A modest civics lesson on a lofty subject

Posted on May 19, 2013 by Linda

Paul O’Connor (no known relation to Sandra Day O’Connor) is embarking on his annual driving trip, which means lots of good listening/reading time for him, and lots of good reviews for us.

By Paul T. O’Connor

OUT OF ORDER. By Sandra Day O’Connor. Random House Audio. CDs, 7 Hours. $35.

It’s an oddity of America’s civic structure that justices of the Supreme Court can declare a federal law unconstitutional one day and walk about their hometowns in relative obscurity the next.

That kind of thing happened often to former Justice David Souter, and the story, as told here by his former colleague, says much about the little book that Sandra Day O’Connor has written.

 Out of Order is not a memoir, a history of the high court, a treatise on constitutional law, nor even a case study – although it contains a bit of each of those. Mostly, it is an attempt by the nation’s first female high court justice to familiarize us all, just a little, with the history and workings of the court.

So, there is a long chapter on the circuit riding that justices had to endure for approximately the first century of the republic. Justices would get on horses or sit in wagons and travel as much as 10,000 miles a year, often staying in fetid taverns or roadside inns, visiting the different federal courts in their districts. The wear and tear on the jurists was significant and led many to either leave the court after only a few years or leave this life earlier than they might have otherwise.

There’s also a chapter on the workings of clerks and the history of their employment by the court.

O’Connor also traces the court’s migration from New York to Philadelphia, eventually to Washington, all through a number of spaces borrowed from other courts, a city government or the U.S. Senate. It is only in the 1930s that the court got its current home, its first permanent home. The story of the design of that building constitutes one of the more interesting chapters.

She follows a number of the more colorful jurists. I didn’t know that Oliver Wendell Holmes had been shot in the neck during the Battle of Antietam or that William O. Douglas tried to take part in court deliberations even after he’d resigned his seat. (I did recall, however, that Douglas was quite the rogue about Washington.)

This book meets her goal. It is a small civics lesson on the judicial branch and the high court. One need not be a lawyer, constitutional scholar or court follower to appreciate it in that regard.

Here’s where the “but” comes in.

Out of Order is an appropriate name for the book because it lacks any discernible order. One gets the impression that Justice O’Connor strung together a number of the general education lectures she’s given over the years and turned them into a little book. The listener will get the sense that it is entirely possible to jump to any part of the book at any time and not be lost, or to listen to the chapters in random order.

It’s important to understand that this is not a tell-all book. O’Connor provides not a single ugly or dissatisfied word about any of the justices with whom she served. Any criticism is reserved for justices of bygone eras, and even those comments are rare. Considering the contentious issues of her tenure, it’s hard to believe that everything was as sweet and nice as she portrays.

The justice, herself, reads the audio book, a feature I first found unpleasant but grew to like. But an experienced audio narrator would have improved the listening experience.

Out of Order won’t go down in Supreme Court literature as one of the great books by a former justice, but it is a pleasant and informative listen (or read).

  • Paul T. O’Connor, contributing editor, is a university lecturer who is available for freelance writing assignments. Contact him at ocolumn@gmail.com.

 

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Who’s smart now?

Posted on May 17, 2013 by Linda

I grew up in a family in which good grades and high test scores were highly prized, and where sibling rivalries could be heated. So the title of Jennifer Close’s second novel caught my eye. The book proved to be what I expected in some ways, and quite different in others.

By Linda C. Brinson

THE SMART ONE. By Jennifer Close. Read by Rebecca Lowman. Random House Audio.  10 CDs. 12½ hours. $46. Also available in hardback from Knopf, 352 pages, $24.95.

When Weezy Coffey was growing up, her parents often said that she was the smart child and her sister, Maureen, was “the pretty one.” Weezy would do well in school and have a fulfilling career, so the mantra went, and Maureen would “marry well.”

Instead, Weezy is the one who made a good and lasting marriage. She’s devoted more of her energies (and intelligence) toward raising her three children than toward excelling in a career. Maureen’s marriage wasn’t a success, but she’s done well enough for herself.

In their own way, Weezy and her husband have labeled their children, much as Weezy’s own parents did before them. Martha, the eldest, has problems getting along socially. She’s smart enough, and manages to graduate from nursing school, but she never quite fits in.  There’s just something off about Martha.

Claire, a year younger, is “the smart one” for this family. After college, she headed for New York, where she landed a job and an apartment, made friends and became engaged.

Max, several years younger, is the only boy and the baby, a status that is a double blessing, or perhaps curse, for him.

Always trying to encourage Martha, Weezy has praised her lavishly for any accomplishment. Claire’s accomplishments, more expected, earned less recognition. Max was, simply, the darling boy.

And now that Weezy and her husband should be enjoying their empty nest, feeling proud of the good life they’ve made and waiting for the rewards of watching their offspring succeed and provide them with grandchildren, things aren’t going according to plan.

In fact, things are falling apart.

Martha, unable to stand the pressures of a nursing career, moved back home a few years ago and took a job at a clothing store.

Much more shocking, Claire and her fiance broke their engagement, and eventually Claire runs out of money, unable to afford the expensive apartment they’d been sharing. Before long, she, too, quits her job and moves back home, and the two sisters, though 30 and 29, slip back into their squabbling adolescent ways.

Even as Weezy is struggling to deal with her no-longer-empty nest and her great disappointment at not having a wedding to organize, she learns that Max, now away at college, also has a life-changing problem.

The family relationships portrayed in this, her second novel, are real and credible, sometimes funny and sometimes exasperating. The characters are well drawn and convincing. None of them is completely appealing, but, as with real relatives, you come to care about them all – although with some, the concern may be more nosiness to see how things turn out than wholehearted affection.

This book is about the nature of families and how they shape us, for better and worse. It’s about home, in Robert Frost’s sense of “… when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” It’s also about what it means to be “smart.”  We see that the force of intelligence and sheer determination may not be enough to control life, and sometimes being “smart” may involve not trying quite so hard.

Well read by Rebecca Lowman, the novel grows on you gradually. The biggest disappointment may be that just about the time you realize you really do care what happens to the Coffey family members, the book ends more or less in mid-story. Of course, that lack of resolution, that sense that there’s really no telling what might happen next week or next year, also is true to life.

 

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All you can read: delicious and satisfying

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Linda

Want to laugh, cry, shake your head and smile? Need a reminder about the good things in life, the things that help us rise above the setbacks? Then Edward Kelsey Moore’s debut novel is a book for you.

By Linda C. Brinson

THE SUPREMES AT EARL’S ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT. By Edward Kelsey Moore. Read by Adenrele Ojo and Pamella D’Pella. Random House Audio. 10 CDs, 12 ½ hours. $46. Also available in print from Knopf, $24.95.

This novel reminds me of the best works of Fannie Flagg, and, believe, me, I mean that as a ringing endorsement. I think Fannie Flagg does a marvelous job of writing about real people, deftly combining laugh-out-loud humor with wisdom, honestly writing about the joys and the heartaches of life. Sometimes, she tosses in a touch of magic.

This story of three girls who were dubbed “the Supremes” because it was the 1960s and they were young, black and nearly inseparable, is squarely in that tradition. It is an often funny, sometimes poignant, always genuine look at life’s inevitable blend of comedy and tragedy.

I’ll admit that I was a bit leery at first. The book is billed as the story of three women who were high-school best friends as they make their way over four decades of marriage, children and the business of living. There are so many novels about groups of women friends that these books tend to take on a certain sameness.

Then there’s the fact that this book about women is written by a man – Edward Kelsey Moore, a first-time novelist whose “real” job has been as a cellist in Chicago. What, I thought, gives this man the idea that he can write credibly about the hopes and dreams of women, that he can understand and convey their challenges and triumphs?

It didn’t take many minutes of listening to the audio presentation of the book to realize my doubts were unfounded. Moore has written a brief note explaining that the novel grew out of a childhood spent “eavesdropping” on the adult women in his family, and is intended to celebrate “smart, funny, and strong women.” He obviously listened well.

And although his book is reminiscent in a good way of Fannie Flagg’s stories, it’s thoroughly original. Clarice, Barbara Jean and especially Odette are vibrant, achingly human and definitely their own women. And then there are Odette’s mother, Dora, and her pal Eleanor Roosevelt, but I’ll let you discover get acquainted with them on your own. Just when you fear that this book is going to lapse into the predictable, Moore throws you a surprise.

Clarice, who has been in the public eye since she was the first black baby born in University Hospital, believes that appearances are important and being prim and proper is a high virtue, perhaps the highest. She maintains her standards despite her philandering husband’s misadventures.

Beautiful Barbara Jean grew up in rough circumstances until teenage Odette, with the nervous assistance of Clarice, took her under her ample wing. Now Barbara Jean’s past threatens to destroy the life she’s made for herself.

Odette, born in a sycamore tree, is tough, determined and known to be fearless. She’s built broad and strong, just like her mother. But life hands her a terrifying challenge that even she might not be able to conquer.

The story spins out in chapters that move back and forth in time. They also alternate between Odette’s first-person accounts and a third-person narrative, a device that offers multiple insights and deeper understanding. In the audio presentation, two readers with noticeably different voices underscore the shifting points-of-view.

Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat is a restaurant and gathering place that’s the heart of the black community in Plainview, a Southern Indiana town. That’s where the Supremes hung out when they were teenagers, and it’s where they go for Sunday dinner and gossip as adults. Big Earl, the founder, was a wise and compassionate man.

You can’t go wrong with this book whether you read the print version or let these two skilled women read it to you.  I can attest, though, that if you listen to the audio presentation, you’ll come to believe you’re sitting at a table at Earl’s, sharing time and stories with good people. You can’t quite taste the ribs, wings and other delights on the all-you-can-eat buffet, but you sure can savor the friendship.

 

 

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A lesson in loyalty

Posted on April 29, 2013 by Linda

Bob Moyer’s reviewing has gone to the dogs – in a good way.

By Robert Moyer

SUSPECT. By Robert Crais. Putnam. 312 pages. $27.95.

“Bark bark arf. Bark.”—Spike

“Yap yap yap.  Yipyip.”—Princess

“Woof, woof, wooof.” –Atticus

 I’m Nesta, and I’ve taken on Bob as my alpha.  He asked me to collect a few critical comments from my canine friends about Robert Crais’ latest book.

None of us can write of course, (you know, that opposable thumb, can’t-read-the-computer-screen thing), but a few of us can read. Of course there’s not much to read. Not too much holds the attention of someone who has 1/8 of their brain tied to their nose. It’s hard to interest us with a story trail (people have story lines, we have trails) about a police officer who left his partner during an unexpected assault, and now suffers serious PTSD while trying to get back on active duty. We would NEVER leave our partner.

He signs up for canine duty, and that’s where it gets interesting. He meets Maggie, who lost her handler to an i.e.d. in Iraq. She, too, is traumatized – but she’s a German shepherdess with the mostest, the cat’s meow. Somehow Crais got inside her head and really gets my ears up with her inner dialogue. It takes a little while, but she finally trains the cop to be as true as she is. The scene in his crate really cemented the deal, they way she makes sure he’s safe before she lies down.

Then, of course, when they start chasing down the guys who shot him and his partner, she hits a homer with her sniffer. And when the bad guys go after – well, I don’t want to give too much away. Let’s just say you’ll probably like her as much as I do. Good dog. Good book. Bow WOW!

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Dashiell Hammett, revisited

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Linda

What could be better for a fan of hard-boiled detective stories than a novel about the daddy of them all: Dashiell Hammett? Bob Moyer writes that the book itself is a bit of a mystery.

By Robert Moyer

HAMMETT UNWRITTEN. By Owen Fitzstephen. Notes and Afterword by Gordon McAlpine. Seventh Street Books. 176 pages. $13.95.

Books about Dashiell Hammett, author of THE MALTESE FALCON and other hard-boiled classics, lionize, criticize, idolize, even demonize the man who created the genre. Few books do what this charming, tight little novel does – humanize him. The premise here is that this book by “Owen Fitzstephen” was found in Lillian Hellman’s papers (she was Hammett’s paramour for many years). According to Gordon McAlpine, Owen Fitzstephen was the name of a writer/character in Hammett’s The Dain Curse, and, quite possibly a doppelganger for Hammett. He suggests we take this book as (possibly) autobiographical.

The book’s title is most fitting – most of Hammett is unwritten. He quit writing novels in the 1930s. According to the conceit of the book, he quit writing after he gave away the Maltese Falcon.

The book opens as a terminally ill Hammett sets out in 1959 to burgle a bourgeois household on Long Island. It turns out to be the home of none other than the “real” Brigid O’Shaughnessy, the femme fatale of The Maltese Falcon. Hammett had modeled the novel after a real case involving the “falcon,” and he had purportedly kept the “fake” falcon that was the object of everyone’s desire both in the case and the book. Now, 27 bookless years later, he’s come for the falcon.

Before he gets it, however, we jump back all those years to the day he gives it to “Brigid,” at the height of his success. She confronts him with the story that the “fake” falcon was the real one, that it contains a force that gives power to whoever has it. Hammett wants her out of his hotel room, out of his life. He gives it to her.

And never writes another book. The convening narrative covers the poignant agony of massive writer’s block, and a series of events that seem to verify “Brigid’s” version of the falcon’s value. A passel of period detail and dashing dialogue bring us through the years, right up to the end of Hammett’s life, and of the book. With a couple of nice twists in the final confrontation back on Long Island, the conclusion leaves room for the reader to wonder: Was it true??

 

 

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Things heat up in Maine

Posted on April 16, 2013 by Linda

My first experience of Elizabeth Strout’s fiction was with Olive Kitteridge, a collection of linked stories set in Maine, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009. I applauded that decision, impressed as I was with Strout’s penetrating insights into human emotions, into the ways we sometimes act harshly when we don’t mean it, the ways we hold the ones we love at arm’s length. She also tells a good story in a quiet, unexpected way that’s very different from much of today’s fiction. And she is skilled at making readers come to like characters who at first seem anything but likable – a talent I kept in mind as I started Strout’s latest novel.

By Linda C. Brinson

THE BURGESS BOYS. By Elizabeth Strout. Random House Audio. Read by Cassandra Campbell. 13 ½ hours, 11 CDs. $45. Also available in print from Random House, $26.

The Burgess boys and their sister grew up in a family that seems about as cold as the Maine landscape that surrounded them. All three were marked by a terrible accident that killed their father when they were young children.

The brothers escaped from the stultifying confines of Shirley Falls as soon as possible, eventually making their ways in New York City, with markedly different degrees of apparent success. Jim, the oldest sibling, is a big-time lawyer who became famous as the successful defense attorney in a celebrity trial. He has a rich wife, well-adjusted college-age children and a storybook life. Bob, the younger brother and the twin of Susan, is a Legal Aid lawyer, divorced and childless, who drinks a bit too much.

Susan stayed in Shirley Falls, where she struggles along in a house she keeps too cold, with an elderly widow as a roomer upstairs. Her husband abandoned her to find his roots in Sweden, leaving her to cope with their odd, lonely son.

Jim is the star in the family, famous in his hometown and state, looked up to and depended upon by Bob and Susan even in middle age – and even though he’s habitually obnoxious and selfish. Jim is especially cruel to Bob, forever belittling him, calling him “Slob Dog,” making fun of his more modest lifestyle.

Bob sees Jim and Jim’s wife, Helen, often enough in New York to be a part of their lives, albeit a second-class part. Neither brother has much to do with Susan.

One seemingly inexplicable action sets in motion profound changes in this uneasy, unpleasant family circle. Susan’s son Zach, a lost teenager not long out of high school, rolls a bloody pig’s head into a makeshift mosque. Somali refugees have flocked to Shirley Falls, to the consternation of many of the town’s longtime residents. Zach’s action – ill-considered prank? hate crime? – makes national news and attracts activists across the political spectrum to their small Maine town.

Of course, Susan calls on Jim, the famous lawyer, for help. But Jim, about to leave for a vacation, agrees to make some phone calls and let Bob be the one to head to Shirley Falls. Bob, of course, doesn’t handle things to the satisfaction of Jim, or of Susan, who borders on being as hostile to her twin as their older brother is.

That initial visit is only the first of several trips the brothers must make to Shirley Falls before all the repercussions of Zach’s action play out.  Federal and state civil-rights and hate-crime charges loom. What Zach did, and especially the national attention it attracted, mobilizes demonstrations and counter-demonstrations.

The Burgess boys, rallying to help family, however begrudgingly, are drawn back to Shirley Falls and into the lives of their sister and nephew. They find themselves revisiting the past, including the freak accident that took their father’s life and left more than enough guilt to haunt all three children for the rest of their lives.

Meanwhile, life goes on, with unexpected ripples touching the lives of the Burgess siblings and their wider circles of family, ex-family and associates.

Once again, Elizabeth Strout does a remarkable job of helping us to get to know the real people beneath the sometimes prickly or otherwise unpleasant selves her characters show the world. And it is not only the readers who come to a better understanding of the people in this novel; in many cases, the characters themselves gain deeper understanding, and some of them manage to make important changes in their lives.

At the book’s opening, the main characters are so flawed that Strout borders on giving us no one to like or care about. But, as with sometimes-difficult real-life family members, there’s enough that’s human and touching in the Burgess family to keep us reading (or listening) until we can begin to see beneath the surface.

She develops the novel beautifully, through multiple perspectives, including that of some of the Somalis at the center of the crisis that has such an effect on the Burgess family. We are reminded that things more often than not are more complex than they seem.

This novel that starts out seeming so cold and barren eventually offers warmth and rich insights into family, home and relationships.

Cassandra Campbell does a fine reading job, bringing various characters to life convincingly. Her Maine accents, especially, seemed authentic, at least to my Southern ears.

 

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Past glories, past sorrows

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Linda

Every time I read a book by Deborah Crombie or Elizabeth George, I have a flash of envy. These women are Americans, but they write excellent police mystery/suspense fiction set in England. Even the British critics say they do a good job, getting the details right. Not only are they successful authors; they also get to make frequent trips to England as part of their research.

I don’t wallow long in my envy, however, because I don’t want to waste time getting to what I’m sure will be another good novel. As usual, I wasn’t disappointed.

By Linda C. Brinson

THE SOUND OF BROKEN GLASS. By Deborah Crombie. William Morrow (HarperCollins). 359 pages. $25.99.

Crystal Palace is an area in South London that got its name from the Great Exhibition, a magnificent iron and glass building that was moved to Crystal Palace Park in 1854. The “palace” was a landmark until it was destroyed by fire in 1936. Now much of the area surrounding the park has fallen on hard times.

Deborah Crombie’s latest novel starring Detective Inspector Duncan Kincaid and Detective Inspector Gemma James – now a married couple raising three children – deals with a shocking crime in the Crystal Palace neighborhood. It also moves back and forth in time, from the present to 15 years earlier, when a lonely 13-year-old boy living in a Crystal Palace neighborhood struck up an unlikely friendship with a young widow, a teacher, who moved in next door.

As the book opens, it’s Gemma’s turn to be back at work while Duncan stays home with the traumatized 3-year-old they’ve taken in as a foster daughter. With her assistant, Detective Sergeant Melody Talbot, Gemma is sent to investigate the murder of a prominent barrister who’s been found naked, trussed and, apparently, strangled in a ratty Crystal Palace hotel. Is this kinky sex gone wrong, or murder? Who was with him in the hotel room? Was the motivation more than just the immediate sexual encounter?

Gemma and Melody search for answers, discovering much that is unexpected along the way.

Andy Monahan,  a guitarist on the brink of the big time, comes under suspicion because he was involved in a brief altercation with the dead barrister at a nightclub earlier on the evening of the murder. Andy, the reader knows, is the lonely boy who made friends with the widowed teacher in Crystal Palace.

Crombie deftly weaves past and present as the reader gradually learns what happened 15 years earlier and how it affected both Andy and the young widow. Things, however, are not always what they seem, and there are complications in the present as well.

As always, Crombie crafts a well-written mystery with enough twists, turns and human unpredictability to keep the reader guessing. The book stands on its own, but fans of the series will also be interested in the latest developments in the lives of Gemma, Duncan and their close friends and associates. Evocative descriptions of the great variety of London neighborhoods add to the richness of the story.

This is a thought-provoking book. How much are we influenced by our childhood experiences? What about betrayal, and guilt? What drives some people to the extreme of committing murder? Whom can we trust? What does bullying do to the victim – and to the bullies? Through her complex characters, Crombie raises good questions and avoids pat answers.

 

 

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Around the world

Posted on April 4, 2013 by Linda

What a great, immensely entertaining book – and it’s educational, too. This would be a good choice for a book club, for vacation reading or any time you want to get transported by a good story.

By Linda C. Brinson

EIGHTY DAYS: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland’s History-Making Race Around the World. By Matthew Goodman. Books on Tape (Random House). Read by Kathe Mazur. 18 hours, 57 minutes; 15 CDs.

Also available in hardback from Ballantine Books. 449 pages. $28.

One could say, by way of praise, that Matthew Goodman’s Eighty Days is a history that reads like a novel. It’s that good a story. One could just as accurately say that this engrossing tale of two women travelers is an intensive history, with layers upon layers of insights into a fascinating variety of subjects ranging far beyond the around-the-world race.

On Nov. 14, 1889, Nellie Bly set sail from Hoboken, N.J., on what was essentially a publicity stunt. A crusading reporter for Joseph Pulitzer’s World newspaper in New York, Bly set out to race a fictitious traveler – Jules Verne’s Phileas Fogg, an imaginary Englishman who had traveled around the world with what was considered amazing speed in the wildly popular 1873 novel Around the World in 80 Days. The World offered more altruistic reasons for her adventure, saying that her trip would be indicative of how rapidly any typical first-class passenger might expect to travel in the modern age of steamships and fast locomotives. But the real reason was to boost readership, which after phenomenal growth, had begun to lag.

Later that same day, Elizabeth Bisland set out in the opposite direction by train, heading across the United States, in a race against Nellie Bly. Her editor at The Cosmopolitan magazine, recognizing a great gimmick when he saw one, decided to get in on Nellie Bly’s action, giving Bly only a few hours to prepare.

Though the book is a riveting story, it’s not fiction, so a desire to learn the outcome of the race between the two women cannot be what keeps us reading. We’ve heard about Nellie Bly and her around-the-world exploits, even if we might not know the details of her journey. Elizabeth Bisland, however, is an unfamiliar name to most people early in the 21st century. In fact, Goodman points out, for most of her journey, Bly was unaware that Bisland was also traveling; she considered Phileas Fogg and his 80 days as her true competitor.

That we already know who “won” doesn’t really matter, however, because this book offers so much more – including a mostly unstated but useful lesson for today’s Americans, in an age when reporters and commentators so often evaluate even our nation’s politics almost exclusively in terms of winners and losers. In real life, things are not that simple and clearly defined.

Goodman gives insights into the lives of these pioneering young female journalists, whose journeys were remarkable in the Victorian age almost as much for their daring in traveling alone as for their speed. They had in common that each was making her way in what was clearly still a man’s profession, but even their approaches to journalism were very different. Bly was a crusading, scrappy reporter who threw herself into her stories. She excelled in exposes, which she was able to pull off because the public didn’t know what she looked like or even her real identity. Her first big story was an expose of the treatment of women in a New York insane asylum, where she managed to get herself committed (without being sure she could get out).

Bisland was more interested in literature and the arts. A cultured, thoughtful writer, she enjoyed the society of like-minded people, but never wanted to be a public figure. Bisland was also known to be extraordinarily beautiful, while Bly was more ordinary in appearance.

Bly grew up poor in Pennsylvania coal country. Bisland grew up in an established Southern family that fell on harder times after the Civil War, but still managed to be aristocratic. Bly enjoyed visiting saloons; Bisland was more likely to be at a literary “salon.”

Bly set out on her journey with one dress and one bag – a small, leather gripsack. Bisland hastily filled a steamer trunk with multiple dresses and shoes, stuffed a couple of other bags – and thought she was traveling light.

As they traveled around a world largely dominated by the British Empire, Bly grew to loathe and resent the British, while Bisland felt admiration and kinship.

The two women’s journeys are described in rich detail. Although they traveled in opposite directions, Bly and Bisland used the same main routes, both traveling through England, France and Italy, transiting the Suez Canal, and stopping at such ports as San Francisco, Yokohama, Hong Kong, Singapore and Colombo.

An account of these two women, where they went, what they saw, and how travel was accomplished as steamships and trains came into their own would have made for a fascinating book. But Goodman moves naturally into all sorts of subjects that come up as his story progresses.

Thus we learn about the power of newspaper journalism in one of its golden eras, as well as the obstacles that aspiring female journalists had to overcome. We learn about British imperialism, and the importance of controlling strategic stations for fueling ships. We learn about the vast amounts of coal required to keep trains rolling and ships moving ever faster, and the devastating effects on those who mined and shoveled that fuel. We learn how the United States came to have its time zones. We learn why it took so long for the Statue of Liberty to be erected in New York and where one of its arms rested in the meantime. We learn about Jules Verne and his wife, whom Bly visited in France. I could go on … but read the book yourself to unearth these and other historical treasures.

Goodman also follows, succinctly, Bly and Bisland through their lives after their celebrated race. What happened to Nellie Bly, who for a time was wildly popular, more celebrated than any of today’s Hollywood stars, is a cautionary tale on the price of fame, as much a problem in the 1890s as it is today.

Listening to the audio version of the book, expertly read by Kathe Mazur, was vastly entertaining. I did, however, find myself sometimes wishing for a map, which the print version provides, along with an index.

 

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So you thought you knew the Lindbergh story

Posted on March 23, 2013 by Linda

Redemption is sweet. For three years, I’ve had a novel by Melanie Benjamin on my office worktable and on my conscience.

I loved her book Alice I Have Been, about the real Alice whom Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) wrote about in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.  But I read it at an in-between time in my book-reviewing life, during the transition when the Winston-Salem Journal stopped running locally written reviews of books for adults, and I was just getting this blog up and running. So the book slipped through the cracks, and I never reviewed it.

Now, however, I’ve just finished Benjamin’s latest historical novel, so I have a natural opportunity when reviewing The Aviator’s Wife to praise the previous book as well.

In Alice I Have Been, Benjamin deftly weaves a fascinating story drawing on the considerable information that is known about Alice Liddell and Charles Dodgson. She deals with, among other things, the idea that Dodgson’s obsession with young girls was far from healthy. At the very least, the real Alice’s family misunderstood the relationship, and their belated attempts to deal with it contributed to problems Alice dealt with most of her life.

This is the well-told, well-imagined story of a real girl who had to grow up, who could not live forever in a magical Wonderland. And her real world, as Victorian England with all its supposed absolutes gave way to the uncertainties of war and its aftermath, was often trying. It was a world that many women of spirit and intelligence found difficult to navigate, and Alice, who struggled with the clash of fiction and reality most of her life, found the going especially tough.

Benjamin followed her Alice novel with another historical novel based on a real person, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb. That book never made its way into my reviewing stack, so I have no guilt associated with it. Having now read Benjamin’s two other historical novels, however, I’ll have to track that one down.

By Linda C. Brinson

THE AVIATOR’S WIFE. By Melanie Benjamin. Delacorte Press. 403 pages. $26.

The Lindbergh story is a part of our American culture. We’ve read about the young aviator’s solo flight across the Atlantic, maybe even seen the old movie about it, starring Jimmy Stewart. We’ve seen the remarkably small, fragile looking plane hanging in the Smithsonian in Washington.

We know the Lindbergh’s baby was kidnapped and found dead, and that there was a trial and an execution. We’ve heard about Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s book Gift From the Sea, even if we haven’t actually read it.

We probably also know, at least vaguely, that Charles Lindbergh associated with Hitler before World War II, opposed American entry into the war and maybe even was a Nazi sympathizer.

And we may remember stories from more recent years about Lindbergh’s infidelities later in his marriage and reports of his illegitimate children in Germany.

From those basic outlines of the Lindbergh story, with extensive research into the writings of both Charles and Anne Lindbergh, biographies and other historical documents, Melanie Benjamin has crafted a fascinating novel about an iconic marriage and, especially, the woman who fell in love with the nation’s hero.

There is so much in this book: The story is rich with romance, adventure and tragedy. And, as she tells the story in Anne’s voice, Benjamin also offers fascinating insights into a 20th-century woman’s struggles to sort through life’s claims on her. She was the ambassador’s daughter, the hero’s wife, the aviator’s “crew” and the dead baby’s bereaved mother. She also was the woman who, more often than not alone, raised five lively children. And, as she long thought of herself and eventually became, she was a writer.

Who, in the midst of all these roles, all these demands, was Anne Morrow Lindbergh, and what was really important to her? The reader watches, sympathetically, as Anne slowly becomes aware of these questions and, eventually, the answers to them.

Anne Morrow was a shy college girl, feeling inferior to her pretty older sister, when the young hero took notice of her.  She longed for a hero who would whisk her away into his dramatic life. She got what she wished for and much more. Charles was enigmatic, moody and demanding, expecting her to be his student and flying partner as well as what he considered an appropriate mother for his children.  He was driven, a hero pursuing missions, rarely able to relax and be simply a man, a husband, a father.

And from the moment their engagement was announced, the couple had to deal with suffocatingly adoring crowds and a dangerously determined press corps. Privacy was next to impossible; Charles always blamed the press, which revealed the location of their home, for the baby’s kidnapping. They were America’s version of royalty, and they paid the price of fame much as Princess Diana later did in England.

In this, her third historical novel, Benjamin does another fine job of turning a historical figure into a living, breathing woman with hopes, disappointments and emotions.  She says in an author’s note that she’s gratified when readers are inspired by her fictions to delve more deeply into the historical records, and she offers a list of her sources. While she’s stayed as close to the “truth” of history as a good novel allows, Benjamin is offering another sort of truth that’s better understood through fiction, the kind that’s kept in the heart.

 

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Guns, mean guys and other lethal weapons

Posted on March 20, 2013 by Linda

Bob Moyer is back, again, from wherever it is he’s been, again. I can’t keep up with his globe-trotting ways. I’m just grateful that he keeps reading and writing reviews. Here’s his latest, with his promises that there are more to come.

By Robert Moyer

THE THIRD BULLET. By Stephen Hunter. Simon and Schuster. 485 pages. $26.99.

This book comes loaded with weapons, guns like Glock 19, M-1 Garand, short-barreled AK-47, C-96 Mauser, .264 Winchester Magnum and the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. A number of these guns were used or could have been used in the Kennedy assassination.  “Could have been” is the key phrase here; without contradicting any of the facts in the Warren Report on the assassination, Stephen Hunter has constructed an intricate case for what happened to The Third Bullet that did so much damage, but left a lot of questions.

Another lethal weapon in the book is Bob Lee Swagger, aka “Bob the Nailer,” a Vietnam-era sniper who first appeared in another assassination-plot novel by Hunter, Point Of Impact.  The CIA tried to make a patsy out of Bob Lee, but he pulled a fast one and got the CIA agent to take a bullet, and the fall, instead.  He’s retired now, but a woman whose husband was killed by a hit-and-run driver thinks the death had something to do with the Kennedy assassination. Bob Lee doesn’t pay attention until she hands him a coat found in the Dal-Tex building across from the Book Depository on Dealey Plaza in Dallas – the smell of gun-cleaning fluid and a tire track on the coat make him take the case immediately. He knows whose coat it is.

He doesn’t know about the other weapon that’s doing all the damage.  That’s an ex-CIA operative who “died” years ago, and doesn’t show up here for 192 pages. He starts his memoir when Swagger starts looking for him.  The agent, Hugh Meachum, knows the coat was a loose end. He has quickly and literally killed off any attention called to the Dal-Tex building, and he tries to take out Bob Lee.  He can’t do it, because Bob Lee may be old, but he’s mean.

As Swagger sorts out all the clues, the agent spells out the saga of how a shooter besides Oswald had a shot, why Oswald was there in the first place, and the system that set Kennedy up for the kill. The author carefully constructs the premise, carrying the readers through some intricate reasoning without losing them.

Meanwhile, Bob Lee sorts out who the agent was, and then sets out to find out who he is and where he is now.  The two narrative lines come together with a lot of guns and tough guys in a giant conflagration all aimed at stopping Bob Lee.

Hunter has turned out a book that makes you turn pages faster than usual, so the book seems much shorter than its 485 pages.  If, like the many people who put this book on the best-seller lists, you find yourself still fascinated by conspiracy theories, you may like this one.  Go ahead.  Take a shot at it.

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