Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
293 pages
Published January 2010 by Harper Collins, now out in paperback
Source: the publisher and TLC Book Tours

In the mid-19th century there was a resort, Tawawa House, in Ohio where slave owners vacationed with their slave mistresses.  The beautiful cover of this book might lead readers to believe that this was a place where these women lived a life of leisure and pampering, quite different from their lives on the plantation.  Such was not the case.  While there was perhaps slightly more leisure time, these slaves were still expected to keep the cottages they and their masters stayed in clean, still expected to service their masters, and still beaten for any infraction.  Although Ohio was not a slave state, the slaves that journeyed to Tawawa House knew they risks for attempting to escape were nearly as great as if they tried to run away from their plantations.

In Wench, Perkins-Valdez introduces the reader to a group of slaves and their owners who regularly travel to Tawawa House in the summers.  Rennie, the oldest, is also the saddest and the most resigned to her lot in life.  Sir, her owner, is also her half brother, a man who is willing to trade her services for other pleasures.  Sweet is the youngest and pregnant when we first meet her.  Despite her pregnancy, Master does not hesitate to beat Sweet when he sees fit and because of her pregnancy and the four other children she has left on the plantation, she is least likely to make a run.  Lizze, actually loves her owner, Drayle, and believes that he will one day free their children if she just treats him the right way.

When Mawu, a red-headed, freckled slave comes into their midst one summer, she makes them all question their lives and begins to put thoughts into their heads about a different life.  Her owner, Tip, is by far the most vicious of the owners and when he finds out that Mawu is contemplating running away, he viciously beats her in front of the other slaves.  Instead of causing them to give up on their ideas of freedom, it drives the slaves to contemplate just how close they are to freedom and to question just how much they would be willing to give up to have it.

From the moment I first heard about this book, I knew I wanted to read it and the rave reviews it got only made me want to read it more.  By the time I finally did read it, I was concerned that it wouldn't be able to live up to my expectations.  Wench more than met my expectations.  Perkins-Valdez does a remarkable job in her debut of bringing these women to life and of exploring the complicated relationship between slave owners and their mistresses.  Heartbreaking and hopeful at the same time, you can't help but imagine yourself in these women's positions.  Would you be able to give up your children, risk what might happen to anyone you cared about if it meant that you could leave a life of abuse and control?

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for including me in this tour!  For more reviews of this book, see the full list of tour sites. 

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Published 1960
Source: I bought this one for my kids from those flyers the kids bring home

"Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it"

This is the home of Scout Finch, narrator of the story of her youth, her unusual father, Atticus, her older brother, Jem, and the people that surrounded them in the mid-1930's in Alabama.

"People moved slowly then.  they ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything.  A day was twenty-four hours long but it seemed longer.  There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County."

By now, particularly in light of the recent 50th anniversary buzz about this book, you're all probably familiar with the story.   This was the first time I have read this book, although I have seen the movie adaptation several times.  I was both pleased to see how well the book had been adapted (including most of the dialogue) and surprised by how much more there was to discover in the book.

I've always had the impression that Atticus Finch was an ideal father (although this may have something to do with the fact that he's played by Gregory Peck in the movie).  The beginning of the book gave me another impression.

"Jem and I found our father satisfactory; he played with us, read to us, and treated us with courteous detachment."  

Courteous detachment?  Hardly what I would consider a perfect parent.  Atticus is often preoccupied and carries the weight of Maycomb on his shoulders.  Yet he clearly cares deeply about his children and instills in them his deep moral beliefs.

Molly, of The Bumble's Blog, pointed out something to me that I certainly never noticed while watching the movie.  While Scout may be the narrator, and certainly a key player in the book, this is really Jem's coming of age story  The movie adaptation leaves out many events that showed this.  Curiously, it also left out what I thought was one of Scout and Jem's greatest lessons, a lesson Scout learned from her teacher, Miss Gates.  During class one day, Miss Gates is discussing events in Hitler's Germany.  She tells her students:

"Over here we don't believe in persecuting anybody.  Persecution comes from people who are prejudiced."

But Scout knows differently.  Following the trial of Tom Robinson (a black man), Scout recalls hearing Miss Gates say:

"...it's time somebody taught 'em a lesson, they were gettin' way above themselves, an' the next thing they think they can do is marry us."  

This is a beautiful book.  If you've ever started it and put it down because it was so slow paced, give it another try.  Until I was about half way through the book, I was only reading a few pages a day.  I thought it was lovely but it just was not pulling me in.  Then I found that I could not put the book down; I simply wanted to immerse myself in Maycomb.  In the end, I was sad to be done with it and sorry that I will never again have a chance to read this book for the first time.

"Your father's right," she [Miss Maudie] said.  "Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy.  They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts our for us.  That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

Thanks for convincing me to read this one, Molly!

On Folly Beach by Karen White

On Folly Beach by Karen White
414 pages
Published May 2010 by Penguin Group
Source: TLC Book Tours and the publisher

Emmy Hamilton's husband passed away six months ago and Emmy is having trouble coming to grips with it. When her mother finds out that the store on Folly Beach that the store on which she modeled her own bookstore is for sale, she encourages Emmy to buy it. Paige feels like Emmy needs to try to move on in a place without memories of Ben. But what really sells Emmy is some notes she finds in the margins of some of the books that came to Paige's store from Folly's Find. They seem to hint of a affair from long ago and Emmy is so intrigued that she agrees to buy Folly's Find.

When Emmy gets to Folly Beach, she meets the store's current owner, Abigail Reynolds, daughter-in-law of the woman, Maggie, who owned the store when Paige was growing up in Folly. Emmy also meets Lulu, Maggie's sister, who makes bottle trees in the back of the store and sort of comes in the deal although Emmy's first impression of Lulu makes her want to have nothing to do with Lulu. Heath, Abigail's son, owns the house Emmy is renting while she tries to get settled in Folly. He's got his own issues--the house was built for his fiancee who left him when he found out he had a brain tumor. Emmy finds a lot more of Maggie's old books in the house and begins to search all of them for margin notes, soon piecing together enough clues to make her start asking the family questions. Along the way she also gets to know Abigail's husband, John and her daughter, Lizzie, along with the town regulars as she settles into life in Folly.

In a style reminiscent of The Divine Secrets of the Ya-ya Sisterhood, the reader is privileged to the story of the past in a way that Emmy is not as we travel back on forth in time between Emmy's story and Maggie and Lulu's story, set during World War II. In Maggie's story, we also met Catherine, Maggies's cousin, who's father left the family and mother passed away; Peter, a man from Iowa visiting the island because he's doing business with the nearby naval base; and we learn about Jim, who Maggie and Lulu both loved but who married Cat...and then died at Pearl Harbor a few months later.

Having read the first two books in White's Tradd Street series, I knew going into this book that it would have a light feel and a sense that everything would be alright. Despite the World War II time period of much of the story and the loss of Ben that Emmy is dealing with in the present time, "On Folly Beach" never feels heavy although White does a very good job of conveying the emotions the characters are battling. What I didn't expect going into this one was to like it as much as I did. I had some problems with the idea of Emmy feeling comfortable asking so many really nosy questions of the family and a hard time believing that they would be so willing to share. But all of that was, I suppose, necessary to tell to the story of Maggie, which I really got caught up in. And much of what that story was about tied into the present. Maggie, Lulu, Emmy and even Heath were all dealing with issues of knowing when to left go and move on.

While I don't think that White is going to win any prizes with her writing, she does manage to weave together a lot of different things here which, for the most part, works. Book clubs, would have a lot to discuss. Paige and Emmy's relationship for instance. Paige had a lot of miscarriages which greatly altered her relationship with Emmy. The way people deal with grief--Maggie and Lulu have lost both parents but seem much better equipped to handle their loss than does Catherine, whose mother also died but who spends her life trying to find a man to fill her father's shoes. The role children, or not having children, plays in someone's life...Emmy and Ben opted not to have children until he returned but now she is wishing she had a part of him to hold onto. There were some parts of the book that I found predictable, and some parts that I found hard to buy into, but, overall, I got so wrapped up in solving the mystery of the past, and there were enough surprises, that I was willing to forgive White for any problems I found.

For more information on White and her writings, check out her website.

Thanks to Trish, and TLC Book Tours, for including me on this tour. It will make a great summer read! For other opinions, check out the rest of the tour:
Monday, May 3rd: Rundpinne
Tuesday, May 4th: Downtown Southern
Thursday, May 6th: Life in the Thumb
Friday, May 7th: Café of Dreams
Monday, May 10th: Diary of an Eccentric
Tuesday, May 11th: Peeking Between the Pages
Wednesday, May 12th: Write Meg
Thursday, May 13th: Savvy Verse & Wit
Friday, May 14th: Luxury Reading
Tuesday, May 18th: Red Lady’s Reading Room
Wednesday, May 19th: Books Like Breathing
Thursday, May 20th: Jenn’s Bookshelves
Monday, May 24th: From the Land of Cotton
Tuesday, May 25th: Natalie’s Sentiments
Wednesday, May 26th: A Tale of This Newlywed
Thursday, May 27th: Good Girl Gone Redneck
Friday, May 28th: Flower Patch Farmgirl
Monday, May 31st: Sasha and the Silverfish

South of Broad by Pat Conroy

South of Broad by Pat Conroy
528 pages
Published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing
Source: the publisher and TLC Book Tours for this review

In June 1969, Leopold Bloom King, the son of a loving, friendly high school math teacher and a strict, former nun mother, who is also the high school principal, suddenly finds himself, for the first time since the suicide of his brother nine years earlier, making friends. New neighbors Sheba and Trevor Poe. Orphans Niles and Starla Whitehead. Ike Jefferson, son of the football coach and one of the first black people Leo has ever really known. Chadworth and Fraser Rutledge and Molly Huger, of the first family of Charleston who end up attending the public high school after an being caught with drugs. Part One of South of Broad recounts how this unlikely group of people became friends and gives a solid background on each of the players.

Jump forward 20 years for Part Two. Sheba, now a major movie star, has made one of her rare returns to Charleston. Those of the group that remain in town throw her a reunion but know that Sheba is there for a reason. It turns out that Trevor, who has all but disappeared in the past few years, has really disappeared now and Sheba is anxious to find him and bring him back to Charleston. Sheba, estranged from Trevor for years, has discovered that he is dying of AIDS and wants him to spend the rest of his life surrounded by friends, friends she would like to have help her find him. So Ike, his wife Betty, Niles, Fraser, Sheba, Molly and Leo head off to San Fransisco, each of them carrying more baggage than just the suitcases they have packed.

Pat Conroy is a master of writing about the American South. Just as in all of his novels, the setting of South of Broad, Charleston, is very much a character in the book. Leo describes Charleston this way:

"I consider it a high privilege to be a native of one of the loveliest American cities, not a high-kicking, glossy, or lipsticked city, not a city with bells on its fingers or brightly painted toenails, but a ruffled, low-slung city, understated and tolerant of nothing mismade or ostenatious. Though Charleston feels a seersuckered, tuxedoed view of itself, it approves of restraint far more than vulgarity."

I love the way Conroy can paint a picture of a place, although it can sometimes get carried away here. Conroy seems to try to pack too much description into much of the book and it can detract from the experience.

Leo, the narrator of the book, is a wonderful character, shaped as much by the suicide of his brother when he was a young boy and his parents' reaction, as much as he is by his parents themselves.

"From the moment I marked the time when the earth opened up to swallow me whole, I left simple grief on the road behind me and held madness at arm's length as it stormed the walls of my boyhood with its timeless regiments coming at the most tender parts of my psyche in wave after unappeasable wave."

"My brother's death had almost killed both my parents, but it did not change my father's fundamental good nature and graceful optimism. He turned his full attention to me and tried to love me harder because I was not Steve. Unlike my mother, who handled his death in the only way she knew how, so I feared that she could never love anyone again who was not Steve."

Leo's mother is a James Joyce scholar and named both of her sons for characters in "Ulysses." It's a cross Leo can hardly stand to bear but a perfect name for him since he is also a character who is traveling. But instead of one day, Leo travels through his own life and the lives of his friends for whom he is the glue that holds them together.

Conroy throws a lot at the wall in this book and most of it sticks. Classism, racism, homosexuality ant the AIDS crisis, incest and child abuse, stalking and murder, love, friendship, religion and family dynamics. Not all of it works but much of it is heartbreaking.

Much as I enjoyed the first part of the book, I didn't feel like Conroy had really captured the voice of an 18-year-old. I know that voice--I have an 18-year-old and Leo often sounds much more like an adult looking back than the kid in the here in now that he was supposed to be. He was also supposed to be a socially awkward kid, one who had had no friends since his brother's death. But suddenly, on the day he meets all of these new people that he will become livelong friends with, he seems to know just the right thing to say.

The friends have a tendency to talk to each other in a teasing way that would be insulting if you said the same things to strangers. Which is all well and good when you are talking about kids. But when we jump forward in time, they are still treating each other the same way--a lot of the time. I think I would have a really hard time being friends with people that talked to me like that so often.

Like so many long books, this one would have benefited from some editing. There might even have been more than one book in these characters' stories. But there are some truly wonderful characters in this book and it was a true pleasure to go on their journey with them.

Overall, I enjoyed watching these characters make their way through life. If your book club is up for a long book, there is a lot to discuss in this one. Talking about the various marriages alone could fill an hour!For more opinions on this book, check out some of the other stops on the tour:
Thursday, April 1st: Jen’s Book Thoughts
Monday, April 5th: Lit and Life
Tuesday, April 6th: Rundpinne
Wednesday, April 7th: Meanderings and Muses
Thursday, April 8th: The Brain Lair
Friday, April 9th: Luxury Reading
Monday, April 12th: Books and Cooks
Wednesday, April 14th: Po(sey) Sessions
Thursday, April 15th: Raging Bibliomania
Monday, April 19th: Life in the Thumb
Tuesday, April 20th: Maggie Reads
Wednesday, April 21st: Reading, Writing, and Retirement
Thursday, April 22nd: Stephanie’s Written Word
Friday, April 23rd: Sherri’s Jubilee
Monday, April 26th: The Literate Housewife
Tuesday, April 27th: Peeking Between the Pages
Wednesday, April 28th: Library Queue
Thursday, April 29th: Lakeside Musing
Friday, April 30th: A Circle of Books

Serena by Ron Rash

Serena By Ron Rash
384 pages
Published October 2008 by Harper Collins

George Pemberton, partner in a lumber company, has returned to the North Carolina mountains with his bride Serena. As soon as they get off the train they are confronted by the father of George's teen-aged and pregnant former mistress. When the father pulls a knife on George, Serena encourages to George to fight back and George kills the father leaving the girl to tend for herself. George is by no means an easy man; he is tough on his help and quick to make examples of those who make mistakes. Serena, orphaned daughter of a lumbar family, steps right up with him, eager to show that she is every bit his equal. Together they kill or do away with anyone who's in their way. But when Serena learns that she will never have a child, she determines that George's son and former mistress must die and the pair are soon running for their lives.

I'm just going to say it up front--I loved this book. Rash's writing is just incredible; the mountains come alive and the story is every bit as character driven as it is plot driven. This one is almost gothic--terrible things just keep happening. These are not characters you know (unless you happen to live in the backwoods of North Carolina) but they feel so true to the time and place. Rash includes in his cast of characters a blind hag who delivers prophesies, a crazy preacher who warns his crew of impending doom, and the almost stereotypical widow woman who helps the young mother.

Serena is every bit as plotting and evil as Lady MacBeth. In the beginning, I was able to feel some empathy for her. She's an orphan and she's deeply in love with her husband. But this is one cold woman. As the book develops, more and more of her character emerges and soon you realize that this lady is capable of anything.

There is a wonderful crew that appears throughout the book. Rash uses their discussions amongst themselves as a way to explore moral issues and to explain things that have happened. Their conversations were one of my favorite parts of this book.

In their rush to expand their timber empire, the Pembertons are in a battle against time as they try to fight off the people trying to buy up the land around them for what is now the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. My timing with this book could not have been better since I had just watched the Ken Burns' series about the National Park series. It made reading about the battle between the people that lived on these lands, the people that wanted the natural resources and the people that wanted to preserve the land that much more interesting.

Like The White Tiger that I reviewed earlier this week, this is not a book for everyone. It's a very heavy read. I listened to this one and it was well-narrated (with the proviso that it's just really difficult for a man to get a woman's voice to sound right). I listen to books while I work and both nights that I came home without having finished this, I spent the evening wishing I would have brought the CDs home.