This was not war as adventure, nor war for a solemn cause, it was war at its purest, a mindless mass rage severed from any cause, ideal, or moral prinThis was not war as adventure, nor war for a solemn cause, it was war at its purest, a mindless mass rage severed from any cause, ideal, or moral principle. It was as if God had decreed this characterless entanglement of brainless forces as his answer to the human presumption.
William Tecumseh Sherman’s march to the sea is, without doubt, one of the defining moments in Southern history. Doctorow picks the march up as it leaves Atlanta and cuts through Middle Georgia to Savannah, the sea, and then the Carolinas. The battles and the ravages of war are chronicled very realistically, and the novel has a cast of characters, both real and fictional, who cover the gamut of those affected by this bit of Civil War hell fire.
Among the most interesting are a field surgeon, a Confederate soldier masquerading as a Yankee, a freed slave girl who passes for white, a black photographer and, of course, Sherman himself. Wrede Sartorius is the field surgeon whose ice-water reactions to the war were a bit unsettling, as if he did not feel anything. His clinical interest in his patients appears to be the only interest he has, remaining as apathetic to them as individuals, as he is to others who come into his sphere. In contrast to Wrede, we have Pearl, a freed slave girl who passes for white, and shows an uncommon degree of sympathy for the distraught widow of the man who fathered her. Arly is a Confederate soldier who is awaiting execution for sleeping at his post when the Yankees come into town and cause him to be freed to fight again. His method of survival is to change uniforms and pose as a Yankee soldier, and he follows the marching troops until he meets with Calvin Harper, a free black man from Baltimore who is traveling as a photographer's assistant.
Each of these characters has a fully developed story within the story, with myriad smaller characters coming and going as the march proceeds. It was Pearl’s journey that pulled this story into a solid tale for me, as so many of the other characters came and went, serving almost as vignettes of what the war was doing to so many lives, but she remained central from the beginning to the end.
It is hard to imagine how these people survived the destruction and death around them and then managed to pick up any of the pieces and carry on with meaningful lives. Sherman was undoubtedly a brilliant general, pursuing a strategy that was designed to put an end to the war and cripple the society beyond any recovery. He did what he intended, but this novel is as much the story of the lives he touched as of his own. Interestingly, Doctorow does not paint him as hero or villain, but as a bit of both, which I suspect falls somewhere near the truth.
The final book in the three book series of the Sarah Prine saga puts a nice finish on the tale. Not quite as moving as the previous novels, this one sThe final book in the three book series of the Sarah Prine saga puts a nice finish on the tale. Not quite as moving as the previous novels, this one still packs an emotional punch, because you have already invested so much into these characters and care so much about what happens to them from here.
I love the way Nancy Turner spins out the story with so much humor and caring. It is a little over the top to think that all these events would happen to one person, but that is the nature of pioneer life, I suppose, a lot of disasters heaped upon disasters, natural and manmade.
There was one particular passage in the novel that felt as if it were written for me, since I have been the object of a shunning for some time now by someone who handles her problems by refusing to address them. Sarah’s reaction was perfect–how do you get “over and done with your fussing” like that?
I don’t understand this nor cotton to it in any way. I can see being angry with folks. Shoot, I’d about hang Chess on the laundry line any day of the week, but I don't shun him. Shunning’s no way to get over and done with your fussing. It just drives in a sword that won’t come out unless the person holding it pulls first.
I am a bit sad to say goodbye to Sarah and her family. I am delighted I read the books. I enjoyed them immensely.
I was much afraid this book would not be able to live up to its predecessor, These is My Words. For one thing, I knew it would be missing one of its mI was much afraid this book would not be able to live up to its predecessor, These is My Words. For one thing, I knew it would be missing one of its most dynamic characters and how could it have that same impact. It would be set in a later period as well, and that seemed to me to invite a less stirring tale. Ah, I have underestimated this terrific writer, for she wove this story and took me right back into Sarah’s world.
I love books like these that feel authentic to their times, that weave an adventure you would never want to live but enjoy participating in from afar. What a hard life our ancestors lead settling this country. It would have required a lot of courage, not to mention the perseverance to keep starting over disaster after disaster, loss after loss. I hardly came up for air while reading it and now I’m quite anxious to get to the third book in the series.
Another thank you to Lori for introducing me to this series of books. Great fun and totally memorable.
I get Wednesday mornings off and I almost always start the day by going for a walk at the park. On one such day in March, I went for my walk and an unI get Wednesday mornings off and I almost always start the day by going for a walk at the park. On one such day in March, I went for my walk and an unexpected shower came up and ran me back to my car. On the way there, I passed the Little Library box, and knowing I had nothing to read in the car, I grabbed this Taylor Caldwell book and sat out the storm reading it. I got several chapters in and decided to leave the book in the car for times when I needed reading material when I was out. Since then, I have gone back to it almost weekly, between errands, waiting for doctors, waiting for my hair appointment.
I remembered Taylor Caldwell from my distant youth, someone I had read then and totally forgotten since. I’m unsure which of her books I might have read, certainly not this one, because I don’t think Dan Hendricks is a character you would ever completely forget. He is unique and the book is a study in the narrow-mindedness of small towns in early 20th Century America and the strength of character that makes a man stand by his own convictions and refuse to cave to crowd pressure. There is some of that still in us, is there not. I see people all the time who want everyone to be like them, think like them, and applaud them, and if they are not, if they do not, they are excluded. It is just harder to completely isolate a person in today’s big city, moving population world, than it would have been in a town where everyone knew you, nobody ever left, and dividing lines were decided at birth, as we find in this pre-depression era world.
Dan Hendricks is such a man. As a boy he is deemed not as good by the reigning adults. His father is a mere blacksmith and his mother is dead. He is somehow different and the children who attempt to torment him become the adults who shun him…until of course his fortunes change and they want to have his ear. But Hendricks is a man of honor and strength; he cannot be cajoled or bought. He has gone his own way, quietly, because it is the right way, and they resent that superiority in him that they recognize and wish to destroy. He can never be one of them, and they will never let him exist in their world in peace.
I found this book fascinating, because, while I would not say it was a great book, I kept going back to it readily and never once wondered where I had left off or what was going on in the last chapter I had read. It stuck to my mind like glue, even in this very weird (for me) and protracted reading situation.
The book is peppered with astute thoughts, particularly from the narrator as he attempts to determine what makes Dan Hendricks different.
He had lived among us but not with us. He had been a stranger who had made no effort to learn our language, not from superior contempt, but from utter indifference. Because he really had not seen us. Yes, perhaps that was it. Mankind can endure any affront except not being noticed.
And to digest his own growth process,
In the spring my father died of apoplexy. As I looked at him in his casket, I had the strange thought that I had never really known him, that he had died in mystery…To me it is the greatest grief of all; that we never in reality see those who are closest to us. Perhaps seeing them after death, we would not recognize them.
This past Wednesday, I finished the last chapter and slid the book back into the Little Library box from which it came. It was a little strange to know that I would not have it to turn to next week, and I will need to supply a replacement.
I’m not sure I will ever seek out another Caldwell. Her writing is dated and her style is somehow slightly unsatisfactory, never quite engaging you with her characters, and yet, I want to give her her due for writing a book that I know I am not ever going to forget…or at least one character for which that is so. ...more
Starla Claudelle is a nine-year old dynamo with red hair, who has a lot to learn about the way things are in the 1963 Mississippi she inhabits. She li Starla Claudelle is a nine-year old dynamo with red hair, who has a lot to learn about the way things are in the 1963 Mississippi she inhabits. She lives with her grandmother, Mamie, who is far from kind and loving, and she dreams of life with her mother, who she believes is a career singer in Nashville. When events unfold in a way that makes her feel she must run away, she heads out to Nashville alone and is given a ride by a black woman, Eula Littleton.
Eula is a damaged soul, but a sweet and caring person, and her meeting with Starla is God’s way of watching out for both of them. They are both misunderstood, but in understanding one another, they come to grips with what it means to be a complete human being.
He’d called her stupid, but she wasn’t stupid. She was just empty.
What ensues is a series of adventures that cause Starla to see first hand the racial divide in a way that she had never seen it before. As she comes to question the way of life she has always known, she develops a bond with Eula that is touching and scary for both of them.
I couldn’t explain the tangled up way things was making me feel. Mamie said I’d understand when I got older. But the older I was getting, the more confused I got.
As you get older, I guess the assumption is that the prejudices have been well taught and whether you understand better or not, you will at least understand the consequences of not adhering and accept this as just the way things are. Thank God for some brave people who stood up and said “no” despite the consequences, like Miss Cyrena, but also those, like Starla, who stand up for what they know is right, without knowing the possible consequences.
As she comes into contact with the Jim Crow world around her, she meets the worst of the white people and the worst of the black, she sees the fear that each can cause in the other, and she recognizes the basic human injustice that is taken for normal in her own world. But, she also sees the best of both, and that many struggle to be good and decent in a world that does not place enough value on those qualities. It is genius to see this through the eyes of a child, an innocent, not yet taught to hate someone for the color of their skin.
I had to hold on to the mad so the sad didn’t drown me.
I love the characters Susan Crandall has invented for this story, particularly Starla, Eula and Miss Cyrena. As improbable as the story was at times, they all seemed uncannily real and the predicaments strangely believable. The book reminded me of The Secret Life of Bees, another coming-of-age tale that addressed these issues. The mood and subject are the same, the story is quite different. Well worth the read.
John Campton is a renowned painter, an American living in Paris for years and more French than American in reality. His ex-wife has married a very weaJohn Campton is a renowned painter, an American living in Paris for years and more French than American in reality. His ex-wife has married a very wealthy banker, and the two of them vie for the love and attentions of their only son, George. Although Julia, the ex-wife, is also American, George was born on French soil, so he is of dual citizenship.
At the beginning of the story, Campton is planning a trip for himself and George, a chance to spend some private time together, but before they can embark on their journey, hostilities reach a breaking point and World War I erupts as Germany invades Belgium. Campton considers his son an American, but the French have him on their military roles and he is conscripted into the French army.
What ensues is a story full of sorrow and enlightenment as George and his father navigate the changing, and sometimes conflicted, feelings toward the cause before them. As the casualties begin to pile up and people begin to understand the nature of the conflict, Campton must struggle with his desire to keep his son safe and his realization that this war and its demanded sacrifices belong to every man, and most particularly to every Frenchman.
The killing of René Davril seemed to Campton one of the most senseless crimes the war had yet perpetrated. It brought home to him, far more vividly than the distant death of poor Jean Fortin, what an incalculable sum of gifts and virtues went to make up the monster’s daily meal.
What is the most unique about this book is that we follow the war, the loss, the effect through the eyes of a father. There are so many other books that show us the war from the soldier's point of view, but this is the angst of the ones who cannot participate and can only watch as all they love is put at risk. We are walked through Campton’s attempts to understand his son’s experiences and developing attitudes with only secondhand information to draw on.
He says he wants only things that last—that are permanent—things that hold a man fast. That sometimes he feels as if he were being swept away on a flood, and were trying to catch at things—at anything—as he’s rushed along under the waves… He says he wants quiet, monotony … to be sure the same things will happen every day. When we go out together he sometimes stands for a quarter of an hour and stares at the same building, or at the Seine under the bridges. But he’s happy, I’m sure… I’ve never seen him happier … only it’s in a way I can’t make out…
This is Edith Wharton at her best, as she deftly tears apart the surface of these two people and shows us everything that lies beneath. All the secondary characters, as well, are fully drawn and engaging, down to the elderly landlady who loses her son and then her grandsons to this spreading horror. And, while men die in droves, Americans in Paris wait and watch for America to understand what is at stake and enter the fray.
While reading, I thought of other novels I have read that have brought WWI home to me. All Quiet on the Western Front and Testament of Youth came to mind, and I felt Wharton was a significant addition to the canon, for she reveals yet another side of the horror. However, this novel is more universal than that, because it also deals with the intimate relationships that bind and separate people, the petty jealousy that prevents sharing and the small moments of understanding that create bonds that are unbreakable. So that, in the end, you might learn to see life, not only from your own view, but from that of others.
What did such people as Julia do with grief, he wondered, how did they make room for it in their lives, get up and lie down every day with its taste on their lips? Its elemental quality, that awful sense it communicated of a whirling earth, a crumbling Time, and all the cold stellar spaces yawning to receive us…
What an excellent work of art this book is. As I have often said, Edith Wharton is one of the great writers. I am in awe of how she can deliver, over and over again, books that leave such an impression upon the heart, the mind, and the soul. I will not be forgetting this one.
Maybe that was the way it went, that all your life you heard the singing and never got any closer. There were things you wanted all your life, and Maybe that was the way it went, that all your life you heard the singing and never got any closer. There were things you wanted all your life, and after a while and all of a sudden, you weren’t any closer than you ever were and there was no time left.
This is a novel about life, the messy, chaotic, craziness; the infinite variety; the joy and the sorrow. It is a novel about understanding how lives intertwine and yet how they remain separate; how we depend upon one another, and how we wish to spread our own wings and find our own way. It is about motherhood, fatherhood, sisterhood, and marriage, and the secret, internal lives, each of us lives, whether we intend to or not.
Beautifully written and deeply thoughtful, there are sections of this book that made me feel I was looking at my own reflection, even though none of the events that make up the plot had any semblance to my own life at all. There is a discussion of the nature of God that must surely be among the best treatments of the subject in print, for at its premise lies the essential question that guides belief and faith in the face of all the unfair and inexplicable tragedies every man is sure to know.
Perhaps the greatest struggle in our lives is to come to terms with who we are, as an individual, as a person unique from but in concert with others, a person with faults that we struggle not to have define us. Perhaps the only way to discover that person is to live long enough and to look backward, and perhaps all the looking back in the world will not truly tell us who we are in time. I found this book to be peopled with some of the most realistic characters in fiction--not a perfect saint or an absolute devil among them.
Suddenly it seemed to me that I looked back from a great distance on that smile and saw it all again - the smile and the day, the whole sunny, sad, funny, wonderful day and all the days that we had spent here together. What was I going to do when such days came no more? There could not be many; for we were a family growing old. And how would I learn to live without these people? I who needed them so little that I could stay away all year - what should I do without them?
My immediate reaction was that I would gladly read every word Jetta Carlton had ever written, then sadly discovered that would entail reading only one more book. I could wish for dozens, should they all be as brilliant as this. ...more
I suspect this is going to be one of those books that will come back to haunt me at later dates. It is hard to describe the emotion it evokes when CatI suspect this is going to be one of those books that will come back to haunt me at later dates. It is hard to describe the emotion it evokes when Catherwood is lost in the wilderness with her child. I have been lost, for only a few hours, in a wood, and I recall how frightening it seemed to me to know that I had lost the trail and might not find it again. In my case, a search party would have been launched within hours, I’m sure, had I not returned; in this case, lost is lost and Catherwood must find her own path out of the true wilderness she has wandered into.
There is, it seems to me, a great symbolic arc to this story, along with the very realistic one of loss and desperation. I did not want the story to end as abruptly as it did, but I realized that the object of the tale had been achieved, and knowing more about what happened beyond that point might diminish, rather than enhance, the impact.
In the end, this book is hard to describe. It has a fairytale quality or an ancient folklore vibe. It has a poetic element that has nothing to do with rhythm, but with flow. The second half of it reads like it could be sung in Homeric ballad style. I seldom read anything that I feel is completely unique, but I would dare say this is.
The other odd thing about this book is that I stumbled upon it while just scanning through a list of books, never heard of it or the author, and picked it out of a list of some 200 titles. It was as if it called to me to read it, and read it now. I had no intention of doing so…my list of planned reads is long and pressing, and the time for reading this year is closing in. Then I came across it again in a friend’s 2022 plans. I felt compelled, so I abandoned the plans and read it today. Right book, right time. Occasionally, the literature gods smile upon us. ...more
The Speckled Beauty: A Dog and His People is Rick Bragg’s tribute to his smelly, rambunctious, troublesome, loveable dog. A discarded stray that BraggThe Speckled Beauty: A Dog and His People is Rick Bragg’s tribute to his smelly, rambunctious, troublesome, loveable dog. A discarded stray that Bragg takes in and allows to rule his life, Speck is a herding dog without a flock, and the scrapes he gets into and out of leave you shaking your head and happy that this is a dog you are reading about and not one you are living with. But, Speck, like all dogs, has his warm side, and the loveable adjective is the one that truly sticks.
I had heard all my life that a dog is a healing thing: they lope down the halls in hospitals and nursing homes, making people smile, though I have often wondered if there were antibiotics yet for the germs my dog could spread. But for three months or so, when about all I could do was sit on the steps, he kept me company, and kept me entertained. I don’t want to make more of it than it was, but he sat with me for hours, till a cat passed by.
Of course, as in most memoirs that involve animals, we learn as much, if not more, about the people. In this case, particularly well-drawn is Rick’s older brother, Sam. Sam is a man worth knowing, more a man of action than words, and there is a lot of brotherly love mixed in with Rick Bragg’s telling descriptions. While most of the book made me laugh, there was a section regarding Sam that made me cry.
The setting is an Alabama farm, belonging to Bragg’s mother, and there is a motley crew of other animals to amuse us, including cats, donkeys, and a mule.
They have determined there can be no genuine Southern literature unless it has at least one mule in it, preferably a dead one. Faulkner said a mule would wait patiently a lifetime for an opportunity to kick you once, which tells me Faulkner did not know shit about mules. Mules will kick you hard and often and when it is convenient; if they only kicked once it was because they killed you the first time.
If the purpose of a memoir is to make you feel you know the people it chronicles better, Rick Bragg has succeeded in spades with this one. I might have been sitting on that porch, with the smell of dirty wet dog in my nostrils, listening to Bragg’s mother making biscuits in the kitchen and waiting for the sound of Sam’s tractor to announce it was time to stop work and get a bite to eat. ...more
Among F. Scott Fitzgerald’s final publications was a series of short articles done for Esquire Magazine in 1936. They are titled The Crack-Up and they
Among F. Scott Fitzgerald’s final publications was a series of short articles done for Esquire Magazine in 1936. They are titled The Crack-Up and they deal primarily with his own sudden realization, at the age of 39 and only four years from his own death, that his life had, in his own eyes, been a failure.
There is a sense of sadness that runs through his always elegant prose that is heart-rending. Early in the essays he states
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
I could not help thinking that his brilliant writing, which he must surely have recognized as such, and his feelings of abject failure, were those “two opposed ideas” and that his great fear was that he would lose his “ability to function.”
As a general rule, I am more interested in what an author writes and the ideas and meanings I can come away with from his body of work than the author’s actual life. Fitzgerald is almost an exception to that rule. So much of what makes him a fascination is his own complicated and flawed life, his dealings with the madness of Zelda, his struggle to belong to a world he never feels quite comfortable in. He is Nick Carroway in so many ways, observing the glitz and glitter and often wondering just what he is doing in this place and time.
He speaks briefly about his own pursuit of Zelda as a young man who cannot support her family lifestyle and his change of fortune when he initially made good on his writing career.
The man with the jingle of money in his pocket who married the girl a year later would always cherish an abiding distrust, an animosity, toward the leisure class -- not the conviction of a revolutionist but the smoldering hatred of a peasant.
Even Scott realized in the end that his attempts to run with the “in-crowd” had tinted his life a different color than he had expected or wished. The essays are part and parcel of this realization, but, like all things Fitzgerald, there is a bit of duplicity there as well, a tiny indicator that the writer is still talking to you, not the man. Perhaps, by this juncture, the man is irretrievably lost. ...more
The Killing Hills is my first Chris Offutt novel, but definitely not my last. What a genuine student of Southern Gothic he is, bringing the hills of KThe Killing Hills is my first Chris Offutt novel, but definitely not my last. What a genuine student of Southern Gothic he is, bringing the hills of Kentucky alive, with all the things that are endearing, like strong family ties, and scary, like clan revenge. Mick Hardin, our protagonist, has a love/hate relationship with his hometown and by the end of the novel, so did I.
I have been reading a lot of heavy material lately--The Henrys, James and Fielding--and this novel was like a breath of fresh air. It was fast-paced, intriguing, and unpredictable. As exciting as the story was, it was the character development that won me and kept me in for the ride. I closed the book wanting more of Mick Hardin.
I have had Chris Offutt on my TBR for years, one of those authors I could just never seem to make time for. That won’t be a problem in the future, because I am excited for the next installment in this trilogy, which is due out at the beginning of 2022, and it will be on my wishlist. ...more
How fragile our lives are anyways. How quickly things can change forever.
This is a splendid book, full of human trial and victory, and singing witHow fragile our lives are anyways. How quickly things can change forever.
This is a splendid book, full of human trial and victory, and singing with love and endurance. I developed a deep respect and admiration for Sarah Prine. Living in the Arizona Territory in the second half of the 19th Century would have been a challenge that not everyone could survive. In fact, Sarah herself says
Anyone who hasn’t got some backbone has no business trying to live in the Territories.
I am pretty sure that there is no one who reads and appreciates this book who doesn’t end up in love with Captain Jack Eliot. He is the kind of man who would not escape the adoration of a woman or the approbation of a man. He is an enigma and an awakening for Sarah, and we are so privileged to see him through her eyes, for we recognize his wonderful character while she is still discovering it. His superb characterization is what makes this book a 5-star read. Like Sarah, I found myself always peering into the distance, waiting for Captain Eliot to return.
Captain Elliot has this recklessness about him, and a way of holding on that you don’t know he is holding on, and a way of laughing that is like he takes pleasure in the act of laughing itself. He is better to have around in a scrap than a trained wildcat, though.
All the secondary characters, Sarah’s mother, Jack’s father, Savannah and Albert, the brothers, the children, the myriad of people who pass through Sarah’s life, are painted with exacting care. We are given every sort of strength and weakness, tenderness and meanness alive in the human race, and it was hard to imagine the hardships and tribulations these people, particularly the women, endured.
I marked dozens of passages to remember, for Nancy Turner puts words of wisdom into Sarah’s diary entries that even Sarah does not wholly grasp the sageness of. In fact, one of the most appealing things about Sarah is that she is often still so innocent and naive for a woman who has had such a harsh and serious life experience; and that she has that ability of children to see right into the heart of things and people.
A few of my favorites:
…this has hurt my heart and spirit more than all the other trials, for being forsaken is worse than being killed.
The likes of her isn’t going to listen nor be changed in the mind just from hearing sense. Some people sense is wasted on, and that’s purely a fact.
After a couple of hours the children began playing. They just cannot be sad too long, it is not in them; as children mourn in little bits here and there like patchwork in their lives.
Sometimes I feel like a tree on a hill, at a place where all the wind blows and the hail hits the hardest. All the people I love are down the side aways, sheltered under a great rock, and I am out of the fold, standing alone in the sun and the snow. I feel like I am not part of the rest somehow, although they welcome me and are kind. I see my family as they sit together and it is like they have a certain way between them that is beyond me. I wonder if other folks ever feel included yet alone.
It seems there is always a road with bends and forks to choose, and taking one path means you can never take another one. There’s no starting over nor undoing the steps I’ve taken.
It fascinated me to think that Nancy Turner based this upon an actual diary left by her own ancestor, and that there was an element of truth to Sarah's experiences.
I am happy that there are two more books featuring Sarah to follow this one. I enjoy Nancy Turner’s writing style and her beautiful descriptions and characterizations. I do not, however, expect the next two will be able to hold up to this one. It is so hard to make lightning strike twice in the same place–let alone three times, and this book is pretty darned perfect to me. And, for anyone who has read it, there is an obvious reason to not expect the same delight can carry through.
My sincere thanks to my friend, Lori, for recommending this book to our little reading group. I am excited that there will be discussion of it and I will not have to let go of these people or this place quite yet....more
We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. And this has been based on the even flimsier assumption thatWe have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. And this has been based on the even flimsier assumption that we could know with any certainty what was good even for us.
The Art of the Commonplace is a collection of twenty-one essays written by Wendell Berry over an expanse of time. In the collection, he presents his philosophy regarding agrarian life vs. urban life, and sets a comprehensive case for why separation from the land leads the modern man into social, spiritual and economic desolation.
Within these pages, I found all those heart-warming, wholesome qualities that make Berry’s fictional books such a joy to read. The first section was a literal walk with him through his own farmland and into the woods that neighbor it, and I found that very enjoyable. His connection to the past, the present and nature herself is somehow very gratifying.
One of his greatest qualities is his ability to find the majestic in the mundane, the beauty in the everyday, the delight in the details. He is a sharp observer of life, and he knows how man ought to fit into the natural world and exactly where he has missed doing so. All the right questions are asked, and I believe we are further from the answers today than we were when this book was published. What is the cost of losing our farmland to conglomerates, allowing our families and communities to disintegrate, and leaving the bulk of our populations stranded in cities that are havens for stress and isolation?
The points being made here are both relevant and interesting, however, as I read one essay after another, I found them less captivating. Often the point was the same and expressed in much the same terms, so that it seemed repetitive and then almost evangelical. I agree with him on 95% of his points, and I knew if I had read each of these essays individually, as they were written and originally published, I would have probably enjoyed each and every one of them. It seemed to me the best way to read them was not as a collection, one after another, in too close succession, but spaced over time.
I have the utmost admiration for Wendell Berry, for who he is, how he lives, what he believes, and how he writes. There is no doubt, however, that he has my heart more soundly in hand when I am with him in Port William and the points are made subtly and soundly through the characters that I have come to love.
We would do well to listen to his voice, whether through his fiction or his non-fiction, for he is issuing a warning to us all that the life we are living is lacking something essential, something we were meant to have. The loss is ours....more
The road to hell was paved with the bones of men who did not know when to quit fighting. Like the Wild Geese of Ireland they were used and spent liThe road to hell was paved with the bones of men who did not know when to quit fighting. Like the Wild Geese of Ireland they were used and spent like coins by one army after another.
The Civil War was a bloody and costly affair to the men who fought it, and a source of despair for most of our nation's families, who lost their fathers, brothers and sons, but there is another side to the war, and that is its effect on the women who were left to fend for themselves in a world that was unkind to the lone woman. Adair Randolph Colley is one such woman, and Jiles portrays in her a person of wit and intelligence and courage that is astounding.
The war was hard on every state in the South, but in Missouri it was exceptionally violent and cruel. Missouri was a divided state, with as many Confederate as Union sympathizers, and as the war wound down, the atrocities on both sides of the conflict toward the innocent citizenry was appalling. Gangs of marauding men scoured the country, killing at random, and in what is a little explored aspect of the conflict, women were imprisoned for feeding or caring for their own male relatives.
During most of the war, the Colley family has managed to remain neutral and continue to farm their acreage. They have never held any slaves, nor do they have combatants on either side of the conflict. But, the depravity of the Union militia finally catches up to them, and Judge Marquis Colley, Adair’s father, is taken prisoner, the house burned and his three daughters left to their own devices. In an attempt to secure his freedom, Adair, barely 18, travels to the headquarters of the Union army and is there falsely accused of spying and herself imprisoned and sent by train to St. Louis.
Jiles' descriptions of the prison and its inhabitants are vivid and visceral. But, she also brings a kind of poetry to her prose.
The fireplace leaked a slow red light, and the bar shadows lined the opposite wall like thin soldiers or the wraiths of the prisoners gone before.
In St. Louis, we meet another pivotal character in Jiles' saga, Major William Neumann, who has been charged with running the ladies prison, and understandably hates his job. He is a decent man caught in an untenable situation. It is through conversations between Adair and William that we begin to see all the layers of Adair's personality emerge.
Just as she gives us vivid images of the prison, Jiles is equally descriptive of the natural sights in her novel, painting visual scenes that play in your mind like a movie trailer.
Sometimes she walked alongside Whiskey and Dolly in the grassy valleys. The horses drifted along either side of her, grazing. Their lips moved without sound and it seemed they were talking to the earth in a long, complex conversion. On the high barrens of the ridges, the wind tore at her hair and sent her shawl and strands of her black hair streaming behind her. The horses walked beside in protection. They spread the wings of their souls on either side of her. They drank of the air, and Adair walked lightly along with them.
I loved this image of the horses spreading "the wings of their souls". It made a particular scene in the book all the more distressing for me.
Adair is such a strong, reliable, and honest character. We can believe her, and we do, and others see this quality in her as well, but we also see her become a person who will do what is necessary to survive. When we first meet her, traveling down the road with her sisters to seek the freedom of her father, she has dressed her sisters and given them hats, and the imagery is almost clownish and playful, despite the seriousness of the situation. This purity and childishness is not meant to last for long. This is not a world in which anyone is allowed to keep their innocence or naivety.
What makes this book exceptional for me is the grounding it has in the actual history of the time. Jiles has carefully researched her subject, and she opens each chapter with an excerpt from documents of the time detailing the horrors that faced these very real people, in the words of those who experienced it.
The first excerpt is from a letter written by Asey Ladd, a Confederate soldier who writes
Dear Wife and Children; I take my pen with trembling hand to inform you that I have to be shot between 2 & 4 o’clock this evening. I have but few hours to remain in this unfriendly world. There are 6 of us sentenced to die in retaliation of 6 Union soldiers that was shot by Reeves men.
With that harrowing letter, we are warned that this will be a tale of a difficult time; a time that requires strong people; a time of precarious survival. Then Jiles goes on to write a character in the guise of a young girl, who is up to the challenge. I thought of Mattie Ross in True Grit, Ivy Rowe in Fair and Tender Ladies, and Ruby Thewes in Cold Mountain. Adair Randolph Colley belongs to this group: unforgettable women, strong women, survivors....more
Edith Wharton's novella about moral choice and temptation spreads itself over two generations and two men's moral dilemmas. The woman at the center ofEdith Wharton's novella about moral choice and temptation spreads itself over two generations and two men's moral dilemmas. The woman at the center of this story is first a girl on the edge of marriage, who discovers a dark secret regarding the man she is to marry, and a mother, whose son must make a similar choice. In this world, where money is king, I dare say most people would never resist the temptations presented to these men.
I read this at one sitting and thoroughly enjoyed the story and waiting, like Kate, to see which would be chosen, the easy way or the moral one....more
When times are difficult, which they are a bit right now, there is such a balm in reading Wendell Berry. He can find a heartstring and tug it about thWhen times are difficult, which they are a bit right now, there is such a balm in reading Wendell Berry. He can find a heartstring and tug it about the best of anybody I have known since my own Grandfather tugged at mine. He takes me back to better times, simpler ones, perhaps because I was so much younger and unjaded, and perhaps because I was surrounded by so much love and security in the family that I had. He also reminds me of the mortality of us all, that death is the end product of life and that the life we have lived matters more than the death we are approaching.
Many of these stories were not new to me. I had encountered them before in other collections, but a few were newly found shiny pennies, and among the new characters that I either did not remember or had never met were Tol Proudfoot and Miss Minnie–a pair that couldn’t fail to make anyone smile. Some of my favorite stories are here, among them those about the last days of Mat Feltner and the death of Burley Coulter, and every one of these stories is a treasure and a joy.
Wendell Berry sees the world as it was and as it is, and he has the measure of what has been lost.
“And now look at how many are gone–the old ones dead and gone that won’t ever be replaced, the mold they were made in done throwed away, and the young ones dead in wars or killed in damned automobiles, or gone off to college and made too smart ever to come back, or gone off to easy money and bright lights and ain’t going to work in the sun ever again if they can help it. I see them come back here to funerals–people who belong here, or did once, looking down into coffins at people they don't have anything left in common with except a name.”
He just turned eighty-eight himself. He was Andy Catlett, but now he is Mat Feltner, and I think he would be just as happy to be either. He has given us a gift that cannot be valued, for it is immeasurable, it is a world into which we can slip and find the past and a hope for the future. ...more
The Fields is the second volume in Conrad Richter’s trilogy The Awakening Land. In The Trees, Sayward Luckett arrived in the wilds of Ohio, where the The Fields is the second volume in Conrad Richter’s trilogy The Awakening Land. In The Trees, Sayward Luckett arrived in the wilds of Ohio, where the forest was so thick it blocked out the sun, and the family were the only people, aside from Indians, inhabiting the land. Before the next group of settlers is established, Sayward’s mother, Jary, is dead and not long after her father, Worth, has departed for the next wilderness he can find.
Sayward stays in the cabin the family built, raises her remaining siblings, and establishes a life. Married now, she becomes the backbone of this land. She raises her children and clears her land, and it is the coming of the fields from the forest that this book deals with. We see, step-by-step, how the wilderness gives way to civilization; how a church and a school and businesses begin to take root in what was once an unsettled land. With the coming of this new place comes a new way of life, and not one without trouble or toil, but one with a different breed of both.
Richter’s style of writing makes me feel I am present in the settlement these people inhabit. I can feel the sweat that is required to make a good life out of a harsh environment, I can see the larger wildlife recede and the smaller animals, mice and possums, foxes and birds, take their place. There is a marked difference between Sayward’s children’s lives and the clear picture that remains in our minds of that of Sayward and her siblings. The change is gradual, but the change is real, and Richter is masterful at bringing us from one stage of the growth of this territory to another in exactly the kind of slow progression that life itself takes. In fact, he has now brought us out of the territory and into Ohio statehood.
I love books with strong women, particularly women who are strong in times and places where men are meant to prevail. Sayward is such a woman. She is much stronger than her husband, Portius, and it is her determination and sweat that carves civilization out of this wilderness, not his books or his law offices. Nothing about this life is easy, the dangers lie all around, and they are coupled with the human failings that have also been with us since the beginning of time.
I am looking forward to the final book, The Town, for I know it will bring these characters full circle and leave them in a place that is not wilderness any longer. I wonder if it will be better, for it is evident to us all that as we gain one thing, we lose something else. ...more
The Trees is the first of a trilogy in Conrad Richter’s American saga, The Awakening Land: The Trees, The Fields, & The Town. Whenever I read about thThe Trees is the first of a trilogy in Conrad Richter’s American saga, The Awakening Land: The Trees, The Fields, & The Town. Whenever I read about the settling of this country, I am taken with the strength of the people who forged ahead to unknown places and dangers, leaving all they knew behind them forever. Such a family are the Luckett’s, Worth, Jary, and their five children, who leave Pennsylvania for the uncharted forests of Ohio, and such a family stands behind all of us whose families founded the U.S. and Canada.
The main character followed through the book is the oldest daughter, Sayward, who is a monument to strong women everywhere. She is physically able and quick, but it is her mental endurance that left me awed. Even one of the tragedies she faces would be too much for many of us, but we know that only the strong survive and only the strongest build. For if Sayward is anything, she is a builder, a worker, and a woman who will leave more behind her than she finds.
I had no difficulty in relating to each of the characters in the book. The rugged loner, that is Sayward’s father, Worth; the reluctant mother who follows him into places she never wishes to go, the children who adapt to whatever environment they are thrown into, and the good and evil people that come to populate their world–all seem real. There are no stereotypes here, even though several of the characters could easily have become that.
There are, of course, nuggets of truth sprinkled among these pages. When Sayward is wishing to make some Moss Tea, her Mother’s recipe, she can only remember pieces of the procedure and she reflects, “What moss it was and what you did then was forever buried now under the big white oak.” Do you think we all die with things we know that nobody else ever will? I do. I wish there were a million things I had thought to ask my Mama when she was here with me, and my Daddy was a fountain of folklore and family stories that have disappeared except in snatches over the years. Like Sayward, we don’t often think of it until it is too late.
This novel reads easily and feels very authentic, as if Richter might have lived in those times himself. If I had a complaint it would be that it ends abruptly, but then that wouldn’t be a valid complaint because it is part of a trilogy and Sayward and all the others are just waiting for me to pick them up again in The Fields, which I am quite anxious to do. ...more
I would not have thought I could admire Eudora Welty or William Maxwell more than I already did, but I was quite wrong. Their correspondence reveals aI would not have thought I could admire Eudora Welty or William Maxwell more than I already did, but I was quite wrong. Their correspondence reveals a depth of character, friendship, and loyalty that is touching. They both exhibit wit and intelligence beyond the average, even when discussing their rose gardens, but of course, that is not a surprise, you can find that in the books they have written.
It felt a rare privilege to get an intimate glimpse into the lives of both of these remarkable writers. The letters are full of their families, their experiences, their thoughts on their own and each other's writings, and their insecurities and doubts.
In one of his letters, Maxwell says,
"I'm trying to put together a book of short stories, and finding it difficult. So many of them are either stuck fast in the copy of the New Yorker they appeared in, or in a period that isn't like now. I keep wishing that somebody (myself for instance) had only said, "Couldn't you try harder?" A few are all right. But only a few. And what bothers me is that I didn't see this at the time.”
The remarkable thing, to me, was that he was referring to his collection titled Over by the River and Other Stories, which is by far one of the best short story collections I have ever encountered. There is something almost comforting about this kind of humility. I suspect this was one of the reasons Welty and Maxwell shared such a long and close friendship, because she is as down-to-earth as he is, even when she is being showered with medals and honors.
I read this book very slowly, taking time to savor each word and event. I broke several times to read stories and novels by these writers that I had not yet read and which they were discussing between themselves. I read every footnote supplied by Suzanne Marrs, who copiously edited this compilation. Before the end of the year, I hope to read her biography of Welty, William Maxwell: A Literary Life by Barbara Burkhardt, and both Welty’s and Maxwell’s novels that I have not yet completed. It feels as if I could never spend too much time with them.
3.5 stars. This is a perfectly fine, take-a-break, kind of book. Catherine Ryan Hyde writes those emotion-tugging, not quite possible but we wish they3.5 stars. This is a perfectly fine, take-a-break, kind of book. Catherine Ryan Hyde writes those emotion-tugging, not quite possible but we wish they were, books. Most of us are familiar with Pay It Forward, which was the first book of hers that I read, and occasionally I resort to reading her again, the way I sometimes tire of substantive film and go watch The Hallmark Channel. In her defense, she isn’t quite that formulaic.
In this book we meet single mother, Brooke, whose daughter, Etta, is taken from her by a man carjacking the Mercedes she is driving. The car is not her own, it is her mother’s, and she is not in the best of situations following a divorce. The second person central to this novel is a homeless sixteen year old, Molly, who finds Etta, strapped to her car seat and deserted on a street in a seedy part of town. What ensues is a story that could surely never happen, but seems completely plausible during the telling. I won’t give away any of the plot twists, but will say that much of what happens is fairly predictable.
What makes Hyde work well is her grasp of the emotions that are central to every human being, so that we recognize her characters as people we know or even people we are. In this respect, she reminds me very much of Anne Tyler. Molly becomes dear to us as the story progresses, because we begin thinking we don’t have anything in common with a homeless person, and then find that we absolutely do.
Ever felt abandoned? I guess I was thinking it was sad how they were just going on without me like nothing much had changed. Like I was a number in a math problem and they could just subtract me and get a different total and move on.
Wonder how people deal with their circumstances? We deal with everything, because, short of actually deciding not to live anymore, we don’t have any other option. Not one damned option.
Have a moment of insight into perspective? We were both nervous. And we had melded our nervousness into being nervous together. But we were nervous over two entirely different issues. And she could only tell me what was on her mind.
Realized even when it is about others, it is about us? ...because anytime a person gets that upset about somebody else’s situation, it’s a little bit their own situation, too. That’s one of those things that other people don’t always seem to notice, but I think you can pick up on stuff like that if you’re even halfway paying attention.
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