Book Reviews

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

Daniel Matheson, 18 years old, visits Madrid with his oil baron father and Spanish born mother in 1957. Generalissimo Franco, the fascist dictator, has been in power since 1936 and will continue to rule until his death in 1975. Ruta Sepetys, the author of “The Fountains of Silence” (Philomel 2019) does deep research and writes historical fiction set within little-known historical events. Sepetys is considered a cross-over author meaning her books are meant for both young adults and adults.

The Matheson family is staying at the posh Madrid Castellano Hilton, once a castle. The hotel is filled with interesting characters, including Shep Van Dorn a lecherous diplomat, his reckless son Nick, the mysterious Paco Lobo and the journalist Ben. The wait staff includes the cheerful Buttons, the mean-spirited Lorenza, and the lovely Ana.

The streets are filled with Franco’s police force, called “Crows.” Any Spaniard who opposes Franco walks on thin ice. That includes Ana and her family. Her parents had been teachers and were executed by the regime for their views of education. Ana lives with her sister Julia, her brother-in-law Antonio, their infant child Lali, and her brother Rafa in the slum of Valleca. Nick Van Dorn tricks our main character, Daniel, who is a serious photographer, to visit Ana in the slum.

Not only is Ana embarrassed, it is dangerous for everyone to have Daniel’s big sleek rented Buick parked on the dirt roads along the sewage ditch of Valleca. Living on the street is Rafa’s companion, a fellow orphan, and aspiring matador, Fuga. Naïve, sweet Daniel wins over some members of the family and photographs Fuga wearing his “suit of light.” Julia is a seamstress, sewing layers of glitter and glass into the jackets and trousers of the great matadors and has borrowed this hand-me-down costume for the orphan matador. As a seamstress, “Julia’s fingers are silent narrators, embroidered with scars.”

Daniel photographs portraits of the family and arranges to give them prints. He also gets shots of the “Crows” which is terribly dangerous, a close-up of a terrified nun running with a dead baby, and eventually a shot of Franco himself. Daniel needs a great portfolio to get a scholarship to a photography school to keep him out of business school which is the only education his father will fund.

Ana and Daniel are drawn to each other, but women in Spain in 1957 cannot go on dates without a chaperone, cannot go to a restaurant or theater alone—and her family is under observation for their parents’ past. Ana says: “What similarities could he possibly see between them? Daniel can travel anywhere in the world. He is heir to an oil dynasty, lives a life of privilege, and enjoys every freedom imaginable. He can vote in an election, pray to any God of his choosing, and speak his personal feelings aloud in public.” Ana calls off the romance.

So much is amiss, including life in the orphanage where Ana’s cousin Purification works. And then Daniel’s parents adopt an infant. The Mathesons return to Texas and the story jumps to eighteen years later for its surprise ending which brings all the characters together. This reading journey is a page turner—and so informative.

 

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