Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo’s epic novel is divided into five volumes:

Volume 1: Fantine
Volume 2: Cosette
Volume 3: Marius
Volume 4: Saint-Denis
Volume 5: Jean Valjean

In January I read, or rather re-read, the first two volumes, but I’m sort of stuck. I first read the entire novel when I was in college. This reading was back in the Dark Ages, before the stage musical, before any movie versions that I was aware of, certainly before the most recent movie musical version starring Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway. I didn’t know what would happen to Cosette, Marius, and Jean Valjean. This burning desire to know how the story would turn out explains why I stayed up until two in the morning once upon a college dorm room, reading Les Miserables even though I had an eight o’clock class that same morning. I had to finish; I had to know.

Now I already know. And although I am enjoying my re-read thirty-plus years later, I no longer have the suspense pulling at me to finish the novel. So, I’m not sure when I will get the motivation to go ahead and read the rest, but here are a few observations on the first two parts.

The first part of Book 1, like the first part of the musical, actually focuses on Monseigneur Bienvenu, the Bishop of M., who first shows Jean Valjean what grace and mercy look like.

Of M. Bienvenu: “He did not study God; he was dazzled by Him.” Brown Bear Daughter thinks the good bishop is too good to be true, but I have met people who, having put their past behind them (and it is implied that M. Bienvenue may have a past of some sort), are veritable saints.

However, Jean Valjean does not immediately become good after his life-changing encounter with the bishop. Even after he is shown mercy, in the book Valjean robs a child on the road, out of habit(?) or dullness or ingrained hopelessness. He only sees himself in his own sin after this shameful act that cannot be excused by “the law is too harsh” or “I had to help my sister and her children by stealing a loaf of bread.” When Valjean sees himself in all his wickedness, then he is given even more grace to go ahead and “become an honest man,” sort of, or at least a useful and respectable man.

Fantine is another character who is more multi-dimensional in the novel than in the musical/movie. She is certainly “more sinned against”, abandoned by Cosette’s father, cheated by the Thenardiers, and driven into debt, prostitution, and slavery by her situation. However, she also nurses hatred and pride in her heart as she thinks of how she lost her factory job and as she continues on to a life of prostitution instead of appealing to M. Madeleine to give her job back. And she, like Valjean, needs and receives redemption and mercy.

Part 2 does introduce us to Cosette, and we watch her grow into a young lady as Jean Valjean grows in his ability to love and to sacrifice himself for another. He becomes Cosette’s true father.

Girl Detective enjoyed reading all 1231 pages of Les Miserables, but she complains, as do most people, about the long digressions and says the book begs to be abridged. I understand and have some sympathy for the abridgment position, especially when it comes to the name-dropping, political sections when Tholomyes and later Marius and his friends talk about people and political situations that we latter-day readers have never heard of and don’t need or want to know about. The political/historical parts where Hugo writes about people who add no value to the story are skippable. But the sewer and the cloister chapters are actually quite interesting to me anyway, and they set a tone for the setting of the story that I think makes it richer and more intense. (Not sure those are the right adjectives? Maybe â€œdeepâ€ or â€œvividâ€.) Yeah, you can skip those and the whole battle of Waterloo, except the part where Thenardier rescues somebody, and the argot chapter and itâ€™s OK, but I would argue that at the least there is good writing (essay and historical writing) there, too.

If the digressions bore you, skip them or get an abridged version. If you’re like me and you enjoy ponderous chapters full of information about arcane subjects, chapters that interrupt the action but do something that I can’t put my finger on exactly for the tone and development of the story, then go ahead and read them. I can’t say that you miss anything, really, by skipping, or that there is any virtue in being able to say you’ve read the entire, unabridged version. Just read it in some version. My favorite novel ever.

By the way, I loved the movie, except for the one part with Santa and various other vulgar vignettes in the Thenardiers’ inn, a scene which begged to be abridged, cut, censored and never even thought up in the first place. Drunken Santa Claus, at least, makes no appearance in Victor Hugo’s novel.

Novel Views: Les Miserables by Jeff Clark. These charts and graphs are fascinating. Did you know that, other than character names, some of the most common words used in Les Miserables are: bishop, love, mother, child, gamin, Paris, old, right, war, barricade, sewer, man, day, street, city, wall, door? And each character has characteristic verbs that are used to describe his/her actions.
Jean Valjean fell, condemned, concealed, stood, robbed, slept, caught.
Fantine coughed, sighed, sang, shared.
Cosette gazed, grew, developed, fetched, noticed, woke, loved.
Marius lived, fixed, paid, launched, fell, reflected, heard.
Javert pinioned, killed, permitted, bound, hunted, recognized, yielded.
Thenardier screamed, unmasked, growled, shook, lied, cast, thrust.
Gavroche muttered, sang, scratched, climbed, shrugged, pushed.

Emotional Detachment and Les Miserables by Michael Sacasas at Mere Orthodoxy. This article asks if some critics of the new movie and of the story itself are disturbed by “having been brought dangerously near the edge of feeling again what had been assiduously suppressed by reflexively deployed irony or cynicism.”

Les Miserables book study at the blog Mommy Life. Barbara Curtis, the blogger at Mommy Life has gone on to be with the Lord, but her blog lives on in cyberspace. Her comments and thoghts on Hugo’s opus are full of insight and Christian theology.

Magistramater gives us some quotations from Volume 1 and from Volume 2.

Amy’s rambling thoughts on Les Miserables at Hope Is the Word.

I started this blog post a couple of weeks ago, and now I think I’m about ready to get back to Les Miserables and finish it. I’ll try to check in again when I’ve finished Volume Three, Marius.

Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan

Feb4

Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive. ~Sir Walter Scott, Marmion, Canto vi. Stanza 17.

My name is Serena Frome (rhymes with plume) and almost forty years ago I was sent on a secret mission for the British Security Service. I didn’t return safely. Within eighteen months of joining I was sacked, having disgraced myself and ruined my lover, though he certainly had a hand in his own undoing.

Set in the 1960’s, this novel of lies and spies and deception within deception is spell-binding, especially toward the end as the author begins to tie up all the loose ends into a choose-your-own ending sort of denouement. As it begins, Serena Frome tells us how she became a spy, a very low-level spy with a fairly innocuous duty to perform. She simply has to recruit an up-and-coming novelist and lie to him about the source of her funding. No big deal. However, as Sir Walter so aptly observed, small deceptions grow over time into large, knotty messes.

Serena, who is anything but serene throughout most of the novel, and her spy-target, Tom, become lovers. They actually fall in love with each other, and the secrets between them become more and more heavy and complicated and unsustainable. In one scene Serena and Tom make love to one another on the beach and declare their love in words for the first time:

“I knew that before this love began to take its course, I would have to tell him about myself. And then the love would end. So I couldn’t tell him. But I had to.
Afterward, we lay with our arms linked, giggling like children in the the dark at our secret, at the mischief we had got away with. We laughed at the enormity of the words we had spoken. Everyone else was bound by the rules, and we were free. We’d make love all over the world, our love would be everywhere. We sat up and shared a cigarette. Then we both began to shiver from the cold, and so we headed for home.”

So ridiculous. We all do this: fool ourselves into thinking that the rules don’t apply to us, that we can lie and steal and cheat and still give and receive love that is lasting and stable. But love that’s built on deceit is just like that Biblical house built on beach sand, headed for a fall.

However, just when the reader thinks that he knows the end of this story, after all we’ve all heard it and experienced it before, love lost, betrayal uncovered, and tragedy, Mr. McEwan and Tom the novelist and Serena herself all have a few more tricks and twists of plot to reveal or live through. I’m not sure the ending is really, truly possible or likely (can the Gordian knot really be dispatched with a single sword stroke?), but I want it to be so.

I’ve read McEwan’s most famous novel, Atonement, and it, too, had a twist at the end. The surprising or ambiguous ending seems to be a trademark in most of Mr. McEwan’s novels, as is a “predeliction for more graphic sexual description than I am comfortable reading” (what I wrote about Atonement and what is also true of Sweet Tooth). I thought the sexual details were unfortunate and unnecessary, but I usually do think that about modern novels. These lascivious particulars were skim-able, and the rest of the story somewhat redeemed the few vulgar parts.

So I give the novel, which also deals with the value of fiction and the intricacies of the Cold War, a qualified recommendation.

A Light Shining by Glynn Young

Feb2

I thoroughly enjoyed Dancing Priest, Mr. Young’s first book about Michael Kent, Olympic cyclist, Edinburgh student, Anglican priest, and orphan with a mysterious past. Of course, it’s also the story of Sarah Hughes, American artist and also a student in Edinburgh, whose lack of faith throws a kink in the developing romance between her and Michael.

In this sequel, I was pleased to read more about Sarah and Michael and their growing families, both nuclear and church families. Michael’s and Sarah’s Christian testimony through lives lived openly and vulnerably is fresh and un-jaded. I loved the way that in their youthful enthusiasm they just did the next thing that God called them to, with prayer and thoughtfulness, yes, but without that too long attention to possible problems and hesitation that many of us (I) are prone to allow to derail our best intentions.

Mr. Young’s writing is simple and unadorned, easy to read and follow. The e-book edition of the book that I read sometimes needed some more spacing indicators to show when the point of view was changing from one character to another. There’s a shadowy terrorist villain in this second book, and I sometime couldn’t tell when I was leaving the mind and viewpoint of Michael Kent and entering the mind and world of the villain. I find this problem frequently in my Kindle reads, and it’s a little bit annoying, but not overwhelmingly so.

I would recommend these companion novels to anyone with an interest in well-written Christian-themed fiction, Anglican church fiction, adoption and street children, Olympic cycling, or the politics surrounding the British royal family. Read them in order, first Dancing Priest and then A Light Shining. No spoilers her, but all of these subjects are elements in the these two books about a vibrant young couple coming to terms with their faith in Christ and their journey to follow Him through difficult circumstances.

I Do Not Come to You by Chance by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani and Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo

Jan19

As the opara (eldest son) of the family, Kingsley O. Ibe has certain responsibilities: he must make his parents proud, study hard, and become a great man. But times are hard in Nigeria and in spite of Kingsley’s degree in chemical engineering, he cannot find a job. In spite of Kingsley’s father’s great knowledge, hard work, and superior educational background, he cannot work because of his illness, diabetes. And Kingsley’s industrious and skilled mother is losing her tailoring business because of changes in technology and the time it takes to care for his father. Kingsley’s brothers and sister need school fees and books and uniforms, and his girlfriend, Ola, “the sugar in his tea,” may not be able to marry him unless he can show the ability to support a wife and family.

So slowly, inexorably, Kingsley is sucked into the business of his rich uncle, Cash Daddy. Kingsley becomes a 419-er, breaking the law and bilking foreigners so that he can do what is right: take care of his family. (The number “419” refers to the article of the Nigerian Criminal Code dealing with fraud.) It’s a sad story, and the author, who lives in Abuja, Nigeria, develops the story deftly with just the right amount of sympathy for Kingsley and his plight mixed with enough detail about the heinous scams he perpetrates to make us have mixed feelings at best about this character.

The culture of corruption that pervaded this story made it a striking companion to the nonfiction book I read just after it. Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo is set in Mumbai, India, where Ms. Boo spent three years researching, interviewing and observing the residents of a Mumbai slum that has grown up near the bright, sparkling Mumbai International Airport. The full title of the book is Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity. There’s not much hope in the story. The central characters in the book are a family of Muslim garbage brokers who buy scavenged garbage from their fellow slum-dwellers, sort it, and take it to recycling centers to sell again. The same culture of overwhelming, near-inescapable corruption, bribery, and governmental chaos keeps the garbage pickers of Mumbai in poverty and despair just as the fictional Kingsley Ibe in Nigeria is unable to escape or retain his integrity in an environment and governmental structure that only rewards cunning and dishonesty, not integrity or even educational attainment and hard work.

I just cannot imagine living in a country where bribery is the only way to achieve a semblance of justice, where votes are for sale, and where the poor are not only poor but forced into slavery, prostitution, and degradation. I suppose I am way too middle class American WASP, but I had to keep reminding myself while reading Behind the Beautiful Forevers that this book was nonfiction, that these were real people. And while the first book, I Do Not Come to You by Chance, was fiction, the things that happen in the book were real. 419-ers exist. People who work hard to get an education are unable to find jobs in a broken economy. People are turned away from hospitals because they cannot pay exorbitant amounts of money for simple health care. People like Kingsley turn to lives of crime and extortion because they see no other way to provide for their families or to survive.

I kept asking myself as I read Ms. Boo’s book, which reads like a novel: where are these people now? The Annawadi slum was slated for destruction/removal; has it been removed? What happened to the families that Ms. Boo writes about in her book who are dependent on trash from the airport to resell for basic necessities? Did the book itself change the lives of these people in any way? For the better? For the worse?

â€œThe Indian criminal justice system was a market like garbage, Abdul now understood. Innocence and guilt could be bought and sold like a kilo of polyurethane bags.â€

“It seemed to him that in Annawadi, fortunes derived not just from what people did, or how well they did it, but from the accidents and catastrophes they avoided. A decent life was the train that hadnâ€™t hit you, the slumlord you hadnâ€™t offended, the malaria you hadnâ€™t caught.”

I Do Not Come to You by Chance was awarded the 2010 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, first novel Africa.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Katherine Boo won the National Book Award in the nonfiction category for Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity.

The Bess Crawford series by Charles Todd

Jan17

A Duty to the Dead by Charles Todd. In which we are introduced to nurse Bess Crawford as she becomes a survivor of the sinking of HMHS Britannic in the Kea Channel off the Greek island of Kea on the morning of November 21, 1916. Upon her return to England to convalesce, Bess carries a cryptic message to the family of a soldier who died while under her care. The message begins a chain of events which lead to Bess’s involvement with a man who is possibly an escaped lunatic, but also possibly a wronged man.

An Impartial Witness by Charles Todd. This second book in the series featuring World War I nurse detective Bess Crawford uses good, solid storytelling and slow, careful character development to hold readers’ interest. Upon Bess’s return to England from the trenches of France, she witnesses a tearful parting between a woman, Mrs. Evanson, and a soldier who is not her husband but possibly her lover. When Bess recognizes Mrs. Evanson from her picture that was carried by her pilot husband and when the woman is later murdered, Bess becomes enmeshed in the family’s affairs and in the resolution of the mystery of her death.

In both of these books, the mystery and the characters were intriguing and entertaining. Bess Crawford is an independent young woman, and yet she doesn’t come across as a twenty-first century feminist artificially transplanted into the soil of the World War I-era. Instead, she has a family to whom she listens and she allows herself to be protected to some extent by the men in her life, especially family friend Simon Brandon. (I think Bess and Simon are headed for romance, but at least by the end of the second book in the series, the romance is completely unrealized.) And still Bess does what Bess feels obligated or drawn to do, and she meddles in things that are not really her concern.

In fact, that would be my only complaint about these books. For the purpose of furthering the plot, the authors (a mother-son team using the Charles Todd pseudonym) have Bess ask all sorts of questions and become over-involved in the lives of strangers with very little justification for her visits and intrusions. However, I can overlook the lack of warrant for Bess’s interference in the lives of her patients and their families for the sake of a good story.

Lots of comparisons are made at Amazon and Goodreads between these books and the Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear. I liked these two, at least, better than I liked the books about Maisie. Maybe I just liked these books set during the Great War better than those set just after.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

Jan14

The series of mysteries that begins with this novel and features almost eleven year old detective, chemist, and poison expert Flavia de Luce has been on my radar for some time now, but I finally used my Barnes and Noble gift card to buy The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and I’m determined to consume the other novels in the series as quickly as possible. The first one is just as good as the many fans have said it was.

From Mr. Bradley’s website: “Great literary crime detectives arenâ€™t always born; theyâ€™re sometimes discovered, blindfolded and tied up in a dark closet by their nasty older sisters. Eleven-year-old Flavia de Luceâ€™s bitter home life and vicious sibling war inspires her solitary diversions and â€œstrange talentsâ€ tinkering with the chemistry set in the laboratory of their inherited Victorian house, plotting sleuth-like vengeance on Ophelia (17) and Daphne (13), and delving into the forbidden past of her taciturn, widowed father, Colonel de Luce. It comes as no surprise, then, that the material for her next scientific investigation will be the mysterious corpse that she uncovers in the cucumber patch.”

I will say that Flavia is unbelievably precocious; she reminds me of my youngest, Z-baby who is intelligent, stubborn, sassy, and spoiled rotten. I say this with some chagrin, since I promised myself that my youngest would not be a pain in the you-know-what like so many other babies of of the family tend to be. And then life happened, and I find myself amazed at her maturity and giftedness and at the same time busily correcting and counteracting her sometimes tendencies to be presumptuous and impertinent.

Anyway, Flavia is a character who might exhaust you if you were her parent, but in a book she’s a delight. I can’t wait to get to know her better, and I’m also anxious to find out more about her sisters, her long-suffering but somewhat absent father, and Dogger, the loyal retainer who serves as dependable adult in Flavia’s life (even though he suffers from something like PTSD or some such ailment as a result of his war experience). The other books in the series are>

The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag
A Red Herring Without Mustard
I Am Half-Sick of Shadows
Speaking From Among the Bones
The Dead In Their Vaulted Arches

I plan to request them from the library immediately. Mr. Bradley is a Canadian author who now lives in Malta, Sherlockian author of a book that argued that Holmes was a woman (!), and a septuagenarian.

Sweet and sassy, and the author is over seventy years old? Congratulations, Mr. Bradley!

12 Favorite Adult and Young Adult Fiction Books Read in 2012

Jan2

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein.

The Summer of Katya by Trevanian.

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides.

Nanjing Requiem by Ha Jin.

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes.

The Hour Before Dawn by Penelope Wilcock.

What Is the What by Dave Eggers.

Joy for Beginners by Erica Bauermeister.

Dancing Priest by Glynn Young. I never managed to get this book reviewed after I read it over Lent, but I have purchased and downloaded to my Kindle the sequel entitled A Light Shining. I hope to read it and then review both books together soon.

The Importance of Being Seven by Alexander McCall Smith.

Bertie Plays the Blues by Alexander McCall Smith. Thoughts on Mr. McCall Smith and his books here.

One Amazing Thing by Chitra Divakaruni.

Best novel of the year? Nanjing Requiem, I think. Fascinating history and fascinating moral dilemmas. It made me wonder how much courage and sanity I would retain in such a crisis situation.

Christmas in Norway, c.1330

Dec5

“It was the custom for all priests at Christ Church to give supper to the poor. But Kristin had heard that fewer beggars came to Gunnulf Nikulausson than to any of the other priests, and yet–or perhaps this was the very reason–he seated them on the benches next to him in the main hall and received every wanderer like an honored guest. They were served food from his own platter and ale from the priest’s own barrels. The poor would come whenever they felt in need of a supper of stew, but otherwise they preferred to go to the other priests, where they were given porridge and weak ale in the cookhouse.
As soon as the scribe had finished the prayers after the meal, the poor guests wanted to leave. Gunnulf spoke gently to each of them, asking whether they would like to spend the night or whether they needed anything else; but only the blind boy remained. The priest implored in particular the young woman with the child to stay and not take the little one out into the night, but she murmured an excuse and hurried off. Then Gunnulf asked a servant to make sure that Blind Arnstein was given ale and a good bed in the guest room. He put on a hooded cape.
‘You must be tired, Orm and Kristin, and want to go to bed. Audhild will take care of you. You’ll probably be asleep when I return from the church.’
Then Kristin asked to go with him. ‘That’s why I’ve come here,’ she said, fixing her despairing eyes on Gunnulf. Ingrid lent her a dry cloak, and she and Orm joined the small procession departing from the parsonage.
The bells were ringing as if they were right overhead in the black night sky–it wasn’t far to the church. They trudged through the deep, wet, new snow. The weather was calm now, with a few snowflakes still drifting down here and there shimmering faintly in the dark.” ~Kristin Lavransdatter, Mistress of Husaby by Sigrid Undset, translated by Tina Nunnally.

Kristin Lavransdatter is one of my very favorite books, so realistic and yet encouraging. Kristin is a real person: warts, and passions, and good intentions, and stupid decisions, all wrapped up in the life of one fourteenth century woman.

The scene I quoted above takes place near Christmas-time when Kristin is visiting her brother-in-law, a priest, because she is having marriage and family conflicts. She goes to the church to think and pray about all her sins and her life. Orm is her step-son.

I would highly recommend Kristin Lavransdatter as a gift for the wife/mother/reader in your family.

Christmas at Queens Crawley, Hampshire, England, 1823

Dec3

“Christmas at the Hall was the gayest which had been known there for many a long day.

On Christmas Day a great family gathering took place. All the Crawleys from the Rectory came to dine. Rebecca was as frank and fond of Mrs. Bute as if the other had never been her enemy; she was affectionately interested in the dear girls, and surprised at the progress which they had made in music since her time, and insisted upon encoring one of the duets out of the great song-books which Jim, grumbling, had been forced to bring under his arm from the Rectory. Mrs. Bute, perforce, was obliged to adopt a decent demeanour towards the little adventuressâ€”-of course being free to discourse with her daughters afterwards about the absurd respect with which Sir Pitt treated his sister-in-law. But Jim, who had sat next to her at dinner, declared she was a trump, and one and all of the Rector’s family agreed that the little Rawdon was a fine boy. They respected a possible baronet in the boy, between whom and the title there was only the little sickly pale Pitt Binkie.

The children were very good friends. Pitt Binkie was too little a dog for such a big dog as Rawdon to play with; and Matilda being only a girl, of course not fit companion for a young gentleman who was near eight years old, and going into jackets very soon. He took the command of this small party at onceâ€”-the little girl and the little boy following him about with great reverence at such times as he condescended to sport with them. His happiness and pleasure in the country were extreme. The kitchen garden pleased him hugely, the flowers moderately, but the pigeons and the poultry, and the stables when he was allowed to visit them, were delightful objects to him. He resisted being kissed by the Misses Crawley, but he allowed Lady Jane sometimes to embrace him, and it was by her side that he liked to sit when, the signal to retire to the drawing-room being given, the ladies left the gentlemen to their claret—by her side rather than by his mother. For Rebecca, seeing that tenderness was the fashion, called Rawdon to her one evening and stooped down and kissed him in the presence of all the ladies.” ~Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

Brown Bear Daughter (age 17) has been reading Vanity Fair for her senior English class, and she is not impressed with Miss Becky Sharp nor with the near-perfect Amelia Sedley. I find it interesting that the characters of Gone With the Wind’s Scarlett O’Hara and her sister-in-law Melanie Wilkes are based on Thackeray’s characters, written so many years before. “Adventuresses” and simpering young ladies and hypocrites and the like never go out of style. But Christmas does sometimes make us all behave ourselves for a while and if not remember our better selves, at least act as if we do.

“I mean the baronet and the rector, not our brothers—but the former, who hate each other all the year round, become quite loving at Christmas.”
~ William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair.

13 Hangmen by Art Corriveau

Nov2

Murder, mystery, history, and treasure—what more more could a reader ask for? This ghostly Boston history mystery reminded me of the movie National Treasure or of book I read a couple of years ago called The Brooklyn Nine by Alan Gratz (“In loosely connected chapters, Gratz examines how one Brooklyn family is affected by the game of baseball.”)

In 13 Hangmen, Mr. Corriveau examines how six 13 year old boys influence the course of Boston’s history in connection with one townhouse and extending all the way back to the American Revolution. And it’s exciting, like National Treasure. Tony DiMarco, the hero of our story is an overweight 13 year old with a Buddhist, vegetarian dad, a worried-about-finances mom, and twin older brothers who treat him like the younger brother that he is. Tony also has a great-uncle named Zio Angelo who dies and leaves leaves Tony a dilapidated townhouse in Boston’s historic North End, 13 Hangmen Court. When Tony finds a pawcorance in his attic bedroom, he is able to “conjure” a meeting with other thirteen year old boys who lived and slept in the same room in the past.

“They have certaine altar stones, they call Pawcorances, but these stand from their temples, some by their houses, others in the woods and wildernesses, where they have had any extraordinary accident or encounter. As you travel by theam they will tell you the cause of their erection, wherein they instruct their children; so that they are in stead of records and memorialls of their antiquities. Upon this they offer Bloud, Dear Suet, and Tobacco. There they doe when they returne from warres, from hunting, and upon many other occasions.” ~Captain John Smith

Only Tony’s pawcorance is a shelf, not a pile of stones. At any rate, Tony finds out that the next-door neighbors have been trying to buy, confiscate or steal the house at 13 Hangmen Court for the last 200 years at least, although the reason for their interest is unclear. As Tony and the boys from the past continue to delve into the mystery, going further and further back into the past, they find out that you really can’t change history. It’s kind of like time travel, except no one really leaves his own time. Yeah, it’s complicated, like time travel, and there are rules.

13 Hangmen is a great story for kids who are interested in mysteries, history, especially the history of Boston, and treasure hunts. I thoroughly enjoyed the story, and I learned a lot about some famous Bostonians, including baseball great Ted Williams, poitician John F. “Honey” Fitzgerald, William Lloyd Garrison, and of course, one of the most famous Bostonians of all, Paul Revere. The book has a helpful section at the end telling “what’s story, what’s history,” something I always want to know after reading a good historical fiction book.

Semicolon

Books we must have though we lack bread.

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