So Much Fascinating History So Close to Home

 

I live in a state that borders the Mississippi River. I've crossed the river several times traveling to and fro on family trips. I probably will cross it again at some point, maybe multiple times. But I will never look at it the way I did before reading Lee Sandlin's history of the river during the antebellum period in this country - Wicked River: The Mississippi When It Last Ran Wild.

This was a fascinating book. I know a history class can't cover everything that happens, but there were several major events in this book that I'd never heard of (or only vaguely). For example, there's an account of the wreck of the steamboat Sultana - the worst maritime disaster in U.S. history. I'd heard the name before, but had no idea how awful it was. Sandlin does a good job conveying the horror. There's information about the New Madrid earthquake, as well as the siege of Vicksburg that was a key to the Union victory in the Civil War. One thing that struck me as I was reading was how the river was at the heart of some of the major events in the country's history.

But one thing I really appreciated was learning about some things I'd never heard of. There was an interesting chapter about New Orleans and the slave auctions, including prices ("girls" for sexual uses were the most expensive slaves, costing up to $5,000). One of the chapters that was especially eye-opening was about a multi-year scare over a possible slave revolt that resulted from what was basically a scam to sell a book. The unfounded fears the book started snowballed into a purge of anyone, black or white, who was even remotely rumored to know something about a revolt. Sometimes just being asked questions was enough to get someone lynched, whether there was any basis to the suspicion. One of the stories Sandlin told was of a slave owner who was ordered to flog one of his slaves who was accused (falsely) of being involved with the (nonexistent) revolt. The owner refused. The "investigators" said they would flog the slave owner instead. So he began to beat the slave, but he wasn't hitting the slave hard enough to suit the "investigators." They hung both men. Some things about that whole incident sounded pretty contemporary; as Sandlin observed, "One reason people were so quick to believe in the Murrell excitement was that they were eager to believe in anything, no matter how strange, as long as it was bad news" (p. 232).

Overall, this was a great read - full of interesting information and written in a compelling style. I thought it was kind of funny, though, that the last chapter fell kind of flat compared to the rest of the book. That seemed fitting, though, because after the Civil War, government engineers began to tame the river through dredging and levees, and railroads began to carry a lot of the people and goods that once depended on the water "highway." The Big River was no longer wild and no longer as big a deal.

I Wish I Knew Her in Real Life

 

I've "met" a lot of interesting characters through my reading over the years. Some of them are cherished "friends." But I "met" a character this summer who is especially memorable, one I wish I could spend time with for real - Corrag, the tiny young woman awaiting her death as an accused witch in Susan Fletcher's novel.

The book is set in late 17th-century England and Scotland. Corrag comes from a family with a history of being executed for witchcraft - both her grandmother (drowning) and her mother (hanging) were put to death. Corrag herself spends the whole novel in a Scottish jail waiting for the winter snows to thaw, when it will be dry enough for her to be burned at the stake. It's pretty poignant to read the passages where she hears the drip, drip of the thawing snow and ice, and knows the end of her life is coming nearer and nearer.

How did she get in this situation? We find out her full life story from an Irish minister who has come to interview her in his quest to get information about the massacre of the Macdonald clan in the Glencoe valley. Charles Leslie, a Jacobite, is there for proof that Protestant King William had a hand in the massacre, which he hopes will help with the Jacobite resistance and restore King James, a Catholic, to the throne. What he gets is much more.

Bit by bit, through Leslie's daily visits with Corrag, we get to know her - the lonely girl living with her outcast mother on the edge of a village, the fugitive who rides "north and west" to escape the men who are coming to arrest her mother, the hermit who finds peace in a hut she built herself on a mountain above Glencoe, the healer who earns trust and makes friends in the Macdonald clan, the courageous sentry who warns the clan of the danger they are facing, the accused witch. She's clearly a political prisoner, and this story made me think of how many women were accused and executed just because they were "different." 

Corrag is definitely different. She is gentle and forgiving, even taking healing herbs to the soldiers who are occupying the homes of the Macdonalds. What I really, really liked about her was how much she appreciates and celebrates her connection with the natural world. Here are a couple of quotes I copied from the book that are favorites:

"When did pennies make a person truly rich? Folk seem to fill their lives with favours or a title or two—as if these are the things which matter, like happiness lies in a coin or two. Like the natural world and our place in it is worth far less than a stuffed purse….”

"But what I say to myself when I see a mountain or a starry sky, or any natural thing which feels too much to bear, is what made this, made me, too. I am as special. We are made by the same thing…Call it God, if you wish. Call it chance, or nature—it does not matter.”

And this one really sealed the deal:

"Some things are hard, even if they are right. Even if you know they are the proper, decent way….It was kindness. And kindness is worth showing."

I chose this book just because it was about the Glencoe Massacre, and my husband and I had been to Glencoe a year or so ago. What I got was much more than just history - I got a new "friend" for my mental cocktail party. And what a sweet one she is. 

 

 

 

Talk to Each Other, People!

 

I started Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier three times this summer, but something else would always pop up that needed reading "right now." (Funny enough, this post is out of order, too - I read this book in July and started the post then, but got distracted by other things. Poor Rebecca!) It wasn't until the third time that I finished the book, and I have some mixed feelings about it.

On the one hand, I've enjoyed Gothic romance since I was a teenager and read a copy of Victoria Holt's Mistress of Mellyn that my mother had. On the other - maybe because of living in the 21st century after the "Me Too" movement - I am pretty squeamish about the relationship between the narrator and her husband. Spoiler alert! - Everything that follows is going to reveal key plot points, so if you've not read this book yet, skip this post, read the book, and then come back and let me know if you agree.

The narrator is a young, shy, naive woman who at the beginning of the book is working as a companion to an older woman. While in Monte Carlo, she meets Maxim de Winter, a wealthy widower twice her age who owns an estate called Manderley. Thanks to the older woman coming down with the flu, the narrator and Maxim get a chance to meet, and they have a whirlwind romance. She falls madly in love with him. When the older woman decides to leave Monte Carlo early, Maxim asks the narrator to marry him, and despite the fact that she met him only weeks before and knows practically nothing about him, she agrees. After a honeymoon in Italy, they go back to Manderley, and that's where the trouble starts.

The issue is that Maxim's first wife, Rebecca, overshadows everything in the narrator's life. The furniture is stuff Rebecca picked. The household routine is what Rebecca wanted. Everyone who knew Rebecca talks about how beautiful she was and what a magnetic personality she had. Worst of all, the narrator suspects her husband is still in love with Rebecca and that she herself will never be able to live up to his memories of the perfect first wife. 

I'm not going to talk about everything that happens, but here's the major spoiler: Rebecca was not the perfect, loving wife, and Maxim didn't pine for her; actually, he hated her. Actually, he murdered her during an argument about her cheating and possibly being pregnant with an illegitimate child that would end up being Maxim's heir to Manderley (which, I guess, was more than he could bear). He shoots her, hides her body in her boat, and makes it so the boat will sink and no one will find her. Except, of course, someone finds the boat and the bones. The last section of the book focuses on the investigation and how Maxim is able to keep the secret and get away with murder, thanks to a friendly ruling of suicide on the part of the magistrate and Rebecca having a convenient case of terminal cancer.

That's where things went sour for me. The "hero" of the story is a murderer, plain and simple. We can try to justify it by saying Rebecca was so bad, but as ADA Jack McCoy often said on Law and Order, "Was killing her really your only choice?" And the narrator doesn't bat an eye about it. She's completely a stand-by-your-man kind of character, willing to lie if necessary to save him. I might be able to accept that if he had been a "good" husband to her throughout the rest of the book, but really, he wasn't. 

The poor narrator is thrown head-first into this toxic environment with absolutely no preparation. It's bad enough that she has to step into Rebecca's role, but everything is made worse by Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper who was utterly devoted to Rebecca. Mrs. Danvers does everything she can to make the narrator miserable and to drive a wedge between the narrator and her husband. And what's worse is that the narrator has no information about how her husband feels about the whole situaton; he doesn't communicate with her on anything more than a superficial level. In fact, there are times when he gets really angry and blows up about something the narrator has done or said (of course, we find out later that it is because it reminds him of his hated Rebecca). The narrator is left to assume meanings and motives, and as any insecure person will do, she turns it on herself.

I know a lot of the lack of communication is to help the mystery of the plot - does he love her, or is he pining for Rebecca? Still, I think we could have had the big reveal about the murder even if Max had confided in her that he and Rebecca didn't have a great marriage. And actually, it would have made it a little easier for me to swallow that the narrator is willing to cover for him and go on living with him if we had seen him being open and caring to her, like maybe explaining why he got so angry when she accidentally wore the same outfit that Rebecca wore to a costume ball. But the way it is written, I'm just left with the impression of a woman who is emotionally abused by a cold, controlling husband. And I don't see much romantic about that.

My First Rejection of the Year

 

I've read some good books so far this year. But I found one I just can't go any further with - Cherokee America by Margaret Verble. 

It sounds like something I would really enjoy - a story about a strong woman raising her family in the Cherokee Nation about 10 years after the end of the Civil War. And look at that cover! That's what makes this so disappointing, I guess. I've read 5 or so chapters, and there is no sign of a plot thread that will carry the story through. Every chapter focuses on something a different character is doing, and it's usually something pretty mundane. For example, last night, the chapter I read had the main character, Cherokee (nicknamed Check), having her nightly meetings with each of her 5 sons. I didn't see anything in it that seemed to point toward a larger plot. Maybe Verble was using that as a way to introduce the characters, but to me it is SO tedious to read sections of a book that don't take the story anywhere. USE that literary real estate, writers!

My first clue that I wasn't going to get into this book, I guess, should have been the list of characters that came up when I opened the first page on my Kindle. Ugh. If you have to have a list of characters and their relationships to each other, there are probably too many characters vying for major attention. I've read books where there are a lot of characters who are introduced organically in the story, and I've been able to keep them straight. This reminded me of The Warriors set of books about feral cats that my daughter read when she was younger, that always started with a detailed list of the cat clans and who was in them. (I never read one of those, either - started, but just couldn't do it!)

Finally, there are so MANY stinking sentence fragments in this book! Call me a grammar bitch if you want, but broken grammar rules are just off-putting to me. I keep telling myself that maybe this is a stylistic thing that is meant to give us a feel for Check's mind. I can see that. But it's not just Check who has sentence fragments - the bad grammar is woven through all the chapters I read. Just drives me batty.

I debated a bit whether to keep going. A storyline might emerge eventually, and I really do think the set-up for the story sounds interesting. But this is a book with like 400 pages. I do not want to get bogged down reading something I might not enjoy just to say I finished it. So.....onward!

The Story Is in the Details

Just in case you're not familiar with the Hunger Games series, it is Suzanne Collins' story about a dystopian society in which a authoritarian power (the Capitol, led by President Snow) rules 12 other districts with an iron fist. Part of the authority the Capitol exercises over the districts is to require them to provide two "tributes" between the ages of 12 and 18 each year for the Hunger Games, in which the tributes will fight to the death until only one remains. The Capitol views the Games as fitting punishment to remind the districts of the failed rebellion in some distant past. If you are a fan of popular culture, you no doubt heard about the original trilogy, in which Katniss Everdeen ends up as the rallying symbol for a new rebellion - successful this time. 

Several years after the original books, Collins has released two prequels - The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and Sunrise on the Reaping. Ballad follows the development of Coriolanus Snow from an impoverished but ambitious student from one of the Capitol's top families before the war to the paranoid, evil person who becomes President Snow of the trilogy.

Ballad was a good book, but it's not the one I want to talk about. I preferred Sunrise on the Reaping, which was the story of Haymitch Abernathy and his experiences as a tribute in the Games. Haymitch ends up as the "victor," which means he is expected to be a mentor to Katniss and Peeta Mellark in the original trilogy. I put "victor" in quotation marks, because although Haymitch was the last tribute to survive in the arena, President Snow saw to it that the victory actually is a defeat and punishment for Haymitch. Spoiler alert! The people Haymitch cares about - his family and his girlfriend - are all murdered to coincide with Haymitch's homecoming, leaving him with nothing but an empty house in the Victor's Village.

But it's not really Haymitch's experience in the Games I want to talk about, either (although it is an exciting page-turner - I finished the book in three days, and that's with plenty of farm chores taking up reading time). What I want to explore is one of the themes Collins wove into the story, and that is the power the media have to shape our understanding of events. 

From the beginning of the story, we see that the media team isn't really interested in showing what actually happened, but instead a version of the events that will please/appease President Snow and keep the Capitol blissfully ignorant of the true impact of the Games. As you can imagine, people in the districts are not thrilled to send some of their children each year to nearly certain death for the entertainment of people in the Capitol. At the ceremony in District 12 where the tributes are selected, there was some resistance - one of the boys chosen tried to run away and was shot dead, and then Haymitch is drafted as a replacement when he's trying to pull his girlfriend away. But none of that makes it into the coverage the Capitol sees; in fact, the head of the media team stages a few reaction shots of family members hearing their child's name called so he can edit together a package that will show people in the Capitol how well the "punishment" of the Games is working.

In the lead-up to the Games, Haymitch and several of the other tributes from other districts create an alliance, and they carefully shape the message and image they present to give themselves whatever advantage they can once they are in the arena. During the actual Games, there are several times when Haymitch does something to help one of the other members of the alliance. He protects and cares for some of the younger and weaker tributes. He mends fences with a tribute from his own district that he hadn't liked at all when they were still at home. He is also part of a plot by some of the adult mentors to disable the arena and maybe bring an end to the Games, and he blows a hole in the arena's water reservoir and finds the backup power generator at the outer edge of the arena. In other words, we get to see he is resourceful, compassionate, and even heroic. However, when he's watching the recap of the Games after the whole thing is over, all the good things he's done are edited out. He's presented as a selfish jackass who abandoned the alliance. And of course there's absolutely nothing about his sabotage efforts.

The story that the Capitol - and all the districts - see about the Games is that everything went smoothly, and that the victor, who is a real jerk, cheated his way to the win. That becomes the "truth" on record for the Games, even though it was not at all what actually happened. There were witnesses to the actual truth - the population of District 12 saw the murder of the boy who tried to escape, and the other tributes in the arena saw what Haymitch did. But the other tributes are all dead, and the population of District 12 has no way to let the other districts know what happened. So the Capitol's version rules.

It's interesting that in the original trilogy, it's a few cracks in the media coverage that finally enable the rebellion to gain traction. For example, there are a few protest moments that leak through in live coverage before the cameras can be switched to something else. Those few moments were enough to let people in other districts know they aren't the only ones experiencing mistreatment by the Capitol, which gives them the encouragement they needed to act.

What made me think about this, I guess, was an article I saw the day after I finished reading the book (sorry, I don't have a citation for it - it was something that came across my phone). The article was about the right-wing media and how they shape their message to gain favor with President Trump and to present their version of events. The article was focused on podcasters who aren't overtly political and who may label their content as comedy, but still present the same framing for events as official right-wing media like Fox News. The point of the article was that people who consume this "non-political/comedy" content may not realize they are getting an edited version of what's going on.

All this ties together with another article I read about Collins and her message with the Hunger Games books (again, I don't have a citation. Stuff comes across my phone that I don't realize is going to be useful, and I don't know how to find it again later....). The point of that article was that the media and the marketing departments for the movies sort of trivialize the story she's trying to tell by reducing audience reaction to some superficial element. For example, for the movies of the original trilogy, there was the whole silly "team Peeta/team Gale" thing in which viewers aligned themselves according to which love interest they thought Katniss should choose, represented by a couple of hunky actors. So what? That doesn't matter as much as the fact that this is a story about children being forced to kill each other for entertainment. I haven't seen marketing material for the new Sunrise movie (other than that it is coming out quickly), but I'm pretty sure it's safe to say it's not going to say anything about Collins' critique of the media and the way the Capitol used media messages to control people.

The Disgracing of Mrs. Robinson

I enjoy a good look at social history. Part of that is because in my fiction writing, I want to be as close to "correct" as possible in the details of daily life. Part of it also is because social history gives us a window into how we got to where we are in the world today and where we might be going. I picked up Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace by Kate Summerscale for the first reason (I had written a novel in which a 19th-century character struggles to get a divorce, and this book is about a famous divorce case of the Victorian era), but I ended up taking away some thoughts about women, marriage, the media and the public.

Quick summary - Isabella Robinson is a widow whose second marriage to Henry Robinson is not a happy one--probably emotionally, if not physically, abusive. Isabella is a woman with strong "Romantic" passions, and she is attracted to a doctor (also married) who is 10 years younger and a family friend. Over several years, Isabella records her infatuation with Dr. Edward Lane (and a couple of other younger men) in her diary. At one point, her desire for Lane seems to be reciprocated; there are several entries in the diary that, although they are written in flowery, euphemistic Victorian language, seem to indicate that Isabella and Edward may have had a brief sexual affair. While Isabella is delirious with fever, Henry goes snooping through her things and finds the diary. He immediately began trying to get a divorce under Britian's new Divorce Act (this is in 1858) on the grounds of adultery, based on her diary entries.

The book details the progress of the trial, the strategy the defense attorneys for both Isabella and Edward used, and the public reaction to the salacious (to the Victorians) diary entries (which were read aloud in court and published in newspapers). The law specified that when a woman was accused of adultery, her lover had to be named as part of the divorce suit (oddly enough, that was not the case when a man was accused - hmmmm), and Edward Lane was desperate to preserve his reputation, since his business (a medical spa that many women used) would be ruined if he were found to have committed adultery with Isabella. The strategy was to portray Isabella as essentially insane and her diary entries as overly-imaginative fiction from a sexually-obsessed woman suffering from "uterine disease." 

I felt a little sorry for Isabella as I read the account of the trial, although how stupid was she to write all this down??? No one seemed at all concerned with her reputation or her humiliation; I felt like she was completely de-humanized and turned into a case study for all the (male) doctors with their pet theories about women and their sexuality. I remember from my Rhetoric of Women's Suffrage class in my Ph.D. program that women were seen as likely to suffer from hysteria that arose from their uterus, making them unsuited for intellectual activities like, say, voting or anything, really, that was not within the "domestic sphere." Don't we still see echoes of that line of thought today? Why is it so often an issue that a woman is trying to do something outside of traditional gender roles? 

I was also kind of disgusted by the media coverage of the trial and the apparent appetite the public had for all the juicy details. The Saturday Review condemned the publication of the diary entries, calling them a "stream of filth" that were "unfit for the reading of any decent woman" (that "hysteria" thing again, I guess). And yet, the "filth," not just of the Robinson case but of other divorce trials, continued to be published, to the point that even Queen Victoria decried them as making it "almost impossible for a paper to be trusted in the hands of a young lady or boy." We think of the Victorian age as a period when people were extremely prudish, to the point that piano legs had to be covered with skirts. Yet, there was apparently a thriving market for pornography in Holywell Street in London. It's the hypocrisy that gets to me, I guess - on the one hand, condemning Isabella's diary while on the other buying and devouring the newspaper accounts that included the diary's details.

Henry Robinson lost his divorce suit, but Isabella was ruined; she lived the rest of her life in several rented houses, moving from town to town (maybe to escape public notoriety?). Summerscale has a poignant conclusion to her work when she tries to answer my question above (why write a diary about things you are doing you know will get you in trouble?). She says, "Part of her, at least, wanted to be heard." Poor Isabella. Stuck in an abusive marriage, consumed by wanting someone she shouldn't want, having her private thoughts made a public spectacle, unable to escape the rigid place her time in history squeezed women into. I didn't really like her, but I felt for her.

One last thought - while I liked the look into Victorian social history, there were several times while I was reading this book when I thought, "how, HOW can someone take a subject like this and make it so boring?" Granted, that wasn't my reaction through the entire book, but there were a lot of side trips into social history (like about diary-writing in general) that interrupted the flow of the narrative.  But....isn't the social history why I read it in the first place? I guess you could say I'm ambivalent about the book.
 

Did I Miss Something?

I usually read a little each night in bed, even though there are some nights I am so tired after a day of farming that "a little" is very little. My eyes will roll shut, and I've even been known to whack myself in the face with a book that has fallen out of my sleeping hands. I was pretty sleepy one night when I was reading what seems to have been an important chapter in Gary D. Schmidt's Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy, and given how the book turned out, I think I must have missed some major developments in my sleepy condition.

Here a quick synopsis of the story: It's 1912 or so. Turner Buckminster III has moved with his family to the town of Phippsburg, Maine, where his father is the new minister at the First Congregational Church. It's a rough transition for Turner; the local boys, led by Willis Hurd (son of a church deacon) bully him, and members of the congregation tattle to his father every time Turner fails to match the image of the perfect son of a minister (which is pretty often). His father is demanding and harsh. Homesick and lonely, Turner takes to spending time on the coastline looking at the ocean. That's where he meets Lizzie Bright Griffin, a girl from the black community living on nearby Malaga Island. Turner and Lizzie become friends despite the disapproval of everyone else in town.

Things get complicated because a group of important men in town want to clear the black families off Malaga Island to make Phippsburg more attractive (in their view) as a tourist attraction. The leader of the group is Mr. Stonecrop, who is leading an investment group to build a big hotel. Some of the black families leave, but some, like Lizzie and her grandfather, refuse. Eventually all the families are evicted, and "difficult" ones like Lizzie are shipped to the Pownal home for the feebleminded and insane (that's not the name in the book, but I'm too lazy to look it up). Turner is forced to deal with a lot of "adult" issues--death, racism, deciding how to respond to enemies.

Ok, now for what I think I missed (probably lots of spoilers in this paragraph....). First, Turner's father has a drastic character change. He goes from requiring Turner to read boring theology texts for his homeschooling to having him read the works of Charles Darwin, which seems out of character for a strict minister. He begins to stand up to the investment group, when at first he seemed supportive of their vision for the town. The same thing happens to Willis Hurd. He goes from being a tormentor of Turner to a friend who warns him when the eviction is about to happen. 

Now, I know that characters should change over the course of a story. That's part of the joy of reading, right? But these changes seem so drastic and unmotivated, more like the click of a switch than a growth process. That's why I think I must have missed something during my sleepy reading. I need to go back and revisit Chapter 8 (I think it was 8). But first, to finish planting purple hull peas since there is rain in the forecast for the rest of the week. Will update later!

UPDATE: I looked back at Chapter 8, and I remembered all of it, so I don't think I was too sleepy when I read it. And my first impression seems to be correct - there are some characters in the book who conveniently (too conveniently, if you ask me) change their personality to fit the story. I might be able to buy the change in Willis. Chapter 8 has another baseball game (the book started with one) in which Turner makes a strong statement of defiance by hitting a bunch of foul balls so far the balls are lost and then very obviously lets the last pitch drop on home plate. The book notes that Willis smiled, so we see that he got the point Turner was making and maybe admired him for it, I guess? I can see that as growth out of being a bully to being a friend. Turner's father, though - in Chapter 7, he gives Turner a Friday afternoon off, and then within a couple of pages is handing him The Origin of Species. What? Why? Maybe it was a visit from Mr. Stonecrop that made Turner's father rethink the ethics of being a minister of God who's conspiring to throw people out of their homes, I don't know. Whatever happens, happens in the character's head. These are not the only examples, either; there are a couple of other things that caught me off-guard because they seemed to come out of the blue.

I think that's the main problem I had with this book. We don't get to see characters working out their changes, they just change for the sake of the story. The book has lovely language describing the ocean and sea breezes. There is a key subplot where Turner encounters a pod of whales while floating in the bay and gets close enough to look in the eye of one whale. That moment comes back to Turner whenever he needs some courage, and I think that is a neat touch. The book is also based on some real history - a black and mixed race community was actually evicted from Malaga Island in the early 20th century to try to develop tourism in the area. Even with all those positives, though, I couldn't get past what to me is the important part of a story - that it needs to "ring true" in terms of the characters, that the characters do what people realistically and logically would do and not just be cardboard cutouts that the author moves around and changes at will to fit the story they want to tell.