Book Reviews

We experience the reality of rural nineteenth century Norway in “West of the Moon” (Abrams-Amulet 2014) by Margi Preus, yet we feel immersed in a land of magic. The Norwegians are Christian but are living in a world paralleling Scandinavian folktales. Superstitions are alive and alluring—with the invisible and wicked huldrefolks lurking near cradles and under bridges.

It’s not so much what the author says as what she doesn’t say that brings to life this world of awe and magic. This life is so natural to Astri and her little sister Greta, Preus doesn’t tell us about their world—we simply live it alongside of them.

Astri, about fourteen, likens herself to the girl in the folktale who is abducted by a white bear who turns out to be a prince. However, Astri’s abductor, Svaalberd or, as she calls him, goatman, is no prince. As his milkmaid, she milks goats. She says, “Oh, and shovel the snow and chop the wood and haul the wood and clean out the ashes and start the fire and rake the coals and cook the porridge and make the candles and knead the bread. All in the dark, dark, dark.” It’s wintertime.

When the goatman assaults her in her bed, Astri saves herself with the knife she keeps under her pillow. Goatman banishes her to the shed, where she discovers the odd silent Spinning Girl. Astri defends herself again against the entitled goatman. And now the picaresque quality really kicks in and the adventure takes off.

Astri takes Spinning Girl and finds her way back to the farm where she rescues Greta from her greedy aunt. Now they must find a way to get to America where her father has gone to make a better life. And on the road they discover the goatman, Svaalberd dying, probably, from the wounds Astri inflicted on him.

Greta and Astri give him a funeral right on the road. Astri says, “I know Svaalberd was a mean old man, but what made him thus? Did he have that hump as a youngster? That would make for a hard life, wouldn’t it?”

Greta responds, “This is a very strange sermon.” Preus is a master at magic and wisdom and dry wit. And metaphor. Astri says, “The snags in my heart are so tangled and deep, I feel them there, twisted little knots that can’t be undone.”

Astri leaves Spinning Girl at a kind farmer’s home, where she steals a horse. Astri and Greta ride to the sea. One snags a ticket and the other stows away, they both contract cholera and are visited by Death. They meet other Norwegians on their way to America as they make their way.

Preus’ story is inspired by the diary of her great great grandmother, Linka, the young wife of a Lutheran pastor, who met a wild girl all alone crossing from Norway to America in 1850 and asked if she might serve her as a maid.

Patricia Hruby Powell’s new book Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker won a Boston Globe Horn Book 2014 Honor for Nonfiction and a Parents Choice Gold Award for Poetry.

Cadence Sinclair Eastman is 18 at the beginning of “We Were Liars” (Delacorte 2014) by E. Lockhart, but her actual story begins “summer fifteen” when she is 15. The blueblood Sinclair family own Beechwood Island and all converge there every summer. Her grandparents reign in one mansion and their three middle-aged daughters squabble over the other three island mansions.

The story centers on the next generation—Cadence and her cousins. Cadence is the eldest by a couple weeks and it is she who will inherit Beechwood. She speaks sparely, as in, “…my father ran off with some woman he loved more than us.” When he actually leaves she says, “Then he pulled out a handgun and shot me in the chest.” What? You sputter. Then a few lines later, “Mummy snapped. She said to get hold of myself.” And you realize that Cadence speaks in dramatic adolescent metaphor. Perfect.

About the two next oldest cousins, only weeks younger than she, “Johnny, he is bounce, effort and snark.” “Mirren, she is sugar, curiosity, and rain.” Then the nephew of her Aunt Carrie’s Indian boyfriend comes. “Gat seemed spring-loaded…He was contemplation and enthusiasm. Ambition and strong coffee.” An Indian boy (and his uncle) enter this white white family.

The accident happened summer fifteen but we don’t know what that accident was. With her headaches, depression, visits to endless doctors and selective amnesia, Cadence cannot tell us what happened that summer. Against her will, she is taken to Europe by her father when she is 16.

We know she fell in love with Gat during summer fifteen. But he doesn’t even answer her emails. Neither do Johnny nor Mirren, but internet service on their remote island is not great. They’d have to take one of the boats across the waters into town. Not only is she depressed but vomiting and hugging the cold floor tiles throughout her European trip. The doctors can find no medical reasons. They say, give her time. Let her remember on her own. Let her remember the accident.

She is sent off to her father for the next summer and the next, but she convinces them to let her spend 4 weeks on Beechwood summer eighteen. She wants to remember the accident. Her cousins—all of them, including “the littles”—are instructed to go easy on Cadence. And throughout that summer she begins to uncover the accident. She begs her cousins to remind her, but mostly she has to figure it out herself.

Eventually we learn that during summer fifteen, her grandmother Tippy died. Her grandfather is slipping in and out of dementia. Cadence rebels against her mother and aunts who vie for all the lovely things that were Tippy’s. The three mothers fight over the three mansions. Cadence gives away everything she owns—including her beloved books.

Through the course of summer eighteen, she remembers. And it knocked me over. If you are older than “young adult,” that’s okay. Read this.

Patricia Hruby Powell’s new book Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker won a Boston Globe Horn Book 2014 Honor for Nonfiction and a Parent’s Choice Gold Award for Poetry.

Love and longing are not unusual subjects in young adult fiction, but in the masterful hands of Julie Berry–“All the Truth That’s in Me” (Viking 2013)—it is new. In measured steps the author shows just what we need to know, offering revelations in nearly every page. Even the village setting is a mystery. It’s historic. But when?

Judith, 18, tells the story as if she’s writing a love note that “you” will never receive. She lovingly describes “your” hands pulling a lamb into the world, offering the reader a view of the beloved through her eyes. Yet what of Maria—the town beauty—who is betrothed to “you.” All is hopeless. Besides which Maria has a big heart. How can Judith hate her?

            “You” turns out to be Lucas, 22, the object of Judith’s affection since they were babies. The narrator also speaks of “him.” As readers, we must turn the pages to discover who that is.

Judith doesn’t speak. Why? She has been silenced by a traumatic experience, clearly. But what? Her loving father is gone, her mother is worse than unsympathetic—she’s incriminating. Her younger brother is spoiled and cruel.

The story of longing is set within an impending war. When ships are seen 20 miles out to sea the townspeople are panicked. Judith might be able to turn around the village’s devastation? But at what cost?

The writing is spare—nothing wasted—as would be true for a person who does not or cannot speak. She writes, “Do you remember the Aldruses logrolling?”

In this scene she delivers layers of emotional and informational groundwork. It’s a land-clearing work/party when Judith, 14, was among the anxious young girls presenting their puddings for the lads to sample. The author introduces Lottie who will become central to the mystery, all the while showing the innocence of their lives before the mysterious crisis occurred. This is neatly set amongst sensual details, which allow us to whole-heartedly enter this early American settlement.

On page 17, so much is suggested in one sentence: “Your father died the night the town believed he did, and my captor was born from his ashes.” Did I catch the gravity of that line the first time through? It made me turn a page, that’s for sure.

This is a love so great Judith will end her life to save Lucas—but there is nothing cheap here. And who was Lottie’s beau? There are so many questions to be answered and you’re so near the end and you still don’t know—until you do.

But why did the publisher choose for the cover a bottle blonde with heavy black eye-makeup—the one mystery outside the author’s control and the one that didn’t work for me. Except maybe the overly-complicated title.

I’ve tried to entice you without giving spoilers. Forget everything I’ve said and go read this.

 

Patricia Hruby Powell is a nationally touring speaker, dancer, author. Her new work Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker is available at book stores.

After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, advisers told President Roosevelt that Japanese-Americans on the west coast were a threat to U.S. security. Others said that was ridiculous. The threat-mongers won out and 120,000 loyal Americans of Japanese ancestry were evacuated and detained in remote areas of the U.S. for two years. So we are reminded in “Imprisoned: The Betrayal of Japanese Americans During World War II” by Martin W. Sandler (Walker 2013).

Having as little as one out of sixteen Japanese great great grandparents—defined one as Japanese. These Americans had two weeks to pack, lease or sell businesses, merchandise, homes, or household goods. And white America took advantage offering the lowest prices.

In the first stage, in the holding areas, which were often racetrack stables, 25 people would be packed into a space, which would comfortably hold four people. There was no privacy. Sanitary conditions were deplorable and illness abounded—including dysentery, typhoid, and tuberculosis.

We learn that the generation born in Japan who immigrate to America are termed Issei. The next generation is Nisei, the next is Sansei. The Issei and Nisei in their “permanent” new internment camps planted trees, shrubs, creating tranquil Japanese gardens, all from salvaged scrap materials. “Our goal is the creation of an oasis.”

Others built chairs and tables from scrap wood or carved jewelry from found shells. They organized sports teams for basketball, football, ping pong, badminton, judo wrestling, and boxing. The biggest camp formed 100 baseball teams, and young children through 60 year olds competed in leagues. Education for both young and old was resumed. These are a resourceful people.

Young Japanese-American men were recruited from the camps to fight for the United States government, which had interned them. They fought fiercely to prove their loyalty. They won so many important battles in Italy and in France that they became the most decorated unit of their size. Ironically, the Japanese-American unit was one that liberated the first concentration camp for interned Jews—Dachau. Because army supplies were low they were ordered not to share their food rations. They did anyway and their officers turned a blind eye.

Even on their victorious return home, the west coast was riddled with “No Japs Wanted” signs and sentiments. Gaman is the Japanese cultural trait of continuing whatever the circumstance. And they did. These proud people when released from camps—their first amendment right having been profoundly violated—could not speak of the humiliation.

It wasn’t until the 70s when the Sansei, part of the rebellious generation, heard the stories and fought back for their parents. The U.S. government eventually apologized and made a small remuneration of $20,000 to each individual who had been interned in the camps.

This is a heartbreaking chapter in American history, but one people should be made aware of so that it cannot happen again. This sensitive insightful book is aimed for 7^th graders and older.

Patricia Hruby Powell is a nationally touring speaker, dancer, author. Her new work Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker is available at book stores.

Do I really want to read a book about the apocalypse? I’ve dreamt too many times about being the last person left on earth searching through stopped cars for survivors. But Francesca Lia Block’s devastated post-apocalypse world is oddly beautiful in “Love in the Time of Global Warming” (Christy Ottiaviano/Holt 2013). I couldn’t stop turning the pages.

The girl, Pen, tells us “…I had been born and raised in a city built on fault lines…” so—she points out—the huge Earth Shaker shouldn’t have been a surprise. The rest of the family has run out of the house just as the tsunami hits. When Pen regains consciousness she is alone in the debris of her pink house in Los Angeles.

Block’s futuristic tale is inspired by Homer’s Odyssey. In that classic tale, Penelope was Odysseus’ wife, thus, our narrator is Pen. Block does not make the mistake of holding too close to the original tale. But as she always does, she tells with lyrical insights such as, “…my ears rang with the silence before danger.”

Sixty-eight days later, having lived off cans of food her disaster-conscious father had stock-piled, men invade Pen’s house. She gathers the growing courage born of devastation, steals the men’s van and sets out on her own odyssey. She must find her parents and her little brother Venice.

Pen discovers piles of clean bones, which lead her to the genetically engineered giants—paralleling the Cyclops of the Odyssey—who eat humans. And yes, the one-eye will come into play in Block’s story.

In the Lotus Hotel teenagers drink punch, hook up, and stay high. It turns out the punch is made from the red-flowered lotus that magically grows from cracks in the hotel floor. Pen’s mind “blooms” and she forgets the horrific recent past. There she meets the boy, Hex and they take off together in the van.

They are guided by orange butterflies, which seem to be the endangered monarch, until an old copy of the Odyssey becomes their guide. Beatrix who was once a soap opera star, and might be the witch Circe, imprisons Pen and Hex, until they meet Ez who is addicted to the cake he’s been fed by Beatrix. The three escape, Ez is weaned off whatever the cake/drug was and they meet Ash.

Before the big Earth Shaker Pen had planned to study art history. Her mother was an artist. Ez paints, Ash sings and plays the lyre, Hex is a warrior. And Pen? She wonders what she does.

Eventually Pen finds her way back home and small signs of life begin to appear in the yard outside her pink house. You can almost always count on the hope found at the end of a young adult book—one of their defining features, which makes them suitable for bedtime reading.

Patricia Hruby Powell is a nationally touring speaker, dancer, author. Her new work Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker is available at bookstores.