The Promise Between Us by Barbara Claypole White

When I was a little girl I sometimes allowed my imagination to take me to dark places. Movies would run through my head after a thought like, "What would happen if Mom and Dad died?" I learned to push aside these 'what ifs' as I grew older.

But....what if...someone never was able to control these thoughts. What if they took over one's life, incessant and intrusive, so that with every moment one was confronted with the possibility of doom.

Barbara Claypole White's new book The Promise Between Us peels back the reality of people who live with the crippling 'what ifs'. Her character Katie has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. A knife sends her into panic: what if she harmed someone with it? What if she killed with it? Before she was diagnosed and treated she abandoned her beloved husband and their child to save them from the acts she envisioned she might commit that would bring them harm.

Years later Katie unexpectedly finds her daughter Maisie in her life and recognizes the early symptoms of OCD. Somehow she must intervene and help her daughter before her life becomes the horror she knows so well. The complication is that Maisie believed that her mother had died.

Readers have loved this book, especially impressed by how White brings Katie's disease to life. We hear the internal dialoge of OCD and are shown how Katie self-talks to control it.

Along the journey we learn the tragic back stories of Katie as well as that of her husband and his best friend. Broken hearts and romance will be found in these pages.

The secondary story of the husband's PTSD, for me, was a bit too much for a book already brimming with broken people. The repetition of Katie's internal voices and the talk about how her daughter can control her thoughts took up a lot of space and slowed the story.

But who can blame White? In her Backstory page found here, we learn she is intimately knowledgeable about her subject matter. Her husband and their son has OCD. I commend the author for bringing understanding and insight. We are all better for it.

Readers will be propelled by the well-drawn characters and will adore Maisie. Book clubs can find lots to discuss with the help of the Reading Group Guide found here.

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

The Promise Between Us
Barbara Claypole White
Lake Union Press
$14.95
ISBN:9781542048989

Mrs Caliban by Rachel Ingalls

I read this slender volume in an evening while my spouse was watching a Hallmark Christmas movie.

Really.

While he was vegging out to a feel-good wish fulfillment movie, I was reading a feel good wish fulfillment novel about a housewife estranged from her husband after the loss of two kids and a dog and his series of affairs, which housewife meets a frog man named Larry who escaped from a science lab where he underwent cruel tests and learned English with the help of electric shocks, so that Larry killed the scientists to escape, and the sad wife and Larry commence an affair that includes her hiding him in the guest room and serving him avocado salad and their enjoying night time swims and walks in other people's gardens, then some punks attack Larry and he has to defend himself and, well, the kids don't make it...

Really.

And the housewife's best friend is dating two men and her kids are troubled and the ending is very convoluted with the philandering husband meeting an appropriate end.

Did I wish I had watched the Hallmark movie instead of reading about a frogman creature learning about human experience and a housewife telling her story of alienation and loss and loneliness?

Heck, no.

Mrs. Caliban was first published in 1982, which explains the use of the phrase "pontificating" because I remember people did that back then, and author Rachel Ingalls had a flash of fame before people forgot her novel. But it was noticed by some very important writers such as Ursula la Guin and Joyce Carol Oates and John Updike and Eleanor Cotton (The Luminaries) and New Directions said it knocked their socks off and so they republished it this year and I am sure it will make connections with readers today.

Is Larry real or an alienated housewife's fantasy? Who cares. Just read it.

I received a free book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Mrs. Caliban
Rachel Ingalls
New Directions
ISBN 0811226697 (ISBN13: 9780811226691)

Grampa's Memories: Child Play 100 Years Ago

My grandfather Lynne O. Ramer (1903-1971) wrote over 200 articles submitted to his hometown newspaper and shared in Ben Meyer's column We Notice That. This year I will be sharing some of these articles.

Today's article appeared August 2, 1968.

Lynne O. Ramer, left, age eight with his cousin 

Lynne O. Ramer on his mother's lap, age six

Participating, Simple Toys Liked Best by Youngsters

“All work and no play
Makes Jack a dull boy.”
(So said an ancient adage).

“All play and no work
Makes Jack a mere toy.”
(So says more up-to-date sage).

(wnt)

The Incredible Brocks

From the dawn of creation down to now children love to play with toys.  Says a German professor, living in the heart of the world’s toy manufacturing world:

“Children of all ages and all peoples are the same in the aptitudes and their desires, and thus the same in their play urge too. The baby’s rattle, the small child’s ball, the house of bricks (blocks) the toy animal and the doll have changed very little throughout the ages.”

Kids like toys best that enable them to enjoy participation, on their part doing something, instead of watching an intricate gadget that performs of itself.  They would rather play with an old box than with a fancy new toy.

Now and then, in a city large or a village small, a family can exert a powerful influence on all the kids in the neighborhood, helping them to get real pleasure in making their own playthings. One such family was that into which were born three boys---the Brocks. Their names were Robert, Albert and Luther. They lived in Milroy.

It was really fantastic, almost incredible, what a great variety of “do-it-yourself” amusements they devised. And how the neighbor kids loved them for it. They dazzled and delighted all the small fry in the village.

(wnt)

Making Their Own Fun

As he recalled the Brocks, a native Milroyan told us [added in ink: Lynne], it was during the decades 1900 to 1920 that the three boys were the talk of the town.

First they had a home-made merry-go-round with a grand organ that produced music. It was all hand operated, much to the delight of the teens and preteens who flocked, some invited and some not, to come and enjoy the fun.

The play room—we’d call it the recreation room nowadays—was the storage room off the kitchen.  There among the pies and cookies cooked for the family use, but shared with the youngsters who came calling between meals, were the home-made playthings.

There were hand-carved spreading fans inside of Mason jars, continuous chain links carved from one billet of wood. There were two spinning cylinder wire cages housing chipmunks who chattered gaily all day long.

Continuous wood chain by John O. O'Dell

Besides these and dozens of other games to play there were stacks of comic strips from the Williamsport Gazette and the Philadelphia North American. These consisted of the adventures of the Katzenjammer Kids, Jiggs and Maggie [Bringing Up Father], Enoch Periwinkle Pickleweight [The Peaceful Pickleweights], John Dubbalong and the like.*

On a rainy day there would be no less than 10 or 12 little boys deeply at their work-play, reading the old “continued funnies,” grinding the hurdy-gurdy carousel, and intently watching the chippies race around the insides of their wire cylinders.

There were stacks of paperbacks of adventure characters, such as the Liberty Boys of ’76, Jesse James**, Fred Fearnot+*** , and every known Horatio Alger tale--Andy Grant’s Pluck****, From Rags to Riches.

“And so it went for many happy hours or boyhood daze” says one of the guests. “So once more, it’s thanks to Robert, Albert and Luther Brock, not forgetting their doting mother and a kind father who realized how to keep kids happy and busy, making and using their playthings.”

The lessons learned well by the youngsters of that time. Long since grown to manhood and womanhood, is this: “It isn’t necessary to buy one’s children expensive and attractive mechanical toys, but something requiring participation. And never forget children are fondest of things they improvise themselves---cooking pans and saucers, empty thread spools, old tin cans, a handful of bright, shiny horse chestnuts.”

Lynne O. Ramer ("it"), at 6, with his school classmates in Milroy, PA

*****

Genealogy findings:

I researched the Milroy Brock family on Ancestry.com.

The patriarch of the family, James Brown Brock (b. 7-29-1858; d. 3-29-1927) , married Minnie Melissa Maben (1867-1925) in 1889.

The 1900 Census for Armagh, Old District,  shows James was a carpenter. The 1910 Census for Armagh, Old District, shows James, age 52, worked in the stone quary. Minnie, age 43, was mother to Oscar, age 19 and working as a baker; Robert, age 17 and working as a presser in a woolen mill; Albert, age 15 and Luther J., born in 1902.

On the 1920 census James and Minnie lived on College Ave. in Milroy.

James' death record shows his father was Adam Brock and mother Mary was born in Germany.

Minnie Mabin Brock was the daughter of Joseph B. Mayben (1835-1900) and Amanda J. Weimer (1833-1880). Joseph was a private in Co. L, 13th Cav. during the Civil War. Amanda was the daughter of Zachariah Weimer (b. 1809), son of Johannes Weimer (b, 1767 and died in Juniata Co. PA) and Mary Brackbill.

The children in my grandfather's story:

Oscar Ream (1890-1973) has a WWI draft card showing he was a baker living in Ohio. His WWII Draft Registration shows he was married to Mary A. and was self employed.

Robert Earl (1892-1964) married Helen C. The 1920 Census shows they lived in Detroit, MI where Robert worked for a motor company as a tool maker. His WWII Draft Card showed he lived in Jersey Shore, PA and owned his own machine shop.

Son Albert Lowell (1894-1979) enlisted during WWI.

Luther Thomas (1892-1964)  has a draft card for WWII which shows he worked for the Armagh County School Board. Luther died in 1964 and is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in his hometown of Milroy, PA. along with his parents and siblings.

*****

Footnotes:

The Katzenjammer Kids and Bringing Up Father were read by my grandfather, mom, and I recall they were still running when I was a kid.

* From the July 14, 1915 New York Canisteo Times, found on Old Fulton Postcards:

Famous Family of Pacificists to Enlarge Its Sphere of Operations.

Who has not chuckled over the unending complications in the household of the Pickleweights — Enoch, the plaintive; Maria, the masterful; Ichabod, the Injun strategist; Dill, the rotund and voracious, and Helen Battleax, gallant defender of her brother's innocence and helplessness?
For years the tribulations of this interesting family have delighted reade rs of the Philadelphia North American, and the characters created by Cartoonist Bradford have become familiar to thousands. In fact, the Pickleweights have grown to be such an institution that more space and special treatment are required to chronicle their explosive history.

Next Sunday, July 11, therefore, they make their appearance in the Sunday North American, occupying a full page, in colors. Henceforth, it is understood, they are to be known to fame as "The Peaceful Pickleweights." Bradford announces that they have moved into the country, in the hope
that tranquil scenes, far removed from the turmoil of the city, will allay the hostilities that have divided them. The first page in the series shows them installed In their new home.

Unfortunately the occasion is marred by some deplorable accidents; but it is the universal
hope that the family has entered upon a career of peace. This is only one feature of The North American's new comic section, which, it is declared, will be the best in the country. With the Pickleweights will appear each Sunday the original Katzenjammer Kids, whose antics have convulsed uncounted readers; "Just Boys," a page of homely humor that will delight everyone who has known childhood, and a fourth page, on the most indulgent of young parents and "Their Only Child." This new comic section will add immensely to the fascination of the Sunday North American and should prove a source of never-ending deltght to all who enjoy rollicking fun.

Order from your newsdealer today.

*****

**You can read a Jesse James dime novel from 1901 at
 https://web.stanford.edu/dept/SUL/library/prod/depts/dp/pennies/texts/lawson_toc.html

*** Read a 1914 Fred Fearnot dime novel at

https://web.stanford.edu/dept/SUL/library/prod/depts/dp/pennies/texts/standish2_toc.html

**** Read Horatio Alger's novel Andy Grant's Pluck at

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14831

The Leavers by Lisa Ko

Our son grew up with a boy born in Asia who, as an infant, was adopted by an American, middle class family. He had perfectly nice parents and a biracial adopted sister. Our son told us the boy felt sad, wondering why his mother gave him up, and about how he was conflicted by being different as the only Asian in school. There was always an air of sadness about the boy.

I thought of that boy, now a man, while reading Lisa Ko's debut novel The Leavers. The book is a moving journey into the lives of Deming/Daniel, a Chinese American child adopted by an American family, and his birth mother Pelian/Polly, bold and strong but whose fierce love of her child cannot save them from the forces--poverty and the law-- that inevitably separate her from her child.

Pelian/Polly Gao is an unforgettable character, born in rural China, daughter of a fisherman. She imagines possibilities of another life and will do anything to achieve her dreams. She could have settled for marrying the village boy who loved her, remained in China, taking care of her aging fisherman father. She could have had an abortion and stayed in the Chinese factory dormitory, working long hours. Instead, she takes out a loan to go to America.

Her son Deming was born in New York City. But Polly's debt meant long hours working for low wages. She sends her son to live with her father in China. After the death of his grandfather, Deming rejoins his mother, who is living with her boyfriend and his sister and nephew. Those years are Deming's happiest. He adores his mother and has a 'brother' for best friend.

One day Deming's mother disappears. He is placed in a foster home and is adopted by an educated and well-off family. Now called Daniel, the boy never feels at home in his new world, any more than his mother had felt at home in her rural village.

Daniel flounders in life. Then he is brought into contact with people from his past who led him on a quest to find his mother. And finally learns the harrowing events that led to their separation.

Illegal immigration, the immigrant experience, the love between a mother and a child, and the search for authenticity and a place to belong are all themes in the novel.

The novel has garnered much well deserved praise and I purchased it to read. The beauty of Ko's writing and the memorable characters made this an outstanding read.

The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin: The Power of Words

In 1969 in New York City, four siblings walk to Hester Street. Varya at thirteen is the eldest. Daniel is eleven, Klara is nine, and Simon is the youngest at seven. Daniel is leading the way. They come totheir father's tailor shop but continue on to an old apartment building. They seek a woman who tells fortunes. She can even tell you the day you will die.

Each child must go into the woman's apartment alone. Each child leaves altered, never to be the same.

Klara is the first to enter the fortune teller's apartment. Next came Daniel, then Simon, and last of all Varya. "What if I change," Varya asks, upset by what she learns. "Then you'd be special. 'Cause most people don't."

In The Immortalists, Chloe Benjamin offers readers a book with big ideas that also reads like butter, an addictive story that lures one on into deeper waters. Each sibling's history is revealed with its impact upon the others. Are the choices they make a reflection of what they believe will come?

Simon and Klara are the risk-takers who leave home for San Francisco. Simon embraces an open life as a gay man, becoming a dancer in a gay club. Klara is obsessed with their grandmother, a performer whose specialty was hanging suspended in midair from a rope which she held in her teeth. Klara pursues magic and performance, imitating her grandmother's famous act.

Daniel and Varya take no risks. Daniel leads a solid life as a military doctor and family man. Varya becomes a researcher in longevity, struggling with obsessive disorder, especially about health.

In her struggle to overcome her losses and fears, Varya learns that the power of words can change the past, and the future, and the present.

This book is going to make a big splash.

I will warn that Simon's story, the first to be revealed, includes descriptions of gay sex and the pre-AIDS San Francisco gay scene. Varya's story includes lab animal testing; Benjamin's research into animal testing moved her and she offers a link to the North American Primate Sanctuary Alliance.

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

The Immortalists 
Chloe Benjamin
G. J. Putnam's Sons
On Sale Date January 9, 2018
ISBN: 9780735213180, 0735213186
Hardcover $26.00

Sharon Bala's Debut Novel, The Boat People, Explores The Refugee Experience

We may have all come on different ships but we're in the same boat now. Martin Luther King Jr.

Who leaves their home unless under duress? The place of one's nativity, where one's ancestors are buried, the house that contains so many memories are not given up lightly. To be a refugee, an immigrant, means to be cast off freewheeling into the unknown mists of the future, without mooring or a known destination.

The Boat People is Sharon Bala's debut novel.

Mahindan fled Sri Lanka with his son Sellian when there was nothing left. The Tamil Tigers had been fighting for their rights under the Singhs for years, turning both the willing and the unwilling into terrorists. The United Nations had pulled out and there was no protection. His wife dead, his village bombed, Mahindan and his son join the stream of refugees, ending up in a camp. Their suffering becomes unendurable, the dream of Canada enchanting. Mahindan raises money for a boat out of Sri Lanka.

Arriving in Canada, the 503 refugees are secluded in holding places, women and children in one place and the men in another, families broken apart. Mahindan is on trial to prove he is not a Tiger terrorist, while his son goes to a foster home and becomes Westernized.

Priya represents the legal counsel for the refugees, sidelined into the work because of her Tamil heritage. She is resentful as she wanted experience in corporate law, and because she identifies as Canadian whose grandparents happen to be from Sri Lanka. The refugee work is exhausting and disturbing. Then her uncle reveals the truth of her family's past.

Grace is a temporary government assigned lawyer. Canada is immersed in xenophobia and fear. All Tamils are considered possible terrorists and she is to do everything possible to find reasons to deport the boat people back to Sri Lanka.

Grace's grandmother in suffering the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, which brings old memories to the forefront. An Issei, first generation Japanese Canadian, she becomes an activist for the Japanese Canadians who were interred during WWII, losing their homes and businesses which now have become valuable real estate. She warns Grace that she is participating in the same kind of racism experienced the Japanese--everyone in a group considered an enemy until proven innocent.

I learned about Canada's parallels to American fear of foreigners as potential terrorists and about the history of Sri Lanka in modern times.

The Boat People is similar to other books I have recently read, such as This Is How It Begins by Joan Dempsey, warning about the implication of current events through the lens of our admitted past mistakes, and involving a courtroom setting.

Sharon Bala's book is interesting and thoughtful, a fine addition to recent novels addressing timely issues in immigration, post 9-11 fears, and learning how to connect our past mistakes to our current policy. Read an excerpt at http://sharonbala.com/excerpt

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

The Boat People: A Novel
by Sharon Bala
Doubleday Books
Pub Date 09 Jan 2018
ISBN: 9780385542296
PRICE $26.95

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones: What Rends Asunder

"Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." Mark 10:9

My first fiction read of 2018 is the highly anticipated An American Marriage by Tayari Jones. It is the story of a young marriage tested by the husband's incarceration for a crime he did not commit. It is an exploration of what endures and what holds us together.

The novel is told through the voices of the couple Roy and Celeste and Roy's best friend and Celeste's childhood soulmate Andre.

Roy and Celeste were married only a year and a half, ready to have a baby. Roy was first generation college, a handsome and charming man on the up-and-up, his whole world ahead of him. Celeste was committed to being an artist when Roy swept her off her feet and into marriage. Roy was glad to "set her down" and supported her art.

All their plans were crushed in an instant when Roy was accused of rape, convicted, and imprisoned. In a series of letters we follow their relationship through the early days of separation. Celeste's lawyer uncle works for justice for Roy. Celeste does not divorce Roy or stop depositing money into his account. But she does break off with him.

Roy's college friend Andre grew up next door to Celeste and has always loved her. Celeste loved Andre like a brother, but kept him at a safe distance. Between their childhood houses is Old Hickey, a centennial tree that represents what lasts. Several years into Roy's sentence Celeste and Andre finally consummate their love into a solid relationship, each still living in their childhood homes next to each other. Celeste has moved on, but feels the guilt of abandoning a man who has lost everything.

These characters are vital and real. And so are the supporting characters, their parents and people who raised them. There are many forms of love, marriage, and families in the story, covering a whole range of human experience. Each reveals what lasts and does not last, the nature of love,  and the many ways love is torn asunder.

The long, simmering set up peaks when Roy is finally released after five years and returns home to see if he has a marriage. It culminates in a desperate scene of conflict and Roy's realization of who he is and is not, and what has and has not endured.

The story is set against the reality of the mass incarceration of black men. I wish that Jones had included more about Roy's trial and prison experience as a black man caught in a justice system stacked against him. It would have helped set up the change in Roy, for I had trouble connecting the dapper ladies man to the violence of his later actions. Still, for readers from a background of white privilege, what is in the book may be enough to open eyes. African Americans already know.

What really sunders Roy and Celeste? Was their love too green? Was their love built on sand and not solid ground? Was Celeste to blame, or Andre? Was it society--racism and a justice system--that failed Roy? Or was it the woman who recognized Roy's face and confused him with the rapist in the dark who attacked her?

In the end, each finds a place to belong, a love that lasts. And that is all any of us really wants from life. To be one flesh in the arms of love.

I received a free book from the publisher through a LibraryThing giveaway.

An American Marriage: A Novel
by Tayari Jones
Algonquin Books
ISBN: 9781616201340

“Tayari Jones displays tremendous writing prowess with An American Marriage, an enchanting novel that succeeds at every level. From the very start, An American Marriage pulls the reader in with gorgeous prose. Even beyond its plot, the story soars. It doesn’t just focus on one instance of a marriage; it explores philosophical and political quandaries, including generational expectations of men and women, the place of marriage in modern society, systemic racism, toxic masculinity, and more. It does so in a gentle, subtle way, avoiding didacticism as it nudges the reader to question their own conventions and ideals. There are rarely novels as timely or fitting as An American Marriage. It brings abstract ideas about race and love down to the material level. The story is gripping, and the characters are unforgettable.”
—Foreword Reviews, starred review