Before We Were Yours

Have I told you lately that I love historical fiction?

I had a hard time getting into Lisa Wingate's latest historical fiction novel, Before We Were Yours. The beginning was not only confusing but it was pretty slow moving. But once I got things figured out and got into the groove, I couldn't wait to see what happens next.

Sometimes historical fiction teaches me about positive time periods, people and places. Other times, like in the case of Before We Were Yours, I get to learn about some really horrific episodes in history. Wingate tells the story of the Tennessee Children's Home Society orphanage and the scheme that Georgia Tann, director of the organization, had for what basically amounted to the kidnapping and selling of children. Blonde-haired children with blue eyes were most desired. Georgia Tann was well connected to wealthy families who for one reason or another couldn't have children of their own. Frequently, there was extortion that occurred after children were placed... or sold. The children were taken from hospitals, from the street while walking to school, or simply just when the parents weren't looking. Georgia Tann put on a good public front while running homes where the children were neglected, often abused and some children, far too many children, died.

Avery Stafford, the daughter of a wealthy senator in South Carolina has come home to help her father get through a medical crisis. She has a chance encounter with an older woman when her father was making an appearance at a nursing home. There's just something about the woman that gives Avery pause. When she gets a phone call later that the older woman was found with Avery's bracelet, Avery decides to pick up the bracelet directly from the woman. She discovers that there's some sort of connection between this older woman, May, and her grandmother, Judy.

Wingate alternates the story of the Foss children, told by oldest sibling  Rill with Avery's attempt to discover what the connection is between May and Judy. Avery enlists the help of Trent who also has some sort of connection thru his grandfather, Trent. The strength of the story is in the weaving of the tales. This is a family drama, a love story, a story about secrets and a story about the strength of sisterhood.

My community book club will be discussing Before We Were Yours in August. I hope that I remember enough about it for me to participate meaningfully. I look forward to discussing this one.

April 4: Going thru my iPad looking at pages I captured in order to write my review of The Librarian of Auschwitz and I found this one that I never referenced. This is probably not meaningful to you, but it's meaningful to me, to my brother and to my cousins.

Fern?
I'm sorry?
Fernie, it's me. Tears frame her eyes. Oh dear, I've missed you so. They told me you were gone. I knew you'd never break our promise.
For a second, I want to be Fern, just to make her happy - to give her a respite from standing by herself gazing into the wisteria. She seemed so very lonely out there. Lost.

 When we were younger, my brother and our first cousin went to visit our cousin's grandmother at a nursing home, there was a woman calling out for Rupert. My cousin had stuck his head in the door, thinking his grandmother might be in there. At that time, he so wished that he was Rupert. Years later, he and my brother, instead of addressing each other by name or by cuz, they use Rupert.

In the Great Green Room

If you don't recognize the phrase In the great green room, it's likely that you haven't raised kids or put kids to bed in the past 40 or 50 years. Goodnight Moon, Margaret Wise Brown's most famous book, was a staple in my house, something that was read multiple times nearly every night when my eldest was a toddler and regularly, although not quite as often, when my other kids were toddlers. Back then, I had the whole book memorized. It was a great book for making the transition from daytime to night.

In November, I read a novel called Goodnight June by Sarah Jio. It was a fictionalized account of what inspired Brown to write Goodnight Moon. After reading Goodnight June, I did a little research on Margaret Wise Brown and learned that her latest biography was the one I'm writing about today, In the Great Green Room:The Brilliant and Bold Life of Margaret Wise Brown by Amy Gary.

I was on the fence about Goodnight June and likewise, I'm on the fence with In the Great Green Room. Not that the short life of Brown isn't interesting. It most certainly is as she did live both a brilliant and bold life.

Brown was born into a family of privilege to parents who didn't really like each other. Those two things probably set her on a path for a lifestyle outside the norms of the day.

(What I didn't understand - and have come across this in other books mostly covering the same time period - when we're told Margaret had limited means, she's still buying multiple houses, renting places to live and/or write, doing all sorts of traveling, employing a valet, among other things. To me that just doesn't jive with being of limited means.)

Brown was a very prolific children's writer. She wrote for several publishing companies, including Golden which probably had the widest distribution network at the time or maybe even ever for children's literature. I was particularly interested in the huge role Brown had in the development of children's literature as we know it today. Towards the end of her life, she had tie-ins to movies and music. (Plus who knew that Rube Goldberg was a great writer of music? Not me. To me he was a simple machines science guy.) She designed novelty books. Are you familiar with Pat the Bunny?

Gary, with a history in publishing, years after Brown's death reach out to Brown's sister, Roberta, since she wanted to republish 4 of Brown's earlier books. In a matter of fact way, not expecting much of a response, Gary asked Roberta if she knew if Margaret had left behind any unpublished works. Roberta brought down a trunk for Gary to look thru and that started 25 years of Gary researching the live and works of Margaret Wise Brown. In the Great Green Room is the culmination of those 25 years' work.

The book goes into great detail about Brown's involvement in the development of texts for children. Not only her literature and the literature of others that grew out of work. But her early work with Bank Street which evolved into creation of textbooks for children based on what children like and how they would best understand material. I loved reading about Margaret's work with her illustrators as I've always found the connection between authors and illustrators really interesting. I was also interested in her interactions with the publishers regarding payment, contracts, royalties, commitments, although a little less detail and a little less repetition of some of the details would have been fine with me.

The book also goes into great detail about Brown's love life. Overall, it was fascinating. She made quite a few poor choices along the way. But some of the minutiae of her romantic affairs got tiresome.

The biography was a quick read, but I think I would have enjoyed it more had there been fewer details where they weren't needed and an inclusion of direct results of Gary's research (quotes from diaries, letters and interviews) rather than just being straight narrative.

Margaret wanted to be remembered as a "writer of songs and nonsense," which until I read that about her, I would have had no clue. She always felt like she was somehow "less" because she wrote for children. I can understand that since children's literature wasn't really a thing back in the 30s and 40s when she was writing away. Eventually she came to appreciate her talents and skills and she seemed happiest at the time of her death. How often does that happen?

Upon finishing the book, I did want to rush back to my computer and pound out a few picture books of my own. (I have one completed draft of a middle grade picture book about the Spanish American War that I worked on with my daughter.) Instead, for now, I'll stick to blogging.

The Lost Letter

Jillian Cantor's The Lost Letter arrived in my e-mail box on the day before I decided I wasn't going to finish my Jo Nesbo book, Police. One of the many newsletters that I get with book recommendations suggested The Lost Letter. I love reading letters and books about letters, I'm interested in Holocaust novels, so I requested it. Months ago.

The Lost Letter isn't truly a lost letter. The letter isn't truly lost. It was simply unsent at the time it was written (during Hitler's occupation of Austria) and recently discovered by Katie Lawrence in 1989.

Katie's father, Ted, was a stamp collector for all of Katie's life. As Katie was growing up, Sunday mornings were spent going to flea markets looking out for "a real gem" of a stamp. A few months prior to where the novel begins, Katie has had to put her father into a memory care home because of his advancing dementia. Ted gives Katie his stamp collection. His very large stamp collection.

Not knowing anything about stamps after a lifetime of not understanding her father's fascination with stamps, Katie turns to a stamp expert, Benjamin, to appraise the collection. When Benjamin phones Katie to share something interesting he's found, she hopes that it will be a gem for her father. It was not. But it fuels Katie's interest in stamp collecting, her father's life before he was her father, and the lives of her mother's parents who were born in Germany but came to the US before Germany became a really dangerous place for Jews.

The Lost Letter is very different from other Holocaust novels that I've read and that's what I really appreciated about it. I learned about stamp engraving, how stamp engraving was used by the Resistance in Nazi-occupied Austria, and things about the Resistance that I hadn't known before. I gave it 4 stars on goodreads because of the way Cantor weaved this interesting story, alternating between 1930s Austria and 1980s California (at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall). What held me back from giving this novel 5 stars was the fact that I didn't feel a connection to the characters and the "sad parts" of the story didn't make me cry. I didn't sense the characters being emotionally vested in the discoveries that Katie makes about her own personal history. All the characters seemed to take each new discovery rather matter-of-factly. I wanted that punch of emotion. I think I needed that tug to my heart. That just wasn't there.

Would I recommend The Lost Letter? Yes, I would. It would probably make a good book club selection as there is lots that could be discussed.

I'm getting much better at dropping books

I'm getting so much better at dropping books. Seriously, there's so much I want to read. Why waste time reading something that I don't enjoy?

Police by Jo Nesbo is the book I dropped in March. My community book club was doing an author study. I looked at what was available in the library, compared that to stars on goodreads and voila, selection was made. 



Rather than write a full review here (full review of a book I didn't finish? ha!), I'm just going to copy the article I'm submitting to our local monthly newspaper. As you're reading it, realize that I am the one reader who didn't finish her book. I was one who found the book difficult to read because of the complex subplots and Scandinavian names and words.

Would I recommend? No. Would I not recommend? No. It might be a genre you enjoy. All I know is that it's not for me.

... Book Club proved once again in March that even books that the majority aren’t enthralled with can lead to great discussions. Each member of the group read one (or more) novels by the Norwegian crime writer, Jo Nesbo. Most selected books from his very popular Harry Hole series, although a few read standalone novels.

Jo Nesbo’s personal story is an interesting one. He grew up in a family of readers and storytellers. As a young person, he had dreams of becoming a football star. Those hopes were dashed when he suffered a joint injury. While attending business school, he became a musician on the side. He was determined to keep that as a sideline since he wanted music to be fun and not his job. So he became a financial analyst. Which he liked for a short while.  He took a long vacation to Australia, outlined a story on the flight down, got to the hotel totally jet-lagged but got to writing. And his first bestseller, “The Bat,” was written. Nesbo will admit that he’s been incredibly lucky as a writer. It comes easily to him, he’s won many awards, and in the early years had no flops.  His books are published in 50 languages and over 33 million copies have been sold throughout the world.

Time conflicts prevented the two women who had recommended Jo Nesbo to the book club from attending the meeting. Wondering what made them like the books and the author so, the club reached out to them. Both enjoy the Scandanavian crime/detective genre. One of them went a step further. “I have always enjoyed the anti-hero, and Harry is it… I like to read about flawed characters who still make a go of life.”

Harry Hole is most definitely a flawed hero. Most members were aggravated by him and didn’t like him. They found that there weren’t really any characters to like. The books are dark, full of violence and gruesome details. A reader needs to be drawn to that type of novel to really appreciate Jo Nesbo. There is so much corruption in most of the novels. It was said that Nesbo tries to steer clear of exposing real corruption, that he’d rather focus on what propels individuals to perform corrupt actions.

Only one person attending the meeting enjoyed the book and planned to read on. The majority felt the book they read was so-so. Several who didn’t really enjoy  the book they chose said they might give the author another chance. And some made it through their books but don’t plan to pick up another Nesbo. There was only one person who made it about halfway thru the book and proclaimed that she had no plans to finish reading. Those who read multiple books said they weren’t able to figure out “who dunnit” until the end of the book when the criminals and their secrets are revealed.

Some of what certain folks liked about the book were exactly what others disliked. Each book was full of complex subplots. For a few of the readers, that’s what really made the books enjoyable and made it a quick easy read as page-turners often are. The chapters are short and Nesbo moves quickly from scene to scene. Again, that’s something that some readers really enjoyed and others found confusing. Some mentioned that they found that the complex subplots, combined with Scandinavian names and vocabulary, made hard work of reading the book. One member listened to the audio book and felt it was probably easier to listen to. A handful didn’t enjoy how farfetched parts of the plots were. Others really enjoyed the unbelievable aspects of the novels, making them seem like a true escape from everyday life. Those who read “The Redbreast” felt they learned a lot from the historical aspect of that novel. “The Redbreast” is about Norwegians on both sides of World War II and how each side fared after the conclusion of the war.