Nuclear Reactor Accident Inspires Novel

The Longest Night by Andria Williams is inspired by the only American fatal nuclear accident that occurred in 1961.

Young army wife Nat has come to Idaho Springs when her husband Paul is assigned to a nuclear reactor there. With two young children and no support system in place Nat struggles to adjust. Paul realizes that his boss is hiding problems in the plant and when he clashes with his superior he is sent to the Arctic for a six month deployment. Left on her own, a pregnant Nat finds an unlikely friendship and support from a local man. Vicious rumors isolate her from the other wives and threaten her marriage as Paul wonders if he can trust his wife.

The accident in the novel is based an the actual accident which took the lives of three men. Read about the SL-1 reactor and the accident at http://www4vip.inl.gov/publications/d/proving-the-principle/chapter_15.pdf. An Army video illustrates in detail what happened on youtube here.

We recognize in Nat the 60s housewife yearning for more than children and kitchen. I could relate to Nat. Military wives and itinerant pastor wives face some of the same problems: lack of control over when one moves, where one moves, and housing; the need to find friends and support in new communities; husbands with stressful jobs and limited pay. Although the army families had some socializing there was not a lot of mutual support. She is a spirited but idealistic young woman.

I found Nat better drawn than Paul whose actions sometimes baffled me. Nat contends he was not violent by nature, but he hits his boss several times, participates in a near fatal road rage accident, and judges his wife without hearing her story. I actually wondered why she didn't run off with the loving and sensitive local guy.

I was interested to learn about early nuclear reactors and how they worked. The accident was gruesome; the cover-up disturbing.

Readers will find the novel an interesting study of a marriage and informative about early nuclear power.

I requested the book based on this review by David Abrams, author of Fobbit, whose blog I read:
"It's hard to believe The Longest Night is Andria William's debut novel. Her command of language, character, and plot--the three essential ingredients for a riveting read--is extraordinary. This is the book I will be pressing into my friend's hands this year when they ask me what they should be reading."

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

The Longest Night
Andria Williams
Random House
Publication January 12, 2016
$27.00 hard cover
ISBN:9780812997743

Mini Reviews, From Mad to Mature

Three more mini-reviews!

"Dine like Draper and Drink like Sterling," reads the back cover of The Unofficial Mad Men Cookbook, Inside the Kitchen, Bars and Restaurants of Mad Men, by Gelman and Zheutlin and published by SmartPop. The 70 recipes are inspired by specific Mad Men episodes and offer a culinary trip to the 1960s. Recipes were culled from vintage cookbooks and magazines and were kitchen tested. Recipes include cocktails, appetizers, salads, main courses, desert and sweets.

My childhood family gatherings always featured Whiskey Sours. One year I had a cold and was given a sip; it was supposed to help. It was the last Whiskey Sour I ever drank, but here is the recipe from the book (Season 4. Episode 10):

Whiskey Sour from Playboy Host & Bar Book by Thomas Mario
2 ounces blended whiskey
3/4 ounce lemon juice
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 lemon slice
1 maraschino cheery (optional)
1. Add whiskey, lemon juice, and sugar to ice in a cocktail shaker and shake well.
1. Strain into prechilled glass. Garnish with lemon slice and cherry, if desired.

Mom made a Wedge Salad. (As a kid I never ate her salads; I didn't like her dressing made with half catsup and half Miracle Whip, or the Iceberg lettuce.) The Palm's Wedge Salad (Season 3, Episode 2) is almost like Mom's:

Wedge Salad
2 Iceberg lettuce hearts, quartered and cored
1 large ripe Beefsteak tomato, sliced
Crumbled bacon to taste (added to original recipe per Roger's preference)
3/4-1 cup Blue Cheese Dressing
1. Place w iceberg wedges on each of 4 chilled salad plates
1. Top with bacon, place slices of tomato alongside. Serve with dressing on the side.

*****

Menswear Dog: The New Classics by David Fung & Yena Kim and published by Artisan, NY, was gifted me because the model is a Shiba Inu.

The amazing photographs are such fun, especially for Shiba lovers. The elements of a four season wardrobe are presented. But the book also imparts useful fashion advice, including fit, step-by-step pictures on the four-in-hand tie knot, decoding clothing care labels, stain removal, packing clothing, and shoe care.

Our best-shod Shiba Inu Kamikaze

*****

I had time to read a book on my real, not virtual, book shelf and picked up Ethan Canin's Carry me Across the Water, a 2001 book from Random House.

August Kleinman has based his life on his mother's advise to "take no one's advice." Together August and his mother escaped Nazi Germany, leaving behind his in-denial father, and forged a new life in Brooklyn. August falls in love, serves in the Pacific theater during WWII, and takes the risk to start his own brewery and makes millions. Now in old age August takes stock of his choices, plans to give away the burden of wealth, and hopes to amend for his action the war, involving a return to Japan.

Memory, violence, father and son relations, expiation, art, and faith are all touched on in this slender volume about one man's life that illuminates the human experience.

Read the first chapter at the New York Times here.

He was in the doorway between boyhood and manhood, and any piece of evidence that indicated his fearlessness came upon him like a sudden break in the mist that enveloped his trajectory. He caught a glimpse of himself as a man. Not the halting, indolent creature he was now but a person of action: unflinching, dauntless, a breaker of the rules that otherwise would not have afforded much to a ruby-faced, ill-proportioned boy like himself.

The Fiona Quilt Block by Carolyn Perry Goins

Quilters have a saying, "The one who dies with the most fabric wins." Quilters also make the same New Years resolution every January 1: "I will use up my fabric stash." (Only because we need to justify buying MORE fabric over the coming year!"

Carolyn Perry Goins knew that quilters needed patterns to showed off the amazing fabrics they have collected but was simple and quick to make. A pattern that could look funky or sophisticated, modern or traditional. So she invented a new quilt block! Used with various settings, sashings, value contrast, and thoughtful layout, this block will suit everyone's style. And she offers the block in 4", 6' 8", 10" and 12" !

Goins book The Fiona Quilt Block  offers fourteen projects, each with a full color photo of the block and the completed quilt, fabric needs, and illustrated step-by-step instructions. A photo gallery of quilts using the block and resources are included.

I really liked the project Woven Rust! It inspired me to use pink, white and black fabrics I bought two summers ago.

Woven Rust from The Fiona Quilt Block

I made 6" blocks all had the same fabric in the center, but laying my quilt out I decided to make more blocks with different fabrics in the center.

Fiona blocks with same middle fabric

I don't do a lot of piecing. And I rarely make scrappy quilts. But I was having so much fun and liked what was happening that I made even more blocks for a lap quilt.

I finished the top with a solid pink border and a pieced border using all the fabrics in the quilt. The only consideration I made in laying the quilt out was to alternate horizontal and vertical blocks.

My husband liked how the same fabrics sometimes border each other in what he called a 'crazy quilt' style.

The blocks were super easy to make. I shared the book and my quilt with my weekly quilt group and it generated a lot of interest.

Visit the Schiffer Publications website to see inside the book:
http://www.schifferbooks.com/the-fiona-quilt-block-14-projects-from-sassy-to-classy-5884.html

I received a free book from Schiffer Publications in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Fiona Quilt Block: 14 Projects from Sassy to Classy
by Carolyn Perry Goins
Schiffer Publications
$19.99 soft cover
ISBN: 978-0-7643-4981-2

Carolyn Perry Goins has been quilting since the 1970s. Her company CPG Designs produces beginners quilt patterns and she has been featured in Quiltmaker's magazine series "100 Bocks by Today's Top Designers."

The Women Behind The Atomic Age

Radioactive! How Irene Curie &  Lise Meitner Revolutionized Science and Changed the World by Winifred Conkling

Irene Curie and Frederic Joliot discovered how to make artificial radioactivity, the modification of elements by altering their atomic structure. This lead to Lise Meitner's understanding of nuclear fission, revolutionizing science and making the atom bomb possible. They had hoped to benefit mankind, unleashing a cure for cancer or establishing a new energy source. But the first application was the atom bomb. They learned that pure research could not stay apolitical, and that once the genie is out of the bottle the power is up for grabs.

The women's stories are a study in contrast.

Irene was the daughter of Marie and Pierre Curie. Blunt, inattentive to social cues and conventions, and athletic she was brilliant but difficult. During WWI Irene volunteered with her mother running X-ray units at the front--while still earning three degrees. She married fellow researcher Frederic Joliot and together they discovered artificial radiation. The Curie-Joliots' research was groundbreaking but they didn't always understand what it meant. Others recognized the implications they had missed. Irene's fingers, like her mother's, were radiation damaged and her health was compromised by her work. Irene's anti-fascism and Frederic's communism made them pariahs after WWII and they were banned from international conferences.

Lize Meitner was of Austrian Jewish heritage but converted to Christianity. Her father taught her independent thinking and her mother music. Lise overcame many obstacles, from a ban on higher education for women to working gratis with Otto Hahn. She was ladylike, shy, and proper. During WWI she worked as a surgical nurse and at X-ray units at the front. Lize worked in a hygienic lab and as a professor and her health was not impacted by radiation. As an Austrian working in Germany, Lise thought she would be protected from Hitler's anti-Semite campaign but when Germany took over Austria she was classified as a German Jew. Her friends arranged a complex plan to get her out of Germany before she was arrested. The story is riveting. At nearly 60 years old Lise had lost everything, including her lab and work. But secretly she continued to help her German research partners and aided them in understanding they had split the atom! Sadly, knowledge of her help was later suppressed and she did not receive the recognition she deserved.

The book includes photographs, a Who's Who, a time line, glossary, illustrations, notes, bibliography, and resources for more information.

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

Radioactive!
Winifred Conkling
Algonquin Books
Publication Date: January 5, 2016
$17.95 hard cover
ISBN: 9781616204150

This is a Story About Love: My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

Recently I was at a local college production of Thorton Wilder's play Our Town. I have seen it many times. It always moves me to tears. During the intermission the lady seated next to me leaned over and remarked, "This is the play where nothing happens."

What is a life? We are born. We grow up. We fall in love. Or don't fall in love. Or no one falls in love with us. We may or may not have children. We likely will work, for pay or as part of our obligation to the family. We die. Same old, same old, generation after generation. There is nothing new under the sun.

I once read in a biography of Jane Austen that she had led a life in which nothing happened. I bristled. Jane's brothers went to sea during war! Her father died and the family lost their financial security, their home. Her sister's love died. Jane suffered a debilitating disease that caused her death. She was a published, female author in her lifetime.

Nothing happened. Same old, same old.

Every life has a story, and that story is immensely important to the person living it. The wonder is that a novelist can create a fictional character with an ordinary life, and strip away the prejudices that tell us nothing happened, and reveal something universal and informative about 'the human condition,' that teaches us how to better live.

My Name is Lucy Barton is a small book of 131 pages. Lucy addresses the reader, relating the story of her hospitalization when her estranged mother spent five days with her. Her mother talked about the people in the rural town where Lucy grew up, the failed marriages, those who found that wealth does not bring success in love and life. She would not talk about Lucy's childhood memories.

Lucy tells us about her childhood, impoverished in material things and in love, when she was isolated and rejected by the 'superior' children. She tells of her dysfunctional family, her escape, and her ignorance and innocence of the greater world, of her first love, her marriage, and her children.

Lucy loves easily anyone who has been kind and accepting--her Sixth grade teacher who teaches about Black Hawk, who Lucy also loves, the writing instructor at the workshop, her doctor, her neighbor Jeremy, even her distant mother. "I loved him," I loved her," she says.

Lucy is also 'ruthless,' ignoring what people think of her, living her life and doing what she needs to do. Her writing teacher advises Lucy not to protect anyone when writing. As Jeremy had told her, she had to be ruthless. This ruthlessness involves leaving her first husband, not accepting his inherited Nazi money, and alienating her beloved daughters. She knew she would never write another book if she stayed.

No one can understand another person fully, Lucy tells us. We must not judge. Even when Lucy's own mother cannot tell her daughter, "I love you," even when her father publicly humiliates her brother. We do not know what demons drive and bind people.

An author does not usually give us direct clues to the meaning of their work; it is hidden away, little things here and there which the reader puts together. Lucy's writing teacher tells her exactly what she is writing about: This is a story about love, she says, people who love imperfectly, "because we all love imperfectly."

You have only one story, Lucy had been told. And Lucy tells us about her life, how people think she came from nothing, which she knows is not true, and how she just lived her life, blindly, fighting to do what she needs to do.

"Strout animates the ordinary with an astonishing force."- The New Yorker

Other books by the author include Olivia Kitteridge, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, which I read a number of years ago.

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

My Name is Lucy Barton
Elizabeth Strout
Random House
Publication Date January 12, 2016
$26.00 hard cover
ISBN:9781400067695

2015 Review

In 2015 I read 118 books, according to my Goodreads list! I went a little crazy with all the NetGalley offerings. I now get most of the books I request. I also joined two book clubs and started a book club at the local library, too.

Reading
I read 47 literary books and short story collections, 21 biographies or memoirs, 15 nonfiction, 10 genre fiction, 10 quilt books, 6 classics, 6 books for young readers, and 3 poetry books.

I was part of my first blog tour (A Place We Knew Well by Susan Carol McCarthy) and had my first author interview (Jacopo della Quercia author of License to Quill).

I was thrilled when authors 'liked' my Goodreads review of their books or commented on my blog thanking me for my review. Nine reviews were chosen by the publisher to be featured on the book's NetGalley page. Two publishers reached out to offer any book I wanted from them. I have shared my quilt book reviews with my local guild newspaper.

In 2015 I did some themed reading: Shakespeare, frozen climes, animal stories, music, art, biographies, African American related, historical fiction, fiction about writers, and Michigan based novels.

Book reviews scheduled for the coming months include:

• My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Trout who wrote Olive Kitteridge
• Radioactive! by Winifred Conklin, about Irene Curie and Lise Meitner
• The Longest Night by Andria Wiliams, fiction based on a real nuclear reactor accident
• Lay Down Your Weary Tune by W. B. Belcher, fiction about a recluse folk singer
• The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson, a British travel book
• Nelly Dean: Wuthering Heights Revisited by Alison Case
• Fast Into the Night by Debbie Clarke Moderow, about the Iditarod
• A Doubter's Almanac by Ethan Canin, a powerful family drama
• All the Winters After by Sere Prince Halverson, an Alaskan romance
• When We Are No More: How Digital Memory is Shaping Our Future by Abbey Smith Rumsey
• Will's Words: How William Shakespeare Changed the Way you Talk by Jane Sutcliff
• Lit Up by David Denby which looks at how literature impacts the lives of 10th graders 
• The Early Poems of Ezra Pound
• Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave, a powerful novel about WWII
• The Books that Changed My Life: 100 Remarkable People Write About Books by Bethanne Patrick 
• The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith, a novel about a forged painting
• The Queen of the Heartbreak Trail about Harriet Smith Pullen, a family history

Quilting
I did accomplish a tidy amount of quilting, too.

My John Quincy Adams quilt is traveling in a show of Presidential Quilts arranged by Sue Reich, and will be in her January 2016 book Quilts Presidential and Patriotic, as will my quilt Remember the Ladies, a Redwork quilt of the First Ladies.

I made Gridlock, made with vintage political linens and handkerchiefs. It won Most Humorous ("humerous" according to the ribbon) at the CAMEO quilt guild show.

 

I made Pumpkin Pie from Bunny Hill and adapted a pattern for a  pumpkin vine  table topper.

I finished my Charles Dickens quilt and completed Barbara Brackman's Austen Family Album quilt top.

I advanced a bit on Love Entwined, Esther Aliu's remarkable pattern based on a antique coverlet. I am nearly done with the fourth appliqué border around the medallion center.

I collected twenty some Rows X Row patterns or kits and made a whole slew and completed two, a wall hanging and a table topper. I am machine quilting another Row X Row quilt.

I made two small Dragonfly wall hangings, a Hawaiian appliqué quilt block from Creating Hawaain Inspired Quilts, and took a hexagon workshop with Mary Clark. I made four little quilts with vintage linens, doilies, and embellishments inspired by Quilting with Doilies. Mary Kerr's Recycled Hexie Quilts sent me looking for vintage Flower Garden Quilts. I found some but haven't started a project. Yet.

AND... I have started putting together appliqué blocks for my long awaited Great Gatsby story book quilt, and I am hand quilting a small Tree of Life Medallion quilt started in 1995, and am gathering fabric for future quilts. I have to live forever to complete it all. Start praying, please!

Miscellaneous
I was thrilled when several of my articles were picked up by other bloggers and shared with a larger audience. It was obvious some publishers or authors shared my review of their book. Very cool!

• Retro Renovation shared about my choosing Wilson Art Betty laminate for our kitchen remodel. 
• My article on Operation Hanky was shared by embroidery guru Mary Corbett and became one of my all-time highest read posts. 
• Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi shared my review of her book And Still We Rise and it is on my top ten most read posts of all time.

Genealogy

• Someone out there has linked to my article about my husband's grandmother's time on the Shipwreck Coast of Michigan and pushed it to my top ten of the year.
• My Gochenour ancestor married into the Rhoades family and my post about the massacre of the Rhodes family was another top visited post.  
• I wrote about my grandfather Ramer's memories of childhood play and pranks and his job at Standard Steel as a teenage.
• I found new information about my Lancashire Greenwood ancestors who worked in the mills
• Grandpa Ramer's Aunt Carrie got a post about her recipes and quilts.
• And my grandfather Gochenour's building a gas/service station in the 1940s
• And my husband's Nelson ancestor's role in the Revolutionary War. 
• I shared WWII servicemen's letters and V-Mail from my in-law's friends and family

I shared from antique math books, vintage magazines, local visits, quilt shows, and art museums. And most amazing my post 1954 Sealtest Recipes stood as the No. 1 most read post for most of 2015. A lot of people wanted that Creamed Eggs in Bologna Cups recipe I suppose.

2016 Plans 

I am planning to participate in a Pickwick Papers read-a-long through the Behold the Stars blog.
I found A Year with Rilke and will read it daily this coming year.
A quilt blogger has suggested a quilt-a-long recreating an applique sampler quilt. If it goes, I'm in!

I already have NetGalley books on my shelf to be read:

• Marooned in the Arctic:The True Story of Ada Blackjack, the 'Female Robinson Cruosoe' by Peggy Caravantes
• Lit Up by Dennis Denby which considers how literature impacts students lives
• Chasing the North Star by Robert Morgan, about a runaway slave
• Smoke the Donkey: A Marine's Unlikely Friend by Cate Folsom about an Iraqi donkey
• Just Another Southern Town: Mary Church Terrell and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Nation's Capital by Joan Quigley

Four Years with Charles Dickens

The Bicentennial of Charles Dickens' birth was in 2012 and I decided to make him a quilt which I have just finished hand quilting and binding!

I designed and hand embroidered blocks representing his novels. Some images are based on the original illustrations and some I designed. The book titles are in Dickens own handwriting as found on his manuscripts.

being quilted

Novels included are Pickwick Papers, David Copperfield, Barnaby Rudge, A Christmas Carol, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, The Mystery of Edward Drood, The Old Curiosity Shop, Oliver Twist, Little Dorrit, and Bleak House.

The Inimitable himself appears over his signature. I used fusible appliqué and embellished him with thread work.

I made my first Hexie blocks for the borders. The fabrics are mostly reproduction or just look old, and the piecing is inspired by early 19th c British quilts. This was one of my design-as-you-go quilts. I had no plan when I started, so that will explain it's design weaknesses.

 

I may have finished the quilt sooner but life got in the way: my husband was assigned a new church in 2012 which meant a move, my husband retired in 2014 which meant a move. We retired to the house my folks bought in 1972. We remodeled the kitchen this summer and are still settling into our permanent, 'forever' home. (Which is half the size of the parsonages we lived in for 38 years!)

While designing the embroidery I reread several Dickens novels and read for the first time Little Dorrit and watched the BBC series Bleak House.

I was sorry I had not finished this one because it was the Bicentenary of Anthony Trollope's birth this year and I love his Barchester novels about the church and have watched The Pallisers BBC series many times. Sorry, Anthony, no quilt for you. Yet.

But he has to get in line. I have my Austen Family Album quilt waiting to be hand quilted next! Austen's bicentennial of her death is in 2017 and I may need that long to finish her quilt!