Archives

The Eldest Son by Barbara Willard

Apr24

The Eldest Son is the third book in Barbara Willard’s Mantlemass Chronicles series. In the two first books of the series, The Lark and the Laurel and A Sprig of Broom, the two families, whose lives become intertwined by marriage and by incident in the books, are founded and begin their multi-generational saga. These families, the Mallorys and the Medleys have a family secret that is passed down from generation to generation. And there are family traits, talents, and curses that are also inherited, sometimes twisted, combined and re-combined to display themselves in new and interesting ways.

The Eldest Son focuses on the family of Master Medley, the owner and patriarch of Ghylls Hatch, a horse breeding farm near Mantlemass Manor in Sussex. The book takes place in and around Ashdown Forest, which coincidentally is also the setting of A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the Pooh. Also near Ashdown Forest is the castle where Henry VIII courted Anne Boleyn, but although The Eldest Son is set in 1534, about the time that Henry VIII was disrupting his household, the church, and the whole of England for the sake of a son, Anne Boleyn doesn’t come into the story. The ripple-effects of Henry VIII’s feud with the Catholic Church do work their way into the story, though.

Master Medley’s eldest son is Harry, who receives the nickname “young falcon” from his mother, daughter to the Mallory family of Mantlemass Manor. “For . . . you do ever hover above what you most desire. And though you might see it to be wrong, and know it to be so, and know you must wait to take it, yet you will have it–and like the falcon, swoop at last, and carry it away.” In short, Harry is a stubborn man with strong ideas and desires. And unlike his younger brother Piers, Harry does not wish to be a breeder of horses like his father. Instead, Harry is drawn to the new and exciting work of the iron foundries that are becoming the mainstay of the area’s economy in Tudor England.

The Lark and the Laurel was a book about marriage, what it means and what it can become, both for good and for evil. The Eldest Son is a book about the relationship between father and son and about the bond between brothers. It also features a conflict between a man’s vocation and his devotion to family and place. Harry does not love horses as his brother Piers does, nor is Harry content to follow the family business in spite of his own inclinations, as the youngest of the three brothers Richard seems destined to do. Harry’s falcon-like stubbornness and focus are both his strength and his weakness as he works throughout the story to become his own man and yet be responsible to his family.

These books remind me of the Poldark saga series of novels by Winston Graham. Both series chronicle the lives and fortunes of families in rural England, far from the centers of power in London and in the coastal port cities. Sussex and Ashdown Forest are only about thirty miles south of London, but in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when travel was by foot or by horse, it might as well have been a hundred miles away or more. Similarly, Cornwall, where the Poldark novels of the eighteenth century are set, is in the far south of England, isolated from the seat of governmental and economic power in England, but affected by the decisions made in those places nonetheless. As history swirls about these families, they both influence and are influenced by the times that they live in and the changes that are taking place in their respective centuries.

I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the books in the Mantlemass Chronicles:

The Sprig of Broom (1485)
The Lark and the Laurel (1485)
The Eldest Son (1534)
A Cold Wind Blowing (1536)
The Iron Lily (1557)
A Flight of Swans (1588)
Harrow and Harvest (1642)

These books take us through English history from the Battle of Bosworth, to the reign of the Tudor kings, to Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries, to the Spanish Armada, to another English civil war between Cromwell’s Roundheads and the King’s Royalists or Cavaliers. During all these great events the families in and around the manor house Mantlemass—-Mallorys, Medleys, Plashets, and Hollands–-pursue their own ends and keep their own secrets. From reading the synopses of these other novels in the series, I can see that marriage and romance and family secrets and loyalty and independence continue to be themes that Ms. Willard explores in her books. I’m going to enjoy exploring with her and her characters.

This book is an example of the kind of young adult literature I wish were being written and published nowadays. It’s exciting, with full and subtle characterization, and respectful to young adult readers who really can appreciate something more than vampires and dystopias and love triangles. By the way, I think these novels would make a really good historical mini-series, like Poldark, if anyone has the ear of a good producer who is interested in making the next big PBS or BBC hit series.

The Namesake by Cyril Walter Hodges

Mar18

Alfred the Great (in this book) at Stonehenge: “I like to come here, because among these stones I know that I am standing where other men like me have stood and thought the same thoughts as I, a thousand years before I was born, and where others like me will stand likewise after I am dead. This place is like Memory itself, turned to stone, and Memory was given to us by God to make us different from the animals. . . . Every man is a part of the bridge between the past and the future. Whatever helps him feel this more strongly is good. By feeling this, God gives us to know for sure that we are not beasts and do not die as the beasts die.”

I watched the BBC/Netflix television series, The Last Kingdom, based on Bernard Cornwell’s The Saxon Stories series of novels. I haven’t read Cornwell’s novels, and I don’t really recommend The Last Kingdom, although it was enthralling. It was much too violent and had too much sexual content for my tastes. Nevertheless, aside from the sex, the story was probably true to the times. It was a violent and bloody time in ye olde Wessex.

Anyway, the TV series inspired me to read more about Alfred, and a bit of fiction to fill in the gaps in the heroic saga between battles and kingly decrees, is in order. In The Namesake, Alfred is just beginning his reign in Wessex and just beginning his long fight to unite England and drive out the invading Danes.

The title refers to the narrator of most of the story, a young boy who has lost one of his legs in a Danish incursion and whose name happens to be Alfred, just like the king. This happy coincidence, along with a rather mystical vision that that the boy has, both serve to form a connection between peasant and king that lasts through battles and sickness and captivity among the Danes and eventually ends in the boy’s becoming a scribe to King Alfred.

The story is not as fast-paced as modern readers might be accustomed to, but it does have a lot of battles and exciting adventures. Fans of the books of G.A. Henty, when they have exhausted that author’s copious number of novels, would probably enjoy this story about a boy in the time of Alfred the Great of Wessex. (Did Henty write about Alfred the Great in any of his novels?) There is a sequel to The Namesake, called The Marsh King, which I would like to read. I assume the title refers to Alfred’s time in exile, a time spent hiding from the Danes in the marshes of Somerset.

Author and illustrator C. Walter Hodges was born on this date, March 18th, in 1909. In addition to this book about King Alfred the Great, Mr. Hodges illustrated three of the Landmark history series books: The Flight and Adventures of Charles II, Queen Elizabeth and the Spanish Armada, and Will Shakespeare and the Globe Theater. According to the author bio in my copy of The Namesake, Mr. Hodges once said that he wished to “continue to the end of his life in the peaceful occupation of an illustrator.” Instead, he became an author as well as an illustrator, and readers are well-served by his decision to do so.

Baker’s Dozen: Best Fiction I Read in 2018

Jan8

This list is a mixture of adult and children’s fiction that I read in 2018 (minus the 2018 middle grade fiction that I wrote about in two other posts). But a good children’s book is usually also a good book for adults, too.

Brendon Chase by B.B. Three brothers run away from home and hide for more than six months in a nearby woods, living off the land, and having adventures. Amazing, in the same vein as Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons.

This Dear-Bought Land by Jean Lee Latham. Historical fiction about Captain John Smith and the settlement of Jamestown.

The Axe (The Master of Hestviken, #1) by Sigrid Undset. Also by the same author, Kristin Lavransdatter. Undset is quite insightful about human nature and family and marriage dynamics, and because she inserts her insights into fiction set in medieval Scandinavia, the “lessons” are subtle and more easily internalized.

The Distant Land of My Father by Bo Caldwell. Also by the same author and highly recommended, City of Tranquil Light.

The Stranger from the Sea (Poldark, #8) by Winston Graham. The series goes downhill from this one, but I still enjoyed finishing all of the books in Graham’s Poldark saga.

Little Britches (Father and I Were Ranchers) by Ralph Moody. The entire series by Ralph Moody about his boyhood and young adulthood adventures is so good. Read them all.

Pigeon Post (Swallows and Amazons, #6) by Arthur Ransome. More Swallows and Amazons.

Coot Club (Swallows and Amazons, #5) by Arthur Ransome. No Swallows. No Amazons. But good fun, nevertheless.

Winter Holiday (Swallows and Amazons, #4) by Arthur Ransome.

Lincoln’s Dreams by Connie Willis. A very odd fantastical look at the interaction between past and present.

The Edge of Time by Louella Grace Erdman. I would definitely like to read more of Ms.Erdman’s writing this year, western-ish, mostly set in north Texas, but slowly unfolding and with the emphasis on characters rather than plot.

The Day the Cowboys Quit by Elmer Kelton. This one would pair well with The Edge of Time. It’s based on a real cowboy strike that took place in north Texas in 1883. So the time period and the setting are quite similar to Ms. Erdman’s book. The issues of farmers versus cowmen and settlement of a wild and lonely country are similar, too.

At Point Blank: A Suspense Novel by Virginia Stem Owen. Congregation, the sequel to this mystery series set in Texas near Houston, is good, too. I’m looking forward to reading the third book in the series in 2019.

This Dear-Bought Land by Jean Latham

Aug23

“This dear bought land with so much blood and cost, hath only made some few rich, and all the rest losers.” ~John Smith, Virginia Colony, 1624

In 1607 fifteen year old Davy Warren joins the sailors “before the mast” as the expedition sails to found a colony in Virginia. As Davy’s father says, Davy’s participation in the expedition is inevitable since “every ship that ever sailed for the glory of England has carried a Warren.”

However, when young David meets the bold and bellowing Captain John Smith, and when Davy finds out what a sailor’s life is really like, he has a choice: grow up and face danger and hardship like a man or give up and go home. In fact, the choice presents itself over and over again as the founding of Jamestown becomes an exercise in survival punctuated by Indian attacks, starvation, disease, and violence and thievery among the settlers themselves. David goes back and forth from hero-worship to hatred for the man who manages, by hook or by crook, to hold the colony together, Captain John Smith.

John Smith was an enigmatic character: was he a born leader or a blustering liar? Or both? Many of the stories that he wrote down about his own life seem a little too big and heroic to be true, but some of those seemingly inflated stories turn out to have been very little, if at all, embellished. As a young man, John Smith was a mercenary, captured by the Ottoman Turks, sold into slavery, and somehow escaped. He became a leader among the Jamestown settlers who trusted him enough to elect him “president” of the colony in 1608. Smith did require all of the settlers, even the gentlemen, to work, saying “He that will not work, shall not eat.”

This work of historical fiction by Newbery award winning author Jean Latham takes a charitable and admiring view of Captain John Smith and a mostly disparaging view of the other leaders of the Jamestown colony. Davy learns to be a man who can be depended upon. And the Jamestown colony itself survives in spite of sword, sickness, and famine. It’s a heroic, violent, tragic, and inspiring story, and this fictionalized version of true events is well worth reading for adults and for children ages ten and up.

“We called it a free land, didn’t we? It was not free. It was dear-bought. But we have paid the price.” ~Captain John Smith, This Dear-Bought Land.

Oh, by the way, this book is selling for $40.00 or $50.00, used, on Amazon and other used book selling sites. I am told that BJU Press is currently working to obtain the rights to reprint the book, so the price may go down. In the meantime, it is well worth the time and effort to at least borrow the book from your local library, if they have a copy, or via interlibrary loan. You can also borrow a digital copy at Internet Archive.

The Day the Cowboys Quit by Elmer Kelton

Aug15

Management versus labor in the Texas Panhandle ranching country, c.1883. Mr. Kelton’s novel is a fresh and fictionalized take on the story of the labor movement, but it is grounded in a real event, the Canadian River cowboy strike of 1883.

Hugh Hitchcock, the protagonist and viewpoint character of the novel, is a trail boss of sorts for a comparatively small rancher trying to move into the big leagues, Charlie Waide. Hugh is a man caught in the middle. He and Charlie are old friends, but Hitchcock is also a working man, friends with many of the cowboys who work under him and sympathetic to their troubles and aspirations. When the big ranchers insist that Charlie Waide join them in imposing order, their order, on the wild and loose customs and laws of the north Texas ranching country, Hugh Hitchcock can see their side. Ranchers can’t afford to let rustlers, even from among their own cowboys, steal and re-brand their cattle. The big ranchers, many of them from the East, are in it for the money, and they don’t intend to pay the cowboys any more than they must. The cowboys themselves are a feisty lot, and many of them are much more loyal to their own interests than to that of their employers.

However, Hugh himself is trying, like many of the other cowboys, to build up his own small herd of cattle. And he sees that the cowboys are only trying to better themselves as they brand mavericks, cows that are orphaned and belong to whatever man can burn a brand on them first. Hugh also believes that the cowboys and the ranch owners are in this business together and that they owe each other loyalty and trust, that they should share in whatever profits are made. When push comes to shove, Hitchcock must decide where his loyalties lie and what to do about his own inner conflicts and indecision.

Hugh Hitchcock is such a good character, a peacemaker with an inner core of ethics and responsibility. And as the Dallas Morning News reviewer Walter B. Moore wrote, “Texas cowboys think, act and talk like Texas cowboys in this novel.” (There is some cursing in the novel, but not that much, certainly not more than would be probable given the characters and setting.)I have read three or four novels by Kelton now, and I definitely plan to read more. His novels are my kind of Western, not at all formulaic or ridiculous in their portrayal of Texas and its history. Kelton’s cowboys have their own cowboy slang, but they are people just like people anywhere else in the world. I can’t say the same for another highly praised and best-selling Texas novel.

My next Elmer Kelton novel will be Good Old Boys, another story about dealing with change in the ranching country of West Texas. My favorite Kelton novel so far is The Time It Never Rained, but The Day the Cowboys Quit is a close second.

Born on This Day: Erik Christian Haugaard, 1923-2009

Apr13

Born on April 13, 1923 in Denmark, Erik Christian Haugaard eventually made his way to the United States and became a writer, even though he left school at the age of fifteen and left Denmark at the age of seventeen. When the Germans invaded Denmark in 1940, young Erik Haugaard got out of Denmark just ahead of the invasion on the last ship out of Danish waters to the United States. After that he traveled some in the U.S., joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, went to college some during and after the war was over, and then began to write. An editor at Houghton Mifflin suggested that he rewrite a manuscript he had submitted and make it into a story for children. And so he wrote his first book for children, Hakon of Rogen’s Saga, a novel about the medieval ruler, Earl Hakon of Norway.

I have five of Haugaard’s thirteen or so books in my library:

Hakon of Rogen’s Saga and A Slave’s Tale are both set in Viking times, after the Christianization of Norway, but in a time when the pagan gods and customs were still in conflict with the new Christian way of looking at life. Leif the Unlucky, also set among the Vikings, is a fictionalized look at the Greenland colony of Lief Ericksson, an attempt at nation-building that did not turn out well.

Orphans of the Wind is a U.S. civil war sailing story. Haugaard’s books tend to be about young boys or girls getting caught up in the dangers and travails of war.

The Samurai’s Tale is one of three books that Haugaard wrote about ancient Japan and the samurai. The other two (that I don’t own) are The Boy and the Samurai and The Revenge of the Forty-Seven Samurai.

Cromwell’s Boy is about a young man living during the English civil war of Oliver Cromwell’s day. It’s a sequel to the book, A Messenger for Parliament, a book that’s on my wishlist.

The Little Fishes, another war story that I do not own, is set in occupied Italy with a twelve year old orphaned beggar named Guido as the protagonist.

The Haugaard book that I most recently acquired and read is titled Chase Me, Catch Nobody. Set in pre-war Germany and Denmark, Chase Me, Catch Nobody features a fourteen year old Danish schoolboy who must be at least a semi-autobiographical character. Erik Hansen (not Haugaard) narrates this story of a school trip to Nazi Germany in 1937. Erik in the book describes himself in much the same way that author Erik Haugaard reminisces about his younger self in a 1979 interview I read. Erik Haugaard the author and Erik Hansen the character are both from upper middle class backgrounds, indifferent students, ambitious to write poetry, and as adolescents “a bit of a snob.” Haugaard says in the interview that even as an adult writer what he most needs and craves from an editor is praise, praise, and more praise. Erik Hansen is self-aware enough to know and tell the reader that he is somewhat ashamed of his parents and their “lack of imagination” and middle class values, but that he enjoys being wealthy and generous just like his father and that he and his father indeed share share many of the same faults, “which is why we didn’t get along.”

I thought the book, rated YA for some fumbling talk about sex and for the very adolescent attitudes expressed in story, was very insightful as the characters, mostly Erik and his friend Nikolai, gained more and more insight into their own characters and their own ability to act with courage and conviction. The boys are tested by an encounter with a stranger in a grey raincoat who entrusts Erik with a mysterious package to deliver just before the man is arrested by the Gestapo. Then, later in the book, Erik and Nikolai are given another mission to complete that will require them to face great danger in order to possibly save a life. And through the book while Erik and his friend act with courage and determination, they are also typical teens, idealistic, sarcastic, foolhardy, convinced of their own invincibility and at the same time vulnerable and unsure of their own beliefs and convictions.

I was reminded of this book, The Boys Who Challenged Hitler: Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club by Phillip Hoose, and I think these two books would be quite a good pair to read in tandem for a teen book club or discussion group. I wrote that The Boys Who Challenged Hitler was “an interesting and exciting portrait of youthful zeal and even foolhardiness which can sometimes trump an adult over-abundance of caution and planning” and the same could be said of Chase Me, Catch Nobody. But the discussion could also cover the possibility that such youthful enthusiasm and lack of respect for possible consequences or for the sheer enormity of the evil that was Naziism could bring many lives to ruin, as it indeed did in some places and situations in the Allied resistance during World War II.

I recommend Haugaard’s books for young adult readers who enjoy a challenging story that will cause them to think about character and philosophy and politics and see these subjects through the eyes of different people from themselves. However, as Haugaard says in the afore-mentioned interview it is much easier to see what’s wrong with the world than it is to see what’s right or to find solutions to the problems. Perhaps just seeing today’s political and social problems in a different historical setting such as medieval Japan or a Viking colony in Greenland will make us see those issues in a new way and begin to understand the path toward new solutions.

Erik Christian Haugaard also made his own translation of Hans Christian Andersen’s stories, published by Doubleday as A Complete Fairy Tales and Stories by Hans Christian Anderson, translated by Erik Christian Haugaard. The translation project took Haugaard three years to finish.

“I don’t know whether my own books will survive, but if I have saved any of Andersen’s stories from obscurity, I have made a contribution to English literature. Who Wouldn’t be grateful for having had such an opportunity!” ~Erik Christian Haugaard, interview in Language Arts, Vol. 56, No. 5 (May 1979), pp. 549-561.

Leonard Wibberley, b. April 9, 1915, d.1983

Apr9

So, I’m doing a little research on Leonard Wibberley since it’s his birthday today. I know about his most famous book The Mouse That Roared. I read it a long time ago, and I remember the basic premise: a very small country decides to declare war on the United States, lose the war immediately, and then benefit from the “Marshall Plan” aid that is sure to be extended; complications ensue.

I have in my library Wibblerley’s Treegate series of historical fiction novels set before, during and after the American Revolution, and I have three of the four in his series of historical novels on the life of Thomas Jefferson, but I haven’t yet read the books from either of those series.

What I didn’t know is that he wrote over 100 novels and other books, some for adults, others for children. And he wrote under three pseudonyms in addition to his own name: Christopher Webb (some historical fiction books for children or young adults), Patrick O’Connor (Black Tiger series on auto racing, and others for YA), and Leonard Holton (Father Joseph Bredder murder mysteries for adults).

Some of these and some of the other books he wrote under his own name look interesting. I’m particularly interested in the mystery series, if it’s good. There’s also a series of historical novels for children or young adults by “Christopher Webb”, published by Funk and Wagnalls in the 1960’s:

Mark Toyman’s Inheritance, 1960. “Mark Toyman is an orphan being raised by his uncle and aunt on the Kansas frontier in the early 1850s. A pro-slavery mob kills his uncle and force Mark and his aunt to flee for their lives.”
The River of Pee Dee Jack, 1962. “Fur trapping and fur trading Northwest Passage exploration story.” (Amazon)
Quest of the Otter, 1963. “Young Paul Joplin’s father, a whaling captain, did not return to his home in Mystic, Connecticut from his last voyage. When he comes of age Paul sails aboard another whaling ship, the Otter, bound for the South Seas in search of his father.”
Matt Tyler’s Chronicle, 1966. “Matt Tyler, a simple cobbler’s apprentice in Boston, finds himself caught up in major events of the Revolutionary War from the siege of Boston to the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown.”
Eusebius the Phoenician, 1969. “Eusebius, a Phoenician merchant/warrior from Tyre sails from the Mediterranean Sea to Scandinavia to return the body of a slain Viking warrior to his people and to seek the Holy Grail. The Vikings accompany him on a quest that takes Eusebius to the British Isles where he helps a defeated King Arthur re-establish his kingdom in return for assistance in finding the Holy Grail.”

And just a few of the many others of interest by this prolific author (#readallthebooks):
The Ballad of the Pilgrim Cat. “An endearing story of how a stowaway cat on the Mayflower saves the Pilgrims by protecting their grain seeds from rodents.”
Treasure at Twenty Fathoms by Patrick O’Connor. “Chuck Crawford is learning to dive and has a run in with a shark. Will he be able to overcome his fears or will he have to quit diving?”
The Centurian. Adult fiction based on the life of the centurion who oversaw Jesus’ crucifixion.
Flint’s Island. A sequel to Treasure Island, Wibberley’s favorite childhood book.

Don’t these and others (listed at Wibberley’s website) sound absolutely fascinating? Has anyone read anything by Wibberley other than Mouse books, Treegate, and Thomas Jefferson? Any recommendations?

Patricia St. John, b. April 5, 1919

Apr5

I’ve been reading An Ordinary Woman’s Extraordinary Faith: The Autobiography of Patricia St. John. IT’s quite a good story, and it makes me long for a time “when life was simple back in the good old days.” She says things that would in our time be taken as evidence of dishonesty neglect, or dysfunction, and as I read, I knew that they were neither. For instance, her mother and father lived apart for many of the years of their marriage, she taking care of the children in England and he traveling the world and teaching the Bible. And Patricia St. John writes that she never heard an argument or even a cross word pass between her parents when they were together. She also writes of her childhood in which she and her siblings were allowed to explore the woods and fields near their country home, being gone all day and only coming home in time for supper and bed. She tells the story of living alone in a Muslim village in Morocco, with no telephone, no English-speaking people living nearby, and very little knowledge of the Arabic language. She fed the beggar children and told them stories about Jesus in broken Arabic. I fear we have come a long way from the 1950’s when Patricia St. Joh was a missionary in Morocco, and even farther from her childhood in 1930’s and 40’s Britain. And I’m not sure that our sophistication and dependence on technology has brought us to a better way of life or of evangelism in many ways.

While Ms. St. John was living in England (during WWII) and in Morocco, she also wrote fiction books for children, books that give a vivid picture of other lands such as Switzerland and Morocco and also a believable and simple vision of the power of the gospel to change lives and comfort the afflicted. The following titles are the ones I have in my library:

Her first book, The Tanglewood’s Secret, was written to comfort and strengthen the girls in a boarding school that Ms. St. John’s family was associated with. Ruth, the main character in the book, lives with her aunt in the English countryside, and although she begins as a rather selfish and unhappy girl, she later comes to know the Good Shepherd who cares for His sheep.

Treasures of the Snow is set in Switzerland, where Patricia and her family spent a year of her childhood. In the story a girl named Annette is filled with hatred for Lucien, the boy responsible for an injury that crippled Annette’s little brother. The bitterness and hatred in Annette’s heart poisons all of her life and her relationships until she learns to forgive.

Star of Light is the first book that Patricia St. John wrote about her mountain village in Morocco. It’s fiction, but based untrue stories of how Jesus and a missionary nurse healed and cared for a blind baby and a beggar boy.

In Rainbow Garden, Elaine is sent to live with a family in the English countryside while her mother goes to work in France. Elaine is selfish and bitter, but she experiences healing and forgiveness in her garden.

Three Go Searching was written while Ms. St. John was a missionary nurse in an Arab village. When Waffi, an Arab boy, and David, a missionary kid, find a sick servant girl and a mysterious boat, and thus begins an exciting adventure.

The Secret of the Fourth Candle, also written during the time in the Moroccan village, consists of three short stories: “The Four Candles”, “The Cloak”, and “The Guest”.

Historical fiction set during the first century, The Runaway tells the story of Philo, a Phoenician boy whose little sister Illyrica is possessed by a demon. Philo finds a way to take his sister to Jesus, the healer.

Twice Freed is the fictionalized story of Onesimus, the runaway slave who returns to his master with a letter, the Book of Philemon in the the Bible.

Patricia St. John also wrote several missionary biographies, including Until the Day Breaks: The Life and Work of Lilias Trotter, Pioneer Missionary to Muslim North Africa, a book I would like to acquire and read someday.

The Edge of Time by Louella Grace Erdman

Feb7

Bethany and Wade Cameron begin their journey by wagon from Missouri to the Texas Panhandle on their wedding day. They take with them, or acquire along the way, a few necessary items: a milk cow, a horse, seeds, curtains, a rag rug, and a rosebush cutting from the rosebush in Bethany’s parents’ front yard. When they reach their homestead in Texas, they will have no near neighbors, no railroad nearby to bring in supplies or take crops to market, and no extra resources other than their own faith, courage, and stick-to-it-tiveness. Bethany is not even sure of Wade’s love for her; he was originally pledged to marry another girl who jilted him, and he only turned to Bethany when she rashly promised to go with him anywhere.

One reviewer on Amazon said of this book: “I started reading this book and thought it was going to start off slow. It wasn’t slow just in the beginning… I think it was a horrible pointless book.” I disagree, but if you’re looking for a modern thriller or romance, you will be as disappointed as the Amazon reviewer was. Bethany’s and Wade’s story unfolds slowly; their love and commitment grow over time. And the story is as much about their love affair with homesteading and with the land as it is about their marriage and their love for each other.

Two things impressed me. I was reminded of the old song from the musical Oklahoma: The Farmer and the Cowman. One of the major themes of the book is the inevitability of change, and the conflict between the ranchers and the new farming homesteaders. Wade and Bethany are determined to make a go of farming in the new lands that the state of Texas is selling to homesteaders. Their neighbors and friends are mostly cowboys and ranchers who are kind and helpful to the new couple but not at all sympathetic to the fences and the plows that are breaking up the open range lands.

The other thing I noticed was the pattern of Bethany’s and Wade’s marriage. The story takes place in the late 1880’s; the book was published in 1950. The Camerons’ relationship displays the customs and expectations of both time periods. Wade is the strong, silent type. He makes the decisions and expects Bethany to agree with him. Bethany also expects things to be this way, although there is a scene in which she wants him to consult her about a major financial decision, but realizes that he can’t show that kind of “weakness” in front of other people. He later admits that he should have asked her about the decision, “that it was cowardly not to have asked her . . . But I just—well, I just couldn’t tell him—” And Bethany ends up glad that Wade didn’t embarrass himself and “come trailing in to ask [her]”.

It’s a different kind of marriage relationship than very many people would try nowadays. But perhaps our lack of trust in one another, and our need to always have everything “equal” and “fair” with all decisions being joint decisions, 50/50, creates its own set of problems and incongruities.

Louella Grace Erdman was a Texas writer who penned a number of books for adults and for children, mostly set in the Texas Panhandle where she lived the majority of her life. Ms. Erdman was a teacher of creative writing at West Texas State College, and she wrote about fifteen or more novels about pioneer and frontier life in Texas and elsewhere and a couple of volumes of memoir. I’m definitely going to keep an eye out for more of Ms. Erdman’s books.

Her books include:

Tales of the Texas Panhandle series. The Pierce family–father, mother and five children—are homesteaders in the Texas Panhandle during the late 1800’s. For middle graders and young adults.
The Wind Blows Free
The Wide Horizon
The Good Land

Other books for adults and teens:
Separate Star. A young schoolteacher’s first year of teaching.
Fair Is the Morning Connie a young school teacher moves the to rural town of Hickory Ridge to write a thesis on rural schools. The job soon proves to be a greater challenge than she had first imagined.
Lonely Passage. Coming of age story about a young girl growing up in a family of strong women.
Many a Voyage. Fiction about Kansas senator, later territorial governor of New Mexico, Edmund G. Ross through the eyes of his wife.
My Sky Is Blue.
The Far Journey. A young woman is reluctant to join her husband, Edward, on the Texas frontier, but eventually she does as they make a life together.
Room to Grow. French immigrants move to the Texas Panhandle from New Orleans.
Another Spring. Civil War era romance about families displaced by Order Number Eleven at the end of the Civil War.
A Bluebird Will Do. “Orphaned in San Francisco during gold rush days, a sixteen-year-old girl travels east by way of the Isthmus of Panama to seek out relatives in New Orleans.”
Save Weeping for the Night.. A fictional account of the life of Bettie Shelby, wife of the Confederate hero, General Jo Shelby.
Three at the Wedding. The wedding of Meredith Dunlap and Rodney Carlyle in the town of Linston, Texas shortly after World War II changes the lives of three other women in various ways.
The Years of the Locust.. The life and influence of an eighty year old farmer, Dade Kenzie, after his death in rural Missouri.
Life was Simpler Then. “Memories of the author’s Missouri farm childhood, within the framework of the four seasons.
A Time to Write.. Writing memoir.

Blog post on Louella Grace Erdman and her books at From Sinking Sand.
Handbook of Texas entry on Louella Grace Erdman.

Mandala by Pearl S. Buck

Jan23

Oh, my. I have read and enjoyed several novels by Pearl S. Buck, but this 1970 novel set in in India wasn’t one of them. I did read about 4/5 of the story before I skipped to the ending and put myself out of my own misery.

The book presented such a cliched view of India, of Americans, of British, of priests, of men and women, of sex and sexuality. The entire book was hard to read, not because it was philosophically difficult, but because it wasn’t—but tried to be. Prince Jagat, the male protagonist, is a man of the “new India”, full of ideas about how he will fit his life into the changes that have come about since the ending of the British Raj. And yet he expects his wife and his daughter to passively respond to his every whim and demand. And for the most part, they do.

Other cliches and stereotypes include the bluff, good-hearted American Bert Osgood; the mysterious and beautiful American lady Brooke Westley (really, Westley because she’s a Westerner, get it?); the rebellious daughter Veera who eventually gives in with a pout; the ghostlike Moti, Jagat’s wife, who glides about in her traditional sari, drinking tea and mumbling wise proverbs; Father Francis, the priest who has sublimated his sexuality in doing good works among the poor; and of course, beautiful, mysterious, esoteric India itself. Common Indians are “poor but happy”, uneducated, stuck in the past, unwilling to give up customs and religious practices that are damaging to their own well-being, but at the same time essential to their Indian heritage. They are stuck between the past and modernity, and no Westerner can truly fathom the depths of the history and heritage that have made the Indian culture what it is. Ah, it is a mystery.

300+ pages of Eastern mysticism combined with agnosticism, adultery and religious speculation is just too much. The end: “Believing and unbelieving, he gave a great sigh. ‘I do not know,’ he said, and believing and unbelieving, he went his way.”