A Street Cat Named Bob, and How He Saved My Life, by James Bowen *****

Posted on by

AstreetcatnamedbobHow does a young man from a middle income family end up sleeping on the streets in a cardboard box, addicted to heroin?

Answer: it happens all the time. It’s closer than you think.

James Bowen does a really fine job relating, in this lovely little memoir, how it happened to him, and the role Bob, a street cat who adopted him, had in pulling him off of Methodone and toward recovery and a life in mainstream Britain.

Here’s the disclosure: I won this book through the Goodreads.com giveaways. I say this on the fifth day of my new blog with a kind of nostalgia, since this was the first book I got free in exchange for a review; it’s been just over a year since then. The review to follow is the one I originally wrote for him back then.

James Bowen’s memoir smacked me upside the head by showing me a bias I did not know I had. First, I assumed this might be poorly written, and successful in England for the content and novelty of its subject matter rather than any attendant writing skill. When I saw the elegantly simple text, the well-crafted pacing, the deftness with which the writer weaves his life’s narrative in and out of the tale about himself and his cat, I started to look for a co-author or an “as told to”. In short, I did not really believe that someone who had (as he put it) “fallen between the cracks” of society would have the skill to write this book.

Slap my Marxist mouth! I am appalled by the social Darwinist that was lurking in the shadows of my own character, and I thank Bowen for casting that particular demon out by the dumpster, where it belongs.

Bowen has a few really brilliantly descriptive passages here, but he is not a master wordsmith. What works is the continuity of the story without any pauses for maudlin self pity. What amazes and strikes deeply, at least for me, is the way he continues for an astonishingly long period of time to assume that the cat will not want to stay with him. He has taken it in, but assumes that the streets will do better for this critter than he ever could. Time and again, he offers the cat the opportunity to run away and reject him, even after he has spent nearly all of his hard-earned money gained as a street musician on veterinary care, food, and wow, even a microchip (which my own little beagle does not have). Bob has the character to stick around, though, and eventually, in a truly marvelous moment, when a well-to-do woman offers Bowen a thousand pounds for his cat, he in turn asks her the price of her youngest child.

Sometimes people who have seen life’s dark underside commit terrible crimes and take a passive voice in discussing them later. They didn’t do something, but rather, it happened. A recent headline in my home city blared that a killer had apologized for his crimes, but when I read the article, the “apology” turned out to be, “I am so very sorry for the things that happened.” Though Bowen is surely no killer, I was watching for it. I’ve worked with youngsters who have been in and around the juvenile “justice” system here in the States. They get good at distancing themselves from their own wrongdoing, seeing it as tragic but inevitable, and adults do it too. But Bowen does not do that and does not go there. Anything he did, was something he did. If it was wrong, he owns that too. It gives his writing integrity that those who feel terribly sorry for themselves cannot impart.

So here it is. This book is terrific, and you should buy it and read it. When I entered the giveaway, I signed an agreement that this review could be used for marketing purposes by the author and his agents. I wasn’t required to write it, though, and if you’ve read my other reviews, you know I never pull punches. This one was well earned, by the way the man pulled himself out of the abyss, for himself and for his kitty, and for the way he tells the story.

Good job, Bowen.

Horns, by Joe Hill ****

Posted on by

hornsjoehillI have to start with three things the reader should know. Then I’ll get on with it.

First, if you are looking for Stephen King II, you won’t find it here. The horror genre is the only thing I can see to connect these two gents, besides DNA. Well, if we’re picky, they both choose New England settings all or most of the time. But this writer does not use his father’s voice or style.

Second, if you have deeply held beliefs that include supernatural events, beings, and/or places, including the possibility of a bad afterlife, you may be offended by this book. He is bold, and puts it right out there in the first few pages. If you’re thinking of buying it and it may or may not push your buttons, read the first chapter before buying, or look at the first few pages online. You’ll know right away. (A taste is in the quote below).

Last but not least, if like me, you have a genuine phobia of snakes, step aside. They didn’t show themselves till the last half of the book, and I was hooked by then. If this book had been out there ten or fifteen years ago, I would have had to give it up because of them, & it would have disappointed me, because the plot is engaging and also because I paid for the book. Once they show up, they show up a lot, in vivid detail. I skimmed where I could during their scenes and read the rest a little quickly, and I got through it without the nightmares that used to plague me.

Okay. So that’s out of the way. I will tell you, I like the guy’s writing. It isn’t seamless, doesn’t mesh fluidly like the finest artists produce; I found a couple of forced elements at the end, and there is a dream sequence that is way too long and that the writer leans on way too hard to explain the list of questions he’s piled up. That said, this is a very fun ride.

The plot feels original to me, perhaps because I have never seen anyone address this subject matter with wry humor. It is cynical yet engaging. Who hasn’t wondered what hell might be like, should it exist? “Hell” is the title of the first section, and we see it immediately. Here’s a sample from page 9, which is really the third page of the story itself. He is looking at a roadside memorial, the type you see along the highway where somewhat met with mortality and their loved ones have been drawn there. It is his sweetheart that has died, and the protagonist is hung over, physically altered (title), and he sees what has been left for his beloved:

“Someone—Merrin’s mother probably—has left a decorative cross with yellow nylon roses stapled to it and a plastic Virgin who smiled with the beatific idiocy of the functionally retarded.

“He couldn’t stand that simpering smile. He couldn’t stand the cross either, planted in the place where Merrin had bled to death from her smashed-in head. A cross with yellow roses. What a fucking thing. It was like an electric chair with floral-print cushions, a bad joke. It bothered him that someone wanted to bring Christ out here. Christ was a year too late to do any good. He hadn’t been anywhere around when Merrin needed Him.”

At some point, the reader must wonder… how much of his thinking is really him, and how much of it has to do with the growths on his head? I won’t tell you, but ultimately, Hill lets us know to some degree.

If there is an echo of any writer, it is that of Michael Chabon, who is quoted twice, once at the beginning of the book, and once later, where he uses a quotation from The Yiddish Policemen’s Union about guilt. (He does not cite the work, only its writer, but I recently read it and recognized it). There is some of Chabon’s playful language and the way that he teases us with the plot, but Hill is his own writer, and it’s just as well, because no one will ever be able to replicate what Chabon does. Were Hill to try, he would find himself kneeling at the feet of the master (Chabon, not the devil, LOL).

I loved this story, warts and all, and suspect that this writer will do some really fine things in the future. As an early literary effort, this is strong.

I should add that because I am not religious at all, nothing here that is said about God or Satan disturbs me; it may be an obstacle to others, but Hill is gutsy and true to himself in his writing, even if it costs him readers. The language is crafted skillfully, and I suspect it will remain so throughout his career.

In an age of virtually unchallenged censorship, it is refreshing to see a man tell his story the way he wants to tell it.

Ballerina: Sex, Scandal and Suffering Behind the Symbol of Perfection, by Dierdre Kelly ****

Posted on by

Ballerinasexsufferingscandal I had originally been interested in reading ballerina Gelsey Kirkland’s 1986 expose of the ballet world, Dancing On My Grave. I’ve never been interested in dancing myself, having found out early that I was born with two left feet. However, middle age has found me reasonably well read in the areas at which I excel, and that has given me the freedom and interest to read about sports, ballet, and other things that have never been a part of my personal universe. I already know about my interests; now let’s see about someone else’s.

I became more interested when I found out that the physical therapist I’ve worked with is a ballerina with Pacific Northwest Ballet (NW USA). I was shocked! I asked her whether that wasn’t pretty terrible for the body, but she said things were changing, and indeed, although she is a slender person who walks with the distinctive grace of a ballerina, she is not emaciated, and appears to be the picture of health. So when I ran across Kelly’s e-book, given me as part of a gift bundle, I decided to have a look.

Kelly has done a lot of research, and for the most part (and in all ways central to the ballet), she really appears to know her field. She begins with the French “Opera rats” of the 1500s who were either recruited or often, promoted by their mothers as dancer-prostitutes during the dark times. (Its roots are in Greece, where fencing began.) The first publicly famous ballerina was La Fontaine, who starred in “Le Triomphe de l’Amour, at the Academie Royale de Musique, the first recorded appearance of professional ballerinas on the proscenium stage”. However, the moneyed class of men showed up for these performances, not to watch the pretty dancers, but to choose a courtesan, and the girls were taught at early ages to preen themselves to this expectation. On the one hand, those who proved themselves desirable got to eat, and so did their families; on the other, they worked like slaves, and in at least one case, a ballerina died young of venereal disease (early 1700s). Though it was possible to live at home and not become a courtesan while dancing ballet, it was unusual. This dubious opportunity had spread across Europe by the 1700’s, to Sweden, Italy, and Prussia. The French dancer Camargo created the first dancing slippers, and offered erotic promise as well as improved physical movement on the stage by moving her hemline up nearly to what fashion magazines now refer to as “ballerina length” (comparison mine, based on the photo in the book and her reference to raised skirts). Camargo also choreographed her own works, & not until I had read the full book did I appreciate how much power this represented. Guimard was the last famous French ballerina prior to the revolution.

During the “second empire” of the 19th century (a backlash against the French Revolution), Emma Livry declined to wear flame-proofing on her costume because it interfered with the other-worldly appearance she wanted to project as a Romantic dancer. (Here I found myself wondering whether the word of a 14 year old ballerina would permit the exception to be made today!)At a dress rehearsal, she fluffed her gown out and was instantly consumed in flame. She was saved by a stage hand only to live out 8 more months in horror and agony, and then die of her wounds.

“Russian ballet was rooted in the culture of the disenfranchised,” the author explains. Here is where we move off of Kelly’s turf and onto mine; she all but ignores the effect of the Russian Revolution, merely noting that there was experimentation with the dance during that period, and that the revolutionary “angry mobs” were outraged when the tsar (here I would add, as brutal a dictator as ever lived) let the peasantry freeze but sent 4 military trucks full of coal to his ballerina mistress, Kschessinska. Consequently, Lenin chose her balcony, which had become a symbol of the effete ruling class, to address his audience after the revolution. (Lenin did not revel in the luxury, but had contempt for it, using her sunken bathtub as an ashtray.) Kelly does point to changes in Russia such as “emancipation of women” and “mass democratization”, but does not comment much on how this changed ballet, apart from no longer pushing women into concubinage. I found this glossing over a bit strange, since she had just stated that Russia was the center stage of ballet; it could be she had difficulty obtaining more material. By 1931 (and Stalin), international ballet superstar Pavlova was able to dance her way to an early grave by dancing while very ill against her doctor’s wishes.

The 20th century introduced the choreographer as the new, higher power in ballet. Kelly puts more voice and less detachment into the second half of this ballet history, taking serious exception to New York’s late star director, George Balanchine, whose emphasis on frailty among his dancers and caustic remarks about the appearance of individual dancers in front of others created the toxic culture of anorexia and bulimia which gradually took over the world-wide stage for ballerinas everywhere. Numerous cited instances of ballerinas starving, yet still feeling too fat, and of instance after instance in which ballerinas were simply fired from their low-paying but hard-won positions if they attempted to advocate for themselves. Gelsey Kirkland’s memoir (the one I had originally set out to read, but couldn’t find) says that Balanchine told her “repeatedly” to “eat nothing”. Ballerinas were subsisting on coffee and chewing gum, and in addition to many other health problems, experienced more fractures because their bones had been deprived of nutrition.

One small error was the author’s nod to women’s rights issues and their effect on ballet. I understand that her realm is not feminism, but ballet, but once she decided to include it, she needed to avoid making errors. She says in this volume that “Everywhere,women were burning their bras” but this is one case where there is no citation. This is because it is myth and legend, rather than fact. Again, she has moved out of her field and into mine (contemporary U.S. and Russian history), and offered a non-fact to bolster her own arguments.

The arguments themselves are well-taken here, and are well argued in the book. Though there are progressive companies, mostly, it appears, on the US west coast and Canada, as well as Australia, where dancers are offered nutritional expertise and encouraged to envision a future without ballet, abuse and eating disorders continue. Most problematic may be that the very ballerinas who need work teaching, are those who previously starved themselves in the “old” Balanchine-rooted style, are coaching the new ballerinas and mis-teaching and mis-training them to harm their own bodies.

I won’t go into more detail about the latter half of the book, because something should be left to the reader. There are myriad outstanding quotations that make this a very interesting read.

The jury is still out, in my opinion, as to whether there is any wholesome way for a ballerina to practice and earn a living while taking care of her body. Companies that embrace modern dance, such as Alvin Alley (California, USA) seem to fare a little better, but that is my take merely from the little knowledge I have, put together with having read this book. If the history of ballet interests you, I encourage you to read it yourself.

Blind Descent, by Nevada Barr*****

Posted on by

blinddescentOf all of the riveting tales Barr has spun around her park ranger protagonist, Anna Pigeon, this is, I think, the most compelling (and I have read them all)! For those that want to know, it’s the sixth in a long series, each of which is set in a national park.

Have any issues with claustrophobia? If yours is intense, you may need to give this one a miss. It involves caving and spelunking, including oh my stars crawling in a tiny horizontal tunnel where five extra pounds put on over a last-minute cheesecake just could mean the end of you. Once you’ve gone miles and you can’t go forward, and your light is out…what are you supposed to do, go backwards? It’s not like it’s all one tunnel. There are places you can fall, wrong turns you can take. After all, it was not made to be entertainment, it’s a seriously bad-ass part of Mother Nature that I don’t care to think about too hard.

Now, imagine that you are on such an intense journey, and that you are Anna Pigeon (whose only really detrimental characteristic is a stereotypical view of large people…you know, lazy, poor character, untrustworthy…I said something on Barr’s website once and she responded that this is her character’s perspective, so if you are sensitive about snarky remarks regarding people who have any extra meat on their bones, beware the whole series). Okay, now with that digression aside, imagine you are Anna Pigeon, and because you are a buff, toned ranger with a good reason to do so, you have headed into one of these caving expeditions; you’re in a tight spot; and it is only there that you realize that someone on the expedition would prefer you not make it out again.

Barr’s bias against sizable people aside, her writing is otherwise so impeccably skillful that I have no choice but to give her all 5 stars. Don’t read it right before you go to sleep, unless you are COMPLETELY untroubled by things that go bump in the night!

I Been in Sorrow’s Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots, by Susan Straight *****

Posted on by

IBeeninsorrow'skitchenWho knew that there is a completely separate people living on the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina? They are descendants of escaped slaves, and the language they speak, known as “Gullah” or “Geechee”, is a dialect similar to Creole English, but it also uses sentence structure that is borrowed from African languages and what Wikipedia calls African “loan words”. I was introduced to this culture by this wonderful novel, written by the talented Susan Straight. It was written some time ago, but remains a personal favorite; your best bet is to order it used.

The story’s protagonist is Marietta, who grows up in this isolated environment in the 1950’s, She’s written several good novels, but this one may be the most memorable so far. Her protagonist lives in an almost unreachable island off the Carolina coasts. Deep back in a nearly impenetrable area that is technologically about 100 years behind, a flushing toilet and an electrical outlet are unseen. Yet tourists somehow get there (god, aren’t they everywhere?) and so she and her family eke out a living by cutting the reeds that grow in the swamps and weaving them into intricate baskets.

She learns early that if a girl (teenage life is unknown in this culture) is six feet tall and very dark, the pale tourists will be frightened and they’ll leave. This gave me pause. I’m not generally into the whole ‘white guilt’ thing; I prefer action to introspection. But I did wonder: if a very dark woman who was seated near me suddenly stood up and she was six feet tall (to my just over five feet), would I take a step back? I don’t think I would now, but there was a time when I would have. The startled reaction comes from isolation and unfamiliarity. I grew up in a very Caucasian neighborhood; there were hundreds of students in my graduating class, and except for the foreign exchange students, there was only one African-American student. The first thing I did, upon gaining independence, was to move straight to the inner city. Isolation wasn’t for me.

But let’s get back to Marietta. When her mother dies, she is forced to move to the mainland, and experiences culture shock. She has to learn to speak standard English; everything is extremely different. Seeing the world through Marietta’s eyes made me view things very differently. What comes of it is a really off-beat civil rights lesson.

How many white authors have the nerve to write as if they can see into the very soul of an African-American protagonist? I only know of one, and I think she carries it off really well. It’s a gutsy thing to do. There’s good reason for it: Straight grew up as virtually the only Caucasian in a Black neighborhood in Riverside, California. Culturally, she considers herself Black.

If this sounds interesting to you, give it a try. See what you think, and let me know. I hope to add a discussion page to this site, which is nearing its one-week anniversary. What could be a better topic for conversation than a really good book?

I

And Ladies of the Club, by Helen Hooven Santmeyer *****

Posted on by

andLadiesoftheclubThis tome was touted, at the time of its first publication, as the book written by “a little old lady in a nursing home”. May we be forever ashamed to pigeon-hole the elderly in such a manner again. What they MIGHT have said, is that this woman was a college dean of students and a professor of English. She was too busy to finish her book until her retirement. How lovely it was that she lived long enough to see it published!

In sumptuousness and richness, it is like Gone With the Wind without the racism. Most wonderfully of all, it is written in the manner in which time seems to go by, as we follow the life of a woman graduating from a women’s college in the late 1800’s. When she is young, a single year takes up many chapters, but when she is very elderly, one chapter spans years and years. As we age, time goes by so quickly.

Her use of the language is so brilliant that I now count hers as one of my favorite novels. It is thicker than some dictionaries, but infinitely more absorbing, and so I read it twice, once when I was a young mother with my first tiny babes at home; we were poor enough that I saved box tops and waited for double coupon day to buy groceries, but the Book of the Month Club was our one luxury, and they sent this. I read it again later when I was teaching. I gave my mother a copy for Christmas one year, and she loved it too.

I just may go back and read it again..
If you have grown up in the era of instant gratification and sound bites, this is not your book. This is a book to curl up with on a chilly afternoon and let the world fade away. Patience and a fairly high vocabulary level and awareness of the past will help, but give it a try if you aren’t sure. It will be worth it.

Drowned Hopes, by Donald Westlake *****

Posted on by

drownedhopesA guy gets out of prison, and he goes to get the loot where he buried it. Unfortunately, he’s been gone quite awhile. A dam has been built and the water for a whole town is on top of it now. In order to get to it, he just may have to drown the whole town.

The protagonist is the guy he goes to see about it. Our protagonist, of course, is not a big-time hoodlum with a heart of flint. Westlake doesn’t write that way. No, our guy is callous, certainly; selfish, no doubt. But he does not have anywhere CLOSE to the hard-heartedness required to drown a whole town. And so it devolves upon him to find a way to get the loot, but not kill the town.

Good luck with that.

Funny as hell, but of course, in a slightly dark way, like all of Westlake’s comic capers.

I confess that when a really amazing writer dies, I feel the impulse to review their work to reduce the possibility that it will fade into obscurity. I discovered Westlake’s work about a year after he died. He wrote for fifty years; his Dortmunder series, of which this novel is the seventh, is where most of his funniest stories are found. This title is my favorite among them…and yes. I hunted down every one of them, and when I could not buy them second hand, I asked for them as Christmas and birthday gifts until I had sucked the entire series dry.

I hope you’ll enjoy them as much as I have.

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, by Fannie Flagg *****

Posted on by

friedgreentomatoesIf I had to whittle several decades of reading down to thirty favorite books, this one would make the cut. It is wonderful on so many levels. Flagg has published a number of glorious, whimsical yet not shallow novels, always set in the deep South. This one is the jewel in her literary crown.

Have you seen the movie? If you have, this book may be easier for you to read. I read it, and absolutely (as you can see) loved it. The issue for other readers I’ve talked to is that the book hops back and forth in terms of setting, including time period, and it doesn’t provide an obvious heads-up that this is what is happening.

There are two stories being told, one that of a contemporary woman who is unhappy with her life, menopausal and fearful that she is losing her husband’s attention, bored and feeling worthless. She is spending part of her weekend at a nursing home where her husband’s wife resides, but the woman hates her and won’t let her in the room. It is in the lobby where she is faithfully stationed, downing the candy stash from her purse for comfort, that she meets one of the home’s residents, who tells her pieces of her life story, a little more each visit. But in the book, we are taken back in time in other ways. Suddenly we are reading a small town newspaper, and if you are a person who skips chapter headings, you’re likely to find yourself entirely confused.

I won’t give away more of the plot, but for the time in which it was written, this novel bravely took up one progressive (IMHO) cause about which not much was being written. It’s very subtle. Other parts of the story will leave you laughing so hard that you either can’t catch your breath, or if you are old enough, you may not hang onto…something else.

Highly recommended.

I Freed Myself: African-American Self-Emancipation in the Civil War Era, by David Williams *****

Posted on by
IfreedmyselfWilliams is smoking hot when it comes to the role of African-Americans in the American Civil War. The overstatement that Lincoln freed the slaves rubs many of us, and his thesis that not only did the slaves largely set themselves free, but were pivotal to the Union’s ultimate victory, is a strong one.

In Marxist organizations, there is an expression for a political over-correction. It’s called “bending the stick too far back”. The idea is that you want the stick to be straight up, but sometimes when something has been done wrong, and once the evidence piles up until the reader cannot believe that anyone was dumb enough to think otherwise, it can cause other mitigating facts to be obscured; thus, the stick is bent too far the other way. And although I really like the work Williams has done here, and am making my 4.5 rating round up to 5 lest anyone not read this scholarly, well documented work, I do think he has made an error or two by disregarding the dynamics of the war and the decision-making process. It’s easy to do.

Actually, when I taught about this subject, I treated Lincoln and his role in it largely the way Williams does here, and that was a mistake. I used the same quotes Williams uses, and said that every American president basically does whatever he is pressured to do by those who hold the economy in their grip.

I was mistaken, and Williams is too, in this one way. Lincoln was such a friend to the Black man, in fact, that his name did not even appear on Southern presidential ballots (according to Catton, who notes it in the first volume of his trilogy). It was exactly because of this known fact that South Carolina gave notice of its secession even before Lincoln was inaugurated. And when Lincoln was being smuggled from his home to Washington, DC, plans for what to do once in office were prefaced by the qualifier, “If you live…” Because, despite the things Lincoln had to do to set the wheels in motion and set the stage for Emancipation, he was going to see the slaves freed.

The first thing Lincoln had to do, though, was protect the integrity of the Union. This was not a racist error; it’s hard to read about the things he said and did, but if the South were allowed to secede, or succeeded in its mission, it would become entirely dependent upon Britain for its manufactured goods, and largely so for its cotton market, and the slaves might well have remained in bondage much longer than they did.

The most graphic way to see it is this way: take a very basic political map of North America. Draw a line where the states end and territory begins as of 1861. Color all of Canada, which was a protectorate of Britain, red. Now color all of the Confederate States red. Mark the Border States with red stripes. Draw red arrows toward the eastern coast of North America pointing toward the USA. And once you have done all of this, put some red question marks on all of the western territory, and color the remaining Union states blue.

The result will be a very small piece of blue in the middle of all that red. If Britain were able to dominate North America so overwhelmingly, it would only be a matter of time before she began arming the borders, to the north, to the south, occupying harbors, and proceeding to take her “colonies” back. (Remember this had been attempted just 50 years before the Civil War during the War of 1812, when Britain burned the US Capitol to the ground.) So in many ways, this war started out being about maintaining national sovereignty, and could only be about freeing the slaves—which HAD to be done in order for Feudalism to die and capitalism to move forward, as history demands—once it was clear that the Union was safe. And the starting point there was keeping Maryland and Kentucky in the Union. (Color Maryland red and you will note that the entire Capitol city is now surrounded by the enemy; with the president and Congress on hostile soil, the war ends pretty quickly, and the slaves are still slaves, at least for the time being.) So I think that Williams is too harsh in his judgment of Lincoln at the outset of the war. It was like a chess game, in which everything had to be done in order. Had the South remained in the Union, slavery would still have had to end, and perhaps with less bloodshed. Most of Europe had ended slavery through government buy-out programs, and Lincoln quietly probed for this alternative several times, even after South Carolina had announced its secession. But the southern power brokers were having none of it.

But this does not diminish (as US history texts do) the role of the slave, the role of the free Black man, the role of the former slave, in the victory of the Union. And I learned a lot from Williams, because written US history has largely suppressed slave revolts, noting only the Nat Turner rebellion, and of course, the one led by John Brown, the only Caucasian male for many, many years that would fight and die for Black people. Williams fills out this missing piece of the puzzle admirably, and to my knowledge, no one else has adequately done so.

For the vast number of incidents documented here in one body for the first time that I am aware of, and done in such a methodical and scholarly fashion, all the while drumming away at Black empowerment and the role played by people of color, this book is worth your buck. If you have any interest whatsoever in the American Civil War; American history; or Black rights, this book should grace a place in your personal library.

And oh teachers, if you don’t have a copy of this in your classrooms—never mind that there is some difficult vocabulary here; when something is important enough, students will access the material—you should definitely dip into your classroom supply kitty, or if you don’t have one, your own wallet if necessary. African-American students have such a hard time dealing with the humiliating details surrounding slavery and the Civil War. They need to see this. They need to see that those who came before them stood up.

Black American leadership started during the American Civil War. Over 200,000 African-American men served as soldiers, and countless others did manual labor, served as spies and saboteurs, or simply walked away from the plantations. Others took ownership, literally, moving into the empty plantation houses and taking what they had already more than earned. (Would that the US government had enforced Reconstruction and kept it alive; but that is another story, a different book.)

Get this book. Read it. If you can afford to do so, get two copies so you can highlight one and write in the margins, and keep the other copy clean for visitors or family members. Its place in American Civil War history is unquestionable.

One of Ours, by Willa Cather *****

Posted on by
OneofoursI 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.

I don’t have any publishers to thank here. I bought this novel on my annual pilgrimage to Powell’s City of Books in Portland, Oregon, where I grew up. Once I’d read the first chapter, I wondered why I hadn’t read it before. It’s not as if I’ve ever been too busy for books.

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 heartbreak. As a mother of grown sons, I identified somewhat with his mother, even though she is not a main character.