Book Reviews

Nine boys (from nine to fifteen years old) and three men are dropped off at the nearly vertical Warrior Stac—one of the tiny rock islands of the St. Kilda Archipelago in the far northwest of Scotland. The year is 1727. Every summer a group of boys goes “fowling” to collect gannets, puffins, petrels and other birds for the meat, eggs, feathers, bones and oil to pay as rent to the owner of their island, Hirta. The amazing Geraldine McCaughrean spins her tale from a true event in “Where the World Ends” (Flat Iron 2017).

After a couple months the Hirta boat will fetch the men and boys home, with their haul of dead birds. But the boat doesn’t arrive. Day after day they wait.

Wise and humble Quill, one of the older boys, has become a natural leader. He comforts the younger boys with stories—although Quill doesn’t understand why they look up to him. He also fantasizes about the young woman, Murdina, who had visited Hirta last year from the mainland.

One of the men, who insists upon being called Colonel Cane, the grave digger in their small community on Hirta, names himself the Minister of the boys. He tells the boys the world has ended and their people have been taken by angels to Heaven and forgotten those on Warrior Stac. Of course the boys are distraught. Cane then requires the boys to confess to him. Jealous of Quill’s power, Cane banishes Quill.

As Quill climbs down the treacherous cliff from Midway Bothy to Lower Bothy, rage keeps Quill alive although he is “drowning in dark.” He finds a shallow cave to protect him from cold and stormy weather. The youngest boy, Davie, is the first to visit Quill.

One by one the other boys visit him in his exile and Quill comforts them by giving each a job according to how they are needed: “Keeper of Faces,” “Keeper of Memories.” He advises them “Do not dwell on the unbearable.”

Kenneth is the teen bully who was “the great snitcher, who used information like a crowbar to thrash his way through the world.” Even he visits Quill as does Quill’s best friend Murdo. But Murdo grows jealous of Quill. The reader will wonder is this a redux of Lord of the Flies?

This richly imagined world, to me, offers more, partly by imparting the technology such as ropes used to help scale escarpments—made on Hirta of sheep skin and horsehair. While exhiled on the stac, the boys string a horsehair taken from a rope through an oily bird, for a wick and it becomes a candle.

In time the boys give up hope, the birds leave for the winter, the storms arrive in full force—and the months pass. Starvation sets in.

Spoiler: The world had not ended, but a smallpox epidemic reduced their Hirta community to a handful of people and no one was able to captain the boat to Warrior Stac. In actual history, every man and boy returned home and found only one Hirta survivor. Both stories are riveting.

 

Patricia Hruby Powell’s Lift As You Climb: The Story of Ella Baker will be celebrated at her Virtual Book Release Party. Check https://talesforallages.com/ for link.

At the Massachusetts School for the Feebleminded, we become acquainted with four remarkable young women in the historical fiction, “The Degenerates” (Simon & Schuster 2020) by J. Albert Mann. Alice, who rarely speaks, is African American, has a clubfoot—a special talent of intuiting relationships between people. Maxine is a dreamer who protects her younger sister, Rose, who has Downs Syndrome and is termed “Mongoloid.” London is pregnant, and of Italian descent—but called “dago.” She curses like a yeoman and is wild, even crass, and yet lovable. Alice, Maxine, and London are fourteen, and Rose is a year younger in this story set in the early part of the twentieth century.

London is beaten by police and brought by wagon to the “School” and put in solitary confinement. She finds that three meals a day and the “pissed on” mattress are acceptable, but the confinement is unbearable. In time, once she’s released from the dungeon into the main school, a generous attendant gives her a book—“The Count of Monte Cristo” by Alexandre Dumas.

The others marvel at London’s ability to read. Rather than reading in this “school,” they’re trained to launder clothes, mop up excrement or take care of dying infants in the baby’s wing. London and Rose build an unlikely friendship likened to a “stevedore” and an “angel” while Maxine and Alice hold each other up with the help of very few words. Bullies in the school provide ever-present danger. Alice must be especially careful because her punishment would be so much worse than that of the white girls.

The staff describes the inmates as “tainted”; they’re diagnosed as “imbeciles,” “morons,” “idiots,” and “cripples”—terms that the author, in her endnote, reports have been taken directly from the historic writings of the doctors. As readers, we’re aghast at the injustice, but even more powerful, we fall in love with the four girls.

The author writes, “Anger wrapped itself around London’s heart like a cold fist and squeezed. She didn’t want help. She didn’t want kindness. Life was crap and she liked it that way. It was easier.” But loving sweet Rose makes her see life differently. And Rose has a plan. Maybe there was hope.

Maxine and Rose were sent to the “School” when their mother found it difficult to care for them at the same time as her many boys. Maxine expects her mother to fetch them home so she and Rose could help care for their younger brothers. But their mother never does come and Maxine knows it’s for her transgression—which remains a mystery to us until deep into the story. Alice has been here since she was seven years old when her brother dropped her off.

In spite of their bleak, violent, racist world, the girls experience deep humanity amongst themselves. They draw strength, inspiration and support from one another. We see that most of the inmates have been put away simply because they are inconvenient to their families. Maybe just maybe some of them will escape and find a way to live outside.

 

Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue;Lift As You Climb releases June 9, 2020.  She teaches community classes at Parkland College.         talesforallages.com

A shy talented pianist, Hazel, falls in love with James, a gentle man who aspires to be an architect. But this is 1917 London and WWI is raging. James is unexpectedly called up and shipped out to France to fight in “Lovely War” (Viking 2019), by acclaimed author Julie Berry.

Aubrey Edwards, a Harlem ragtime musician, enlists and becomes a member of the United States 15^th New York Infantry, an all-black regiment of soldier-musicians under the direction of the great jazz composer/band leader James Reese Europe. The 15^th regiment is employed to both play jazz and dig trenches, rather than the “glorious” job of fighting.

Hazel, wanting to help the war effort and perhaps visit James when he’s granted a leave, travels to Saint-Nazaire, France to serve at a YMCA relief hut at an American training base. There, she meets Colette Fournier, a Belgian singer, who has lost her entire family to the Germans. Colette and Hazel become fast friends. They befriend the African American Aubrey and are both smitten with his piano playing—Hazel as a fellow pianist, Colette as a chanteuse. All three are breaking rules by meeting around the piano late at night. Need I say, the book is about war, love, and racial divide. Plus . . .

The story is narrated by Olympian goddess of love, Aphrodite—a story she tells her husband Hephaestus who has just caught his wife cheating with Ares, god of war. Rather than living on Mt. Olympus, the gods reside in a luxurious Manhattan hotel room in the 1940s during WWII.

Back in France, WWI, Hazel watches Colette and Aubrey fall in love. In the gods’ world Aphrodite invokes the four lovers’ story of struggle during wartime, to plead her case to her jealous husband. We fall deeper in love with Hazel, James, Colette, and Aubrey. When white racist American soldiers witness black Aubrey with white Colette together, Aubrey is whisked away to play jazz throughout Europe lest he be murdered by racist white American soldiers at the base. Colette and Hazel are accused of being wanton women by the proprietor of the boarding house and cast out.

In the meantime, James turns out to be a skilled sharpshooter, requiring him to be placed in intensely dangerous battle situations.

War brings tragedy, of course. And war promotes intense love. Berry is a master of weaving historical details into well-crafted beautifully-written fiction. If you love war history or jazz history—and even if you don’t—you might want to experience hope in the face of destruction. Highly recommended.

 

 

Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue and the forthcoming Lift As You Climb.  She teaches writing classes at Parkland College.         talesforallages.com

Shaun David Hutchinson wrote “Brave Face: A Memoir: How I Survived Growing Up, Coming Out, and Depression” (Simon Pulse 2019) revealing his life in a small town in Florida in the 90s.

Hutchinson felt that books and movies told him what he was supposed to want: “fall in love with a girl, and want to have sex with her.” He set on his path to marry (a woman), have a family and live happily.

With an early girlfriend “kissing . . . gave me that sweaty/nauseated/horny feeling that made me unsure whether I was going to puke.” He drops her. He tries another and drops her. Whereas he wasn’t an unpopular kid, these events don’t increase his social status.

At home, he can’t do simple chores or take part in the family community. He has yelling fights with his mom. “I felt like she was dropping the weight of the world on my back while I was already carrying twice that amount . . . there was a short circuit in my brain somewhere.”

At school he finds solace in the drama club and finds close frienships. Then he finds debate, which helps develop his analytical thinking.

Still, as a straight kid he performs a monolog from “I Hate Hamlet,” playing it for laughs limp-wristed, bare midriffed, in short shorts. He loves the outraged laughing response of the audience. Later he says, “I wasn’t gay. I couldn’t be gay. Being gay . . . was a role I’d played for laughs.” He’d be a lawyer or an actor.

In 1994 the Department of Defense instituted the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, confirming that being gay was shameful. Movies showed gay men as “flamboyant comedic reliefs whose sole purpose was to help satisfy the needs of straight people.” Or gay men were “portrayed as promiscuous sexual deviants and drug abusers . . . it’s how I saw them too.”

His older half-brother comes out to him. “I assumed that he was going to wind up the way I believed every gay man wound up. Lonely, sick, addicted to drugs, or dead.” He does not empathize. By his own admission, he’s arrogant. When he steals magazines displaying naked men it does not occur to him that he’s gay. But he gets caught

He gets himself into some rough situations and here’s the necessary spoiler. He attempts suicide and nearly succeeds. There are links to suicide prevention and depression support groups in the book.

It’s a relief for him—and for the reader—when he finally starts coming out. At which point I realize, right, you come out many times—there’s your family, your groups—it’s not just one big hurrah.

Fortunately, being gay has been normalized to a degree—especially in urban or college town settings, but, still it’s difficult. Everyone deserves to see themselves in literature. You might want to give this book to some kid who you think might benefit.

 

Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue among others.  She teaches community classes in writing at Parkland College.  talesforallages.com

When their mother dies, Frankie and her siblings are sent to an orphanage until their Italian immigrant father can pull himself together and provide for them in Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All (Balzer & Bray 2019) by Laura Ruby. Set in late Depression era in Chicago, we see all of society struggling in this National Book Award finalist. Now here’s the kicker. The narrator is a deceased young woman—a ghost—who is able to see what just about everyone and anyone is doing—or thinking.

The writing is lyrical only when it needs to be—such as the opening. Likening her to an abalone cup, the narrating ghost says, “Frankie traced the pearlescent edge of the shell with her finger,” observes that it still wasn’t broken, and neither was Frankie. Then Frankie hears a fox cry in the distance. If I weren’t already hooked by the ghost-narrator, the mystery, wildness, and subtle delicacy would draw me right in.

The orphanage is Catholic which plays heavily into the story. Frankie, curious about her young womanhood, irritates many of the nuns, who, out of fear, behave cruelly to their pubescent charges. Or maybe they’re cruel for some other reason. Sister George, wakes many a girl by hefting her mattress and spilling her to the floor. Daily.

But nothing is going to keep Frankie down—not even her annoying younger sister Toni. Not until her father arrives with a meatball sandwich for his four children, and a new wife and her children in tow. He announces that he will take her older brothers and his new family to Colorado where he will start anew as a cobbler for miners—leaving Frankie and Toni behind. There’s a promise to fetch them, but years pass, Frankie falls in love, her young soldier marches off to World War II, and when will her father return for them? But maybe the orphanage is a safer place to grow up than in her family home, where she appears to be worthless enough to be discarded.

The other story is that of the narrator Pearl who we eventually discover died during World War I. Both Frankie and Pearl’s stories are mysteries, which come together at the end in a surprising way.

Perhaps one of my favorite aspects of this admirable book is that it comes from the life and stories of the author’s late mother-in-law, Frances Ponzo Metro. This you find out in the end-matter. Metro told her stories in snippets and out of order to the fascinated author, surprised that anyone would be interested. And Ruby did copious research, interviewing Metro’s fellow orphans, viewing archival documents and films of Angel Guardian (the German Catholic orphanage in Chicago), as well as copious reading about the Depression, World Wars I and II.

This is another wonderful cross-over book for adults and young adults.

 

 

Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue among others.  She teaches writing classes at Parkland College.         talesforallages.com

1919: The Year That Changed America (Bloomsbury 2019) by Martin W. Sandler won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature.

Sandler’s opening chapter would be humorous if it weren’t so horrific. A huge vat of molasses—2.3 million gallons—explodes in Boston’s crowded North End in mid-January 1919 burying people and horses alive or blowing them clear into the bay. If the reader is anything like me, they’re riveted. Molasses?

Molasses connects us directly to many issues of 1919. Molasses had everything to do with slave trade. Sugar cane was produced and processed into molasses by enslaved people. The enslavement led to the racial unrest and riots that would break out across the country in 1919 in Chicago, Washington, Charleston and elsewhere. Black soldiers returning home from World War I, which ended November 11, 1918, hoped and expected a degree of equality after fighting for their country. Instead, they were met with riots and lynchings. White mobs were threatened by these newly confident black men.

Explosives for the war were made by mixing molasses and ammonium nitrate. With the war over, manufacturers were stockpiling molasses to make rum before the 18^th Amendment—

Prohibition Act—could be ratified and consumption of alcohol would become illegal. Prohibition went into effect January 16, 1919. It’s of interest that there was more drinking done once it was illegal, when the saloons exclusively for men gave way to illegal speakeasies which included women.

But women were largely behind the prohibition of drinking, in order to protect their families from drunken husbands. Women were working for the 19^th Amendment—women’s suffrage—which would be passed in 1919 and ratified in 1920.

Molasses connects—race riots, war explosives, Prohibition, and women’s suffrage.

One chapter, “The Red Scare” outlines the fear of communism at this time. “Red” denotes Communism because they rallied around a red flag. A Communist government had been installed in Russia in 1917 while the U.S. has a capitalist form of government. Many Americans felt threatened by the spread of Communism.

Another chapter, “Strikes and More Strikes” describes “work stoppages in almost every field of endeavor.”

Page long “sidebars” include topics such as Immigration (then and now).“Those Opposed” speaks of the citizens who resisted the suffragists, believing that women should not vote because they belonged at home, were too emotional, too fragile, and not smart enough. “The Doubly Disenfranchised” are the African American women, who even after that ratification of the 19^th Amendment were still barred from voting by white supremacist laws. “The Harlem Renaissance” describes the blossoming of African American artists in New York City, during the Great Migration. “The Second Red Scare” tells of the 1950 Joseph McCarthy era. And others.

The photos are provocative. Detailed timelines end each chapter. At just less than 200 pages this is a fascinating historical document of not only one year, but how it changed our nation.

 

Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue among others.  She teaches community classes at Parkland.         talesforallages.com