The Personal History of Rachel duPree by Ann Weisgarber

When Rachel, hired help in a Chicago boardinghouse, falls in love with Isaac, the boardinghouse owner's son, he makes her a bargain: he'll marry her, but only if she gives up her 160 acres from the Homestead Act so he can double his share. She agrees, and together they stake their claim in the forebodingly beautiful South Dakota Badlands.

Fourteen years later, in the summer of 1917, the cattle are bellowing with thirst. It hasn't rained in months, and supplies have dwindled. Pregnant, and struggling to feed her family, Rachel is isolated by more than just geography. She is determined to give her surviving children the life they deserve, but she knows that her husband, a fiercely proud former Buffalo Soldier, will never leave his ranch: black families are rare in the West, and land means a measure of equality with the white man. Somehow Rachel must find the strength to do what is right-for herself, and for her children.

Reminiscent of The Color Purple as well as the frontier novels of Laura Ingalls Wilder and Willa Cather, The Personal History of Rachel DuPree opens a window on the little-known history of African American homesteaders and gives voice to an extraordinary heroine who embodies the spirit that built America.

Recently, I was asked the question 'Why do you read historical fiction?' I think my answer was something along the lines of being able to eavesdrop on history. Really, the answer could have been to read books like this to find out about little known facts from history. My knowledge of homesteaders in America is very limited and I certainly hadn't given any thought to the fact that there were African-American homesteaders,or to the life that they and their families would have lived.

Rachel and Isaac DuPree are living in the Badlands of South Dakota,  a land that is beautiful but also harsh at the best of times but is especially harsh during a long drought. The novel opens with a disturbing episode as one of the smaller children, Liz, is sent down the well to scoop out what little water remains at the bottom because the bucket can't be used in such a small amount of water as the well is practically dry.

Rachel tells us of her life in the Badlands but also flashes back to episodes from her past, especially back to when she was working in the Chicago boarding house owned by Mrs DuPree. When Mrs DuPree's son Isaac returns on leave from his duties as a buffalo soldier, she has grand ideas of marrying him off to a nice young lady from an acceptable section of society. She certainly doesn't want him marrying the help, but that is exactly what happens when Rachel agrees to join the parcel of land that she is entitled to under the Homestead Act to that which Isaac has already claimed, thus doubling his land size. They initially agreed to a limited time marriage, but they are still together, working hard to maintain their constantly expanding land holdings and their expanding family.

Rachel is in the latter stages of pregnancy when we meet her, and already has several young children, but this life that she has chosen with Isaac was not an easy one and she has also lost two children. She is however proud of the life that she has built with Isaac, having started with nothing, then living in a sod dugout until finally she is living in a wood house that they built themselves. That begins to change however when she begins to questions Isaac's priorities.

I loved reading about Rachel. She was strong enough to make the decisions that need to be made, both for herself and her children. It took her a while, but she got there in the end.

The character that has me thinking the most though is Isaac. I can't quite decide if he is such a driven man that he can think of nothing but acquiring and holding on to land, or if he is just a guy who doesn't easily show or communicate his emotions. He is hard on all of his family but I don't think he is blind to them and just making them do things that they won't like just for his own selfish ends. For example, with sending a terrified Liz down the well, the fact of the matter was that without doing this there would be absolutely no water for his family and they would all die of thirst.

In his mind, he thinks he is doing the right thing by contemplating going off to work in the mines to bring in a steady income and leaving Rachel to cope despite the fact she is telling him quite plainly that she won't be able too. It is obvious though that he is capable of physical affection with Rachel which he shows just by the touch of his hand on her back when she needs it. He does have feelings about his children, evidenced by the tears he sheds at one of the key moments in the book.

Isaac is particularly rigid when it comes to the rules in his own house. He seems to me to be very much of a generation where the father in the house must be obeyed by everyone, including his wife. Some of his rules make sense, but we did get to see more emphasis on the idea of persecution of a minority group with his own refusal to allow agency Indians into his home, or even to meet his own responsibilities in relation to certain Indians who make their way to him. He is discriminated against by certain towns people but he in turn is intolerant of others who he sees as beneath him for whatever reason.

I didn't actually realise for a few chapters that the characters in the book were African-American, and for me, that can be seen as quite a good thing. Whilst a big part of the subject matter of the book is both the isolation that Rachel felt not only living in the middle nowhere with few neighbours, but even more isolating is the fact that there are no other African-American people living anywhere near her. At it's heart though The Personal History of Rachel DuPree is a human story - a woman who is struggling to get by in a difficult situation and making the difficult but necessary choices to get the best outcome for both herself and her children. A story of endurance, of courage and of knowing when it is time to make changes.

A couple of years ago I was visiting Perth and I spent some time listening to the stories that my grandfather told about some of the jobs he has done over the years. One of his earliest jobs was clearing areas of land in some of the hilly areas nearby. He had a horse and cart, and himself, and that was it. In another example is having to walk from one town to the next in the country areas of Western Australia in order to get to the next job, and these towns were not close together. All of his work as a farmer and a shearer was hard and it was physical, and is really pretty foreign to the kind of work that his grandchildren get to do. I found myself thinking of his stories as I read this book, mainly because of the sheer physicality of their day to day lives! I suspect that I would be a bit too soft from modern city living to live this kind of life.

When I think of pioneers and homesteaders in Australian terms I think that we are talking more than 150 years ago, and yet this book is very much talking about life in the wilderness, about making a life for yourself in the isolated rural region of the Badlands of South Dakota in America. 100 years ago was a long time ago, but by that time in the cities there was electricity, there was running water, there were cars on the street. It was therefore something of a shock to me to realise that timewise, The Personal History of Rachel DuPree was in my grandfather's lifetime! In 1917, he would have been 8 or 9 years old. Giving it some kind of context makes it feel as though it happened very recently indeed.

This is a book that I would highly recommend to anyone who loves to read about times gone by. I am sure that you will cheer for Rachel, just as I did.

Rating 4.5

I am reviewing this book today as part of the TLC Book tours blog tour, although I obtained the book from my local library. To see other stops on the tour click on the following links.

Tuesday, November 1st:  nomadreader
Wednesday, November 2nd:  Peeking Between the Pages  
Thursday, November 3rd:  Linus’s Blanket - author Q&A
Monday, November 7th:  A Bookish Libraria
Tuesday, November 8th:  Man of La Book
Thursday, November 10th:  Unabridged Chick
Monday, November 14th:  Book Dilettante
Tuesday, November 15th:  Book Chatter
Wednesday, November 16th:  She is Too Fond of Books- Spotlight on Bookstores guest post
Thursday, November 17th:  Book Club Classics
Monday, November 21st:  Raging Bibliomania
Tuesday, November 22nd:  The Brain Lair
Wednesday, November 23rd:  Historical Tapestry – author guest post, “Why I Love Book Groups”
Wednesday, November 23rd:  Broken Teepee
Friday, November 25th:  Historical Tapestry
Monday, November 28th:  A Bookworm’s World
Tuesday, November 29th:  My Bookshelf
Wednesday, November 30th:  Elle Lit.
Thursday, December 1st:  Melody & Words
Monday, December 5th:  Book Snob
Wednesday, December 7th:  Life in Review
Thursday, December 8th:  The 3 R’s Blog

Why I love weather by Anna Solomon

I grew up in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Yes, Gloucester is the home of The Perfect Storm. It’s also the place that inspired painters including Winslow Homer, Marsden Hartley, and Edward Hopper, who were drawn by the rocky shoreline, the deep woods, the soft, purplish light, and the dramatic skies. You can never be more than a few miles from the ocean in Gloucester, which means that weather permeates everything. From my childhood house overlooking the Essex Bay I could see fog rolling in, sunshine breaking through the clouds, or the wall of a nearly-black storm front pushing its way across the far beach.

By weather I don’t just mean temperature or wind speed. I mean, what are the elements that make up and affect the landscape? What does the air smell like? What does a winter morning sound like? What kinds of trees grow in such a place and if there’s a storm, what kinds of leaves and nuts fall on the people’s heads? If you lived in this place, what weather would you long for? What would you fear?

Anna Solomon

As a writer, these questions are gold. Asking them – and discovering the answers to them – helps me to establish my setting. And “setting” is not just a hill, or a chair. It’s light. It’s texture. It’s all the sensory inputs that make up our characters’ worlds. Look at how Willa Cather describes a thrilling sleigh ride in My Ántonia: “The wind had the burning taste of fresh snow; my throat and nostrils smarted as if someone had opened a hartshorn bottle.” And how different the cold seems in Yiyun Li’s The Vagrants: “With her good hand, Nini wrapped the thin quilt around herself, but hard as she tried, there was always part of her body exposed to the freezing air.”

Yet these passages are deceptively simple, because weather isn’t just affecting these characters. It’s also being used by these authors, to excellent affect, to express the characters’ feelings: aspects of their inner lives that can be better expressed through their sensory experience than by anything they might say or think. Fictional characters – like real people – are only so self-aware; weather is one way to let the reader in to a character’s emotions even if she doesn’t know she’s feeling them.

Weather is wonderful in yet another way: it can help create plot, which can help drive, well, the whole story. Weather can be premise, catalyst, climax, resolution. Think of the rain that keeps the Ramsay family from getting to the lighthouse (for ten years!) in Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse. Or the drought that dries up the stream that empties the hotel that becomes a home for unwed mothers in Ann Patchett’s first novel, The Patron Saint of Liars. Or – in case you haven’t thought of it – the tornado that sets Dorothy a-flying in The Wizard Of Oz. Heat can drive people crazy and cold can create intimacy (or vice versa). In my novel, The Little Bride – set in desolate South Dakota during the 1880s – a freak hailstorm ruins the family’s wheat crop, causing a shortage of food; it also creates a great division between a father and son, one of whom wanted to harvest the crop the day before the storm, one who argued against it for religious reasons. Weather, in this case, does lots of things: it creates conflict, expresses moods, complicates relationships, and sets up the characters for future trouble.

I love weather especially when it comes to historical novels, because it’s one thing –unlike fashion trends, medical treatment, or saddle styles – that hasn’t changed very much over the years. (Let’s leave climate change out of this, shall we?) Today’s tornadoes are probably a lot like tornadoes in 1850; cumulus clouds look like cumulus clouds from 1952. As a writer, this means I have first-hand access to a very important aspect of my characters’ worlds. It also means that my readers know what my characters might smell, or even feel, during a spring rain; the very words “spring rain” evoke associations and memories, letting readers drop deeply into a world that might otherwise be strange. In this way, weather can provide a meeting point between centuries. It’s timeless. Just like the best historical novels.

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To learn more about Anna Solomon and her wonderful book The Little Bride (released the 6th September 2011), don't forget to visit her website: http://www.annasolomon.com/

Hearts and Bones by Margaret Lawrence

Hannah Trevor, a midwife in a small Maine town, discovers the body of a young wife and mother, along with a note naming Hannah's secret past lover and the father of her illegitimate daughter as the woman's murderers.

Ever since I read, and really enjoyed Sara Donati's into The Wilderness that I have been looking for books with a similar setting. Hearts and Bones is also set in America and around the same time and I couldn't resist picking it up.

Unlike Donati's this book is a murder mystery. The heroine is Hannah Trevor, a midwife living with her aunt and her deaf, and illegitimate, daughter in Rufford, Maine. When she finds a young woman raped and murdered who left a letter accusing three men, one of which is Hannah's child's father, she can't resist doing an investigation of her own. Unable to believe the worse of the man she loved she eventually finds a link between the dead woman, the three mentioned men and some others not mentioned in the letter.

Despite being a great lover of mysteries I think what I loved best in the story was the sense of time and period. How life was actually hard for this people, how some of the wounds of the Revolutionary War were still open and how Hannah, that we could consider a bit too modern for those times, is looked sideways for her behaviour does making it believable. However I found that she unraveled what was happening a bit too quickly to be believable.

The story is dark, there are some pretty horrible crimes mentioned and some people never recover from them. The aftermath and consequences of the war are very present here and play an important part in the action. It's also very atmospheric; you can almost see the characters as they walk around doing their business, which definitely contributed to my enjoyment of the story. It made for an interesting read and I wouldn't mind picking the other books in the series to find out what happens next to Hannah and Daniel.

Grade: 4/5

Guest Post: Frances Hunter on Rediscovering America (includes giveaway)

If you were a kid in America in the 1970’s, July 4^th, 1976, was the biggest deal in the world. That Sunday marked the 200^th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the glorious capstone of America’s Bicentennial year. I vividly remember festooning the house with flags and watching President Ford’s speech from Independence Hall in Philadelphia on our old black-and-white TV. As the sound of the Liberty Bell rang from two thousand miles away, my sisters and I gathered on the front step at high noon to bang out “The Star-Spangled Banner” on a toy piano.

My other indelible memory of that year is of my mother reading John Jakes’ The Kent Family Chronicles, also known as “The Bicentennial Series.” John Jakes, a relatively unknown writer from Chicago, was tapped by Doubleday to write a series of books to tell the story of the founding of America. The first book hit the streets in 1974 with the jaw-dropping title of The Bastard. It told the story of Phillippe Charboneau, the poor illegitimate son of a French innkeeper, who through a series of improbable events ended up in Boston in 1775. Caught up in the tide and tumult of Revolution, Phillippe embraced the cause of liberty, changed his name to Philip Kent, and founded a fictional family that would manage to be involved in just about every momentous event in American history from the Alamo to the Civil War to the Johnstown flood.   

Jakes’ books were full of strife, romance, and struggle; they had body doubles, crazy villains, and plenty of suffering and sex. They also unabashedly celebrated the American experience. The 8-volume “Kent” series sold over 50 million copies; Jakes’ follow-up book, a Civil War saga called North and South, sold over 10 million copies, was made into a TV miniseries, and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. In 1993, Jakes earned a second Pulitzer nomination for his immigrant saga Homeland.

A generation later, Jakes’ success is hard to imagine. In the eyes of big publishers, historical fiction about American topics is all but dead. At a time when non-fiction biographies of America’s Founding Fathers are frequently on the best-seller list, we are told that nobody wants to read fiction about American history, certainly not about American men. In the historical fiction genre, we now shy away from sweeping stories of the American experience and retreat to time travel, Tudor England, and romantic tales of somebody’s wife/sister/daughter/mother/Aunt Hilda. So what has changed?

For one, I think a generational change has taken place in the reading public. A few years back, history-based fiction like Jakes’ The Kent Family Chronicles and Howard Fast’s April Morning and Citizen Tom Paine were snapped up and devoured by the “greatest generation,” who saw themselves in the struggles of characters battling for liberty over the Old World forces of evil. Many people had been through Depression and war; many were still close to the immigrant experience depicted in best sellers they loved, like Irwin Shaw’s Rich Man, Poor Man or James Michener’s Centennial. People loved the idea that America was special; they still believed in liberty and democracy as a wonderful, ever-evolving experiment we could all be a part of.

Boy, have times changed. Nowadays, cynicism reigns. What began with the disillusionment of Vietnam and Watergate has reached its fruition in the post-911 world, reinforced by decades of historical revisionism in the halls of academe. To many readers, the founding sagas and frontier tales of the past seem ethnocentric and hoary. Rightly or wrongly, many people no longer feel like America is so special. In a world of constant and sometimes discouraging change, we are struggling to hold on to the thread of the American story.

It seems to me there is all the more need to tell that story, in a way modern readers can relate to. The reading public is hungry for heroes—perhaps not the swashbuckling heroes of John Jakes’ day, but real, flesh and blood heroes who fight, laugh, and bleed along with the rest of us, who dare to do great things, and more importantly, dare to fail. This is what we are going for in our books To the Ends of the Earth and The Fairest Portion of the Globe – Lewis and Clark not as cardboard heroes, but as real men.

Sister's Mary and Liz Clare writing as Frances Hunter

In 1976, John Jakes’ books depicted the greatest generation’s view of what it meant to be an American. In 2010, we see a more imperfect union than we saw back then. We are bruised and sometimes battered; our heroes are not square-jawed and intrepid but raw and real. But with all their flaws, they are just as worthy of celebration. Publishers, wake up. By picking up the thread, by telling the story, fiction writers can help readers discover America – and their own American experience-- all over again.

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Frances Hunter’s new historical thriller, The Fairest Portion of the Globe, has been praised by critics as “invigorating” and “wonderfully exciting,” and was “urgently, wholeheartedly recommended” by Historical Novels Review. (Reviews http://franceshunter.wordpress.com/latest-reviews/) . Her first book To the Ends of the Earth, earned a “highly recommended” rating from Library Journal, won the Independent Publisher “IPPY” Book Award silver medal, and was a finalist for ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year.

GIVEAWAY RULES:


Thanks to Frances Hunter we have one copy of The Fairest Portion of the Globe to giveaway.


- contest is open worldwide
- leave a comment telling us about why you do or don't like to read about US history and your email adress (one entry per household)
- contest closes 15 August at midnight GMT.

Dragonwyck by Anya Seton

I always had a soft spot for Gothic novels like Rebecca and Jane Eyre, so Dragonwyck seemed like a must read to me, especially when a brooding and mysterious character like Nicholas Van Ryn is involved. Nothing could be more perfect!

Honestly, in the beginning, I had some troubles warming up to Miranda Wells. In the movie adaptation, she's more sympathetic and we easily relate to her wish to see the world, where in the book I found her a tad unpleasant and extremely snob. I wasn't very sure I was going to like her, but slowly she became a much stronger woman, someone definitely more interesting.

Nicholas Van Ryn seduced me as easily as Miranda. After reading the final page of Dragonwyck, I couldn't stop thinking about him, the last of a long line of patroons, and also the last of a long line of cruel men. His heavy heritage combined with a dark past (both always hinted, never really explained) create a very intriguing character. He is charming and generous, but his attitude towards his first wife, Johanna, and later, Miranda, reveal how deeply disturbing he could be. His final scenes came up as a surprise... Somehow, I was expecting a different end.

The captivating historical background researched by Anya Seton is undoubtedly one of the strong assets of Dragonwyck. I knew next to nothing about the middle 19th century New York and the Dutch community. I did remember reading about the strong Dutch presence in the state in the short story The Legend of Sleepy Hallow by Washington Irving, which was set about 60 years before Seton's novel. But other than a reference here and there, I never had the opportunity to read any other stories who fully explored this interesting part of American history.

Dragonwyck can sometimes be a little predictable but the author's delicious writing style, the historical research and the wonderful characterization make this book special. This is definitely a keeper!

Grade: 4/5 stars

The Winthrop Woman by Anya Seton

This bestselling novel - Anya Seton's follow-up to Katherine - concerns Elizabeth Winthrop (nee Fones), a real historical figure who married into the family of Governor John Winthrop of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and moved to the wild New World in 1631. This perceptive, authoritative, and thoroughly documented account portrays the fortitude, humiliation, and ultimate triumph of a Puritan woman who dared to live and love as her heart commanded.

I know I am not the only one who buys books and doesn't read them. I also know that I am not the only person who then reads one of those books, and then wonders why on earth I hadn't read it before. I initially bought this book back in 2007 when it was chosen as book of them month at the forerunner to Historical Fiction Online, and now here I am nearly 3 years later finally reading it for Anya Seton season here at Historical Tapestry.

If I was going to be brutally honest with you all, I didn't have particularly high hopes for this book. I thought I would read it, and move on. I am not sure why I thought that because I loved Katherine when I read it years ago, and I really liked Dragonwyck too. Maybe it was the pretty uninspiring synopsis? Whatever it was, it was a really pleasant discovery for me to find that when I opened the book I actually was very interested!

Another reason why I didn't really anticipate this read all that much is that I have a kind of overview understanding of American history. I know that about the Mayflower, and there were Puritans, and then there were witch trials, and about the American Revolution and the Civil War. That is probably an oversimplification, but key to this book is the fact that I didn't realise how there came to be different Puritan colonies, and certainly don't recall hearing about John Winthrop before.

So if the synopsis above is a little dry then what is The Winthrop Woman about? The main female character is Elizabeth Fones, member of the prominent Puritan Winthrop family.  From a very young age, Elizabeth displays tendencies towards rebellion against the strict religious rules imposed by her family, and particularly find her relationship with her uncle John very difficult.

With the family's fortune waining due to religious persecution, John Winthrop is looking towards America for a new start, freedom in a new land. Elizabeth's impulsiveness has led her into marriage with one of her cousin, despite the fact that her heart belongs to another. In a very short period of time she is widowed and a young mother on her way to the Massachusetts Bay Colony along with her Winthrop relations.

Through the eyes of Elizabeth we get to see the difficulties enveloping the young colony including political turmoil, religious divisions between different Puritan sections, relationships with the Siwanot . Elizabeth herself is an engaging main character who we get to see for all her faults and her strengths. She is a woman who could be seen to have been dealt a difficult hand in life - a settler working hard, some times pariah of her community, unlucky in love and marriage for most of her life, but whose inner core of strength ensures that she does what it takes to survive and to rise above the challenges facing her.

This was a fascinating character study of a very interesting woman. I will also endeavour to read more Seton without expecting to be unengaged.

Rating 4.5/5

My Theodosia by Anya Seton

THEODOSIA


HER FATHER bound her to him with a love transcending the ordinary.

HER HUSBAND could claim her, but he could never have her for his own.

THE OTHER MAN rich and ambitious, demanded that she betray her loyalty as a daughter and her vows as a wife.

Theodosia - a bewitching woman caught in a fierce drama of love and loyalty, with the fate of a young nation hanging perilously in the balance.

Although I have read some of Anya Seton's novels before it was only now that I had the opportunity to read My Theodosia, her first published work. Reading about Theodosia Burr Alston made me realise that I seldom read books about American history and that my knowledge is indeed lacking in that department. Something I started working on as soon as I finished the book because I had to look up every real people mentioned and that I intend to continue by looking for more books with that setting.

Theodosia is the beloved daughter of Aaron Burr, America's Vice President from 1801 to 1805 under President Jefferson. The story starts on her seventeenth birthday and ends with what Seton believed was the event that led to her death.

Theodosia had an uncommon love for her father. Her mother died when she was still a child and she was raised by her father alone who took great care in her education. Her relationship with him shaped her whole life, she is at first hostess to his house parties and used to charm his friends and then married to cement his power in the south. She never ceases to support and accompany him in his various projects. I thought it interesting that Seton doesn't show Burr in a very good light, he manipulates his daughter, and everyone else around him, to his own ends and in doing so gives a great contribution to her tragic life. Theodosia goes from a happy girl in the beginning of this biography to an unhappy married woman who sees her love for another man crushed under her father's will. His convoluted life and especially the duel with Alexander Hamilton and the project for the Kingdom of Mexico also take their toll on Theodosia's life and health as do her private losses.

I must confess that what I loved more about the story was the glimpse I had of all these extraordinary people and how they lived. Since Theodosia goes to live in the South after her wedding there are many references to slavery and live in the plantations. Theodosia, while starting out as an engaging character ends up being too blind for too long to what her father really was - a charming scoundrel - and so set herself for much heartache.

Seton does a good job of grabbing historical figures and known facts and weaving them into fictional novels. The objects of her biographies are usually less known characters of history and that leaves her more freedom to fictionalise and romanticise their lives. Besides Theodosia there's Katherine Swynford (Katherine) and Elizabeth Fones (The Winthrop Woman). Her concern with historical accuracy and research was known but My Theodosia seems to be a highly fictional account of Theodosia's life, instead of being the final work about her it whetted my appetite for more. I was only sorry not to see more pages devoted to Theodosia's unusual education and the use she made of it. In all the references I found about her that is one of the things mentioned that set her apart from the other women of her time.

An interesting novel that should appeal to everyone interested in American history in general and Aaron Burr and his daughter in particular!

Grade: 4/5

Grease Town by Ann Towell

fiction novel. The story is told through 12 year old Titus Sullivan. His parents both died and he is being raised by his Aunt Sophie. His older brother, Lemuel decides to move to Oil Springs , Ontario where their Uncle Amos lives, to try to make his fortune in the oil business. Titus wants to go along to get away from their overbearing Aunt but Lemuel says he's too young.

Titus sees Lemuel off and then sneaks into the back of his wagon. He is discovered much later when his brother stops to water the horse. He figures that he has gone too far to go all the way back so they continue to Oil Springs. However, they take along a passenger, John who promises to pay $20 for the trip. Titus knows right away that John is bad news and Lemuel figures it on soon after. They end up leaving him at their last stop. They figure that it isn't that far to walk or hitch a ride with someone else.

When Titus and Lemuel arrive at Oil Springs they get a big welcome with their Uncle Amos. He is surprised to see Titus and scolds him and makes him write a letter to his Aunt Sophie right away.

Oil Springs is a dirty town in a swamp. The well water has to be boiled before you can safely drink it and there is so much oil in the swamp water that it easily catches fire, as Titus witnesses soon after his arrival.

Titus makes friends with a black boy named Moses and they do just about everything together. However, Titus and Moses runs into John frequently. He is racist and makes trouble for them and later, the entire town.

From the book description, I thought that Titus was going to learn about the Underground Railroad from Moses but that is not the case. I expected this book to go into at least some detail about it but it does not. Also, we don't figure out that Titus himself is a white boy until later in the book. I think it was important to know this from the start. Johns, character is very predictable. The read figures out right away that John will be the villain of the story.

I enjoyed the story overall. The characters were memorable and the writing, simple but good. I just think that it could have been so much more.

3/5

Roses by Leila Meacham

In the tradition of The Thorn Birds comes a panoramic saga of dreams, power struggles, and forbidden passions in East Texas.

Spanning the twentieth century, Roses is the story of the powerful founding families of Howbutker, Texas, and how their histories remain intertwined over the span of three generations.

Cotton tycoon Mary Toliver and timber magnate Percy Warwick fell in love, but because of their stubborn natures and Mary's devotion to her family's land, they unwisely never wed. Now they must deal with the deceit, secrets, and tragedies that surround them, and the poignant loss of what might have been - not only for themselves, but also for their family legacies.

With expert and unabashed big-canvas storytelling that reads like a Texas Gone With the Wind, Leila Meacham pens an epic of three intriguing generations. A deeply moving love story of struggle and sacrifice as well, Roses is steeped with nostalgia for a time when honor and good manners were always the rule: it is destined to be cherished and read again and again.

I hadn’t heard anything at all about this book, until suddenly it was there were mentions of it all over the blogosphere. As soon as I saw what it was about, and the comparisons to books like Gone with the Wind and The Thornbirds, I wanted, no, had, to read this book! You see, I have a weakness for big juicy sagas, especially cross-generational family sagas, and that is exactly what I got with this book.

The Toliver, Warwick and Dumont families founded the small town of Howbutker in East Texas, and have become the mainstays of the town. The Tolivers are cotton plantation owners, the Warwicks are lumber barons and the Dumonts are merchants. When the town was founded there were strict rules put in place to ensure that each of the families did not become co-dependant on the others which included the use of roses as symbols of forgiveness, or otherwise.

The central character of the novel is Mary Toliver. When the book opens she is an old, and unwell, woman who has only weeks to live. As she reflects on her life, she remembers back to when she was a young lady in the days just before WWI. She loves Somerset, the cotton plantation that her family runs like no one else in her family, except her father. When he dies, she is determined to hold onto Somerset, no matter what it means to her future life, and no matter that her father’s decision pretty much destroys her family life.

The author touches on many of the major events of the last century – World War I, the depression, the commercialization of farming through the 1970s and 1980s amongst other things and does it with a deft touch. It is however Mary and her life that is the core of this novel. Her loves, the choices she makes as she fights to hold on to Somerset, often with great personal cost, and her determination that no other member of her family should suffer from the Toliver curse.

For me though, the character that will stay with me the longest is that of Percy Warwick. He is portrayed as being a dashing, honourable man, who struggles with the social expectations of his time as he tries to be with the woman he loves, despite the fact that he knows that she will always choose her family land rather than what he wants. Through a series of near misses, he and Mary don’t get their happily ever after, and so they have to make the best of the life they have chosen. The thing about Percy is that he is not perfect, he doesn’t always make the right choices, but he knows it and tries to do something about it, even when it appears to be too late to make amends.

When the storyline is focused on Mary and Percy, the author shows an assuredness and confidence that shines through the writing, but when she moves into the last third of the book and the focus shifts to Mary’s grand niece Rachel, the story stumbles a bit. Mary’s decisions about the future of Somerset cause untold grief for her family, and devastation for Rachel who must try to understand the decisions that were made, and that will effect her life dramatically. For example, when the Toliver curse again strikes, I thought it was a bit heavy handed and somewhat unnecessary. With Percy’s grandson, Matt, the reader is shown the parallels between their lives and those of the earlier generation, but it didn’t always work for me.

At 608 pages, this is a chunkster, but the story just flew by for me. I would be more than happy to see more of these saga style books published. In the meantime I will just have to reread my copies of The Thorn Birds, Gone with the Wind, and yes, this book, to satisfy my addiction to these kinds of novels.

I rated this as a 4.5/5 read. This review has been adapted from a review originally posted at Royal Reviews.

Pieces of Sky by Kaki Warner

Pregnant and burdened with a terrible secret, Jessica has left England for the American West in search of a new life. Brady, a hard-bitten rancher haunted by the violence of his past, is desperate to protect his land and family from a blood feud that has already claimed one brother. She’s fancy hats and pamphlets on deportment. He’s rough manners and twenty years of blood on his hands. An improbable pair. But after their stagecoach crashes and Jessica is stranded at his high mountain ranch until she gives birth, antipathy slowly becomes attraction. He teaches her to trust and laugh again — she helps him find the joy he’d lost. Faced with hard choices and unspeakable loss, they draw strength from each other to overcome the horrors of their pasts, and in the process find redemption, forgiveness, and ultimately love.

For weeks I saw Pieces of Sky recommended by several blogs I use to follow. The story but specially the setting immediately aroused my curiosity.

Jessica Thornton left in a hurry her beloved home in England to join her brother in New Mexico. Traveling by stagecoach, she looks completely out of place and this doesn't escape the notice of the other passengers. If she seems all fashionable and delicate, this young woman is a spitfire heroine. Jessica seems to have lead a somehow sheltered life until the attack of her brother-in-law but she doesn't hesitate to leave everything behind to start a new life in a completely different country where everything seems wild and confusing to her. When she starts to think that her decision might be a mistake, she meets Brady Wilkins a local rancher who clearly doesn't understand what a woman like her is doing in the West.

After so many years involved in a family feud, fighting, killing and suffering, Brady Wilkins steeled himself against any feeling except revenge. A man marked by tragedy whose only worry is his brothers' safety. He carries a very heavy burden with him, one he knows he will never be able to share with anyone. Brady doesn't seek happiness or tries to build a life for himself until he meets the pregnant and quick-witted Jessica.
These two learn how to heal themselves slowly and together. It was heartwarming to see them to get to know each other and how a simple smile or just a look can do wonderful things to a damaged soul. The scenes after the birth were filled with angst and sorrow and I confess that I fell in love with Brady watching him bring Jessica alive again.

If the book is mostly about Brady and Jessica, everyone has its place in it. The characters are strong and yet very real. It's easy to identify ourselves with them and I could perfectly see myself among the Wilkins family and friends sharing a dinner laughing and teasing. But they also make mistakes and try to make the best out of it, even when all hope seems lost. The interaction between the brothers are some of my favorite scenes and I can't wait to read more about Hank and Jack.

One of my favorite parts of this book is how vividly Ms Warner describes the life in the West without romanticizing it. It was tough, sometimes dangerous but also held the promise of an opportunity to start all over again.

Kaki Warner's storytelling talent is obvious from the first pages. She gently invites you to take part of an incredible and quite unexpected ride filled with beautiful and striking scenes that will remain in your memory longtime after you read the last words of Pieces of Sky. It's going to be hard to wait until June...

Grade: 4.5/5

Why do I love to write about the West? by Kaki Warner

Because it’s born into me and is as elemental as taking the next breath, and because it will always be the best of my past.

I spent my early childhood in a small Texas town, playing to the drone of cicadas in the mesquite trees on lazy summer days, and sleeping to the tick-tick-tick-whrrr of the big hayfield sprinklers. I ate persimmons off the tree, and dodged tarantulas and sticker burrs, and rode a fat pony on army maneuvers and Indian war party raids. I caught lightning bugs and ran barefoot in warm rain and lived among people who loved the land because it was forever and it would never let them down.

Then I moved to the city.

The yodel of coyotes changed to the distant wail of sirens and honking horns, and the sweet smell of fresh cut alfalfa became the sharp scent of cool raindrops on hot asphalt. The sky shrank. Stars dimmed to pale pinholes in a sooty sky that never seemed to grow dark, and the heat-shimmered horizon ended at the brick wall of the building next door. I remember pushing my bed up against the window and putting my pillow on the sill so I could feel the breeze on my face and see a patch of moon as I drifted to sleep. And I dreamed of going back. But I never did.

So when I sat down to write Pieces of Sky, and all those sights and sounds and smells from my childhood returned in a flood of memories—hawks silhouetted against lint ball clouds, cattle dotting rolling grasslands, people struggling stoically to hold on to a way of life and a patch of ground so they would have something to leave behind for the generations to come—I knew I had to write about a place like that, and people who never gave up, and a sky so vast it made your soul soar.

And then there’s that whole myth of the West thing that Zane Grey described in his 1934 novel, The Code of The West. How can your heart not resonate with ideals like integrity, self-reliance, accountability? How can you not respect those stoic settlers to whom loyalty, hospitality, fair play and respect for the land was a way of life? Romanticized in music, books and film, the cowboy era still and forever remains an enduring symbol of American culture.

Never shoot a woman, no matter what.
Always remove your guns before sitting at the table.
Never try out another man’s horse, hat or wife.
Don’t inquire into a person’s past—measure people by what they are today.

Words to live by. Still.

As a sub-genre, western historical romance has had its ups and downs. Since the release of Pieces of Sky, I’ve heard from many readers who are coming back to it after an absence of many years. Why? What’s pulling you back? And to those die-hard western romance readers who never left, I’d love to hear your thoughts on what you like best about the genre? And what turns you off?

________________________________

Kaki Warner is the award-winning author of the Blood Rose Trilogy (Berkley Trade, Pieces of Sky, January 2010, Open Country,June 2010, Chasing the Wind, 2011), a historical series about the unpredictable West and the men and women who brought it to life against all odds. Although Kaki now lives on the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains in Washington State, she actually grew up in the Southwest. Her years spent riding horses and enjoying the expansive views of Texas became the inspiration for the backdrop of her novels – the wide open spaces of historic New Mexico Territory. Kaki spends her time gardening, hiking, reading, writing, and soaking in the view from the deck of her hilltop cabin with her husband and floppy-eared hound dog.

For more information, please visit Kaki's website at http://www.kakiwarner.com/.

Jessica James on Why I Love the Civil War

“If I do not return, my dear Sarah, never forget how much I loved you, nor that when my last breath escapes me on the battlefield, it will whisper your name. …Do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for me, for we shall meet again...”

When I first read these lines from the famous Civil War letter of Major Sullivan Ballou to his wife Sarah, I was immediately enthralled with the poignancy, passion and emotion of his words, and how powerfully they reflected the essence of a man’s love for his wife in the 19th century. Within the text of the letter, Sullivan manages to convey, not only his deep sentiment for his wife, but his firm belief in everlasting life. This intriguing theme is captured in many letters home during the Civil War and is what started me on my journey into the lives of times past.

After reading this letter, I devoured letters, newspaper articles and diaries from the War Between the States to try to discover more about the human side of the war. I’m sure when some readers hear the term “Civil War,” their eyes glaze over as they think about pages of military strategies and battlefield reports. But as I discovered in Sullivan’s letter, there was a human element – and most definitely a romantic element in that conflict. The gallantry, chivalry and valor of this period in our nation’s history remains unmatched. When reading about the tremendous hardship, sacrifices and suffering that every day people endured, one cannot help but be captivated.

Another sentence in Sullivan’s letter that enthralled me and contributed to the plot of my historical fiction novel Shades of Gray shows the patriotism that men of that era felt for their country. He writes:

“My love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me with mighty cables that nothing but omnipotence can break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me irresistibly with all those chains to the battlefield.”

For all of Sullivan’s love and devotion to his wife, his bond to country and conviction for duty drove him to service in defense of his homeland. This theme is recurrent in thousands of other letters. Men who cherished and respected their wives with an affection seldom seen today still rushed to the battlefield in selfless devotion to duty.

I tried to make the plot in Shades of Gray reflect the tremendous emotional conflict that men – and women – of the era endured. Confederate General James Longstreet (on whose shoulders it fell to order Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg) perhaps put it best when he wrote: ‘In the silent passages of the heart, many severer battles are waged than were ever fought at Gettysburg.’

If you are wondering about the fate of dear Major Sullivan Ballou, he was killed at the first Battle of Bull Run, one week after penning the letter to his wife. Though only twenty-four at the time of his death, Sarah never re-married. The inscription on Sullivan’s tombstone reads:


“I wait for you there. Come to me and lead thither my children.”

******

Jessica James is the author of the award winning novel Shades of Gray, set during the American Civil War. You can find out more details about Jessica and her book, at her website, or at her blog, Life in the Past Lane.

Into The Wilderness by Sara Donati

It is December of 1792. Elizabeth Middleton leaves her comfortable English estate to join her family in a remote New York mountain village. It is a place unlike any she has ever experienced. And she meets a man unlike any she has ever encountered--a white man dressed like a Native American, Nathaniel Bonner, known to the Mohawk people as Between-Two-Lives. Determined to provide schooling for all the children of the village, she soon finds herself locked in conflict with the local slave owners as well as her own family.

When I first heard of Into The Wilderness I must confess I was a bit doubtful that it was the book for me. It was presented as a sequel to The Last of The Mohicans and usually the sequels are a bit (or a lot) of a letdown (it isn't exactly a sequel though as the events take place quite a few years after TLoTM and only some of the same characters appear). However Marg was so sure about it and recommended it so well that I ended up putting it in the TBR pile and this weekend I finally read it. And I am very happy that I did.

This is the story of Elizabeth Middleton who travels to the New World to meet her father and become a school teacher. Her father has other ideas though and wants to see her well married with one of his neighbours, Richard Todd, whose primary interest is Elizabeth's dowry - the mountain Hidden Wolf. But Elizabeth has other ideas, not only wants she be independent but she is also attracted to Nathaniel Bonner, Cora and Hawkeye's son, who lives with his family in the mountain and has his own reasons to dislike the Richard. To help Nathaniel gain what he wants Elizabeth must plot to apparently to her father's wishes till the moment is right to show her hand.

But there's a lot more to like than just Elizabeth and Nathaniel's story. There's the vivid portrayal of the native way of life and the settlers way of life. The tension in their relationship and the problems faced by those who live between both worlds.

I think the best thing about the story is Donati's vivid descriptions and complex characters, you really feel transported to that world for the space of the reading and when it closes you really want to know what is going to happen next with the characters. Fans of Diana Gabaldon will be happy to know that her famous characters are mentioned in the space of a page.

Grade: 5/5

Hunting Midnight - Richard Zimler

At the dawn of the nineteenth century in Portugal, John Zarco Stewart is an impish child of hotheaded emotions and playful inquisitiveness, the unwitting inheritor of a faith shrouded in three hundred years of secrecy--for the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula have been in hiding since the Inquisition. But a season of loss and bitter discovery brings his innocence to an abrupt end. It is only the ministrations of a magical stranger, brought to Porto by his seafaring father, that restore his safety: Midnight, an African healer and freed slave, the man who will become John's greatest friend and determine the course of his destiny.When Napoleon's armies invade Portugal, violence again intrudes on John's fragile peace, and seals his passage into adulthood with another devastating loss. But from the wreckage comes revelation as he uncovers truths and lies hidden by the people he loved and trusted most, and discovers the act of unspeakable betrayal that destroyed his family--and his faith. And so his shattering quest begins as he travels to America, to hunt for hope in a land shackled by unforgivable sin.

This was my first book by Richard Zimler and I must say he does approach interesting and original subjects.

Hunting Midnight tells the story of John Zarco Stewart, a Portuguese boy of Scottish and Portuguese descent and of Jewish heritage who was born in Porto where he grew up before travelling to England and America. Set in the 18th and 19th centuries it deals with such different subjects as the French invasions and slavery.

In the beginning, John meets Daniel and the two boys will soon become fast friends. Zimler is very good at describing evocative imagery and one can almost see the preacher, who John call necromancer, that scares him by calling him a Jew, and later the market where exotic birds are sold in miserable conditions and where the two make a rescue attempt replacing the real birds by wooden substitutes. In the aftermath of this event, they meet Violeta, who will become the third part in their friendship and while telling of their adventures Zimler tackles very different subjects like the hidden Jewish faith, the inquisition, Violeta’s abuse at the hands of her family and the difficult life conditions shared by many told.

John’s life changes drastically when Daniel dies and he falls ill believing himself guilty. To restore his health his father brings home Midnight, a black man knowledgeable in healing herbs but also with a very special life’s philosophy. He soon becomes John’s best friend and mentor.

When Midnight disappears after travelling with John’s father to England and John later finds out he has been sold as a slave, he starts a voyage that will take him from Porto to London and then to New York and the American south. The second half of the book introduces a second main character as it is partially narrated by Midnight’s daughter Morri. Morri tells of her life as a slave in a plantation in Charleston and of her father’s life there and disappearance and writes her observations on the differences between the black and the white man.

This is the story of John and his growth but also a story of love and tolerance. There is the love between friends, between family members, husband and wife and between fellow men. There is the respect and tolerance for different religions and beliefs and a reflexion on the status of women in society.

I did have some trouble getting into the story as it is a bit slow paced in the beginning but the second half was a page turner. Considering all the interesting themes and details included, the richness and the importance of themes focused I don’t hesitate to recommend this novel.

Grade: 4/5

Still I Rise by Roland Laird with Tanesha Nash Laird, Illustrated by Elihu "Adofo" Bey

A Graphic History

'Still I rise' is a graphic history book about the struggles, heroic, and triumphant history of African Americans. It mentions all of the largely known history but it also tells of more little known facts and of important people who helped shape how America is today.

Something I certainly didn't learn in my school history books was that of indentured servitude which lead to slavery. I didn't enjoy my history classes back in grammar school or high school because the text books were dry.

This book would make students want to learn the history of African Americans! It is a short book but the details of the history included are rich in detail. It is well researched, well written, and beautifully illustrated.

This is my first time reading a graphic book. There have been some that sound good but I have been hesitant. I visualize a comic strip, like the Sunday funnies in the newspaper. I just couldn't believe that they could be taken seriously. Still I Rise has changes my view point! If you haven't read a graphic book, this would be a good place to start!

Highly recommended!

5/5

Ride The Wind by Lucia St Clair Robson

Ride the Wind is not an easy read! Lucia St Clair Robson does know how to write a good story and she keeps us enthralled till the end in the story based on the true facts known of the life of Cynthia Ann Parker.

In 1836, when she was nine years old, Cynthia Ann Parker was kidnapped by Comanche Indians. This is the story of how she grew up with them, mastered their ways, married one of their leaders, and became, in every way, a
Comanche woman. It is also the story of a proud and innocent people whose lives pulsed with the very heartbeat of the land. It is the story of a way of life that is gone forever....

Cynthia Ann's story is unique because she was adopted by the tribe, raised by them, married one of the last great Comanche chief's and ended up feeling her rescue was another kidnapping of sorts that kept her away from the people she loved. It's an emotional journey to follow Cynthia Ann from the time she is taken to her new family, through her acceptance of her way of life, the knowledge that other captives weren't treated like her and her identification as a true Comanche, an important member of their society in her own right. No doubt Robson took many liberties with Cynthia Ann's story to fill in the blanks but the result feels real and moving.

The books gives very interesting details of the Comanche culture and society. It is hard to reconcile the People's behaviour towards their own and the children they adopted and the way they treated the older ones who became slaves. How they understood and respected nature with their savagery in battle and towards their prisoners. It's a culture oriented towards warfare as being a great warrior was what men aspired to be and in a period where the clashes with the new settlers in Texas were growing violence and death were very much an every day ocurrence. But their organised society and bigger respect for nature makes wonder what we could have learned from their way of life.

A must read for every person interested in native americans and the history of Texas.

Grade: B+


Posted also at Aneca's World

Ringside 1925: Views from the Scopes Trail By Jen Bryant

Written for Young Adults, but Just as Engaging for Adults

The year is 1925 in small town Tennessee. The school year is winding down and the children are excited about having a laid back summer. However, when it comes to the towns peoples attention that the science teacher, J. T. Scopes taught Darwin’s theory of evolution in class, he is arrested and the children realize it won’t be the same summer they planned after all.

The title Ringside is quite accurate, as the town turns into a virtual circus for the trail with nationwide publicity: reporters, lawyers, scientists, religious leaders, and tourists. The only drugstore in town orders in all kinds of monkey memorabilia to sell and even rents a real monkey to sell the items. Many of the towns people also cash in by setting up tables outside the courthouse to sell food and all kinds of things.

Some of the friendships in town became strained because of the differing point of views. In the end, some friends were able to come to terms with their differences and even see their friend’s point of view but a few could not.

Bryant tells the story from the town’s people’s and reporter’s point of view, each narrating in turn. By writing it this way, we really get to know the town and all it’s people, both it’s children and adults with differing point of view.

She writes in fresh lyrical prose. This small and fast paced book really packs a punch. Both children and adults will learn more about the real life Scopes trial while being thoroughly entertained at the same time.

I loved this book and highly recommend it! What a gem!

5/5

A special thanks to Jen Bryant for sending me a copy of this extraordinary book!

The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare

Kit Tyler is marked by suspicion and disapproval from the moment she arrives on the shores of Connecticut in 1687, far from her beloved home on the island of Barbados. Her unconventional background and high-spirited ways immediately clash with the Puritannical lifestyle of her uncle's household, and she despairs of ever truly fitting in. When Kit meets Hannah Tupper, she is sure she has found a friend at last. But the locals believe that the old woman is a witch, and witches must be burned.

I have to confess that I don't remember even hearing about this book until it was Book of the Month for February over at Book Bitches. Obviously, I am a bit behind, but I guess that is what happens when I have to continually juggle due dates for all of the library books I have out I wasn't going to give it a go, but I am so glad that I did, because this book had me completely enthralled, to the point where I didn't want to read certain bits because I was afraid of what was going to happen, but then again I didn't really want to put it down either!

The novel begins on board the ship that is bringing young Kit Tyler to a new life with her aunt and uncle who follow the Puritan lifestyle. That lifestyle is a stark contrast to the life that she was used to in the tropical climes of Barbados, where she lived in luxury with her overspending grandfather. When he dies she has no choice but to seek a new life. Even whilst still on the boat, Kit stands out, and creates an enemy for herself when she dives into the water to swim after a young girl's doll. Straight away, she comes under suspicion because everyone knows that only witches float.

When Kit arrives in her new town, she struggles to fit in both within her family and the town. She does however attract the attention of one of the more eligible young men in town, but even their courtship is stilted and somewhat sterile. It is only when Kit befriends an old Quaker woman, Hannah Tupper who lives out near Blackbird Pond, that Kit truly finds friendship, but at what cost? In an era of superstition and fear, Hannah has longed been branded a witch.

The edition that I read was a Collins Modern Classics and has an afterword by Jane Yolen where she says:

It amazes me how much of a story is told in such a compressed amount of pages. For a modern historical novel, The Witch of Blackbird Pond is quite short. At the time it was written, most children's novels were deemed necessarily short. But think how much is crammed into it: a girl's quest; a historical lesson about some of the things that finally led to the American Revolution; information about sailing ships, weaving, colonial cooking, clothing, religious matters of the day, colonial punishments and the drudgery of Puritan daily life. Plus romance, loss, suspicion, anger, fear secrets, friendships and a sense of belonging - to a land, a family, a love and to one's own self. I have to marvel at that compression, the compact poetry of it, and wish that more writers today had that kind of precision and ability to be so beautifully concise.

I couldn't agree more! I thoroughly enjoyed this trip back through time to colonial Connecticut, and I was definitely moved throughout the novel. I believe that this book won The Newbery Award back in 1958, and despite the length of time that has passed since it was first published, the strength of the writing and the story have not been diminished or aged at all.

Dead Man's Walk by Larry McMurtry

Here, is the eagerly awaited prequel to Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Lonesome Dove. In Streets of Laredo he bought the story ahead, giving us Woodrow Call in his old age; in Dead Man's Walk, he takes the reader back, to the days when Woodrow Call and his friend Gus McCrae - surely two of the most beloved figures in American fiction - were young Rangers, first confronting the wild frontier that will form their lives. Danger, hardship, sacrifice, pain and fear test them to the limits of endurance; friendship, comradeship, courage and love give them the strength to survive and be cheerful against fearful odds.

In Dead Man's Walk Woodrow and Gus are not yet twenty; young Rangers in the days when Texas was still an independent republic. Having volunteered to join the forces of the capricious land pirate Caleb Cobb in a foolhardy attempt to seize Santa Fe from the Mexicans, they experience their first great adventure, in the barren, empty landscape in which shocking violence appears out of nowhere, whether from nature or Indians. Though their eyes, we meet the great Comanche war chief Buffalo Hump (one of McMurtry's most compelling creations), his companion Kicking Wolf, who specialises in prolonged torture, the deadly Apache child-stealer Gomez. It is these formidable figures - cruel, swift and almost invisible - who confront and eventually defeat Caleb Cobb's expedition, plus most of the Mexican army. Woodrow and Gus's companions include Matilda Roberts, a whore known as The Great Western, and Bigfoot Wallace, the famous scout. The wildness of the Frontier and the men who live there - the Indians defending it with savagery, the Texans attempting to seize and 'civilize' it, the Mexicans threatened by both - are at the heart of Larry McMurtry's extraordinary novel, at once a profound work of literature and one of the most riveting adventure stories of all time.

I first read Lonesome Dove years ago, not long after the mini series came out in fact, so that makes it..what..nearly 20 years ago. Since that time, I either didn't hear that Larry McMurtry had gone on to write further books in the series or just didn't take any notice. With my participation in the Pulitzer Project where the goal is to read all of the Pulitzer Prize winners, I figure now is as good a time as any to reread Lonesome Dove (hereafter referred to as LD) which one the award in 1986, but if I was going to do that, then I wanted to be sure to have started at the beginning of the story, and so I found myself reading this book.

Part of my difficulty in writing this review, is that I am comparing the writing and atmosphere in this book to a book I read so many years ago and remember absolutely loving, but not remembering much else in terms of specifics. It could therefore be that some of the issues that I had in reading this book were already present in LD and I just didn't remember them.

The narrative in Dead Man's Walk takes us back, way back, to where Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call are very young men - twenty years of age - and they are just setting out on their first adventures as Texas Rangers. Gus is impulsive, smooth talking and restless, Woodrow more of a thinker and less hotheaded but when he loses his temper he really loses it. Also travelling with them are a number of other colourful characters including the whore Matilda Roberts (known as the Great Western) who alternates between a prostitute and a mother figure during the novel (but is portrayed to have such bravery and put up with an awful lot), various trackers and Indian hunters.

After a disastrous first trip where the Rangers find themselves hunted by the vicious Indian chief Buffalo Hump, the boys join up for another adventure - this time a raid against Santa Fe which at that time was held by the Mexicans. This time they have not only Buffalo Hump and his cohorts to deal with, but also Gomez (an Apache warrior) and Mother Nature, all the while being lead by a man who only had marginally more experience than themselves.

In many ways the events in this book try and include as many of the things that we have come to expect from Westerns - there are Indian raids, scalpings, there are crazy Ranger leaders, there are whores (oh my...are there whores - Gus in particular is constantly obsessed with them), there are Mexicans, wild animals, wild weather. In fact, you name it. Anything that could go wrong on a journey across the wilds of colonial America does and McMurtry doesn't skimp on any of the gruesome details. He also has no heart for the minor characters he has created as he kills them off with reckless abandon - each method of death more and more gruesome.

Then there is an ending which whilst is has the desired effect of getting our two heroes out of the predicament that they found themselves in, seems a somewhat strange resolution to that problem.

For me, whilst this was an interesting read, it wasn't the compelling, touching tale that I remember LD to be. There are definitely glimpses within the characters of Gus and Call where you can see the men that were loved by so many in LD, and the colours and drama of the Wild West definitely came to life, but maybe in a slightly too surreal fashion.

I am looking forward to reading the next book in this series, which I believe is Comanche Moon.

City of Glory by Beverly Swerling

Set against the dramatic backdrop of America's second war for independence, Beverly Swerling's gripping and intricately plotted sequel to the much-loved City of Dreams plunges deep into the crowded streets of old New York.

Poised between the Manhattan woods and the sea that is her gateway to the world, the city of 1812 is vibrant but raw, a cauldron where the French accents of Creole pirates mingle with the brogues of Irish seamen, and shipments of rare teas and silks from Canton are sold at raucous Pearl Street auctions. Allegiances are more changeable than the tides, love and lust often indistinguishable, the bonds of country weak compared to the temptation of fabulous riches from the East, and only a few farseeing patriots recognize the need not only to protect the city from the redcoats, but to preserve the fragile Constitutional union forged in 1787.

Joyful Patrick Turner, dashing war hero and brilliant surgeon, loses his hand to a British shell, retreats to private life, and hopes to make his fortune in the China trade. To succeed he must run the British blockade; if he fails, he will lose not only a livelihood, but the beautiful Manon, daughter of a Huguenot jeweler who will not accept a pauper as a son-in-law. When stories of a lost treasure and a mysterious diamond draw him into a treacherous maze of deceit and double-cross, and the British set Washington ablaze, Joyful realizes that more than his personal future is at stake. His adversary, Gornt Blakeman, has a lust for power that will not be sated until he claims Joyful's fiancée as his wife and half a nation as his personal fiefdom. Like the Turners before him, Joyful must choose: his dreams or his country.

Swerling's vividly drawn characters illuminate every aspect of the teeming metropolis: John Jacob Astor, the wealthiest man in America, brings the city's first Chinese to staff his palatial Broadway mansion; Lucretia Carter, wife of a respectable craftsman, makes ends meet as an abortionist serving New York's brothels; Thumbless Wu, a mysterious Cantonese stowaway, slinks about on a secret mission; and the bewitching Delight Higgins, proprietress of the town's finest gambling club, lives in terror of the blackbirding gangs who prey on runaway slaves. They are all here, the butchers and shipwrights, the doctors and scriveners, the slum dwellers of Five Points and the money men of the infant stock exchange...conspiring by day and carousing by night, while the women must hide their loyalties and ambitions, their very wills, behind pretty sighs and silken skirts.

Bearing in mind that I read this, the third book in the series, second, I can't tell you how pleased I was that the author didn't try to fit another 100 years of history into one book. In fact, in this book the time frame of the novel is tightened down yet again, and instead of covering a period of over 100 years (as we were in City of Dreams) or even a handful of years (Shadowbrook), we are treated to the stories of what happened to a group of characters, some imagined and some real, over the period of 10 days or so (with a few flashbacks here and there). And what a tumultuous ten days they were in 1814. The British were advancing on Washington, and everywhere there was fear, distrust and temptation.

The main character of this book is Joyful Patrick Turner. He is a surgeon until he is forced to look for a new line of work due to the fact that his hand is blown off by a British cannon ball during the blockade. Joyful as a character has an intriguing past, having spent many years in China as a young man, and his ability to understand the Chinese way of business as well as to speak the language are very handy skills to have, as he tried to work his way up to being one of the most influential people in the world of New York trade, and if that influence comes to the detriment of his estranged cousins, then so be it.

Along the way Joyful rubs shoulders with many real life characters including the Astors, and some significant events such as the meeting of businessmen in Wall Street (the basis of the Stock Exchange) and the burning of Washington amongst others events.

If I was asked to provide a summary of the events in this books there is no way that you could think that such a variety of plot lines could possibly work, and yet it does. There is opium trading, pirates, love, lust, prostitution, bribery, kidnapping, betrayal, magnificent jewels, talk of secession, battles, blackbirders (people who capture blacks, who may or may not have the necessary documentation, and sell them off to slavers). Whew...there's a lot going on, but Swerling does manage to keep hold of all the various threads of storyline and bring it all to a surprising, if a little fantastical, conclusion.

I have really enjoyed each of the Swerling books that I have read. If I had to pick a favourite though, it would definitely be a toss up between City of Glory and this one.

Now, I need to wait for the next book in the series to come out. According to her website, Beverly Swerling is working on it now. I am looking forward to seeing what period of American history the author wants to show us next.