BOOK REVIEW: Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

They say you never get over your first love. Lara Nelson, the protagonist and narrator of Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake, believes that this is not true. Lara’s first love was Peter Duke, a handsome, young, charismatic actor at the beginning of his career. They met at a summer stock theater in Michigan, at a place called Tom Lake. Lara was twenty-four and also an up-and-coming actress. The play was Our Town. Lara starred as Emily Webb. Although brilliant as Emily, she soon discovered it was the only role she could play well. In contrast, Peter Duke was a huge talent who went on to movie stardom.

It is now a pandemic spring. Lara, her husband, and their three adult daughters are in their bubble at the family cherry orchard in Michigan. They are spending long hours every day harvesting the cherries, because someone has to and workers are hard to come by. While they work, the girls ask their mother to tell them the story of her summer at Tom Lake and her love affair with the famous Peter Duke.

The story alternates between the farm/current day and Tom Lake more than 30 years before. Lara thoughtfully relates the story, a compelling story of youth, ambition, innocence, and innocence lost. Lara also narrates the current day, where her love for her family and contentment with the way her life has unfolded shine through.

The book is also an homage to Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, a play I never liked much but now have a greater appreciation for.

This is a beautiful, poignant, and affirming novel. I have to read more by Ann Patchett. 

BOOK REVIEW: The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon

I heard good things about The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon, and bumped it to the top of my TBR pile. This is a historical mystery that definitely lives up to its hype.

The novel is inspired by the story of Martha Ballard, a late-eighteenth century midwife in Maine, who kept a daily journal of her work. I read about this fascinating woman decades ago in the award winning biography A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, based on her diary, 1785-1812 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. That nonfiction account puts Martha’s life in the context of the time. I still recommend it all these years later.

In this novel, Lawhon breathes new life into the story by focusing on diary entries recording the rape of one of the townswomen, Rebecca Foster. She named the local judge as one of the rapists. Although The Frozen River is fictional, truthful (painfully true) elements seep through. (Be sure to read the author’s note at the end!)

I don’t want to give away the plot(s). So I’ll just say the writing is superb. The questions that are raised throughout, the desire to see justice done, and the fear that it won’t be, makes this a book that is difficult to put down. The love story between Martha and her husband Ephraim gives the book a soothing, hopeful core while corruption, male privilege, rape, and murder swirl around them. This novel is highly recommended as a must-read for fans of historical fiction.

BOOK REVIEW: My Fair Katie by Shana Galen

My Fair Katie by Shana Galen is the second book in the Misfortune’s Favorites Regency Romance series. The first book, The King and Vi, was so much fun that I pre-ordered book two.

The set-up in this novel is the same as the first. Three 13-year-old sons of peers were sent to boarding school in Scotland after being kicked out of the usual boys’ schools for misbehaving. One night, the three (King, Henry, and Rory) decide to steal a barrel of whiskey from two impoverished sisters who live near the school. Making and selling whiskey is how they survive. The entitled brats take the whiskey and then drop the barrel as they are making their getaway. The sisters (known locally as “witches”) catch them. In convincing witchlike fashion, one of the sisters calls down a curse that when they are thirty years old, they will lose everything that they love.

The curse has seemingly come true for King in book one, and for Rory, who we will see in book three. But now, it’s Henry’s turn.

Henry is now a duke, but is already on the road to losing everything he loves. He is a compulsive gambler. What he loves most, it seems, is the thrill of the cards or dice. He has already gambled away his country home. On his thirtieth birthday, he loses his London townhouse in another unwise bet. Just as he is doing so, he sees an image of the witch from his past and recalls the curse.

Now, Henry is impoverished and disgraced. The winner of both bets (and new owner of both houses) is the vile Marquess of Shrewsbury, who seems determined to ruin Henry, though Henry has no idea why.

Katie (Lady Katherine Malfort) is the daughter of the marquess. He has sent her away to the country home he won from Henry, partly as punishment for showing a burst of independence, but also to hide her away. She has a port wine stain on her face that the marquess is ashamed of. He has convinced her she is ugly and marred and that no man will ever want her.

With nowhere else to go, Henry hies off to his mother’s home – the dower house on the property of the country home now occupied by Katie. The two meet. Sparks fly.

However, there are obstacles to their getting together. Henry is suffering from withdrawal from his gambling addiction. (This is realistically portrayed.) And Katie is convinced no man could ever love her because of her birthmark. Still they team up to figure out why the marquess hates Henry’s family so much.

This is a medium-steam romance with likeable protagonists. They earn their HEA, but there is still more to come. Henry, like King, is still under a curse. Book three promises a resolution, and I’ve already pre-ordered the novel!

BOOK REVIEW: Death on the Tiber by Lindsey Davis

 I received this book for free from Netgalley. That did not influence this review.

I’ve been following the Flavia Albia Roman mystery series since Book 1, The Ides of April. And before that, I read all of Lindsey Davis’ Falco series. So I was eager to read the latest, Death on the Tiber. While the mystery is very clearly Albia’s to solve, Falco and his friend Petronius Longus jump in to help – and it is a delight to meet up with them again.

The tale begins when the corpse of a woman is dredged up from the Tiber, and identified as Claudia Deiana, from Britain. She was the mistress of a well-known Roman gangster named Florius. Albia is determined to find out why the woman had come to Rome. And why she was killed. Albia feels a sense of duty to the unfortunate victim because she, too, originally came from Britain. Moreover, she knew Florius. He ran a crime ring in Londinium, centered on brothels. When Albia was a young orphan, he trapped her, raped her, and tried to install her in one of the brothels. Fortunately for Albia, she was rescued by Falco, adopted, and brought to Rome. Florius is back in Rome, and Albia has a score to settle.

The novel starts slowly as the backstory is established. There are a lot of characters to keep track of, most of whom were seen in previous books, so it does all fall into place. A list of the cast is given at the beginning of the story to help. It’s probably best to have read earlier books to get the full impact of this one.

The mystery of the dead woman is just a small part of the story. Albia finds herself back investigating the dangerous gangs warring for primacy in Rome. One of the main patriarchs has just died, so there is a good deal of jockeying for power (think The Godfather), and all this violence muddies the waters.

Albia is supported by her father (Falco), her uncle (Petronius), her long-suffering husband (Tiberius), and some high-up muckety-muck who appears in deus-ex-machina style to help her sort things out. I feel like this guy must have figured in one of the previous books, but couldn’t place him – one of the disadvantages of having so many characters to keep track of over so many books. For me, the story would have been more satisfying without this secret character. He goes only by a pseudonym, Titus, and his position, Princeps Peregrinorum, and it was a bit frustrating to have them chat so coyly together and not be able to place who he was and why he and Albia were so cozy. Other longtime fans will likely have a better memory than me.

Albia does her usual grand job of gathering information, working in tandem with the authorities, and chasing down her suspects. Her voice, cynical, snarky, intelligent, funny, and at times, loving, make it fun to follow her along as she investigates. 

BOOK REVIEW: The Phoenix Bride by Natasha Siegel

I received this book for free from Netgalley. That did not influence this review.

The Phoenix Bride by Natasha Siegel is a gentle yet gripping historical novel. Set in London amidst plague and the Great Fire of 1666, the novel follows Cecilia Thorowgood, a young widow who lost her beloved husband to the plague. She grieves so deeply that her sister is worried for her health and sanity. After a series of doctors fails to cure her melancholy, her sister takes a bold step, bringing in David Mendes, a Jew.

David understands obsessive grief. He has also lost a loved one, a longtime friend. Because the friend was a man, David never confessed his love. As a Jew and a bisexual, David has to take great care in all he does. Falling for an aristocratic Gentile is perhaps even more perilous than falling for another man.

Gentle and understanding, David is able to reach Cecilia in a way no other physician could. They grow dangerously close. But David learns a secret. Cecilia’s sister’s concern is not as altruistic as she wants it to seem. She wants Cecilia cured so that she can be advantageously remarried. She even has a second husband picked out. And when Cecilia learns what David knows, the fragile band of trust is broken. Can it be restored?

The novel is beautifully written. The setting is richly rendered. And readers will find their heartstrings pulled.

BOOK REVIEW: James by Percival Everett

 I received this book for free from Netgalley. That did not influence this review.

I love re-imaginings of classic stories, and have been excited to read James by Percival Everett, which will be released on March 19. This is a re-imagined Huckleberry Finn, told from the viewpoint of Jim.

Jim is an enslaved man with secrets. He is self-educated (highly educated) and devoted to his wife and daughter. He is also entangled with Huck (as in Twain’s novel.)

Jim learns that he is going to be sold, separated from his family, so he runs off to a nearby island to hide. There, he meets up with Huck, who has just faked his own death to escape from his cruel drunkard of a father. Now Jim knows he will likely be charged not only with running away, but also with killing Huck. The two flee the island.

Jim’s goal is to find a way to earn money to purchase his wife and daughter. Huck’s goal is adventure. While roughly following the timeline of Huckleberry Finn, this novel follows Jim rather than Huck. His adventures and close calls are even more compelling than Huck’s.

The novel shows the agency of enslaved people and the secretly subversive ways they undermine the institution of slavery. It also shows the fear and loss that are embedded in their daily existence. One of their tools is language. Whenever around Whites, they speak “slave,’ but among themselves, they speak in an educated, grammatical way that allows them to mock the ignorance of Whites. One of the most unsettling and even frightening things that Jim can do is to speak “correctly” to a White man. Language is power. Liberation will ultimately require choosing/claiming his own name, James.

This is a powerful novel that turns Mark Twain’s classic on its head. Highly recommended.

BOOK REVIEW: Loving the Dead and Gone by Judith Turner-Yamamoto

Set in small-town North Carolina in the 1960s, Loving the Dead and Gone by Judith Turner-Yamamoto is a touching novel of fraught family relationships that explores how lives are upended as survivors react to death.

The story is set in motion when a young man is killed in a car crash. His seventeen-year-old widow, Darlene, is adrift, crushed by the fact that no one will allow her to fully mourn. She is expected to move on and stop talking about something that makes everyone uncomfortable. But Darlene’s love is still so fresh and new that she can’t possibly let go. She keeps reaching for a way to connect with the dead man, to hold on. 

Multiple viewpoints are employed to explore the aftermath of this tragedy as its consequences ripple through other families. Clayton is a factory worker who found the cars and the dead man. He is haunted by the death, but has no way to vent his emotions, until Darlene approaches him wanting to know more about the setting of the car crash. Darlene feels that in some way, her husband is trying to communicate with her through Clayton.

Clayton’s family life is a mess. He is married to a woman, Berta Mae, who is warped by her own childhood trauma. She has always been trying to win her mother’s love and failing. Now she feels her teenage daughter is rejecting her as well. And her husband has pulled away. Berta Mae is desperate to be loved and is growing as embittered as her mother.

Berta Mae’s mother, Aurilla, married the wrong man. She lived a long life of misery which turned her bitter and mean, and left her unable to love Berta. Aurilla’s husband has also (finally) died, and her reaction to his death, after a long marriage, is the exact opposite of Darlene’s reaction to widowhood, after a marriage of less than a year.

There is a pervasive loneliness and hurt in the novel, and the reader is propelled along waiting for redemption for the characters. While the young man’s death starts a downward spiral for the characters, it also serves as a catalyst, breaking them out of their ruts and giving them a second chance at life.

This is a beautiful story, thoughtfully told.