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.

Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories and Other Disasters

 

By Jean Shepherd

A collection of humorous short stories by Jean Shepherd, mainly based on his years growing up in an industrial town in Indiana, eight stories altogether.

• The Grandstand Passion Play of Delbert and the Bumpus Hounds — A large family of 'hillbillies' moves in next door to the author's family. Between the packs of angry dogs, the drunken parties, the shouting and the piles of junk and trash, the author's dad is almost at his wit's end when the Bumpus folks vanish in the night.
• County Fair! — a trip to the county fair in the 1930s which revealed to me that county fairs haven't changed much in almost 100 years. One of the best stories and the most realistic story in the collection, I think.
• Scut Farkas and the Murderous Mariah — a top battle, top as in the spinning toy. This one was a struggle for me, because I had no idea what the author was talking about, top battles? Also, basically a sports story of scant interest to  me who cares not for sports.
• Ollie Hopnoodle's Haven of Bliss — loading up the family car for a trip to Clear Lake to spend a couple of weeks in a rustic cabin. An ordeal that many of us have had to endure in our lives. 
• The Star-crossed Romance of Josephine Cosnowski — a Polish family moves into the neighborhood and one of the kids is a teenage girl about the same age as the author and she is undeniably attractive. Author asks her out on a date finds out a lot about the girl and her family and he gets cold feet.
• Daphne Bigelow and the Spine-chilling Saga of the Snail-encrusted Tinfoil Noose — the author has a crush on his biology lab partner, Daphne, and works up the courage to ask her out on a date. He realizes he is out of his league when he arrives at Daphne's home and it is a mansion, with servants and a Cadillac and driver. 
• The Return of the Smiling Wimpy Doll — the author, now an adult and living far from his childhood home, receives a package from his mom containing his childhood toys and he has a blast rediscovering these treasures from his youth. A really sweet story that made me sad because all my childhood mementos were thrown away by my mom when she moved and it never occurred to her to ask if I wanted any of it. 
• Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories — returning to the author's childhood and it is time for his high school's Junior Prom. Time for fancy clothes and figuring out who to date and how to get there and all the fun before and after Prom. A bittersweet story, as I never attended a Prom or a high school dance. 

All these stories are fun and bring back memories on one's own childhood and teenage days. Really, things haven't changed all that much since the 1930s, in many ways! 

Here is a review of the book by Kirkus Reviews.

Lost & Found

 

By Jacqueline Sheehan

Rocky's husband died of a sudden heart attack and she is having a very hard time coping with her grief. In order to give herself a breathing space, she leaves her home and moves into a rental house on a touristy island off the coast of Maine during the off season. 

Looking to occupy her time, she takes on the part time job of animal control officer. She deals with a lot of stray cats, problem raccoons and pets abandoned by the summer people. One of the animals she deals with is a Labrador retriever who is found seriously ill and crippled by an arrow in his shoulder. 

Rocky fosters the dog, which she names Lloyd. It seems to her, as a person who is dealing with grief, that Lloyd is dealing with grief too. When it turns out that the arrow that was in the dog's shoulder was a rather rare, handmade arrow, Rocky starts trying to track down where it came from, hoping to discover more about Lloyd and what happened to him. 

Meanwhile, Rocky gets to know some of the permanent residents of the island and starts to form some good friendships. If her obsession with tracking down Lloyd's past doesn't get in the way, that is. Oddly, she decides she wants to learn archery, using the same kind of homemade arrows as the one that Lloyd was shot with. This brings her into contact with a man on the mainland who teaches archery part time, Hill, short for Hillary. Is a romance blossoming? Or will poor Hill end up with an arrow in his leg? 

I sympathized with Rocky's grief and her desire to have some time alone to adjust to her new reality. I was happy when she found a friend in poor, wounded Lloyd. I was less interested in the mystery of Lloyd's previous owner. And I was not much interested in the teenager next door who is anorexic. And I was completely uninterested in Rocky's desire to become proficient in archery. Nor was I surprised to read that Rocky's elderly friend on the island didn't have cancer and instead was risking her life by not going to see a doctor about her belly pain. Because everybody in this story is a bit different. So parts of the story I liked but other parts I really didn't.

There is a follow up book, Picture This. 

Darwin's Radio

 

By Greg Bear

A new disease has popped up. Women are having miscarriages, losing extremely deformed fetuses. Further investigation leads researchers to conclude that some ancient component of human DNA has suddenly reactivated and is causing these miscarriages. 

As scientists and the medical community try to figure out what is going wrong, a huge divide emerges, with one group claiming it is some kind of sudden evolution. And the other group claiming it is a disease that must be stopped. 

A small group of the 'it's evolution' scientists go rogue, running from the US government that is tracking pregnant women and performing abortions because they claim the offspring are just disease carriers who pose a terrible risk to human survival. Naturally, since no one seems to know what is really happening, it causes massive social upheaval and riots. 

Greg Bear loves to delve into the science. Unfortunately, a lot of it is hard to follow, especially for a person who does not have fairly high level science knowledge.  I don't need the amount of detail he goes into to understand the story. He just goes on and on about DNA and genetics. It just adds a lot of pretty unreadable bulk to the story. My paperback copy was over 500 pages long. Naturally I did what I always do when authors are suffering from word diarrhea: I skip it. Minutia doesn't interest me.

Anyway, two of the 'it's evolution'  scientists, a man and a woman, get together and have a baby. They want to prove their thesis is correct by giving birth to a new version of human. They spend the rest of the story hiding from the Feds. 

The evolutionary changes that Bear images are odd. How they are suppose to improve the human race in its struggle to cope with overpopulation and environmental degradation are not explained. One of the changes he imagines is people have squid-like skin that changes colors as a form of communication. I expect all that is explained in the sequel, Darwin's Children. Which I will not be reading.

Here is a review by Publishers Weekly.

Right Ho, Jeeves

 

By P.G. Wodehouse

Berti and Jeeves are off to the country to visit Berti's favorite aunt, Dahlia Travers. She needs his help in a little matter of talking her spouse into a small loan, money that is vital to keeping her ladies' magazine going. Uncle Tom already gave her the money but she blew gambling in Cannes, France. She also wanted to enlist Berti as the guest speaker at a local grammar school event. He weaseled out of it by sending an old friend of his in his place, Gussie Fink-Nottle. Gussie, devoted newt fancier, has fallen in love with one Madeline Bassett, who just happens to be visiting at Brinkley Court, the country estate of Tom and Dahlia Travers. Gussie is quite happy to be going to Brinkley Court where he hopes he will be able to overcome his extreme shyness long enough to propose to Madeline. Berti neglected to mention the speech to the grammar school boys though. 

Aunt Dahlia gives Berti some news that sends him to Brinkley Court anyway. She tells him that a friend of his, Tuppy Glossop, who is also visiting at Brinkley, got into an argument with his fiancée, Angela, Dahlia's daughter and the engagement is off. The argument was about whether Angela was pestered by a shark while swimming in the ocean off Cannes. She claims it was definitely a shark but Tuppy holds that it was a submerged log or a flatfish. Angela fired back that Tuppy was a glutton and fat and out of shape. Feelings were hurt and the engagement called off. 

Bertie has a rather high opinion of himself and, instead of laying all these problems at the capable Jeeves' feet, declares he will handle it all by himself, namely Gussie's lack of a backbone, Angela and Tuppy's silly spat and Aunt Dahlia's need of more money from her tightwad husband. Because of Bertie's bungling, he ends up engaged to Madeline. Angela ends up engaged to Gussie. Tuppy, who despite Angela's slurs, is a real bruiser, is out to murder Gussie, for stealing Angela from him. And Anatole, Dahlia's fancy French chef is threatening to quit and go back to France, this also due to Bertie's bungling efforts. Finally Bertie admits the only one who can handle this mess is Jeeves, of course.

Though this plot is the same plot that make up many of Wodehouse's Bertie and Jeeves stories: young lovers unable to find each other or falling apart due to mistakes and misunderstandings, with the young women ending up, at some point, engaged to marry Bertie. And their jilted lovers out for Bertie's blood or a rival's blood, anxious to win back their lover. But not as anxious as Bertie is to escape his entanglements. It's the same basic plot but the complications that always crop up are hilarious and laugh out loud funny! 

Just a quick note to say that this book was first published in the early 1930s. Attitudes towards people of different races is dated compared to what we would like it to be these days. 

Also, this book can be read for free on the Project Gutenberg website. It is now in the public domain in the USA and no longer under copyright.