The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton: A Novel

This is Jane Smiley's ninth book (1998); the premise and the character sounded intriguing so my book group selected this for our June read. Smiley has won numerous literary awards including a Pulitzer and The National Book Critics Circle Award (for A Thousand Acres) and this book won the 1999 Spur Award for Best Novel of the West. This is set in the mid-west in the years running up to the Civil War (1855) when tensions between free and slave holding states were ramping up.
I think the New York Times does an admirable job of setting up the book in their review:
"At 20, Lidie is tall, plain, bookish and argumentative, by her own reckoning ''what you might call an odd lot, not very salable and ready to be marked down.'' Her half sisters in Quincy, Ill., view her as a problem to be solved, and so one of them furthers the fateful match between Lidie and Thomas Newton, who is on his way to the Kansas Territory, known as K.T., with a dozen Sharps rifles and the support of the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company, which hopes to see Kansas enter the Union as a Free State."
Book One (262 pages) is all about the very rough and tumble life that Lidie and Thomas embark upon trying to homestead in a place where the people from Missouri were determined to route out those "damned black abolitionists" at any cost in order to make the K.T. a slave state. I won't spoil it by telling you what happens, but suffice to say that. in Book Two. Lidie leaves the K.T. and, disguising herself as a young man, has quite a number of adventures and tries to help a slave escape before eventually ending up back in Quincy, IL. Lidie had been immersed in her husband's abolitionist views when they married and moved to Lawrence to be with other members of the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company; prior to that she had been apolitical, knowing only what a distant half-sister who supported abolition had told her. Lidie doesn't really know what she believes. The LA Times writes that Lidie's conflicts are a means to explore such moral questions as "How far should one go in the name of beliefs? How tolerant should one be of others' values, particularly values you find abhorrent? Is territoriality justifiable? Is theft in the name of a cause justifiable? Is it OK to steal from people who have been good to you, even if you don't believe that what you're taking--a slave--can rightly be considered property at all? Is revenge justified? Are there circumstances in which killing is justifiable?"
What I liked about this book was what I often enjoy about historical novels. I learned about a period of time and a place with which I was unfamiliar. I was actually born in Kansas but moved to Oklahoma before I started school so never learned much about it's history. The day to day struggle of living in such a harsh environment--especially for those coming from the civilized East who were lured with promises of well developed towns, free fertile farmland, and mild winters--is rendered in detail. Although we have all read various accounts of the Civil War and heard about John Brown, the horrendous violence that occurred in newly opening territories between "free-staters" and those who wanted to preserve the right to own slaves was unfamiliar to me. But to me, the first half of the book was a slog. The pace picked up in the 2nd half of the book, although the NYT found that part of the novel incredible (as in, hard to believe). Overall, I found Lidie particularly frustrating because she never clearly comes to hold positions and opinions of her own. The ending was believable but highly unsatisfactory.  More favorable reviews are available from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly.

The Last Equation of Isaac Severy: A Novel in Clues

Nova Jacobs inaugural novel does indeed lead the protagonist and the reader on a merry chase trying to figure out where the elusive equation is. Nobody is quite who they seem to be, or at the very least, they are keeping significant secrets from those closest to them. The Severy family is initially brought together in this story when Isaac Severy, a brilliant mathematician and world expert in chaos theory, apparently kills himself. Although we know from the Prologue that this isn't true, the rest of the family is devastated because no one had any sense that he was despondent or at risk of suicide. Our protagonist, Hazel Severy, the owner of a financially failing bookstore in downtown Seattle, has come to Los Angeles where the rest of the Severy family --or at least those she knows about--have always lived. Hazel and her brother, Gregory, an LAPD detective, were actually the abused foster children of Isaac Severy's son, Tom. When Tom was arrested for the death of his wife, Isaac officially adopted the two children and they lived with him and his wife Lily as their grandchildren. All of the Severy children are brilliant but not equally successful. Tom, the abusive foster parent, succumbed to drug addiction and is ostensibly in prison for life; Philip, like his father, is a noted mathematician at Cal Tech but feels he has stagnated in recent years; and their sister, Paige, has been working forever on a book that will never be finished. They all suffer from migraines, although Tom is more severely affected than the others. As the story proceeds we learn about the horrendous abuse visited on Hazel and especially on Gregory.
A few days after Isaac's death, Hazel receives a letter telling her that she is to destroy all of his work in room 137, and to turn over his final equation to only one person, a mathematician named Respanti who likes herringbone. Isaac also tells Hazel that his death was not a suicide and that she must leave his house no later than Oct .31, for there will be two more deaths. She must tell no one of the contents of his letter. Finally, Isaac's letter to Hazel says that the equation has been left with the person that people will least suspect; Hazel assumes this means her since she is not a mathematician. The long and short of this intricate plot is that Isaac has created a formula that can predict death--not accidental death, but homicides and suicides. When Hazel eventually finds room 137, she discovers a map of greater Los Angeles marked with red dots bearing the exact dates and times of deaths that will occur. Some of these are now past, but some lie in the future, creating additional pressure to solve this puzzle. One of Hazel's cousins, Philip's married daughter Sybil, dies from a fall down steep canyon stairs within a few days of Isaac. A mysterious person named P. Booth Lyon is stalking both Hazel and Philip, trying to find Isaac's legacy in order to profit from it. When Hazel turns to her cousin Alex, Paige's estranged son, to help solve the mystery, he betrays her. Raspanti arrives from Italy, tracks down Hazel and learns of the theft of Isaac's computer and the map; he berates Hazel for allowing Isaac's work to fall into the wrong hands. Can Hazel repair the damage no only from this error in judgment but also from the decisions she has made in other parts of her life? I've really only scratched the surface of the plot and characters. Highly recommended. Reviews from The Washington Post, Kirkus, Booklist, and Publishers Weekly.

American by Day

Can't remember where I heard about this book but I am glad I read it. This is a sequel to Derek B. Miller's Norwegian by Night, a Dagger Award winner eventually published in a dozen languages, featuring the same protagonist, Chief Inspector Sigrid Ødegård of the Oslo police. Miller is American, but married to a Norwegian woman and they live in Oslo. He has a rather impressive academic and real world resume including a PhD in international relations from the University of Geneva.
Sigrid has recently been involved in shooting a man to death and, although the shooting was ruled as justified, it has left her questioning herself. She takes leave to visit her father and finds out from him that her brother, Marcus, who has lived in the United States for 20 years, has gone missing. Moreover, Sigrid's father, has already bought her a plane ticket to go to the U. S. to find him.  So she does. But in some ways that is the least of the story, for this is a look at America from a European point of view, in particular our culture around guns and individualism and race. The characters are fascinating,  provocative, and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny. It seems like an odd combination of philosophy, humor, mystery, and literary fiction...but it works.
It's 2008 in the run-up to the Obama-McCain presidential election. Set in sultry late summer upstate New York, which as Sigrid dryly observes is still south of Venice, Sigrid has her suitcase stolen within minutes of arriving at her brother's empty house, which is now occupied by a prostitute who claims Marcus gave her the keys when he left. Sigrid teams up with local sheriff Irv Wylie, and his deputies, especially Melinda, who comes to look at Sigrid as a sort of mentor. Wylie has a master's degree in divinity so takes a somewhat different perspective on law enforcement and the world than your run-of-the-mill small-town sheriff. Marcus' disappearance coincides with the death of the woman he was dating, Lydia, an African American professor at the same small university where Marcus was working as an adjunct. Marcus made the 9-1-1 call and was there when Lydia fell to her death from the 6th floor of an office building still under construction, so he is suspect #1.  Wylie is having to tread very carefully because the Black community is up in arms about the police shooting of a 12-year-old Black boy--Lydia's nephew-- and the powers that be want this case solved quickly and seem less concerned about whether they get the right culprit. Needless to say, Sigrid feels she needs to reach Marcus before the police do if he is to have any chance of staying alive.
Not only was I impressed with the craft, the perspective, and the characters, but I also admire how Miller seemed able to cross the gender gap and authentically present a woman's point of view. I will definitely go back and read Norwegian by Night and maybe The Girl in Green as well. Reviews for this book from The Guardian, the New York Journal of Books, Kirkus, and Publishers Weekly.

Weeping Waters: Book I of the Inspector Beeslaar Series

This crime fiction/ mystery by Karin Brynard was originally published in 2009 (in Afrikaans) but only translated recently (by Maya Fowler & Isobel Dixon) for this English edition of 2018. Really a knockout book that kept me engaged from beginning to end. I love learning about other cultures and the ins and outs of race relations in post-Apartheid South Africa were all new to me. There were times when I struggled to work through some of the unfamiliar vocabulary, but it never detracted from understanding nor slowed the plot. Brynard was previously a political and investigative journalist, and she knows how to string her words together in this compelling story.
Our main characters are, of course, Inspector Albertus Markus Beeslaar, who, we gradually learn, has left Johannesburg for a supposedly quieter life in a small town on the edge of the Kalahari Desert--it's really hot there! His reasons for leaving are partially revealed through phone conversations with a former lover, who just happened to be the wife of his ex-partner at the police department. What is clear from the beginning is that his new supervisor, in the slightly larger town of Upington, feels Beeslaar has been forced upon him--and there is racially based animosity towards this white detective as well. Beeslaar, for his part, is dealing with two very inexperienced local juniors (both black), Pyl and Ghaap, in response to a series of stock thefts from local farmers, which have recently escalated with the murders of the farmers or their hired help.
The catalyzing event of the book, however, is the brutal murder of an up-and-coming woman artist and farm owner, Frederika Swarts, and her adopted daughter. Estranged sister, Sara Swarts, arrives with a load of guilt for having abandoned her sister to care for their dying father on the family farm. Sara eventually comes to believe that Freddie's death is not, as has been characterized in the press, another in a years' long string of "farm murders," but something unique and personal to her sister. I won't try to explain the significance of "farm murders," a phenomenon that was an eye-opener for me, or to introduce the several likely suspects in the murders. I would agree with one reviewer that, if you like Stieg Larsson, you will probably like this. It is dark in nature, but also rich in character and history and culture. I can't wait for the next translation in the series to come out--hopefully later this year. A bit more detail in this review from Publishers Weekly.

The Bellini Card: Investigator Yashim Goes to Venice

This third entry in Jason Goodwin's "Inspector Yashim" series (see my posts on The Janissary Tree and The Snake Stone), is, in fact, largely set in Venice, which was a little disappointing. It's now 1840 and the old sultan has died and been replaced by his son, Abdulmecid, who has asked Yashim to track down a portrait of his ancestor, Mehmet the Conqueror, by Italian artist Bellini, which is rumored to be on the market in Venice. However, one of the powerful pashas in the city (Istanbul) warns Yashim not to go, so Yashim is caught between two powerful men. His solution is to create a fake identity for his friend, the Polish ambassador Pawlewski, and send him instead. Pawlewski has been a man of the world but is clearly in over his head when art dealers (or dealers of forgeries) start dying and he becomes the prime suspect. Fortunately Yashim has realized, after following clues at home, that something rotten is afoot and has come to Venice in the nick of time to rescue Pawlewski, locate the painting, have a torrid affair with the Contessa d'Aspi d'Istria, and cook a wonderful Turkish meal. But there is deceit piled upon deceit, and even though the ending is revealed at the beginning of the book, you don't know that until you reach the end. We do get a behind the scenes look at Venice, which at this point in time has fallen to the Austrians, and is sliding into ever greater debt and decay. Still, I missed Istanbul.

The Unwanteds

This book by Lisa McMann was her first foray into writing for young teens and the first of a series. In the town of Quill, strength and conformity are valued above all else because the world is a threat to their existence--or so they have been told by their leader, Justine. As a result, all 13-year olds are "purged" annually with the strong, smart, rule-following kids--The Wanteds-- sent to University to eventually join the Quillitary (their military), or to the Necessaries to become service people for the community. Those who have broken rules--which forbid any creative activities such as drawing or singing or telling stories--are The Unwanteds and are sent for extermination. So it is that identical twins Aaron and Alex are separated, with Aaron going to the University and Alex put on a bus for the death farm, slated to be dumped in the Great Lake of Boiling Oil. But when Alex and his fellow Unwanteds pass through the gates, what they find instead is a magical world, Artime, protected by the illusion of the death camp, run by master magician, Mr. Today. Here, the Unwanteds pursue their education and their talents and learn to use them as magical tools, including using them as weapons. But Alex cannot let go of his belief that his brother would be happier here, even though Mr. Today has warned that any knowledge of their world will be seen by the Quillian authorities as an existential threat. You can predict the rest. The war actually ends in a mutual tolerance pact for the present, but the door is clearly left open for the sequels.
This is of course a wonderful book to recommend to kids who are not part of the "in crowd" as the misfits triumph in the end. Quite suitable for middle grades, i.e., no sex and minimal/ mild descriptions of violence. Rave review from Kirkus!