Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman

I came to the Owens family story through Rules of Magic, published years after the first Owens family novel, the immensely popular Practical Magic. I had liked the characters in Rules and realized their story was rooted in the very real struggles of young adulthood. Afterward, I finally read Practical. 

The prequel to Practical Magic, Magic Lessons, begins in 1664 in Essex, England. It is the story of the first Owens witch who cursed all the Owens women's loves.

The teenage witch Maria tragically loses her mentor and adopted mother. Her biological parents send her to the New World as an indentured servant. On St. Kitts, she honed her craft as a healer. Maria falls in love with the New England merchant John Hathorne, who abandons her without knowing she is pregnant. Maria travels to New England to find John.

She finds passage in exchange for nursing and healing the pirate Samuel Dias, whose Jewish family had fled Portugal. He falls in love with Maria.

Her troubles increase when she does find John. Her very life is threatened by the witch hunters of Salem, her daughter stolen from her.

John Hathorne in the novel is based on the actual magistrate who condemned women accused of being witches to death. (Nathaniel Hawthorne, our great early novelist, added that 'w' to his name to disassociate himself with his ancestor.)

Oh! the ways women have been controlled and punished for overstepping the narrow lives men ordained for them. If a woman reads, she must be a witch. If a woman stands up for herself, she must be punished. If a man is attracted to a woman, she has bewitched him and is evil. Bind them in iron and drown them! Nail their feet to the ground and burn them!

And women are still fighting this battle.

Maria understood that a woman with her own beliefs who refuses to bow to those she believes to be wrong can be considered dangerous.~from Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman

The heart of the novel is, of course, love. How women love the wrong men and suffer for it. "Love someone who will love you back," Hannah advises. But how do we know love when we find it? Young people confuse lust with love, always have. We ignore the signs that later seem obvious. Maria rejects her true love, first because of her passion for John, and later because she vows never to love again.

Love was risky, for marriage required women to abdicate all self-determination and choice. Maria's magic helps women from men who abuse them.

I had a neighbor who said, "What goes around, comes around." Hoffman's rule of magic is similar: you get back threefold whatever you do. Best to do good! What magic you bring into the world becomes your responsibility.

Hoffman weaves her stories with flawed characters whose struggles we recognize, for even if they have magic at their command, they are very human. It is no wonder these books are so popular with readers. They offer romance, challenges, strong female characters, life lessons, and in this book a heavy dose of history.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Read my review for  Rules of Magic
Read my review for Hoffman's novel Faithful here.
See my review for Hoffman's novel The Marriage of Opposites here.

Magic Lessons: The Prequel to Practical Magic
by Alice Hoffman
Simon & Schuster
Publication Date October 6, 2020
ISBN: 9781982108847
hardcover $27.99 (USD)

from the publisher

In an unforgettable novel that traces a centuries-old curse to its source, beloved author Alice Hoffman unveils the story of Maria Owens, accused of witchcraft in Salem, and matriarch of a line of the amazing Owens women and men featured in Practical Magic and The Rules of Magic.

Where does the story of the Owens bloodline begin? With Maria Owens, in the 1600s, when she’s abandoned in a snowy field in rural England as a baby. Under the care of Hannah Owens, Maria learns about the “Unnamed Arts.” Hannah recognizes that Maria has a gift and she teaches the girl all she knows. It is here that she learns her first important lesson: Always love someone who will love you back.

When Maria is abandoned by the man who has declared his love for her, she follows him to Salem, Massachusetts. Here she invokes the curse that will haunt her family. And it’s here that she learns the rules of magic and the lesson that she will carry with her for the rest of her life. Love is the only thing that matters.

Magic Lessons is a celebration of life and love and a showcase of Alice Hoffman’s masterful storytelling.

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

It was time for a new book.

The first book I picked up was full of horrors and war. 

The second book was full of fears of horror and war. And the war was shortly coming.

I could feel my blood pressure shoot up. I am trying to control my blood pressure. I scanned through my hundreds of unread ebooks, downloading anything that might be uplifting, fun, or happy. Beautiful Ruins came up. Why not this one? It had that lovely photo, exotic and unfamiliar. I heard heard great things about it. 

I downloaded it and two days later swiped to the last page, completely content with my choice.

From the opening sentence to the end, Walter weaves a beautiful story about love and doing the right thing and fame and finding true happiness. 

Oh, and my blood pressure has been remarkable.

Jess Walter, I thank you. 

from the publisher:

The story begins in 1962. On a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline, a young innkeeper, chest-deep in daydreams, looks out over the incandescent waters of the Ligurian Sea and spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat. She is an actress, he soon learns, an American starlet, and she is dying.

And the story begins again today, half a world away, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot—searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier.

What unfolds is a dazzling, yet deeply human, roller coaster of a novel, spanning fifty years and nearly as many lives. From the lavish set of Cleopatra to the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Walter introduces us to the tangled lives of a dozen unforgettable characters: the starstruck Italian innkeeper and his long-lost love; the heroically preserved producer who once brought them together and his idealistic young assistant; the army veteran turned fledgling novelist and the rakish Richard Burton himself, whose appetites set the whole story in motion—along with the husbands and wives, lovers and dreamers, superstars and losers, who populate their world in the decades that follow.

Gloriously inventive, constantly surprising, Beautiful Ruins is a story of flawed yet fascinating people, navigating the rocky shores of their lives while clinging to their improbable dreams.

Day of Days by John Smolens: A Novel of The Bath School Disaster

You believe in reward. That's what they teach you in that fancy new school we all pay for. In church, too. They tell you if you work hard you earn your reward...It's a lie. It's all a lie.~from Day of Days by John Smolens

The Day of Days was May 18, 1927. The place was the small farm town of Bath, Michigan. 

Andrew Kehoe blew up the Bath Consolidated School, killing 44 people, including 38 schoolchildren--one of the worst terrorist acts in American history. He murdered his wife and horses and blew his farm and himself up while he was at it.

John Smolens has wrapped this horrific event in a novel of great beauty and wisdom through the experience of surviving school children.

After WWI the chemical companies were left with stockpiles of explosives which they sold to farmers to help them clear fields. 

Andrew Kehoe was smart and inventive. He studied electrical engineering. After an accident left him in a coma his personality changed. His wife inherited a Bath farm but Kehoe found himself in financial straits. He blamed the tax burden for the new school. 

In Smolens' novel, Kehoe hires the boy Jed. He takes Jed with him as he removes tree stump with explosives. Jed was impressed by this farmer who wore a suit. 

Bea, the narrator of the novel, works for Mrs. Kehoe. She tells her story from her death bed, of life before the incident, the horror of that day, and the broken lives it left behind. There is survivor's guilt, broken people carrying on, and eventual healing. 

I first heard of the Bath school bombing when living in Lansing.  Smolens fills the novel with Michigan places and references. Kehoe travels to Lansing and eat at Emil's Italian restaurant, a place we knew well. The children are given Vernors ginger ale. The historical setting is given, the innovative changes happening in science. Electricity. Biplanes. Lindbergh's famous Atlantic crossing concluded while citizens were frantically looking for survivors.

I loved Smolens writing and how he handled this story. Accurate in historical details, Smolens demonstrates the benefit of fiction's ability to delve into the depth of human experience to bring the past to life. 

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

Day of Days
by John Smolens
Michigan State University Press
Pub Date  October 1, 2020   
ISBN: 9781611863819
hardcover $29.95 (USD)

from the publisher

In the spring of 1927, Andrew Kehoe, the treasurer for the school board in Bath, Michigan, spent weeks surreptitiously wiring the public school, as well as his farm, with hundreds of pounds of dynamite. The explosions on May 18, the day before graduation, killed and maimed dozens of children, as well as teachers, administrators, and village residents, including Kehoe’s wife, Nellie. A respected member of the community, Kehoe himself died when he ignited his truck, which he had loaded with crates of explosives and scrap metal. 

Decades later, one survivor, Beatrice Marie Turcott, recalls the spring of 1927 and how this haunting experience leads her to the conviction that one does not survive the present without reconciling hard truths about the past. In its portrayal of several Bath school children, 

Day of Days examines how such traumatic events scar one’s life long after the dead are laid to rest and physical wounds heal, and how an anguished but resilient American village copes with the bombing, which at the time seemed incomprehensible, and yet now may be considered a harbinger of the future.

JOHN SMOLENS has published eleven works of fiction, ten novels and a collection of short stories. He is Professor Emeritus at Northern Michigan University, where he taught in the English Department and served as the Director of the Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing. In 2010 he was the recipient of the Michigan Author Award from the Michigan Library Association.

 

My Literary Quilts Part I: Inspired by Marion Cheever Whiteside

I am a lifelong reader and a quilter since 1991. When I read about the Story Book Quilts of Marion Cheever Whiteside Newton I was inspired.

My introduction was an article by Naida T. Patterson in a 1997 Piecework magazine. 

Peterson's article was based on the Volume 16, 1995 Uncoverings paper on her research into the Story Book Quilts. The quilts were on display at the Museum of the American Quilter's Society at the time.

The Piecework article included applique blocks from the quilts, including Pinocchio, Peter Pan, Christopher Robin, Peter Rabbit, and Little Women.

In 2002, Issue 38, the American Patchwork & Quilting Magazine had an article by Merikay Waldvogel with research from Patterson. The article included a photograph of Marion Cheever Whiteside, Story Book quilt examples, and the original Ladies' Home Journal ads for the quilt patterns.

I searched the Internet for more information, photographs, and patterns.

I purchased two patterns on Etsy from CraftyCharlie that had been scanned from the originals, Little Women and Pinocchio. 

The Little Women Quilt was published by the Ladies Home Journal in 1952--the year of my birth! It was the first Story Book Quilt I made.

Little Women quilt by Nancy A. Bekofske

Little Women quilt detail by Nancy A. Bekofske

I used Civil War era reproduction fabrics for the applique.

Little Woman quilt detail, by Nancy A. Bekofske

I saw a version at a local quilt show a few years ago. 

Little Women quilt by Rebecca Mangus

It is interesting to see interpretations of the pattern.

Little Women quilt detail by Rebecca Mangus

Little Women quilt detail by Rebecca Mangus

I was able to purchase several original patterns.*

I was in Sixth Grade when I picked up James M. Barrie's Peter Pan books. I had loved the Mary Martin musical that aired on television when a child. When Riley Blake printed Peter Pan fabrics, it was my inspiration to use Newton's patterns to make my own Peter Pan quilt.

The Ladies Home Journal ad for the Peter Pan Quilt

Peter Pan quilt by Nancy A. Bekofke

I did not use all of the patterns in my quilt.

Peter Pan quilt by Nancy A. Bekofske

Early on, I decided to make my own Story Book quilt and chose Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. My appliques were based on copyright free book illustrations, art, and Regency era fashion illustrations and dance manuals.

Pride and Prejudice Story Book Quilt
by Nancy A. Bekofske

The quilt is hand appliqued and hand quilted. I sell the patterns on Etsy.

Pride and Prejudice quilt detail by Nancy A. Bekofske

Pride and Prejudice quilt detail by Nancy A. Bekofske

I then did a Redwork version including some different illustrations.

Regency Redwork quilt by Nancy A. Bekofske
a Pride and Prejudice Story Book Quilt

detail Regency Redwork by Nancy A. Bekofske

detail of Regency Redwork by Nancy A. Bekofske

After reading Maureen Corrigan's book on teaching The Great Gatsby, And So We Read On, I reread F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel. I thought it would make a wonderful Story Book Quilt.

I found fabrics printed at the time of the last movie. I used 1924 advertisement images for the basis of my applique patterns.

The Great Gatsby Story Book Quilt
by Nancy A. Bekofske

Even the eyeglasses!

detail of The Great Gatsby quilt by Nancy A. Bekofske

I may make another Story Book Quilt in the future. Who knows when inspiration may strike?

*Original patterns I have found include The States Flower Quilt, The Circus Quilt, The Fireman Quilt, and Brides of the World Quilt.

Rose Lea Alboum created an Index to Marion Cheever Whiteside Newton and her Story Book Quilts. It is a marvelous resource that includes hand drawn images of the quilt blocks for each quilt.

Finally, here is Marion herself. She was an artist who had a cottage industry of people making the quilts she designed. They sold in New York City to important people including the Eisenhowers and Mrs. Vanderbilt.

You can see an Alice in Wonderland Quilt at the MET website 

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/13649

Empress Alexandra: The Special Relaitonship Between Russia's Last Tsarina and Queen Victoria

Empress Alexandra by Melanie Clegg was such an interesting and informative read. She draws from Victoria's letters and journals, revealing a mother and grandmother who doted on her family. She was known as Grandmama to her granddaughter's spouses.

Clegg tells Alix's story in context of her relationship with her grandmother Queen Victoria. Alix was Queen Victoria's favorite granddaughter. Her mother Alice was the queen's companion and social secretary after the death of Prince Albert. Tragically, Alice died young.

The queen took Alice's children under her wing as a surrogate mother. They and their father Prince Louis became even closer to the monarch.

Alix was a beautiful child. At an early age, she caught her cousin Nicky's attention.

Queen Victoria and Alix

In spite of Queen Victoria's endeavors to arrange a marriage for Alix, she and and her cousin Nicky fell in love. When became Nicholas became Emperor of Russian, and Alix became Empress Alexandra, Victoria worried about her. She did not approve of the opulent lifestyle of the Russian Court, or the condition of Alicky converting to the Russian Orthodox Church. And especially, she worried about the social unrest and feared assassination attempts.

The queen loved Nicky and he enjoyed his time in Britain with her and his beloved Alix. The couple recreated a retreat inspired by British middle class style, and preferred a quiet life. When Nicky's father died, he was only twenty-six. He followed his father's autocratic style of governing.

Victoria and Albert raised their children to be self-sufficient, educating them well but also including fun and healthy activities in their lives. Alice patterned her mother's style, and so did granddaughter Alix when a mother.

Queen Victoria died in 1901 and happily never lived to know her beloved granddaughter and Tzar Nicholas and their children were assassinated in 1918.

Clegg's book is well presented, and for all the characters and royals to keep track of, I never felt confused.

The royal family suffered so many tragedies! But love also blossomed.

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

from the publisher:

When Queen Victoria’s second daughter Princess Alice married the Prince Louis of Hesse and Rhine in 1862 even her own mother described the ceremony as ‘more of a funeral than a wedding’ thanks to the fact that it took place shortly after the death of Alice’s beloved father Prince Albert. Sadly, the young princess’ misfortunes didn’t end there and when she also died prematurely, her four motherless daughters were taken under the wing of their formidable grandmother, Victoria. Alix, the youngest of Alice’s daughters and allegedly one of the most beautiful princesses in Europe, was a special favourite of the elderly queen, who hoped that she would marry her cousin Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and one day reign beside him as Queen. However, the spirited and stubborn Alix had other ideas…

Empress Alexandra: The Special Relationship Between Russia's Last Tsarina and Queen Victoria
by Melanie Clegg
Pen & Sword
Pen & Sword History
Pub Date  September 30, 2020
ISBN: 9781526723871
hardcover £19.99 (GBP)

NOTE: This book’s publication has been delayed and will be available November 30, 2020.

Jack by Marilynne Robinson

Can these bones live?

I read Marilynne Robinson's novel Gilead when it came out in 2004. A few years later I read it again with a church book club, and four years again I read it a third time for a book club.

It is a gorgeous,profound novel written as a letter by an elderly preacher to his young son. The narrator, John Ames, is conflicted about his best friend's ne'er-do-well son, Jack. Jack has returned to Gilead to visit his ailing father. His presence is a torment to John Ames who fears his young wife will be drawn to Jack. Jack left town after impregnating a girl, his abandonment of the child causing a rift. When Jack finally tells John Ames he has a colored wife and child, he gives Jack the blessing of forgiveness he has long sought.

Robinson has revisited Gilead in Home and Lila, and now in a fourth volume, Jack. I could not resist reading Jack's story.

The novel begins shortly after Jack is released from prison. He has been a bum, a drunk, homeless. There is still an air about him of respectability, learned from being the son of a Presbyterian minister. People call him Professor. They appreciate his playing hymns on the piano.

Jack is in a black suit when he assists a young colored teacher who has dropped her papers in the rain, and she believes him to be a minister and invites him into her home. From this a relationship begins, one that is not only socially unacceptable but against the law.

Jack is profoundly aware of his sinfulness. His birth nearly killed his mother. His boyish antics, unrelenting unbelief, and teenage wildness embarrassed his preacher father. The final straw was impregnating a young woman and not taking responsibility for their child who later dies. His legacy of harming those around him weighs heavily.

"And everything is vulnerable to harm, one way or another Everybody is vulnerable. It's kind of horrible when you think about it. All that breakage, without so much as an intention behind it half the time. All that tantalizing fragility."~from Jack by Marilynne Robinson

This young woman who treats him so respectfully draws him. He has lied to her by not correcting her mistake; already his harm has begun. But Jack can't forget her.

He had seen kindness weary before.
~from Jack by Marilynne Robinson

Jack and Della meet again and talk poetry and more. He is falling in love. The daughter of a minister, Della is a college educated teacher, and has a respectable family who loves her. They can have no future in this world.

...it was taking her a long time to give up on him.
~from Jack by Marilynne Robinson

Jack feels shame and dread and grief. Just by existing he is destroying Della's career and alienating her from her family. Her freedom and even her life is in peril if they are caught.  Jack calls himself the Prince of Darkness. His "battered, atheist soul" has regrets, but he cannot repent. He jokes that he has lived a life of 'prevenient death,' a play on prevenient grace which believes all can grasp the grace already offered.

Jack isn't preying on Della. She has pursued him. Like God, she can look beyond the outer appearance and the social appraisement to the inner man. She sees his soul.

But once in a lifetime, maybe, you look at a stranger and you see a soul, a glorious presence out of place in the world...You've seen the muster--you've seen what life is all about. What it's for.
~from Jack by Marilynne Robinson

Jack has stolen the grandest thing by far--he has stolen Della. Yet a wise man has told him that if God puts some happiness in your way, you should take it. Even the greatest sinner can find a moment of grace.

Jack is one of the great characters in literature, a portrait of a sinner who struggles with his unbelief and the wreckage he has brought. His love story goes to the heart of America's original sin, slavery and segregation that treated people of color as less than human.

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

Jack: A Novel
by Marilynne Robinson
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Pub Date September 29, 2020
ISBN: 9780374279301
hardcover $27.00 (USD)

from the publisher

Marilynne Robinson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal, returns to the world of Gilead with Jack, the latest novel in one of the great works of contemporary American fiction

Marilynne Robinson’s mythical world of Gilead, Iowa—the setting of her novels Gilead, Home, and Lila, and now Jack—and its beloved characters have illuminated and interrogated the complexities of American history, the power of our emotions, and the wonders of a sacred world.

Jack is Robinson’s fourth novel in this now-classic series. In it, Robinson tells the story of John Ames Boughton, the prodigal son of Gilead’s Presbyterian minister, and his romance with Della Miles, a high school teacher who is also the child of a preacher. Their deeply felt, tormented, star-crossed interracial romance resonates with all the paradoxes of American life, then and now.

Robinson’s Gilead novels, which have won one Pulitzer Prize and two National Book Critics Circle Awards, are a vital contribution to contemporary American literature and a revelation of our national character and humanity.

Covid-19 Life: Autumn Doldrums

It is mid-September and in Michigan that means I brought out a warmer quilt. In the early fall I use this Sunflower quilt, a pattern from Mountain Mist, because it is heavier than it looks. It was my first applique quilt. It is heavily hand quilted and the backing fabric is heavier than typical quilter's cotton. Perfect for later summer/early fall.

Grandpuppy Sunny is going to school--for obedience training! Just a year old, Sunny is all joy and exuberance and running and jumping. Her mom has taught her all kinds of tricks, but now she must learn to sit and stay on command without treats being involved.

Sunny shared her birthday cake with Ellie.

But sadly, grandkitty Hazel underwent an operation to remove a tumor that was found to be cancer. This beautiful and loving kitty is twelve years old. The kids have a hard decision to make.

Hazel and Ellie were good friends.

My brother recently took this photo at Cass Lake, MI.

We are going through books and deciding what we need to keep. Looking at old cookbooks we found some old recipes that once were very popular, like Russian Tea.

Our little city is divided politically. We picked up signs from the Indivisible group. Two doors down are signs for the other party's candidates. They have been very friendly over the years...Will this election make bad neighbors? I have never before put signs up in my yard.

Talking of signs, the city post office has one, too.

My only new TBR book from NetGalley is The Decameron Project: 29 Stories from the Pandemic from the New York Times.

I am excited that in November the library book club will read The Bear and will Zoom with author Andrew Krivak! And, we rescheduled Miracle Creek for February and will Zoom with author Angie Kim! We were to Skype with her last March.

I am still working on the Water Lily quilt borders. 

Summer is gone. With a pandemic taking 200,000 lives, who knows which of us will see another? I always loved fall's colors and cool weather, but as I age, I know autumn means winter and snow and ice and days stuck indoors. Will we be spending Thanksgiving and Christmas alone? What risks will we take if we join with family?

The stress has affected me. Oh, it was fine in March and April, I was busy with reading and reviewing and quilting. But as the months drag on, it  becomes harder. I am too aware of mortality, already living 11 years longer than mom and being the age my grandfather was when he passed. I was never afraid of death...until it became more probable. So there is fear and there is the longing to hug my family and there is remembering to find the beauty here and now.

But it is more than my own paltry existence that I grieve for. It is the wildfires and the floods and the hurricanes and the droughts, the rising sea waters and the warming of the planet. It is the endless injustice and racism that America can't seem to escape. It is the victims of disease and violence. It is the daily reality show of Trump's White House, politics that has lost all moral centeredness, wealth that purchases privilege and power.

We watched The Pickwick Papers, an old British miniseries. It was such absurd fun, until it wasn't funny. Pickwick goes to Fleet Prison and it opens his eyes to his privilege. He sees poverty and suffering and starvation and illness. He changes his life and helps those less fortunate.

Like Dicken's A Christmas Carol, the story tells of a transformation. Pickwick was an innocent abroad. He sought experiences and pleasure. He saw how others lived and then acted to help ease the life of the less fortunate.

 We need a moral transformation in America today. A rebirth. 

Choose hope, not hate.