After the Ball by Patricia Beard is subtitled “Gilded Age secrets, boardroom betrayals, and the party that ignited the Great WallStreet Scandal of 1905.” It’s not as exciting as it sounds. The book is mostly about an insurance tycoon named James Hazen Hyde who inherited majority shares in the Equitable Life Assurance Society. He then proceeded to live like the Vanderbilts and the Rockefellers and made the mistake of mixing his money with the life insurance company’s money, making questionable loans and transfers of huge amounts, and being generally irresponsible. The final straw was a party he hosted on January 31, 1905. The theme of The Hyde Ball was Versailles in eighteenth century France, there were 600 costumed guests, and the party was rumored to have cost $200,000, a great deal of money for a ball in any day, but especially back in 1905. Soon after his lavish ball was over, James Hazen Hyde was accused of using money that belonged to the insurance to finance his grand life style, and he had to defend himself, first before his own board of directors, and ultimately in Congressional hearings. The ball was determined to have been financed by Hyde’s own fortune, and its cost was far less than the rumors said, but so many other accounting irregularities and corrupt deals were uncovered during the investigations that James Hazen Hyde had to resign from the board of the life insurance company that his father founded, sell all his shares, and move to France for the rest of his life. There he lived a decadent life and carried on a grumbling correspondence with his mother concerning the amount of money she sent him for his expenses. Ah, how the mighty have fallen! It reminds me of Martha Stewart, but she hasn’t absconded to France and may even be making a comeback.

I also read Plain Truth by Jodi Picoult,. The setting for this fictional lawyer/murder mystery is about as far away from Wall Street and the Gilded Age as one can get and still be in the good old USA. Plain Truth is set in Amish country, Paradise, Pennsylvania, and it tells the fictional story of a young Amish girl accused of killing her newborn infant and of the lawyer who defends her. Because of the setting and some of the issues (law vs. grace, religious vs. secular values), this book is easy to compare to compare to Levi’s Will by Dale Cramer, a book I read earlier this year. Although I only know what I’ve read about Amish life and culture, I think Cramer gets it more right than Picoult. Picoult spends the entire book trying to convince readers that the Amish are nearly perfect, that their deep religious convictions and their strict upbringing means that they cannot commit murder or other heinous crimes and still remain Amish. Then she throws in a plot twist at the end that undoes anything that she’s managed to persuade us to believe about Amish sinlessness. The story itself is good, kept me guessing until the end, and the writing is better than adequate. But her premises are flawed and undermined by the plot itself.

Next I read a YA novel called Pagan’s Crusade by Catherine Jinks. I can’t decide what I thought about this one. The writer really likes to use sentence fragments, and it’s sort of effective in a strange way. I got the idea that this was the way the young protagonist of the novel, Pagan, thinks. An example chosen at random:

“My pleasure. Following Rockhead as he pushes his way to the door. Squeezing past great slabs of hot, sticky flesh through steamy clouds of garlic and onions and spice and sweat and hot peppers. Whoof! What a stew! Rockhead uses his elbows, his knees, his shoulders, his fists. Yelps and squeaks from the targets. Then into the sunshine–and a sea of heads stretching out across the square.”

Not every paragraph was like this one , but plenty of them were. As I said, it’s somewhat effective in conveying the fragmentary nature of Pagan’s thought processes, but it’s somewhat distracting, too. I had to get used to Ms. Jinks’ writing style. The story takes place during the Crusades, late 1100’s, as Jerusalem is about to fall to the forces of the Turkish Sultan Saladin. Pagan, the young hero of the story, is a street urchin who’s become squire to Lord Roland de Bram of the Knights Templar, protectors of Jerusalem and of all the holy places and of the many pilgrims who come to visit them. Pagan is an irreverent sort; his life hasn’t taught him to honor anything or anyone. And as Pagan is beginning to admire and respect Lord Roland and to believe (sort of) in the mission of the Knights Templar, his master, Lord Roland, is losing his faith in God and in the Order to which he has dedicated his life. Interesting story. Very violent. I may have to read the sequel just to find out what happens to the two main characters.

Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books focus article on Catherine Jinks and her series of four Pagan books.

Now I’m reading The Shakespeare Stealer by Gary Blackwood. I’ve seen it on various lists, recommended several times, but I’m just now getting around to it. Have I ever said that I really enjoy YA literature? It’s just ambiguous enough for me, but YA authors are not so caught up in trying to be pretentious that they lose the story–most of the time. The Shakespeare Stealer is the story of an orphan boy who is sent by his master to copy out the words of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, to steal it for another company of players. Instead of stealing the play, the boy, Widge, gets himself taken on as an apprentice actor, but he must keep a watch out for his evil master who still wants the play. It’s a fun story with all sorts of good Shakespearean details, details that I assume are authentic. (Were Shakespeare’s players really accused of motivating the Earl of Essex to mount a rebellion when they presented a special performance of Richard II, a play about a king who is deposed?) This one has sequels that I’m definitely reading as soon as I can get them from the library. I’m also going to recommend it to Brown Bear Daughter and Karate Kid.

Next book on deck: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, 1599 by James Shapiro