Sisters of the Confederacy

 

By Lauraine Snelling

Book Two of the A Secret Refuge series, a three-part series.

The story of two young women, Jesselynn Highwood, who goes by Jesse, and Louisa Highwood. Jesse, in Missouri, is passing as a teenage boy, trying to lead her people to Oregon to start a new life away from the Civil War and to freedom for the black members of her group. Louisa is in Virginia, helping her brother take care of several wounded Rebel soldiers in their home. The brother, Zachary, was gravely wounded in the war, having lost an eye and two limbs, but has recovered and has also put a stop to Louisa helping take care of the wounded at the army hospital. 

Jesse has all the weight of trying to shepherd her people and animals safely to Oregon while Louisa has all the irritation of being limited in what she is allowed to do since her brother returned home and put a stop to her work at the army hospital. Her situation is the opposite of that of Jesse's, who is overburdened, while Louisa is feeling put aside.

It takes the story quite a while to get Jesse's group headed west. Bored Louisa spends most of the story being upset at her brother but finally turns, with his help, to smuggling opium, a pain reliever that the army hospital has run out of and sorely needs but is no longer available. When Jesse finally gets her group attached to a wagon train and headed west, her masquerade as a boy is quickly discovered, not surprisingly. And back at Louisa's tale, her disabled brother has vanished without an explanation. Will it turn out ok for the two young women? The reader will have to read the third book in the series, The Long Way Home, to find out.

It's a good story although it gets off to a slow start. It has a lot of religious stuff in it though. I picked this book to read from a recommendation online and it did not mention how much of the book was about the main character's religion. I also did not notice that the publisher is Bethany House, a publisher that specializes in Christian publications. 

I'm not going to blame the book for being too religious. But most of the way through the story, it felt to me like it was a Christian tract disguised as a novel. That was before I noticed the publisher was Bethany House.

Also, the book is the second in the series of three. Probably should read the first book, Daughter of Twin Oaks, before starting on this one. I didn't and there is a lot that happens in the first book that is touched on in this story and that makes it sound much more exciting and dramatic than this one. Like how Twin Oaks burned and how Zachary nearly died. And how they got their horses away and safely hidden away from being taken by the military. 

Cold Mountain

 

By Charles Frazier

The story of Inman and Ada, two lovers separated by the US Civil War, who manage to find each other after years apart.

Inman, who fought on the Confederate side, was seriously wounded and had not yet recovered from his injury when he decided he was leaving the war and heading home. He wanted to see Ada again, even though he was not sure she cared for him. He set forth on a perilous journey from Raleigh, North Carolina to Cold Mountain, North Carolina, which is in the Blue Ridge Mountains, a distance of about 290 miles. He has many dangerous encounters and ends up captured by a criminal gang. Things go from bad to worse for Inman.

Meanwhile, back on Cold Mountain, Ada, the only child of her wealthy and indulgent father finds herself in charge of her father's large farm due to his sudden death. Pampered all her life and all alone, as local farmhands have all gone off to the war, Ada is wallowing in depression and loneliness barely able to survive until a caring neighbor sends young Ruby to help out. Motherless and deserted by her worthless father when she was only eight, Ruby is a graduate of the school of hard knocks and has learned how to live off the land and raise crops and livestock. Together, Ruby and Ada turn the farm into a productive enterprise, in the process giving each other the companionship neither woman really wants to admit they need. 

As for Inman, Ada thinks about him occasionally. The attraction between the two was certainly felt more strongly by Inman than by Ada. But as time passes, Ada begins to think more about him and the way he touched her hair and neck that one time. If Inman makes it back to Cold Mountain, Ada won't be turning him away. If he makes it back.

This was a pretty good story. But two thirds of the way through it, I stopped reading it after I read the part where Inman beats another man's head in. The man deserved it, but I just got tired of all Inman's struggles. I had to take a break. The book sat unread for nearly three weeks before I picked it back up again. It's not a fun book to read. And I enjoyed the story of Ada and Ruby much more than I did that of poor Inman. 

The book won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1997. It was the author's first published novel. It was also made into a movie that was nominated for several awards in 2003.

Review by Kirkus Reviews.

The Silver Queen

 

By Jane Candia Coleman

This is the fictionalized story of Horace and Augusta Tabor who, as a young married couple, had joined the many hopefuls heading west to make new lives for themselves, in the 1850s. Eventually they would come to own some of the richest silver mines in Colorado.

Horace and Augusta Tabor first settled on a farm in Kansas. But the unrest occasioned by the anger over slavery and a failed corn crop set Haw, as he was called, on a search for a new endeavor that would take them out of lawless Kansas. He decided the gold fields would be the making of him.

Off they went, Augusta now a mom to the only child she would ever have, Nathaniel, called Maxcy. The trail west was a trial, for sure, but they made it to Colorado intact and set out exploring the rugged mountains looking for the jackpot that would make Haw rich. Augusta struggled along with her husband, who was a bit of a dreamer, but she would have been happy to have an ordinary life. Mining for gold was not the jackpot Haw had hoped for. But they got by, helped out by Augusta's cooking and doing laundry for and selling supplies to the others in the gold fields hoping for the same dream. 

In the course of the years, they acquired several mines, none of which was particularly productive, of gold that is. But it turned out that some of the mines were very productive of silver, an ore Haw had overlooked in his dream of gold. Silver made all his dreams come true. In today's money, his fortune may have been in the $2 billion range. Certainly he was the wealthiest man of his day in Colorado.

But money was not good for the Tabor marriage. Haw had always had a tendency to stray and was perhaps a bit too fond of hanging around in saloons and bars. And his wife, Augusta was maybe a bit too stern, to apt to criticize. Haw had political ambitions and wanted her to be part of his effort to charm people and win supporters. He had a mansion built for her in Denver and she settled in to it and enjoyed her life there. But he was mostly absent, pursuing his political dreams and funding projects in Denver and Colorado. His relationship with a young widow, Baby Doe, who he set up in a suite in the hotel he owned, showering her with fine clothes and jewelry, became a scandal.

It was Augusta who pointed out to Haw that his behavior was not helping his political ambitions. If she thought that would bring her unfaithful husband back home, she was mistaken. The marriage ended in divorce and Haw married his pretty young mistress. But Augusta had taken care of herself financially, maybe she wasn't fabulously wealthy, but she had a very comfortable life. At her death, her estate was worth $1,000,000 in 1895, which is about $36 million in 2020 dollars. Things did not work out as well for Haw and Baby Doe, unfortunately. In 1890s, the value of silver started to decline drastically. Tabor lost everything but was appointed Postmaster, a position he held until his death in 1899.

Stupidly, I did not realize that the story I was reading was based on real people. I kept waiting for Augusta to have her moment of triumph over her ex-spouse, but that never really happened. She got old, he got old, even Baby Doe got old and they all died. That's when I finally understood that this story was about an actual marriage that fell apart because people change, circumstances change and love fades. I didn't get that revenge scene I was expecting but that is my fault for misunderstanding. It was a pretty good story. It's great to see someone's dream come true, but sad to see it all slip away.

Hangman's Beach

 

By Thomas H. Raddall

An historical novel about Halifax, Nova Scotia at the time of war between Britain and Napoleon. 

A prosperous merchant buys an island near to the colonial area of Halifax and builds a nice home for his family. The place passes to his son, Peter McNab II, and things go along smoothly, with Peter and his wife Joanna raising their two sons on the island along with an orphan from the British Isles, Ellen. But then European affairs intrude when Britain has to fight off Napoleon's lust for territory. Much to Peter's disgust, the British Navy chooses his island to set up their gibbets to hang sailors who run afoul of the Navy's harsh rule. So even though Peter owns the island, British law gives the Navy control of the shores to do with as they please.

Halifax area becomes one of the locations where the British stash French prisoners of war. At first the prisoners are housed in hulks, ships that are no longer seaworthy. Later a proper prison is built and Captain Rory MacDougal is put in charge of it.

Time passes and Ellen is now in her twenties and is uninterested in any of the young men that Peter brings to the island to meet her. So sensing she may be wearing out her welcome and wanting to no longer be the dependent of the McNabs, she talks MacDougal into proposing to her, even though he is about thirty years older than she is.  

Peter wants to send his two sons back to England to finish their education, mainly so they learn to speak French, something he views as a necessary accomplishment for an English gentleman. But his wife is very much against it, not wanting her two boys to be so far away from home. It then turns out that one of the French prisoners speaks English fluently and he is hired to teach the boys his language. Letting prisoners go out into the community to earn money was permitted to those men who were deemed unlikely to take advantage of the freedom and run away. The French prisoner, Michael Cascamond, becomes the French instructor, which satisfies both Peter and Joanna.  

But when Ellen meets Michael, she wants him and turns up at his hut one day and they have a romantic encounter. After that, she sneaks away from the main house to visit him when he is free from his teaching work. This goes on for weeks until MacDougal surprises them together in Michael's hut. Michael and MacDougal fight and Michael leaves the older man on the ground, presumed dead from hitting his head on a rock when he fell. Now Michael decides he must escape, rather than face the consequences of MacDougal's death. With Ellen's help, he steals a small sail boat and sets sail for Acadia, where many French emigrants to Canada are said to live. He figures he will be safe from the British there and can eventually rejoin the French Navy. But he doesn't even come close to reaching his goal when he loses control of the boat in a fierce Bay of Fundy current. 

This was an interesting read, mainly because it is a part of American history that I knew nothing about. The romance story was pretty good but is not the main thrust of the book. Michael's story is definitely the highlight of the novel. Very much worth a read if you enjoy historical fiction. 

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

The Children's Blizzard

By David Laskin

The winter of 1887-1888 was something else in the upper Midwest: cold and snow and cold and snow. So when a sudden warm spell arrived in January, folks relaxed and went outside and tried to enjoy the relatively balmy temperatures. This was a time to do chores, bring in hay, put the cattle in the pasture. Farmers went out to work in their shirt sleeves. Children left for school without their coats, hats and gloves.
At the time there was no national weather service. The Signal Corps was in charge of weather monitoring and forecasting and were a branch of the military. And although they had predicted falling temperatures and snow, they did not forecast a coming blizzard. And what a blizzard it was.
It happened so fast. One moment it was warm and sunny. The next it was a blast of snow, a curtain of black clouds and gale force winds. It hit the Dakotas while kids were in school. Teachers had to choose between trying to get the kids home or staying in the school house with rapidly declining fuel to heat the building and no food beyond what the students had brought from home for their lunch. Those who risked the trip often did not make it home. Their bodies were discovered later after the storm passed.
Farmers who have released their cattle to pasture risked their lives bringing them back in. Many died trying.
Some who got caught out took shelter in hay stacks but died of the cold. It was so cold that even people in their homes froze to death. Cattle died in the thousands.

Parts of this book were really interesting. The stories of the immigrants and how they came to settle in the upper Midwest and set up their homes on the prairie. The stories of the struggle to survive the cruel onslaught of the unexpected blizzard. The stories of those who survived and those who didn't. All that was quite gripping.
What wasn't so interesting was the tale of the Signal Corps and how it failed to warn of the coming and drastic weather change. The author also goes into quite detailed descriptions of how the weather works, meteorological detail that was quite boring. Worse was his description of what happens to the human body when it freezes to death, just gruesome. I mostly skipped those parts.
But even with the more boring parts, this is an amazing story of a terrible tragedy that affected people from the Dakotas, Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska. The cold front that came roaring down out of Canada pushed cold weather clear down into Texas with temperatures in some locations there falling into the teens (Fahrenheit). A reminder that we humans are not the rulers of this planet.

A review from Publishers Weekly.

Fire and Fury

By Michael Wolff

Wolff proposed writing a book on Trump's first year in the White House and was given an amazing amount of access to Trump's people. It's possible that they thought Wolff was going to do a puff piece on Trump and his administration. But instead Wolff wrote an exposé, revealing the craziness, backstabbing, leaking and inexperience of those trying to cope with one of the most unpredictable, childish and ignorant presidents in American history. Even though Trump denied talking to Wolff, sources back up his claim that he did, in fact, talk to Trump, either in person or on the phone.
No one can deny that this administration is probably one of the most unstable ever, do to the poor leadership ability of this  president. Top officials come and go, often fired by  the callous, uncaring and rude Trump via Twitter tweets. No one can deny that Trump's picks seem designed to burn their departments to the ground rather than improve their function and government. And, finally, no one can deny that Trump turns this way and then that, changing his mind hour by hour so that no one really knows (including Trump himself) what he wants.
Does the author really understand what is going on in the White House? It sure seemed so to me. The book was published in January 2018. Towards the end of the book, Wolff says that factions within the White House were pushing for CIA's Mike Pompeo to replace Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State. And in mid March 2018, that is exactly what happened.
It also seems pretty clear to me that Michael Wolff knows what he is talking about. And that Trump and gang are probably as awful as Wolff portrays them. Though, to be honest, Wolff's book is more like a gossipy Hollywood tale than fact-driven portrayal.

Politifact has a fact-check on the Wolff book:    http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2018/jan/09/fact-checking-read-fire-and-fury-michael-wolff/  (Most of the fact-checks are minor things like wrong dates and misspellings.)

Here is a review by The Guardian.

Slaves in the Family

By Edward Ball

Edward Ball's ancestor came to America and started plantations near the Atlantic coast, growing rice. They used slaves from Africa to do the plantation work.  At one point, the family owned several plantations in the same area of South Carolina.  They owned thousands of slaves. They also fought to keep their slaves in the Civil War.
Knowing this, Ball set out to connect with the descendants of those slaves that he was able to track down by perusing family documents and historical records. In several cases, he was able to find these people and give them the information he was able to gather about their ancestors and from their family lore piece together more of the story of their ancestors' history, even to the probable location their African origins.
Not surprisingly, he also figured out that his ancestors had mixed race children from informal liaisons with their female slaves. Ball was able to track down some of the descendants of these relationships, people who are distantly related to himself.
He encountered some anger but he also gave people a better understanding of their own personal history and this valuable information was welcomed by the families.

This was a very informative read as it goes quite deeply into the slave-owning experience of the author's own family. And his interviews with the descendants were touching to read. It's a long book and I must admit I got a bit bored with it towards the end. But I do feel it is a worthwhile book to read.

For another review, see http://www.thedailybeast.com/if-you-only-read-one-book-about-the-legacy-of-slavery-slaves-in-the-family.

The Oregon Trail

By Rinker Buck
When Rinker was a youngster, his father took his kids traveling in a covered wagon. It was an unforgettable experience that stuck with Rinker throughout his life. Now in his later years, Rinker decided he wanted to travel the Oregon Trail in a covered wagon like the original pioneers did.
So he purchased wagons, mules, and other gear and, together with his brother Nick and Nick's dog, Olive Oyl, headed west to start their wagon trip at St. Joseph, Missouri. Both Rinker and Nick are experienced horsemen and Nick is experienced in driving a wagon and team. So they are not neophytes in this enterprise.
Unfortunately, much of the Oregon Trail has been lost to farming, ranching, development and highway construction, so the trip on actual trail only consisted of about 40% of their travel time. The rest was on highways and country roads. But they still had to contend with some of the same problems the original users faced. Storms, flooding, washed out passages, equipment failures, crashes, ornery mules, getting lost, runaway mules, dog bites, bringing too much stuff along, miscalculations and so on. About the only thing they didn't have to deal with was illness, as they tolerated the rough travel surprisingly (to me) rather well.
But this isn't just a book about the trip. It also delves into the history of the trail and of the westward emigration, presented in an easy style that made it all just part of the story.
Rinker also has some interesting opinions about the past and present:

Few organized religions, however, can prosper without stunning misbehavior by their leaders. Smith's [Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism] new faith soon stumbled over his secret endorsement of plural marriage, or polygamy, a practice he justified with a great deal of theological mumbo jumbo designed to conceal his chronic philandering. Smith was an attractive man and a spellbinding speaker, and women swooned during his sermons. He rarely met a follower's pretty wife or teenage daughter whom he didn't covet, and many of them succumbed to his charms without Smith having to make much of an effort. Under an impressive veil of deceit, Smith eventually "sealed" to forty-five wives, and his successor Brigham Young would go on to build two adjoining mansions in Salt Lake to house his own fifty-one wives and estimated fifty-seven children.

This model of government support for a major development project [the Lander Cutoff of the Oregon Trail] became popular and was accepted as the new norm for western growth. Each new phase of frontier growth -- the railroads, ranching, mining -- was also supported by either outright government subsidies, land giveaways, or federally supported irrigation and bridge-building projects. That was the tradition established by the Oregon Trail and it has always amused me that the myth of "rugged individualism" still plays such a large role in western folklore and American values. In fact, our vaunted rugged individualism was financed by huge government largesse.

The [mean] rancher reminded me of those Emperor Nero state troopers who cannot hand out a routine speeding ticket without pestering a driver with a string of useless and humiliating questions. The cops of America are poster-boys of low self-esteem. Their uniforms, silly hats, and sparkling patent leather girdles freighted down with shiny handcuffs, walkie-talkies, and spray canisters of Mace apparently do not make them feel secure enough, so they always add the hostile interrogation to make sure that the accosted citizens know who is in charge.

I enjoyed this book from beginning to end and I even read most of the lengthy acknowledgements in the back of the book. It's grand adventure, man vs nature and American history all in one.
For another review, see http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/24/books/review-in-the-oregon-trail-two-brothers-take-an-1800s-style-road-trip.html?_r=0.

The Rebellion of Miss Lucy Ann Lobdell

By William Klaber

A novel based on the life of a real person, the author fills in the gaps left by the documents of the times.
Lucy Ann Lobdell grew up in New York in the 1800s. She fell in love with a scoundrel who abused her and then abandoned her before their child, Helen, was born. Lucy was obliged to move back home, to the ridicule of her mother and siblings.
Life was uncomfortable under the uncharitable scrutiny of her family (except for her loving father and a sister). Her family blamed her for her poor choice in a spouse. Lucy decided her life and her child's life would be better if they had a home of their own. But opportunities for women to earn a living outside the home were very few. She did teach school briefly and discovered she was being paid half of what the male teacher was paid.
She got work as a housekeeper and it wasn't too long before the man she worked for and her family were pressuring her to marry him. But she was completely disinterested in the proposed alliance.
A bit of a tomboy and a good shot, Lucy decided her best chance to earn a decent living was to disguise herself as a man. Well educated and a talented violinist, she planned to open a dancing and music school. So one day she cut her hair, put on her brother's clothes and left her family and her child behind to seek her fortune.
Setting up her dancing school on her savings, things went really well once she became more comfortable in her guise as a man. She made a place for herself in male society and enjoyed its freedoms greatly, within limits to protect herself from discovery. But then it all went bad.
She fell in love with one of her female students, Lydia, and Lydia's boyfriend got jealous. Warned that he and a gang of his friends was planning to waylay her, Lucy fled the town. Her next stop was the wilds of Minnesota. Her dream was to raise horses and bring Lydia and Helen to live there. But then it all went bad again.
An vile man caught Lucy bathing in the river. He proceeded to rape her despite her struggles to prevent it. She did manage to stick a knife in his leg, but he ran to the sheriff with his tale. She was arrested and jailed for impersonating a man.
Her life went from hardship to hardship but she mostly clung to her masquerade. A skilled hunter, she lived in the wild and survived off the land. Eventually she ended up back east in a poorhouse. By this time she was having some mental problems, a weakness that ran in her mother's side of the family.  It was in the poorhouse that Lucy met the woman she would end up marrying, Marie. Of course, the person who performed the marriage ceremony believed he was joining together a man and a woman, not two women.
Their story does not have a happy ending. They were eventually exposed and hounded from place to place. As their hardships continued, Lucy's mental condition worsened. She finally ended up in an institution.

Reading this book was quite a journey into the mostly sad life of a woman who refused to accept the boundaries. She paid the price for it and reading about her life was troubling and depressing.  Many women today are still regarded as the property of men and of lesser status than males.
But even though this is a sad tale, it made for a very good, compelling read.  It really engaged me from beginning to end.

The Zookeeper's Wife

By Diane Ackerman

The true story of Jan and Antonina Zabinski's role in saving the lives of many Jews and others targeted by the Nazis during the German occupation of Poland.
Before Germany invaded Poland, Jan and Antonina ran the Warsaw Zoo. They made many improvements to the zoo, including building structures for the animals that were more like their natural habitats than just a plain cage. Jan was the official director of the zoo, but Antonina, who had an instinctive understanding of animals, helped in the nurture and care of the animals too.
But when the Germans moved on Poland, the zoo suffered greatly. It was bombed because it was located near strategic targets. Many of the animals were killed during the bombing. Others, such as the bears and big cats, were shot because of fears they would escape. Many were carted off the Germany where it was believed they would be safer. Of course, they weren't as Germany was heavily bombed during the war.
Left with no animals for the zoo, Jan turned it into a pig farm and later it was used to breed fur animals to supply the German military with warm coats.
But that is not all for which it was used. The Zabinskis used their home and several of the remaining structures at the zoo as hiding places for Jews and others fleeing the Nazis. Jan and Antonina gave them food, clothes, refuge and false ID papers to help them travel on to safety. Altogether, they helped to save the lives of many people who would have ended up in the Nazi extermination camps.

This was a pretty good read. It really puts the reader right into the suffering and terror of that time and place.  Books like this are vital to remind us just how vile human beings can be to one another and to never forget that terrible things that have been done in the name of ridiculous ideologies.

For a better review, see http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/13/AR2007091301895.html

One Summer

By Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson takes a look at the summer of 1927 and with brief and illuminating discussions of  the antecedents of the events of that summer. Charles Lindbergh, record floods in the Mississippi basin, flagpole sitting, Clara Bow, talkies, Herbert Hoover, Calvin Coolidge, Al Capone, Sacco and Vanzetti, Henry Ford, Babe Ruth  and more are all featured in this entertaining and fascinating look at what our ancestors were up to almost a ninety years ago. I am not a fan of baseball but even the stuff about Babe Ruth was pretty interesting.  Bill Bryson has a real gift for making history come alive by telling the human story not just a bunch of dry facts. He knows how to get personal with his subject matter and doesn't shy away from the unsavory aspects of the story. It was a pleasure to read this entertaining and informative book.  

Invitation to Tea

By Monica Lang

When Monica was a little girl living in England, a boy came to stay with her family, his name was George McCrie. This was in the early 1900s.
George's parents were English citizens living in India. It was the custom among the English to send their children home to England to be educated and that was why George was in England. He spent the next 10 years, studying in England with periodic visits home to India. And in due time, he became the manager of a large tea plantation there.
To Monica, George was her protector against the teasing and torments of her many older brothers. So it wasn't very surprising that the hero of her childhood turned out to be the love of her life. So at the young age of about 18, Monica found herself married to George and living in the wilds of Burma while George ran the tea plantation.
Coping with life in the tropics in the 1920s was quite a challenge for Monica. Unfortunately, she ignored George's advice about protecting herself from mosquitoes and she became very ill with malaria. She was able to recover after a while and realized that she had to grow up and face the realities of her situation. So she set about creating a comfortable and welcoming home for herself and her husband and, in a few years, for their little daughter, Elizabeth.  Despite the dangers of their location, what with the tigers and the cobras and other wildlife, and the brutality of the climate in summer, Monica grew to love it there.  But when their little girl was about seven, George was promoted and made manager of a larger tea plantation and they moved away from the jungle and to a new location.
Life in the jungle had been rather isolated and the new location offered much more opportunity to socialize, as it had quite a few English folks in the area. Monica missed the peace and beauty of the jungle but really enjoyed being around her peers.
But then the day came when it was time to send Elizabeth to England to go to school. Monica and George traveled there with their daughter but George had to return to his job and Monica stayed on to get Elizabeth settled into school. Elizabeth was very unhappy at being separated from her mother and Monica almost decided to stay in England for her daughter's sake but then felt she should be with George.
So back she goes and it all seemed to work out for the best. George got promoted again and their new home had electricity and an indoor toilet and a modern kitchen, quite a change from their previous dwellings. She and George had another baby, Rosemary, born almost ten years after Elizabeth. Life was good. But looming on the horizon was the chaos and destruction of World War II. Before much longer, Monica and Rosemary were refugees headed to South Africa with George staying behind, doing his duty. Nothing would ever be the same again.

This true story was really interesting, a picture of a different life and time. At that time all the normal housekeeping chores were done by servants. The house was lit by oil lamps and candles and food was cooked on a wood fired stove. They had servants for inside the house and servants for outside the house. That was one of the reasons that the social round was so important for Monica, because she had very little with which to occupy her time, all the cooking, cleaning, gardening, child care, laundry, etc was performed by servants. One of the local English people advised her to develop hobbies just so she would have something to do. And it is not as if she and George were wealthy, George had to work for a living. They couldn't even afford to buy a decent car.

The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion

By Fannie Flag

Sookie, 59, has just married off the last of her daughters and is looking forward to relaxing and maybe travelling with her husband, Earle. Her life has run pretty smoothly, with no major problems except for her mother. Lenore, the mother, considers herself Southern aristocracy and wants her only daughter, Sookie, to carry on the family traditions.
Next to her flamboyant mother, Sookie has always felt dowdy and subdued. She has also always felt like she was a disappointment to her mother, who constantly tried to mold Sookie in her own image. But Sookie's failure to please her mother made sense once Sookie found out that she was adopted and no blood kin of Lenore's at all. In fact, Sookie wasn't even a Southerner, her birth mother was a woman of Polish descent from Wisconsin and a Catholic to boot!
So Sookie sets out to find out more about the woman whose name appears on Sookie's birth certificate, Fritzie Jurdabralinski, and who, it turns out, is alive and living in California.

I quite enjoyed this story. Fritzie was one of a group of women who took on jobs originally performed by men during World War II. She and her sisters ran their family gas station when their brother joined the military and when they had to close the gas station, the sisters, all of whom were pilots, became WASPs: Women Airforce Service Pilots. These women flew planes from the air plane factories to the military bases, freeing up male pilots for combat duty. It was hard and even dangerous work, with long hours and grueling schedules.
So not only is this just a good and entertaining read, it also tells the not-so-well-known story of the WASPs, the women pilots who showed that women can fly airplanes too.

For another review, see: http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/the-all-girl-filling-stations-last-reunion-by-fannie-flagg/2013/11/18/5b32ac96-4af0-11e3-be6b-d3d28122e6d4_story.html

The Good Lord Bird

By James McBride

The story of abolitionist John Brown as told by a young slave boy he rescued. The story starts in the Kansas territory when the boy Henry's father is shot during a confrontation between Brown and some pro-slavery advocates. Brown carried the boy off, making the mistaken assumption that Henry was actually a Henrietta, a charade that Henry goes along with. At first Henry tries to return several times to his owner but the attempts fail for various reasons. Later on he realizes returning would be a mistake and he remains with Brown and continues to masquerade as a girl.
Brown, Henry and others spend some time rushing around Kansas, getting into various battles. Henry gets to meet Harriet Tubman when Brown goes to Canada to raise money and volunteers. He also spends quite some time living with Frederick Douglass, another of Brown's supporters.
Henry is in the thick of the planning for the raid on Harper's Ferry and its sorry aftermath.

Henry/Henrietta dismisses most of what Brown intends as craziness. He doesn't have much respect for Brown's religious convictions or his zeal for ending slavery. Mainly he sticks by Brown because he really has nowhere else to go. And through Henry's rather skeptical eyes the reader gets to live a bit of American history in an interesting and absorbing story.

Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot

By Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard

This very readable book looks at the life of John Kennedy, focusing mainly on his presidency and his assassination. The prose is bit over-heated at times, but gets its point across in a clear and easy to understand style. Many intimate details of John and Jackie's lives are included, including their sex lives.
The book also discusses Kennedy's presidency and his relationships with his brother Robert and his vice-president, Johnson.
So, even though it is a bit on the sensational side, it is still a very informative and well-laid out look at the life and death of one of America's most popular presidents, John Kennedy. It was a good read.

The Professor and the Madman

By Simon Winchester

For centuries, the English language went without a complete, comprehensive dictionary. Finally, it was decided that such a dictionary should be created, backed up by extensive scholarship and quotations from literary works and other writings illustrating the meanings of words and how the meanings changed as the language did.
Professor James Murray became the chief editor of the dictionary as it was being created. Coming from a ordinary family, it was soon apparent that young James was no ordinary child. Extremely intelligent and consumed with a hunger for knowledge, James excelled in school. But since his parents were not able to pay for his further schooling, he quit at the age of 14. That didn't mean an end to his scholarship, as he continued to educate himself in a wide variety of fields, including archaeology, languages, and history. By the age of twenty he was the headmaster of the local academy for boys. It was at about this time that he discovered his passion for Anglo-Saxon and was soon presenting learned papers on the subject.
Meanwhile, across the ocean in America was another young man of about the same age as Murray. William Minor, unlike Murray, was born to a family of distinction and wealth. Like Murray, however, Minor too was a bright, intelligent and gifted lad, if a little on the sensitive side. He pursued the study of medicine and became a talented and competent surgeon, this at the time of the American Civil War. Dr. Murray enlisted and before long found himself performing surgery on the battlefield. But his sensitive nature was overwhelmed by horror of war and his fragile mind cracked. He left the military in an attempt to recover his mental balance and eventually decided a trip abroad might help, which is how he came to be in London. The change of scenery did not help, his private demons still plagued Minor. Early one morning, in the grip of his delusion of persecution, Minor shot and killed a man, a man Minor didn't know and who had never met and who was simply on his way to work.
The courts were lenient and recognized Minor's illness so instead of hanging he was incarcerated at Broadmoor, a prison for the criminally insane. He lived pretty well there, in a private room and with money from his military pension and funds from his family back in the USA, Minor amassed quite a large library of books which he was allowed to keep in his room.
Meanwhile Professor Murray was sending out a call to the public asking for volunteers to read and look for words and note down the passages where the word's context helped to reveal its meaning. Thousand of slips of papers poured into the Scriptorium, the building where the dictionary was being created, and one of the most prolific and helpful of the volunteers was Dr. Minor. And while Professor Murray relied on and valued the contributions that Dr. Minor was making to the dictionary, he had no idea for many years that one of his most important volunteers was a madman locked up in an insane asylum.

It sounds like a dry subject, the creation of a dictionary. But the human drama behind the fact makes this anything but a dry subject. Dr. Minor's story is so sad and compelling and his life was such a waste, except for the work he did to help with the creation of the dictionary. It was the one of the few bright spots in his otherwise blighted life. Reading about his story and the story of the dictionary and its editor, Professor Murray, was really interesting. It was a very good read.

Life in a Medieval Castle

By Joseph and Frances Gies

A brief history of the medieval castle, with the main focus on castles in England. Explains their role as outposts, forts, military installations and as centers of government in their communities. Looks at the roles of the lord of the castle and at how the castle supported and also fed off the local populace. Goes into the knighthood and the relationship of the lords of the castles to the kingdom and how the castles functioned during times of war and rebellion. Concludes with a look at the decline of the castle system.

This was a pretty good book, especially in explaining how the castle functioned as a part of the community and in its role as a military installation, not only as a method of defense but often as a center of rebellion. The explanation of the relationship between the lord of the castle and the local people was very informative.
It was an interesting book, not at all difficult to read and with two handy glossaries in the back.

Don't Know Much About the Civil War

By Kenneth C. Davis

From the cutesy title I thought this would be a more tongue in cheek or a more entertaining look at the Civil War. But it's not. It is pretty much just a history of the Civil War. So that was disappointing but even so it is a very clear and easy to understand explanation of the US Civil War. The book ranges from the causes of the Civil War, follows the course of the war and briefly examines the aftermath of the war. Need to know more about the Civil War? You can't go wrong with this book.

New Word

Catafalque: a decorated bier on which a coffin rests in state during a funeral. 'I kept on until I arrived at the East Room, which I entered. There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. "Who is dead in the White House?" I demanded of one of the soldiers. "The President," was the answer, "he was killed by an assassin!"' (From Lincoln's account of a dream he had.)

A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World

By Tony Horwitz

What a wonderful book! Horwitz takes the reader down the little explored avenues of American history, mingling the past and the present in a very intimate and informative way, yet keeping the pace lively and entertaining without bogging the reader down in a dry recitation of boring dates and facts. He makes history personal and living as he travels around gaining a new vision and understanding of the underpinnings of American history and in the process exploding lots of our most dearly held myths. These myths include the first Thanksgiving, the landing at Plymouth Rock, Ponce de Leon's search for the fountain of youth, and Columbus proving the world was round. All false, as false as George Washington chopping down that silly cherry tree and all came to exist in pretty much the same way as the cherry tree story. Some old guys decided that that was the way it should be and so it was, never mind the truth. As Horwitz discovers, the first Thanksgiving was celebrated by the Spanish settlers in Florida; the Pilgrims didn't land at Plymouth Rock, they landed on the beach, Ponce de Leon was not looking for the fountain of youth, that was completely fabricated by later historians, and Columbus and the Catholic Church already knew the world was not flat but round. Still, at the end of the book, Horwitz acknowledges that people need their myths and that myths will outlast the truth every time.

You know you are reading a terrific book (a history book more than 400 pages long) when you can't put the book down and end up reading it in just a few days. Such was the case with Horwitz's engaging history of early American explorers, A Voyage Long and Strange. I had a lot of fun reading this book and it is definitely "a keeper".
The only thing I didn't enjoy was reading of the slaughter of the innocents and the brutality of the Europeans against the native peoples. That was really painful and hard to read about and it made me very sad that American history is built on piles of dead and exploited peoples, native and African. That part was tough to read about yet totally worth it. You don't really know history if you don't know the ugly parts too.

For a review see NPR, which also has an excerpt from the book.

New Words
Yoiking: Yoik, Joik or juoiggus is a traditional Sami (Lapp) form of song. "The show opened with a woman yoiking, then segued to an interview with a Swedish Jew."
Prelapsarian: Of, or relating to the period before the fall of Adam and Eve. "This prelapsarian image helped give rise to the myth of the Noble Savage, which would endure in the Western imagination for centuries."
Cumber: The act of slowing down or hindering. "They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize." (A quote from Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary)
Exurb: A residential area beyond the suburbs. "St. Augustine today is almost an exurb of Jacksonville, with a population one one-hundredth the size of the sprawling metropolis."
Lacuna: A blank gap or missing part. See also lacunae. "For Gannon, though, the controversy sparked by his remarks spoke to a more consequential lacuna in our memory of early America."
Cosmography: The creation of maps of the universe; the study of the size and geometry of the universe and changes in those with cosmic time. "Typical was Richard Hore, a leather seller and dabbler in cosmography who sailed in 1536 with thirty gentlemen 'desirous to see the strange things of the world.'"
Pickery: Petty theft. "But she [Elizabeth I] quietly abetted the looting of Spanish treasure by seamen on 'journeys of pickery.'"

A Concise History of the Middle East

By Arthur Goldschmidt, Jr.

Arthur Goldschmidt, Jr. is a professor emeritus of Middle Eastern history at Penn State.

This book does not cover the ancient history of the Middle East. It starts with the era shortly before Muhammad and goes on from there. Like it says, it is a concise history, but still contains interesting details that help liven up what is basically a college text book for beginning students of Middle Eastern history. The author's style is very readable and his explanations some of the best and most clear that I have read. He lays out the history of this complex area simply and makes the connections apparent. This book gives the reader a really good, basic understanding of the region. I wouldn't mind having a copy of this book on my bookshelf.