Judging a Book by Its Cover

I'm currently reading The Big Knives by Bruce Lancaster, and over the weekend, I was adding it to my "I'm Reading" list on Facebook. During the process, I found something I thought was amusing, and I thought I'd share it.

The copy of the book I'm reading is a hardcover that my son picked up at a "purging" sale at his school library. The cover looks like this:



However, the only image I could find while I was uploading this book to my Facebook page was this one:



I ask you, does that even look like the same book????! After laughing for a while, I asked myself what would lead to a pair of covers that are so different. My conclusion (which may or may not be complete hooey) is that somewhere along the line, someone decided to market the book to a different audience - women instead of men.

The first cover is, as I said, for the hardcover edition that was published in 1964. The second is from a paperback reissue (by a different publisher) in 1978. The first cover, I think, has masculine appeal - we have a group of men in buckskins, obviously engaged in some kind of frontier military action or hunting, since their guns are prominent in the picture. The second cover looks a lot like a romance novel cover (a tame one, since both the man and woman are fully clothed, ha ha, albeit in clothes that are NOT accurate for the historical period). I doubt a man browsing in a bookstore would pick up that book with a woman in a hot pink dress. I asked my husband if he would read it, and he gave me one of those looks, which I took as a "no." (LOL)

I'm guessing that somewhere along the way between 1964 and 1978, someone decided women would be a more lucrative market for this book than men. Although I'm not finished with the book yet, I don't see how on earth that decision was made. I think this is very much a book with a "male" orientation (not that I am saying there are books for men and different books for women - not at all!). Actually, the main character, Markham Cape, reminds me strongly of Alex Rider from the juvenile spy series my son liked so much a couple of years ago, or maybe even James Bond transplanted to the American frontier. There's something cool and detached about him, which I see as traits in a literary character that appeal more to men than to women. I know as a reader I like characters much better when I can identify with them (something that may or may not be influenced by the fact that I'm a woman).

Anyway, I'm really mystified by this woman on the cover. I'm nearly halfway through the book, and there hasn't yet been a woman in the story who has been anything more than a temporary flirtation for Mr. Cape. I bet if you put every line about a woman together, they wouldn't fill two pages. So now I expect a major plot turn of some kind...or is this a case of a cover that would "hook" the female reader and then deceive her???

Virginia Woolf was on to something.....

You probably know the famous line from Virginia Woolf: "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." In a break from my usual reading fare, I recently finished a non-fiction work called A History of the Wife, by Marilyn Yalom. After following the history of wives from ancient Jewish and Greek civilizations to modern times, I think Virginia Woolf had it right, and I'm going to offer this paraphrase of her statement: "A woman must have money of her own and control of her own decisions before she can be truly productive."

As I was reading Yalom's book, I kept thinking of the other books I've read this year that featured women who were married, or who were trying to get married, and one in which the girl was trying to avoid getting married. With this post, I'd like to try to pull together some of those thoughts.

First, I'll talk about A Girl Named Disaster by Nancy Farmer. To be honest with you, it wasn't really my kind of book - I'm not a fan of the "man (or girl) against nature" type of story in which a girl has to struggle alone to survive against every kind of natural phenomenon you can imagine (think Julie of the Wolves or Island of the Blue Dolphins. Award-winning, but just not my thing). This particular version of that story is set in Africa, with the girl (Nhamo) running away to escape a forced marriage to a cruel older man with two other wives. Nhamo's grandmother comes up with the escape plan and gives Nhamo some gold nuggets to wear in a little package around her neck. The gold nuggets then disappear from the story until the very end, when the people who have rescued Nhamo from the wilderness find them. The character who tells Nhamo about finding the gold is a woman who is a scientist, and she advises Nhamo to start a bank account with the gold. She tells Nhamo her grandmother gave the gold to help Nhamo avoid the fate of every other girl in the village. The grandmother's wish is that Nhamo will not marry young and become a virtual slave, but that she will have a chance to get education and develop her mind so she can have choices in life.

As I was reading that, I realized how important a gift her grandmother had given Nhamo; by giving her money, she made it possible for Nhamo to have some control over what happened to her, instead of having to relinquish control to a husband in exchange for him supplying the food and shelter she needed to live.

That leads me to think about Hannah Fowler by Janice Holt Giles. Hannah finds herself in the opposite position to Nhamo. Hannah's father has died, leaving her in the Kentucky wilderness with nothing more than a few household goods. While Hannah is a big, strong woman who is probably capable of staking out her own claim and being successful in raising crops, she gives in to the social pressure that tells her a woman shouldn't even try to do that. Faced with a string of potential suitors who recognize the value of a woman's help in taming the wilderness, Hannah bows to the pressure - but on her own terms. She searches out the man who helped her and her father in the wilderness and, in a break with social tradition, asks him to marry her. Fortunately for Hannah, she's made a good choice, and Tice Fowler turns out to be exactly the kind of companion, lover, partner that women are looking for in marriage.

Those two cases would seem to give credibility to my paraphrase of Woolf's axiom - at least for the lower classes. Ironically, though, the more money a woman (or her birth family) had, the less likely she was to have control over who she would marry, for most of human history. Yalom's book gives a number of examples of upper-class women who were part of a marriage that was more an economic or political arrangement than a love match. It wasn't until the 18th century that the concept of romantic love and a heart's desire became factors in allowing people to choose marriage partners.

I hope this post doesn't come off as cynical. I think most women, like Hannah Fowler, are willing or even glad to give up some of their self-determination to gain the benefits of marriage (myself included). But I also admire Nhamo's grandmother for providing the means to help put Nhamo in a position where she could choose to marry at some point in the future -- or not.

Ooops, I Did It Again!

Both kids had basketball games today, and in the break between my daughter and I took a little trip to my favorite used bookstore (the son had shoot-around practice before his game). I knew as I walked through the door that I was too weak, that I would walk out with at least one book. Well...how about eight books for myself, plus two for my daughter? It began when I saw a like-new copy of a book I've had on my Amazon wish list since early last spring - The Falconer's Knot. I couldn't believe the selection of good young adult fiction they had this time. I halfway think some teacher had purged his/her classroom library, because there were several copies of some books.

Anyway, I got a whole selection of new historical fiction. Fortunately, the bookstore happened to be having their Christmas open house, and they had 20% off everything, so I didn't have to take out a second mortgage! I think I'll tell my husband this is my Christmas present. After all, it's just what I wanted!

Romance, or Love?

(Please indulge me as I talk about my own book.)

It's been a whirlwind of a week in my journey toward being a published author. I had submitted my first three chapters to an agent in September, and on Monday of this week, I finally heard from her - she wanted to read the full manuscript! Naturally, I was quite excited. I got the manuscript to her on Tuesday and settled for some waiting. As it turns out, I didn't have long to wait - I heard from her this morning. She said, "I have decided not to take your manuscript at this time, although I would definitely reconsider it if you decide you would like to address the following concerns...." She then goes on to say that the first 150 pages are "very engaging" and that she "loved" the "initial development of the characters" and the "young love" between those characters. However, she said, once they start on their pioneering journey (this is historical fiction, of course), "all the strong characters, tensions, concerns, and issues...got left behind." She said the relationship between the characters was central to the plot in the first part of the book, but that it "takes a second seat to many of the external events in their lives" once they start traveling.

I've pondered this on and off (well, OK, mostly "on") all day, and I think I understand our differences: she wants romance, and I wrote love.

In the first chapter of the book, the hero and heroine meet and get married the same night through a set of unusual circumstances (that I won't go into here, because this isn't really about my book). It's a marriage in name only, though, and they plan to dissolve it as soon as they get an opportunity. But over the next five chapters, they begin to be "in love" with each other. Not to flatter myself, but I think the reader can sense the sexual tension of those characters being around each other, becoming more and more attracted to each other, drawn together by a desire to protect each other from angry and unfair parents. Finally, they give in to that tension and decide they will stay married. The very next day they leave on their trip. And that's about the time the agent says she lost interest.

Throughout the rest of the book, that sexual tension is not so intense. They are married, after all, and now they can have sex whenever they feel like it. But now their challenge is to learn to love each other, with all the flaws that they sort of didn't notice during that period of infatuation. So they fight sometimes. They have to figure out how to deal with problems in a way that takes into consideration the needs and wants of two people instead of satisfying only themselves. They hurt each other, and they have to face up to that and to decide if they can get past that pain to continue on as husband and wife, or if it's time to give up.

Personally, I find those kinds of struggles interesting. It's part of what I liked so much about Hannah Fowler. But....it's a different kind of thrill than reading about/experiencing infatuation. Now that I think about it, Forged in the Fire (which I loved) seemed to lose some of its drive once Will and Susanna married. The same is true once Baudoin Bras-de-fer spirits Judith of France away from the captivity the father has imposed on her. Heck, even in television shows like Moonlighting or Scarecrow and Mrs. King or Remington Steele (ok, now you know how old I am, ha ha ha!), once the two main characters got together, the thrill of the show was gone, and it didn't last much longer. I haven't read the Twilight series yet, but I read a comment about it the other day that made the point that the writer deliberately maintains that intense sexual tension for three books precisely because she knows it's necessary to keep people interested.

So, I guess I made an error in plotting my story, if I wanted to be commercially successful. Are we as a culture so in love with the idea of being "in love"? Is love only interesting when it is fired by infatuation? Do we turn off when passion has burned down to a warm, steady glow? Does marriage bore us?

The agent told me she would be happy to reconsider my book if I made some changes. She wanted a total re-write of the second half of the book, to change the entire reason I wrote the story in the first place. I'm not going to do it. Maybe it won't be a commercial success. But at least it will be what I want it to be, to explore issues I think matter. I hope somebody else thinks they matter, too.

No Light Confection, This

One of the dangers of living in an "advanced society" is a degree of arrogance toward those who came before. I recently read a little novel about the Great Plague of 1665 in London, and I couldn't keep from wondering how we in the 21st century would react if we were faced with circumstances similar to what the Londoners faced. I have a hunch that, regardless of how "advanced" we think we are, people would react in much the same way.

The novel was At the Sign of the Sugared Plum by Mary Hooper. It's a simple, short book for relatively young readers, but I found it to be really thought-provoking. The main character, Hannah, is a young girl who is coming from the country to live in London and work in her sister Sarah's sweetmeat shop (that's a candy shop, if you find it as confusing at first as I did). Hannah is excited about the prospect of living in the big city, and her top priorities are catching up on the city fashions and finding a sweetheart. Unfortunately for Hannah, she's come to London just as the plague has -- shortly after her arrival, the Bills of Mortality are announcing the number of deaths in St. Giles' parish has doubled during the week. Then the deaths begin in other parishes, then a neighbor's house is shut up for plague, then the Bills of Mortality begin to number in the thousands each week. Hannah's obsession with fashion is forgotten as she observes piles of bodies carelessly dumped into mass graves. Hooper does a fine job of moving Hannah's character through a growing awareness of the seriousness of the times she's living in.

One reason I liked the book so much was because it was so rich in historical detail. I've read other stories in which the plague had a role, but none of them ever brought home to me the way Hooper's book did the reality of what it must have been like to live during those times. The people of London were faced with an overwhelming crisis over which they seemingly had no control, and I find it fascinating to learn about how they reacted to that crisis. They had no idea what was causing the plague or how it was moving from one person to another; as a result, a hearty market for "plague preventatives" developed. Knowing what we know now, some of the things people tried to do to avoid plague infection were laughable -- carrying a handful of flowers to sniff, smoking heavily, taking specific herbal potions made to match up with their birth sign. Other things they did are horrifying, such as forcibly barricading an entire family into their home for forty days when a single member fell ill with plague, or killing virtually all the cats and dogs in the city. I also think it's interesting to look at the "civic government" side of the issue. Can you imagine being a city official who has to figure out how to dispose of 7,000 bodies in a single week, knowing next week there may be 10,000?

All that brings me back to my original statement. We look back on how seventeenth-century Londoners responded to the crisis of their times, and with the superior knowledge of history on our side, we can laugh at the ineffectiveness of their plague preventatives or condemn their practice of quarantining victims for its role in increasing the number of deaths. But I wonder if we would fare any better if we were faced with our own crisis, and I'm afraid the answer would be probably not. Human nature being what it is, we would probably respond with the same type of irrational fear.

We do have the advantage now of understanding germs and how disease is spread; but consider the descriptions of a possible outbreak of Ebola or bird flu. We may be able to understand that the disease is caused by a virus and that it's spread by contact with air-borne particles, but would that keep us from reacting with fear if or when we came in contact with someone who was ill? In one sad scene in the book, a child of one of Hannah's neighbors has died of plague, meaning the whole family will not only have to deal with grief but with being locked up. People from the neighborhood gather around to watch the scene when the baby's body is taken out of the house, but Hannah notices no one goes forward to comfort the distraught mother or to take care of the two little boys who are left. Would we be any different today? Or would we be like the "quality" folk of London, who got their Certificates of Health and got as far away from the city as they possibly could?

I don't mean to say that I believe everyone is so callused to the suffering of others. Actually, Hooper does a good job in showing Hannah dealing with the conflict of knowing what others need and wanting to do something to help, but fearing for her own safety so much that she can't make herself do what she knows need to be done. That's humanity, I think. In the end, Hannah and Sarah do take a big risk to do something to help someone else (although, of course, they get a big benefit as well). I like to think that "our better angels" will come out -- at least sometimes. Maybe the bigger the crisis, the more extreme the conflict in our human nature appears - there is a mighty pull for self-preservation, but maybe it will be balanced by noble regard for the needs of others and courage to risk personal danger.

Did I ever say I love historical fiction?

The Wonder of Words

This entry will be only loosely related to reading.
Yesterday in class, I had one of those serendipitious "teaching moments" arise. We were going through an analysis of an argument about U.S. policy toward Israel, when one of the students said, "What does 'boon' mean?" Ever eager to show off my vocabulary skills (ha ha), I defined it for him as a "gift, or a windfall." He responded, "So why didn't the guy just say 'gift'?"

What a wonderful opportunity to talk about the writer's most valuable tool! We discussed how the choice of a particular word influences the image the writer projects to his/her audience, and also how language choices allow us to be more precise in conveying our exact meaning. As one young woman in the class pointed out, there is a difference between being "scared" or "afraid" (I added "fearful," "anxious," and "terrified"). Although that little side discussion meant we didn't get as much done during that class period as I had planned to, I think it was very productive, both in terms of just what they learned about vocabulary AND in terms of what language can do for them in an argument. So, I can ease my guilt that the day wasn't wasted!

They all looked at me like I was either pulling their legs or purely nutty when I told them the best gift I got last Christmas was a dictionary. I'm serious, though! I enjoy poring through it, looking at word meanings and word origins, synonyms and proper usage. One feature I was especially pleased with in the version my husband gave me was the effort to give a date for the word. The entry for a word will include the date when the word (or at least its first definition) first appeared in a dictionary. That has been very helpful to me in editing my little historical novel. There were several times when I found that a word I'd used didn't exist (or at least wasn't in common usage) until maybe decades after my story is supposed to take place. Call me obsessed if you must, but that kind of detail matters to me - I went back and changed the words to something that was more historically accurate. Sometime maybe I'll write a post about what I learned from that experience; words that entered the dictionary during a particular time period seem to reflect the general mindset of the period (which suddenly sounds quite obvious, but really isn't as simple as it sounds).

I think I'm going to offer my students an extra-credit assignment about vocabulary. Maybe I can be the matchmaker who leads them to their own love affair with words...

What's a "Strong" Woman, Anyway?

It's funny how themes in current events and themes in my reading will sometimes wind themselves together. There's been so much talk in the news lately about "strong" women and feminism and the "glass ceiling" since John McCain selected Sarah Palin as his running mate. It just so happens that I've recently finished reading books with what could safely be described as "strong" women. In two cases, I would agree wholeheartedly; in the last case, I would describe the female protagonist as a bully, just another pit bull with lipstick.

The three books in question are Hannah Fowler by Janice Holt Giles, Bella at Midnight by Diane Stanley, and Boone's Lick by Larry McMurtry. The only thing all three books have in common is a female protagonist who faces an overwhelmingly difficult situation. Hannah is kidnapped by maurading Indians, but manages to escape and make her way home, despite the fact that she's several months pregnant. Bella discovers a plot to start a war that will lead to the death of her best friend from childhood, and she sets off alone to the neighboring enemy country to warn him and to try to avert the war. Mary Margaret (in Boone's Lick) takes a wagonload of children across the American West to track down her wayward husband, braving flooded rivers, Indian attacks, and cold weather. No doubt about it -- all three of these characters had to be physically strong and mentally tough to get through the challenges they faced.

So, your question probably is....who's the bully? It's Mary Margaret. I suppose McMurtry gave her characteristics that are supposed to prove how "strong" she is. She's stubborn to the point of being obnoxious. She's single-minded and unrelenting in her pursuit of finding her husband, even if it means dragging her kids across the northern Great Plains in early winter. She's bossy, even hateful at times, to Seth, her husband's brother, who has stayed with her all these years while her husband is off starting several other families with Indian women. She belittles him, she contradicts him, she won't even let him drive the wagon. Perhaps McMurtry wants us to see her as "strong," but I see her as mean-spirited and selfish -- a bully, or a pit bull in lipstick.

Mary Margaret looks even worse when compared to Hannah and Bella. While Mary Margaret bullies Seth, Bella forgives Prince Julian for ignoring her -- his best friend -- when he sees her (a common peasant) while he's out on the town with his highborn friends, an act that hurts her deeply. Her love for him motivates her to carry out a plan to save his life that puts her in an unfamiliar and uncomfortable -- and possibly dangerous -- position, even though she believes she's nothing to him. And while Mary Margaret is driven to find her husband so she can finally get control of his role in her life, Hannah is driven to travel miles of rough territory without rest by her love for Tice (her husband) and her baby Janie. At one point, Hannah wants to get a drink from a creek, but she recognizes that if she gets off the horse she stole from the Indians, she would never be able to get back on in her weak condition. So she does without water until she gets back to a neighbor's house. Now, that's strength -- to deny yourself what you want immediately, and maybe need desperately, for the long-term good of others and yourself. Of course, both Hannah and Bella benefit from their sacrifices as well, but the way they are written makes it clear that for both characters, self-interest takes a back seat.

I guess what has me bothered by all this is that I'm afraid a "strong woman" is going to be narrowly defined in the Mary Margaret/"pit bull with lipstick" mode. I'm afraid we aren't going to value the type of strength Hannah and Bella show, because it sometimes looks like weakness. But what kind of world are we going to have if everyone is a Mary Margaret?