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The Explorations of Pere Marquette by Jim Kjelgaard

Apr4

Jim Kjelgaard was just the guy for the Landmark book series editors to ask to write about an intrepid explorer of the wilderness. Father Marquette, a Jesuit priest of the seventeenth century, along with his explorer buddy Louis Joliet, were the first Europeans to explore the Mississippi from the north in Wisconsin down to the place where the Arkansas River joins the Mississippi. Father Marquette wrote about all of the peoples, plants , and animals, that he and his fellow explorers found as they travelled down the Mississippi, and he returned to Green Bay in Wisconsin to tell of his adventures to the French governor and others.

Because Father Marquette worked among the Indian tribes in Michigan and Wisconsin and was also one of the first Europeans and Christians to minister to the Illinois Indians and the first to camp near the site of the present-day of Chicago, this book would make an excellent addition to the study of the state histories of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan. In the foreword to the book historian and Jesuit R.N. Hamilton writes:

“What makes this book most interesting is that Jim Kjelgaard has based all but two incidents on the life of Father Marquette, S.J. The stories of the wounded Indian and the finding of game on the South Lakes, while not recorded of Father Marquette, are, as we know from the writings of Jesuits who were his fellow laborers, typical of what he would have done in the circumstances.”

There are content considerations for the book, however. While some individual Native Americans who appear in the story are described as handsome, strong, and courageous, the Indians as a whole group and as individual tribal groups are usually characterized as improvident, unsanitary, poor, and of course, savage. Since this was truly how the early Europeans saw the Native Americans they met in the New World, and since Father Marquette and other Jesuit missionaries were compassionate and eager to improve the physical and spiritual condition of the Native Americans they came to serve, I don’t have a problem with this characterization. I don’t believe that all cultures are equally conducive to human thriving or to honoring the God who made us, so I have no issue with the idea that the Europeans had much that was good and needed to share with with their Native American brothers. And the Native American people had things to teach the Europeans, but that aspect is not emphasized in this book.

Jim Kjelgaard wrote one other book in the Landmark series, The Coming of the Mormons, one Signature biography, The Story of Geronimo, and the historical fiction book, We Were There at the Oklahoma LandRun. Kjelgaard is also responsible for many beloved animal stories, including Big Red, Irish Red, and Outlaw Red, all dog stories. An outdoorsman and a lover of American history and adventure in particular, Mr. Kjelgaard tells the story of Father Marquette and his explorations in an engaging way that will appeal to young, beginning outdoorsmen and adventurers.

The Pirate Lafitte and the Battle of New Orleans by Robert Tallant

Mar20

Another book in the Landmark series, this narrative nonfiction book introduces history buffs and pirate readers to Jean Lafitte and his brother Pierre who were quite a pair. Pirates or patriots or both? You can read the book and decide for yourself, but at the very least, the brothers Lafitte were a bundle of human contradictions and secrets and even heroics.

Contradictions: They were rich, educated, and urbane, but they lived for the most part in the swamps of Barataria, near New Orleans, where Jean Lafitte ruled over a rascally crew of over a thousand pirates with an iron fist. He was beloved by these men who would do almost anything for him. Jean and Pierre made a great deal of their money selling Africans into slavery, and yet their crew included men of every skin color and nationality.

Secrets: Hardly anything is known about Jean’s and Pierre’s youth and childhood. They appeared on the scene in New Orleans in about 1803 when Jean was twenty-four years old and Pierre a year or two older. They were at first privateers with a letter of marque but may later have become pirates. Jean hated Spain and the Spanish and said that he only plundered Spanish ships. Their other enemy who tried to have them imprisoned, tried and executed was American Governor William Claiborne, but they somehow became Claiborne’s friends and allies when New Orleans was threatened with a British takeover during the War of 1812. Then there’s also the secret of what happened to the Lafitte brothers after they were evicted from their second pirate lair on Galveston Island. No one knows.

Heroics: It is not too much to say that had it not been for Jean Lafitte’s loyalty to his adopted country of the United States, Louisiana, at least New Orleans, might be a British possession today. The British invaders had 12,000 men and vastly superior ships and weapons. General Jackson who led the American defense had about 700 regulars and access to a militia of about 1000 men. Then Jean Lafitte and Pierre Lafitte volunteered along with their crew of about 1000 Baratarians, and the British were defeated.

The Pirate Lafitte and the Battle of New Orleans gives children and adults an introduction to a fascinating time and event in American history. Read it as you are learning about Lewis and Clark or the War of 1812 or the Louisiana Purchase or Louisiana history—or just for fun and one more books about pirates, maybe. “People still argue about whether or not he (Jean Lafitte) was a pirate. They even search the marshes for buried treasure that they never find.”

May you find the buried treasure you’re looking for in all the Landmark books you read.

The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler by William L. Shirer

Feb14

What would lead a person to read an entire book, even a children’s middle grade nonfiction book, that takes the reader inside the life and mind of Adolf Hitler, the arch-villain of the twentieth century? Well, there’s something rather fascinating about trying to understand how Hitler became Hitler, synonymous with the most evil, murderous, racist, anti-Semitic dictator and warmonger ever. William L. Shirer, author of the 1000+ page tome, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (for adults), was in a position to study this question and come to some kind of conclusions, if anyone from the Allied side of the war was. As an American correspondent in Berlin, Shirer actually met Hitler, listened to many of his spell-binding speeches, and observed him over the course of several years before and during World War II. The result of Shirer’s observations and his journalist’s eye for character and for a story is this book, written for children in the Landmark history series, but suited to readers of all ages.

Shirer begins his book with eleven year old Adolf, showing an independent streak even at that young age in aspiring to become an artist instead of the civil servant his father wanted him to be. I learned a lot about Hitler that I never knew before from this book, and I was reminded of a few “home truths” along the way. After his art career bombed because the art school wouldn’t let him in, said he had no talent, Herr Hitler became a tramp without a real job for several years, but a very well read tramp. He read and studied all the time while working very little. First lesson: readers may become leaders, but they may also become very bad leaders.

Chapter 7 of the book is called “Hitler Falls in Love,” and it tells a story I never knew or else had forgotten. In this chapter of the book and of Hitler’s life, he falls hard for his half-niece, the daughter of his half-sister. Her name was Gell Raubal, and Hitler declared after her death that she was the only woman he ever truly loved. You can read the story in Shirer’s book and decide for yourself whether or not “loved” is the right word to describe Hitler’s controlling obsession with a girl half his age. (The story of their brief “romance” is tastefully told, appropriate for middle grade and older children who will read the book, but icky nonetheless.)

After this personal interlude, the book moves on to Hitler’s political actions and aspirations and quickly into the war years. As he becomes more and more successful, in politics and in war, and gains more and more power, Hitler becomes more and more deranged. Shirer calls him “beyond any question a dangerous, irresponsible megalomaniac.” And yet (next paragraph) Hitler is able to maintain power, and be “so cool and cunning in his calculations and so bold in carrying them out that few could doubt that he well might be the military genius that he claimed to be.” This lead me to another unpleasant truth: a mentally ill egomaniacal murderer can act in a very lucid and intelligent manner for a long time. It is possible to be cunning, bold, and crazy.

Of course, this book chronicles the rise and fall of Hitler, so the craziness does come to an end. Shirer is to be commended for his ability to tell the story in a way that is appropriate for older children, but also truthful and candid in its presentation of Hitler’s horribly destructive life and actions. The book doesn’t completely explain the quandary of why the German people were so enamored of Herr Hitler or how he was able to fool so many people for so long into believing in his “genius”, but it does document in a very readable and engaging style, the rise and fall of a man who was “a power-drunk tyrant whom absolute power had corrupted absolutely.”

I recommend Shirer’s book for its insight and as a cautionary tale for those who would place their faith in any political leader. Hitler is dead, but it is still quite possible to be fooled by a seemingly lucid and benign leader who is actually a wolf in disguise.

Download a list of the entire Landmark history series in chronological order.

Evangeline and the Acadians by Robert Tallant

Feb8

This Landmark book, #74 in the series, published in 1957 (the year I was born), tells the story of the Acadians, or Cajuns as they came to be called in Louisiana and Texas, who were exiled from their homes in Nova Scotia. These Acadians were French farmers who settled in Nova Scotia when it was named Acadia by the French, and they were forced to leave Nova Scotia by the British who distrusted them and questioned their loyalty during the many years of war between France and Britain.

It’s a sad story. Tallant compares the plight of the Acadians to the Jewish Holocaust of World War II. While the Acadians were not taken to extermination camps, they were torn from their homes and dispersed up and down the Eastern seaboard, with many of them ending up in prisons or forced labor or just poverty. Families were separated, and many Acadians died on crowded, unsanitary ships or in homelessness after they reached shore.

So my question was: how did so many of the Acadians end up in southwestern Louisiana where they made a new home for themselves? To find out, you’ll have to read the book, or do your own research. It’s a fascinating saga, and Longfellow’s famous poem, Evangeline, only tells a small, fictionalized part of the story. As indicated in the title, Tallant refers to Longfellow’s poem over and over again throughout the book, and readers of Tallant’s book can learn a good bit about what parts of the poem are fiction and what parts are true. The fictional character, Evangeline, looking for her lost love, Gabriel, made the Acadians famous the nineteenth century, and today Cajun culture and history is celebrated in food, song, dance, literature, and entertainment.

Evangeline and the Acadians not only gives the history of the Acadians, but since those Acadian people were a large part of the history of Louisiana itself, the book is a sort of capsule history of the state of Louisiana. Mr. Tallant wrote two other books in the Landmark series, The Louisiana Purchase and The Pirate Lafitte and the Battle of New Orleans, and the three books taken together would be an excellent introduction for elementary and middle school students to the culture and history of Louisiana (and even southeast Texas). If I were helping my students of Louisiana heritage to study the history of their own state and region, I would certainly read these three Landmark books with them.

Of course, as I said these books were published in the 1950’s. The last two chapters of Evangeline and the Acadians talks about Cajun life and culture “today.” Children who read the book might need to be reminded that the “today’ of 1957 was much different from the twenty-first century “today.” I doubt very many Cajuns speak French as a first language nowadays or even use Cajun English dialect as the Cajun people have become even more assimilated into the greater American culture.

In addition to this book and the other two Landmark books by Robert Tallant, for those interested in the history and culture of Louisiana and of the Acadians, I would recommend:

Picture Books

  • Freedom in Congo Square by Carole Boston Weatherford.
  • Through My Eyes by Ruby Bridges.
  • If I Only Had a Horn: Young Louis Armstrong by Roxanne Orgill.
  • Mr. Williams by Karen Barbour.
  • Little Pierre: A Cajun Story from Louisiana by Robert San Souci.

Children’s books

The Barbary Pirates by C.S. Forester

Feb7

This Landmark book, written by the celebrated author of the Hornblower series of Napoleonic nautical novels, is not so much a book about pirates and piracy as it is a book about the beginnings of the U.S. Navy and naval warfare. One of the heroes of the book is Captain Edward Preble who established many of the procedures and protocols that became the basis for U.S. Navy regulations and discipline later on when the Navy was a more official entity. (The USS Constitution under Preble’s command makes a very brief appearance in C.S. Forester’s novel Hornblower and the Hotspur.)

The naval warfare in The Barbary Pirates involves the war between the new nation, the United States of America, and the nations of the Barbary Coast of Northern Africa, mostly blockade and eventual invasion of the port of Tripoli, which is in the modern nation of Libya. The war is called the Tripolitan War, after Tripoli, and it took place during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries while Jefferson and later Madison served as presidents of the U.S. The goal of the war was to clear the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean of North African pirates (or privateers) at a time when the economy of the Barbary States—Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya or Tripoli–depended on the prizes their corsairs were able to take and bring home. Of course, the U.S. economy depended upon the trade across the Atlantic with Europe and Africa. So, the war, which America eventually won, made the U.S. and Europe, over time, much richer, and the Barbary States much poorer.

I enjoyed reading about an era and event in history that I knew very little about before reading this children’s Landmark book. There is a book written for adults, Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates: The Forgotten War That Changed American History by Brian Kilmeade, that goes over the same ground in more detail, I would assume, but I haven’t read it and therefore can’t recommend it. I have heard it recommended, but also I’ve seen mixed reviews. So if you just want a basic understanding of the Barbary pirates and the war to contain them, I would recommend Forester’s little book. It’s well-researched and would likely make a good nonfiction accompaniment to Forester’s Hornblower series or to Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series of nautical adventures—for a bit of historical background.

These Landmark books are such a good introduction, for children and for grownups, to so many historical time periods, people, and events. I’m excited to continue my project of reading and reviewing many of the Landmark series books this year. Next up: The Slave Who Freed Haiti: The Story of Toussaint Louverture by Katharine Scherman.

Famous Pirates of the New World by A.B.C. Whipple

Jan13

After reading The Mysterious Voyage of Captain Kidd by A.B.C. Whipple, I wanted to read Mr. Whipple’s other Landmark pirate book, Famous Pirates of the New World. It was not a disappointment. In fact, I found this book even more compelling than Captain Kidd.

The book starts off with a bang, after an introduction about piracy in general and why it was such a problem. The author pulls the reader in by telling the story of “The Dark Secret of Captain Flood.”

“Captain James Flood had a secret. He kept it well, so well that when he died his secret almost died with him. In all his life Captain Flood revealed his secret to only one man, the first mate of his pirate ship. If he had not told his first mate, we would not know his strange, evil story. But we do, and here it is–the dark secret of Captain Flood.”

Can you resist that hook? Don’t you want to read all about it right now? The story is indeed a rollicking, strange, and violent one. Kids will love it, unless they are particularly sensitive to violence and mayhem. By the way, that disclaimer goes for the whole book. The pirates in this book are real pirates–murderous, evil, and greedy. There’s a description later on in the book of the advantages and disadvantages of fighting with a cutlass versus a rapier that will challenge even the battle-hardened veteran mom to read aloud. It’s fascinating.

And this isn’t a particularly moralizing story. As Mr. Whipple tells it, some of the pirates got what they deserved: they were captured and hanged by the neck, and good riddance to them. Others got away with their loot and settled down to a life of ease after their pirating days were over. “We know of hundreds (of pirates) who ‘retired’ and enjoyed their plunder without ever having to account for it.” Alas, that is the truth of the matter: sometimes justice doesn’t come in this life.

I thought this was a great book with all of the famous stories of Blackbeard, Stede Bonnet, Calico Jack Rackham, and Anne Bonney and many more. The stories of the pirates are full of adventure, but the pirates themselves are not glamorized. You would not want to find yourself on a ship with any of these men–or women.

The book ends with the story of Governor Woodes Rogers of New Providence, Nassau, a haven for the pirates of the Caribbean and of how the Governor managed to civilize many of the pirates and put “an end to the almost unrestricted piracy which had plagued the seas around the Americas for more than two centuries.” It’s an amazing story of good governance and wisdom on the part of a British-appointed governor.

I have only one complaint about this book: I wish I knew where Mr. Whipple got his information. There are no footnotes or endnotes in the book, no bibliography. When I tried to look up the story about Captain James Flood online, I couldn’t really find anything to corroborate that spine-tingling story. Oh, well it’s a good story, nonetheless, and it could be a true one. Who knows? Maybe Mr. Whipple got his facts from a dark and secret source.

Ten (or Eleven) Best Nonfiction Books I Read in 2022

Jan4

The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler by William L. Shirer and The Mysterious Voyages of Captain Kidd by A.B.C. Whipple. These two Landmark books, written for children, tied for tenth place in my “best of nonfiction” list. Both were well-written, contained many interesting facts and stories that I didn’t know about before I read the books, and generated much conversation among the “Library Ladies” of whom I am privileged to be a part.

Mere Motherhood: Morning Times, Nursery Rhymes, and My Journey Towards Sanctification by Cindy Rollins (re-read) What I wrote a few years ago when I read this book for the first time still applies: “I laughed. I cried. I identified. Cindy Rollins, mother of nine homeschooled children, mostly boys, has written an honest, but also encouraging book about what it was really like to homeschool a large family in the 1980’s and 1990’s homeschooling culture. Cindy is honest about the things she’s learned along the way, but never jaded or dismissive of her younger self or of homeschooling families who work every day, although imperfectly, to get it right and teach their children to know the Lord.”

Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep by Tish Harrison Warren. Compline prayer from Prayer in the Night: “Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ, give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous, and all for your love’s sake. Amen.”

The God of the Garden: Thoughts on Creation, Culture, and the Kingdom by Andrew Peterson. “Solitude is a choice. . . Isolation is finding yourself alone when you don’t want to be.”

The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis. (Re-read)

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang.

Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Cheng. Another memoir of the Cultural Revolution and the reign of terror under Mao in China. Both this book and Wild Swans were difficult to read, difficult to believe that man could be so inhumane, so cruel, and that a society could devolve into such chaos and horror.

Rembrandt Is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art Through the Eyes of Faith by Russ Ramsey.

The Truth and Beauty: How the Lives and Works of England’s Greatest Poets Point the Way to a Deeper Understanding of the Words of Jesus by Andrew Klavan.

Where the Light Fell by Philip Yancey. These last three books on the list are the best books I read in 2022. I will be thinking about and returning to all three many times, I am sure. Yancey’s spiritual autobiography is heart-rending at times, but ultimately hopeful.

The Mysterious Voyage of Captain Kidd by A.B.C. Whipple

Jan4

Who was Captain Kidd? Most people would answer simply, “A pirate!” or maybe, “A pirate who buried a great treasure!” But was he a pirate? Or was he a falsely accused and misjudged victim? Was he a legal privateer acting under the King’s orders? Did he even have a treasure? And if so, what happened to it?

Mr. A.B.C. Whipple’s book doesn’t answer all of those questions. (HINT: The treasure is still either nonexistent or up for grabs.) But it does present a compelling case for the honor and victimization of one William Kidd, New York merchant turned—either pirate or privateer. Take your pick.

This Landmark history, one of the books in the famous Landmark series, is anything but a dry recitation of facts and figures. Of course, the subject is piracy and one of the most famous of all the pirates, Captain Kidd. But Kidd’s story is full of detail about the life and times of the pirates and about the late seventeenth century and its business practices and British politics; yet, nevertheless, the story is told in such a way as to draw in the reader and make him care about the East India Company and the coast of Madagascar and the intricacies of trade between New York and the West Indies—and much more. I love how these living Landmark books educate without pontificating, simply by telling a story.

The story begins with the British judge sentencing William Kidd to death by hanging, so there are no surprises about how Kidd’s story ends. But the author then goes back into to tell readers how in only six short years Kidd went from being a prosperous New York merchant to a criminal convicted of piracy and murder. It’s a sad, cautionary tale. Although I’m not sure what Captain Kidd could have done differently to avoid his fate, I certainly think some lessons can be drawn from his story. Maybe, stay away from ventures with politics and secret investors involved. Or, never trust a politician. Kids who read the book can draw their own lessons and conclusions.

As for the buried treasure, maybe it’s somewhere, buried still. I’d like to think so. In an author note at the end of my copy of the book, Mr. Whipple writes:

“Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of Treasure Island, once heard that another author, Henry James, had never gone looking for buried treasure. ‘If he has never been on a quest for buried treasure,’ said Stevenson, ‘it can be demonstrated that he has never been a child.'”

I certainly remember searching for buried treasure once upon a time. Maybe this book will inspire treasure hunters, children or adults, to try once more to find the buried treasure of Captain Kidd. And maybe someone, somewhere, will find it!

This Landmark book, once a rare find, out of print, and very expensive to purchase, has been reprinted by Purple House Press, and it’s now available at a very reasonable price with updated maps and other information. If you or your child (or both of you) are interested in pirates, and who isn’t, it’s worth purchasing or borrowing from my library (Meriadoc Homeschool Library) or from your local public library, if they have a copy. If not, you should request that they buy one immediately. Maybe it has clues to the whereabouts of the treasure, or maybe the story itself is the treasure.

More about this Landmark book, The Mysterious Voyage of Captain Kidd by A.B.C. Whipple (don’t you just love that author’s name!) on the Plumfield Moms podcast, where they are featuring one of the Landmark books each month on the first Friday of the month.

Rembrandt Is in the Wind by Russ Ramsey

Apr6

Rembrandt Is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art Through the Eyes of Faith by Russ Ramsey.

Wow! I’ve heard Mr. Ramsey speak about art and artists and the way to look at art through a Christian lens, so I’ve heard some of the material in this book before. Nevertheless, I was riveted as I listened to this new book, written by a Presbyterian pastor from Nashville. I’m hoping to order several copies–one for my church library, one for my own library, and one for my artist daughter. Maybe I’ll think of even more people who need a copy of this book.

The book features chapters about Rembrandt, of course, but also Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Van Gogh, Edward Hopper, Johannes Vermeer, and Lilias Trotter. (You’ve probably heard of all of those except the last one, but her story may be the most intriguing of them all.) If you want a book that will help you to appreciate fine art in a whole new way, whether you’re an art connoisseur or an art amateur or a just a wannabe, like me, this is the book. Ramsey writes about the artists’ lives as their lives relate to the paintings they made. He also writes about technique, but again only as it relates to the art each artist produced. And he places each artist and his or her art in historical context and in spiritual context as well.

I can’t give you any quotes from the book since I “read” it as an audiobook, but I’m sure that there is much here that is eminently quotable. And I’m also sure that I will reread this book in print as soon as I get my hands on the print copy (copies) that I’m going to order. I suggest you do the same. Oh, and the narrator for the audible version was fine, but he mispronounced a couple of words (Wen-DELL Berry?), Russ Ramsey himself as narrator/reader would have been better. If you need more encouragement to get you to read Rembrandt Is in the Wind, check out this lecture by Russ Ramsey about Michelangelo and his famous statue, David. (Yes, this material is in the book. You can skip the lecture and just get the book.)

O. Henry by Jeanette Covert Nolan

Mar18

O. Henry: The Story of William Sydney Porter by Jeanette Covert Nolan.

O. Henry, aka William Sydney Porter, led a colorful life, but he was a retiring and secretive man. As his biographer says, “his autobiography, if set down, would probably have been scorned as a travesty on truth by the instructors of proper college writing classes.” Born and raised in North Carolina, he moved to Texas as a young man, married an Austin girl from a wealthy family, fathered a daughter, became a journalist, owned a newspaper for a short while, worked in a bank, was accused of embezzlement, fled the country, returned to be with his dying wife, and was convicted of a felony and imprisoned in Ohio. All this happened while he was still a young man, in his thirties, and before he began to make his reputation as a writer of exquisitely crafted short stories that became both popular with common readers and respected in literary circles.

Ms. Nolan’s biography of O. Henry/Porter, written for young adults, is obviously sympathetic to Porter, portraying him as wrongly convicted of embezzlement and mostly confused and mistaken in his decision to flee justice, deserting his wife and child for a brief time. His wife, Athol, seems unnaturally supportive, saying in her letters only that she believed in his innocence but that they would have to remain apart as long as he was a fugitive since she was too ill to join him in Honduras where he fled. And Nolan glosses over Porter’s alcoholism–he died of cirrhosis of the liver and other ailments—and says only that he drank heavily but was always a perfect gentleman. Porter comes across as a lonely and tragic figure, shrouded in mystery, but likable, jovial, and humorous with all who knew him in his after-prison days.

This approach to telling the story of Porter’s life makes the biography a gentle story, somewhat melancholy, but ultimately hopeful. Nolan describes Porter as a “rather stout and mild-mannered man, timidly smiling, respectably dressed–dark suit, blue tie, yellow gloves in his right hand, and maybe a malacca cane, too; and the buttonhole of his coat the little Cecil Brunner rosebud which he had bought that very morning at the flower-stand one the corner of Madison Square.” The entire book inclines one to think of Porter fondly, much as his short stories portray most of their characters, mistaken at times but “more sinned against.”

However, Ms. Nolan makes a strategic error when she includes in her story references to the Ku Klux Klan, apparently active in Porter’s boyhood hometown of Greensboro, North Carolina. I’m not sure why Ms. Nolan even felt it necessary to mention the Klan, but she does. And when she does, while she has Porter’s father argue that the “Klan is as hateful in theory as in practice,” she also has him say that “the average Negro is still an inarticulate creature, not far removed from the primitive; he doesn’t know what he’s doing or why.” In these first few chapters of the book about William Porter’s boyhood there’s a whole thread of apology for the Klan and for the hatred of Southerners for Reconstruction and the Northern interlopers it bought to the South. And the fear, pity, and contempt of Southerners for their formerly enslaved Black neighbors is quite evident and articulated plainly. It made me wonder: if Nolan could sympathize with the underlying fears and prejudices that gave rise to the Klan, what other dark episodes and secrets would she spin in a positive way? (And Nolan was Indiana born and bred, so it’s not as if she was a Southerner herself.)

At any rate, I still enjoyed reading this biography of William Sydney Porter, and it made me want to pull out some of his short stories and re-read them. Book does lead on to book in a never-ending chain.

Interesting side-note: William Porter made friends in New York City during the latter half of his life, mostly in the publishing world. One of those friends was Gelett Burgess, author of Goops and How To Be Them and its sequels, and also the famous ditty, “I Never Saw a Purple Cow.”

I never saw a Purple Cow,
I never hope to see one;
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I’d rather see than be one.