Set in the majestic yet dangerous natural beauty of Alaska, "a land that does not forgive mistakes," All the Winters After is ultimately a story of the healing power of forgiveness, of love, and of place. from the publisher
The Story
Alaska offered freedom and new life to Lettie. She had the tenacity and courage to embrace this new world. Even after her son died in a plane crash with his wife and eldest son Lettie loved Alaska. But her youngest grandson Kache couldn't wait to escape. Newly orphaned, he went to Texas for college, giving up a music scholarship for mathematics, the emotion of song writing for the logical work of crunching numbers. For twenty years he left Alaska in the past. But the past persisted in haunting and tormenting Kache.
After a lucrative career Kache was let go from his job. He returned to Alaska and his grandmother Lettie and his father's sister Snag. Snag admits she never dealt with his family home, never gathered the mementos and books, all left to the elements. He races to the cabin expecting to find devastation. Instead he see smoke rising from the chimney and the cabin almost untouched by the passing of time.
A young woman is living in his family home, wearing his family's clothing, and marking the passing of days with a knife on the walls. Nadia has been squatting there for ten years, having escaped from her Old Believer's community and the abusive husband of her teenage marriage. Ten years spent in total isolation, reading Kache's family library and magazines--and the diary left by Kache's mother. Lettie had found Nadia and learned the girl had faked her death to escape a cruel life. Lettie kept Nadia's secret, bringing her food and a puppy. At 98 Lettie is in a wheelchair, trapped in the old age home, leaving Nadia without human support.
Kache tries to connect with Nadia by helping her with the cabin and slowly exposing her to the world beyond the woods. Thinking her husband has left the area, and under Kache's protection, Nadia blossoms into the kind of woman she has always dreamed of becoming. Working in the garden with Nadia, Kache discovers a love for Alaska he never knew as a boy. As they help each other come to terms with their past they fall in love, but the future lures them in different directions. What will they choose?
All the Winters After is a story of personal growth, a mystery, and a suspense story. Most of all it is a love story, the love between people and the love people have for the wild and dangerous land of Alaska.
Spoiler Alert!
The novel caught my interest when Kache returns to Alaska and is confronted by Nadia's occupation of his family cabin. I was compelled to read and find out more about Nadia's history, why she left her family of Old Believers to live in hiding. Kache's family story is revealed by his Aunt Snag and by Nadia sharing his mother's diaries. His parents had their secrets, protecting the boys from cruel or difficult realities.
I found Nadia well drawn, but her transformation too quick. Growing up in a society where women married at age thirteen, followed by ten years in isolation, Nadia has a year with Kache, visits into the modern world, and a computer. Within months, Nadia sports piercings and short hair and dreams of studying film in San Francisco. Also, her commencing on a love affair with Kache after only knowing the abuse of her husband should have included false starts and a slow gaining of trust.
Kache's struggles seemed more in line with his experience. His childhood memories of his family left him with a hatred of his father. He was an exceptionally supportive friend to Nadia, almost idealized. Kache struggles with wanting to keep Nadia from the world.
The author leaves us an open ending; we can decide if love will bring them together again after Nadia sees the world, or perhaps after Kache has had enough of farming and living in an isolated cabin.
Alaska is the big success of the novel. We see the country through Lettie's loving eyes in its alluring majesty and magnificence.
I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
"All the Winters After is a vivid exploration of landscape and community. Sensual, insightful, and deeply affecting...I read this book quickly, compulsively, and thought about it long after I turned the last page." Jilian Medoff, author of I Couldn't Love You More.
All the Winters After
Sere Prince Halverson
Sourcebooks
Publication February 16, 2016
$24.99 hard cover
ISBN:9781492615354
Sunday, February 21, 2016
Friday, February 19, 2016
Encountering African American Quilts at the Flint Institute of Arts
detail Lone Star attributed to Mary Duncan c. 1950 |
Lone Star |
Log Cabin variation, Sallie Gladney, 1989 |
Housetop quilt, Plummer T. Pettway, c. 1960-70 |
Patriotic Stars, Mary Maxtion, c. 1992 |
Roman Stripes, Lureca Outland,c. 1989 |
detail Everybody Quilt, Addie Pelt, c. 1988 |
The Gees Bend quiltmakers have become identified as representative of African American quilts. But African American quilts include all kinds of quilts and you can not identify the cultural background of a quilt just by looking at it. Many fall into the realm of Folk Art, a term which today is even being stretched as quilt artists are inspired by 'folk' traditions. In the end, only provenance can identify a quilt as made by an African American, Southerner, folk artist, or quilt artist.
Nora's Necktie Flower Garden, Nora Ezell, 1994 |
Pig Pen Quilt, late 20th c |
Log Cabin/Pig Pen variation, Catherine Somerville, c. 1950-60 |
Crib quilt, c. 1945 |
The Lord is My Shuper, Sarah Mary Taylor, c. 1989 |
detail The Lord is My Shuper |
detail Humpty Dumpty, 1988 by Yvonne Wells |
Elvis, Yvonne Wells, 1991 |
detail Elvis |
Helen Keller by Yvonne Wells |
detail Helen Keller quilt |
detail Jackie Robinson by Yvonne Wells |
The Higgenbottoms II, 1989, Yvonne Wells |
Civil Rights in the South III, 1989, Yvonne Wells |
The title of the quilt is Civil Rights in the South.
detail Civil Rights in the South III |
Detail Civil Rights in the South III |
Detail Civil Rights in the South III |
Then I noted that a figure in the circle was being hit by a spray. I learned it was a fire hose, held by the yellow figure. There are slaves picking cotton, a dog waiting to be unleashed for attack, George Wallace baring the door to the school. And along the left the figures of the martyred boys Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman laying behind the dam where buried after being murdered because they worked for voting rights.
detail Civil Rights in the South III |
Before we left the museum we visited Jacob Lawrence's The Legend of John Brown prints based on his 1941 paintings in the collection of the Detroit Institute of Art.
Before we left we visited the gallery with landscapes, including works from my favorite Hudson River and Luminist school paintings. After delving into the depths of evil humans can plumb I was glad to be reminded of our proper place in the world, in nature. We are insignificant in the large scheme of things. If only that knowledge brought the wisdom that we are all in this together, sisters and brothers for our short time, and endeavor to bring love and mercy and empathy to all our interactions.
Jasper Cropsey, Hudson River View, 1872 |
detail Hudson River View |
Martin Heade, Sunset on the Marshes, 1863 |
Pierre Damoye, Flooded Meadows, 1880 |
Dove Descending, Yvonne Wells, 1993 |
Tuesday, February 16, 2016
WIP and A New Hanky
I have been motivated to get some work done.
I have been making Esther Alui's new pieced quilt Little Hazel. She is now on Facebook and we have been sharing photos of our progress. I am using reproduction fabrics in red, indigo, and ivory. I thought it would be much harder than it is! The star was done last month. This month we are doing the two concentric circles.
The leaf vine strip fabric is better than I imagined! I love what it does!
I finished the last side of the first border on Love Entwined and am eager to get it finished! I sewed the first solid border and the top and bottom borders together. You can see how wonky my appliquéd zig zag borders turned out. I have finished the last border and just need to complete the corner blocks!
And I have been preparing appliqué blocks for the reproduction 1857 Sampler from Gay Bomer of Sentimental Stitches. Some gals are using such wonderful creative color and fabric choices. I am using colors similar to the original quilt. Interestingly, the quilt is similar to the Houseman Quilt in Florence Peto's article is shared here. Both have blocks with various appliqué' motifs and leaf shapes in the corners that make a secondary design.
My quilt guild has a challenge: a 24" x 24" quilt showing your favorite season. I used printed fabric to creative a 'typical' Michigan autumn scene. I need to quilt and bind it before May.
My Fox quilt is stopped until I find the right fabric for the fox. The trees branches and leaves part is done.
I bought a Faith Austen handkerchief of mushrooms. So cute! I organized my collection and counted over 1,000 handkerchiefs. About 200 are designer/signed hankies.
I have been making Esther Alui's new pieced quilt Little Hazel. She is now on Facebook and we have been sharing photos of our progress. I am using reproduction fabrics in red, indigo, and ivory. I thought it would be much harder than it is! The star was done last month. This month we are doing the two concentric circles.
The leaf vine strip fabric is better than I imagined! I love what it does!
I finished the last side of the first border on Love Entwined and am eager to get it finished! I sewed the first solid border and the top and bottom borders together. You can see how wonky my appliquéd zig zag borders turned out. I have finished the last border and just need to complete the corner blocks!
And I have been preparing appliqué blocks for the reproduction 1857 Sampler from Gay Bomer of Sentimental Stitches. Some gals are using such wonderful creative color and fabric choices. I am using colors similar to the original quilt. Interestingly, the quilt is similar to the Houseman Quilt in Florence Peto's article is shared here. Both have blocks with various appliqué' motifs and leaf shapes in the corners that make a secondary design.
My quilt guild has a challenge: a 24" x 24" quilt showing your favorite season. I used printed fabric to creative a 'typical' Michigan autumn scene. I need to quilt and bind it before May.
My Fox quilt is stopped until I find the right fabric for the fox. The trees branches and leaves part is done.
I bought a Faith Austen handkerchief of mushrooms. So cute! I organized my collection and counted over 1,000 handkerchiefs. About 200 are designer/signed hankies.
It has turned bitter cold again. Our doggies have been sleeping in. They don't want to get up in this weather. But just wait until it turns warm, and Kamikaze (White Dog) will be barking at 5:30 eager to enjoy the day!
Perfect weather to stay in and stitch.
Sunday, February 14, 2016
A Doubter's Almanac by Ethan Canin
In the Woods of Michigan
It was serendipity; I was Up North in Michigan, a stone's throw from a spring fed pond, two hours away from Cheboygan--reading a book whose character's life took him from Cheboygan to a cabin on a small inland lake in Michigan. The character also lived in Lansing, where I lived for many years, in a small Ohio college town similar to where we lived when my husband was in seminary, a half hour's drive from OSU, and in Princeton, a half hour's drive from where we first lived in Pennsylvania. The landscape was all so familiar.
The book was A Doubter's Almanac by Ethan Canin who also wrote America, America which I read several years ago, an impressive book which has stayed with me. When Canin's new book appear on NetGalley I immediately requested it and was pleased to get an ARC.
The book revolves around an unforgettable character and the son who struggles to understand him. It is about the search for one's father, a quest to understand life and how to live, an exploration of existence.
A Savant from the Woods
In the 1950s Milo Andret grew up fifteen miles inland from the resort town of Cheboygan. His parents were insular and joyless. Milo spent his free hours in the woods surrounding his home, preferring to be alone than with people.
When Milo was thirteen he found a beech tree felled in a storm. Inside the tree he envisioned an interlocked, continual chain and he spent the summer carving it out. Over 25 feet long, each link twisted upon itself like a Mobius strip, he secreted it away in a hollow tree behind a cover with reversed screw threads. It would be his life's great work.
He eventually showed the chain to his shop instructor who warned that no one would believe he made it. The year the freighter SS Carl D. Bradley sank along with the fathers of many of his classmates Milo was targeted and beaten by bullies who had heard of his remarkable achievement. His father's response was, "Welcome to the world."
A teacher identifies Milo's special ability and pushes him into a mathematics competition; his winning would bring fame to the school. He won.
Milo attended university in East Lansing and after years of pumping gas in Lansing is accepted into U.C. Berkley. It is the 1970s and Milo discovers love and ambition, addiction and competition.
Pressed into topology by his advisor Milo solves a mathematical problem and finds fame and a position at Princeton. Milo is expected to conquer another mathematical question. His days are spent deep in thought, imagining and testing and failing to find another big idea. His life becomes a slow dance of unraveling into darkness, alcoholism, and decline. He loses his position at Princeton and slides down the scale until he is at a small Ohio private school. Milo has won the Field Medal in Mathematics but his theory is challenged. As Milo tells his son, mathematicians are destined to lose, never able to find what they are looking for.
The Son, Fellow Mathematician, Addict, Lonely Yet Ever-hopeful Soul
The first part of the novel is Milo's early story; in the second part we learn his son Hans has related the story as his father told it to him. We now view Milo through the eyes of the son who desperately wants to understand his father and we learn about Han's own struggles with genius and addiction.
When Hans was thirteen his father takes the family to a wreck of a cabin on a muddy Michigan lake. It was in the Michigan woods that he completed his first great work, the continual chain of wood. He thinks that here he will find his way again. Nature surrounds them. The children watch a pair of red ants drag their prey across the sand and realize the truth about life.
Milo is incommunicative and prey to his demons while his wife plays Pollyanna, looking for the bright side, trying to make choices right. But she is wearing out, ruing the loss of the glamor of being married to an important man, living in Princeton. Her bitterness is expressed in wise insights. When Hans remarks that the Mayflies seem to be committing suicide in pairs she responds that he is right: they are mating. And later when daughter Paulie asks why clean a rented house her mother replies because that's what life is--cleaning a rented house.
The story ends with Hans returning to the lake cottage to be with his father who is in his last days, Everyone who ever believed in Milo, for however short a time, and everyone who ever doubted him, for however long a time also come. It is a time of reckoning.
It is a dark novel, a hard story. Milo is a failure. He dies over a long time, beginning with the first drink he takes at grad school. Unable to meet his own high expectations and the expectations of his mentors he lashes out indiscriminately. It isn't easy being a genius; people hold them to unreasonably high standards. He holds on to his alcoholism more ardently than he does his lovers.
Days have passed since I finished the novel but the somber and sorrowful feeling lingers. I think of the alcoholics of my family. I think of my father's slow death from cancer, and how my mother asked for morphine knowing she'd never wake again, but unwilling to suffer any longer. After such things sorrow remains, and the questions of life's meaning or lack thereof. I wonder if having a special ability necessitates extraordinary achievement. Had Milo chosen his own path would he have been dissatisfied and driven? I want to read the book again. It is deep and rich and revealing.
The novel offers hope: one can learn, we can become wise, we can choose a good enough life, we can decide that fun and happiness are more enduring than awards and prizes.
Never give up, Milo has instructed Hans. What is it we should hold to, to not give up? Our decision will form our life.
I received a free ebook in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
A Doubter's Almanac
Ethan Canin
Penguin Random House
Publication Date: February 16, 2015
$28.00 hard cover
ISBN-13: 978-1400068265
It was serendipity; I was Up North in Michigan, a stone's throw from a spring fed pond, two hours away from Cheboygan--reading a book whose character's life took him from Cheboygan to a cabin on a small inland lake in Michigan. The character also lived in Lansing, where I lived for many years, in a small Ohio college town similar to where we lived when my husband was in seminary, a half hour's drive from OSU, and in Princeton, a half hour's drive from where we first lived in Pennsylvania. The landscape was all so familiar.
The book was A Doubter's Almanac by Ethan Canin who also wrote America, America which I read several years ago, an impressive book which has stayed with me. When Canin's new book appear on NetGalley I immediately requested it and was pleased to get an ARC.
The book revolves around an unforgettable character and the son who struggles to understand him. It is about the search for one's father, a quest to understand life and how to live, an exploration of existence.
A Savant from the Woods
In the 1950s Milo Andret grew up fifteen miles inland from the resort town of Cheboygan. His parents were insular and joyless. Milo spent his free hours in the woods surrounding his home, preferring to be alone than with people.
On the Straits near Cheyboygan, MI |
He eventually showed the chain to his shop instructor who warned that no one would believe he made it. The year the freighter SS Carl D. Bradley sank along with the fathers of many of his classmates Milo was targeted and beaten by bullies who had heard of his remarkable achievement. His father's response was, "Welcome to the world."
A teacher identifies Milo's special ability and pushes him into a mathematics competition; his winning would bring fame to the school. He won.
Milo attended university in East Lansing and after years of pumping gas in Lansing is accepted into U.C. Berkley. It is the 1970s and Milo discovers love and ambition, addiction and competition.
Pressed into topology by his advisor Milo solves a mathematical problem and finds fame and a position at Princeton. Milo is expected to conquer another mathematical question. His days are spent deep in thought, imagining and testing and failing to find another big idea. His life becomes a slow dance of unraveling into darkness, alcoholism, and decline. He loses his position at Princeton and slides down the scale until he is at a small Ohio private school. Milo has won the Field Medal in Mathematics but his theory is challenged. As Milo tells his son, mathematicians are destined to lose, never able to find what they are looking for.
The Son, Fellow Mathematician, Addict, Lonely Yet Ever-hopeful Soul
The first part of the novel is Milo's early story; in the second part we learn his son Hans has related the story as his father told it to him. We now view Milo through the eyes of the son who desperately wants to understand his father and we learn about Han's own struggles with genius and addiction.
When Hans was thirteen his father takes the family to a wreck of a cabin on a muddy Michigan lake. It was in the Michigan woods that he completed his first great work, the continual chain of wood. He thinks that here he will find his way again. Nature surrounds them. The children watch a pair of red ants drag their prey across the sand and realize the truth about life.
Milo is incommunicative and prey to his demons while his wife plays Pollyanna, looking for the bright side, trying to make choices right. But she is wearing out, ruing the loss of the glamor of being married to an important man, living in Princeton. Her bitterness is expressed in wise insights. When Hans remarks that the Mayflies seem to be committing suicide in pairs she responds that he is right: they are mating. And later when daughter Paulie asks why clean a rented house her mother replies because that's what life is--cleaning a rented house.
The story ends with Hans returning to the lake cottage to be with his father who is in his last days, Everyone who ever believed in Milo, for however short a time, and everyone who ever doubted him, for however long a time also come. It is a time of reckoning.
On a lake Up North in Michigan |
*****
Milo Andret is not an easy man to live with, and I mean both within the novel and for the reader. While I was reading The Doubter's Almanac I would wake, at night, and in the morning, puzzling over Milo and wondering if he would solve the questions tormenting him.It is a dark novel, a hard story. Milo is a failure. He dies over a long time, beginning with the first drink he takes at grad school. Unable to meet his own high expectations and the expectations of his mentors he lashes out indiscriminately. It isn't easy being a genius; people hold them to unreasonably high standards. He holds on to his alcoholism more ardently than he does his lovers.
Days have passed since I finished the novel but the somber and sorrowful feeling lingers. I think of the alcoholics of my family. I think of my father's slow death from cancer, and how my mother asked for morphine knowing she'd never wake again, but unwilling to suffer any longer. After such things sorrow remains, and the questions of life's meaning or lack thereof. I wonder if having a special ability necessitates extraordinary achievement. Had Milo chosen his own path would he have been dissatisfied and driven? I want to read the book again. It is deep and rich and revealing.
The novel offers hope: one can learn, we can become wise, we can choose a good enough life, we can decide that fun and happiness are more enduring than awards and prizes.
Never give up, Milo has instructed Hans. What is it we should hold to, to not give up? Our decision will form our life.
I received a free ebook in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
A Doubter's Almanac
Ethan Canin
Penguin Random House
Publication Date: February 16, 2015
$28.00 hard cover
ISBN-13: 978-1400068265
"I've been reading Ethan Canin's books since he first burst on the literary scene...I thought he could never equal the power of...America, America, but...With A Doubter's Almanac, Canin has soared to a new standard of achievement. What a story, and what a cast of characters. The protagonist, Milo Andret, is a mathematical genius and one of the most maddening, compelling, appalling, and unforgetable characters I've encountered in American fiction..." Pat Conroy, author of The Prince of Tides
Saturday, February 13, 2016
Queen Victoria Jubilee Souvenir Linens
Bobby Brown of Backstreet Quilts in Bad Axe, MI (yes that is a real town name!) spoke to my guild and shared her embroidered and wool appliqué quilts. She also shared an embroidered linen towel or 'splasher' that I knew right away commemorated Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, 60 years on the throne. A boy is blowing a trumpet with a banner reading "God Save the Queen" over a banner reading "1837- Jubilee-1887".
One edge has a hand knotted fringe.
One edge has a hand knotted fringe.
There appears to be initials in red embroidery.
I have a handkerchief celebrating the Golden Jubilee ten years later in 1897.
In 1837 eighteen-year-old Queen Victoria came to the throne.
At the bottom of the handkerchief is, "Four generations, the longest reign on record." The flags include all the countries of Great Britain.
The Queen passed in 1901, the second longest reigning British monarch.
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