Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann

David Grann's masterful account of the Osage Murders is one of the most horrifying histories I have read. Uncovering layer after layer of murders, Grann exposes an entire society in which (supposed) upstanding pillars of society committed horrendous crimes then orchestrated a massive cover-up. 

The Osage had been savvy enough to reserve the mineral rights to the land they bought and became rich leasing the rights to oil companies. White society did everything to limit the natives' access to their own money, requiring them to find trustees to handle their affairs. When the Osage began to die--of poison, guns, and bombs--their money landed in the hands of white trustees and spouses.

What kind of person raises children with a spouse and then participates in their murder---for money? One would think only a rare sociopath, but Grann discovers a whole was society complicit.

I commend Grann for his amazing research and his determination to find the truth and for his sensitivity and compassion toward the Osage and their heirs.

I received a book from my Goodreads friend Allen. Thank you!

“[C]lose to impeccable. It’s confident, fluid in its dynamics, light on its feet…. The crime story it tells is appalling, and stocked with authentic heroes and villains. It will make you cringe at man’s inhumanity to man.” 
—The New York Times

from the publisher:

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER   –  NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST 
A New York Times Notable Book

Named a best book of the year by Amazon, Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, GQ, Time, Newsday, Entertainment Weekly, Time Magazine, NPR, Vogue, Smithsonian, Cosmopolitan, Seattle Times, Bloomberg, Lit Hub, and Slate

From the #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Lost City of Z, a twisting, haunting true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history

In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.

Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. One of her relatives was shot. Another was poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more and more Osage were dying under mysterious circumstances, and many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. 

As the death toll rose, the newly created FBI took up the case, and the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including a Native American agent who infiltrated the region, and together with the Osage began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.

Quiltfolk Issue 08 Highlights Michigan Quilters

When I heard that Quiltfolk Issue 8 was about Michigan quilters I went to my local Barnes & Noble to pick up a copy.

The articles include quiltfolk I was very familiar with and some who were new to me.

Divided into sections by geographic location within Michigan, the first is Up North, the "top of the mitten" on Michigan's lower peninsula and the Upper Peninsula.

First, readers met Rachel May, a professor at Northern Michigan University whose book An American Quilt I reviewed earlier this year on this blog. Rachel has also written a book on making Modern Quilts.

The next profile is Gwen Marston, who recently retired from teaching. I was lucky to have taken a workshop with Gwen many years ago through my local quilt guild. Her "Liberated" quilting techniques freed quilters from the perfectionism required by the big quilt contests.

Gwen Marston quilts I photographed in 1996 at Crossroads Village, Flint Michigan

Some of Marston's books from my personal library

Readers meet Ann Lovelace, two time Grand Rapids Art Prize winner, whose landscape quilts are just awesome. I reviewed her book Landscape Art Quilts, Step By Step here.

Ann Lovelace and her award-winning quilt. From Ann's website.

Other North folk profiled include Monte and Carol Graham and their featherweight clinic.

The "thumb" of Michigan is where I now live and where I grew up. The population-dense Metro Detroit and Ann Arbor include quilters from the Great Lakes African American Quilters' Network and "Detroit Star" Carole Harris, and former fabric designer and quilter Lizzy House whose new venture is in gardening.

Mid-Michigan--Lansing and Grand Rapids--is an area rich in quilt heritage. Readers meet teacher Lynne Carson Harris and learn about sisters Pat Holly and Sue Nickels. I have seen Pat talk about her award-winning The Beatles Quilt at the Capital City Quilt Guild in Lansing long ago, and also was on a weekend retreat with a Muskegon-based quilt group she helped to organize and returns to attend. Seeing how Pat worked on her machine appliqued quilts was a marvel.

Sue Nickel's quilt Alberta Rose photographed at the 1995 Ann Arbor Quilt Guild Show

The "Dream Team" at the Michigan State Museum are quite familiar to me. Marsha MacDowell brought a talk and slide presentation to Hillsdale, MI when I was first quilting. Seeing the quilts from the Michigan Quilt Project was an inspiration. I knew I had to make the Mountain Mist pattern Sunflower Quilt.

This Sunflower Quilt was my first applique project

MacDowell has written many books including To Honor and Comfort on Native Quilting Traditions.

Marsha MacDowell's To Honor and Comfort from my personal library.

Quilt pattern book from MSU museum quilts by MacDowell. from my personal library.

I met Beth Donaldson through the Capital City Quilt Guild and for a while a group of quilters created a reproduction quilt from the museum's collection, meeting in my husband's church. A year ago, I saw her presentation on the Detroit News History Project at the CAMEO Quilt guild in Clawson.

Beth Donaldson's book Charm Quilts from my personal library

Mary Worrall is another familiar name from my Lansing days. And Lynne Swanson is the last of the "team."

Michigan Quilts includes discoveries from the Michigan Quilt Project
Published by MSU Museum. book from my personal library.

The Michigan State Museum has a large collection of quilts This team created and maintains the Quilt Index, a resource for searching thousands of quilts and quilt-related materials. Readers will learn about this amazing resource, including the great perennial favorite quilt The Sun Sets on Sunbonnet Sue.

The legacy of Mary Schaffer is included through doll quilts she gifted to Gwen Marson, who first discovered and promoted Schaffer's quilt legacy.

Mary Schaffer American Quilt Maker by Gwen Marston. from my personal library.

You can "look inside" this issue at the Qulitfolk link by clicking here.

The idea of this magazine came to Mary Fons, daughter of quilting icon Marianne Fons whose Fons & Porter television show and magazine are well known among quiltmakers. As Mary describes it on the website,

At some point in my ongoing, passionate love affair with quilts, I realized something: No one was taking pictures or telling stories about the passion part. Wonderful teachers shared their expertise in person, on TV, and online; plenty of patterns were available; and there were friends with whom I could talk about my big love. But I wanted to see it. I wanted to read about it.

Then came Quiltfolk.

In late 2016, Quiltfolk published its first issue, and everything changed. Here was a magazine without ads, on gorgeous paper, with the most beautiful photographs I had ever seen of quilters and quilts — and it seemed to care as deeply about stories and people and quilt history as I did. Who were these Quiltfolk people? 

The magazine is 180 pages of articles and photographs without advertising. It comes out four times a year, each issues concentrating on a specific state.

Wasn't That a Time: The Weavers, the Blacklist, and the Battle for the Soul of America

We sang the songs in elementary school music classes.

I Ride an Old Paint
Drill Ye Tarriers, Drill
Big Rock Candy Mountain
The Erie Canal
On Top of Old Smokey
Paddy Works on the Railway

And in scouts and church camp.

Michael, Row the Boat Ashore
Kumbaya 
If I Had a Hammer
Little Boxes

We heard the songs on the radio and played them on our record players and hi-fis and cassette players and CD players.

This Land is your Land 
Good Night, Irene
Turn! Turn! Turn!
Kisses Sweeter Than Wine
Tom Dooley
Guantanamo

Generations of musicians have recorded the songs.

Where Have All the Flowers Gone
Wimoweh
Sloop John B

I sang St. James Infirmary and Leatherwing Bat as bedtime songs.

On family trips we sang to Dangerous Songs, belting out Garbage and Beans in My Ears.

In a live concert at Penn's Landing in Philadelphia, Pete Seeger taught the crowd The Garden Song.

The music sang and recorded by Pete Seeger definitely imparted certain values. And that is exactly what Pete Seeger, Ronnie Gilbert, Lee Hays, and Fred Hellerman intended. "Cultural equity and global harmony" were the suspect values lurking behind the Weaver's music. It doesn't sound dangerous, just mainstream liberal-progressive stuff. Except those values had led Pete and Ronnie and Lee and Fred to join the Communist party and although they had dropped out, they could not escape the association. And being pro-union, anti-war, globalists extolling the common man in those days was just as bad as wearing a big red "S" for Socialist.

Wasn't That a Time by Jesse Jarnow is the story of the Weavers and the early folk music scene, presenting their battles with the House Un-American Committee and Blacklisting.

It was an age of fear. President Eisenhower had denounced Communists as traitors and a threat. Idealists like Pete Seeger, Ronnie Gilbert, and Lee Hayes were attracted to the Communist party for its high ideals of equality. Events in the USSR disquieted American communists and they drifted away from the Party. But they held onto the values which in time became mainstream progressive liberal values.

Meanwhile, the Weaver brought Folk Music from square 'ethnic' music to mainstream, dominating the airwaves and influencing a generation of younger musicians, even while turning it into counter-culture protest music.

Music--Art--was a weapon, Pete Seeger believed. And his goal was to impact how Americans thought, through music, changing our values.

Although not strictly a biography, we learn about the Weaver's personal lives, their demons and struggles, the arc of their careers. We learn how their music changed as they struggled to walk the fine line between commercial success and staying true to their values. Pete left the group and several talented young men replaced Pete, but in the end, the group broke up.

So many folk singer's names appeared: Huddie Ledbetter, Josh White, Malvina Reynolds, Paul Robeson, Oscar Brand, Harry Belafonte, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Dave Von Ronk, Alan Lomax, The Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul and Mary, Alan Arkin, Will Geer, Holly Near--and of course, Woody Guthrie and his son Arlo.

Seeger became an environmentalist activist with the Clearwater Hudson River restoration. We loved singing with the songs on the Clearwater album--"You can't eat the oysters in New Haven Harbor, you can't eat the oysters that live in the bay, 'cause New Haven sewage is dumping down on 'em, if I were an oyster I'd get out today."

As I read the book I realized how deeply the Weavers music changed America. I remembered the last time we saw Seeger live, thousands under a huge tent along the Delaware River, hanging on his every word, being taught new songs and singing along with his standards. We felt a community of spirit in the singing. How many of us knew or remembered that Seeger had appeared before the House and was convicted of perjury?

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

Wasn't That a Time: The Weavers, the Blacklist, and the Battle for the Soul of America
by Jesse Jarnow
Perseus Books, Da Capo Press
Pub Date 06 Nov 2018
Hardcover $27.00 (USD)
ISBN: 9780306902079

read an article with Jarnow at
https://www.dacapopress.com/articles/a-talk-with-jesse-jarnow-author-of-wasnt-that-a-time/

from the publisher

The dramatic untold story of the Weavers, the hit-making folk-pop quartet destroyed with the aid of the United States government--and who changed the world, anyway.

Following a series of top 10 hits that became instant American standards, the Weavers dissolved at the height of their fame. Wasn't That a Time: The Weavers, the Blacklist, and the Battle for the Soul of America details the remarkable rise of Pete Seeger's unlikely band of folk heroes, from basement hootenannies to the top of the charts, before a coordinated harassment campaign at the hands of Congress's House Un-American Activities Committee and the emergent right-wing media saw them unable to find work and dropped by their label while their songs still hovered on Billboard's lists.

Turning the black-and-white 1950s into vivid color, Wasn't That a Time uses the Weavers to illuminate a dark and complex period of American history. Emerging while a highly divided populace was bombarded and further divided by fake news--and progressive organizations and individuals found themselves repressed under the pretenses of national security--the Weavers would rise, fall, and rise again. With origins in the radical folk collective the Almanac Singers and the ambitious People's Songs, both pioneering the use of music as a transformative political organizing tool, the singing activists in the Weavers set out to change the world with songs as their weapons.

Using previously unseen journals and letters, unreleased recordings, once-secret government documents, and other archival research, veteran music journalist and WFMU DJ Jesse Jarnow uncovers the immense hopes, incredible pressures, and daily struggles of the four distinct and often unharmonious personalities at the heart of the Weavers. With a class and race-conscious global vision of music that now make them seem like time travelers from the 21st century, the Weavers would transform material from American blues singer Lead Belly ("Goodnight Irene"), the Bahamas ("Wreck of the John B"), and South Africa ("Wimoweh") into songs that remain ubiquitous from rock clubs to Broadway shows.

Featuring quotes about the Weavers' influence from David Crosby, the Beach Boys' Al Jardine, and the Byrds' Roger McGuinn, Wasn't That a Time explores how the group's innocent-sounding harmonies might be heard as a threat worthy of decades of investigation by the FBI--and how the band's late '50s reformation engendered a new generation of musicians to take up the Weavers' non-violent weaponry: eclectic songs, joyous harmonies, and the power of music.

In the Hurricane's Eye by Nathaniel Philbrick

The defeated British army trudged out of the ruins of Yorktown to the slow beat of a drum, surrounded by the American militia on one side of the road and the French on the other. The British General and his army showed their disdain of the Americans, giving their attention to the French. How could a barely clothed army of ill-fed and unpaid country yahoos defeat their magnificence? Only the French were worthy enemies.

And yet somehow General George Washington had achieved the unthinkable. Yes, he needed the French navy to do it. He knew this battle would be fought on water. And even if the French generals often ignored Washington's directive and did what they wanted, they were pivotal.

It all started with hurricanes in the Caribbean. The French were forced to move their ships to safer latitudes. The rest is history. The history Philbrick covers In The Hurricane's Eye.

Maps show readers the battles that are the focus of this installment of Philbrick's history of the Revolutionary War. There is no focus on one big personality, like Benedict Arnold was in Philbrick's previous volume Valiant Ambition. This is an ensemble cast of characters--British, French, and American.

But some things stand out. Washington for his ability to reign in his passions to keep a cool head. A favorite story is how Washington deceived the British by building ovens to bake the fresh bread the French army found a necessity on a route to New York City while the army headed south.

Readers are reminded of the plight of the common American militiaman, who after six years at war are released without recompense, worn out, to an uncertain future. 200,000 men had served. The escaped slaves who served the British with hopes of freedom were left without protection, starving and diseased, preyed upon by Southerners rounding up their property.

At war's end, America consisted of individual states unwilling to work together. They would not agree on taxes to pay for the war, and now they all vied for their own concerns. Anarchy threatened.

This narrative takes readers on a journey into an understanding of our past that will challenge the simplistic vision of America's beginnings encountered in school textbooks. Was victory at Yorktown all because of hurricanes? Or Washington's superior leadership? Was it because the French funded the war that Americans refused to support financially? Or the missteps of British generals?

Near the end of the book, Washington is quoted from a letter written to the French Admiral de Grasse: "A great mind knows how to make personal sacrifices to secure an important general good." I was appalled by the war crimes and suffering described in the book, but I was also inspired by Washington's ability to always chose what was right for his country. If only our leaders today would channel the Founding Father's vision of personal sacrifice and self-control, to do what was right for the many and the country.

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

In the Hurricane's Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown
by Nathaniel Philbrick
PENGUIN GROUP
ISBN: 9780525426769
PRICE: $30.00 (USD)

Unholy Land by Lavie Tidhar

I closed the book--or rather swiped to the last page on my iPad--and my first thought was, I want to read this again. Now.

Because  Unholy Land by Lavie Tidhar took me on a crazy ride across genres and space and time and I want to do it all over again.

I read Tidhar's Central Station last year after my son raved about it. So I was expecting Science Fiction. But Unholy Land transcends genre, encompassing alternative history, noir mystery, and time-travel sci-fi, with social and political commentary (not so unusual in sci-fi, of course), so in the end, it transports the reader into an imagined alternative reality AND reflects on contemporary world politics. Add the "wink wink" self-referential nods and existential discussions on the nature of reality, we also get humor and philosophy.

In one work of fiction. And I think I missed some things.

So, yes, I want to read it AGAIN.

Tidhar was inspired by a true story of forgotten history. In 1904, the Zionist movement leader Theodor Herzl was offered land in Uganda as a Jewish homeland. Three men went on an expedition to survey the territory. One became separated and at journey's end, reported fertile land and while the other a saw desert. The idea was abandoned. Tidhar's novel considers the implications of establishing a Jewish homeland predating the Nazi regime.

The main character Lior Tirosh (note the character's name, so like Lavie Tidhar) slips through to an alternative reality. He doesn't realize what has happened, but he is tracked by two people who have been through the portal and lived in other worlds. He becomes embroiled in a battle to control the portal and prevent overlaps in realities.

Tirosh questions, what is history if not an attempt to impose order on a series of meaningless events, just as a detective must piece together a story from conflicting tales.

Don't expect escapist genre fiction, readers, for in Unholy Land we learn in all the worlds possible walls will be built and some will be cast into the outer darkness.

"Lavie Tidhar is a clever bastard, and this book is a box of little miracles." Warren Ellis, Afterword Unholy Land

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

Here is what the publisher offers on the plot:

When pulp-fiction writer Lior Tirosh* returns to his homeland in East Africa, much has changed. Palestina—a Jewish state established in the early 20th century—is constructing a massive border wall to keep out African refugees. Unrest in the capital, Ararat, is at fever pitch.

While searching for his missing niece, Tirosh begins to believe he is a detective from one of his own novels. He is pursued by ruthless members of the state’s security apparatus while unearthing deadly conspiracies and impossible realities.

For if it is possible for more than one Palestina to exist, the barriers between worlds are beginning to break.

Unholy Land
by Lavie Tidhar
Tachyon Publications
Pub Date 06 Nov 2018
ISBN 9781616963040
PRICE $15.95 (USD)

New Stuff, Including Old New Stuff

I just returned from the library sale at my local library. I found some interesting old books.

I picked up Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, which I read a lifetime ago. Pearl Buck's Kinsfolk, a volume with three John O'Hara novels, and an interesting volume by Hendrick Van Loon on Tolerance throughout history.

I once had all of Thomas Mann's books! I think they were all sold when we left Philly for Michigan. We sold $500 of rare and vintage books to a bookshop in Princeton, NJ. That was a lot of money in 1989! We needed to downsize for the move.

Tolerance is illustrated by the author. I thought it would be interesting to read considering today's worldwide tendency toward intolerance.

Van Loon's name sounded familiar. I did a Google search and learned that when our son was young we had picked up the author's multi-volume set The Story of Mankind! It was let go a few years later. Van Loon is an interesting character, apparently lacking in scholarship and with a definite bias.

This month at the library two of my quilts are hanging! My Autumn Leaves is all made by hand: hand pieced, hand applique, hand quilted, and even hand dyed fabrics. The central image was inspired by the sight of orange leaves against a blue sky, an image that stayed in my memory for years. I used bleach on the leaves and also Pigma pen.

Autumn Leaves by Nancy A. Bekofske

This quilt began as my interpreting pictures of doors in a photo book. I used hand dyed fabrics. I set the blocks in fabrics that looked Autumnal, and then I thought of the Thomas Wolfe quote from Look Homeward, Angel: Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. I printed the quote onto fabric and appliqued it to the quilt. I scanned real rocks onto fabric and appliqued them onto the quilt, then added silk leaves.

Speaking of books, I am currently reading Haruki Murakami's Killing Commendatore, compliments of A. A. Knopf, and Claire Fuller's Bitter Orange.

 Algonquin Books sent me Sugar Run by Mesha Maren.

And from St. Martins Press I was sent An Anonymous Girl by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen.

My TBR galley shelves are full! I am reading Big and Bang and Bomb books...

Big Bang by David Bowerman, an epic fictional consideration of the Kennedy assassination

Quilt Big by Jemima Flendt, creating big quilt block quilts

Atom Bomb to Santa Claus by Trevor Homer, a compendium of American inventions

And waiting are...

Once Upon a River, an atmospheric blend of historical fiction and fantasy by Diane Setterfield, author of The Thirteenth Tale which I have read

A Glad Obedience: Why and What we Sing by Walter Brueggemann on hymnody

Queen Victoria by Lucy Worsley

The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King: A Novel of Teddy Roosevelt and his Times by Jerome Charyn, recommended by Michael Chabon

Daughter of Moloka'i by Alan Brennert (After I read Moloka'i which I have had on Kindle for a while)

Finding Dorothy by Elizabeth Letts, whose The Eighty-Dollar Champion I enjoyed although I missed last year's much-touted The Perfect Horse. This book is historical fiction about Mrs. Frank Baum1

The Editor by the author of Lily and the Octopus Steven Rowley

Saving Meghan by D. J. Palmer, a thriller

Quilt projects in process: 

I am still hand quilting my Peter Pan quilt.

I need to add borders to my hexie flower quilt April Showers Bring May Flowers.

I decided to add borders to my quilt using the Thistle line printed animals. I don't like the white blocks along the edges. They need a frame to contain them.

During our recent mini-vacation, I worked on these Little Red Riding Hood Redwork blocks based on an 1918 pattern.

And I am getting ready to sew together the quilt for our son! The 18" blocks are all sewn.

My husband had his Edison Disk Player and Victrolia repaired and can now play his 78 record collection!

And he found my 45 record collection to add to the Seeburg Bandshell jukebox!

Some of the records were given to me as a child by my Aunt Alice (Wimoweh and Ride an Old Paint with the Weavers) and mom (Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White and The Poor People of Paris and Love Letters in the Sand) and others are from my teenage collection  (Color my World by Chicago and Flowers on the Wall by the Statler Brothers) or my husband's (My Sweet Lord by George Harrison and Amazing Grace by Judy Collins). Also, I have Kisses Sweeter than Wine and Scarlet Ribbons and Tom Dooley and Spanish Flea by Herb Alpert and Purple People Eater and The Battle of New Orleans and Snoppy vs the Red Baron.

This will fill up the jukebox. Now I can listen to the jukebox or the 78 records while I work in my quilt room.

Novels with a Sense of Place

I have recently two books that offer a wonderful sense of place. Vacationland by Sarah Stonich is set in the far north of Minnesota, along Lake Superior. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens is set in the North Carolina marshes. 

Vacationland with quilt Michigan Autumn by Nancy A. Bekofske

Reading Laurentian Divide through Bookish I fell in love with Hatchet Inlet and the people of Naledi lodge. I learned that the novel is based on Sarah Stonich's set of interconnected short stories Vacationland and found a copy through my local library.

If anything, I would say that Vacationland is even better than the novel. And that's saying a lot, folks. I feel like I know so much more about these characters and their experience. Hatchet Inlet becomes more "real" and vivid in these stories. The depth of human experience in all its varieties that Stonich elicits from a small group of people is profound. The stories left me heart sore and some will stay vivid in my mind for a very long time.

The sense of place comes alive through the character's love of this far north land where Chicagoans come to summer but few have the stamina to stay year round. And in descriptions that leave a visual image.

Much of the resort is pocked with neglect: a sack of mortar left leaning near a wall has hardened to its own shape, with tatters of sack flapping; a tipped wheelbarrow has a maple sapling sprung through its rusted hole. Flat stones form a run of stairs have eroded to a jumble below, and high on the plateau old cabins lean like a trio of gossips, their eaves and sills lushly bumpered with moss...Bunchberry has berried and the sumac has gone bright. A fork in the path leads to a bog, where each footprint fills with water and spindly tamarack drop yellow needles. At her feet are colorful pitcher plants looking tropical and misplaced amid the hair-cap and hornwort...Water hyacinths, leatherleaf, bog rosemary--soft and woody plants in various stages of growth and bloom and rot make for a heady decay. from short story Hesitation in Vacationland by Sarah Stonich 

Bunchberries in bloom, Upper Peninsula of Michigan near Lake Superior. Photo by Gary L. Bekofske

stones near the Lake Superior shore in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Photo by Gary L. Bekofske

I heard so much about Delia Owen's first novel Where the Crawdads Sing. I had high expectations, based on reviews by Goodreads friends. 

I found it to be a good page-turner read, with a vivid sense of place. The author's love of the North Carolina marshland shines in lovely descriptive passages. I enjoyed this aspect of the novel.

The further I read into the book, the less satisfied I was with the plot which stretched my credulity. And the supporting characters were standard stereotypes: good boy, bad boy, drunk father, a mother who has run off, the victim of societal prejudice.

It is the story of an abandoned child who shuns society and manages to survive with the help of a kindly African American family who offers her covert charity. There is a boy who loves her too much (and teaches Kya to read) but leaves her, and a boy who loves himself more and leaves her. The girl grows up to become an expert on marsh flora and fauna, illustrating and writing scientific books about the marsh. There is a suspicious death, a trial, and an unexpected reveal.

I am in the minority in rating this as an average read. Entertaining enough. The marsh is memorable and the best-drawn 'character' in the novel. But it is hard to believe that a small child would be left alone to raise herself, ignored by society, survive without incident, and grow up to become a self-educated scholar and science writer. There was foreshadowing but no real lead up for the twisted ending.

I recalled the quote from Alice in Wonderland:

“There's no use trying,” she said: “one can't believe impossible things.” “I daresay you haven't had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

If you are willing to believe the impossible, Kya's story will tug your heartstrings.

The novel is filled with wonderful observations of the flora and fauna of the marsh. Kya is so connected to the land, her boyfriend knows she could not survive penned up into "civilization" and the teeming human life of the city. It is this wild world that feeds her soul.

Sandhill Crane in the Seney National Wildlife Preserve marsh, Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Photo by Gary L. Bekofske
This is the setting for The March King's Daughter by Karen Dionne

Other novels I have read this year with a sense of place include:

The March King's Daughter by Karen Dionne, set in Michigan's Upper Peninsula near Seney Wildlife Preserve

Virgil Wander by Leif Enger, set in Minnesota along Lake Superior

Marlena by Julie Buntin set in Northern Michigan near Lake Superior

Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell set on and near the Kalamazoo River in Michigan

Hard Cider  by Barbara Stark-Nemon set in the Leelanau Peninsula in Michigan

A Collar for Cerberus by Matt Stanley set in Greece

Historical fiction

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

Our Homesick Songs by Emma Hooper set in Newfoundland

The River by Starlight by Ellen Notbohm set in Montana

The Winter Station by Jody Shields set in Manchuria

The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason set on the Eastern Front of WWI