Mrs. Everything by Jennifer Weiner

"We lose ourselves...but we find our way back." from Mrs. Everything by Jennifer Weiner

Mrs. Everything by Jennifer Weiner is an emotional roller coaster about Baby Boomer sisters Jo and Bethie. Pop culture and political landmarks set the novel in specific times and places, beginning in 1950s Detroit. When their father suddenly dies, their mother Sarah struggles on her own, finding affordable housing and a job at Hudson's.

Jo was the rebel, resisting girly dress and activities and early becoming involved in Civil Rights protests. She also falls in love with her best friend Lynnette. Lynnette buckles under social pressure unable to accept her sexual orientation.

Younger sister Bethie was always the perfect Jewish middle-class girl, her mother's favorite. She becomes a victim of sexual abuse and begins to alternately binge eat and starve herself. She is in a school play with Harold, who is African American, but they do not act on their mutual attraction.

Jo goes away to the University of Michigan, meeting the love of her life, Shelley. Bethie comes to visit where she is picked up by an older, drug-dealing, man who turns her onto drugs and sex, beginning a long spiral of bad choices.

When Shelley elects to marry, Jo is devastated and allows a man to woo and marry her. She loves being a mom, but as the children grow so does the distance between Jo and her husband until he betrays and leaves her.

Passivity allows bad choices to take the sisters further from their true selves while misunderstanding and anger drive a wedge between them. Meanwhile, Jo's three girls grow up and her youngest, Lila, makes her own series of bad choices.

Their stories become a synopsis of women's history from the 50s housewives to the women who juggle career and family to the last question of what kind of death to choose.

As entertaining as the book was, for a long time I was not sure what its purpose was until near the end of the story when Jo summarizes a woman's struggle between expectations and self-fulfillment, how we find ourselves far from our deepest truths and struggle to come home again.

I was offered a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Read an excerpt at http://www.jenniferweiner.com/mrs-everything

Mrs. Everything
by Jennifer Weiner
Atria Books
Pub Date 11 Jun 2019 
ISBN: 9781501133480
PRICE: $28.00 (USD)

Note: The story takes place almost parallel to my own life and the cultural references were a trip down memory lane. We moved to the Detroit area in 1963 and I enjoyed all the references to the places and stores and radio stations mentioned. But...I take issue with one thing in the book--The sisters go to Suzy Q's for burgers. Burgers! It was known for its chicken! Why would they go there for burgers!

Indianapolis Star 1930 Quit Contest Patterns and a Family Mystery

Vintage newspaper quilt block patterns took me researching a quilt contest and a family mystery.

The Quilt Block Patterns

A member of my weekly quilt group is moving and downsizing. Among the things Karen brought to the free table was a package of envelopes with quilt block templates. My savvy lady friends quickly set it aside for me!

The patterns had belonged to Karen's friend Delphine (Del) Theman.

The patterns were shared in the Indianapolis Star in 1939 as part of their second Quilt Contest. I quickly recognized the patterns as by Ruby McKim.

November 16 ad for the Quilt Contest in the Indianapolis Star

The contest had a total of $275 in prizes! First prize won $50, second, $30, third prize, $20. There were five $10 prizes, ten $7.50 prizes, and ten $5 prizes. Ladies sent their completed quilts to the Quilt Contest Department at the Indianapolis Star.

Envelope holding quilt block pattern

Each envelope had the quilt block on the front and was noted by name and by number.

Inside each envelope were the original article and the original pattern, cut apart. I found the pattern in  Newspapers.com, seen below.

the November 20, 1930, article in the Indianapolis Star

She made another pattern which included seam allowances for cutting.

You can see in the photo above the pattern piece cut from the newspaper article and the hnd made pattern piece made with seam allowance added.

Also with the group was an illustration of the blocks in a quilt pattern layout with quilting motifs noted. The illustration was later hand penciled to enhance the illustration.

The block patterns included:

• Cherry Basket
• Bear's Paw
• Sunbeam
• Double T
• Crazy Ann
• Noon Day Lily
• Old Corn & Bean
• The Rising Sun
• Grandmother's Cross
• Rambler
• Mill Wheel
• The Skyrocket
• The Weather Vane
• Spool or Jenny Lind
• Double Nine Patch
• Wild Goose Chase
• The Strawberry
• V-Block
• Crosses & Losses
• Grandmother's Fan
• Road to Oklahoma
• Hickory Leaf
• Road to California
• The Palm Leaf
• Little Beech Tree

Here you can see the backside of the newspaper patterns.

And the paper patterns including seam allowance that she made for cutting the fabric.

Over 400 quilts were entered into the contest!

April 1, 1930, Indianapolis Star article

April 3, 1930, Indianapolis Star article

The Mystery

I researched Del on Ancestry.com. It quickly became obvious that in 1930 Del was only ten years old and she was not the collector and preserver of these patterns! Did her mother make the quilt? Did she inherit or obtain the patterns from someone outside of her immediate family?

I researched Del's family tree to see if I could garner any clues.

Del was born in Penzance, Cornwall, England on January 1, 1920, and died April 20, 2008, in Michigan. When Del was four years old she immigrated on the Melita, arriving in Quebec with her mother Emily Rosina James (age 24) and sisters Emily, Eileen Pearl, and Rosina Ellen. Emily Rosina James had been living with her mother Charlotte Standbridge.

Del's father was William Henry James and I found his Petition for Citizenship dated March 21, 1923. The document also noted that his wife Emily arrived in America on April 4, 1925. This proved that William had immigrated before his family and sent money back for their passage. This was how my Grandparents on both sides of my family came to America, the husband crossing first, obtaining work and housing, and then sending for his family.

I learned more about Del's parents.

William was born July 5, 1894, in Cornwall, England. He married Emily on October 26, 1918. Emily was born in Southampton, England on April 5, 1900. At the time of William's petition, his children were listed as Delphine, Eileen (born March 19, 1921), Rosina (born July 25, 1935), who were both noted as being born in England, and Kathleen (born December 12, 1928) born in Detroit, MI.

William Henry James's naturalization petition

William's naturalization record of March 15, 1930, showed William was 5'5" with brown hair and fair skin and weighed 115 pounds. He immigrated to Windsor, Canada, arriving on March 18, 1923, his wife and children still in England.

The 1930 Census shows the family living on Wabash Avenue in Detroit, MI. William was a 'tool man' working for Ford Motor. He became an American citizen in 1922 and Emily was naturalized in 1924. The family appears in the 1940 census as well.

On August 25, 1945, Del married Earl Henry Theman. Earl was 37 years old. His father's name was Ernest Theman. Earl's draft card dated October 16, 1940, showed he was living with his mother Anna Hessell Theman. Earl had a ruddy complexion with brown eyes and hair and was 5'8" tall. He worked for Ford Motor. Earl died on March 31, 1993.

Here was a mystery. The marriage certificate shows the bride's name as Delphine Irene Pegouske!

Karen always remembered Del talking about 'my Johnny." This was clearly not Earl's name.

I did a search for Delphine Irene Pegouske and found a marriage on November 20, 1941, to John Elroy Pegouske, son of William and Lucy Bourrassa Pegouske, 21 years old and living in Dearborn, MI. Witnesses at the wedding were John's brother Everett Pegouske and his wife Emma Leora Phieffer Pegouske.

So, Del was married before and her husband's relatives witnessed her second marriage! It was time to look into Johnny.

John was born June 22, 1916, in Melvindale, Wayne County, Michigan.

"My Johnny" enlisted on October 16, 1940. He was 24 years old, 5'9" tall with blonde hair, gray eyes, and a light complexion, born on June 21, 1916. He worked for the Thornton Tandem Co. He was an army technician 4th grade and his religion listed as Catholic.

According to his niece who posted on Ancestry.com, Johnny died on July 15, 1944, when his truck ran over a hidden land mine in Italy. John was buried in Sicily-Rome American Cemetery and Memorial in Nettuno, Città Metropolitana di Roma Capitale, Lazio, Italy.

No wonder that John's family witnessed Delphine's marriage to Earle Theman. They were supporting her to move on from her devastating loss.

Now I was curious about the Pegouske name. It is similar to my married name.  There are many spellings of the name in my husband's family tree.

My husband's grandfather's name was transliterated as Bekofske and his brother's name was transliterated as Pekoske. Gary's father called his family Prussian. My research showed they were Germans who moved into Poland and then into the area now called Ukraine before immigrated to America. Also, the 'e' ending is more usual for Prussian names.

A family tree on Ancetry.com shows the Pegouske line going to Frantz (later Frank) Pajatzky (1835-1918) in Germany/Prussia, arriving in America on June 6, 1870. Frantz married Augusta Justine Mandilke (1839-1921).

Franz and Augusta's son William (1876-1946) married Lucy Philomene Bourassa (1881-1929) and they had 15 children including John Elroy who predeceased his father by two years. William was a widower when he died in Eloise, Wayne, Michigan.

William's death in Eloise, Wayne, Michigan rang a bell for me. A few years ago our library book club read Annie's Ghosts by Steve Luxenberg about an unknown relative cloistered away in the Eloise Hospital. What was established as the Eloise Poorhouse became the Eloise Sanitarium or Hospital, at its peak a huge complex, a city in itself. In 1945 it was named the Wayne County General Hospital and Infirmary. People were sent there for many reasons. I don't know if William was ill or had dementia or had no where else to live.

The family name was also transcribed as Pogoska, Pelgotssky, Pagutski, Pegonsky, and finally Pegouske.

My friend Karen never talked to Del about her family history. We still don't know who collected the Sampler Block articles. But I had fun researching all these mysteries!

The first Quilt Contest held by the Indianapolis Star was for Ruby McKim's Flower Garden quilt.

See vintage Ruby McKim sampler quilts at
Quilts-Antique and Vintage
https://quilts-vintageandantique.blogspot.com/2010/01/ruby-mckim-1930-patchwork-quilt.html
Material Things by Barbara Brackman
https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2013/02/ruby-mckim-in-denver-post.html

Paris, 7 A.M. by Liz Wieland

Serendipity

On Monday, April 15, Notre-Dame was in flames.
A horrified world watched, joined in tears.

On Tuesday, April 16, during my husband's surgery,
I was in a waiting room
reading Liz Wieland's Paris, 7 A.M.

And I read, "The crazy quilt of languages around Notre-Dame,"
and I read, "The being that will appear will emerge from the guest bedroom
will be hideous, a sort of gargoyle
come down off the sheer facade of Notre-Dame,"
and I read, "In an hour, it's lighting a candle in Notre-Dame,"
and I read, "the great squatting hulk of Notre-Dame,"

while the television in the waiting room aired
photographs and videos of the "great squatting hulk",
the gleam of the cross rising out of the ashes like a beacon.

I have never seen Notre-Dame or Paris or France.
I have not had the luck to have been a traveler.
No memories rushed forward, just sorrow for what was lost.

But the book brought Paris alive for me,
albeit a Paris from long before my birth,
a Paris just before the war,
with intimations of war
quivering in the atmosphere.

The Novel

Geography 
In 1937, the young poet Elizabeth Bishop and two Vassar friends
traveled to Paris.
For three weeks, Elizabeth did not write in her journal.

Liz Wieland wondered about that silence
and imagined Bishop's life over those missing weeks,
the mysteries she held close and never revealed.

Elizabeth and her friends,
full of youthful optimism
in spite of the disorder on the continent.

Louise of the blue eyes.

Anaphora. Margaret's horrid accident.

And the people they meet,
Sigrid who married for safety,
and the Countess Clara Longworth de Chambrun
who sees in Elizabeth her deceased daughter
who sees in Elizabeth a co-conspirator.

Paris 7 A.M. reflects Bishop's poetic voice, steals her imagery
and the titles of her books of poetry, Easter eggs
left to find in the days before Easter when I was reading.
So many hidden in the paragraphs beyond my ken.

"And then the clocks speak," I read.

The clocks, the time, the water, sailing,
the drinking, the women,
the traveling, and the traveling.

"Why do you travel?" I read. Questions of Travel.
And she answers, "To be free." "To see beauty."

It was coming, people sensed, knew
the world would shift again, war inevitable.
"The world is getting so ugly," I read.
"The swastika, a headless spider," I read.

The Jewish babies, lovingly handed over
by desperate loving mothers
to travel into stranger's arms
to travel into another mother's arms.

Elizabeth's mother could not mother
Elizabeth would never become a mother
Elizabeth was a midwife in the babies rebirth.

Elsewhere
Back to the known, Wieland's pen
flirts across the years
touching like a butterfly on a flower
upon Bishop's travels.
Florida. Brazil. America.
Letters from Marianne Moore, Sigrid, Louise.
Sailing with 'Cal' Lowell.
A summation of a life's losses.

And I read,

"Does everybody live such divided lives, Elizabeth wonders: one self moving about the world like all the other million selves, and another that's stuck somewhere behind?"

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

Paris, 7 A.M.
by Liza Wieland
Pub Date 11 Jun 2019 
ISBN: 9781501197215
PRICE: $26.99 (USD) hardcover

Quotations are from the advanced reading copy.

I read Wieland's previous novel The Land of Enchantment about an artist who studies under Georgia O'Keefe. Read my review here.

Songs of America by Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw

Oh, I so enjoyed reading this book! From the beginning with the beautiful and inspirational Overture on The History of Music by Jon Meacham, I did not want to stop reading this history of America through music.

Music brings a deep association with the events and places I have experienced. When I hear a song I can place myself in a specific place and point in time. The Green Berets by Barry Sadler came out when I was fourteen. It had pride of country and was an appealing march. I bought a ceramic green beret pin at a drug store counter.

But the patriotic support of the war was short-lived and the backdrop of my teenage years was filled with anti-war music including Turn, Turn Turn, Where Have All the Flowers Gone? and Give Peace a Chance. 

The music of my life tracked the social changes going on. The songs about women waiting for men became feminist anthems. Love of country was replaced by calls for justice and equity. Love songs were still popular, but cooler were the protest songs for social change with messages of universal love, peace, inclusion, anti-authority, and dropping out of the system.

The music of patriotism is inevitably the music of protest, Meacham writes, adding that history is not just read, but is something we also hear. And he notes that history is a continual process. He holds hope that we "can overcome fear, that light can triumph over darkness, that we can open our arms rather than clench our fists." Music reminds the nation of where we have been and points to what we can become.

The authors begin with pre-Revolutionary songs such as John Dickinson's 1768 The Liberty Song which rallied the colonies to unite in a righteous cause and move through history to Bruce Springsteen's protest anthem Born in the U. S. A. Each song placed in its historical and cultural setting.  

Over There was George Cohen's "bugle call" 

evoking the American Revolution's Yanke Doodle in its patriotism.
"Johnny get your gun...show the "Hun" you're a son-of-a-gun"
"And we won't come back till it's over, over there."

The music discussed by Meacham and commented on by McGraw includes the well-known and well-beloved but also lesser-known songs that were influential in their day. They all represent America at a specific historical era: The Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, slavery and abolition, the Civil War, minstrel shows and racism, WWI and WWII, the social movements of Civil Rights and equal rights and voting rights, the reactive rise of the Klan and Jim Crow, the cultural division of the 1970s, and the political divisions of the last fifty years.

WWI saw patriotic music like America, Here's My Boy 

with a mother offering her 'boy' to the cause... 

and anti-war protest music like I Didn't Raise My Boy to be a Soldier.

McGraw's contributions are inserted in text boxes. He addresses the songs from a musician's viewpoint and from a personal, emotional response.

Sinatra was one of McGraw's idols

Songs of America is a book of history, filled with stories that trace the complicated American experiment in democracy.

In 1938 Irving Berlin's God Bless America was debuted on Kate Smith's CBS radio show. Woody Guthrie's This Land Is Your Land was originally titled God Blessed America and questioned the inequality behind the American promise.

History is an argument without end, Meacham shares. Americans have argued and fought, and dissent and protest continue, but this book offers the promise that "America is not finished, the last notes have not yet been played," and calls us to lift every voice and sing in the continuing great national conversation.

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

Songs of America: Patriotism, Protest, and the Music That Made a Nation
by Jon Meacham; Tim McGraw
Random House Publishing Group - Random House
Pub Date 11 Jun 2019
ISBN 9780593132951
PRICE $30.00 (USD)

All sheet music photographed are from my personal collection.

Helen Korngold Diary: June 2- 8, 1919

Helen Korngold, December 1919, New York City

100 years ago a Washington University student kept a diary. I found it in an antique shop in 2001. I was so taken by the author that I spent years researching her, her family, and the people and places she wrote about. This year I am sharing weekly posts from Helen Korngold's diary along with my research.

June finds Helen busy preparing for final exams.

June

Monday 2
Home – tired- study

Tuesday 3
Study for Shakespeare

Wednesday 4
Shakespeare. Slept.

Thursday 5
Study for Ed & Shakes. [Shakespeare]

Friday 6
Exams in Ed & Sh. Pretty fair.

Saturday 7
Exam in Hist., Ed. & Geol. I’m almost dead – downtown – dressmaker’s- Emil phoned – Milliners.

Sunday 
Sunday School. Swimming with Bernard in afternoon at Highlands – Had a wonderful time – to Satellites with Emil Winkler in evening. Big row over elections – they don’t suit us.

Notes:

Helen was busy preparing for final exams but managed to spend time at Highlands Amusement Park.

June 7, 1919 St. Louis Post-Dispatch notice

Helen did not have time to see Mary Pickford in her new movie.


In the news, the last WWI soldiers returned home are celebrated in a parade.

President Wilson congratulated the ladies on getting the vote.

June 7, 1919, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Make Me a City by Jonathan Carr

"But if what survives of our legacy is a patchwork of threads, I believe the historian has a duty to try to stitch them together." ~the ficitonal Mr Winship, Professor of American History at University of Chicago, in Make Me A City by Jonathan Carr

As a family genealogy researcher, I have delved into many turn-of-the-century place histories in which people still living recollected earlier days. Make Me A City is patterned in part on these late 19th c. volumes. Central is a fictional history of Chicago's first hundred years, offering an alternative narrative of its founding families. Interjected are other fictional primary sources. The overarching narrative is the development of the city, but the stories of these characters drives the book.

Jonathan Carr offers a French-born mulatto trader as the first European to settle at Echicagou where the Illinois River meets Lake Michigan. Jean Baptiste Pointe de Sable built his family an admirable home before an unscrupulous man determines to take it from him.

We follow Jean and his descendants through the century, along with the stories of men who built Chicago, the visionary engineers and the immigrant workers, the con men and the idealistic journalists.

The story keeps weaving back to Jean and those early days when all was set in motion--the disenfranchisement of people of color, the anti-immigrant prejudice, the powerlessness of women.

Toward the end of the book, Antje Van Voorhis Hunter, whose lineage traces back to Jean, travels to see a statue erected by Pullman to commemorate the Massacre at Fort Dearborn. Her grandmother survived that massacre and her version of history has been recorded by Prof. Winship.

The statue portrays a white woman and a baby on the ground with a scantily clad Native American raising a tomahawk overhead. Another Native American stands with his hand out to stop the massacre; this man is taller and wears buckskin trousers. The civilized Native heroically is stopping the violence. No soldiers appear in the scene.

Antje and her husband discuss the implications of the statue's version of history, "like using perfume to cover up a bad smell." The myth portrayed in the art has become an accepted and shared truth.

"If you take on somebody more powerful than yourself and play by the rules and beat them, they annul the result," Antje thinks, adding, "Then nothing has changed. "It's in our blood," Mr. Winship believes, referring back to the first violence committed against Jean.

I made a family tree to keep the families straight.

 Read an excerpt here.

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Make Me A City
by Jonathan Carr
Henry Holt and Co.
Publication: 03/19/2019
$30.00 hardcover
ISBN: 9781250294012

The Electric Hotel by Dominic Smith

I could not stop reading Dominic Smith's new novel The Electric Hotel. I was transported back in time to the heady early days of film, disturbed by a trek into the horrors of WWI, and enthralled by the vivid characters and their stories, especially the tragic story of unrequited love.

Claude Ballard's cutting-edge, notorious 1910 film The Electric Hotel had impelled audience to high emotion. It was his highest achievement, but it came crashing down when Thomas Edison sued his company for copyright infringement--as he did all his competition, seeking a monopoly on the film industry.

Claude has not seen a movie since 1920 when in 1962 a grad student in filmography seeks him out. He realizes he has been "pickling" himself for thirty years, holed up in a hotel filled with other aging film industry has-beens, his hoard of film decaying from vinegar syndrome.

"He'd witnessed and photographed the passing of a golden, burnished epoch." from The Electric Hotel by Dominic Smith

As Claude answers Martin's questions and shares his hoard of decaying canisters of film, he revisits his early life and ascent from a French farmer's son who in 1895 was mesmerized by the early Lumiere films, how he became a noted movie maker, then while bravely filming WWI he was taken by the German army, always haunted by the film actress who broke his heart.

"When I dream of that old life I see it like a strip of burning celluloid. It smokes and curls in the air, but it's impossible to hold between my fingers." from The Electric Hotel by Dominic Smith

Sabine Montrose had beauty but no heart. She arrived in Paris as a teenager and fled when men pursued her. She learned to act and to use men but never would give her heart. Claude became one of her victims when the older woman took him into her bed for one night only. Claude was caught in her web, filmed her and made her an international star, forever hoping that Sabine would allow him into her life once again.

"Loving a woman was like that...was chasing smoke." from The Electric Hotel by Dominic Smith

The son of a failed nickelodeon owner, Hal was the theater owner who ran Claude's films; the small, spunky boy Chip was the burning man in a circus act when he joined the company as a stuntman. Sabine's mysterious mentor Pavel was always at her side.

The mystery of what happened pulled me along like a magnet, but I cherished every sentence of the gorgeous writing and would not skip a line.

Smith was impressed by the quality and art of the early movies he viewed during his research. What treasures have been lost? The Electric Hotel is an actual 1908 film recently rediscovered. I viewed it online here. A couple take a room in a hotel in which stop-action animated luggage takes itself up the elevator and unpacks itself. Brushes clean the traveler's boots. I can imagine the impact on audiences over 100 years ago!

"People wanted escape, sure, but first they wanted the shock of recognition." from The Electric Hotel by Dominic Smith

I previously read Smith's novels The Mercury Visions of Louise Daguerre and read and reviewed The Last Painting of Sara DeVos.

Read an excerpt at  http://www.dominicsmith.net/pdfs/excerpts/Eletric_Hotel_Excerpt.pdf

I was given access to an egalley through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Electric Hotel: A Novel
by Dominic Smith
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Sarah Crichton Books
Pub Date 04 Jun 2019
ISBN 9780374146856
PRICE $27.00 (USD)