Category Archives: women’s rights

Margo’s Got Money Troubles, by Rufi Thorpe****

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Margo’s Got Money Troubles, by Rufi Thorpe, is a bold, inventive, and very funny novel about a young woman cut adrift in a difficult, expensive world. My thanks go to NetGalley and William Morrow for the invitation to read and review. This book is for sale now.

Margo is the daughter of a Hooters waitress and a former pro wrestler, an absentee father with a family of his own; her mother had been his woman on the side. Consequently, Margo has always understood that she would have to hit the ground running when she grew up, and so she’s enrolled in a junior college. When the brief affair with her English professor leaves her pregnant, she has nobody reliable to advise her. The women she confides in urge her to terminate the pregnancy, and of course, the professor does, too; yet Margo likes the idea of becoming a mother, and it’s her fetus. Nobody can make her do anything. She decides to keep it.

Her mother is about to marry a man with money and conservative values, and she sees Margo as a loose cannon that just might upset the whole ship, so she tells her to terminate or be cut off.

Wow, Mom. Really?

Margo’s roommates hadn’t agreed to share an apartment with a baby. They need to sleep! They have to get up early!

Early on, I’m rolling my eyes. Part of me is thinking that Margo is about as dumb as they come; part of me is wondering why no author in this entire world is writing—or, more likely, why no major publishing house is publishing—novels in which a young woman chooses to have an abortion and take back her body and her life. But I’m overthinking, because soon, Margo—who after all, is just young, naïve, and rudderless—admits her error. She loves her little boy, but she had no idea he would be so expensive, or that motherhood would be so difficult. She tells her father, who re-enters her life as her mother steps away,

 “’I shouldn’t have had him,’ as though some rip cord had been pulled inside her. ‘I know that, okay? Everyone told me it would ruin my life and it did. They were right, and I was stupid, and I didn’t get it. Okay? But now I’m here.’ And her father, who strangely enough becomes the most reliable adult in her life, says, ‘Yes. Now we’re here.’”

Later, Margo will comment that nothing can make a person pro-choice like having a baby.

Margo has been waiting tables, but she can’t find child care, and when she brings the baby to work, she’s fired. And the truth is, she doesn’t like leaving her baby. Then one day, while looking at her naked self in a full length mirror, she observes that she has huge boobs for the first time in her life. Men would pay to see this. She opens an account on OnlyFans.

And so this controversial choice becomes the crux of the story. Some friends reject her, and her mother has really had it with her now. But there are a lot of meaty conversations that are thought provoking, and so, even though this old lady schoolteacher reviewer is mighty uncomfortable reading about an online sex worker’s film process, there are related questions that cannot be ignored. For example, Jinx—her father—advises her against it, saying that she shouldn’t get mixed up with these kinds of girls, and she asks him, “What are ‘those kinds of girls’?” And it’s true. A man can send his dick pix out into the world any number of times and places, and whereas many will consider these gross, or obscene, which they are, how many people will condemn the guy’s entire character, his moral fiber, for having done it? So the double standard is screaming to be recognized.

Margo goes through a lot of grief, defending custody of her son when the skeevy professor resurfaces, as well as having to deal with housing crises and other problems. But the central issue lurking in the shadows is that of a young mother choosing sex work as a career.

I have to tell you quite frankly that I was way out of my comfort zone through much of this book. I am probably not part of its target audience, despite the fact that I was approached to cover it. Partway in, I considered not finishing it, but the quality of the writing is so strong that I kept going, and I’m glad I did.

The story is told from a third person omnipotent perspective, but it shifts in a surprising and funny way, and that’s all I will say about that, lest I ruin it. I wonder from time to time if we have an unreliable narrator, but this is more than that. This unusual point of view a brave choice, and I think she carries it off well.

There are a lot of worthwhile discussions that can spring from this novel; it’s fertile territory, if you’ll pardon the expression, for book clubs. It’s also being adapted for Apple TV. I recommend this book for any feminist that likes to laugh, and isn’t afraid to think outside the box.

Trouble in Queenstown, by Delia Pitt***-****

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Delia Pitts has been writing mysteries for quite some time, but she is new to me. In Trouble in Queenstown, she introduces hardboiled sleuth Evander Myrick. Myrick’s friends call her Vandy, and that helps to distinguish her from her elderly father for whom she is named; he’s in a memory care unit.

My thanks go to NetGalley, Macmillan Audio, and St. Martin’s Press for the review copies. This book is for sale now.

At first glance, I thought that this detective fiction was set in New Zealand. Queenstown, right? But in this case, the locale is Queenstown, New Jersey. The story opens with Vandy cleaning up a mess in her office just as Leo Hannah storms in and wants to see Evander Myrick. He assumes Myrick will be a Caucasian male, and that Myrick herself is a member of the cleaning staff.

Oops.

Hannah comes to hire Vandy in the wake of his wife’s murder. He knows exactly who did it, he tells her, and he wants her to prove it, starting with some surveillance. Vandy isn’t sure she should take this job, but she has to pay top dollar to keep her daddy in the best facility, so she reluctantly signs on. As the story progresses, there are numerous twists and turns, and the violence escalates. By the story’s end, three different people have tried to hire her for exactly the same case!

The thing I appreciate here is the way Pitts addresses cop racism. So many detective novels require the reader to suspend belief, to assume that every cop is fearlessly dedicated to finding out the unvarnished truth and arresting the perpetrator of the crime, regardless of race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. But as Vandy conducts her investigation, Pitts keeps it real. At one point the detective speaks with a salon stylist that worked on Ivy’s hair, and he tells her that Ivy was afraid of someone at home. Vandy asks if he contacted the police.

“’The police?’ He jerked his neck, pursing his lips as if I’d farted. ‘Girl, you think the cops came here?’ He sniffed. ‘You don’t look like a fool. Maybe I read you wrong.’”

Sadly, the second half of the book doesn’t impress me as much as the first half does. I have a short list of tropes that I never want to see again in a mystery novel, and she trips a few, including my most hated one. I won’t go into details because it’s too far into the story, and I don’t want to spoil anything, but when it appears, I sit back, disengage from the text, and roll my eyes. Ohhh buh-ruther. As I continue reading, I can see who the murderer is well in advance, and the climax itself is a bit over the top, though without the tropes, I mightn’t have noticed this last issue.

In addition to the digital review copy, I have the audio. The reader does a fine job.

The more mysteries a person reads, the staler tropes become. I am perhaps more sensitive than most readers, having logged over a thousand novels in this genre. Readers that have not read many mysteries are less likely to be aware of, and therefore bothered by overused elements, and so this book may please you much more than it did me. But for hardened, crochety old readers such as myself, I recommend getting this book free or cheap, if you choose to read it. Newer readers may enjoy it enough to justify the sticker price.

The Stepford Wives, by Ira Levin*****

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Ira Levin, legendary novelist and playwright, published The Stepford Wives in 1972, a time when feminist ideas were at a fever pitch for many, and a frightening development for others. Women’s rights were at the forefront in a way that they had not been since the suffragists had won the right for women to vote over 50 years earlier. Now the book is re-released in audio format, at a time when the advances won during that time have been rolled back in some places, and appear to be under attack everywhere. So although I was already familiar with this book, I jumped at the chance to listen to it and promote it; I wish Levin was still alive today, because we can use men like him.

Version 1.0.0

My thanks go to NetGalley and Blackstone Audio for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

Stepford, Connecticut appears to be idyllic; beautiful homes; rolling lawns; good schools. There’s no crime to speak of in Stepford, and Joanna and Walter jump at the chance to move their young family away from the city and into a lovely new home. The children make friends almost immediately, but for Joanna, it’s a little harder. All the women are stay home mothers—not unusual in 1972—but they are insular, preferring housework and beauty regimens over any outside interests, including other women. She finds two women that are friendly, and that have moved here fairly recently themselves, and she turns to them for solidarity. But then one of them begins to change, and Joanna has become suspicious. Is it something in the water? Why are Stepford women such docile, ornamental drudges?

This is a brief book, more of a novella than a novel, and that’s part of what makes it so effective. Levin uses spare prose and doesn’t let anything clutter his central message. In doing so, he creates a more spine chilling effect than a more description laden, dialogue rich novel could have done. And once you read it, you’ll never forget it.

I highly recommend this classic work of horror for women and those that care about them.

It’s a Privilege Just to Be Here, by Emma Sasaki****

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Emma Sasaki makes her fictional debut with the darkly amusing story of a mother and daughter caught up in a scandal at a prestigious private school. My thanks go to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for the audio galley. This book is for sale now.

Wesley Friends School is the prep school to which presidents and other high placed politicos send their teens, a place where they are nurtured as completely as any hot house flower, and then sent onward, hopefully to an ivy league college. Aki Hiyashi-Brown abandons her PhD and accepts a teaching job there in order for her daughter, Meg, to be able to attend; otherwise the tuition would be impossibly expensive. The school is overwhelmingly Caucasian, and so perhaps it’s unsurprising that Aki finds her face prominently displayed on all of the promotional materials the school disseminates, along with those of the few other teachers of color.

That’s all fine and good until the day when the fence outside is vandalized by spray paint reading, “Make Wesley white again.” Aki is ready to do what she’s been taught from the cradle: keep her head down, do her job, and not say anything. But Meg and her classmates have no intention of remaining silent. Before she knows it, Aki finds she has been assigned to be the head of the Racial Equity Task Force, a token job on a token committee that has more to do with appearances than with any actual desire for change.

She is given a script to follow and told not to offer up any of her own observations or opinions.

Soon, things spiral beyond the control of Wesley’s administration, and Aki is caught between doing what her bosses want her to do, and supporting her daughter and students in their quest for genuine change.

This book, which the author notes is based on her own experience, has me at hello. Though I am not a wealthy or connected individual, I did send my child to a private school for a few years, one which was very white, and which used my half-Japanese daughter’s face on its pamphlets a lot. I can’t not read this book, and whenever I have earbuds in, this is what I listen to. I find it well paced and engaging, setting just the right tone without over-moralizing or becoming strident. There are some great side characters as well; I like Aki’s husband and mother particularly, and appreciate the bond between Aki’s half-Japanese daughter and her Issei (first generation) grandmother.

However, my own husband is also Issei, and I asked him to listen to the reader during one of the many passages in which the grandma speaks to Aki in Japanese. “Is this reader’s Japanese as good as I suspect?” I asked, somewhat proud of my first year Japanese skills. He listened to two lines, laughed, and shook his head.

For this, I really do have to knock one star off my original five star rating. Perhaps if I had a digital review copy I could have rated that version higher, but I have what I have, and it’s problematic. Nevertheless, I appreciate this novel and the message it delivers, and I greatly look forward to reading whatever Sasaki publishes next.

The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club, by Helen Simonson*****

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Helen Simonson is the author of the bestselling novel, Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand. With her new release, The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club, she is once more in her element, creating believable characters and using them to skewer the pervasive racism and class snobbery of Britain, and also, in a smaller way, that of the U.S.  With outstanding word smithery and an unflagging pace, this historical novel should be number one on your summer reading list.

My thanks go to NetGalley and Random House for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

The year is 1919; the place is England. Constance Haverhill has been ousted from her job running an estate; the Great War has ended, and now the women that have been gainfully employed and done a fine job are unceremoniously ejected so that their jobs may go to the men that have returned from the conflict. For the time being, she has a position as a traveling companion to a family friend who’s recuperating at the seashore; once this situation ends, she has no idea where she’ll go or what she’ll do.

Out of nowhere comes Poppy, a daring young woman from a wealthy family. Poppy wears trousers and drives a motorcycle; she befriends Constance and sweeps her into her motorcycle club. Things become even more interesting when Poppy purchases a used biplane to bring home to her brother Harris, a handsome but severely depressed young man who’s lost a leg in the war. At one point he laments, “They look at me as if my brain has gone missing along with the leg. Or rather they refuse to look at me at all.”

Poppy is utterly fearless, challenging local authority and promoting women’s rights. She doesn’t care about the opinions of others; her eye is set on the horizon. And she can do that, because she has a soft nest in which to land. At the same time, Constance is always aware of the stark class division that prevents her from behaving as Poppy does.

“Respectability was the currency in which Constance knew she just trade for the foreseeable future. She…did not have Poppy’s wealth and position from which to defend herself against notoriety.”

There are a number of amusing side characters whose less progressive attitudes contrast with Poppy’s. The two women—also very wealthy—on the adjoining estate sniff at her exploits and declare them to be unladylike. The class division is also highlighted when Constance is offered a position with the hotel where she and Mrs. Fox, the family friend she accompanies, are staying. However, she is told that once she accepts the offer, she can no longer be a guest at the hotel, nor may she use the restaurant, which is a frequent gathering place of Constance’s new friends. No hobnobbing with the clientele will be tolerated; she must use the back door. Constance reflects to herself that wherever she goes, her friend Poppy will use the front door.

Britain’s racist attitudes toward people of color is also featured here, but in a way that does not hijack the plot. There’s an Indian guest of the hotel that is snubbed left and right; at one point, an American visitor attempts to have him excluded from the social events to which he’s been invited. This is resolved in a deeply satisfying manner, as is the issue of taboo friendships formed by Mrs. Fox.

If I could change one thing, it would be to add a bit more nuance. The bad characters are oh so bad; and while the good characters make the occasional mistake, we never doubt their complete goodness. However, this is a minor bone to pick, and overall this is a delightful book.

Highly recommended.

Piglet, by Lottie Hazell****

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“Such a special day.”

Piglet is an offbeat novel that marks the debut of author Lottie Hazell. The protagonist is a young woman named Pippa, but everyone calls her Piglet. This author has me before I open the book, because with a nickname like this, I have to see what’s behind it, and where it’s going. My thanks go to NetGalley and Henry Holt for the review copy; this book is available to the public now.

Piglet lives in London, far from the working class area where she was raised, and where the rest of her family still resides. She’s a cookbook editor for a publishing company, is engaged to marry Kit, who is handsome and comes from a well to do family, and they have recently purchased a gorgeous home. Her star is clearly rising.

It’s a tightrope walk, to be certain. People with money have expectations, and so it’s not easy for Piglet to advocate for herself in the presence of his family. But she genuinely likes them, and so she works with them—which generally means that they get their way. Her own family mildly embarrass her when the two families meet, but her folks won’t often cross paths with these people once she and Kit are wed.

Then, two weeks before the wedding, Kit confesses a terrible, terrible betrayal, and Piglet has to decide whether she is in or out. As she unravels, I watch in horror. Piglet, you see, is an emotional eater.

In many ways, Piglet is the protagonist I have been wanting to read all my life. So often female main characters respond to stress by not eating. The lesser characters around them cluck over how pale, how thin they’ve become, and I sit back on my ample behind and say, “Yeah, right.”

But Piglet’s stress eating is epic in scope, and I also worry that the resolution will involve therapy, a new diet and a wedding gown in a size smaller than anything she’s ever owned. And since this much comes from my own imaginings rather than the book, I’ll go ahead and tell you, no. That doesn’t happen, and I am so grateful.

For most of this novel, I feel an intimacy with the protagonist that is rare. I can’t wait to find out what happens next, but I also can’t tolerate interruptions, and so I choose my reading sessions carefully. I am fortunate enough to receive both the digital review copy and the audio galley, and at the outset, I do what is my usual routine in such circumstances, listening to it while I am doing something else, but with the DRC nearby so that I can make notes or highlight likely passages for quotes. But by the time I am about thirty percent in, that’s over, and instead I am listening while reading also, because how can I think of anything else?

There are two things that I am dying to know. First, does she stay with Kit? And more importantly, what terrible thing did he do? Piglet keeps this information close to her vest, but the few people she tells are uniformly horrified, and so I know it’s bad. But what is it? Just what the hell did he do?

The ending feels incomplete to me. There are so many things that Hazell could have done and didn’t that I am disappointed by what feels like a slightly bland resolution. This is a good book, but it could have been a great one.

Hazell’s word smithery skills are stellar, and when I was done, I found I’d highlighted over 150 passages. Obviously, I won’t use them all here. Most of the novel’s tone is quite serious, but there are a few moments of dark humor that leave me shaking my head in admiration. In particular, there’s a wedding photographer that makes me howl!

The narrator is outstanding.

One way or another, Lottie Hazell is an author to watch. I look forward to seeing what she produces next.

A Fever in the Heartland, by Timothy Egan*****

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Timothy Egan, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, is one of my favorite historians to read. His most recent book, A Fever in the Heartland occupied the bestseller lists for months, and rightly so. I took my time with it because it is a very uncomfortable read most of the way through, with the first half being much rougher than the last. I learned a lot from it, and this is clearly a case of truth being stranger than fiction.

The Klan was originally formed by former Confederate officers after the Union’s victory in the American Civil War. However, it was stamped out during Reconstruction, and was gone for fifty years. It was revived on Stone Mountain, Georgia, and the horrifically racist film by D.W. Griffin, The Birth of a Nation, which depicts African-American men as crazed rapists that drink to excess and lose their minds when a Caucasian woman is anywhere nearby, not only aided its reincarnation, but contributed one of its most feared symbols. No crosses were burned until it showed up on movie screens around the United States; the pointy hoods were shaped that way to make the men underneath them appear taller. Later, the women’s organization had robes with cardboard forms in their own pointy hats, because a night of terrorism is no excuse for a woman to let her hair get out of control.

At one point, one Caucasian man in three belonged to the Klan. There was even a children’s organization, with activities similar to boy and girl scouts.

The woman that is at the center of this story, Madge Oberholzer, was the secretary in the office of D.C. Stephenson, the Grand Dragon of the newly revived Klan. Despite the hugely moral speeches he gave around the country extolling traditional values (for the time) including the avoidance of alcohol; women that remain virgins until marriage and then live their lives in service to their husbands and young children; Protestantism, with regular church attendance; Caucasian separation from other races and ethnicities; and unquestioning patriotism, Stephenson himself was a drunk, as well as a serial rapist and sexual sadist, fond of using his teeth to mutilate the women that he savaged. Madge was the one victim that would not crawl into the shadows, and she literally used her last dying breaths to expose him.

I was given a hardcover copy of this book when it was at its height of popularity, but it took me a long time to get through it, because I could only stand to read a few pages at a time. The end was enormously satisfying, however, and even in the worst parts, there are occasional moments that made me want to stand up and cheer. For example: the Klan plot to go the University of Notre Dame—a Catholic university– and burn the golden dome there was foiled by its football team, and the melee that ensued when they physically attacked the Klan is the origin of their nickname, The Fighting Irish. (The dome survived.)

Often when I read nonfiction history, I can’t help imagining how much more interesting it would be if it were written as historical fiction. That was never the case here. Firstly, if this were a fictional account, reviewers everywhere would have been brutal, because nobody would ever believe a story like this one. But the fact is, it’s entirely true, and Egan is second to none when it comes to research. Also, his conversational narrative style is as interesting as the best historical fiction; the pace here is slowed in places, not by any lack of authorial fluency, but by the horrifying nature of this true story.

For those that have the capacity to read something like this without becoming morbidly depressed or coming unstuck, this book is highly recommended. For everyone else, I recommend finding something lighter and more uplifting to alternate with it, and to never read this at bedtime. You won’t want it in your dreams.

On the Line, by Daisy Pitkin*****

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On the Line, a labor memoir by Daisy Pitkin, tells the true story of a grassroots struggle to organize a nonunion laundry in Arizona as part of an industry-wide unionizing campaign. My thanks go to NetGalley and Algonquin for the invitation to read and review. This book is for sale now.

Daisy is an organizer for UNITE, a labor union that organizes textiles, laundries, transportation, service workers, and some others, created by the merger of ILGWU (International Ladies Garment Workers Union) and ACTWU, the American Clothing and Textile Workers Union (of which this reviewer was once a member and union activist.)  She is working at the ground level, approaching workers in the parking lot, partnering with a woman named Alma that worked there and could talk to other workers inside the factory.

The memoir is written in the second person to Alma, and at first this seems odd, but as I read, I realize this is an effective and intelligent choice. By addressing Alma and the things that Alma has said and done during this fight, as well as the things the author did, along with what they did together, and the occasional differences of opinion they had and how they resolved them, she avoids making herself sound like a martyr to the cause. It would not read nearly so well in the first person, with the reader as audience.

The tasks of the workers all revolve around the commercial laundering process. Immense bags of dirty linens weighing up to 300 pounds are pushed off of the delivery trucks in rolling carts.

“The linen moves down the belt, you said, and then you flicked your arms back and forth to demonstrate how you and the other sorters toss sheets into one bin, towels to another, gowns to a third, and so on. You said, Sometimes they speed up the conveyor, and we don’t have time to be careful. There is a lot of blood and puke and feces. You said, We don’t get shoe covers, so some of us take off our shoes and drive home in our socks. You said, Our gloves are too big—they slip off our hands. Sometimes when they tear open, we have to handle the soiled linen with exposed skin…you were demanding a seemingly simple thing: to work your eight-or-ten-hour shift and come home unharmed. You wanted gloves that hospital needles cannot puncture. You wanted face masks to keep the blood and fluids from other bodies from entering your bodies. You wanted safety guards put back on machines where they had been removed. You wanted linen dust cleaned from the rafters to prevent fires.”

Safety rules are routinely flouted. Dirty linens land on the belt, and the belt feeds them into the mouth of a tunnel washer. When the washer jams, workers sometimes have to crawl through hot, bleachy, contaminated water to clear it and get it working. The supervisors are supposed to cut power when someone is in there, but they don’t. Ultimately it’s a choice for the owners to risk a possible, but unlikely fine from the government, or frequent decreases in production, which cut into profits. The workers are expendable; they can always find more. The wash and dry departments of industrial laundries are the most fatal of all industries, according to U.S. government statistics.

Daisy and Alma are working on a shoestring. When they have to be away from home overnight in order to meet workers as they go in or come out, they sleep in the car. Their signs are made by hand with posterboard and Sharpies. Initially, all of the workers sign cards, but then management begins a campaign of threats and intimidation. Not all of the workers are in the States legally, and most of them don’t know their legal rights. Most of them rescind their votes, and then it’s an uphill climb to get them to sign again.

This is a topic that is of great interest to me, and I was supposed to have read and reviewed this book in April of 2023, but my stomach twisted as I read of the horrific obstacles encountered by workers and by Daisy, and halfway through I had to put it down. Only recently did I slap myself upside the head and resume reading.

In any labor union, there are two sets of obstacles. The first, the one that is obvious, is the company, the bosses. Unions cut into profits, so the owners or boards of directors nearly always fight unionization. The second, and lesser known, is the union officialdom at the top. These people spend more time around the bosses and other highly paid union officers than they do around the workers, and they become jaded, sometimes contemptuous of those that they are supposed to represent, whose dues pay their salaries. When Daisy is eventually promoted, she discovers it’s harder to do anything that is in the interests of the clientele.

The book also includes a fair amount of union history, and it’s clearly explained, well woven throughout the narrative.

For those that are interested in unions and labor history, this is an excellent resource. But don’t read it at bedtime; it will do things to your dreams.

The Women, by Kristin Hannah****

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Kristin Hannah can draw character like nobody else. Her latest novel, The Women, tells the story of Frances “Frankie” McGrath, a young woman from an upper middle class family that follows her brother to Vietnam, serving as an army nurse. Frankie is a character that will stay with me long after I read dozens of other novels, and this experience is made even more memorable by the talented Julia Whelan, the voice actor that narrates the audio version. My thanks go to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, and Macmillan Audio for the review copies. It will be available to the public February 6, 2024.

Frankie is twenty years old when we meet her, and her family is throwing a party for her big brother and best friend, Finley, who is leaving to serve in the U.S. Navy. Kennedy is in the White House, and most Americans still bear an implicit trust in their government. But Frankie is worried about Fin, and doesn’t like that he is about to put himself in harm’s way. He reassures her, “It isn’t dangerous, Frankie. Trust me. I’m a Naval Academy graduate, an officer with a cushy assignment on a ship. I’ll be back in no time. You’ll hardly have time to miss me.”

Frankie completes her nurse’s training, then signs on to join her brother, but before she is even packed, the telegram arrives. Finley is dead; killed in action.

The plot itself is unremarkable. Yes, war is hell; yes, friends die. And yes, a married man that sees an attractive, vulnerable American woman in a place where they are scarce, will lie like a rug in order to get close to her. But in Hannah’s hands, every joy and every sorrow are real and visceral, because we believe.

Frankie serves as a combat nurse at the front, and works in every possible hard situation. Sometimes the lights go out during surgery because a bomb has fallen; at one point her sleeping quarters is bombed and has to be rebuilt. She works for days on end without sleep when it’s necessary. And the trauma follows her home.

My only quibble with this otherwise outstanding story is the emphasis Hannah places on the abuse of returning troops by the public. She brings in the old saw about them being spat upon and called baby killers, even though an easy search confirms what I remember: this is mostly myth. Just as women weren’t really burning bras, most troops were not greeted with abuse. It’s true that the wildly patriotic parades that greeted the troops that returned from World War Two are not there for these men and women, but then, the Korean War vets didn’t see them, either. Historical fiction should honor history, not rewrite it.

With this caveat, I recommend this book to you. Do read it; it’s a damn fine novel. But do so critically, because you can’t always believe everything you read.

The Wind Knows My Name, by Isabel Allende****

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Isabel Allende is a living legend, a literary genius and fierce defender of human rights, foremost of women and immigrants. The Wind Knows My Name is a novel that features the struggle of two generations of immigrants, those that came to the U.S. during the Holocaust, and those that are coming here now from Latin America. Allende moves us seamlessly from one set of characters to the next, and then back again.

My thanks go to Net Galley and Random House Ballantine for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

I have been reading Allende’s work for decades. To read her stories is to be transported. In this case, the protagonists include two small people designed to possess the human heart. Samuel is a Jewish violin prodigy, still quite small as this story unfolds; his parents send him to safety when the Nazi occupation of Vienna takes hold, thinking that they will square things away and join him later. Of course, they are never able to do that. Our present-day protagonist is Anita, a Guatemalan immigrant child that is nearly blind. She is separated from her family at the U.S. border, and does her best to stave off loneliness by talking to her sister, Claudia, who is dead.

On the one hand, Allende is, to my way of thinking, on the side of the angels here politically. She always is. But if this feels a bit lecture-like to me, a diehard fan, it seems unlikely that she will reach a lot of newer readers. Usually I bond with her characters and carry them around with me for some time after I have turned the last page, but this time I find I am watching the page numbers go by. The person I feel most affinity for is Samuel, the tiny child clinging to his precious violin, but he disappears quickly and when he returns, he is an old man. Another reviewer commented that too much is told here, and too little shown, and that sounds right to me. And as much as I love Samuel, I also am burned out on historical fiction set during World War II. I hope in her next project, the author will turn in another direction.

To Allende’s many devoted readers, this book is recommended with the above caveats.