Bold Spirit

Bold Spirit by Linda Lawrence Hunt is the story of an immigrant mother and her teen-aged daughter walking across the country - from Spokane, Washington to New York City - in 1896. An anonymous sponsor has set forth the challenge that she would pay $10,000 to any woman who would successfully complete the journey. There were all sorts of strict stipulations and the woman needed to wear a bicycle skirt with bloomers for most of the walk. Almost like a promotional trip for the new controversial fashion.

The really story in the book, though, is how and why this story was nearly lost. Helga, a Norwegian immigrant, and her husband, Ole were suffering from tough financial times. The lure of $10,000 made Helga feel like she could save her family. She planned to earn additional money after completion of her journey by publishing an illustrated book about the walk. She documented her entire trip and she wrote lengthy letters to her family back home. Years later, she wrote her story again. Yet somehow all these written primary sources vanished (which is explained in the book). The story that Hunt presents was something that was pieced together from many secondary sources.

The story of Helga and Clara's journey was fascinating. It was like a reverse Oregon Trail story. (Boy, do I love Oregon Trail stories!) The pair had to hit all the western state capitols they walked thru, meeting with political leaders along the way. The 1896 political climate sounds very similar to our divided country, now. Helga and Clara were on opposite sides of the presidential election (between William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan). But Helga's eyes were opened to the plight of women's suffrage. Completing the walk gave Helga a new appreciation for the capabilities of herself and of all women.

Victorian views of women were that they were frail and inferior to men. I can't imagine committing to walking unaccompanied across the United States now, in 2018. Over 100 years ago, much of Helga's walk was thru wilderness! And she didn't take the trip with the support of a wagon train. She only had her daughter - who styled her hair with a curling iron regularly while they were walking - and needed to rely upon the goodness of strangers. Incredible!

But as I said earlier, the real story was the fact that after these two women took this incredible risk, the story was nearly lost. Cultural norms and expectations, family dynamics and tragedy all played a hand in the outcome. That's what I'm really interested in discussing with my book club.

The story was fascinating and I look forward to discussing this with my book club. My biggest disappointment was that we never got to hear Helga's own words and that she never got to share the story with her granddaughter, Thelma. Despite those disappointments, I would still recommend the book.

I'll end with a few things I highlighted while reading, included here more for my reference when I discuss this with my book club rather than to spark any conversation with my readers. But here you are.

She faced the question, "what does fear keep you from doing?" and decided she was unwilling to let fear or disapproval keep her from action.

In an increasingly urbanized and industrialized America, ailing farmers felt forgotten, and many joined the Populist party to fight for reform of the injustices they experienced. In routing languages, Bryan built his campaign to tap into the needs of those he called the "struggling masses" and "humbler members of society." He reaffirmed their worth to the country, citing them as the Americans who produced the crops and goods that allowed the nation to live.

He also excoriated the "capitalistic class" that "owns money, trades in money and grows rich as the people grow poor." Bryan named and identified their fears of abuse from the powerful corporate elite, from Wall Street, and from the railroad and mining magnates. Captains of industry such as John D. Rockefeller (Standard Oil), J.P. Morgan (banking financier), and James J. Hill (Union Pacific) passionately supported William McKinley and the Republican agenda, and they  wielded enormous political clout. Bryan fought openly against "the heads of these great trusts" that he believed put corporate profit above people.

McKinley proposed protective tariffs as the best way "to get work for the masses," which particularly appealed to urban factory workers in the East.

During the following spring, Helga and Clara faced the reality of being penniless women eeking out a living in New York City. ... They moved to Brooklyn to look for work because it was a less expensive place to live than Manhattan.

She had flagrantly broken the most basic code of Victorian and Norwegian motherhood: mothers belong in the home.

The humility of her destitution in Brooklyn taught her that sometimes individual effort alone was not enough in an unjust system. No matter how hard she and Clara worked in New York, with women's wages so low, she felt helplessly trapped.

The Haunting of Hill House

I was a little girl when I first watched "The Haunting" on TV with my cousin who just a few years older. We watched it again a few years later. I only remember giggling about some of the stuff and that Mrs. Dudley, the housekeeper, was really creepy. For some reason, my cousin and I referred to her as Winifred Dudley. (Was that her name in the movie? In the book she has no first name.) That made us giggle, too. I really don't remember being too scared, but maybe that's because I knew that my cousin would keep me safe.

My cousin loved all things haunted. Well, maybe not all things, but movies and TV shows. Hitchcock was one of her favorites. And I recall her telling me at least twice during the last years of her life that when she couldn't sleep that she watched "The Haunting" and thought of me. She'd then make some Winifred Dudley joke and we'd both giggle again.

It was really hard not to think of my cousin as I (finally) read Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. I felt her making silly remarks as I was reading. That's just what she would do.

Since I'm not a horror reader, I can't really say if this classic ghost story was typical. The Haunting of Hill House is a ghost story, but it's also a story about relationships. The plot involves a doctor studying haunted houses who has rented the empty house from the current owner and has invited three younger people (two women and the nephew of the house's owner) to chronicle their experiences in the house. The relationships between the three guests ebb and flow. I especially liked the banter between Eleanor, with her vivid imagination, and Theo, who is the more worldly of the two.

I plan to watch the original movie again sometime between now and our book club meeting. From the descriptions of the movie, it seems like it is very close to the book. And I might look into a new mini-series (either Netflix or Amazon Prime) which is very loosely based on Jackson's novel.

I was the one who suggested this book for our October title. I'm really glad this was the selection. I hope everyone else agrees.

I've got a few passions in life. Reading is one of them. Photography is another. You might be able to imagine how devastated I was when my Canon DSLR fell off the tripod when I was trying to play around with night photography. My Canon is nearly 10 years old and I've had new camera lust for a long time. In fact, I'd been camera shopping for awhile, knowing that there was no way I was going to spend money on a camera when I had a fully functioning camera. Then my camera fell. And I swear, it was not deliberate. Not even subliminally deliberate. I really liked my camera.

But... I'd been (online) camera (window) shopping for awhile so it only took me about two weeks to decide that I was going to buy a Sony mirrorless ILCE. (That stands for interchangeable lens something something.) Sight unseen, I placed my order online and waited.

The camera arrived, I had it out of the box with lens attached, battery charged, within a short span of time. After just that first bit of use, I realized that this is a camera much more powerful than any I've ever used before. It could do a lot if only I knew how to do all these things!

It then took me another two weeks to decide that yes, I was going to buy a book to teach me the features of my new camera.

I don't plan to review the how-to book after I'm done reading, but just wanted to put it out there that I'm reading it. With post-its and a pen nearby.

Here's a photo that I took during my first real outing with my new camera.

I might add more photos as I go along. Or might even post about what it's like to try to learn something from a book - not my preferred learning style. I'd much rather someone tell me, show me and have me try all within a span of about 2 minutes.

I do anticipate that much of my daytime reading time will be devoted to this how-to book over the next few weeks. And I wanted you to know.

Redemption Road

Many of you who have been following me for awhile know that mysteries and thrillers aren't really my thing. But I've learned a few things by reading "The Sign of the Crime" novels authored by my friend, Ronnie Allen. I've learned that I don't have to be able to follow all the subplots early on. I have to patient and let things evolve.

That was definitely the case with John Hart's latest, Redemption Road. To say I was in a state of perpetual confusion for the first 1/3 of the novel is an understatement. But I was patient, knowing that eventually the subplots would come together - and differentiate themselves - and things would become much clearer. I'd know what I was dealing with.

Redemption Road is about murder, rape, parent/child relationships, loyalty, infidelity, police violence. I'm sure there's more that I just haven't pegged yet. It takes place in a small town in North Carolina. I'd read somewhere that the location of the setting was important to the plot. I didn't find that at all. This story could have taken place almost anywhere.

I'm afraid that I'll inadvertently give something away if I begin to explain any of the subplots. Which is why I'm not giving you any personalized sort of summary of the book. Instead, I'll just give you what I read on goodreads.

Imagine:
A boy with a gun waits for the man who killed his mother.
A troubled detective confronts her past in the aftermath of a brutal shooting.
After thirteen years in prison, a good cop walks free as deep in the forest, on the altar of an abandoned church, a body cools in pale linen…
This is a town on the brink.
This is Redemption Road.
Brimming with tension, secrets, and betrayal, Redemption Road proves again that John Hart is a master of the literary thriller.

 If you want to know more, you're going to really have to read this book.

About two thirds of the way thru the book, I started having my own thoughts on how things were going to pan out. And in nearly all cases, I was correct. I'm pretty sure that will be something many of my book club members will comment on as well.

I'm really curious, though, if tomorrow's book club meeting will be more about the specifics of the story or more about the writing style of John Hart. Either focus should lead to a good book club discussion.

I gave it 4 stars on goodreads. Mostly because I enjoyed John Hart's use of language. And because this was a book that put me out of my reading comfort zone that I didn't mind reading.