Pew by Catherine Lacey

A town has a feeling, I remembered someone telling me long ago, because certain kinds of thought are contagious.~ from Pew by Catherine Lacey

I grew up in the sprawling suburbs of Detroit and lived in and around Philadelphia as a young adult. My first time in a small city of under 8,000 left me struggling. A woman told me that everyone needed to fit into a box, and no one knew what box to put me in. When I took up quilting, people relaxed. Quilters they knew. I finally fit into a box.

Nothing can be more closed than a faith community. The best are open and affirmative. The worst sort people reject outsiders who challenge their values. Been there, too. Are you with us or against us? And if you don't join them, you become the outsider, an enemy.

Some humans are comfortable with ambiguity, but most want to parse the world into black and white, good and bad, male and female, us and them, liberal and conservative.

Catherine Lacey's Pew introduces us to a character with no past, no name, no identity.

One Sunday morning a worshipping congregation in a small town finds a being sleeping on a pew. Out of Christian charity, a family takes the foundling home. They name the being Pew.

The foundling has no identifying characteristics and is mute in response to people's questions.

Clothing is offered to see if Pew chooses male or female attire. The pastor tries to learn Pew's age; there are rules about how things work based on age. A social worker and a physician are brought in to discover if Pew has suffered physical or mental abuse. Pew does not respond, will not disrobe, will not speak. Pew does not know the answers to the questions being asked.

Christian charity turns to self-protection, discomfort, and even fear.

This community is separate from the world and has their own ritual of forgiveness. Pew has appeared a few days before the festival. It unnerves the community.

There is a Shirley Jackson feel to the novel, The Lottery coming to mind. The small town, the closed society, the ritual of the scapegoat are in this novel.

Pew's voice takes us into some deep territory, showing what it is like to be on the receiving end of social pressure that seeks to categorize people---put them into a box.

Can't we just be and let be? Why do we have to 'fix' the things we don't understand? Must our bodily being determine our place in the human community?

Pew sometimes catches a visual memory, almost can articulate a past. But words fail, they are misunderstood, and eventually forgotten. Some things are incommunicable.

Members of the community project identities onto Pew, seeing what they want to see.

A woman tells Pew about her son’s faith journey. The son determined that to truly follow the teachings of Jesus one had to give up all attachments in the world. The son gradually let go of his identity, becoming one with all creation. Her son's mystical journey of ego death has shattered his mother and she hoped to discover Pew was her lost son. Pew is shuttled from the white community to the black side of town. An old African American woman sees the 'new jesus' in Pew.

People tell Pew their stories, revealing sorrows and horrible acts they would not confess to a community member.

There is a lot going on in this novel, and I can't whittle it down to one idea. Perhaps readers will all see their own story in the tale, project what they want to find. I will be ruminating on this one for a long while.

I was given access to a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Read an excerpt at
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374230920

Pew
by Catherine Lacey
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Pub Date July 21, 2020
ISBN: 9780374230920
hardcover $26.00 (USD)

from the publisher

A figure with no discernible identity appears in a small, religious town, throwing its inhabitants into a frenzy

In a small, unnamed town in the American South, a church congregation arrives for a service and finds a figure asleep on a pew. The person is genderless and racially ambiguous and refuses to speak. One family takes in the strange visitor and nicknames them Pew.

As the town spends the week preparing for a mysterious Forgiveness Festival, Pew is shuttled from one household to the next. The earnest and seemingly well-meaning townspeople see conflicting identities in Pew, and many confess their fears and secrets to them in one-sided conversations. Pew listens and observes while experiencing brief flashes of past lives or clues about their origin. As days pass, the void around Pew’s presence begins to unnerve the community, whose generosity erodes into menace and suspicion. Yet by the time Pew’s story reaches a shattering and unsettling climax at the Forgiveness Festival, the secret of who they really are—a devil or an angel or something else entirely—is dwarfed by even larger truths.

Pew, Catherine Lacey’s third novel, is a foreboding, provocative, and amorphous fable about the world today: its contradictions, its flimsy morality, and the limits of judging others based on their appearance. With precision and restraint, one of our most beloved and boundary-pushing writers holds up a mirror to her characters’ true selves, revealing something about forgiveness, perception, and the faulty tools society uses to categorize human complexity.

One of Vogue's Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2020, one of the Wall Street Journal's Nine Best Books to Read This Spring, one of BuzzFeed's Most Anticipated Books of 2020, one of Vulture's Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2020, one of Refinery29's 25 Books You'll Want to Read This Summer, and one of The Millions Most Anticipated Books of the First Half of 2020

Sawmill Boiler Explosion Nearly Killed My Second Great-Grandfather

Joseph S. Ramer and Rachael Barbara Reed Ramer

My second great-grandfather Joseph Sylvester Ramer (1832-1900) was a Pennsylvania lumberman. In 1887, he was injured in a sawmill boiler explosion that made headlines across the state. My grandfather Lynne O. Ramer referred to the incident in his writing.

Altoona Times, March 18, 1887



The York Daily, March 18, 1887


The Cambria Freeman, March 25, 1887

Pittsburgh Daily Post, March 18, 1887



I also discovered a Dec. 8, 1896, article in the Altoona Tribune about a Joseph Ramer, lumberman, who was shot in Gallitzin, PA while collecting money! This was Joseph's son Joseph Karner Ramer (1864-1940).

Dec. 15 it reported that he was doing nicely.

And on Dec. 21, he was discharged.

Rachael Barbara Reed Ramer

See photos of Pennsylvania lumbering camps in the late 19th c at Slate Magazine
https://slate.com/human-interest/2016/09/photographs-of-william-t-clarke-capture-life-in-pennsylvania-s-lumbering-camps-in-the-late-19th-century.html

Covid-19 Life: News, Books, Quilts

That is the grandpuppy, Sunny, sporting a bandana I made for her and her fur sister Ellie, plus I made matching masks for their adoring parents. Sunny was reunited with her foster mom and fur friend on a visit to a fundraiser for Safe Harbor Animal Rescue.

 Ellie stayed with us that day.

Sunny and Ellie's human mom has a birthday today! My son told me that she loves succulents and wanted a succulent pillow that was no longer available. I didn't have a pattern, but tried my hand at making one. I also found this adorable Baby Cactus quilt pattern to make. It is hand appliqued and machine quilted on my new Bernina 570QE.

I found this adorable fabric for the backing!

I am nearly finished hand quilting the Great Gatsby quilt.

I was shocked to hear from Amazon that I was made an Amazon Vine voice! Such an honor! I thank my review readers for liking my reviews!

Books I won to come from the Book Club Cookbook:

• The Second Home by Christina Clancy
• The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner

Also waiting on this giveaway from Goodreads

• The Great Indoors: The Surprising Science of How Buildings Shape Our Behavior, Health, and Happiness by Emily Anthes

New egalleys received to be read:

• Good Blood by Julian Guthrie from the BookExpo PW Galley Grab
• Jack by Marilynne Robinson

Reading Now:

• The Violence Inside by Chris Murphy
• The Inheritors by Asako Serizawa
• His Truth is Marching On by Jon Meacham
• Sergeant Salinger by Jerome Charyn, J.D. during WWII

Waiting on my TBR Shelf

• Superman is Not Coming by Erin Brockovich
• The Writer's Library by Nancy Pearl
• JFK by Fredrik Logevall
• Catching the Wind by Neal Gabler, a biography of Robert F. Kennedy
• Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman, from her Practical Magic series
• Missionaries by Phil Klay about America's Forever Wars
• Eleanor, a biography of Eleanor Roosevelt by David Machaelis
• The Last American Aristocrat by David S. Brown
• Nick by Michael Farris Smith, imagines Nick Carraway at war

• Jo & Laurie by Margaret Stohl and Melissa de la Cruz from Bookish First
• Moss by Klaus Modick from LibraryThing

My husband bought a new bread machine. It makes huge loaves, so he removes the dough for the second rising and baking.

After a long drought, Michigan has been getting rain. The garden is looking wonderful.

My brother made me a bee house.

My brother and his girlfriend's camping trip to the Keweenaw Peninsula in Michigan must have been wonderful, judging by their photographs. Below is Copper Harbor Lighthouse, photo by Martha Kovich.

 She found this art installation.

Returning home, they still enjoy weekend jaunts. Below is the Clinton River in Macomb County, Michigan.

We haven't traveled, but enjoy the views from our own front yard.

I had a scary occurrence and went to the ER, another scary experience in itself. I am fine, the doctor tweaked my medications and I will get my ears checked out. It's good to know that coming up to my sixty-eighth birthday that my heart is in good health.

Stay safe out there. Wear a mask. Avoid crowds. Find the beauty around you.

The Lives of Edie Pritchard by Larry Watson

I had twin uncles. They were identical in appearance. One joined the navy. The other worked in an auto factory and built a cabin. When one died, his twin divorced his wife and married his brother's widow.

It was more complicated than that, of course. But the gist of their story was that, in the end, they both loved the same woman.

In The Lives of Edie Pritchard by Larry Watson, Edie is loved by twin brothers. Her story is revealed through three road trips across Montana.

She leaves home to become her own person; then returns home to confront her past and escape her present; and last of all, she goes on a quest to save her granddaughter.

Dean Linderman was unsure that Edie had meant to marry him and not his twin brother Roy. Roy was the hunk, the chick magnet. Dean was quiet, introspective. Why would the most beautiful girl in town choose to marry him when she could have had his brother?

Dean was jealous but passive, even knowing that Roy still carried a torch for his wife. Edie pleaded to move away, hoping to separate the brothers to save her marriage. They needed a fresh start.

Dean assumes that Edie wants to move so she won't fall into bed with Roy. No, Edie replies, "What I'm afraid of is that you'll end up with him."

Edie Pritchard did not ask for the attention of men. She resented their unwanted attentions. Her first marriage ends because Dean's repressed jealousy came between their love. Her second marriage ended because Gary didn't truly love her; he only wanted to possess her.

She's done with complications. She's done with men, including the nice guy who stalks her at work, and especially the younger men who come on to her. It seems that no sees or care about who she is, just their projections they create based on her beauty. No one ever asked Edie what she wanted.

Edie knows she failed as a mom to her and Gary's daughter, Jennifer. Jennifer's teenage daughter Lauren shows up with her boyfriend Billy and his best friend Troy, escaping her unhappy home. Troy is deeply insinuated into Lauren's relationship with Billy. No one understands better than Edie that when a couple is a threesome, there is trouble ahead. And Troy is trouble. One more complication has entered Edie's life.

Lauren moves on with the men, later sending a cry for help. Roy shows up to help Edie rescue Lauren, still insisting it was always and only her that he loved.

In a climatic scene, Edie makes a dramatic stand, hoping to save her granddaughter from the men who would use her.

Watson's book explores the boxes men put women into, the compromises women make, and what it takes for a woman to live authentically. Easy to read, with detailed descriptions of the past and the landscape and great characterizations, I loved this story of Edie Pritchard and her individuation quest for self-realization.

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

from the publisher:

Everyone in Gladstone, Montana recognizes Edie as the smart, self‑assured, beautiful wife to her high school sweetheart Dean. But they only see what they want to see. They don’t see the relentless pursuit of Edie by Dean’s twin brother, Roy. Or Dean’s crippling insecurity in the face of Roy’s calm, easy charm. Edie’s relationship with the Linderman brothers reverberates through the years: from her conventional start as a young bride; to her second marriage to an explosively jealous man with a daughter caught in the middle; to her attempts to protect a granddaughter who is pursued by two lecherous boys. But despite it all, Edie remains strong and independent, no matter how many times her past attempts to claw its way back into her life.

“A few years ago, my wife and I were at a banquet where the guests began to trade stories,” says Larry Watson, whose writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, among others. “An older gentlemen told of being a high school exchange student in Japan, where he fell in love with a young woman. She was a twin however, and he could never be sure which sister was the one he was in love with. I didn't quite believe his story—surely love would enable one to discern the difference—but the situation was so intriguing, I kept playing with its possibilities. 

I began to work on a novel whose working title was Edie and the Linderman Twins, which featured twin brothers who were in love with the same woman. But something happened in the writing that I hadn’t expected. 

It was not the twins, but Edie who came to dominate the story, a woman who often found that others, men usually but not exclusively, projected on her an identity that suited their needs rather than hers. Perhaps it was this that drew me to Edie’s character most of all: through her many lives, despite others’ attempts to define her, she was sure of who she was. I hope you recognize her.” 

The first film adaptation of Watson’s work, based on his novel Let Him Go, will be released by Focus Films in 2020, starring Kevin Costner and Diane Lane.

Read an excerpt at
https://www.workman.com/products/the-lives-of-edie-pritchard
Read an essay by Watson about the book at
https://d17lzgq6gc2tox.cloudfront.net/downloadable/asset/original/9781616209025_ae.pdf?1588876608

The Lives of Edie Pritchard
by Larry Watson
Algonquin Books
Publication Date July 21, 2020
ISBN: 9781616209025
hardcover $27.95 (USD)

The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue

Having read the galley for Emma Donoghue's last novel The Wonder, I put in a request for The Pull of the Stars before even reading the synopsis. I was not disappointed.

Donoghue revisits some of the same themes in this novel--an unmarried female nurse embracing scientific methods, women's lives in a repressive society, what we will do for family and love.

Set in 1918 in the middle of the Spanish Flu epidemic, in a Dublin maternity ward where an endless round of pregnant women ill with the flu come and go, the novel is a spine-tingling reminder of our vulnerability.

Donoghue began writing The Pull of the Stars in 2018. How chillingly providential that it would be published the year of the novel cornoavirus covid-19 epidemic.

Today as I write this review, violence and protests have been breaking out across America, demanding a just society.  Donoghue's novel depicts a world crushed by WWI, men broken in body and spirit like ghosts of the people they had once been. Unwed mothers are taken in by organizations that demand repayment through a kind of slave labor, their babies becoming trapped in servitude and subject to abuse.

The myth of progress is challenged by reminders of how little has changed in 100 years. War still crushes, the human body still is attacked by enemies large and small, society remains inequitable, ingrained social prejudices destroy lives.

Nurse Julia Powers is dedicated and hard-working, although underpaid and lacking authority. Readers spend several days with Julia at work, the action taking place in a small hospital room of three hospital cots.

This is not a novel for the squeamish. So many things go wrong. In graphic detail, readers endure the female patient’s suffering, the heroic endeavor to save the lives of mother and babies. We learn about their lives, their illness, their deaths.

Every loss is marked by Julia on her silver cased watch, a memorial and reminder to never forget.

This is not a novel to escape, the world too closely reflects what we are dealing with with today's pandemic. Warnings, fake cures, the uncertainty, government endeavoring to play down the threat--nothing has changed.

I finished the novel in two days.

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

Read an interview with Donoghue discussing the novel published in the Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2020/05/emma-donoghue-interview-the-pull-of-the-stars-the-blood-tax/610828/

The Pull of the Stars
by Emma Donoghue
Little, Brown and Company
Pub Date: July 21,2020
Hardcover $28 (USD)
ISBN: 9780316499019
PRICE $28.00 (USD)

from the publisher

Dublin, 1918: three days in a maternity ward at the height of the Great Flu. A small world of work, risk, death, and unlooked-for love, by the bestselling author of The Wonder and ROOM

In an Ireland doubly ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city center, where expectant mothers who have come down with the terrible new Flu are quarantined together. Into Julia's regimented world step two outsiders -- Doctor Kathleen Lynn, a rumoured Rebel on the run from the police , and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney. 

In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over three days, these women change each other's lives in unexpected ways. They lose patients to this baffling pandemic, but they also shepherd new life into a fearful world. With tireless tenderness and humanity, carers and mothers alike somehow do their impossible work.

In The Pull of the Stars, Emma Donoghue once again finds the light in the darkness in this new classic of hope and survival against all odds.

Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars: Space, Exploration, and Life on Earth by Kate Greene

Kate Greene was one of six people who spent four months living in a geodesic dome in Mauna Loa, Hawaii, simulating a Martian environment. The 'almost' astronauts were human guinea pigs in the Hi-SEAS project focused on the domestic challenges of privacy, food, and shared resources in space.

This book is the result of Greene's struggle to find a way to talk about those months and how they changed her.

Greene travels across a broad range of philosophical questions that arose from her experience, discussing food, finding a balance between solitude and sociability, boredom, and isolation, applying her insights to daily life.

I appreciated her thoughts on the privatization of space technology and the lack of oversight in the data collection and use of social media by tech companies, influencing users without their knowledge or consent.

The Space Race arose from a quest for military and political dominance. Greene asks, is it possible for space exploration to transcend "nationalist pride, capitalist power, and ordinary ego?"

"I've come up with more questions than answers," Greene writes.

Entertaining and informing.

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

Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars: Space, Exploration, and Life on Earth
by Kate Greene
St. Martin's Press
Pub Date July 14, 2020
ISBN:9781250159472
hardcover $27.99 (USD)

from the publisher

When it comes to Mars, the focus is often on how to get there: the rockets, the engines, the fuel. But upon arrival, what will it actually be like?

In 2013, Kate Greene moved to Mars. That is, along with five fellow crew members, she embarked on NASA’s first HI-SEAS mission, a simulated Martian environment located on the slopes of Mauna Loa in Hawai'i. For four months she lived, worked, and slept in an isolated geodesic dome, conducting a sleep study on her crew mates and gaining incredible insight into human behavior in tight quarters, as well as the nature of boredom, dreams, and isolation that arise amidst the promise of scientific progress and glory.

In Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars, Greene draws on her experience to contemplate humanity’s broader impulse to explore. The result is a twined story of space and life, of the standard, able-bodied astronaut and Greene’s brother’s disability, of the lag time of interplanetary correspondences and the challenges of a long-distance marriage, of freeze-dried egg powder and fresh pineapple, of departure and return.

By asking what kind of wisdom humanity might take to Mars and elsewhere in the Universe, Greene has written a remarkable, wide-ranging examination of our time in space right now, as a pre-Mars species, poised on the edge, readying for launch.

The All-Night Sun by Diane Zinna

I loved The All-Night Sun by Diane Zinna, mesmerized by the writing and propelled by the story line. It was the perfect read for my scattered and distracted brain, transporting me into another's story.

A family of three is like a bet.~ from The All-Night Sun by Diane Zinna

Only child Lauren lost her parents in a tragic accident when she was eighteen, leaving her alone in a baffling world. Her parents couldn't afford to send her to college but after their deaths she guiltily sold everything to raise the funds for her education. She learned how to survive in isolation, accustomed to lying about being orphaned.

At twenty-eight, she has her dream job teaching a writing class to international students at a small Catholic college, a popular teacher who loves her work. She understands her foreign student's experiences as outsiders, their homesickness, and admired their courage.

Art student Siri comes into her classroom and insinuates herself into Lauren's life, and for the first time Lauren felt understood, that she had a true friend. Siri was outgoing and sincere, but also a risk taker who charms her teacher out of her safety zone. Lauren is used to secrets, and knows she must keep their relationship under wraps from the other teachers and administration.

Siri asks Lauren to come to her home in Sweden for Midsommer and she impulsively accepts.

I gasp at early memories of our trip now, and they are otherworldly, other-sensory. ~from The All-Night Sun by Diane Zinna

The gorgeous descriptive writing weaves visions of an enchanted land and time, maidens frolicing in meadows and woods, flowers woven in their hair, bathing in the cold water. Lauren allows Siri to transform her, and she feels what it is to be young--that fleeting time that passed her by with her parent's demise.

Siri has a complicated relationship with her siblings. The early deaths of their parents spurred older sister Birgit to take on the role of mother. Siri hates her artist brother Magnus, both blaming each other for their mother's death, and she warns Lauren to stay away from him. For Siri's sake, Lauren wants to resist the attraction between them.

The headiness of the all-night sun, being a part of a circle of teenage girls, comes to a crisis at a Midsommer party. Lauren retreats home determined to put Sweden and Siri and her family behind her. But there is no escape.

As her life spirals out of control, Lauren loses herself and her life, but in the end she discovers forgiveness and acceptance.

The All-Night Sun reads like a psychological thriller written by accomplished literary hands that spin a denouement of  uplifting satisfaction.

I was given a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Read an excerpt at
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/602443/the-all-night-sun-by-diane-zinna/

The All-Night Sun
by Diane Zinna
Random House Publishing Group - Random House
Pub Date  July 14, 2020
ISBN: 9781984854162
hard cover $27.00 (USD)

from the publisher

Lauren Cress teaches writing at a small college outside of Washington, DC. In the classroom, she is poised, smart, and kind, well liked by her students and colleagues. But in her personal life, Lauren is troubled and isolated, still grappling with the sudden death of her parents ten years earlier. She seems to exist at a remove from everyone around her until a new student joins her class: charming, magnetic Siri, who appears to be everything Lauren wishes she could be. They fall headlong into an all-consuming friendship that makes Lauren feel as though she is reclaiming her lost adolescence.

When Siri invites her on a trip home to Sweden for the summer, Lauren impulsively accepts, intrigued by how Siri describes it: green, fresh, and new, everything just thawing out. But once there, Lauren finds herself drawn to Siri’s enigmatic, brooding brother, Magnus. Siri is resentful, and Lauren starts to see a new side of her friend: selfish, reckless, self-destructive, even cruel. On their last night together, Lauren accompanies Siri and her friends on a seaside camping trip to celebrate Midsommar’s Eve, a night when no one sleeps, boundaries blur, and under the light of the unsetting sun, things take a dark turn. 

Ultimately, Lauren must acknowledge the truth of what happened with Siri and come to terms with her own tragic past in this gorgeously written, deeply felt debut about the transformative relationships that often come to us when things feel darkest.