellow;
With grains in plenty seasoning
in autumn's purple haze,
We have no dread foreboding
of winter's fearful days.

Jack Frost

Elfin pictures on the pane
Mean Jack Frost has come again;
Lace and fens and vines and flowers,
Snow-capped peaks and fairy bowers,

Castles gleaming opalescent,
Rivers flowing iridescent;
Jewels set in filigree,
All in crystal fantasy.

from A Year With the Fairies
Anna M. Scott
1924