"Two Women in Love and War"

Jack and Eve, Wendy Moore  (2024 TBR)

I bought this book after hearing the author on the BBC History Extra podcast. It is the story of Evelyn "Eve" Haverfield and Vera "Jack" Holme, who met while working for suffrage with the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). Eve had been married twice and had two sons, while Jack's relationships were primarily with women. They fell in love, eventually moving in together into a house that Eve owned. They found a community of other queer women, and both sometimes had flirtations or affairs, Jack in particular. But their bond remained strong.

Eve was a friend and ally of Emmeline Pankhurst, and Jack became Mrs. Pankhurst's driver, one of the first women chauffeurs in Britain. When the Great War broke out, they began organizing women to serve on the home front and abroad. Eve and Jack then joined Dr. Elsie Inglis's Scottish Women's Hospital (SWH) group in Serbia, where they worked to set up hospitals wherever the Serbian forces were fighting. Like many of the SWH women, both became deeply attached to the Serbian people and their country, refusing to leave even as enemy forces pushed the Allied armies out. After a desperate retreat, Jack ended up in Russia as the revolution was breaking out. Once safely evacuated to England, both she and Eve continued to raise money for Serbia. Eve felt called to return after the war ended, to open orphanages for the thousands of children left destitute. Jack followed her, but after Eve's death in Serbia in 1920, she returned to Britain, where she lived until her own death in 1969.

This book fascinated me on so many levels, starting with Eve and Jack's work in the suffrage movement. Reading Constance Lytton's autobiography (and then a biography of her) introduced me to the inner circle of the WSPU and the Pankhursts. But I didn't know about the WSPU car that Jack drove all over Britain, carrying the movement's leaders to meetings and protests. Both she and Eve were accomplished equestrians, and they often led suffrage parades (riding astride rather than side-saddle). Eve was arrested with Emmeline Pankhurst after a London rally in 1909, and their trial made headlines around the world.

Eve and Jack took their experience and connections from the suffrage movement into their war work. I learned so much about women's work in the Great War, about women in medicine, and about the war on the Eastern Front (the subject of podcasts and articles in recent months, though not focused on women's work). Like many women in the Britain, Eve wanted to put her talents and energy to use in supporting the war effort. She had an absolute belief that women could do anything men could, including working with the armed forces. The British government could not have disagreed more strongly. With other like-minded women, Eve founded the Women's Emergency Corps (WEC), "to register and coordinate offers of help from women . . . Within two weeks more than 10,000 women had registered..." She then went on to set up the Women's Volunteer Rifle Corps, which could function as a home guard if needed. Next, she organized the Women's Reserve Ambulance Corps, known as the "Green Cross Corps," which would later send the first women's ambulance team to France.

Jack worked with her through all of this, but both of them wanted to do even more. When Eve heard Dr. Elsie Inglis speak on Serbia, raising funds to send a hospital unit, she was quick to volunteer. In September 1914, Dr. Inglis had offered to set up and run a military hospital, staffed by women. She was told, "My good lady, go home and sit still." Instead, she established the Scottish Women's Hospital organization. The governments of France, Belgium, and Serbia gladly accepted her hospitals and her staff. The time that Jack and Eve spent in Serbia is the largest section of the book. The SWH worked under incredibly difficult and dangerous conditions, often short of supplies and food. They dealt with epidemics of disease, in the civil population as well as the soldiers they treated. I did find the military aspect difficult to follow sometimes, particularly since the only small period maps included were in the photo sections. Wendy Moore also spends a lot of time on conflicts between the different members of the SWH, which made their work even more complicated.

Finally, this book explores queer women in Britain in the early 20th century, which is a subject I knew very little about. As Wendy Moore points out, we cannot know how people in the past defined themselves. Jack preferred male dress and re-named herself "Jack" in her early twenties, which is the name Wendy Moore uses (but refers to Jack as "she" and "her" since Jack did not present herself as a male person). She and later Eve were part of a circle of queer women, some of whom were settled domestic partners. Triangle relationships were also common, and after Eve's death Jack met two women with whom she shared a home and life for 32 years. From this book, I learned that there was little concern over women's emotional or physical relationships until the publication of Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness, which sparked an uproar over lesbianism and eventually an obscenity trial.

I had previously read Wendy Moore's No Man's Land, about "the trailblazing women who ran Britain's most extraordinary military hospital during World War I." I am happy to see that our library systems have several more of her books. I also want to find a biography of Dr. Elsie Inglis, who persisted despite the misogynistic dismissal of her work.

Reading through the winter storm

I was just out walking around the melting snow from our winter storm here in southeast Texas. It's been years since I've seen so much snow - even when visiting family up north. Family and friends who live in snow country have a hard time understanding how everything shuts down here with snow or ice storms. We don't have the infrastructure to deal with it, especially with the roads.

So with the Dr. Martin Luther King Holiday on Monday, I've been off work for five days. I spent some of that time getting my house as ready as I could (my pipes are pretty much mummified), and some of the time worrying. The last time we had a bad winter storm, in 2021, I lost power for four freezing days and nights. Thankfully, this time we had no issues with power in my area of the city.

I am still reading primarily fantasy and science fiction, though I have some interesting non-fiction books that will be due soon at the library. I did try one history of the Titanic disaster, a recommendation from Crimes and Survivors, but it was an indictment of Bruce Ismay, and I found that less than compelling.

Among the books I did finish:

Navigational Entanglements, Aliette de Bodard (library book). One of Tor's short books, a story of four young space navigators sent to represent their clans in the struggle to contain a deadly force threatening their systems (a Tangler). There are clashes between the clans - and so the women - tangled up in politics and trade. This is the first of Aliette de Bodard's books that I have read in print, and I enjoyed it very much. It led me to look for others of her work in print, because I've found ebooks of her stories hard to follow for some reason.

Falling Free, Lois McMaster Bujold (TBR, 2024). I recently re-read Diplomatic Immunity, where Miles and Ekaterin Vorkosigan are diverted from their delayed honeymoon to resolve a situation in Quaddie Space. I didn't like the book the first time I read it - I can't remember why now - and somehow I'm surprised by how good it is. "Quaddie space" is the homeworld for a gene-engineered people with four arms (and no legs) who live in free-fall environments. I was inspired this time to finally read their origin story, one of LM Bujold's earlier works. It's set 200 years before the Vorkosigan saga begins. It was interesting to read, if a little less polished than her later works.

The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison (re-read). This is one of my comfort reads, so I picked it up as an antidote to storm anxiety. I will also be re-reading the two novellas that follow one of the characters in his work as a Witness for the Dead, before a third one comes out later this year. There is also another short novella set in this world coming out later this month, and both will be on my "52 books for 2025" list.

Point of Sighs, Melissa Scott (re-read). I love this fantasy series set in the city of Astrient, where one of the main characters, Nico Rathe, works as a pointsman (a city police officer). His lover Philip Eslingen, a former soldier, has held various jobs in the city and is now part of the new City Guard, resented by the points. There is a sixth book in this series coming out in March, which I need to pre-order. Melissa Scott has become one of my favorite fantasy authors, and I am still working my way through her back catalogue.

Grave Importance, Vivian Shaw (library book). This is the third book in her "Dr. Greta Helsing" series, where the main character is a doctor for creatures that most of the world doesn't believe are real. I actually started the series with this book, but I felt like I was missing too much backstory, so I went to read the others first. This one is set mainly at a clinic and spa for mummies, "Oasis Natrum," in the hills above Marseille. I loved all the Egyptology and mummy-ology in the story. But that's really a sideline to the main story, about an invasion from another dimension. There's a fourth and final book in the series coming later this year, which I'm also looking foward to.

I will probably have to go back to work tomorrow, which will cut into my reading time again. But at least the libraries should be open again too.

A trilogy became a quartet

Crimes and Survivors (2024 TBR) and "Unseen," short story (ebook version), by Sarah Smith

It has been years since I've re-read Sarah Smith's trilogy of Edwardian mysteries centered around a family from Boston. I was reminded of that last year, when they were among the books I had to move for my foundation repair work. I kept them on the shelves afterwards, unlike many that I decided I wouldn't re-read again. I must have had them in the back of my mind, because in December something suddenly made me check to see what else Sarah Smith has written. To my surprise, I found not just a fourth novel, but also a short story set between the first and second books. I was excited enough on finding new stories, but then I realized that the novel is set in part on the Titanic's fatal voyage. That had me clicking the order button and waiting impatiently for the book.

I've written before about the second and third novels, The Knowledge of Water  and A Citizen of the Country. As I said in one of those posts, these aren't mysteries in the "who done it" sense, they are more novels of suspense. The central mysteries have to do with identity. In the first three, it is the identity of Alexander von Riesden, a scientist and an Austrian baron who is shocked to discover how much he looks like members of an American family from Boston. In this fourth novel, it is his wife's identity that comes into question:

It's 1912. America is the land of Jim Crow, of lynchings and segregation. And a young white concert pianist has just discovered that the grandfather she barely knows may be black. She has a family. She has a child. She can't be black, because her brothers and sisters and son can't be. She can't be black, because she couldn't play the piano in America. She follows her grandfather onto the newest, safest, biggest ship in the world, to learn the truth--the right truth, the one that will save her family. But after the iceberg, she finds the truth is more complicated than black and white. More daring, more loving, and far more dangerous. And instead of a convenient truth, what she'll have to find is a different America. (cover blurb)

The central question is an absorbing one, and also very complicated. I was constantly surprised by the turns that story took, and I am still thinking about the ending. But running along side it, and intertwined with it, is a story of the Titanic's passengers. From the "Acknowledgements," which are also a bibliography, it is clear that Sarah Smith has thoroughly researched the Titanic, and I think she succeeds in bringing to life not just the voyage and the tragedy of its sinking, but also the effects on those who survived. I had a vague memory of silent film star Dorothy Gibson among the survivors, but I did not realize that she immediately set to work making a film about the sinking, filming in New York harbor (Smith's characters are drawn into the film).

The short story "Unseen" is set in 1906, in Paris. It is the story of how Reisden buys Jouvet Medical Analyses, which plays such a big part in the second and third books. He intends to close it down after the death of its director, but first he has to resolve a last open case, a mother accused of murdering her son.

The last chapter of Crimes and Survivors felt like an ending to the stories of these characters. I wondered if it might be the end of the series. But the novel was published in 2020, at the height of the Pandemic. The short story "Unseen" was published in October of last year, which gives me hope that Sarah Smith might still have more stories to tell in this world.

52 books project for 2024

It's that time of year, to make lists about books read and books to read. I've been thinking about what to put on my "Best Books of 2024" list, but I'm still working on that. I saw a list that was divided by category, which immediately got me re-ordering my draft. I may need a section for "favorite re-reads."

I've also been thinking about my "52 books project." This is the second year that I set myself the goal, or challenge, of only buying 52 books that I hadn't read. If I read a borrowed book, and I decide that I should add it to my library, that doesn't count against the 52, since my main goal is still to reduce the TBR stacks and shelves.

Again this year I met the goal, with only 44 new books. I was in Barnes & Noble the other day, looking for a calendar, and I realized I could still buy a book or two, but I wasn't even that tempted. I was tempted on other days, though. There was more impulse buying this year, primarily from the book sale shelves at my local library (ironically, often right after I dropped off a bag of books for the book sale shelves). I think that my neighborhood Barnes & Noble closing in January for renovations and staying closed all year has helped. It also helps that my neighborhood independent bookstore closes at 5 PM, so I can never get there on weekdays. On the other hand, I discovered how easy it is to order books from Blackwell's, so I don't have to wait for North American editions.

If I met the goal of buying fewer books, I still failed to read all of the books that I did acquire this year. I have 17 of the 44 still on a special 2024 stack (the ones on the list with no letter grade). The stack is just to my left as I'm typing this, to remind me.

I currently have 7 books on my 2025 planning list, though the publication of one isn't confirmed yet. I'm sure that list will grow, because there are always new or new-to-me books. And as always, the book people I follow on blogs or now on BlueSky will introduce me to new books and authors. That's something to look forward to in the New Year.

Reading through despair

I woke up the morning after the US election to disbelief and despair. I think I went through all the classic stages of grief - definitely anger and denial - in the first hour. I remember the morning after in 2016, but this was and is so much worse.

I talk a lot about "comfort reading," both in real life discussions and on-line. At this particular time in my life, I am reading science fiction and fantasy pretty much exclusively. I know this is a coping mechanism, and as I've said elsewhere, it is working for me right now. It's a mix of re-reading favorite authors and trying new ones. I want compelling worlds, with competent and above all morally good (or at least grey) characters, who recognize their shared responsibility to people and their worlds, and act on that. I am collecting all the recommendations I can find, and I also wander through the sci-fi/fantasy section of the library each week. It's probably just as well that my local Barnes & Noble is still closed for renovations, so I'm not out buying on impulse. I have been re-reading a lot, which is not cutting down the TBR stacks, but at least I'm not adding to them (much).

Here is a short account of what I read in November:

The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi, Shannon Chakraborty (2023 TBR)  In this alt-medieval fantasy set in the Indian Ocean, retired pirate captain Amina Al-Sirafi is blackmailed into retrieving the kidnapped daughter of one of her old crew. For that, she needs to track down her remaining crew and claim her ship again. This was an amazing adventure set in a magical Muslim world. It's the first in a trilogy, and I am looking forward to Amina's next adventures.

Catalyst, Audrey Faye (2024 purchase)  This is the eleventh book in the Ghost Mountain series about a shifter pack in British Columbia. Audrey Faye self-publishes through Amazon, so her books are unfortunately only available there. The series begins with Alpha, where three wolves stumble on a pack that has been severely traumatized by evil leaders. One of the three, Hayden Scott, kills the alpha in a fight and assumes leadership, to find a small group of terrorized women and children. Over the books, the pack begins to come together, to heal, and then to thrive. The stories don't wallow in the trauma, this isn't torture porn. The reader learns only enough of what has happened to understand what a character is feeling or needs. These stories are an epitome of care and comfort and healing, and I re-read them regularly. In fact, I read seven of the previous books around this new one - in part because there are a lot of characters to keep track of (I made a chart).

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, Becky Chambers (re-read)  I turned to Becky Chambers earlier this year, when I was having foundation work done on my house. Her worlds and characters are compelling, and they also wrestle with ethical and personal questions, but most of all they take care, of themselves and others. I went on to re-read Record of a Spaceborn Few (for the second time this year).

Strange Practice, Dreadful Company, and Bitter Waters, Vivian Shaw (library books/ebook purchase)  I have seen these books recommended many times, and I finally went looking in the library. I found the third in the series (Grave Importance) on the shelves, but after reading about half, I felt like I was missing too much of the backstory, particularly the connections between the characters. I went back and started with the first instead, Strange Practice. In this series, Greta Helsing is a physician to supernatural creatures, with a Harley Street practice inherited from her father. Descended from Abraham van Helsing, the family turned from hunting "monsters" to protecting them. The books pull in (and slyly reference) characters and events from classic horror stories, which in this world actually chronicle true events but have been written over into fiction. The main characters includes vampires and vampyres, werewolves and mummies. I need to get back to the third, before the fourth and final comes out next year.

The Redoubtable Pali Avrampul, Victoria Goddard (re-read)  I picked up my first Victoria Goddard book, The Hands of the Emperor, in 2021. 738 pages later, I emerged with a new obsession, and eventually a shelf full of books. There are various connected series in Goddard's fantasy Nine Worlds. Pali Avrampul belongs to the second I read, the stories of the infamous Red Company, as her site says, "Friends by chance. Revolutionaries by accident. Folk heroes very much on purpose." After the Red Company disbanded, Pali went on to become a professor of history. This story begins with "Professor Black" preparing to take a sabbatical, which will involve meeting the Emperor. That leads to her to return to being Pali Avrampul and meeting up again with old friends. Goddard has just published the third book in a triology about Pali and her sisters, background stories to the Red Company. I have them in ebook, but since they are now available in print, I am adding them to this year's TBR. Victoria Goddard is also self-published, though not through Amazon, but I'm not sure her books are widely available in libraries.

I don't know what December will bring, reading-wise. I'm just grateful to have the comfort and distraction of good books, and fellow readers with whom to share books and recommendations.

An entertaining mix of cases

Mr Fortune's Trials, H.C Bailey  (TBR shelves, 2024)

After reading Mr Fortune, Please in September, I went looking for more reprints of H.C. Bailey's books. I struck it lucky with Mr Fortune's Trials, originally published in 1925. The six "Trials," as Bailey labels the cases that Reggie Fortune takes on, were the most entertaining I have read yet. Only two of them, the first and last, involve murder - or at least successful murder.

It makes sense that a book published in 1925 would include stories that are connected to events or the aftermath of the Great War. In "The Only Son," Wilfrid Hartford survived the war but lost his father and elder brother. He came home with "lung trouble" and (the reader understands) psychological trauma. His mother, desperate to help him heal, has found a doctor to care for him in England. But Reggie, who knows this doctor is a scientist, not a physician, is compelled to investigate that treatment. In the much less serious "The Hermit Crab," Miss Platt-Robinson, a tireless worker during the War, has been rewarded for her service with the position of superintendent of the Record Department of the Ministry of Social Welfare. There are rumors of conflict among the staff, and Miss Platt-Robinson has started to get threatening letters. Then she disappears. Reggie actually enjoys tracking her down.

My favorite "Trial" was the third, "The Furnished Cottage." The cover of the edition I read refers to this story, where Reggie is for once the victim. It's apparently taken from the cover of the original U.S. edition in 1926.

Reggie is set up for an accusation of theft, at an over-the-top reception to view bridal presents, where he is meant to be found with stolen emeralds. Even more astonishingly, he is kidnapped and left in the cellar of a vacant house, with a pitcher of poisoned water to tempt him to a quick death. I was quite impressed with his ingenuity in solving this case.

I have another book of H.C. Bailey stories on the TBR stacks, and I'll be keeping an eye out for more.

Cosy fantasy with jam and books

The Spellshop, Sarah Beth Durst  (TBR shelves, 2024)

I've been hearing a lot lately about romantic fantasy (especially under the new term "romantasy"), and cosy fantasy has also been getting some attention, particularly with Travis Baldree's Legends & Lattes and Bookshops & Bonedust (both of which I enjoyed). I saw this recommended as both, and I put it on my library list. The other night, I stopped at a newer Barnes & Noble and decided that I didn't want to wait out the long library queue for this. (The B&N near me has been closed most of the year for renovations, which has cut down considerably on my impulse book-buying.)

The Spellshop opens with a library burning. Revolution has broken out in the capital city of Alyssium, and the emperor has been defenestrated "in a rather dramatic display." The staff has fled the Great Library, except for one librarian: Kiela is sure it will be safe, that the revolutionaries will respect the

hallowed stacks [that] were filled centuries-old treatises, histories, studies, and (most importantly in Kiela's opinion) spellbooks. Only the elite, the crème de la crème of the scholars, were allowed to even view the spellbooks, as only the rarefied few were permitted, by imperial law, to use magic.

She has worked and also lived in the library for eleven years, tucked away in a wing with only a sentient spider plant named Caz and the occasional researcher for company. She and Caz have packed some books away, just in case. But the flames have nearly reached her section before Caz can convince her that they have to flee. They move the books down to docks in the lower level of the library, where there is a boat they can use to flee with city with the books. Kiela is intent only on escape, but she realizes they need a plan. She decides to sail back to the island of Caltrey. Her parents (who have since died) moved to Alyssium when she was a child, in search of opportunities and a life beyond their small community. If their old house is still standing, she can hide herself, Caz, and the books there.

What she and Caz find is an island that is slowly dying, because the Empire has abandoned the magics that keep the world safe. With the spellbooks that she has rescued, she and Caz decide to try casting some spells, to try and help. But since magic is still illegal - as far as they know - they will call them "remedies." And they open a shop selling jam, as a cover, because raspberries are growing everywhere, and there is a lack of jam on the island (the fishing on which the economy depends is dying, because necessary spells are wearing out and not renewed). Their research process of trying out spells is delightful, as is the community that Kiela and Caz slowly discover. This is a book that celebrates community, and the power of books and knowledge shared. It celebrates food as well - not just jam, but food shared too. I also enjoyed the magical creatures, particularly "cloud bears" that act as forest guardians. This was a joy to read, and I hope that Sarah Beth Durst has more stories to tell set in this world.

An unusual female detective, from 1915

The Golden Slipper, and Other Problems for Violet Strange, Anna Katharine Green  (TBR shelves, 2020)

I had seen Anna Katharine Green described as the first women to write detective stories in the U.S. before I found a pristine Penguin edition of her first book, The Leavenworth Case from 1878, on the library sale shelves. I thought it was interesting for its setting in Gilded Age New York as much for the locked-room mystery. After finishing it, I found a couple of her later books in print and added them to the TBR stacks. I was in a strange mood this week when I couldn't settle on a book to read, and I picked this one up almost at random.

The Golden Slipper consists of nine "Problems" that Violet Strange helps to resolve, most set in New York City. She is a woman of fashion, a popular figure, welcome everywhere and showered with invitations. She is described as a debutante in the first chapter, but like some of Georgette Heyer's characters, she has poise and confidence, she is not an ingenue. Though she is the daughter of a wealthy man, she works for the head of detective agency as a confidential agent. We never learn his name. The daughter of a wealthy man, with a limousine at her disposal and outfits for every social occasion, Violet nevertheless needs money, and she must keep her work (and her funds) secret from her father. This need for money forces Violent to accept cases she would rather not be involved in, and it's a thread running through the stories. Eventually we find out why she needs the money, as the final "problem" is sorted out.

The cases that she takes are an interesting mix. Some involve theft, others murder. They become increasingly complex and melodramatic, particularly the last one, which has a secret passageway with corpses whose cause of death I had a hard time taking seriously. Violet falls in love with one of central characters in a "Problem," another thread that runs through the stories. Since he is described as 

"a degenerate in some respects, lacking the domineering presence, the strong mental qualities, and inflexible character of his progenitors, the wealthy Massachusetts [family] whose great place on the coast had a history as old as the State itself, he yet had gifts and attractions of his own which would have made him a worthy representative of his race, if only he had not fixed his affections on a woman so cold and heedless..."

Struck by the word "degenerate," I couldn't believe he turned out to be the love interest (but not the reason she needed the money).

I enjoyed the stories, the earlier ones more than the later. This was apparently Anna Katharine Green's only book to feature Violet Strange. I do have another of her books on my shelves, Lost Man's Lane, whose main character is Amelia Butterworth, an older woman who inserts herself into the mystery and like Miss Silver and Miss Marple, sees more than the police officers do.

Anne Frank Remembered

Anne Frank Remembered, Miep Gies with Alison Leslie Gold  (TBR shelves, 2019)

Anne Frank was recently featured as a "Person of the Week" on the BBC History Extra podcast, which reminded me that I have had this book on the TBR shelves for a good while. I was also reminded by finding on the library sale shelves Etty Hillesum's An Interrupted Life and Letters from Westerbork, described as "the adult counterpart to Anne Frank."

As far as I can remember, reading Anne Frank's diary was my introduction to the Holocaust, as I think it must have been for others in my generation in the US. I owned a copy of the original edition, and when I visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam after college, I bought the expanded version published later. I wish I could remember more about that visit now.

Though I haven't read the Diary in a few years, the story that Miep Gies told in her memoir was very familiar, but it was so interesting to see that familiar story from the other side of the door into the Secret Annex. This is also the first memoir I have read about life in occupied Holland during World War II. Both Miep and her husband Jan (Henk in Anne's diary) were active in the Resistance, beyond helping those in the Annex. I did not know that Miep was born in Vienna (in 1909) and sent to Holland after the Great War as part of a program to help feed children amidst post-war shortages. She never returned to live in Austria, but when the Nazis invaded Holland, she was classified as a citizen of the Reich, which distressed her and complicated her life and resistance work.

Miep Gies's narrative about the struggles of life in wartime, with the constant shortages, and also the constant small acts of resistance, is compelling. I also appreciated that her memoir covered the years after the war, and the changes in her life and in her country. I have Dutch ancestry through my father's side of the family, which I have only just begun to learn more about. I would like to visit again some day. In the meantime, I am very glad to have this on the shelves next to Anne Frank's famous diary.

Editing this to add: after hitting "publish" I realized I have read another memoir of life in the Netherlands during the war, Corrie ten Boom's The Hiding Place. I might need to read that one again.

Returning to Singapore, after the war

 The Angsana Tree Mystery, Ovidia Yu  (TBR shelves, 2024)

This is the eighth book in Ovidia Yu's Crown Colony series of mysteries, this one set in 1946. As soon I saw it was coming out this year, I knew it would be one of my 52 books for 2024. And I see that she has already announced a new one for next year, The Rose Apple Tree Mystery, so there's the first book for my 2025 list.

The first book in this series, The Frangipani Tree Mystery, is set in 1936, with Singapore a British Crown Colony but with Japanese power gathering in the east. The last four books were set during World War II and the Japanese occupation of Malaysia, and they were dark and sometimes difficult to read - not because of the mysterious deaths, though I am sometimes surprised by violent turns in the stories, but because of the brutal treatment of Singapore's residents and the struggles they go through just to survive. Ovidia Yu noted that she drew on her mother's experiences in the war in writing these books.

The Angsana Tree Mystery is the first set after the end of the war. Singapore is again a Crown Colony under British administration, but political change, and upheaval, is in the air with the push for independence from colonial rule in India, Malaya, Burma, spreading across the east. In Singapore, there are tensions as the residents are trying to rebuild from the devastation of the war and occupation, while British administrators reassert their authority. Su Lin has been working with her former boss in the police force, Thomas Le Froy, managing a public health service project. He has been accused of embezzling the funds, so their work is on hold, as is their tentative romance (which honestly, I have a little trouble believing in). Su Lin is bringing some holiday treats for the upcoming Dragon Boat Festival to another family when she finds one of the daughters standing over a dead body. She knows that Mei Mei Pang couldn't have killed the man, and she immediately starts trying both to help her through the shock and to find out who did. Spoiler alert: there are more dead bodies to come.

This is a complicated story, one I sometimes had a little trouble following, but I enjoyed meeting Su Lin and her redoubtable grandmother Chen Tai again. As always I found the Singapore setting fascinating. It is a place I hope to visit some day. This year I also enjoyed Oanh Ngo Usadi's memoir of her U.S family's relocation to Singapore, Hawker Dreams. I look forward to my next fictional visit.

"True Stories of Regency Romance"

The Game of Hearts, Felicity Day  (TBR shelves, 2024)

My first draft started with a rant about the Bridgerton series, because my North American edition of this has a big button that read "For Fans of Bridgerton." I've deleted it as off-topic, but I will say that if I had seen the UK cover first, I'd have clicked with no hesitation to buy my copy.

Even the subtitle is better: "The lives and loves of Regency women."

In this history, Felicity Day looks at the women in the highest circles of society, the "Ton" and those who aspired to join them. She uses letters, diaries, memoirs, and newspaper articles to explore courtship and marriage, continuing beyond wedding ceremonies (to my surprise, often at home with only a few guests, and by special license) into married life. She also looks at how marriages ended, whether by death or divorce. The sources partly explain her focus on the upper levels of society, because these were the people with leisure and the means to write, whose records have been best preserved over the years. Day follows six women in detail, with a host of supporting characters - sisters and other family members, friends, rivals, in-laws. I recognized some of the names from other reading, particularly Georgette Heyer.

With chapters covering topics like "The Price of Love" (settlements and financial matters) and "The Power of Refusal" (what options women had), Day moves beyond the tropes of romantic fiction and also looks at several commonly-held assumptions about women in the Regency period. Companionate marriages were becoming the norm in this period, so parents were less likely to pressure their daughters for dynastic or financial connections. There was also no pressure for a woman to marry in her first season, lest she be considered "on the shelf" or in Georgette Heyer's phrase, an "ape-leader" in a cap at age 20 or 21. Day reports women marrying into their 30s and 40s.

I very much enjoyed meeting the Regency women featured and learning about their lives. The illustrations are both beautiful and informative. I particularly appreciated the pictures of some of the women and men featured, which helped make their stories feel more real. There are even two photographs, as Felicity Day carries some of their stories in her last chapter down into the later Victorian era. This book was more serious than I expected from the North American cover, and I'm very glad to have read it.

More Mr. Fortune, please

Mr Fortune, Please, H.C. Bailey  (TBR shelves, 2024)

I was introduced to H.C. Bailey and his sleuth Reggie Fortune through the British Library collections of Golden Age crime stories edited by Martin Edwards. I took an immediate liking to both author and character and started looking for more of Bailey's work. I didn't have much luck, with most of his books being out of print, since as Martin Edwards and others have said, Bailey fell out of favor after the Second World War. I resigned myself to scouring each new Crimes Classics collection as it came out, hoping for a Reggie Fortune story (and was usually disappointed).

One of my favorite podcasts, "Shedunnit," recently featured Mr Fortune, Please, as part of the host Caroline Crampton's read through the Green Penguins. Caroline mentioned that due to the differences in British and US copyright laws, this book is available in the US. After a few more minutes listening, I had to put the podcast on hold until I could get the book for myself (and not just to avoid spoilers). It was wonderful to be back with Reggie and the Scotland Yard officers he assists as a forensics expert, with cases new to me. I did note that these stories, originally published in 1927, date before he meets and marries his wife Joan, and I missed her.

There are six stories in this collection, slightly longer than a usual "short story" but not novella length. I had read only one, "The Little House," in the Capital Crimes collection. They are a mix of cases, some of theft rather than murder. One turns on a rumor of buried treasure, another on a missing kitten. I was surprised that one of the stories begins with a theft of jewelry, and while Reggie works out who the thief is, he takes no action toward that person. In several of the cases, Reggie is at odds with the local police force when they are too quick to find a solution, especially when they stubbornly hold on to their solution, and when it threatens a person whom Reggie's investigation has proven to be innocent. As he says at one point, "Mercy - that's not my department. I work for justice." He is always concerned for those accused unjustly, for the vulnerable who may be denied justice, and he will not be silent in those situations. I find that aspect of the stories moving and powerful.

After finishing these stories, I wanted more of Mr. Fortune. I found two modern reprints of story collections available, so that's two more slots filled on my "52 books" list for this year.

An angel and a demon decide to immigrate

When the Angels Left the Old Country, Sacha Lamb  (library book)

I don't remember where I saw this book recommended, but I was intrigued enough to put it on my library list.

"Uriel the angel and Little Ash (short for Ashmedai) are the only two supernatural creatures in their shtetl (which is so tiny, it doesn't have a name other than Shtetl). The angel and the demon have been studying together for centuries, but pogroms and the search for a new life have drawn all the young people from their village to America. When one of those young emigrants goes missing, Uriel and Little Ash set off to find her. Along the way the angel and demon encounter humans in need of their help, including Rose Cohen, whose best friend (and the love of her life) has abandoned her to marry a man, and Malke Shulman, whose father died mysteriously on his way to America. But there are obstacles ahead of them as difficult as what they’ve left behind. Medical exams (and demons) at Ellis Island. Corrupt officials, cruel mob bosses, murderers, poverty. The streets are far from paved with gold."  (publisher's blurb)

At the start of the story, the angel doesn't have a name, or rather its name changes constantly with its purpose - which is often counteracting the mischief that Little Ash gets up to. Ash is called "Little" because he is one of many sons of the Demon King Ashmedai, but he himself has almost no magic, "belonging to that class of creatures another people might call fairies, and we Jews know as sheydim: mischievous spirits of the earth who enjoy leading people astray." The angel receives the name "Uriel" when Ash forges papers to allow them to immigrate outside of Russian Poland. Accepting that name changes it in ways that I still don't fully understand, and also changes its relationship with Ash. But then so do all their adventures.

The first part of the story, where demon and angel set out on their travels, and Rose on hers, was enlightening. Much of what I read about immigration to North America focuses on the voyage and arrival. I hadn't thought about how much work it could take just to get to a major immigration port. This is fiction, of course, but it made me want to know more. Ash and the angel go first to Warsaw, where they discover the dangers of trusting the wrong immigrant agents. Sacha Lamb included a very helpful glossary of Yiddish and Hebrew phrases, but I could also wish for a bibliography.

I pulled this almost at random from my stack of library books one day last week when I wasn't sure what I wanted to read. I fell into the story from the first page and read it with great delight. I was probably primed for it, having just read a non-fiction work about Jewish migration and immigration in the same period, Rachel Cockerell's Melting Point. With so many of the people Rose, Ash, and Uriel meet in New York working in the garment district, it also links to another book on my TBR stacks, Triangle by David Von Drehle, Here the sweatshop workers are organizing and striking for better working conditions.

A wicked mother and a terrifying horse

A Sorceress Comes to Call, T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon)  (TBR shelves, 2024) 

T. Kingfisher would be an "auto-buy" author for me, except that I find her horror stories too disturbing to read (I have a very low tolerance for horror). When she announces a new book, I have to wait to see what type of story she is telling this time. A Sorceress Comes to Call is usually described as a retelling of "The Goose Girl." That is not a story I know, but I figured this book was one of Kingfisher's reshaping of fairy tales. Her Thornhedge, which has recently won several awards, is a take on "Sleeping Beauty" that I very much enjoyed. I wasn't prepared for just how dark this story became, particularly in the deaths of several innocent bystanders (most thankfully off-page), and the monstrosity of the title character. I skipped to the end more than once, just to verify that my favorite characters were still safe.

The book opens with Cordelia, sitting stiff in a pew listening to a long boring sermon, while a fly torments her. She cannot move to brush the fly away, because her sorceress mother Evangeline can take complete control of her body whenever she wants. Fourteen-year-old Cordelia calls this "obedience," something her mother inflicts on her for misbehaving or for her own convenience. Mother and daughter live in a small ramshackle house in the village of Little Haw, where Cordelia is never allowed to close doors, and where she does much of the housework. Her only relief is in rides on her mother's horse, Falada, whom she considers her only friend and confidant (spoiler alert: he is neither). Every so often, Evangeline rides Falada off to visit her "benefactor," who supports the two of them with money and jewelry. Except one day Evangeline returns home in a rage, saying she has to find a new benefactor, and muttering that she should have made him cut off his own legs with an axe (a grim bit of foreshadowing).

The story then switches to Hester Chatham, who awakens in the middle of the night with a shuddering presentiment of Doom. She lives with her bachelor brother Samuel, the Squire of their neighborhood. And then "Three days after her first panic-filled awakening, Doom appeared on Hester's doorstep, in the shape of a woman." Evangeline (who has given herself a title and a deceased husband) has met the Squire in the neighboring city, claiming to be lost in the bustle and in need of his aid. He chivalrously brings her home to his sister, and Evangeline wrangles an invitation for herself and her daughter to stay. Hester sees exactly what is happening but isn't sure how best to protect her brother. It isn't until Cordelia arrives with her mother that Hester begins to realize Evangeline is even worse than she thought. Cordelia on the other hand finds an ally in Hester and in the maid assigned to her, Alice, and she even gets to shut her door against her mother. Even as Hester gathers allies, though, Evangeline draws Samuel into her coils and doesn't hesitate to use her sorcery on anyone she perceives as getting in her way.

By the end of the story, I was quite attached to Hester and Cordelia, and I would happily read more about them. I was delighted to find at least one Easter egg in the story. When Cordelia is helping to search a library for books about sorcery, the stories she reads blur into "a morass of lost princesses, feckless soldiers, evil wizards, and dogs made of bones" - a clear reference to Kingfisher's Nettle & Bone, a wonderful story.

I was entertained by KJ Charles's review of this on Goodreads, where she wrote, "I will add that I read the author's note, and if T Kingfisher could get therapy for her horse issues, the rest of us might not need to get therapy for the horse issues she's giving us, because WOW the horse in this book." I have to agree, and I don't believe Kingfisher's promise in the same author's note "to write a book in the near future where the horse is pleasant and not attempting to murder anyone," since she adds "Probably."

Diversity and inclusion win

The Takedown, Lily Chu  (library book)

This was first released as an Audible Original. Since I find it hard to follow audiobooks, I have been waiting a good while for the print edition, and it was worth the wait. I enjoyed Lily Chu's first two books, both set in Toronto, as this one is. The Stand-In is a celebrity romance, with Gracie Reed hired as a stand-in for Chinese superstar Wei Fangli while she is appearing in a play. I found the reason for her striking resemblance to Fangli (revealed late in the story) too big a coincidence. The Comeback is more of an anti-celebrity romance, where Ariadne Hui is surprised to find a beautiful man staying in her apartment, who turns out to be the cousin of her roommate. Ariadne knows as little about K-Pop as I do, so she doesn't recognize Choi Jihoon. When she does, romantic and professional complications ensue. There is some crossover between all three stories, since they are all set in the Canadian Asian community, but each story stands on its own.

The Takedown begins with Dee Kwan enjoying her perfectly organized life in the family home she recently received from her parents when they moved north. She has just spent her savings renovating and decorating to make the perfect sanctuary. She has finally achieved her dream job as a diversity consultant, one she worked hard to earn. She relaxes by playing Questie, an on-line puzzle-solving game that involves finding clues scattered around the city.

This perfect life goes off the rails very quickly (and in only the second chapter). The owner of the company where she works announces that he is retiring and closing the business. Her mother calls to tell her that her grandmother has broken her hip, so her parents want to move back in to their house with her, to care for her. Dee ends up sleeping on a camp bed in her former home office, while trying to find a new job in a tough market. There is tension at home, because her grandmother disagreed with her daughter's decision to marry a Chinese man, and she has been hostile to both him and his two daughters over the years.

This story deals with some difficult topics. Dee (who uses her given name Daiyu at work) finds a new job as a diversity consultant, where she is assigned to a fashion company that has image problems (and more) due to its homogeneous staff, particularly the upper management. There are rumors that the creative director is stealing ideas from younger designers. Meanwhile, the handsome young man she has met playing Questie turns out to work for the company she is consulting for, which creates a conflict of interest. And her family crowding her out of her home is driving her to distraction, especially her grandmother's pet chinchilla and his squeaky exercise wheel, but worse is the tension over her grandmother's racism toward the Chinese members of the family. Dee's mother, a relentlessly positive person, refuses to even discuss the situation, or to acknowledge Dee's complicated feelings.

I enjoyed the story of Dee's work more than the family situation. It was a refreshing change to see diversity and inclusion celebrated and valued, even if there is constant pushback to Dee/Daiyu's work. It's not described in detail, nor is the work of the company (other than a disastrous runway show). The ending of the story felt cathartic in that bad people get their comeuppance, and the good people find their way to happiness and new beginnings - and Grandma repents and apologizes.

Lily Chu's next book is also an Audible Original (sigh). Drop Dead sounds like a bit of change for her: "One mysterious mansion. Two rival journalists. Three weeks to uncover the story—and love—of a lifetime." I'm looking forward to reading it when I can.

A family history in Zionism

Melting Point, by Rachel Cockerell  (TBR shelves, 2024)

I heard Rachel Cockerell interviewed on the BBC "History Extra" podcast, and I immediately put her book on my reading list. I ended up ordering it from Blackwell's in the UK, which has become my "I don't want to wait for the North American edition" option after the Book Depository closed. Which has been dangerous for both my book budget and my 52 new books project.

What drew me to the book was learning that Galveston, Texas, was chosen as a center of Jewish immigration in the years just before World War I. I live 50 miles from Galveston Island, I love visiting there, and I work in an archives that has rich documentation on the city of Galveston from the 1840s. I know about the city's history as an immigration hub, and that there was a strong Jewish presence on the Island from the mid-19th century, but I had never heard of the "Galveston Movement," which brought more than 10,000 European Jews primarily from Russia through Texas. Rachel Cockerell's great-grandfather David Jochelman was one of the most active agents in Russia, recruiting and persuading potential emigrants that the US offered other options than New York City. Cockerell knew nothing of this family history and had never heard of Galveston. Her research into the story connected her with branches of the family now settled in Canada and Israel, as well as cousins in the UK, where she lives.

Cockerell begins with a history of the modern Zionist movement, founded by Theodore Herzl, who called the first Zionist Conference in 1897 to meet in Basel, Switzerland. She has compiled a history without an overarching narrative, of a type I have never read before. There is a very brief prologue, outlining how researching her family history drew her into the larger story of Zionism. She notes there that she decided to take herself out of the narrative. The rest of the book consists of quotations from letters, memoirs, newspaper articles, and other primary sources. Some are only a line or two, others several paragraphs. The author of each is listed beside the quotation, but only by name. Most of the names were unfamiliar to me, yet the way the author wove them together created a narrative that was generally easy to follow. I was surprised to find the book has no index (but does have notes and a bibliography). I think an index would have helped in cases where I forgot who someone was, but I couldn't immediately find a previous reference to them.

Herzl's movement eventually divided over whether to consider other options than Palestine for a Jewish homeland, while waiting for Palestine to be restored. Those who believed they should, to help Jews faciing persecution particularly in Russia, founded a separate group, the Jewish Territorial Organization. For many years the leader of the ITO was the British dramatist Israel Zangwill (a name I did recognize), and David Jochelman became a colleague of his. I was honestly surprised to learn that the government of Great Britain offered Zangwill part of Kenya as a potential Jewish homeland, and that the group considered other options in Mesopotamia, Australia, and northern Africa. The "Galveston Movement" was another attempt to find a temporary refuge (and another that involved land taken from native residents).

After covering the establishment of the Zionist movement, the ITO, and the Galveston Movement, Cockerell then turns her story to her family's history. David Jochelman had children from a first marriage, one of whom came to America as a teenager - to New York City, not Galveston. There he established himself as an avant-garde playwright under the name "Em Jo Basshe." The story takes a detour into the attempts to establish a theater group for new and modern plays, funded by a prominent Jewish financier, Otto Kahn, who also helped fund the Galveston Movement. The plays proved too modern for audiences and Kahn eventually withdrew his funding. I lost interest in this section and nearly gave up on the book at this point.

The story then shifts to Britain, and a history of David Jochelman's second family, whom he brought to England just before the Great War. Em Jo Basshe's daughter Jo came to London in 1950, to meet the other side of the family. One of Jochelman's daughters, Sonia, moved with her husband and three children to Israel soon after the establishment of the State of Israel, which brings Cockerell's story to a close. It was interesting to read accounts of life for new arrivals in Israel, and Cockerell does acknowledge the complications and contradictions in the displacement of Palestinians in the creation of the state. It felt like a bit of a rush to the ending, particularly after the detours in the family history. Despite the helpful family tree in the prologue, I had a hard time keeping everyone straight, when they are identified only by first name next to their quoted material.

I thought this book was going to be primarily an account of the Galveston Movement, but it turns out that is actually only one part of the story (and a short chapter of it). Rachel Cockerell cites a book about the movement in the text and in the notes, if I want to read more later. Though this wasn't the book I was expecting, I found it interesting and I learned a lot from it, though I found it a bit uneven in the end.

A late P.G. Wodehouse novel

The Girl in Blue, P.G. Wodehouse  (TBR shelves, 2011)

This book sat unread for many years, in at least three different homes. I think it was moving a shelf of Wodehouse books for the construction project that nudged me to finally pick this one up. It also made me realize how long it's been since I've read anything by PGW.

This novel was originally published in 1970, when Wodehouse was 89 years old. Even without the somewhat jarring references to Dear Abby and Dr. Joyce Brothers, I would have known this was a later work. It doesn't have the energy and fast pacing of my favorites from the 1930s and 1940s. The characters spend a lot of time sitting around, or walking around, and the the story meanders with them.

The "girl in the title" refers to a miniature painted by Thomas Gainsborough, which Willoughby Scrope has just acquired. It is a portrait of his great-great-grandmother and he is delighted to have it. He is in such a good mood that he happily writes a check for more than two hundred pounds, to help his older brother Crispin with repairs to the family seat, Mellingham Hall. Crispin reminded me of my beloved Lord Emsworth, except that he doesn't even have a pig to cherish. He does however have a debt collector in the house, posing as a butler. He also has paying guests, whom he loathes, because he needs their money.

In return for the cash, Willoughby tells Crispin that he will be hosting Bernadette "Barney" Clayborne. Barney's brother Homer Pyle, a wealthy attorney, has brought her over to Britain after she was caught shoplifting in a New York City department store. Pyle was advised to place Barney at some country estate far from temptation and stores, and his good friend Willoughby has suggested Crispin's private hotel. While the siblings are staying with Willoughby, Pyle starts to worry that Barney will steal the miniature, so he takes it himself and hides it away. When Willoughby finds it gone, he assumes Barney stole it, and he tries to get Crispin to search her rooms for it. After that fails, he enlists his nephew Jerry West to go down to Mellingham.

Jerry brings romantic complications to the story. He is engaged to the beautiful but unpleasant Vera Upshaw, but he has just finished serving on a jury with a young woman with whom he has instantly fallen in love. Jane is an air hostess, another modern note in the story, as is their jury service. Of course she ends up at Mellingham, and so does Vera eventually. I felt that the love story was not handled with Wodehouse's usual deft touch, and I think there might be a breach of promise suit in the end, which rather undercuts the happy ending in my mind.

This was a perfectly pleasant story with some comic moments, and I spent most of Sunday reading it. I'm glad to have crossed it off the TBR list, but I don't think this is one I'll read again.

"Scenes from the Life of a Spinster"

Hopes and Fears, Charlotte M. Yonge  (TBR shelves, 2017)

It has been a while since I've read one of Charlotte Yonge's Victorian morality doorstoppers. The last I read, Nuttie's Father, ended with the death of a child who had been lured from home and so badly treated that he did not survive long after his rescue. As I have noted before, death is ever present in Yonge's books, and it is often treated as a happy end to a character's life. On the other hand, it can be a punishment for a character's misdeeds, which is particularly jarring when it is not the doer of the deeds who dies, but someone in his or her orbit, who then becomes a lesson to the misbehaving one. I found it hard to accept the child's death in Nuttie's Father as a happy ending for anyone, and it put me off her books for a time.

I don't know why I thought it was good idea to pick another of her books in the middle of my construction project, but my exasperation with her characters did offset my frustration with the project delays. (It is finally completed, and I am replacing books on shelves and enjoying the downstairs again.) The project was finished before the book, actually, which I attribute to its 569 pages of very small print in my 1899 reprint. Hopes and Fears was originally published in 1864, nine years after Yonge's bestseller The Heir of Redclyffe. She published so many books that I find the lists of her titles a bit overwhelming. I picked this one back in 2017, after finishing The Three Brides, for the subtitle: "Scenes from the Life of a Spinster." As a spinster myself, I am predisposed to read stories that feature single women - and Charlotte Yonge herself remained unmarried all her life.

The spinster in question is Honora Charlecote, who to my surprise was not the heroine of the book. The daughter of a clergyman with an old historic house in a commercial district of London, she often visits her cousin Humfrey Charlecote. He lives at his beautiful estate, Hiltonbury, where he conscientiously carries out the duties of a country squire, doing much good in the neighborhood. A decade or more older than Honora, he proposes to her one summer day when they meet in his woods. She tells him she has an understanding with Owen Sandbrook, one of her father's curates who is going out as a missionary to Canada. Waiting patiently for him at home, she later learns that he has married the daughter of an army officer. He returns with her to England, becomes a popular city preacher, and then loses his wife and infant daughter, leaving him with a daughter and son. And he himself has developed one of those ominous coughs that means he must leave England for the warmth of Italy. Honora eagerly volunteers to take charge of his children, Lucilla and Owen. His daughter is devastated when he dies abroad, and she resents and blames Honora, who has fallen under the spell of the younger Owen. We are told more than once that she made a idol of him, and moreover, her faith is not true trust and reliance on God. All of this happens in the first three chapters.

Over the following 32 chapters, we follow Honora and the two young people as they grow older and make a lot of mistakes, and several more people are written into their story. After the death of Humfrey, Honora inherits his estate and responsibilities, but in trust for his heir (when located). There are rumors of a Canadian branch of the family, but no one actually goes looking for them. The younger Owen grows up with expectations, despite being told pretty clearly that he is not a Charlecote and cannot inherit. Lucilla prefers her mother's family, the worldly Charterises. They also becomes friends with the neighboring Fulmort family, whose wealth comes from their distillery business in London, where their "gin palaces" in Honora's neighborhood are turning it into a slum. One of the Fulmort children, Robert, gives up his inheritance to become a priest (High Anglican of course), building a mission church and school in the area, to offset the evils his family is perpetrating there.

Robert is in love with Lucilla, and she inclines to him. But when she decides to go on a fishing holiday in Ireland with only her cousin Horatia Charteris, he decides that he cannot marry a woman who would act so inappropriately. She assumes her influence over him is strong enough to draw him back to her, but she learns her mistake and has many, many pages to regret it, not to mention the miserable trip among the uncouth Irish. Owen meanwhile makes a secret and imprudent marriage that leaves him with a child and a very unsuitable mother-in-law. Yonge takes several swipes at her evangelical faith along the way. Their father left very little money. Owen squanders his, so Lucilla uses hers to pay his debts and then becomes a governess. Eventually she develops that significant little cough. Owen meanwhile goes off to Canada to become a surveyor. From the first hint of that, I was waiting for him to meet the North American Charlecotes.

In every one of Charlotte Yonge's books that I have read, there has been at least one character with a physical disability, who lives a full and complete life, with their physical conditions handled very matter-of-factly. I was still surprised to find a character here, Maria Fulmort, who is mentally challenged. Her older sister Phoebe is devoted to her, and Maria has made great progress under the latest governess, Miss Fennimore, who accommodates her limitations. Unfortunately, the governess has infected the middle of these three sisters, Bertha, with her science-based agnosticism. Maria is presented quite sympathetically, with interests and abilities that her sisters and Miss Fennimore encourage. Besides Lucilla's unhappy years as a governess, and Miss Fennimore's career, there is a third governess, Miss Wells, who becomes Honora's companion and chaperone, living out a comfortable retirement with a beloved former pupil.

In the end, I enjoyed this long, drawn-out story for the characters, which I think is one of Charlotte Yonge's strengths. The number of deaths in this book was surprisingly low in the end. Most of those with the consumption coughs were still alive when the story finally ended with a wedding, and several pages of moralizing about the proper way to raise a child in godliness, wherein Honora admits her errors. I was a little startled that the drawing of blood through cupping occurs more than once. I didn't realize doctors were still prescribing that in the 1860s. There is also a reference to a cholera outbreak, which the breezes will cure by dispelling the miasmas. I had to check the date of John Snow's discovery of the infected pump in London (via The Ghost Map), which was in 1854. Maybe Charlotte Yonge hadn't yet accepted the new science.

Unlike my experience with Nuttie's Father, this book of Charlotte Yonge's has left me more inclined to read the four others I still have stockpiled on the TBR shelves.

Reading in a construction zone

I am in the middle of having foundation work done on my house. I live in the middle of three townhouses, and my neighbor to the right has had issues with his foundation that are dragging my house down on his side (literally by about three inches). We have finally been able to coordinate the work. The delays have been beyond frustrating, with big cracks in my walls and a leak in the garage/downstairs every time it rains (this is Houston, it rains a lot even when we aren't hit by hurricanes).

Most of the first floor is in the construction zone, though the kitchen has been spared.

Getting ready for this work meant packing up five bookcases of books (there are four bookcases in that pile of furniture). Much like moving houses has in the past, taking the books off the shelves has made me realize that I don't need all of these books. I was much more of a "completist" in the past, I collected the complete works of my favorite authors. I've come to realize that other than Jane Austen, there are no authors whose entire body of work I like or will want to re-read in the future. (And even with Austen, I rarely re-read Northanger Abbey). I've been culling my bookshelves over the past year or so, and this will give me another push. When it's time to put the books back on the shelves, I'm guessing a few more will go to the library sales.

In the past I also collected more than one edition of some authors' books, Dorothy Dunnett in particular. I had already decided to let some of those go. And speaking of Jane Austen, I might not need all the books about Jane Austen that I have. The same might be true for the many, many books about Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. This will be an ongoing project.

The cats and I are living upstairs while this is going on, with forays down to the kitchen. I know people who've lived out of their second floor after hurricanes, while waiting for repairs downstairs. It's an odd, unsettled feeling. Despite the days of free time (NOT how I wanted to blow through my accumulated vacation days), I have had trouble focusing on reading, between the noise of the drilling and the other work. As usual in times of stress, I have turned to re-reading favorite authors: Georgette Heyer (The Talisman Ring), Becky Chambers (Record of a Spaceborn Few), Lois McMaster Bujold (Cryoburn), Helen Dore Boylston (Sue Barton, Rural Nurse). I did give up on one new book, Sarina Bowen's Golden Touch. It is a suspenseful romance, with a woman on the run from a violent drug-dealing ex, who runs a motorcycle gang. I wasn't in the place for violence or the level of suspense in this book, or for a MMC who keeps making decisions for the FMC. I may come back to it later. It's a sequel to her Good as Gold, which I did enjoy.

Hopefully, the project will be completed early this week.

Exploring religious faith in 19th century America

Lincoln's God, by Joshua Zeitz  (from my TBR stacks)

I am always looking for book discussions and book recommendations. For the past several years, I have found podcasts to be a rich source of both, particularly the history-related ones like the "BBC History Extra Podcast" (I also subscribe to their print magazine, which is a delight), the "Historic Royal Palaces Podcast," and lately "The Rest is History Podcast." All three are British, though the BBC and "The Rest is History" regularly cover world history topics. (I am currently listening to "The Rest is History" series on the outbreak of the Great War.) If I am listening while walking, I frequently hit pause so that I can check the library catalogue for a book that is mentioned. Sometimes I just can't wait for a library copy.

Lincoln's God came via the only U.S. history podcast I follow. "With the Bark Off," produced by the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation. I was familiar with Joshua Zeitz from his book Lincoln's Boys, about the presidential secretaries who became his biographers and the guardians of his legacy. In reading many books about Lincoln, I have learned something about his personal religious beliefs (or lack of them). I have also studied the role of religion in US history, especially in the 19th century. So I had some background in reading this book, which as the subtitle says explores "How faith transformed a President and a nation."

The author says in his Preface,

"What follows is the story of Abraham Lincoln's religious transformation, set against the backdrop of a nation's spiritual awakening and transformation. . .This is not a comprehensive biography of Lincoln or a broad account of the Civil War. Instead, it is a story of how religion and, more specifically, the rise of evangelical Protestantism, influenced the familiar political, economic, and military narrative. . . Abraham Lincoln's own spiritual journey was distinct from that of most Americans, but he understood better than most the organizing and galvanizing power of evangelical Christianity. His faith, and his appeal to the faith of others, in no small way determined the outcome of the war."

That lays out three main themes woven through his book. First, he charts Lincoln's religious beliefs through his lifetime, arguing that Lincoln was never a conventional Christian. By the end of his life, he might have identified as a Unitarian. Second, he tracks the rise of evangelical Protestantism and the growth of new churches and religious movements, particularly the revivals that swept through America. Church members became involved in campaigns such as temperance and most crucially, abolition of slavery (while holding racist attitudes toward Black Americans). This would split some of the mainline churches into northern and southern branches, as with the Southern and American Baptists. Zeitz also explores the role that Black churches played, particularly in the North, where they argued against slavery and for emancipation long before many white Christians. (Zeitz also acknowledges the presence of Roman Catholics and Jews in America in these years, but his focus is on Protestant Christians.)

The third theme details how northern Evangelical Christians came to ally themselves with Lincoln and with the Republican party in ways that broke down the familiar separation of church and state. Most northern Protestant churches came to embrace abolition of slavery as a war aim but also as a moral good. Like Lincoln himself, many came to view the war as a divine punishment on the United State for the sins of slavery - in which the North had been complicit. Recognizing the power of the churches, Lincoln courted their support, both financial and political. He also began to see himself as an instrument in a divine plan to eliminate slavery. I had not understood just how deeply the Protestant churches cooperated with and identified with Lincoln's administration and with the Republican party. It is easy to see parallels in our political situation today.

I have a lot of books about Lincoln and about the Civil War on the TBR stacks. I am determined not to buy more until I read some of those already on my shelves. We'll see how that book resolution goes.