Category Archives: historical fiction

The Trouble with the Truth, by Edna Robinson ****

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thetroublewiththetruthThree and a half stars, rounded up. My thanks go to Betsy Robinson, the late author’s daughter, who invited me to preview an ARC and review it. It’s been a fun read.

Lucresse and her brother Ben have an unusual life. On the one hand, they aren’t starving, as many people around the world were during the Great Depression. But on the other hand, their circumstances require a constantly changing back-story in order for them to be accepted by polite society, which was much harsher and more judgmental than it is today.

For one thing, their mother is dead, and their father, a much older man than their classmates’ fathers, has not remarried. Not unless you count Fred, their chauffeur, butler, and otherwise highly respectable servant whose devotion to their family is not fully understood until a crisis strikes. Fred does not sleep with Father, of course. He has separate quarters, but no separate life. They’re pretty much his whole story.

Lucresse has the trouble with the truth that gives our novel its title. Her whole life is predicated upon a series of courteous lies; every time they pack everything and move to a new town, which occurs as often as four times annually, she and Ben are thrown birthday parties. There’s a good reason to do that, but it’s not true that it’s their birthday, and they both know it. And when Father cultivates the acquaintance of a well-known actress and she moves into their guest room, a visiting aunt is told she is the book keeper. It’s another lie, for the sake of appearances.

This highly accessible, charming novel is set out in brief chapters, and in most cases the chapter represents a new story within the overall story, so it is almost like reading a series of consecutive short stories featuring the same characters. With quirky good humor and also a certain amount of ambiguity regarding our head of household, I found myself smiling and nodding at the fib-to-cover-another-fib.

Though the family’s life is bizarre, the children are loved and well cared for; this is no Glass Castle. Rather, it is a portrait of a fictional family that never quite meets the conventional standard society seems to expect.

Recommended for those who like a little whimsy now and then.

The Smoke at Dawn, by Jeff Shaara *****

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thesmokeatdawnI hungered for this book! I am a great fan of Shaara’s work. I didn’t get the ARC, but Seattle Public Library came through. Had it not done so, this is one of the very few books for which I would have paid full jacket price.

Shaara writes historical fiction about American wars, sometimes in the form of trilogies, and here he wraps up a trilogy on the Western campaign of the American Civil War. The scenario: Rosecrans, the Union officer who heads the Army of the Cumberland, has had a strong victory followed by a stunning defeat. First he used brilliant gamesmanship and planning to attack and take Chattanooga; this went largely unnoticed by the press, which was beside itself, understandably, over the twin victories of Vicksburg and Gettsburg. But then, unfortunately, Rosecrans pushed his luck too far, getting his ass kicked and a lot of good men dead at Chickamauga. The result was that he ran like hell, dug himself in, and refused to go forth again. Unfortunately, the Confederate troops led by Braxton Bragg cornered him and he was besieged. When Grant was given overall command of armies in the west, he was asked to choose whether to keep Rosecrans in place, or send him packing and promote George Thomas. He chose the latter.

Shaara is generally brilliant at crafting character based upon the historical record. I found Bragg to be almost a caricature—and hell, for all I know, maybe he didn’t have many good characteristics from which to draw; I haven’t studied him much. Grant is portrayed with warmth in a way that sits right with me; the same holds true for Sherman. Thomas has always been something of an enigma, and he clearly is for Shaara also. Sherman and Grant both said in their memoirs that he was slow. (My own memory of Sherman’s is a letter to Grant in which he says, “We both know Thomas is a little slow,” and I sensed irony and understatement in his tone). Yet other historians swear that he was in fact misunderstood. Shaara gives him the benefit of the doubt while allowing for some ambiguity.

I read my copy digitally, and I was pleased at the way I was able to zoom important maps that made it much more possible to see what troops were moving where.

The most controversial aspect, judging from what other reviewers have said about this trilogy, is the creation of Bauer. When I have wanted to confer 4.5 stars on one of his novels in this series, I round up, and it is for Bauer that I do so. Bauer is the only character that is entirely fictional, but Shaara chose to create him to represent that nameless, faceless soldier who represented the vast number of those who bore the greatest burden. They didn’t become famous or have their belongings shown in museums. It’s rare to find a foot soldier’s whole story. Some kept journals, but these were often lost during a battle, scuttled during a hard march when everything non-essential got tossed on the road, or drenched in rain or during a river crossing. No journalist ever followed a humble private around to record his experiences and opinions. For his effort to include the every-man in spite of the flack he would endure from the purists among his readership, I give Shaara high marks.

Next up: Shaara will tackle Sherman’s march through Georgia, through the flames of Atlanta, to the sea. This is my favorite part of the whole thing, and I am excited as I look forward to reading it.

If you enjoy historical fiction based on the American Civil War, and especially if you do not harbor any cherished sentiments toward the dead lost “Cause”, you can’t go wrong with this one. Historical fiction at its best, from a master of the genre.

Far As the Eye Can See: A Novel, by Robert Bausch ****

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farastheeyeSharply evocative of time and place, Bausch’s novel Far As the Eye Can See is a treat and in some ways an education as well. Bausch’s fictional tale, set during the Grant Administration in the USA around the time of Custer’s last stand, draws on considerable research with regard to the Crow, Cheyenne, Nez Perce and other American Indian tribes. He uses story to drive home his message, which is that neither Caucasian nor indigenous people were either entirely good or entirely in the right, and that the conflict between the two was inevitable.

I only agree with part of that last bit, but I really enjoyed his story. Thank you to Net Galley and Bloomsbury Publishing for allowing me an advance glimpse via an ARC.

Bobby Hale is a deserter from the US army some seven times over. During the latter part of the American Civil War, he took the cash bounty for signing on, went to fight, and left the first chance he got. By using a wide variety of names he was able to do so repeatedly, but he was nevertheless roped into participating in some terrible battle. Were he real, and were he alive today, we’d say he has PTSD.

And there you have it! I always know an author has done a strong job developing their character when I find myself giving out diagnoses. It’s just as well that the character is indeed fictional, since my medical credentials don’t exist either.

Hale is headed west, away from cities and civilization. The idea of holding down a job and answering to a supervisor is anathema to him. The classic (but not stereotypical) mountain man, he is willing to sleep in freezing temperatures out of doors when necessary, climb steep cliffs and slog through ravines, all in the name of independence. But even out west, he inevitably runs into other humans from time to time, and not being completely antisocial, he makes friends, makes enemies, and falls in love. Twice. He finds himself having to make difficult choices a number of times. At other times, he is forced into action before he can really examine his options.

Here we check in with what I call the “ick meter”. Every reader has an independent threshold for bloodshed, human body parts, and other gore. Given that this is a soldier’s story, renegade or not, we would expect to find some of it here. I would not have cared to see Bausch add any more of it than he did; however, my own sense is that there was nothing added that was gratuitous or overdrawn. If you can’t stand reading war stories, you probably already know that by now, in which case, I wonder why you are still with me here.

Another noteworthy detail has to do with his use of place. When he describes the approach to the Rocky Mountains from the eastern part of the USA, I can see those blue mountains and all that sky, because I have driven across the USA a few times, and I have vacationed in Montana and Wyoming. Bobby Hale covers a tremendous amount of ground. If you are somewhat familiar with location in regard to the Black Hills, the Northern (inside the US) Rockies, and the Great Plains, you will probably enjoy the book more than if you don’t have a clue. I think if I were starting from scratch, I might have become confused, because he puts on a lot of miles without pausing to lay out which state lines he is crossing. Actually having been to at least one of these places, even if only to drive through it and notice the difference in elevation, climate, etc. will increase your appreciation and understanding.

As for me, I found it very satisfying. It’s a great read to have ready to hand beside a snug bedside. When Hale froze in the mountains and froze again on the plains, I burrowed deeper into the blankets and found myself even more content than when I began.

A great story for late fall and winter reading in a toasty nest.

Hardcastle, by John Yount ****

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hardcastleThis hauntingly evocative Depression-era novel centers around a coal battle near Harlan, Kentucky. Our protagonist is Bill Music (originally Musik, before the Ellis Island people decided to yank the German element from the family name). Music has gone from his family’s bare-dirt farm in Virginia to seek his fortune in Chicago. He worked his way through a nine month electrician’s certification program, did hard labor to support himself, and just when he was ready to go on home, he was robbed. His attackers even found the $20 hidden in his shoe, since they took his shoes also. Barefoot, broke and hungry, he joins throngs of other down-and-out Americans by jumping a freight train toward home. The third day on an empty stomach, he sees a farm with piglets in the back yard and crazed from hunger, leaps from the train with no thought how he’ll get back on one. A twenty mile, post-piglet walk leads him to Hardcastle, a mining town filled with impoverished, bitter miners on the brink of unionization.

Regis Patoff may be my favorite character in Yount’s story. The name itself is great; I will leave the reader to uncover its origin, one of the few humorous moments in the story. Patoff offers Music the heart-stopping salary of three bucks a day, more than he used to make in a whole week, to be a mine guard. He deceives Music by telling him that the mine is too small to attract union drama anyway, and so he will be paid this handsome amount to routinely trudge around the property at night three times a week.

When something looks too good to be true, it generally is.

Music moves in with Regis and his mother, the wonderfully drawn Ella Bone, who takes to him as a second son. When all hell breaks loose, Music is in too deep to walk away. Winter is coming; he has been away so long that he can no longer imagine the faces of his parents or siblings, but Regis, Ella, and his beloved Merlee are right there in front of him. He stays.

The reader should expect to deal with a certain amount of Appalachian/country dialect. If English is your second language, you will want an e-reader for definitions, or a native English speaker to guide you through some of the vernacular.

For me, however, it created an immediate bond. Two generations ago, my father’s people were miners; they were comfortably ensconced in more lucrative, less dangerous work by the time I was born. Until I read Yount’s novel, I was unaware of how many cultural artifacts had leeched into my own childhood from the mines of the Depression era. Immediately a little girl calls her grandfather “Pappaw”, and I found myself missing my own Pappaw, who died in 1977. One of the main characters calls out the greeting, not hello but “Hydee!” and I can hear my father’s voice, gone 35 years, as clear as day. When you read the word “victuals”, hear it as “vittles”, and it means food, usually a good meal. And so it went.Somewhere along the way I realized I had flagged so many terms I hadn’t heard for ages that those reading my review would not want to march through all of them with me, so I will leave off here and continue with the story.

For me, this was a page-turner. The last star fell off the review during the last ten percent of the story, when some historical inaccuracies too great to dismiss as mere story-telling devices came up. The greatest was the depiction of the United Mine Workers as a union made up entirely of communists. And given that contemporary working class history is my field of expertise, it really grated. For those who want the truth, here it is:

During the early years of American union struggle, most industrial unions banned anyone who was not Caucasian; who was not an American citizen; or who was a communist from their ranks. The UMW refused to let its ranks be decimated by these distinctions, believing in solidarity. So yes, people who were communists and said so openly were allowed to join, and if the ranks voted them into leadership, they were allowed to take their posts. The union did not yield to red-baiting. There were white folks in the union who didn’t think people of color should be allowed in, but the UMW pointed out that solidarity was the best way to keep workers all on the side that would fight for their interests.

Yount correctly depicts the UMW as inclusive of every ethnicity, race, and nationality, but it incorrectly paints the UMW as a communist union, to the extent that in order to stay in the union, members were ultimately expected to renounce their Christian beliefs and take up little red flags. It is preposterous. When it came into the story, I expected some other thing to happen in order to undo the incorrectness of it, but he left it lay there, the dead elephant in the room. It really got in the way of the story. It was just stupid, and I did a complete 180 from being really entertained and enjoying the story and its characters, trying to determine what would happen in the future to the main surviving players, to being aggravated at the lie on which the resolution of the tale hinges. I also didn’t like the implication that mine workers were dumb enough to be led around by the nose without having known who was leading them. Many of them (including my grandfather) had a low or nonexistent literacy level, but that didn’t make them stupid, just poor.

For other readers, the whole story may be entirely enjoyable. The characterizations are endearing, the setting palpable. When Yount brought winter, my feet got cold. His writing is really strong.

But watch the history. Changing major historical events and realities through fiction is a dangerous thing, because when emotion runs high, people bond to what’s in the text, and if they have no reason to believe otherwise, they assume they are getting the truth, or the mostly-truth. And this author hasn’t merely tampered with some minor realities for the sake of a good story; he has stood the historical record on its head.

A Painted House, by John Grisham*****

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apaintedhouseGrisham has written a wonderfully refreshing book. He is a fine writer, and I think he dwelt a bit too long and too timidly in the familiar swimming hole of the legal thriller. This is a really strong, well-written novel, steeped in the deep South (USA) in the 1950’s. For those of us up north who heard in school that the cotton weevil ended cotton farming soon after the end of the Civil War, Grisham has news. The protagonist and narrator is a seven year old boy named Luke Chandler. He is wise beyond his years, but I bought the premise for two reasons. First, it is discreetly revealed up front that he is academically talented, and so having him able to analyze things that an average 7 year old cannot, becomes believable. Second, he has no siblings, but has been raised in an all-adult household, a big frame house (NOT painted) that somehow houses himself, his parents, and his paternal grandparents. His “buddy” is 12 years older than himself. Uncle Ricky is his father’s younger brother, and is fighting in Korea, and anxiety over his well-being filters in and out of the myriad other anxieties that went with cotton farming. Though the Great Depression officially ended with WWII, small farmers (80 acres plus “the garden”, which is vastly larger than any ordinary suburban garden) in the deep south are living decades behind those in cities. They have water from a pump out front, and an outhouse. There is electricity, convenient but expensive. There is no telephone. The latter is viewed with cheer; it gives neighbors permission to visit one another without advance notice or an appointment, and there is a tacit understanding that this will happen mostly in the off-season. Winters are for rest and hospitality; summers are for work. And they ALL work. The two men haul huge cotton bags along with the workers they’ve hired, and they bring in 100 pounds of cotton off their own backs every blessed day, rising at 4, finishing at dark. It is a grueling existence. The women, including the grandmother, spend less time in the fields due to domestic chores. (There is no washing machine). But once they have cleaned up the breakfast dishes, they too are out in the field, leaving earlier than the men to cook a hearty lunch. There is often a break afterward due to the incredible heat and humidity, but because of the ever-present fear of rain, a very real fear, given that their farm is “bottom land” fronting the river, they are out again as soon as humanly possible. The seven year old, whom modern mothers would be taking for play dates and curling up to read with, is expected to haul 50 pounds of cotton daily also. Interestingly however, despite the family’s immense debt burden, he is paid the same wage as the other workers, and may dispense with the money as he sees fit. The two most striking features of this time, place, and way of living that struck me were the stratification of classes and subclasses, and for all the hail-well-met hospitality, a deep sense of privacy, and the need to keep secrets. At first, our young protagonist is weighted with one or two sworn secrets, and they are fairly benign. Later, however, he is beset by some whoppers, ones that could cost someone a life. Beyond this point are spoilers. If you have not read the book and think you may want to, stop here. If you have read it and want to compare notes, keep going.

The social levels are deep and intrenched. The most respected are the small business owners in town, preachers, and the farmers who own land, no matter how heavily indebted they may be. Those next were families like our protagonists, renters. Again, their debt level might be heavy, their clothing worn and not abundant, but they could hold their heads high, be church deacons, and be well regarded socially. After that, there is a large drop. On a similar social par, yet treated differently to an extent, are the hill people (very rarely are they referred to as “hillbillies”) who come down to pick cotton for a summer wage. They are not respected, but they are treated with a certain level of deference, nevertheless, because if they leave, the cotton may not all get harvested, and it is essential that every possible bole be brought from the immense cotton bushes to the truck. Workers are paid according to the amount they pick in weight. They can get away with a certain amount of disrespectful talk and obnoxious behavior because it will be hard to replace them once harvest season has begun.

On a social par with hill people, but considered more of a community responsibility, are the sharecroppers. Sharecroppers are considered to be above Mexicans only. (There do not appear to be Black people, at the time referred to as ‘Negroes’, in this town or its surrounding community). One does not interact socially with them; they are wage-slaves, forced to give most of their crop to the landowner, and often suffering from malnutrition. They are described as thin and dirty. They are so demoralized that no real attempt is made to teach their children manners, and any discipline meted out is so extreme that it would earn them a trip from a social worker today (assuming someone told; it might be the local “secret”, though nothing to that effect is said; it is considered typical sharecropper behavior). It is considered “Christian duty” to feed extra vegetables from the garden to the sharecropper’s family, and the giving is done in such a way as to protect, to the extent possible, the pride of the recipients.

The local sheriff, known as Stick, has no respect from anyone. This appears to be because he DOES NOT WORK. The work ethic in this town goes wide and deep. While respectable people are in the fields breaking their backs from sun-up till sundown, the sheriff “takes naps in that patrol car” and comes around “nosing into things” when a crime has been committed. In point of fact, two murders take place more or less under his nose, and no one, not ANYONE will give him the full story. Luke is witness to both murders. They are SECRETS. Later, when he finally confides in his grandfather at a time when knowing the facts will not mean economic ruin for the family, he is told that he “did the right thing” in keeping his mouth closed. “Are you gonna tell Gran?” he asks his grandpa. “Nope.”

Mexicans, even those who have far better manners and are far more tidy when they depart the Chandler farm, who do as they are told (with one singular exception, and even he was sorely provoked) are on the bottom of the social heap, and racism is not veiled, it is right out there in the open. “The Mexicans” are provided for well, just as the hill people are. They are given lodgings in the barn, and Kathleen, Luke’s mother, has been campaigning for them to be brought in for picking season in a bus, not heaped on the back of trucks where they will become parched and sunburned. She puts out quilts and pillows in the well-swept loft, and takes them big baskets of vegetables “that they like” from her garden, and introduces these as part of the wage package, so that they will not feel they are accepting charity; her decency is above that of most white folks. But they are Mexicans, and when one of the hill people, a 17-year-old named Tally who has told Luke she’d like to go north and never pick cotton and see real snow, runs away to marry one of them, the whole Chandler family feels sorrow for the degradation to which the hill people have been submitted. The hill people’s head of household even suggests his daughter has been kidnapped, until a letter is found from his daughter, at which point the pretense implodes and the reality, that his daughter genuinely fell in love with someone with dark skin, is laid bare. The word “humiliation” is used repeatedly.

The hill people, though they work for a wage and are poorly clad, actually enjoy a higher standard of living than the farmers do. One of them, Hank, who bullies young Luke in unconscionable ways that he keeps “secret” so his father will not have to dismiss him and lose the whole family’s labor, brags endlessly about how his family has a car and a painted house. It is the disabled family member who takes pity on them, and together with funds earned by Tally, secretly begins to paint their house white.

Kathleen Chandler accompanies Gran more than usual to visit the sharecropping Latcher family with vegetables these days. They have been enlisted by the local church ladies, who want to know the Latchers’ secret. It is rumored that their fifteen year old daughter has become pregnant, and as the Latchers’ nearest neighbors, they have been deputized to learn the truth. Gossip is not viewed as unchristian, but is almost the only form of recreation available in this insular community. But the girl is kept deep inside the house, and Darla,the Latcher family’s mother, is lightning-quick at greeting them on the porch so that they can’t come inside. Ultimately, the secret is made manifest when the truth of Libby’s pregnancy is doubled with another, closer-to-home truth: Ricky, the 19-year-old who is away fighting in Korea, is the baby’s father. It is of course only Libby’s word…except for the fact that both Chandler women say that the baby boy looks just like Ricky. Again, Luke forsees humiliation and public shunning as real possibilities. NO ONE is supposed to even socialize with a sharecropping family unless they, too, are sharecroppers.

Then there is the house. It had been secretly painted in a back corner. About half the farmers had painted houses and half did not, so until now, having an unpainted house meant no embarrassment locally. Now, however, a house that is partly painted is just not acceptable. Because rain has ruined the crop and left his parents destitute, Luke gives up his dream of a Cardinals jacket to wear to school when it starts close to Christmas, and instead invests his own money in paint and brushes. Once more, Tally kicks in and buys more too, and hill people, Chandlers, and Mexicans all paint 3 sides of the family home. The Mexicans display gratitude this way because they know other farm families do not always show respect by offering bedding, clean sleeping quarters, a fan, and vegetables. They can’t pick because the crops are flooded, and while Eli Chandler, the patriarch, seeks employment for them elsewhere, they burn off the boredom by helping Luke, side by side. He begins to perceive that the Mexicans are real people.

Later, when the rains come harder, the Latchers are in danger of drowning. Eli and Luke’s father take him with them to rescue all eleven Latchers, and temporarily house them in the barn. Though Gran insists that they have enough to feed everyone in their own family and the Latchers too for the next 6 months, Luke isn’t so sure. Gran is doubling the food in her mind, but the Latchers have twice as many family members, including Ricky’s baby, who will only stop crying for the ultimate, unheard of luxury of store-bought vanilla ice cream.

Kathleen Chandler, the mama, has the final word, at least when it comes to Luke’s future. All along, she has told him he will NOT become a farmer. She has shared the home and kitchen of her in-laws with decency and grace for seven years or more; one year, Luke’s father went north to Flint, Michigan and worked in an auto plant long enough to cover all or most of the debt incurred, and then brought it home. Kathleen has gone to work on her husband. She wants to go to Michigan, for him to go to work in the plant (where his obnoxious but helpful brother has a job waiting for him), and leave the cotton fields, the dirt, and the poverty behind forever. They will have indoor plumbing, drive a car (“unheard of” in their tiny community, where everyone owns a truck for farming), and maybe even have a television set. And this is the most fascinating to me of all: ultimately, the second-most powerless person on the surface, after Luke only, is the one who determines her family’s fate. In the home of her in-laws, she has little to say and is occasionally overruled even in the discipline of her own child (though she usually prevails in that venue, as well as the vegetable garden, which will keep Gran, Grandpa and the Latcher family from starvation after they leave for Michigan). In the end, Luke states, the “final word” in what will happen to his smaller family–himself, his father, his pregnant mother (but that’s a secret)–will be up to his mother. His mother is the one who persuades his father that the time to break loose has come. They leave behind a painted house, with only a few boards at the top left undone when the paint and money ran out. His grandparents promise that when he “comes home”, those boards will be white, but Luke understands that he will never live in the painted house in the Arkansas hinterland again.

Shannon, by Frank Delaney *****

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Frank Delaney has done it again.

There are some writers that have such a gift for spinning a compelling tale while seamlessly weaving in subplots that the rest of us can but applaud. He’s clearly one of them. I was spellbound by his Ireland, but there are a lot of people with one remarkable book in them. I was surprised again, then, at how good Tipperary was. Now this.

Everything I’ve read by Delaney thus far (including Shannon) is set in some part of Ireland for most of the novel. He favors the period when the whole world is changing–World War I is either imminent, taking place, or we’re in the aftermath; Ireland struggles for her own freedom, and he doesn’t gloss over the errors and tragedies that go with this struggle–and I mentally note that it’s also the period of the Russian Revolution. He’s done a whole lot of research so that he can provide his novels with a rich, accurate background. His target audience is one with an interest in Irish history, but he is never dry, never lapses into the lecture-like style that I’ve seen in some writers who are specialists in a given academic area use when the narrative aims at their area of expertise. It’s riveting clean through. The people, whatever their station in life (we have several members of the Catholic clergy and a nurse foremost) are individuals first.

If you have a strong anti-Catholic bias, you may not like this story. There are some Catholic bad guys, for sure, though they aren’t two-dimensional ones, but you won’t see the pedophiles that have been the sole focus of the mainstream US press where Catholics are concerned. Rather, there are those who are corrupt ladder-climbers; there’s (oh my god) an assassin; and the protagonist, Robert Shannon, who is recovering from PTSD, then known as “shell shock”.

Altogether, I found it nearly magical. I will read anything that Delaney writes at this point; he’s that good!

Bittersweet, by Colleen McCullough ***-****

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bittersweetIf you’re looking for a light beach read to keep you company during what remains of summer, you could do worse than this frilly piece of historical fiction by Colleen McCullough.

You could also do better.

The story follows the lives of four sisters, two sets of twins who share the same father but have different mothers, one of whom is deceased. It takes them from their teens into their adult lives, skimming the surface of each without fully developing any of them.

At first I thought perhaps I was too harsh in my judgment; after all, McCullough wrote The Thornbirds, and not every book can be that strong. But consistently throughout the story she tells us what each woman is thinking, repeatedly tells us in what ways they are different, and because she does this with narrative rather than showing us these things through the story, it renders the whole effort slightly clunky. There are small changes in the way each of them regards the world, so each is slightly dynamic. Yet the thing that was missing for me was that connection that makes me want to talk to a character, or that makes me care deeply about how their story ends. In really good fiction—and my blog has plenty of examples, including love stories—the protagonist becomes so real that they are nearly tangible. I find myself daydreaming about what the character would think of this thing or that. It didn’t happen here.

Still, at bedtime I found myself reaching for this book rather than the others I am reading. It’s good mind candy when you don’t want to think too hard. It’s linear in the telling so there aren’t a lot of changes to keep straight.

Unconscionable, especially for historical fiction where the setting is primarily a background and the story devolves so heavily upon its fictional characters, is the use of the term “tar brush” to suggest that one of the sisters may have African ancestry somewhere in her genes. To bring out a term like that, there had better be a really strong reason related to the plot calling for such a nasty term, however common among white folk during this period, and McCullough doesn’t have one.

Bright spots are the early development of Charles Burnham, and the way Edda’s situation is resolved.

Read it for free or for cheap, but don’t spring for a hard copy.

One of Ours, by Willa Cather *****

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I always seem to love Willa Cather’s writing. Just imagining the country as it was a hundred years ago or more is time-travel of the imagination, and Cather can help a person get started, with her meticulous research and careful, thought-provoking shaping of the protagonist and other characters as well. I feel that the cover description provided on this site is a spoiler, since it takes the reader at least halfway through the book; if you haven’t read it yet and like strong historical fiction, save the goodies as a surprise.

Claude is a wonderful protagonist; he is flawed, and I find myself wanting to go up to him, as if he were before me, and tell him he needs to stand up for himself. And I want to yell, “Don’t DO it! Don’t marry her!” But he is at Cather’s mercy, and she shows us what love and beauty look like, but poor Claude also sees some real heart break. As a mother of grown sons, I identified somewhat with his mother, even though she is not a main character.

The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair *****

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thejungleIt’s not your best beach read, but it’s an important bookmark in the history of American literature.

The second wave of immigrants who came to the USA around the turn of the century (our setting is 1905) came mostly from Eastern Europe. Political turmoil and poverty were the push factors for myriad Italians, Greeks, Slavs, Turks and others who needed to get away, and the still vivid hope of the American dream, the possibility of social mobility unthinkable in Europe, was the pull factor. The Statue of Liberty still meant something back then.

It wasn’t as simple as it seemed, though. One of the primary large cities to which immigrants flocked was Chicago, and one of the chief industries that would offer them work–as usual, work that those born here would not do–was meatpacking. It looked like good money, even after meeting coworkers who had fewer body parts at the end of their tenure at the packing plant than they’d had going in. It was bloody, nasty, inhuman, and heartless, both toward the workers and the animals. And the stuff that landed on the conveyor belt went into the product to be sold at the supermarket, whether it belonged there or not.

I’ll let that sink in a moment.

Sinclair’s novel was intended to be a workingman’s call to arms. Cast off the bonds of wage slavery. Let the people who do the work own the means of production, set the time tables, and divide the spoils. He’d been reading Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, and believed his book would be a revolutionary vehicle. After all, working people read back then, and their attention spans had not been reduccd by the instant gratification that television and video games would later provide. He hoped it would be effective.

It was, but not the way he planned. When Americans read about all of the disgusting stuff that was landing in what they intended to serve for dinner, they revolted, and the Food and Drug Administration was born.

Today, meat packing workers are still among the most injured and the lowest paid, and they are still largely manned by immigrant workers.

The bottom line: read this for its historical importance and its place in American literature, but don’t expect to enjoy the experience. It’s pretty grisly material, but rightly so.

We Are Not Ourselves, by Matthew Thomas *****

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WearenotourselvesA haunting, epic story that stays with the reader long after the final page has been turned; Thomas has created a masterpiece. Thank you once and once again to Net Galley and Simon and Schuster for the ARC.

When I saw that some goodreads reviewers had marked this book at three stars, at first I wanted to grab those people, shake them by the shoulders and ask, “What is wrong with you?”

But eventually, I came to understand, or at least I believe I do, what it was that bothered them. Our protagonist is not always a lovable one. She’s deeply flawed and hard to bond with. Those who equate a lovable character with a well written book may indeed be disappointed, not only by this story, but by many of the Great Books.

As for me, I am impressed. My measure of extraordinary literature is that I am still thinking of, or even wishing I could have a conversation with the main characters after I have finished reading. I’ve moved on to other books, and yet this one remains with me. Aw, geez; poor Ed. We didn’t know. And what’s up with Connell, anyway? It speaks to me on a deeply personal level as I find myself comparing my own family and relationships with the Leary family. Given that I am a reader who absorbs a dozen books a month and sometimes more, this says a great deal.

Our protagonist is Eileen, who grows up in an Irish immigrant family that cuts across the typical large, boisterous, poor-yet-loving stereotype of the New York Irish. Instead she is the only child in a chilly, quiet apartment. Relationships are often strange and distant despite the fact that her parents love each other and her. The second bedroom is taken, for most of her childhood, by a tenant. Her father is a genial man, well loved among the Irish workingmen’s community, a union man and a hard drinker. Her mother is lonely, hardworking, and bitter until she also takes to drink; yet her parents don’t drink together, but apart. The only fun time is when relatives from Ireland come across the ocean and spill over into her family’s wee apartment as their final pit stop before finding a place of their own.

Eileen grows up knowing that she wants more.

As her hormones work their alchemy and her body grows and changes, she becomes disarmingly beautiful, and she understands that marriage may be her ticket to better things. Once she finishes college and becomes a nurse, she wants to marry a man of great capability and ambition. She believes she has found him when she meets Ed, a brilliant young scientist with a promising career ahead of him. Between the two of them, they ought to be able to bring in the money needed to live the good life. By the time children come, he should have climbed far and high enough that she can stop working and be happily domestic in a magnificent home. It is the dream of the 1950’s, though she wants something a bit finer than a suburban house with a picket fence.

Eileen’s grasping nature and her harsh behavior, at times, toward Ed and their son are off-putting. When their only child brings home a test marked 95%, her husband exudes praise while she asks what happened to the other five percent. I cringe. At times she seems to understand that she is showing no more warmth than her own mother did, yet the habits are ingrained. She does not reach out for the hug, does not easily part with praise. And as it becomes clear that her goals and Ed’s are not really the same, the marriage begins to founder.

The harder she pushes, the more irritated I grow with her. It’s like watching a relative who is bent on self ruin; I want to talk her out of this. I want to hit the “escape” key for her. I want her to be more empathetic, more flexible. But the one thing I absolutely don’t want to do is put the book down.

Then the unthinkable happens, not at all what I expected though, and everything that has gone before takes on new meaning. As events unfold, Eileen must change also.

To say more would be to spoil the read, and you should read it. Happily, this is one book that works just fine on a digital device, and I am grateful to the publisher and Net Galley for letting me read it that way. But if you are a reader who needs the tangible object in your hands, I will tell you that this is worth investing in. All you need is an attachment to excellent literature.

Absolutely brilliant. I look forward to seeing more of Matthew Thomas’s work in the future!