Archives

The Rest of the Story: Eric Liddell

Sep4

The late Paul Harvey had a feature on the radio called “The Rest of the Story” in which he would tell familiar stories of well-known people and events or commonplace tales of ordinary people–and then tell “the rest of the story”, the part that not many people know or the part that gives the true story an ironic twist. I’ve been reading a lot of unusual stories myself lately, and I decided to share a few of them with you here at Semicolon.

Olympic gold medalist Eric Liddell is featured in the movie Chariots of Fire. If you’ve never seen the movie, I highly recommend it.

In the movie and real life, Eric Liddell refused to run in a qualifying heat scheduled on Sunday because he believed in keeping the Sabbath holy. He had to withdraw from the 100 meter race, his best event. Liddell began to train for the 400 meter race instead, and he ran the race in the Olympics and won. Eric Liddell broke the existing Olympic and world records in the 400 meter race with a time of 47.6 seconds. After the Olympics and his graduation from Edinburgh University, Liddell continued to run in track and field events, but he always refused to compete on Sunday, citing his desire to please God above all else.

In 1925, Eric Liddell returned to China where he had been born and where his parents were missionaries. He served as a missionary there until 1941 when he was captured and interned by the Japanese who were invading China during World War II. It was there in the internment camp that “the rest of the story” of Eric Liddell’s allegiance to God’s principles above all else took place.

Peach Heaven by Yangsook Choi

Jul9

Picture Book Around the World: Reading Through Korea I’m working hard on my Picture Book Around the World sequel to Picture Book Preschool, my preschool read aloud curriculum for homeschooling your preschooler or kindergartner. This week at Semicolon, we’re going to be visiting Korea through the medium of a treasure trove of picture books featuring that country and its children.

The setting is Puchon, South Korea, 1976. Yangsook is day-dreaming about a peach garden in heaven–just like the calendar picture of children playing in a peach orchard that is posted above her desk. Puchon is famous for growing beautiful, juicy peaches that are sold all over Korea.

The voices of her grandma and her little brother come intruding into Yangsook’s daydream, telling her to come and look at the rain which has turned to hail. But it’s not hail—it’s raining peaches!

There were a couple of oddities in this story, which is actually based on a childhood memory of the author. First of all, I’ve never heard of peaches raining down from the sky, but I’m willing to suspend disbelief. But the other odd scene is when the the townsfolk bring the peaches back to the farmers’ orchards and tie them to the trees with yarn. Why? To console the farmers for the loss of most of their peach crop. I suppose it made a good visual image to tie the peaches to the trees, but it seems rather superfluous in practical terms.

Anyway, I doubt children will have the same questions that I did. Instead, they will most likely enjoy this quiet little story of a girl growing up in South Korea and an memorable episode in her childhood. The watercolor illustrations, which were done by the author, complement the story and its mood quite well.

The Twelve Little Cakes by Dominika Dery

Jul5

I have had this memoir on my TBR shelf for a long time, but I finally got the urge to go ahead and read it when Brown Bear Daughter left about a week ago to go back to Slovakia for her third summer mission trip there. Dominika Dery’s memoir of her childhood lived under Communist rule in a village on the outskirts of Prague, Czechoslovakia, obviously doesn’t take place in Slovakia, but rather in the Czech Republic. However, it’s as close as I can get right now. (Does anyone know a really good book, fiction or memoir, set in Slovakia?)

Dominika grew up in a loving home with her mother, a writer of technical reports, and her father, a former economist who is now a taxi-driver, and her much-older sister, who comes across mostly as a spoiled brat and a world-class flirt. Dominika herself seems to be somewhat spoiled, but not a brat. The parents are dissidents associated with the 1968 failed “revolution” called the Prague Spring, which ended when the Russians invaded to stop the reforms of Communism that were being instituted in Czechoslovakia. As a result of their complicity in the Prague Spring reforms, Dominika’s parents are consigned to low level jobs and constantly in danger of being denounced to the political authorities.

Dominika, born in 1975, slowly becomes aware over the course of her childhood of her parents’ political predicament, but she nevertheless remembers a mostly idyllic childhood enlivened by the resilient optimism of her father and the style and panache of her beautiful mother. Even when the family goes on vacation to Poland of all places and the car breaks down because some corrupt mechanic replaced the working engine with a defective one, Dominika and her parents manage to have a good and memorable holiday under ostensibly trying circumstances.

I think I’ll loan this book to Dancer Daughter(23) because of the Czech setting (she’s been to Slovakia a couple of times, too) and also because Dominika spends a lot of her childhood studying to become a dancer. The story of how she gets into a dance school that normally excludes the children of dissidents and only admits children whose parents have Communist Party connections is fascinating, and Dominika’s indomitable spirit is sure to charm the readers of her memoir.

The book ends in 1985 when Dominika was only ten years old. But it seems an appropriate place to stop. Dominika has been accepted to study at the State Conservatory in Prague. Her parents are still stuck in political limbo, but there is some stirring of hope for the future. Things are beginning to change, with the Solidarity movement in Poland and Mikhail Gorbachev‘s rise to power in the Soviet Union. In November-December 1989, The Velvet or Gentle Revolution restored democracy in Czechoslovakia. In 1993, Czechoslovakia became two separate nations, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

From an adult looking back at childhood point of view, Dominika Dery sees things this way:

“This was the country of little cakes and sausages. This is the memory of my childhood. Driving back home in our old, rusty Skoda; my father’s big hands steering us safely through the night; the soft touch of my mother’s hand on my head. This was the happiest time in my life. The time when we had no money, no choice and no chance.

It would take me another eighteen years to realize that what we had back then was as much as anyone on earth would ever need.

We had each other, and plenty of love in our hearts.”

Twelve Little Cakes by Dominika Dery was recommended by Kerry at Shelf Elf.

The Big Burn by Timothy Egan

Jun24

The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America by Timothy Egan.

I remember the story from history class of how FDR tried to pack the Supreme Court by creating new justices behind Congress’s back and of how John Adams tried to fill a bunch of vacant judgeships with his own appointees just before leaving office so that Jefferson wouldn’t fill them with his people. Teddy Roosevelt tried something similar, but with forests, and he got away with it—to the everlasting benefit of all Americans.

“In 1907, an amendment was tacked onto a spending bill, a bit of dynamite in a small package. The add-on took away the president’s authority to create new national forests in a huge part of the West without congressional approval. . . .

Roosevelt felt cornered. Not so with Pinchot. To the forester, the Senate amendment was no defeat; it was an opportunity–but only if they acted quickly. The president had a week to sign the bill, and it had to be signed because it kept the government in operation. Pinchot had an idea. Why not use the seven-day window to put as much land into the national forest system as possible? Just go full bore and do in a week’s time what they might normally do over the course of four years.

Roosevelt loved it. He asked the Forest Service to bring him maps–and hurry!–a carpet of cartography, every square mile in the area Heyburn was trying to take away. . .

At the end of the week, Roosevelt issued executive proclamations covering sixteen million acres of land in half a dozen states, bringing them into the fold of the national forest system. And then he signed the bill that prevented him or any other president from doing such a thing again.”

That was 1907, and although the National Forest Service had the land, it didn’t have the personnel and equipment and funding to take care of the land, to build ranger stations, and to watch for and fight fires, because Congress still wasn’t on board with Teddy’s little conservation mania. Speaker of the House Joe Cannon declared, “Not one cent for scenery!” And a lot of senators and representatives were in agreement with Cannon. Then, Teddy Roosevelt’s two terms as president were over, and he went off to Africa on safari and left President Taft, his hand-picked successor, in charge. But Taft wasn’t Teddy, although he promised to carry out TR’s conservation policies, and then came the Big Burn.

On August 20, 1910:

“‘All h–l broke loose,’ Bill Greeley reported. For the minister’s son this was as emphatic as he got. His rangers–those still in contact–were sending dispatches that made it sound as though virtually all of the forested domain of the United States government was under attack. They wrote of giant blowtorches flaming from treetop to treetop, of house-size fireballs rolling through canyons, pushed by winds of seventy miles an hour. They told of trees swelling, sweating hot sap, and then exploding; of horses dying in seconds; of small creeks boiling, full of dead trout, their white belies up; of bear cubs clinging to flaming trees, wailing like children.”

It was the worst forest fire anyone had ever seen, and the end result was over 100 people dead, about three million acres of forest burned to a crisp, and the National Forest Service with a mandate for the future: Prevent Forest Fires.

Aside from the availability of helicopters, better communications, and some more advanced firefighting methods, this nonfiction book about the worst wildfire in U.S. history sounds a lot like the newspaper articles and stories from the Colorado wildfires that are still raging and the fires that we read about every year in California. We still don’t know exactly how to manage forests and fires in forests.

Colorado State Trooper: “Forests didn’t used to grow to the point where you have these catastrophic fires. We would have a lot of little fires all the time. We’ve got to stop trying to preserve forests. I think we should work the forest. If we’ve got a 40,000-acre area burning because we have had a lot of beetle-killed trees over a decade, maybe should have done something during those years?”

Colorado State Senator: “We need to thin this dead stuff out. A timber industry can help keep the forest healthy.”

Americanforests.org: “For quite some time, the United States’ federal fire policy focused on suppressing all fires in national forests to protect timber resources and rural communities. However, decades of fire exclusion have resulted in unusually dense forests in many areas, actually increasing the risk of intense wildfires. As suppression proved to often be more damaging than beneficial, federal policy turned to more practical measures, such as prescribed burns and forest thinning. Even these, however, must be practiced carefully to avoid damage to the ecosystem by artificially providing a process that would occur naturally.”

They were saying some of the same sorts of things over a hundred years ago: We can’t let the forests burn because we need the timber. If we just let logging companies harvest the timber, there won’t be any fuel for big forest fires. If we allow forest fires, rural communities will be endangered. We have to save the forests. We have to use the forests.

The added element nowadays is the concern that both controlled and uncontrolled fires can add to the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and contribute to “climate change.” Or maybe climate change is contributing to insect infestation and dryer conditions which in turn cause more forest fires.

Yeah, it’s complicated, like everything else these days. Nevertheless, The Big Burn is a good book, and it features my favorite president, Teddy Roosevelt. If I didn’t learn how to manage forests and wildfires, I at least learned that wildfires in the forests of the United States are nothing new. And I learned the history of the National Forest Service, a bumpy start and a fine heritage.

Timothy Egan also wrote The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl, the book I passed out for World Book Night in April.

The Rosemary Tree by Elizabeth Goudge

Jun20

I have read very few authors with as much insight into the feelings and thought processes of men, women, and children as Elizabeth Goudge. The Rosemary Tree is remarkable in its treatment of characters who are all somewhat broken (as are we all), but who fall on a continuum from repentant to ineffectual to struggling to wise to completely evil. And the character who is represented as utterly irredeemable, because she doesn’t want to be forgiven or changed, might be the character you least suspect.

It all seems very true to life. (By the way that’s an awful cover, but the others I saw at Amazon weren’t any better. I don’t know why the people are wearing what looks like Elizabethan or Edwardian costumes. The story takes place in the twentieth century, after World War II.) The main characters in this little vignette of village life are:

John Wentworth, a bumbling and diffident country parson who sees himself as a weak man and a failure who can never get anything quite right.

“He took off his coat, rolled up his shirt-sleeves, lifted up to Almighty God the magnitude of his failure and the triviality of his task, and applied himself to the latter. The hot water warmed his cold hands and the pile of cleansed china grew satisfactorily on the draining-board. There was a pleasure in getting things clean. Small beauties slid one by one into his consciousness, quietly and unobtrusively, like growing light. The sinuous curves of Orlando the marmalade cat, washing himself on the window-sill, the comfortable sound of ash settling in the stove, a thrush singing somewhere, the scent of Daphne’s geraniums, the gold of the crocuses that were growing round the trunk of the apple tree outside the kitchen window.”

Others see him as Don Quixote, the Man of la Mancha.

Daphne Wentworth, John’s wife, is much more competent than her husband, but also full of pride and thwarted ambitions from her youth.

The couple have three children: Pat, who is like her mother, competent and intelligent and sharp, Margary, who is more like John, dreamy and vulnerable, and Winkle, who is the baby of the family, but wise with the innocence of childhood.

Harriet lives upstairs in the Wentworth parsonage, and she is wise with the wisdom of many years of experience, first as John’s nanny, then as the parsonage housekeeper, and now as a retired pray-er and watcher over the entire household.

“They all said they could not do without her. In the paradoxical nature of things if she could have believed them she would have been a much happier woman, but not the same woman whom they could not do without.”

Maria Wentworth, John’s great-aunt, lives in Belmaray Manor and keeps pigs.

Young Mary O’Hara, Irish and full of vitality, and Miss Giles, middle-aged, bitter, and full of frustrations, both teach school at the small private school that the Wentworth girls attend. Mary’s aunt, Mrs. Belling, “was a very sweet woman and had been a very beautiful one.” She is headmistress of the little school, where all three girls are quite unhappy, each in her own way.

Into this mix comes a stranger, Michael Stone, who is weighed down by many, many real failures and sins and who comes to Devonshire where the story takes place not so much for redemption as simply for a place to go, perhaps to hide from the world. Michael will find more than he’s looking for, and the other characters in this novel will change and grow as a result of Michael’s presence and the truth he brings into their lives.

Elizabeth Goudge really has written a lovely novel. Apparently, The Times criticized its “slight plot” and “sentimentally ecstatic” approach when the book was first published in 1956. I’ll admit the story is a bit short on action, but the descriptions of how and what people think and feel more than makes up for any deficiency in fictional exploits.

Sidenote/detour: While looking for more information about Elizabeth Goudge, I found this article about an Indian author, Indrani Aikath-Gyaltsen, who plagiarized from The Rosemary Tree in her 1993 Cranes’ Morning. In fact, aside from changing the setting to India, the names of the characters to Indian ones, and the religion to Hinduism, Ms. Aikath-Gyaltsen copied much of Goudge’s novel word-for-word. It took about a year for the plagiarism to be noticed and confirmed, and in the meantime Indrani Aikath-Gyaltsen died, probably committing suicide. Sad story.

I wonder what Elizabeth Goudge, who died in 1984, would have thought about it all?

Not to end this review of and homage to Ms. Goudge’s agreeable novel on such a sad note, I’ll leave you with one more quote:

“The way God squandered Himself had always hurt her; and annoyed her, too. The sky full of wings and only the shepherds awake. That golden voice speaking and only a few fishermen there to hear; and perhaps some of the words He spoke carried away on the wind or lost in the sound of the waves lapping against the side of the boat. A thousand blossoms shimmering over the orchard, each a world of wonder all to itself, and then the whole thing blown away on a south-west gale as though the delicate little worlds were of no value at all. Well, of all the spendthrifts, she would think, and then pull herself up. It was not for her to criticize the ways of Almighty God; if He liked to go to all that trouble over the snowflakes, millions and millions of them, their intricate patterns too small to be seen by human eyes, and melting as soon as made, that was His affair and not hers.”

I like the idea of God as a spendthrift, creating beauty for the sheer joy of it all whether there’s anyone there to perceive it or not. Isn’t there a poem based on that idea? Maybe Emily Dickinson?

Links and Thinks: June 5, 2013

Jun5

Great Summer Reading Suggestions from Breakpoint and The Chuck Colson Center.

Free June Desktop Wallpaper and Calendar from The HOmeschool Post.

Born on this day:

Federico Garcia Lorca, b.1898, d.1936. Spanish playwright and poet. He was actually executed by Nationalist forces during the Spanish Civil War.

Richard Scarry, b.1919, d.1994. Author of busy, busy children’s books set in Busytown and featuring characters such as Lowly Worm, Bananas Gorilla, Huckle Cat, Mr. Frumble, and others.

Allan Ahlberg b.1938. Author with his wife Jan of The Jolly Postman, The Jolly Pocket Postman, and The Jolly Christmas Postman. Ahlberg on children’s books: ” . . . just because a book is tiny and its readers are little doesn’t mean it can’t be perfect. On its own scale, it can be as good as Tolstoy or Jane Austen.”

Ken Follett, b.1949. Mr. Follett gained fame as a writer of political thrillers, and then turned to historical fiction with 1989’s epic novel The Pillars of the Earth. I read Pillars, but I wasn’t terribly impressed. He’s good at creating characters and setting, but the attitudes and cultural mores in the book sometimes felt anachronistic to me.

Beholding Bee by Kimberley Newton Fusco

May17

I reviewed Ms. Fusco’s book, The Wonder of Charlie Anne, a couple of years ago, and I enjoyed reading it. This novel, Beholding Bee, set during World War II in the northeastern U.S.(Ohio, Illinois), tells a good story, too. Bee is a feisty girl who learns over the course of the novel to stand up for herself and persevere—lessons we could all afford to learn and re-learn.

“When you have a diamond shining on your face, you have rules about things.

First you keep it hidden. There is a hose outside every place where we hook up because we need water to run our traveling show. Pauline and I keep a bucket and a sponge in the back of our hauling truck. Water from a hose is cold as cherry Popsicles, but if you let the bucket sit in the sun all day it heats up, and at night Pauline pours out her apple shampoo and we take turns washing our hair.

Pauline has a big towel and she wraps my hair and then combs it out and I don’t yell out much because she is mostly gentle. Then she braids my hair, and when it dries she lets it loose and it falls all soft in twists and curls and hides the diamond on my cheek. Because when you have a jewel on your face, some days you might not want to show everyone who feels like looking.”

Bee, an orphan, is forced to learn to depend on her own strength and imagination when the adults in her life, Pauline and Bobby, desert her. She has “two aunts”, Mrs. Swift and Mrs. Potter, wwho take her into their house and take care of her, but they’re very old. And no one else other than Bee can see them.

The idea of the two old ladies from the past that no one else can see is a little odd and even disconcerting. But it made the story more interesting and in a way more believable than it would have been if Bee was living just alone in an abandoned house.

I liked the lesson Bee learns about how unsatisfying revenge can be, and I liked the fact that Bee and her friends pray together for a friend’s father who is away in the war. None of the story is preachy or overtly Christian, but it felt good and grounded in Biblical principles. Bee learns the things she needs to learn from each of the adults in her life. From Pauline, she learns to read and do math, and about the stars and nature and all sorts of practical life lessons. Bobby teaches her to run and to spit. Her friend Ruth Ellen teaches her empathy, and Ruth Ellen’s mother serves as a surrogate mother and counselor to Bee. Her teacher, Miss Healy, teaches her that school can be a good, safe place, and other students teach Bee to recognize her won strengths and draw on her own inner resources.

Beholding Bee is just a good solid story, mostly realistic with a bit of fantasy thrown in for spice.

The Homecoming of Samuel Lake by Jenny Wingfield

Apr4

Ah, yes, complex, multi-layered, “faith-informed” fiction. I speeded through this book, recommended to me by the blogger at Thoughts of Joy, because I really, really loved the characters and wanted to know what would happen to each of them. So, let’s start with the characters, almost of whom could be described as “central characters” in the book:

Swan Lake, an eleven year old, rather precocious, and full of mischief.
Bienville and Noble, Swan’s older brothers.
Samuel Lake, Swan’s Methodist preacher daddy. Samuel is about to go through a crisis that will test his faith, his commitment to his life’s work , his marriage, and his sense of who he is.
Willadee Moses Lake, Swan’s mama. Willadee makes good biscuits, likes for her children to run free as much as possible, and loves Samuel Lake extravagantly.
Calla and John Moses, Willadee’s parents. Calla runs a general store out of the front of the house during the day, and John runs an all-night bar called “Never Closes” out of the back.
Toy Moses, Swan’s uncle. Toy likes hunting and fishing in the woods, and he doesn’t talk much. He lost a leg in the war, and the rumor is that he killed a man after he returned from the war.
Berniece Moses, Toy’s wife who thinks that she is in love with Samuel Lake.
Ras Ballenger, neighbor to the Moses family. Ras trains horses and terrifies his wife and children.
Blade Ballenger, Ras Ballenger’s oldest son and Swan’s new friend.

I wish I could give you a feel for this novel. That list sounds sort of prosaic and humdrum, but the book is anything but. Jenny Wingfield captured the culture of the south that I grew up in just perfectly. These are real people, and I enjoyed reading about them. Well, mostly I enjoyed. I must warn sensitive readers that there are violent deaths, more than one, in the novel, and there is a very difficult scene toward the end of the book that could trigger emotional distress in some readers.

That said, I think the violence and abuse in the novel were described in a tasteful manner while not minimizing the horror of what happens to several of the characters. I also thought Samuel Lake’s perplexities and inner confusion were handled quite well. Lake is a man with a deep faith in God, and that faith isn’t ridiculed as it could easily have been. Nor is Lake’s faith cheapened by making it facile and shallow. He has to struggle with some very difficult questions, and in the end (which some people didn’t like) the answers God gives Samuel Lake are satisfying but not really complete. It’s a realistic ending, and one one that I did like.

More reviews:
USA Today: “But it’s Wingfield’s ability to set the stage, to transport her readers back to rural Arkansas of the 1950s, that takes this novel to another level.”
Book Snob: “The Homecoming of Samuel Lake will break your heart, make you leap for joy, and bring tears to your eyes. You will fall in love with the Lake and Moses family and become a believer in miracles.”
Literary Hoarders: “There are parts of this novel that are difficult. You’ll want to holler “watch out!” at critical moments. You’ll want to hold the hurt, and will want to save the helpless. Luckily, you’ll have Swan on your side. She’s eleven years old, and you will be eternally grateful that she has no patience for injustice.”

Edith Schaeffer, 1914-2013

Mar30

Edith Schaeffer, wife of theologian and Christian apologist Francis Schaeffer, and an author and teacher in her own right, died today and went to be with the Lord.

I knew her through her books, some of which were and are my favorites. I’ve read and enjoyed the ones in boldface.

1969. L’Abri.
1971. The Hidden Art of Homemaking: Creative Ideas for Enriching Everyday Life.
1973. Everybody Can Know.
1978. Affliction.
1975. Christianity is Jewish.
1975. What is a Family?
1977. A Way of Seeing.
1981. The Tapestry: the life and times of Francis and Edith Schaeffer.
1983. Common Sense Christian Living.
1983. Lifelines: God’s Framework for Christian Living.
1986. Forever Music.
1988. With Love, Edith: the L’Abri family letters 1948-1960.
1989. Dear Family: the L’Abri family letters 1961-1986.
1992. The Life of Prayer.
1994. A Celebration of Marriage: Hopes and Realities.
1994. 10 Things Parents Must Teach Their Children (And Learn for Themselves)
1998. Mei Fuh: Memories from China.
2000. A Celebration of Children.

I need to look for the rest of these books.

“God does not promise to treat each of his children the same in this life. God does not say that each one of his children will have the same pattern of living or follow the same plan. God is a God of diversity. God can make trees—but among the trees are hundreds of kinds of trees. God can make apples trees, but among the apples on that tree no two look identically alike. God is able to make snowflakes, and make each snowflake differently. God has a different plan for each of his children—but it all fits together.” Everybody Can Know: Family Devotions from the Gospel of Luke by Francis and Edith Schaeffer

“Don’t be fearful about the journey ahead; don’t worry where you are going or how you are going to get there. If you believe in the first person of the Trinity, God the Father, also believe in the Second Person of the Trinity, the One who came as the Light of the World, not only to die for people, but to light the way… This one, Jesus Christ, is Himself the Light and will guide your footsteps along the way.” ~Edith Schaeffer

Tim Challies on the life and influence of Edith Schaeffer.
Frank Schaeffer: Good-bye, Mom.
Brenda at Coffee, Tea, Books and Me eulogizes Mrs. Schaeffer.

No Wind of Blame by Georgette Heyer

Mar20

I’m definitely a fan of Golden Age detective fiction—Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Rex Stout, Josephine Tey—but I’ve read all the books I can find by those authors. And I’ve tried a few others that are supposed to belong to that particular club, Margery Allingham and John Dickson Carr in particular, and I just didn’t care for them. So, Georgette Heyer’s mysteries have that Christie/Golden Age flavor, and I’m pleased to find another writer from that era that I can recommend and enjoy myself.

No Wind of Blame has lovely, interesting characters, somewhat stereotypical but still memorable, and that’s what makes the book. There’s a fortune hunting Russian (or perhaps Georgian) prince with an impossibly long name, a histrionic and very wealthy Aunt Ermyntrude, a dogsbody poor relation with a pleasant personality and a pretty face, a very pretty daughter who tries on a new persona every time she descends the stairs, a smarmy neighbor who’s involved in some dubious business deals, and a police inspector with a refreshingly normal, down-to-earth take on the whole case. The case itself, a murder of course, is not the focus of the novel, and the solution is beyond my understanding and limited mechanical abilities. However, I didn’t care that I didn’t understand exactly how the murderer did it because I enjoyed the company, the dialogue, and the interactions between the characters so much.

I’ve read one or two of Ms. Heyer’s Regency romances, and although the wit and good characterization are still there, I don’t much like straight romance novels. An element of romance is good, but I prefer my love stories mixed up with something else, perhaps a good mystery. I plan to look for more of Ms Heyer’s mystery novels and see if they’re all as good as No Wind of Blame.

A list of Georgette Heyer’s “thrillers” or detective novels:

Footsteps in the Dark (1932)
Why Shoot a Butler? (1933)
The Unfinished Clue (1934)
Death in the Stocks (1935)
Behold, Here’s Poison (1936)
They Found Him Dead (1937)
A Blunt Instrument (1938)
No Wind of Blame (1939)
Envious Casca (1941)
Penhallow (1942)
Duplicate Death (1951)
Detection Unlimited (1953)

For a while Ms. Heyer published one thriller and one romance every year. However, her British publisher and her American publisher both disliked the book Penhallow, published in 1942, and she mostly stuck to romances with some historical fiction after that.