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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.

7 Joyful Tidings; or, Stuff to Be Glad About

Jun20

“[I]f God took the trouble to tell us eight hundred times to be glad and rejoice, He must want us to do it—–SOME.” ~Pollyanna by Eleanor Porter.

1) How Sunday School Sparked Revival in Egypt’s Oldest Church, from Christianity Today.

“We have been blown away by their care for the next generation. It takes two years of training to even teach a kindergartener.”

2) Even the writer of Ecclesiastes knew that not everything is meaningless:

3) The Things That Count by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Now, dear, it isn’t the bold things,
Great deeds of valour and might,
That count the most in the summing up of life at the end of the day.
But it is the doing of old things,
Small acts that are just and right;
And doing them over and over again, no matter what others say;
In smiling at fate, when you want to cry, and in keeping at work when you want to play—
Dear, those are the things that count.
And, dear, it isn’t the new ways
Where the wonder-seekers crowd
That lead us into the land of content, or help us to find our own.
But it is keeping to true ways,
Though the music is not so loud,
And there may be many a shadowed spot where we journey along alone;
In flinging a prayer at the face of fear, and in changing into a song a groan—
Dear, these are the things that count.
My dear, it isn’t the loud part
Of creeds that are pleasing to God,
Not the chant of a prayer, or the hum of a hymn, or a jubilant shout or song.
But it is the beautiful proud part
Of walking with feet faith-shod;
And in loving, loving, loving through all, no matter how things go wrong;
In trusting ever, though dark the day, and in keeping your hope when the way seems long—
Dear, these are the things that count.

4) Texas Builder Dan Phillips Turns Trash into Treasure

5) Some lovely old (new-to-me) books in my library:

6) Some relatively new books look as if they might be good news:

The Penderwicks at Last by Jeanne Birdsall (Knopf, May 2018) is said to be the fifth and final book in the Penderwicks series, and I have it in my reading queue. I’ve read good things about the finale, and I’m looking forward to reuniting with the Penderwicks and friends.

“Golden Hill by Francis Spufford (Scribner, 2017) is set in 1746 New York, pop. 7,000. When a young, handsome man hops off a boat from London with a promissory note for 1,000 pounds—a fortune in those days—locals whisper and conspire: Who’s he? A spy? Royalty? Con man? What results is a well-researched, comical, lyrical, action-packed story of wit-sparring lovers, local politics, Shakespeare, and mysteries.” —World magazine reporter Sophia Lee

The Lola Quartet by Emily St. John Mandel. Recommended by Ann Bogel at Modern Mrs. Darcy.

The Black Widow (Gabriel Allon Series Book 16) by Daniel Silva is recommended by both Marvin Olasky and Ann Bogel, so maybe I should read the first fifteen books in this series of spy novels, or should I just jump into this latest and greatest one?

7) Today I want to tell those that I love: be careful what stories you tell yourself. Be kind to yourself. Expect kindness from others. Give other people the benefit of the doubt. Don’t assume evil motives or hidden hostility.
Above all, TRUST in God’s love and concern for the person He created and sustains in you. You truly are His, redeemed, bought with a price, forgiven, renewed, the apple of His eye.

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

Henry James, b. April 15, 1843

Apr15

“In Heaven there’ll be no algebra,
No learning dates or names,
But only playing golden harps
And reading Henry James.”
~Displayed at James’s home, Lambs House in Rye and said to have been written by Henry James’s nephew in the guest book there.

I doubt this little jingle is an accurate description of heaven, but if it were, then it would follow that even though such a heaven would be bereft of higher mathematics, it would involve a great deal of thinking. One can’t read Henry James without thinking, carefully. For instance, I found this excerpt of criticism by James, concerning William Morris’s poem The Life and Death of Jason, to be quite amusing after I thought about it and figured out what James was actually saying. (Maybe I liked it partly because I’m also not a fan of Mr. Swinburne.):

“Mr. Morris’s poem is ushered into the world with a very florid birthday speech from the pen of the author of the too famous Poems and Ballads,—a circumstance, we apprehend, in no small degree prejudicial to its success. But we hasten to assure all persons whom the knowledge of Mr. Swinburne’s enthusiasm may have led to mistrust the character of the work, that it has to our perception nothing in common with this gentleman’s own productions, and that his article proves very little more than that his sympathies are wiser than his performance. If Mr. Morris’s poem may be said to remind us of the manner of any other writer, it is simply of that of Chaucer; and to resemble Chaucer is a great safeguard against resembling Swinburne.”

I want to steal (borrow?) James’s template sometime and use it in my own reviews, for example: “XYZ fantasy novel reminds me of Tolkien and Lewis, and so even though its writing has been compared in reviews to that of contemporary and less talented fantasy authors, to resemble Tolkien and Lewis is a great safeguard against modernity.”

So happy birthday to Henry James, who resembles no other author, really, and has been called by readers and critics, the Master. His books and other works do require effort and some thought to be appreciated, but that’s certainly not a bad thing. It depends on the reader as to whether you think James is worth the effort.

Links and thinks for Henry James:

William Faulkner on Henry James: “One of the nicest old ladies I ever met.”

Ernest Hemingway on Henry James and his novels: “Knowing nothing about James, it seems to me to be the s–t.” Also, “he wrote nice but he lived pretty dull I think. Too dull maybe and wrote too nice about too dull.”

Oscar Wilde: “Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.”

Christopher Beha, James and the Great YA Debate: “So few other writers offer the particular pleasures that James does.”

From Portrait of a Lady:

“It has made me better loving you. . . it has made me wiser, and easier, and brighter. I used to want a great many things before, and to be angry that I did not have them. Theoretically, I was satisfied. I flattered myself that I had limited my wants. But I was subject to irritation; I used to have morbid sterile hateful fits of hunger, of desire. Now I really am satisfied, because I can’t think of anything better. It’s just as when one has been trying to spell out a book in the twilight, and suddenly the lamp comes in. I had been putting out my eyes over the book of life, and finding nothing to reward me for my pains; but now that I can read it properly I see that it’s a delightful story.”

Top 10 Henry James novels by Michael Gorra, Publisher’s Weekly.

Henry James on life: “To take what there is in life and use it, without waiting forever in vain for the preconceived, to dig deep into the actual and get something out of that; this, doubtless, is the right way to live.”

And, finally, a quotation that seems to epitomize James’s approach to writing and to the United States. (He moved to England and lived most of his adult life there.): “I hate American simplicity. I glory in the piling up of complications of every sort. If I could pronounce the name James in any different or more elaborate way I should be in favour of doing it.”

If Mr. James’s novels may be said to remind us of the manner of any other writer, it is not an American author. And to resemble no other American author is a great safeguard against resembling Hemingway.

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:

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.

The Children Act by Ian McEwan

Jan26

McEwan’s book is about a judge who must decide a case concerning a minor whose Jehovah’s Witness parents don’t want him to have a blood transfusion that could save his life. It’s a book that garnered a lot of notice and a fair amount of praise back in 2014 when it first came out. I’ve been planning to read it for a while, but when I found a copy at Goodwill the other day, I decided to go ahead and do it. It’s only little over 200 pages long, so it’s not that much of a commitment.

The point of view protagonist is Fiona May, a British High Court Judge, almost sixty years old (my age!), and specializing in family law, custody disputes and decisions involving the “best interest or welfare of the child.” Unfortunately, at the same time that she is deciding a controversial case about a seventeen year old, Adam Henry, who is refusing, along with his parents’ approval and consent, a life-saving blood transfusion, Fiona May is also dealing with her husband who asks her permission to have an affair because their marriage has grown stale and sexless.

These two crises are supposed to be related somehow, I think, but really I could only see that they were related because they both were happening at the same time in relation to Fiona. The judge uses the complexities of the Jehovah’s Witness case to escape from her tumultuous thoughts about her broken marriage. And maybe she becomes personally involved in Adam’s life, visiting him in the hospital before making her ruling on the merits of the case, as some kind of demonstration to herself to prove that she is not as cold and passionless as her husband accuses her of being.(?) Otherwise the two plot strands are really separate events, and Fiona is curiously passive in both her relationship with her husband and her relationship with the boy, Adam. And yet, at the same time, as a judge, she plays God and berates herself for not being all-knowing and all-wise enough in her chosen role.

I thought the novel brought up many interesting themes and questions. How is a secular court to decide what is the “best interest” of a child whose parents can’t agree? Especially when religious doctrines and secular philosophies clash, both the religion and “philosophy” are deeply held beliefs, and the court cannot favor one over the other. But, of course, it inevitably does favor one religion over the other (secular) religion because the court, or the people who administer justice, have their own religion, usually secular, and their own values, usually valuing peace and safety and enjoyment in this life over any eternal values that some religions may claim to hold as more important. Thus, Adam’s fidelity to his convictions as a Jehovah’s Witness, a faithfulness which he believes will usher him into eternal life and right standing with God, is not as important as his earthly physical life which is in danger unless he has the blood transfusion.

The book doesn’t really solve the dilemma of competing worldviews and values, but it does give the reader something to think about. The secondary plot having to do with Fiona May’s marriage is less interesting and not so thought provoking.

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.”

10 Best Adult Fiction Books I Read in 2017

Jan22

News of the World by Paulette Jiles. It’s a surprise, even to himself, when in Wichita Falls Captain Jefferson Kidd agrees to deliver ten year old Johanna Leonberger to her relatives near Fredericksburg. Johanna has been a captive of the Kiowa for four years, and now the girl has been recovered. But, unfortunately for her, Johanna still believes she is Kiowa, but the Indians don’t want her back and the only choice Johanna has is whether or not to go quietly to her unremembered relatives’ home in German country.

The Scent of Water by Elizabeth Goudge. A lovely novel about enduring suffering and finding one’s place in the world.

Safely Home by Randy Alcorn. American businessman Ben Fielding discovers the truth about the persecuted church in China when he goes to visit his former college roommate, Li Quan.

The Glorious Cause by Jeff Shaara. A fictionalized history of the American revolution as seen through the eyes of George Washington, Nathaniel Green, Benedict Arnold, the Marquis de Lafayette, British Generals William Howe and Henry Clinton and Charles Cornwallis.

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett. Dr. Annick Swenson is working, in the heart of the Amazon jungle, on a fertility drug that will revolutionize the world, if it can be brought to market. The trouble is that Dr. Swenson can’t be bothered to communicate with the pharmaceutical company that is sponsoring her work and that hopes to make a fortune by selling her discovery. The company has already sent one person down to Brazil to find out what’s going on, Anders Eckman. But he’s disappeared, reported dead. Now, they want Dr. Marina Singh, a researcher who worked with Eckman, to go to Brazil, find out exactly what happened to her friend and colleague Anders Eckman, and bring back a firm timetable for the completion of research on the fertility drug.

Frederica by Georgette Heyer. Solid Regency romance with strong characters and witty and slangy repartee. I liked the romantic leads quite a bit, and I even felt sympathy for the ingenue parts, played by Frederica’s sister Charis and her crush.

The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman. World War I veteran Tom Sherburne, returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, a small, isolated island off the coast of western Australia. He marries a local girl, Isabel, and although the marriage is happy, the isolation of the lighthouse leads Isabel to make a fateful decision.

Kindred by Octavia Butler. Dana, a twentieth century black woman, is transported back in time to the early nineteenth century in a slave state where she is forced to decide again and again whether she should do something to save the life of a young white slaveowner, Rufus.

Demelza by Winston Graham. This second book in the Poldark series ends with death, destruction, and loss. From its hope filled beginning with the birth of a child for Ross and Demelza Poldark to the end when all is dark with only a hint of light in the last line of the novel, the story is an engaging look at late 18th century Cornwall and its politics, characters and social customs.

Jeremy Poldark by Winston Graham. The third book in the Poldark saga.