The Last Romantics by Tara Conklin

 Tara Conklin’s examination of the Skinner family in her book The Last Romantics begins in the dystopian future where Fiona Skinner, 102 year old poet of renown, is speaking and answering questions about her body of work and more particularly, her famous piece “The Love Poem.”  A young girl’s remarkably familiar looking face sends Fiona’s mind back in time to 1981 when her life and the life of each of her siblings changes forever.  It was in 1981 that Fiona’s 31 year old father dies suddenly hurtling the family into chaos.  This was the beginning of “The Pause”  a three year period where Fiona’s mother goes to her bed and rarely emerges.  The four children were for all intents and purposes left to care for themselves and remarkably they survived.  That is not to say they thrived as they were all damaged by this time of their life.  It actually seemed that they devolved into more of a wolf pack than a family.  The oldest sister took total control of the siblings much like the alpha wolf controls their pack. As the alpha, Renee secured the food, determined the pack territory and oversaw its safety; she was in the position to demand complete respect.  Caroline, the second oldest, became the caregiver/mother and was dependent on Renee for confirmation and direction. Joe, the lone son, was the darling of the family, the golden child, but he was also the warrior/protector. Fiona, only 4 years old at the time of her father’s death, was the “baby” and therefore not given responsibility.  So, for three years this group lived nearly a feral life. Unfortunately, they were so scarred they never really recovered.  The description of their lives as they became adults was a picture of estrangement, distance and avoidance.  They all seemed to want to be left alone to live disconnected from people even though they were caught up in self destructive lifestyles. This novel was interesting and yet there were too many anomalies in the structure that took away from the overall storyline.  Why, for instance, did we have a vague and yet disturbing connection to global warming in the bookend future time at the beginning and ending of the novel? Why the title The Last Romantics when there was little in the book that demonstrated deep love.  It seemed the opposite was much more apparent.  These characters did not know how to love because they had been forced into a life of survival as children where sadly love was not demonstrated to any of them by the adults with whom they came into contact. This was a book that was a split decision at the very least.  The writing was very good, the descriptions were jarringly realistic, but the overall structure left something to be desired. 

Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane

 I have really scratched my head over Mary Beth Keane’s book, Ask Again, Yes and how to best summarize it.  It is really a difficult book to pin down in a short paragraph.  I finally decided to just put it out there and let the chips fall where they may. The novel is a well written, compelling character study.  You will learn much from this novel about love and hate, mental illness and addiction, jealously and control, abuse and obsession and families with dysfunction.  That seems very bleak I realize and much of the story is heartrending at best, but the strong central theme found throughout is that there is love in spite of all the pain.  The father figure after his own near death experience, after seeing his daughter struggle with a husband’s alcoholism and after watching most of his friends suffer through tragic life experiences agrees with his wife when she says, “I think we’ve been luckier than most.”  Our lives are not promised to have only good times, our lives are not promised to be stress free and our lives are not under our control most of the time.  But, we can look back like Keane and say “we have been lucky.”

The Book of Lost Friends by Lisa Wingate

My recollection of what happened to the slaves after the end of the Civil War is vague at best.  I do not remember talking about these people as individuals but only as a whole....”the slaves.”  Lisa Wingate has written a wonderful historical fiction novel in which she delves into the life that remained after the emancipation. She has chosen to tell this story through two women.  Hannie’s story lies back in 1887 and Benny’s story is current and starts when she comes to teach at the school that is close by the old plantation where Hannie was born and raised.  What Benny finds is a poor town with many secrets that she is determined to uncover. The 1887 storyline begins with Hannie who is working as a share cropper for her former owners in order to reach her goal of land ownership. Because Hannie has a good heart and curious mind she is caught up in the lives of two other women, Missy and Juneau Jane, the daughters of her former master.  These three are brought together as they search desperately for the girls lost father. It is while on this mission that they discover the “Lost Friends” articles that are being published in newspapers. Written by former slaves,  the articles show the pain of people who are looking for their family members who were sold off.  Hannie and the other women begin their own collection of “lost friends” as they travel to Texas looking for Mister.  Wingate masterfully ties the two time periods together when Benny finds the girls handwritten memos and collected notes in the old plantation library and then uses them to enrich her students and awaken in them a sense of purpose and connection.  The story humanizes the freed slaves, highlights their plight and clearly shows pain they feel over the loss of family members.  The storyline movement from past to present also adds to the awakening that you feel as the reader.  As we read the articles, we see people instead of “the slaves” and this makes a huge difference. This is really a book that we all should read.

A Hundred Suns by Karin Tanabe

Over the years, our book club has noticed that the phrase “It’s All About the Money” comes into play in just about every book we read.  Karin Tanabe in her historical fiction novel, A Hundred Suns, delivers a clear picture of the imperialist French in Indochina.  Centering her story around Jessie an American married to Victor who was a member of the French Michelin dynasty, Tanabe reveals to the reader the cruelty of the French rubber plantation owners to the native people who were forced into a slave like lifestyle working in inhuman conditions on plantations.  The rich expats lived like kings on the labors of the poor people who were not earning enough money to survive.  The storyline was more than just an expose on the living conditions of the poor however.  The development of labor unions organized by the communists gave evidence to show how these radical antigovernment political groups were able to fight the imperialists and to begin the push to remove all foreigners.  The impoverished natives were easily persuaded to join the militant communists who promised to make everyone equal.  The devious plans of empathetic supporter and communist members made the book more of a suspenseful mystery than just a history book.  The treachery of servants, supposed friends, and crooked police added to the tension and hooked the reader from the beginning.  In the end, mysteries within mysteries were uncovered in a most satisfying way.  Tanabe truly has a gift in story telling and revelation of historical periods that ought not to be forgotten.

Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes

I am always inspired when I read historical fiction books with strong female characters.  It seems that our history books left out the accounts of many truly remarkable women.  Jojo Moyes uncovers  just such a “strong woman” story in her book, Giver of Stars, a novel about four fictional women who volunteered in the 1930s to take up the challenge of Eleanor Roosevelt to become part of the pack horse librarians of eastern Kentucky. Although these women were different in every way, they valiantly headed out into the coal country mountains of Appalachia in the hope that they would open up the world to many less fortunate people.  Often the librarians would ride nearly 20 miles a day on horses or mules carrying as many books as they were able.  Many times the families they visited were illiterate and so these librarians would take time to read to them or they would spend time teaching the children to read on their own.  This remarkable retelling of an historical time would have made for a truly interesting novel, but in true Moyes fashion the fictional storyline for these women was filled with conflict, loveless marriages, male dominance and repression and racism.  The determination of these four women to keep the library going even in the face of constant and in some cases dangerous resistance was inspiring.  Moyes added a touching romance to the plot just to put a ribbon on the package.  Historical fiction is not always written in a way that draws you into the time, but Moyes has a gift and she shared it in Giver of Stars.

The Women of Copper Country by Mary Russell

I am always amazed to learn of women who changed their world.  When I read the book, The Whip, I learned of a real life woman who was the first to drive a supply wagon across the west during the Gold Rush days.  This was an amazing story of courage and strength in a world that did not encourage women to step outside of their “box.” In The Women of Copper Country,  Mary Russell enlightened me about a time and place in American history that I was totally unfamiliar with—the 20th century copper mines in the UP of Michigan and the strikes that began the labor unions that improved their lives.  Most of us are blissfully unaware of the horrific work conditions in the early 1900s done by many poor, undereducated men and women in support of the industrialization of our country.  Russell tells the story of the plight of the miners in Michigan.  The working conditions were beyond dangerous and the living conditions were clearly set by the mine owners to keep the workers in near slave conditions.  The divide between the “Have” and “have nots” was wide and the attitude of the wealthy was that those who worked for them were simply there to keep the wheels turning. The wealthy owners had little desire to help the workers to improve their living conditions or to move up in the world.  Russell tells the story of the copper strike of 1913 in Calumet led almost entirely by Annie Clements and her faithful followers.  Up against the power and money of the mine owners the strikers were doomed to be defeated and left in worse shape than when they began.  Because strikes, by their nature, are collective actions and thus require workers to leave their jobs, these workers had to be willing to risk what little they had and hope they would survive on the generosity of strangers.  Annie and her team were able to support their strikers by bringing in money from other unions around the country as well as collect money sent because of publicity from well known strikers like Mother Jones and Ella Bloor as well as the coverage from news writers like Mike Sweeney.  Annie was simply a housewife, but somehow she was able to mobilize 10,000 miners and she kept the strike going for months.  It cost her dearly, but she was eventually rewarded with the passage of the Clayton antitrust act in 1914 which came to be known as the Magna Carta of Labor.  If you liked the movie Norma Rae, you will enjoy this book.  It is inspiring and uplifting to read about those who are willing to sacrifice everything to win independence and respect for themselves and their community.

American Dirt by Jeannine Cummings

Try to imagine the feeling of dread you have when watching a horror movie.  You watch with your hands over your eyes because you know the monster is coming; you just do not know when and from which dark corner.  Jeannine Cummings managed to capture that panicky feeling on each and every page of her novel, American Dirt.  The book opens in Acapulco at a family barbecue where a sudden, brutal massacre kills 16 family members leaving one mother and son alive, hidden in the bathroom, listening to the murderers laughing and eating the chicken rather than letting it go to waste.  We learn that the murders were in retaliation for a scathing article written for the local paper by Sebastian, an investigative journalist, in which he “outs” the cartel leader and his cruel gang and the take over of Acapulco by his drug cartel. The article truthfully describes the murders of locals, the flight of people from the city and the fear felt by the citizens as a result. The twist comes when we also find that the Jesé of the cartel, Javier, has become a friend of Sebastian’s wife, Lydia, and that she convinced her husband to publish the article reassuring him that “her friend” would not harm the writer and his family because of the relationship that he and Lydia have developed in their weekly get together at her bookshop.  Lydia realizes her grave mistake too late.  Her husband, her mother and all her family except Luca, her son, are dead because Javier is a killer despite his attempts to appear cultured and well read.  Thus begins the long, perilous journey of Lydia and Luca to el Norte.  We live the pain and the desperation of the mother and son as they join other migrants trying to make it to the only place they will be able to find a new life, the United States.  Cummings’ descriptions of the unimaginable risks these people take to get on the Beast (the boxcars of the many trains moving products north) and the unspeakable hardships and tortures such a rape that the migrants face every day are heartbreaking and eventually exhausting.  By the end of the journey the characters are whittled down to existence mode.  They have given up all pretense of sophistication; they just want to survive and as a reader you feel that way too.  Just get there; just finish the journey; just make it through the day.  American Dirt has faced backlash from the Latino community who complain the author is “stealing” their story and that Cummings descriptions of places and events is not factual.  The book is eye opening and given that much of literature is written about people and places the author has never seen, it seems that awareness is a positive result.  We rarely hear the story of migrants from a migrant point of view and even if this one is what some have described as “trauma porn”, the conversations that will arise are important.  I recommend you read this book, but do not expect to be comfortable as you do.

The Sweetness of Forgetting by Kristen Harmel

Long lost love, mysterious connections to France and Jewish holocaust victims and a family stunted by an inability to give or accept unconditional love is the recipe for success in Kristen Harmel’s The Sweetness of Forgetting.  Harmel slowly unravels the life of Mamie, the grandmother/matriarch of her family.  We learn early on that Mamie is sinking into the haze of Alzheimer’s, but she is not so far gone that she does not realize that she needs to right the wrong she has done to her family since coming to America when she was 19.  Living a lie her entire life has ruined the happiness that could have been hers.  Choosing to hide her true identity has only caused Mamie to live a half life.  Plagued by guilt, she is convinced that it is because of her failure to make her parents believe the Nazis were coming that they and all her siblings perished.  She is convinced that it is because she begged Jacob, her secret husband, to go back for her family when she made her escaped that he was taken and killed in the German camps.  And sadly, because of this hidden pain, she is convinced that she is to blame for the emotional wall that existed between her and her daughter.  So before it is too late, Mamie decides she must get her granddaughter, Hope, to go to France and find out what happened to all her relatives and especially Jacob. In a lucid moment, Mamie writes Hope a letter explaining all that she has kept hidden for 60 years.  So begins Hope’s journey to piece together her family’s history.  Through some almost unbelievable connections, Hope is able to find a long lost uncle and Mamie’s long lost soul mate, Jacob. This is a touching story where we are shown the harm that is caused when you shut yourself off from emotional connections for fear of failure or pain.  Harmel wove the story together through Mamie’s flashbacks and through the wonderful characters and their revelations and dialogues.  As a reader, the happy endings were heartwarming and uplifting.  This is a good book for book clubs.

The Guest Book by Sarah Blake

Wow, wow, wow, wow and wow!!  There are few books that stop me in my tracks and cause me to really think about who I am and what I believe about the human race and our treatment of each other, but Sarah Blake’s The Guest Book did just that and more.  As a former English teacher, I often come across books that I believe would be great novels to read and discuss and write about, and Blake’s book is one in that catagory for sure.  The interesting thing about this book is that there are so many themes, so many great characters, so many social issues I would hardly know where to begin if I tried to use it in a class.  There are at least 7 characters who are deserving of in depth discussion.  These characters are so real it is easy to find yourself thinking about them long after you put the book down wondering if you are like them or how you would react to them if you met them face to face.  Likewise, there are so many social issues that beg for illumination and exam.  The rise of Nazi Germany, capitalism, racism, class distinctions, sexuality are all integrated into this story of three generations and are all handled with a deft hand by the author.  And certainly there are themes such as feminism, family dynamics, and racial inequality that are ageless and which demand discussion and reflection.  This book was not one that I would describe as an easy read.  The author spent eight years writing it and clearly it was a act of love.  I was struck many times by the way Blake interweaves three different generations within one page of writing.  Truly a magnificently drawn story.  This is the book I will recommend throughout this year.  Great read!!