Pre-Revolutionary America mixed with Ye Old American Folktale

My dear reader,

I have not been in a writing mood of late, and life has been crazy, so not a terrible lot of reading has gotten done either. Before I go on vacation, where I will most certainly read quite a bit, I will review the latest book I read.

How does life unfold before you? Christine Wade’s book Seven Locks says that we unlock our lives. Our life is a great book lying before us. We can turn pages, but in order to jump chapters we need to open the locks. These are great events or experiences that change us. Turning points that shape us into who we are, so we can read on. The nameless narrator in Seven Locks is a mother of two with a lazy and self-indulgent husband. Our narrator is said to be a shrew for scolding her husband to do work. One day, after a fearsome fight between the two, the husband wanders off with his gun and his dog, never to return.

Set in pre-Revolutionary America, this tale is about a woman trying to run a farm, raise children, and deal with the humiliation of being left by her husband. It is historical fiction about domestic life. Although the main character can be a bit harsh, it is understandable given that she has had to run a farm and maintain her children’s well-being without help. That’s hard enough in today’s society, let alone in the 1700s when women didn’t live by themselves. Her life and tragedy become an urban legend. Her children disrespect her.

I found the atmosphere and setting captivating. I love hearing about how people ran their homes and how everyday life was conducted in past centuries. The narrator is very capable with her animals and the garden. Her children, however, are a difficulty. How does a woman reign in children who do not trust her and stop listening? The second part of the novel gets into the American Revolution and talks about common thoughts about the war along with how normal people dealt with the onslaught.  Our narrator must deal with even more tragedy due to the war.  

The novel was at times captivating, but I was looking for it to end after a while. There were small breaks in the main character’s narrative for her daughter, Judith, to talk about what she was doing. I enjoyed hearing from the child and then from her as a young woman. As a naive girl, her thoughts are selfish and naive  but her spirit is ignited with the Revolution. The third part of the novel dealt almost exclusively with Judith after the war, when she herself was a wife and mother.  

For the most part I enjoyed the novel. It isn’t terribly memorable, but it was a relatively quick read and gave some insight into pre-Revolution life. The story was inspired by an American folktale and I think most of you will guess what said folktale is rather quickly.

Here are some readalikes for Seven Locks by Christine Wade:

If you want something based on a Folktale, try The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

If you want something that explores the historical and cultural aspects of Colonial America try Caleb’s Crossing by Geraldine Brooks

The Heretic’s Daughter by Kathleen Kent is about a young girl in Salem, Massachusetts whose mother is accused of witchcraft and how they deal with being outcast. 

Persian Giggles

My job requires me to talk about books and reading. You can imagine how much I hate this (read: sarcasm). Well a week ago I told a coworker to pick out a book for me to read. Something that maybe I would not read on my own, but wasn’t leaps and bounds out of my comfort zone. She gave me Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas.

The book is a memoir of Dumas’s experience growing up as an Iranian in America. It focuses on her family, with an emphasis on her father, and her experiences as a foreigner in this country. Her family originally moved to California before the Iranian Revolution, so her experiences before and after those events took place completely changes her outlook on life in the US. Although it has its serious points, this is a fun read. From going to a sleep away summer camp to bringing stuffed grape leaves to school events, Dumas’s retelling is humorous and light hearted.

Although I was not laughing out loud, I did find the light tone of the book easy to read and fun to pick up. Dumas speaks to the reader in an accessible way and although her family’s cultural background is very different from my own, her stories rang a bell. I found myself nodding along as she retold her stories of family eccentricities because they sounded a lot like things my family did or would do.

If you’re up for something light and enjoy a different perspective on our American life, try Dumas’s book.

Here are some similar reads:

• Laughing Without an Accent: adventures of an Iranian American, at home and abroad by Firoozeh Dumas

• Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

• Journey from the Land of No: A girlhood caught in revolutionary Iran by Roya Hakakian

• Lipstick Jihad: A memoir of growing up Iranian in America and American in Iran by Azadeh Moaveni

Presidential Romance

A friend recommended a book to me and was rather insistent upon my taking a look at it because she thought it was so sweet. Because she’s my best friend and it seemed to mean a lot to her, I picked up the book. Mary Higgins Clark typically writes mystery/suspense novels, but she had a hankering to write a historical romance with none other than our nation’s first president, George Washington, and his lovely wife, Martha or as she was called, Patsy. The book is A Mount Vernon Love Story and it works on two fronts seeing as George loved his home, Mount Vernon, and he loved Patsy, who eventually lived in Mount Vernon.

The novel starts as Washington is stepping down from the Presidency and handing the reigns to Adams. From here, George reminisces about his younger years and thus other chapters take place before and during the Revolution. Every two chapters or so, the novel flits back to George as he’s leaving the Presidency and anticipating his return to Mount Vernon. The novel deals mostly with Washington’s personal life, but of course his military and public years cannot be ignored. This, however, is a novel about love and the trials that George deals with on that front. God knows that even a general has a hard time with strategy when it comes to love.

The novel was sweet. My dear friend was right. It is an easy read, weighing in at a measly 230 pages. I enjoyed learning about the personal history of George Washington and a little about Martha. Washington was a very measured and disciplined man, so seeing his affection and adoration of his wife and stepchildren was enlightening. My problems with the book stem from the writing style and the depth of the story.

Obviously, when talking about the public and personal life of a president, there’s a lot to cover. I applaud Clark for taking on such an enormous undertaking, but I felt there was a lot missing. She skimmed over major events in Washington’s life and did not go as in depth with his personal life as she could. This is a rich subject and I felt that it only touched on the surface and quickly ran on to the next event. The other thing that threw me off was the chapter to chapter jumps from old George to young George and the terrible transitions from one to the next. Yuck. Just do a chapter at the beginning when he’s old and have a good transition into his early years, then at the end go back to him going to Mount Vernon after his term is finished. Boom. I just made your book better Mary Higgins Clark.

Holiday Reading: Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving is a fantastic holiday. You gather to enjoy a delectable meal (so long as whoever cooks it is a good cook), you relax, watch football or movies, and give thanks for what you have. No worries about buying presents or having to prepare more than just the meal. It’s truly a lovely holiday.

Well for Thanksgiving, the first book I read was An Old Fashioned Thanksgiving by Louisa May Alcott. Alcott, the author of Little Women, sets a quaint scene of family life in early 1800s New Hampshire. The Bassett’s are in the midst of preparing for the Thanksgiving feast that will occur the next day. The girls help their mother cook, while the boys do chores and care for the animals. Suddenly, mother gets word that her mother has become very ill and she must rush away with Papa to be by her side. This leaves the children alone at the house with the oldest child being 16 year old Eph and 14 year old Tilly in charge of all the kids. Now unlike today’s children who would probably run rampant, these children do their chores and maintain the house. The next day, Tilly decides to continue with the Thanksgiving feast anyway because Papa is supposed to be coming home for dinner. Thus her and the girls start cooking their mother’s recipes from memory, which, of course, ends up being a bit of a culinary adventure.

This is a sweet story. It gives the reader a descriptive sense of home life during the time and introduces a loving family. The story reminded me a bit of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s stories in the Little House on the Prairie series. The way the family divvies up chores and interacts with one another is similar to Wilder’s accounts. It’s always fascinating to me to hear about how people lived when they had to make most things themselves and live a self-sustaining life. This is a very short account of that.

The story is about fifteen pages long, so yes it is very short. Think of this as a good story to tell your children on the Eve of Thanksgiving. It’s warm and easy to get through. Some of the language is outdated, but remember this takes place in the early 1800s and was written in the 1800s, so it’s no wonder some vocabulary and syntax are old fashioned.

If you enjoy adorable things and family events, then sit down for 20 minutes and read this story. If you regret it, it was only 20 minutes!

Holiday Reading: Halloween

Well Halloween is a couple weeks gone and we are well into the Thanksgiving hype, but I need to talk about my holiday read for Halloween. This year I read Death Makes a Holiday: a cultural history of Halloween by David J. Skal.

This is a book of essays about different events, history, and paraphernalia of Halloween as we know it today. There were essays on events like, the candy man, Halloween parades, horror films, and haunted houses, along with a short history of the holiday and how witches came to be a symbol of Halloween. All the essays were informative, entertaining, and researched. Skal makes it easy to get into the spirit and see this spooky holiday from an industry and eerie perspective.

I have read other nonfiction books on Halloween and its origins, but this book focuses on the current celebration of Halloween while nodding its head at where we derived these traditions from. I thought the book was fresh and fun.

For those of you who are Halloween lovers or enjoy reading about societal trends, this is a good choice

I fight for my Whiskey like I fight for my country! RRRRRR!!

Ok so my title sounds like a pirate and this story is backwoods, not open ocean, but it just felt right. The Whiskey Rebels by David Liss is on the docket today and what a case it makes for itself!

I tend to get a wee bit nervous with adult historical fiction. It can seem more like nonfiction sometimes and just be tedious. When I originally heard about The Whiskey Rebels my original thought was the above, that it would be boring and long, but it was about whiskey...and rebels...so it had to have something good going on between those covers. One weekend while traversing the great Midwest in my loyal green stallion (also known as my Sebring), I decided to partake of this book on CD instead of drinking in the glorious Midwestern landscape...of corn fields, and flat ground. Sixteen CDs later, I fell back in love with historical fiction.

The Whiskey Rebels is taken from two different perspectives. One the disgraced former American spy, Ethan Saunders, who finds himself caught up in the affairs of his former love that leads down a long and winding road and Joan Maycott, the strong willed, intelligent, determined woman who began a plot to get the justice that is owed her. Both characters have stories that keep the pages turning and plots that move the reader along. Through a labyrinth of historical figures and settings, the reader learns about life on the frontier and life in the city post-Revolution. The underlying plot of this story is rich, detailed and well thought out. Not only does the reader get a sense of the era, but they become engrossed in the characters.

Ethan Saunders is a rogue. At the beginning of the novel, he seeks only escape from his life through sleeping around and drinking, but he is clever, sly, intelligent, cunning, and usually, pretty damn funny. All in all, you love the guy. He has a moral code that bends to his will, but he is an honorable man even if society does not see him that way.

Joan is a determined woman from the moment the audience meets her to the end. She is candid, intelligent and bold for a woman of her time, but she knows what she wants and she goes for it. I envy her ability to know her own mind. She has morals and values that she sticks to, and when wronged, she is determined to make those who ruined her pay the price that a corrupt system would not extract. Vengeance is a dish best served cold and Joan is brilliant in her method.

The first thing that got me was the quality of the reading and production. There was music at the beginning and the end of each CD that fit perfectly and the actor who read, Christopher Lane, did a brilliant job portraying each character in a different way that made them all distinguishable. Just like in film, audio actors make all the difference between a good book and a disaster. Lane has a commanding, masculine voice that never got old. Truly enjoyable to listen to.

The book keeps moving and although there were times when Joan explained an economic practice that I zoned out a bit, I was always avidly listening. I truly liked the characters and thought the plot was well constructed. It is a lengthy read and the author probably could cut some of the writing out, but I did not think he was long winded or overly explicative. I will certainly be looking for more David Liss books in the future.

A Walk Across America

In the early 1970s at the tail end of the peace and love hippie movement, with turmoil bubbling up around the country, Peter Jenkins decides he needs a life changing journey. Peter is a recent college graduate and divorcee who wants to leave the US because he believes it is in shambles until an older friend tells him, "if you want to leave, go right ahead, but first you sure as shootin' ought to give this country a chance!". That's when Peter decides to take his Alaskan Malamute, Cooper, and himself on a soul searching quest for what America and Americans are really like by walking across America.

The journey starts in Alfred, NY and the book ends when he reaches the Gulf of Mexico, so the title is a bit misleading. I guess "A Walk Down the Eastern Part of the United States" doesn't sell as well. He eventually finishes by walking to California, but we do not hear about it in this book. A journey that begins with Peter trying to figure out if America has any heart quickly becomes introverted. Peter begins to feel this whole journey is a spiritual and religious quest. In the end aren't we all looking for God or at least his replacement?

Peter finds both a spiritual answer for himself and discovers that Americans are warm and welcoming from West Virginia to Alabama. We meet some fun characters throughout the book including a mountain man and a soulful black family who adopt Peter as one of their own. Cooper was perhaps my favorite character in the book. A dog is always a great way to add fun and heart to any story, but *warning* like in most books with dogs, he dies! Tragic.

Although the writing is amateur, the story is compelling. It often feels like Peter lightly taps places and people on the shoulder without fully embracing his experience with them in his writing. He often says how thankful he is to people and how great places are, but I often wish he'd give more than just a passing nod. Even when he devoted chapters to one place or person he stayed with, his writing felt like it was lacking feeling and depth. I wanted more meat.

The first half of the book I felt was equal parts about the hiking/camping and the people/places he went. Towards the end of the book, however, it changed to be more about the people. They were both interesting, but personally I was more interested in the hike, nature, and Cooper.

This book does speak to more than just the lost hippie child. I loved that he seriously used phrases like 'groovy' in his writing, but even with those tacked on, this reaches more than just the flower child generation. It's a fun read and a true story of a man learning about his American routes and discovering that his suppositions about Americans were wrong.