My Ántonia

      I have always believed that a real benefit of book groups is reading things that are outside one's regular reading routine; so, although I am not in a book group, my friend Dee Stefanelli is and, thanks to her, I have read 3 books I might not have picked up on my own. I have already written about Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet and Caleb's Crossing. My Ántonia by Willa Cather is the 3rd. One of the things I said I would do when I retired was read some of the classics I had previously missed and now I've started. This is an incredibly moving and heartfelt love story for the land in the middle of America and the immigrants who settled it. These were the first generation Scandinavians and Europeans who homesteaded an often harsh land and brought it under the plow to become the breadbasket of America. The story of Ántonia is told from the adult viewpoint of Jim Burden, now a successful lawyer in New York City,  who came to Black Hawk, Nebraska as an orphaned 10-year old on the same train as 14-year old  Ántonia and her family in the late 1800's. Jim was fortunate in that he came to live with his grandparents who were already successful farmers with a real house. The Shimerda family, of Czech or "Bohemian" nationality, came to live in a large hole in the ground. Due to the dishonesty of their agent, their money bought them only broken down farming equipment and animals and they knew nothing about farming, the father having been a professional musician. They would have starved except for the generosity of neighbors like Jim's grandparents, and yet Mrs. Shimerda and even Ántonia were haughty and critical of these efforts. Mr. Shimerda killed himself out of grief for all he had lost and  Ántonia mourned him all her life. She and Jim were, in spite of their age difference, nearly constant companions and Jim adored her.  After his grandparents leased out the farm and moved to town, some of the "country girls" came to town to work and help out their families financially.  Ántonia became the live-in maid/cook/nanny for the family next door to the Burdens and, although always a hard and cheerful worker, became enamored of the town life and eventually lost her position. After Jim had gone away to college, he no longer saw  Ántonia but kept tabs and learned that she had been engaged, then deserted and left with an illegitimate child. Broken-hearted, she returns to the family farm to work and raise her child, then soon marries a fellow "Bohemian" with whom she builds a successful farm and large family. Twenty years later, Jim reluctantly goes to see her, fearing that circumstances have beaten her down and changed the girl/woman he has idolized through the decades. But  Ántonia has preserved her love of life and restores Jim's faith in the future. 

     Part of what I reflected upon while reading this book is that this has always been a country of immigrants, those whose first language and history and customs are not of this country; they have built America. It dismays me that we continue, as a people, to disregard this truth and discriminate against whichever group is the newest to seek refuge here. The language and passion of this book will vividly recreate the people and the places for the reader and it's well worth taking the trip to Black Hawk.  

The Beautiful Mystery

     I always awaits the next Louise Penny with delicious anticipation and pre-ordered The Beautiful Mystery so as not to have to wait an extra minute. Right away I was immersed in her masterful ability to make her characters come alive and create the place for the story. She has delivered another bombshell with this installment in the Inspector Gamache series, and this time it hits even closer to home than when one of our favorite innkeepers was arrested for murder. Two parallel tales unwind here, both dealing with fraternal orders, both dealing with power and how it can be used for good or ill, specifically how some will use their power to try (and sometimes fail) to protect, while others will twist the less powerless to their will. She is so effective at conveying this, that I was even led to doubt...
     The Gilbertine monks have hidden in the backwoods of Quebec for hundreds of years, first escaping the Inquisition and later just the world. They have taken a vow of silence, but ironically are known for their exquisite renditions of Gregorian chants. And now the world knows where they are, for the Prior and choirmaster persuaded them to release a recording and it has rocked the world. People have come seeking them and been repeatedly sent away from this isolated and fortress-like monastery.  But the Prior has been murdered and the Abbot is in crisis because he failed to foresee how the growing rift in his community could come to this. Gamache and Beauvoir come to stay and find out who committed this crime against God and man. The conflict among the monks centered around whether or not they should make another recording. The Abbot wants to preserve the community as it has been, while the Prior wanted to make the recording...and perhaps had another agenda as well.
     We can rely on Gamache, who is in thrall to the chants, to find the killer no matter how painful it will be to the community. But the sabot thrown into the works is when his arch enemy, Superintendent Francoeur, shows up. So begins a game of cat and mouse with the highest stakes in play. I usually don't hesitate to reveal the ending, and indeed the murderer is caught, but I can't bring myself to talk about the really important things that transpire here. If you haven't read the previous 7 books, you can still read this...it will stand on its own. But you will miss some of the nuance and gut-wrenching significance of the conclusion.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

     Prejudice comes in all forms and this is a book about some of the terrible consequences of the stereotypes, ignorance, cruelty and discrimination that can be engendered by such prejudices. This novel by Jamie Ford tells the story of Henry Lee from the perspective of two times in his life--one when he was 12 years old, at the beginning of WWII, and involved in a forbidden relationship with a Japanese friend, Keiko Okabe, and the second when he is a widower in 1986. In 1942, Henry is enrolled in an all-white school in Seattle because his parents want him to integrate and get ahead in a way that wouldn't happen if he stayed in the all-Chinese schools. They don't seem to understand the daily torments and bullying he must endure not only from the students but also from the teachers. And then one day, a Japanese girl also come to the school, and because she is also a "special student," she is  put to work in the cafeteria at lunch times alongside Henry and they soon become fast friends. Henry's parents, and especially his father, hate the Japanese based on the historical transgressions of the Japanese against China, so they are pleased when the entire population of Japantown, including Keiko's family, are loaded onto trains and shipped to prison camps. Henry finds a way to visit Keiko's family at Camp Minidoka but then loses touch with her until decades later when the basement of the Panama Hotel is opened by a new owner and Henry is confronted with memories of his lost love.
     I am to this day amazed that I graduated from high school in California and never read a word in any of the history books about the internment of Japanese American citizens, most of which took place on the west coast. It wasn't until I started reading children's and YA books that I learned about this shameful episode in our history. Cynthia Kadohata's Kira Kira won the Newbery in 2005 with its account of the continuing prejudices against Japanese Americans after the war and seemingly the floodgates opened for numerous other accounts targeted to children and teens: Kadohata's Weedflower, Allen Say's Home of the Brave, Virginia Euwer Wolff's Bat 6 are some of my favorites.
     This book was enjoyable to me partly because it was set in Seattle, where I lived for 18 years, so I recognized many of the landmarks. The Panama Hotel, which was bought up and renovated in the 1980's, actually existed and was really found to contain the belongings of dozen of Japanese families who had been summarily imprisoned and lost their homes and businesses.  Pioneer Square and Bud's Jazz Records are also real places. The "Author's Note" at the end details the factual elements of her story. 

Caleb's Crossing

A long time ago, when I joined my first book group in Seattle, we read a book called Nine Parts of Desire by Geraldine Brooks, a Jewish author writing about the lived experience of Muslim women in different parts of the world. It was an eye-opener. So my curiosity was piqued when friend Deanna Stefanelli loaned me her copy of Brook's new novel about the first Native American to have graduated from Harvard. Although based on the actual life of Caleb Cheeshahteaumauk, a Wampanoag Indian born around 1646 on what is now known as Martha' Vineyard, the main character of this fictionalized account is Bethia Mayhew, a girl born to a Puritan minister and raised on the Vineyard. While young, she roams the island and meets and then befriends Caleb--her name for him because she doesn't like his Indian name, which means "hated one." Bethia is a rebel at heart, constantly running up against the constraints of the time and her parents' beliefs about women's role. Although she knows it is "wrong" to be friends with a "salvage" --especially a boy who doesn't believe in her God--she eagerly teaches him everything she "overhears" in her father's tutoring of her older brother. When her mother dies in childbirth, Bethia is sure it is God's punishment of her and she renounces her friendship with Caleb and takes on the duties of mother to her infant sister and housekeeper to her father and brother. But her father has made it his mission to educate and convert the local Indians and brings Caleb to live with them in order to prepare him to go to school on the mainland. When her father dies suddenly in a storm at sea, Bethia is signed into indentured servitude at a prep school on the mainland in order to fund her brother's continuing education there. Caleb and his fellow Native American Joel are also sent there and so Bethia keeps an eye on their painful progress; both are academically gifted, but constantly challenged by people's prejudices.  Bethia is a compelling character and the sense of time and place are well conveyed by Brooks' eloquent account. Brook's story also confirmed some of my earlier learning about the different philosophies and world views of Native Americans in contrast to those of Europeans. This is historical fiction at its finest with an author's "Afterword" which recounts the factual information available about Caleb. I recently bought another book by Brooks that I am eager to start called People of the Book...