Book review: Justin Catanoso, My Cousin the Saint

Many Americans have worked on their family genealogy, tracing their roots back to the countries of their ancestors. They find wealth, poverty, possibly a minor nobility. Not many, however, find a saint. In 2001 Justin Catanoso, a former Greensboro NC News-Record reporter who now teaches writing at Wake Forest University, was very surprised to discover that his grandfather’s cousin Gaetano had been beatified by Pope John Paul II. In a few more years, Pope Benedict XVI would canonize Padre Gaetano, making him a saint.

Catanoso’s book is not about his relative-the-saint as much as it is about family. Once he became aware of Padre Gaetano, and the Internet helped him connect to relatives in southern Italy he had never met, Catanoso took his wife and three daughters to his grandfather’s hometown. Around the same time, his brother Alan was diagnosed with brain cancer and the entire family came together to help.

My Cousin the Saint is beautifully written and deeply moving, woven with threads of faith even in the face of death. Catanoso is not afraid to expose his own emotions, fears, and joys, making this a story-with-a-saint as human as it can be.

 

NC books reviews

Kids all over are groaning at the start of a new school year. All that learning to do! What they don’t realize is that education doesn’t have to be painful. With this stack of books you can learn and enjoy it! 

Intellectually adventurous readers may already be familiar with Duke professor Henry Petroski’s book on the pencil (creatively titled The Pencil). He’s back with an equally inquisitive look at the toothpick. The Toothpick: Technology and Culture (Knopf, 2007, $27.95) explores the history, the function, the very manufacturing techniques behind this tiny part of our everyday lives. People could not pick up cheese at formal functions without this little sliver of wood; olives would languish unattractively at the bottom of  martini glasses; and bad men in movies would have nothing to suck on while they plotted their next move. Mass production of the toothpick began as Charles Forster’s dream for a quality product; today Petroski laments the decline in manufacturing quality as the once-impeccable Forster brand is now produced in China.

We haven’t had a “big” hurricane in a little while, but the name “Katrina” still sends a chill through people, especially those in hurricane-prone areas. CBS News’ hurricane analyst Bryan Norcross has written his second Hurricane Almanac: The Essential Guide to Storms Past, Present, and Future (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2007, $12.99). In addition to giving the history of “notable” hurricanes, Norcross explains how these storms are named and, more important, how they are predicted. The second half of the book, “Living Successfully in the Hurricane Zone,” starts with the biggest question: do we stay or do we evacuate? He then outlines the steps for either situation, from everyone contacting the same outside family member to physically prepping your home to protect against damage. This is a must-read for hurricane-zone families.

Asheville Citizen-Times columnist Susan Reinhardt is only too willing to give advice by example, as in “don’t have heart attack symptoms when the in-laws are coming to dinner and the roast is in the crockpot.” Reinhardt freely admits she’s no Julia Child, so her latest book, Dishing with the Kitchen Virgin (Kensington Books, 2008, $12.95), offers fast, impossibly easy recipes sprinkled among hilarious real-life food stories. When Reinhardt cooked collards without cutting off the stems and spines, her mother said eating them “was like pulling a big eel out of a lagoon.” Reinhardt is as funny and on the mark as ever. Even if you already know there’s more to seasoning meat than Lipton’s Soup Mix, and especially if you liked her Don’t Sleep with a Bubba Unless Your Eggs are in Wheelchairs (Kensington Books, 2007, $12.95),  read Dishing with the Kitchen Virgin.

In Freedom for Themselves: North Carolina’s Black Soldiers in the Civil War Era (UNC Press, 2008, $40.00) Richard M. Reid has written an in-depth history of four Army regiments: the 35th, 36th, and 37th U.S. Colored Troops and the 14th U.S. Colored Heavy Artillery. It wasn’t until early 1863 that the first black regiment was mustered in to the Union Army, although men had served unofficially since the previous year. General Ambrose Burnside’s 1863 occupation of some of eastern North Carolina opened the door for recruitment of local African Americans. By focusing on an under-examined subject, this well-written book adds depth and dimension to the research already available about the war and its participants.

Another significant though little-known part of North Carolina history is covered in Bettering the Health of the People: W. Reece Berryhill, the UNC School of Medicine, and the North Carolina Good Health Movement (UNC Press, 2007, $29.95))  by William W. McLendon, Floyd W. Denny Jr., and William B. Blythe. This comprehensive volume is a biography of both Dr. Berryhill and the UNC medical school complex as it developed under his guidance through the mid-20th-century. In the 1920s any aspiring doctors from North Carolina had to leave the state to complete their medical degrees. When Dr. Berryhill became dean of the medical school in 1941 his priority was training doctors quickly for World War II, but in the years that followed he helped bring MD-granting medical schools back to North Carolina as well as promoting a statewide Good Health Movement.

Not everyone wants to be a doctor, though—many people dream of being a rock star. After reading Steven Kurutz’s Like a Rolling Stone: The Strange Life of a Tribute Band (Broadway, 2008, $23.95), though, some may have second thoughts. Tribute bands work to emulate another band in sound, looks, and performance. For this very believable book, Kurutz followed Sticky Fingers, a Rolling Stone tribute band, with one “Mick” and the “Keithiest Keith” and interchangeable other players, as they played mostly frat parties and small clubs. The author neither glamorizes nor degrades his subjects; he just writes very honestly about a little-known area of the rock world.

 Other recent titles of note:

 With many photographs and thorough research, Richard Eller’s Piedmont Airlines: A Complete History, 1948-1989 (McFarland, 2008, $49.95) tells the story of this Winston-Salem airline from its beginnings until USAir’s acquisition 41 years later.

 Grandparents Doug and Robin Hewitt, in The Joyous Gift of Grandparenting (Hatherleigh Press, 2008, $16.95), give advice and suggestions on how to entertain the grandchildren, whether for a few hours, a day, or longer.

 In Thumbs, Toes, and Tears, and Other Traits That Make Us Human (Walker and Company, 2006, $15.95), author Chip Walter explains why we have the opposable thumb, as well as other body parts, that separate us from other creatures.

 

Agonies of Authorship

(Or “writing isn’t the only way we can suffer . . . “)

I am often annoyed by the fictionalized versions of a writer’s life—so often it’s made to look easy, as though we write a few things and ta-da, people are lining up around the block to buy our book.  Well, if you’re at all considering this career, I can tell you, in the words of a certain rockstar, “it isn’t gonna be that way.”

I was excited for my first few book signings but the luster was soon replaced with disappointment, then frustration, and finally plain old boredom. Although a really fun read (just read the reviews!), my book was overpriced for the market. Very few were sold at book signings, despite my best author-patter (but the entire first print run did sell in a good amount of time and the publisher reprinted).

So when my friend Marion Winik came to town for her own signing for her latest book, The Glen Rock Book of the Dead, of course I went to support her. The Borders staff was incredibly friendly and helpful. The table was placed in a good area. Marion’s a well-known, phenomenal writer (read her!). And still nobody came.

At one point I wandered around while Marion talked to someone. I was surprised to find one copy of my own book. I also discovered that my publisher has once again raised the price. (Guess they like keeping that second printing in their warehouse!)

Finally, just as we were about to pack it in, a man came by and bought a copy for a friend (and I found out he knows my neighbors). So we ended on a good note. But she’s got three of these events left in the next two weeks. I don’t envy her.

(P.S.: For the record, last night I beat her [and my husband] at Scrabble. )

 

Book review: NASCAR

Maybe your child or your husband spends Sundays staring glassy-eyed at the TV while cars run in circles. Or you wonder what people at work are talking about when they say it’s the “silly season.” On the other hand, maybe you’ve always dreamed of trying out a dyno or yearn to do donuts in the midfield. In any case, most likely you know where you were when you heard Dale Earnhardt had died. NASCAR is a part of our culture and these books just prove its broad appeal.

 

For the novice, Liz Clarke’s One Helluva Ride: How NASCAR Swept the Nation (Random House, 2008, $25.00) is a great place to start. Writing as an insider, Clarke takes the reader behind the scenes and into the pit. From the days of moonshine-running and “Big Bill” France’s efforts to regulate what had been a somewhat disorganized sport, to the modern-day multimillion-dollar NASCAR franchise, Clarke writes about the history and the personalities with humor and great affection for the pastime. Even non-race fans will find this book interesting. A sportswriter for the Washington Post who has written for USA Today and the Charlotte Observer, the author won the Russ Catlin award for excellence in motorsports journalism.

 

In the world of NASCAR, Cale Yarborough stands out. The only driver to win three consecutive championships, he was voted one of NASCAR’s 50 Greatest Drivers in 1998. Joe McGinnis’s authorized biography, They Call Him Cale: The Life and Career of NASCAR Legend Cale Yarborough (Triumph, 2008, $24.95), shows just how Yarborough struggled to go from logger and turkey farmer to race-car winner and family man, slugging a few Allison brothers along the way. The appendix is loaded with race statistics to satisfy any fan. No surprise that the author grew up (and still lives) near the Charlotte Motor Speedway.

 

Before there was Winston Cup, there was Grand National. Historians and trivia buffs alike will enjoy Silent Speedways of the Carolinas: The Grand National Histories of 29 Former Tracks by Perry Allen Wood (McFarland, 2007, $35.00). This guidebook to former racetracks in North and South Carolina—including Tri-City Speedway in High Point—provides pictures, histories, statistics, and surprising tidbits about each track. Who knew that 1930s orchestra leader Paul Whiteman was involved in stock-car racing? Or that Jayne Mansfield once graced the track at Occoneechee Speedway outside Hillsborough? Interesting reading even if you never set foot on any of the tracks.

 

People often say that their passion, whatever it may be, is their “religion.” A professor of religious studies at Elon University, author L. D. Russell is willing to put that in writing. His memoir, Godspeed: Racing Is My Religion (Continuum, 2007, $16.95), opens with Dale Earnhardt’s death and funeral. He credits his grandfather with introducing him to the sport: “Grease monkey that he was, [he] . . . planted the seed of stock car racing in my soul.” Today the author gives lectures on the connection between racing and religion, but admits not everyone agrees with him. This book is part NASCAR history, part Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, with a little Bible study thrown in. His relaxed writing style will draw you in.

 

Two mysteries will appeal to readers looking for something lighter. Steve Eubanks’ Downforce (Harper, 2007, $6.99) is his second thriller featuring Robert “Redball” Redding, a former stock-car racer and now North Carolina prosecutor, trying to figure out how an eco-terrorist ended up blown to bits in the Gulf of Mexico. The author’s rapid-fire style brings 1950s hardboiled mysteries to mind, but his descriptions—“a pretty girl with heroin eyes and gunmetal-blue hair”—are pure 21st century. Long-time mystery writers and self-admitted NASCAR fans Joyce and Jim Lavene first introduced readers to Ruby and Glad in Swapping Paint, the first in their Stock Car Racing series. Now they’re back with Hooked Up (Midnight Ink, 2008, $13.95). Ten million dollars is missing and Ruby can’t resist following the trail, no matter where it leads or how much danger it brings.

 

The die-hard NASCAR fan will truly appreciate Portraits of NASCAR (Triumph, 2008, $27.95), a picture book of NASCAR personalities at home, by Anita Rich and Robin Dallenbach. From “Humpy” Wheeler to Tony Stewart, the photographs capture a surprisingly sensitive side to these men who deal in engines and grease and unimaginable speeds every day for work. Put this one on your gift list for the NASCAR fan who has everything.

 

[First published in the Greensboro News-Record, August 24, 2008]

 

Book reviews: The Novel Lives!

We’ve heard for years that the novel is dead, that recreational reading is passé, that books will soon be no more. But based on the stacks sitting on my desk—all fiction—I have to say that reports of the literary publication’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. Take the opportunity to sample one or more of these; you’re bound to find something to suit your tastes. . . .

 

What makes better summer reading than a mystery? Cathy Pickens’s Hush My Mouth [St. Martin’s, 2008] is fourth in her Southern Fried Mystery series. Attorney Avery Andrews has returned to her roots in Dacus, S.C., and quickly gets caught up in a tangle of missing persons, a 20-year-old murder case, some ghost hunters, and a shady real estate deal. Pickens, a lawyer living in Charlotte, who says her influences are Perry Mason and Nancy Drew, knows her way around both small towns and mysteries. This fun read has enough twists and turns to keep it interesting and still be believable.

 

For more intense reading, try the second and third political thrillers written by Andrew Britton, The Assassin [Kensington Books, 2007] and The Invisible [Kensington Books, 2008]. Britton’s first novel, The American, introduced troubled Special Forces vet and CIA agent Ryan Kealey. In The Assassin, Kealey has to deal with Iran’s threat to bomb the UN and in The Invisible the U.S. secretary of state is kidnapped. This trilogy holds more than a few surprises. British-born Britton grew up in Raleigh and served in the U.S. Army before publishing his first novel at 21. Sadly, this very talented writer, called the “next Tom Clancy,” died suddenly this past March in Durham.

 

Another suspenseful, “ripped from the headlines” story, The Moonpool [St. Martin’s, 2008], begins with a radiation poisoning a la Alexander V. Litvinenko. Even if you haven’t read the first three titles featuring ex-cop and now head of Hide & Seek Investigations Cam Richter, you’ll be able to dive right into this book. The author, P. T. Deutermann, who lives in Rockingham County, N.C., has written 12 novels.

 

But maybe you’re less about homeland security and more about home and hearth. Eleven-year-old Ellie Sanders has a difficult life, forced into making adult decisions while watching her mother slip into mental illness and her father slip away in denial and infidelity. In her first novel, Tomato Girl [Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2008], author Jayne Pupek writes a story of sorrow and resilience. Pupek’s roots as a poet show in her vivid details, even the ordinary ones: baby chicks smell “like corn and baking soda,” the sheriff’s fat neck “rested on his dark brown collar.”

 

Much less serious is Clyde Edgerton’s The Bible Salesman [Little, Brown, 2008], which might bring to mind Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People,” only with humor. Or maybe Paper Moon, but Henry the Bible salesman isn’t the one who’s the con artist. A sheltered upbringing with his Bible-reading Aunt Dorie didn’t prepare Henry for car thief Preston Clearwater, who invites Henry to join him in “undercover FBI work.” As Henry figures out what is really going on, he has to figure out what to do. Edgerton, the author of nine books, teaches creative writing at UNC-Wilmington.

 

Ever wonder how Tiger Woods could just be so good for so long? That might just be where Willie Thompson got the idea for Scratch Golfer [Mainland Press, 2008]. This laugh-out-loud novel combines golf and mid-life career frustrations for a story that even non-golfers will relate to. Thompson, who according to his bio “has written several books that you haven’t read, unless you happen to work on elevators or data communication networks,” lives near Hickory, N.C.

 

Don’t want to make a commitment to a novel? Short fiction can be irresistible. I started to read Louise Hawes’s Anteaters Don’t Dream and Other Stories [University Press of Mississippi, 2007] and couldn’t put it down. While Hawes, who now lives in Chapel Hill, has written books for a variety of age groups, this one is for adults, with tales of abusive fathers, a wife neglected, men in life crises, and a woman dealing with a long-ago abortion.

 

Finally, Kris Radish says she writes what women are thinking. She couldn’t be more right. Searching for Paradise in Parker, PA [Bantam, 2008] is the funny, insightful story of Addy and Lucky Lipton. Married long enough that they don’t need to communicate (or even want to some days), Addy and Lucky find themselves facing the biggest crisis of their married life when he injures his back, forcing them to take a look at themselves and each other and ask “what do I really want?” Radish’s writing is deft, humorous, and right on target. This book would be an excellent choice for a book group, bound to spark discussion and laughter.

 

 

[First published in the Greensboro News-Record, August 3, 2008]

 

Book reviews: Traveling in NC

Gas prices are going to keep us all closer to home this summer but that doesn’t have to mean we have to spend our time in rickety lawn chairs eating popsicles with our feet in the kiddie pool. Plenty of books out right now give great ideas for things to do and places to see, both ordinary and, well, weird!

 

Looking to get out and move? Joe Miller’s 100 Classic Hikes in North Carolina (Mountaineer Books, 2007, $19.95) provides distances, times, elevation changes, and difficulty level, plus directions and instructions on how to get maps and more information, for 100 hikes throughout the state, including the Lake Brandt Greenway, part of the Greensboro Watershed Trails. The colorful photographs and well-written descriptions will entice even the most-reluctant couch potato to put on hiking shoes and hit the trail.

 

If you’re looking for a hiking destination that’s more out of the ordinary, try Peter J. Barr’s Hiking North Carolina’s Lookout Towers (John F. Blair Publishers, 2007, $14.95). New technology made most of the fire towers in the state obsolete in the 1960s but they are still good hiking destinations, guaranteeing both views (even if the tower itself is not accessible) and some North Carolina history. Closest to Greensboro are Rendezvous Mountain and Walker Top, both on the National Historic Lookout Register.

 

Don’t want to hike alone? In addition to all the pertinent human information, Karen Chavez’s Best Hikes with Dogs: North Carolina (Mountaineer Books, 2007, $16.95) shares everything you need to take your best friend along. Her hiking tips include trail etiquette and first aid for Fido. According to the author, fall is the best season to try the Jomeokee and Sassafras Trails in Pilot Mountain State Park, giving the hiker spectacular views and the pup lots of new smells.

 

Maybe you want more than just a scenic hike with beautiful views. For a little education mixed in with your recreation, try Exploring the Geology of the Carolinas (UNC Press, 2007, $39.95). This field guide, written by Kevin G. Stewart, associate professor of geological science at UNC-Chapel Hill, and science writer Mary-Russell Roberson, covers 31 places in North Carolina from Grandfather Mountain to Oregon Inlet. The authors explain how the landscape came to be, describe geologic features to look for, and, in some cases, debunk local myths such as how the Carolina Bays were created. You don’t need to be a rock hound to appreciate this one.

 

A road trip of any length is better when it includes a good meal. In Southern Belly: The Ultimate Food Lover’s Companion to the South (Algonquin Books, 2007, $14.95), food writer John T. Edge serves up eateries big and small from Virginia to East Texas, with an ample serving of Carolina barbecue, even served with grits on request at Short Sugar’s Drive-In in Reidsville. If Edge’s descriptions don’t get your mouth watering (“Dressed with shredded lettuce, pickles, tomatoes, mustard, mayonnaise, and gobs of fresh brown, garlickly gravy, this two-fisted sandwich looks like a train wreck”), the recipes he includes just might. You won’t know whether to keep this book in the kitchen for cooking or the car for traveling.

 

But maybe this year you’re staying at home and your only travel will be the armchair variety. These titles can entertain and educate as well. North Carolina native and former park ranger Tim Pegram shares his experiences in The Blue Ridge Parkway by Foot: A Park Ranger’s Memoir (McFarland, 2007, $29.95). After retirement, Pegram decided to hike the 469-mile Blue Ridge Parkway. His encounters with humans and wildlife (sometimes one and the same) are mixed with observations of nature and the history of the Parkway.

 

Ray McAllister’s Wrightsville Beach: The Luminous Island (John F. Blair Publishers, 2007, $13.95) will make you yearn for the beach. McAllister writes with love about a place he knows very well, describing its beauty and relating its history (including both fires and hurricanes) and its struggle with growth common to most coastal property today. 

 

Finally, Roger Manley’s Weird Carolinas: Your Travel Guide to North and South Carolina’s Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets (Sterling Publishing, 2007, $19.95), another in the “Weird” states series, is chock full of ghosts, tragedies, legends, mystery lights, UFOs, and Woollyboogers, Carolina’s answer to Bigfoot. Henry Warren’s Shangri-La, the little village he built in Prospect Hill, is prominently featured. This one’s good for traveling (some sights have directions) or just staying home.

 

[First published in the Greensboro News-Record, June 1, 2008]

 

Book review: Michael Malone, The Last Noel

In The Last Noel Michael Malone has carved a romantic story out of the modern era. The two central characters come from different worlds. Noelle Tilden is white, John Montgomery King is black. She’s rich, he’s poor. While growing up in a small North Carolina town, with two brothers, a rigid mother, and a doting but alcoholic father, she has every advantage afforded the upper class. He divides his time between his mentally unstable mother’s home in Philadelphia and his grandparents’ cottage in North Carolina, where his grandmother is a servant to the wealthy Tilden family living on the hill.  

They meet on Christmas Day 1963, his seventh birthday; she had turned seven the day before. From the moment he crawls in her bedroom window to urge her to go sledding, Noni and Kaye, as they are known, connect. They see each other at least every holiday season. Over the years they grow close, grow apart, and never truly lose their connection to each other. And that is their love story. Two souls, connected by the times they live in and the place they live, but with so many obstacles. 

The book follows Kaye and Noni through school and into adulthood. They continue to share their birthdays in the same way they share their feelings for each other, sometimes in sync but not always. Yet, at least for Noni, there is a permanent connection to Kaye. “Noni and Kaye—of this she had no doubt—had been from the beginning of their relationship so attuned to each other that she knew that if she stared long enough at the back of his head, he would turn around and look at her.” 

Malone’s strength is in his gift for description. It is not at all difficult to imagine the worlds he has created. We know what people look like and what they’re wearing, even when he’s describing someone who is not a central character. “He handed eggnog to a tall think homely faced man in a pearl gray Nehru jacket listening to their conversation with an unlit cigarette in his mouth.”  

The pictures are especially clear when he describes the Tildens: “There, on the far side of the handsome paneled space, Bud Tilden lay on his red leather couch, dressed in his perfect soft wool gray slacks and his cashmere sweater, but with bloody bare feet. A spilled glass was tilted in his hand. A record album lay on the floor, Where Are You? On its cover, Frank Sinatra hunched over, sadly smoking a cigarette, wearing a green V-neck sweater very much like the one Bud Tilden had on. Nearby, built-in shelves showed off trophies with basketball players on them; others held hundreds of vinyl records—classical Romantic music, mostly, and pop vocalists.”  

Malone uses the unusual device of centering each chapter around the Christmas season, numbering them like the Twelve Days of Christmas. By doing this the author has given the reader a familiar point of reference in family holiday celebrations and what the coming new year may bring. But it also limits the storytelling to some degree, since people don’t live as much of their “ordinary” lives in late December. I wondered what these people really did the rest of the time. Occasionally we see other months, but I don’t feel I really knew their daily lives, especially Kaye’s. I wanted a better picture of him living with his mother, or what life was like for Noni in college.  

Since it is set in the second half of the twentieth century, The Last Noel comments on contemporary issues. From an early age, Noni and Kaye are influenced by the social changes around them–the Vietnam War, civil rights, alcoholism, Alzheimer’s, and AIDS.. Kaye’s mother keeps memorials to victims of racial violence; his absent father was a protest marcher. Noni watches her brother go reluctantly to Vietnam. And she knows her mother’s attitude toward people of other races and ignores it.

Unfortunately, though, it appears that the women’s movement never came to Noni’s life. Kaye often yells at her for living her life only for other people. He is right. Despite her achievements, and the fact that the book says she has, she never truly seems to become her own person.  

And that—without giving away the ending—is what disappointed me. In the end I wanted a fuller picture of both Noni and Kaye. But even with that caveat, it is still a beautiful read, full of vivid descriptions, family stories, and love.

 

Book review: Julianna Baggott, The Madam

Writer Bernard Malamud said that “all biography is ultimately fiction” because it is impossible to recount a life with complete accuracy. And fiction usually has its roots in biography and autobiography. In Julianna Baggott’s latest book, The Madam, the author unapologetically turns her own unconventional family history into fiction. Baggott’s dedication acknowledges that her great-grandmother Ella ran a whorehouse and raised Baggott’s grandmother, Mildred Holderfield Smith Lane, in that house. 

How much more of what she calls “a novel” is true and how much is fiction only Baggott knows. But that family tale is the genesis of the story. It’s 1924 in Marrowtown, West Virginia, and Alma and her husband, Henry, are scraping out a hardscrabble existence. She labors in a hosiery mill, he works for the railroad, and they take in boarders.

When Sir Lee, a local moonshiner, tells tales of mysterious trunks of riches to be found on the docks in Florida, Henry and Alma decide to pursue the treasure, even though it means leaving their three children behind. Oldest son Irving, whom Alma describes as “wild,” is to fend for himself at the house. Younger son Willard, who is “slow,” and daughter Lettie, “easily upset at things,” are signed over to the nuns at a local orphanage while Alma and Henry drive south. 

When the trunk yields less than their dreams, Alma returns alone to West Virginia to reclaim her children while Henry deserts the family to stay in Florida. Along the way she picks up Roxy, a larger-than-life woman with an even larger heart. In the short week and a half that Alma has been gone, the boarders have moved out and Irving has hooked up with Smitty, son of the moonshiner, and Delphine, a local prostitute, both on the run from Sir Lee’s violence. Lettie is eager to leave the orphanage, but Sister Margaret tells Alma that Willard has made much progress and should stay.  

Faced with no income and only the option of going back to the mill to beg cold Mrs. Bass for her job, Alma listens when Delphine suggests opening a whorehouse, saying, “We never go out of fashion.” Alma wonders, “is it so different from the hosiery mill?,” and then agrees to become the madam. Roxy is both bouncer and lover to Delphine, the reigning queen of the house. Other local women bring in steady business. In Marrowtown, prostitution is seen as a fact of life even by the local police, who occasionally harass Alma when not partaking of the house services. 

Lettie is now the only child at home, at night restricted to her room, safely hidden away from the customers. She fantasizes about her long-absent father: “She has created the notion that her mother doesn’t run a whorehouse but an orphanage for wayward fathers. This is when she hates her mother for not letting her downstairs to claim her father from the abundant choices.” Lettie escapes the confines of the house. Alma—in a way mothers would best understand—helps her daughter escape the life she ran to.  

From the very first paragraph Baggott’s writing is laden with detail, as when she introduces Alma: “You must imagine her as a young mother, thin, cheerless, her hair frizzing around her head. She stands in front of a smoothed pedestal, curved like a flexed foot, fitting each toe seam to it, pulling stockings on and then, quickly, off again. It is like dressing and undressing a thousand women’s bare legs.” It’s a book not to be read quickly, but one to take time with, to see the pictures the author draws.  

Baggott’s world, populated with circus people (even a bear), the maimed, and social outcasts, brings to mind John Irving’s The World According to Garp.. And yet this world is vastly different from Irving’s, dominated as it is by women. The men come and go, the women continue on with them and without them. Women control the hosiery mill, the whorehouse, even the Chinese laundry where Delphine gets her opium. Women may follow their men, but their minds are always their own. 

The Madam is not just biographical. Autobiography plays a role, possibly more than Baggott realized when she wrote this book. Like Alma, Baggott has three living children. In a recent interview (http://www.writerswrite.com/journal/nov01/baggott.htm) Baggott talks about working through her grief after a miscarriage; Alma’s thoughts of the child she lost haunt her throughout the book. 

In the end, whether it’s fiction, biography, or autobiography doesn’t matter. Full of lush description and raw emotion, The Madam is a thoroughly engaging story.

 

Book review: Barbara Wright, Plain Language

The words “Great Depression of the 1930s” bring vivid images to mind. Eastern cities were full of soup lines and men selling apples on streetcorners. In the Midwest impoverished farmers struggled with dust storms and crop failures, trying desperately to make ends meet, to support their families and keep their farms going. Author Barbara Wright takes this rural side of our not-so-distant American history and builds within it a story that is as much the daily struggle for survival as the lifetime struggle for love and security.

By the time Virginia Mendenhall, a North Carolina Quaker, marries Colorado rancher Alfred Bowen, a man she has met only twice, the Depression is in full swing. Unlike most women of the era, Virginia has had a full career and independent life. She left the protective shelter of her family in the small town of Whittier, N.C., to study for a master’s degree at Haverford College in suburban Philadelphia. She then devoted her life to social service by working for the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization. Yet even with a life full of work and reading and friends, by her early 30s she knew she was missing something: “she had never become inured to that moment . . . before sleep when the chilly fingers of loneliness touched her in an unwanted caress” (31).

She finds what she was missing in an unlikely place. Virginia first encounters her future husband, Alfred, in a Washington, D.C., train station. The meeting is brief, nothing more than an afternoon spent in conversation, but he makes such an impression on her that five years later, when she finds herself in Mexico City—his destination all those years ago—she looks for him. They spend another afternoon in conversation and she finds her attraction grows. This time when they go their separate ways, they settle into a regular correspondence. Eventually he proposes marriage and a life on a ranch in eastern Colorado. 

Alfred—in his early 40s when he marries Virginia–was raised on a Colorado ranch, the younger of two sons. His older brother, Shrine, was skilled at ranch work, the favored son. Alfred was the artistic, dreamy one, always disappointing his father. He left the ranch for an education and the chance to succeed at his own dreams, but the ranch life draws him back, and Virginia with him. 

The Quakers are not a group often associated with romantic stories, but Wright’s story is not a typical romance. Plain Language is about marriage and what it takes to make one work. Virginia and Alfred come together as almost strangers, but they work together to carve out a life in the dust and the drought that cover Colorado. “Now they were two strangers joined by—by what? A mysterious bond that had nothing—or everything—to do with marriage” (33). Over the course of the story they disagree, sometimes they defy each other, but they continue to come back and try again, no matter what the obstacle. They are truly life partners.  

The idea of writing about a Depression-era couple on a Colorado ranch came from an acquaintance, according to the author. She had been introduced to Elizabeth Jensen, a Quaker activist who had lived in a ranch in eastern Colorado. Wright says, “Virginia has a different background, personality and character from her real-life inspiration, but many details of the hardship of ranch life came from Elizabeth.” Those details are very clear—the constant dust, the prayers for water, even what the characters felt like after bathing. Wright never misses a chance to use description to make their lives easy to visualize. 

Wright admits that she started writing this book without knowing how it would finish. She says, “One of the exciting things about writing fiction is you never know where the story’s headed. Three-quarters of the way through the novel I had no idea how it was going to end.” Even with a few hints, the reader won’t truly know until the end either. 

While the book does have modern conveniences, like vehicles, it’s easy to forget what era this book is set in. The relationship between Virginia and Alfred, and with their families, as well as the hardships they endure are timeless. No matter where we live, it’s not hard to relate to this husband and wife scratching out their lives on the prairie. It’s a familiar tale, and Wright tells it well.

 

Book review: Richard N. Côté, Strength and Honor: The Life of Dolley Madison

Dolley Madison is among the most well known of our pre-twentieth-century First Ladies, famous for saving items from the White House when the British were about to burn it in 1814. After that, her name is connected to far more trivial things, like snack cakes and ice cream, both of which have no real connection to the woman who was our fourth First Lady. Richard N. Côté sets out to correct that gap in our knowledge with his Strength and Honor: The Life of Dolley Madison, the most comprehensive biography written of this influential woman to date.

 Dolley Payne Todd Madison was born near Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1768. Her parents, John and Mary Payne, had moved from Virginia to join the New Garden Quaker settlement. Not long after Dolley’s birth they returned to Virginia, and when Dolley was fifteen, they freed all their slaves and moved to the Quaker city of Philadelphia. With this move to the nation’s new capital, Dolley’s future was set.

Described as “exceptionally pretty,” Dolley had a number of suitors. She married another Quaker, John Todd Jr., had two children, and lost both husband and younger son to the city’s yellow fever epidemic of 1793. Within a year she married again, this time to Anglican James Madison. Since this time she married outside her Quaker faith, she was disowned by her meeting.

Because the author had access to 2,000 of Dolley’s letters, the reader gets to “hear” the real Dolley and know what she was thinking. Writing to a friend on her wedding day, she said, “I have stolen from the family to commune with you—to tell you in short, that the cource of this day I give my Hand to the Man who of all other’s I most admire . . . In this Union I have every thing that is soothing and greatful in prospect–& my little Payne will have a generous & tender protector” (124).

The Madisons would live first in Philadelphia, then at Montpellier (now spelled Montpelier), the Madison family estate in Virginia, and then in the nation’s newest capital, Washington. They had no children but raised her son, Payne Todd, together. According to all accounts, theirs was a very happy marriage.

Dolley’s life reads like a who’s who of the early United States. She counted Aaron Burr among her friends and received advice on marrying James Madison from the first First Lady, Martha Custis Washington. Her younger sister married George Washington’s nephew. Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe were nearly neighbors to the Madison estate in Virginia and all visited each other regularly.

When James Madison became the fourth president of the United States in 1809, Dolley Madison had already been the nation’s hostess for eight years. Madison’s predecessor, Thomas Jefferson, was a widower and had no woman to serve in the traditional role of hostess at official gatherings. He asked Dolley, his good friend and wife of his secretary of state, to fill that role. By the time she became “Presidentress” (as wives of presidents were called in her day) she already knew a host of international figures and was well versed in international protocol.

The detail in this book is staggering. The author has clearly researched his subject as thoroughly as humanly possible and provides minute details. The reader is led through lengthy family trees for both the Madisons and the Paynes. Every physical characteristic is described, from Dolley Madison’s wedding dress to James Madison’s hat size.

A highlight of the book is the author’s account of the burning of Washington in 1814, as seen from Dolley’s perspective. From the sounds of battle to the smell of gunpowder, to the last minutes as Dolley directs the rescue of Gilbert Stuart’s famous portrait of George Washington from the President’s House before the British overtake the building—it couldn’t be more vivid if it was on the History Channel.

Although early nineteenth-century life was different from today in many ways, it seems some things in politics never change. When Madison was running for president, rumors were spread that Dolley was Thomas Jefferson’s lover. When Jefferson was president, he and his vice-president, Aaron Burr, had a falling out over the distribution of patronage jobs.

Sadly, after her husband’s death, Dolley Madison fell on hard times. Her son, Payne, was a constant source of disappointment, and she spent her last years struggling to make ends meet. Not the ending one would hope for a woman who helped shape the role of a First Lady and at great risk to herself preserved part of our American history. But—despite the snack cakes, and thanks in part to Cote’s work—Dolley Madison will always be remembered for her heroic actions in 1814 and much more.