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Texas Tuesday: Apparent Danger by David R. Stokes

Apr20

Apparent Danger: The Pastor of America’s First Megachurch and the Texas Murder Trial of the Decade in the 1920’s by David R. Stokes.

I get a lot of emails from publicists pitching books that I might want to review here on the blog. Mostly, I don’t respond because a) most of the books just don’t sound that interesting to me, and b) I don’t like being pressured to read a book and write a review on someone else’s time schedule. However, when I received an email about Apparent Danger, I took the bait because I am interested in Texas history, particularly Southern Baptist history in Texas, and the book was about the notorious J. Frank Norris, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Fort Worth from 1909 until Norris’s death in 1952.

What I knew about Norris before I read the book: He was the pastor of FBC, Fort Worth. He got thrown out of or left the Southern Baptist Convention with his church. He was a real, live “fundamentalist.” He was involved in some kind of scandal or something?

What I learned from the book: J. Frank Norris was much more than just a run-of-the-mill pastor of a large church. He was a celebrity with aspirations to become the religious and political leader of the fundamentalist movement after the death of orator and politician William Jennings Bryan. The “scandal” I vaguely associated with Norris was really more than one scandal, but the biggest one was that he shot and killed an unarmed man in his church office —and was subsequently indicted and tried for first-degree murder. (And we think we have outrageous behavior among the clergy nowadays!) Of course, the book goes into much more detail about Norris, the murder, the trial, Norris’s relationships with Fort Worth’s finest, almost everything you’d ever want to know about Fort Worth and its politics and culture in 1926.

And I ate up every word. The picture that Mr. Stokes paints of this larger-than-life preacher and his strange reaction to criticism and controversy is fascinating. I kept trying to figure out what made J. Frank Norris tick and why so many people were so devoted to him and to his church for so long. That I never completely understood or got answers to those questions was not the fault of the author so much as the subject. Pastor J. Frank Norris didn’t seem to want to be understood so much as feared and followed and obeyed and admired. He was virulently anti-Catholic, associated with the Ku Klux Klan if not a member, and yet he spent a lot of time visiting in the homes of his six thousand church members and and seemed to see himself as a crusader against the evils of alcohol, gambling, and immorality in general. But he didn’t see anything immoral or even questionable about his shooting of Mr. D.E. Chipps in cold blood in the church building on July 17, 1926.

I thought the book, again, was wonderful in its detailed and comprehensive view of the time period and of the particular circumstances of Chipp’s death and the subsequent trial of J. Frank Norris. At the same time I very much wanted to know who Norris was and why he did what he did. Did he really believe what he preached? Was he a charlatan out to make a buck and enjoy his power over the masses? Was he ever sorry for the events of July 17th? What did his children think of him? Or his grandchildren? If he didn’t really believe the Bible, how did he sustain such a ministry for a lifetime? If he did, how did he square his actions with Jesus’s commands to practice peace and humility and lovingkindness? How could a Christian man ever feel justified in killing another human being, even in self-defense? (Oddly enough, George W. Truett, pastor of FBC, Dallas, during the same time that Norris was in Fort Worth, accidentally shot and killed a friend in a hunting accident, and it nearly ended his ministry. Truett was deeply depressed by the accident and only recovered after much prayer and encouragement from his congregation and family.)

I found this article, A Tale of Two Preachers, by author David Stokes linked at his website, and it added some to the story. But still I came away from the book wishing I knew more about this man, Doctor J. Frank Norris. (He received an honorary doctorate from Simmons College, as my alma mater, Hardin-Simmons University, was called back in those days.) How could he continue on for twenty-five more years in the ministry at the same church without ever revealing his heart? Did he have a heart? Did he preach the gospel, or just so much legalistic, racist, anti-Catholic nonsense? Was it all so mixed-up that you couldn’t sort it out? What really sustained Norris, besides Kipling’s poem If, a poem he had posted on his study wall and could quote by heart?

Apparent Danger is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of fundamentalist Christianity, of Fort Worth, of Texas Baptists, or of religion in the 1920’s. It reads like a fresh news story and seems to be well-researched and sourced without having the story itself get bogged down in footnotes and minutia. Recommended history.

Janice Meredith by Paul Leiscester Ford

Feb15

OK, so older is not always better. The bestsellers of today are sometimes full of gratuitous sex and violence, without much depth of character and devoid of significant meaning.

Janice Meredith, one of the ten best selling novels of 1900, didn’t have any sex, other than a few stolen kisses, and the violence of the American Revolution was described somewhat obliquely through the eyes and experiences of the noncombatants, Janice and her mother. For example:

“Only with death did the people forget the enormities of those few months, when Cornwallis’s army cut a double swath from tide water almost to the mountains, and Tarleton’s and Simcoe’s cavalry rode whither they pleased; and the hatred of the British and the fear of their own slaves outlasted even the passing away of the generation which had suffered.”

Nevertheless, the character development in Janice Meredith is poor, and by today’s standards, the book could have been edited down from 503 pages to about half that. Janice herself begins the novel as a giddy teenager reading romance novels and indulging in romantic fantasies, and she ends the novel, after having bounced from one suitor to the next and back over a dozen times, indulging in her new romantic fantasy of marriage to dashing young officer with her father’s reluctant permission.

The characters of the Revolution –George Washington, Cornwallis, General Gates, General Lee, and others—appear with as much historical accuracy as can be expected in a romance novel. The battles and the deprivations that the people experience as the war drags on seem real, and if the language is little flowery, the descriptions are at least based on fact.

The main problem with the novel was that I never really liked wishy-washy little Miss Meredith. She never knew what she wanted. SHe ran away with one man and was fetched back by her parents. She promised herself in marriage to at least four different men over the course of the novel in return for their help to her and her family as they attempted to navigate the vicissitudes of war. Janice’s father promised her to several different men, usually the same ones Janice affianced, but at differing times. It made for several confusing reversals of plot, and Janice ended up seeming fickle and willing to give herself in marriage to the highest bidder.

If all of the bestsellers of 1900 are like this one, I feel sure that:

a) most of the books on the bestseller list must have been purchased and read by women. I can’t imagine any man reading through 500 pages of this.
b) surely Dickens’ and Thackeray’s heroines were a relief to the ladies of 1900 after reading about Miss Janice. At least Dora (David Copperfield) knows she’s found a good man in David, and Becky Sharp (Vanity Fair) could have transplanted herself to the New World and had a whopping adventure in the time it took Janice to dither around, flirt with half the British army, and then end up where she began with a penniless and somewhat immature American fiance.

Footnote: I looked up the author, Paul Leicester Ford, and his life, or more particularly his death, would make a rather lurid novel. (In fact this NY TImes article about Ford’s death reads like a novel. Ah, the good old days of yellow journalism!) Ford wrote biographies as well as novels, and his subjects were several of the founding fathers, including Washington. So I’m guessing his facts and characterizations are, as I said, quite accurate.

Texas Tuesday: Flygirl by Sherri L. Smith

Jan26

What an inspiring and absorbing book! Ms. Smith writes about Ida Mae Jones, a self-identified “colored girl” who is light-skinned enough to pass for white. The book begins in late 1941, and of course, that means Pearl Harbor, and World War II. Ida Mae learned to fly airplanes from her daddy, who was a crop duster. So when she hears that the U.S. Army has formed a group called the WASPs, Women Airforce Service Pilots, Ida Mae Jones is determined to sign up, even though she lives in Louisiana and the training is to take place in Sweetwater, Texas, two places where the very idea of a young black woman serving alongside white women is sure to be anathema. So in order to get into the WASP’s, Ida Mae basically pretends to be white.

A lot of the book is about the training and the dangers these pioneering women pilots faced as they bravely gave themselves and their abilities to the war effort. I don’t know much about flying airplanes, so although I thought the parts of the book that described the training and the women’s heroics were wonderfully written, I don’t know how accurate they were. I assume Ms. Smith did her research since the book Flygirl started out as a master’s thesis.

Another aspect of the book is the discussion and treatment of race and skin color. I thought this was fascinating, especially in light of recent discussions in the kidlitosphere. What does it mean to be black or to be a person of color? How do POC themselves see the variations in skin color? Is it wrong to pretend to be white and leave your darker-skinned family and friends behind? Even for a good cause?

One of the scenes in the book reminded me of Esther in particular. Ida Mae, like Esther has hidden her heritage and her connection with her people, but she is asked by her mother to go to the military authorities and ask for help in finding her brother who is MIA. Ida Mae knows that if she asks about her brother, she may be discovered and sent home. Her story doesn’t exactly parallel Esther’s, but it is similar. And Ida Mae shows similar courage.

All the issues, discrimination against women and against people of color, the varied reasons that people have for volunteering to fight in a war, misunderstandings and rifts between family members and friends, the cost of following one’s dreams, are explored with both sensitivity and humor. I would recommend this book to all young women who are in the middle of deciding who they are and what they want to be. And as an older woman, I enjoyed reading about Ida Mae Jones and her adventures. I wanted her to be able to “have it all,” even as I knew that the time and place where the story was set wouldn’t allow for a completely happy ending.

Reading in Color: “Flygirl made me want to go out and learn how to fly an airplane (or at least fly in one so that I can sit in the front and observe the pilot). The way the characters describe their love of flying makes you want to try it.”

One Librarian’s Book Reviews: “The setting is absolutely perfect, with the details from the time period completely enhancing the whole feel of the book. I absolutely felt like every part of it seemed like it could be true.”

Liz at the YALSA blog: Flygirl examines universal questions of identity, family, and growing up, with flying being both what Ida Mae wants to do, as well as working as a metaphor for a young woman trying to escape the limitations her country places on her because of her race and her sex.

Interview with Sherri L. Smith at the YaYaYa’s

What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell

Jan11

I just got around to reading Ms. Blundell’s National Book Award-winning young adult novel this weekend. If it wasn’t a 2008 publication, I would add it to my list of Best YA Books of 2009. It was nominated for the 2009 Cybils in the YA Fiction category, probably because it was published toward the end of 2008. And I’m not second guessing the panelists, but there must be some extra-fine books on the finalist list to have beaten this one out.

The setting and atmosphere reminded me of Mad Men and The Great Gatsby, although it takes place about a year after the end of World War II, in between Jay Gatsby’s follies (1922) and Don Draper’s escapades (1960’s). The setting and characters feel historically authentic, kind of film noir, with lots of cigarettes and Scotch and red lipstick and dancing and full skirts like those in White Christmas. I could imagine Alfred Hitchcock making a movie of this book, but I don’t know of anyone nowadays who could do it with the right touch.

The story itself is Hitchcock-ish, with “adultery, blackmail, and possible homicide,” very much dependent on the reader’s point of view, with a few surprising twists and turns along the way. I can imagine a very young Grace Kelly playing the lead part, a fifteen year old named Evie who has a crush on a twenty-three year old ex-GI named Peter (Jimmy Stewart or Cary Grant?). There are a lot of scenes in which it’s obvious that something else is going on underneath the surface of the dialog, but it’s not so obvious just what that something else is. Hitchcock would have had a blast with camera angles and the characters’ complicated interactions.

The book is quite well-written. Evie, the narrator, has a voice that is vintage 1940’s and typical fifteen year old girl, going on forty, anxious to grow up and unsure of how. I chose a few lines to whet your appetite, almost at random:

“Now I recognized that other woman, the one I’d seen angry and turning her face away. All that pizzazz and underneath it was a whole lot of sad.”

“Ugly. Once in the schoolyard Herbie Connell threw a rock and it hit me in the back. This felt like that, ugly hitting me in the back. . . . I wanted to put my hands over my ears. I was gulping my tears into my mouth. I didn’t want to hear any more ugly tonight. So I ran.”

“I looked like a doll, a dish. The image in the mirror—it wasn’t me. If I had the clothes and the walk, I could make up a whole new person. I wasn’t who I used to be, anyway. A different me would do the thing I had to do today. The dish would do it.”

What I Saw and How I Lied is well worth your reading time as a coming-of-age novel, or a psychological thriller, or a study in family dynamics, or just a thoughtful, insight-filled romance. I found it intriguing, hard to put down, and fun to try to figure out.

Other bloggers said:

Bookshelves of Doom: “Evie Spooner’s story is a coming-of-age story. Like a lot of coming-of-age stories, there is a tragedy. Like a lot of coming-of-age stories, there is a first love. Like a lot of coming-of-age stories, our heroine learns that the adults in her life are not the shining stars she has always believed them to be. There are lies, there is betrayal, there is injustice, and Evie sees it all. Heck, as the title suggests, she participates in some of it.”

The Reading Zone: “I hate to summarize the book, because Judy Blundell has woven an intricate story, full of dark twists and turns down paths you can’t even imagine. There is murder, intrigue, a fascinating backdrop of World War II, racism, classism, and a classic (but dark) coming-of-age story. To summarize more would give away too much of the plot and I would hate to ruin it for anyone.”

The YA YA YA’S: “Blundell did an amazing job creating a moody, atmospheric, noirish novel. You can practically see the action unfurling before your eyes, complete with cigarette smoke wafting toward the ceiling. The atmosphere is so evocative that it elevates the quality of the book.”

At 5 Minutes for Books they’re inviting you to share a review that you read at anyone’s recommendation. I read What I Saw and How I Lied because of the many, many reviews I saw in the Kidlitosphere and because it won a National Book Award.

The Lady Vanishes

Dec30

We watched a very old (1938) Alfred Hitchcock feature tonight, The Lady Vanishes. I ‘d say Mr. Hitchcock was still honing his craft when he made this particular movie, but it did have its moments.

Best line of the movie, delivered by a British cricket fan during the final shoot-out: “You know, I’m half-inclined to believe that there’s a rational explanation behind all this.”

The ending is a bit lame, but glimpses of later Hitchcock genius shine through anyway.

Christmas at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, 1903

Dec17

Western Union telegram, December 17, 1903, sent to Bishop Milton Wright in Ohio:

Success four flights thursday morning
all against twenty one mile wind started from Level with engine power alone
average speed through air thirty one miles
longest 57 seconds
inform Press
home Christmas.
Orevelle Wright

“This historic telegram was sent from the Kitty Hawk weather station to the weather station at Norfolk, Virginia, then relayed by telephone to the local Western Union office. During transmission, two errors were made: 59 seconds became 57 seconds, and Orville’s name was misspelled.”
~From The Wright Brothers: How They Invented the Airplane by Russell Freedman.

Road to Tater Hill by Edith M. Hemingway

Dec13

Road to Tater Hill is the story of Annabel and the death of her baby sister Mary Kate. The story reminded me of Love, Aubrey, another Middle Grade Fiction Cybils nominee in which a mother grieves so deeply for her lost child that she neglects the child she has left alive. Also in both books the child who is neglected and also grieving finds a new friend to help her cope with her loss and her feeling of not being enough for her mother. In yet another similarity, Aubrey and Annabel both live with a grandmother who takes care of them while their mothers are recovering from their depression. (You can read Betsy-Bee’s and my take on Love, Aubrey here.)

Road to Tater Hill is also a story that extols the joy and comfort of a reading life. Annabel is a reader, and her new friend, Miss Eliza, also finds strength and consolation in books. In fact, just like in another of this year’s middle grade fiction books, When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead (Semicolon review here). the protagonist finds particular solace in reading one of my favorite books, Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time.

“I dragged out the reading of A Wrinkle in Time. Whenever I really liked a book, I couldn’t stop reading, but this time I didn’t want it to end. I read each page twice, sometimes three times, before turning it. I felt like I knew the characters, and I wanted to keep them as my friends. Once I finished the book, they would be gone.”

I enjoyed the way Annabel and her friend swapped books and reading recommendations. Miss Eliza introduces Annabel to my favorite poem, Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe. Annabel shares her copy of A Wrinkle in Time with Miss Eliza. Reading friends are some of the best friends of all, aren’t they?

The Road to Tater Hill takes place in North Carolina in 1963. The novel is Ms. Hemingway’s first solo book. (She co-wrote a couple of other novels.) If the setting or the subject appeal to you, it’s worth a look. I like the photograph of an actual, whole girl on the cover of the book, by the way.

Do You Know What Today Is?

Dec7

Every year on this date, my mom would ask me, “Do you know what today is?”

“Christmas? Almost Christmas? The beginning of Christmas?”



I eventually learned that December 7th has nothing to do with Christmas. Go here for an article by Maggie Hogan on commemorating this “date which will live in infamy” in your homeschool.

The book Early Sunday Morning: The Pearl Harbor Diary of Amber Billows, Hawaii, 1941 by Barry Denenberg is one of the Dear America series from Scholastic. Go here for more information on the book and some activities to accompany it.

Other books for children and young adults:
Air Raid–Pearl Harbor!: The Story of December 7, 1941 by Theodore Taylor.

A Boy at War: A Novel of Pearl Harbor by Harry Mazer. Interview at Cynsations with author Harry Mazer.

Eyes of the Emperor by Graham Salibury. A Japanese-American boy in Hawaii, Eddy Okubo, experiences the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, lies about his age, and joins the Army. Because of his ethnic background, Eddy is given a special assignment that tests his commitment, patriotism, and endurance.

World War II for Kids: A History with 21 Activities by Richard Panchyk.

Clouds Over Mountains by Matt Joseph. Reviewed by The Sleepy Reader.

Naval History and Heritage Command website on the story of Pearl Harbor.

Christmas in North Platte, Nebraska, 1941

Dec7

“The whole effort started by mistake. Several days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, people in North Platte, Nebraska heard that their own Company D of the Nebraska National Guard would be passing through town on its way from an Arkansas training camp to the West Coast. A crowd gathered at the Union Pacific train station to greet the boys with cookies, candy, and small gifts. When the train arrived, it turned out it was transporting a Company D from Kansas, not Nebraska. After a moment of disappointment, someone in the crowd asked, ‘Well, what are we waiting for?’ And they began handing their gifts to the war-bound soldiers.
The next day Miss Rae Wilson wrote the North Platte Daily Bulletin to suggest that the town open a canteen to greet all troop trains stopping there. ‘Let’s do something and do it in a hurry!’ she wrote.
Beginning on Christmas Day 1941 and continuing through World War II, the town offered itself as the North Platte Canteen. For 365 days a year volunteers from the remote community of 12,000 and surrounding hamlets provided hot coffee, doughnuts, sandwiches, and encouragement for young soldiers passing through. Hundreds of families, churches, schools, businesses, and clubs pitched in to help raise money, buy supplies, and make food. They greeted every soldier on every train with gifts and good wishes. By April 1, 194 its last day, the North Platte Canteen had served more than 6 million GI’s.”
Taken from The American Patriot’s Almanac, compiled by William J. Bennett and John T.E. Cribb. Semicolon review here.

What small act of kindness or charity is God asking you to do today? Do it. Don’t delay or find excuses; just do it. Who knows how God may multiply your small effort?