Book Review: Is This Tomorrow by Caroline Leavitt

Is This Tomorrow by Caroline Leavitt (Algonquin Books; 384 pages; $14.95).

            Fear of communism and nuclear war permeated the psyches of millions of Americans in the 1950s.  Public and private concerns were heightened by Senator Joseph McCarthy when he proclaimed that hundreds of Communists had infiltrated the United States government.  Many writers and entertainers were accused of sympathizing with Communists and thus were blacklisted.  His accusations were later disproved, but that did not stop his fervor from spreading.

In her tenth and best novel, Is This Tomorrow, expert storyteller Caroline Leavitt capitalizes on these anxieties.  “You can’t trust these Communists,” one of Leavitt’s minor characters maintains.  “They couldn’t tell the truth if they wanted to….You kids think it’s funny, but any second a missile could come down on us,” he insists.  “And we wouldn’t even see it or be prepared.  One minute we’re here talking in this nice neighborhood, and two seconds later, boom, we’re ash.”  In his eyes, the Russians “hide explosives” and could be anywhere, even in his own neighborhood, “and we wouldn’t even know it.”

The era in which Leavitt sets her story is perfect for her setting.  Father Knows Best gently reminds American kids who is boss in the household.  Echoes of “just wait until your father gets home” are heard all across the United States as the mother keeps house and raises the children and the father brings home the bacon.  Doors are left unlocked.  Sunday is the Lord’s day.  The post-war economy is booming, and so is the birthrate.  Everything seems idyllic, but appearances often deceive, as we all know.

The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union is at its frostiest with no signs of thaw.  Nuclear annihilation is a real and daily threat as school kids are taught to duck and cover and worried fathers build bomb shelters.  New phrases such as Red Scare and Yellow Menace become part of the everyday lexicon.  Americans view those who are different, who do not conform, who look different, who sound different, and who worship differently with contempt.  Anyone deemed not like everyone else was considered deviant.

Life seems peachy for Americans, but ugliness and fear lurk just under the surface.  This juxtaposition is at the heart of Leavitt’s taut, atmospheric, and humane tale.  Blending a coming-of-age saga with history and mystery, Leavitt creates a tense and suspenseful atmosphere when a neighborhood boy goes missing.

Is This Tomorrow is told from three different and varied perspectives: Ava, divorcee, working mother, and the head of the only Jewish family on the block; Lewis, her son; and Rose, her son’s best friend and sister to Jimmy, the youth who vanishes.  Although Jimmy is not a narrator, his disappearance looms over the novel; his presence and his absence are powerfully palpable.

Because Ava is different from the other neighborhood parents, she is suspect.  Ava locks her doors when all the other doors are unlocked; she works when the rest of the mothers do not have jobs outside the home.  She does not dress like the other mothers and she has had a string of boyfriends. The neighbors see her as a floozy.  These things do not necessarily damn her, though.  Other parents believe she may have had an inappropriate relationship with her son’s best friend.  Ava denies it but admits she knew Jimmy had a crush on her.  He was at Ava’s the day he went missing.

Jimmy’s disappearance profoundly changes the lives of all of Leavitt’s main characters.  Jimmy’s departure leaves Ava, Lewis, and Rose stuck and unable to go forward.  The calendar turns and they grow older, but they are still stuck in the moment Jimmy faded away forever.  They have too many loose ends in their lives, and the burning desire to know what happened drives them.

Caroline Leavitt

Rose, Jimmy’s sister, becomes a teacher but never forgets her family tragedy as she desperately pleads with the principal to put a fence around the playground so school kids will not wander off.  Lewis withdraws from his mother and searches for his father, who once wanted custody of Lewis but has since vanished himself.  Ava feels alone and bakes pies that she sells to a local restaurant but has never forgotten Jimmy and the day he seemed to evaporate into thin air.

Leavitt hooks you in the first chapter when young Jimmy goes missing and does not let you go until the very last page.  I was riveted.  Leavitt provides readers with timely and weighty issues such as missing children, difference, and paranoia.

With expert pacing, the author takes her time revealing secrets.  This master storyteller is meticulous and wise as she teases out every detail but still keeps you guessing.  Is This Tomorrow is atmospheric and taut and has everything you could ever want in a book: compelling, fully realized characters; an intense, dramatic, and compelling plot; and the perfect, evocative setting.  Everything comes together superbly in Leavitt’s skilled hands.

The title is taken from a propaganda comic book that came out in 1947 and warned of the dangers of a Communist takeover.  An estimated four million Americans purchased the educational comic, no doubt contributing to the fear and paranoia of the 1950s.  In Is This Tomorrow, Leavitt brings this era to life and illustrates how fear of the unknown and fear of difference transformed a country, a community, and a people.  Although her book is set primarily in a time very different from our own age, Is This Tomorrow is a cautionary tale for us in the Twenty-First Century.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea by Dina Nayeri

Book Review: A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea by Dina Nayeri

A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea by Dina Nayeri (Riverhead Books; 432 pages; $26.95).

            In 1981, eleven-year-old Saba Hafezi shows her best friend, Ponneh, an issue of Life Magazine dated January 22, 1971.  The young Iranian girls look at the pages, featuring a newly-engaged Tricia Nixon, in awe.  “Ta-ree-sha Nik-soon,” Saba says, is “the daughter of the American Shah.”

As far as the two girls are concerned, Ms. Nixon’s world is straight out of a fairy tale.  “She is a princess.  Shahzadeh Nixon.”  Saba soaks up the four-page magazine spread of the smiling young woman and her beau, Ed Cox.  For Saba, the main character in Dina Nayeri’s breathtakingly beautiful debut novel, A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea, the daughter of the American president is vibrant and mysterious, and she is, above all, American.  Saba is enamored of everything American. And it’s very easy to understand why—post-revolutionary Iran is no place for a girl to grow up in.

Overnight, or at least it seemed so to Saba, the “pro-scarf people” overthrew the “pro-hair government.”  Just like that, the things Saba loves—nail polish, shorts, bare arms in summer, new music—are forbidden. Every part of Saba’s body must be covered.  Nayeri writes, “They [the new government] shut up beautiful things in dark places, so no one can see…What do you do when you want to douse a fire?  You throw a big, heavy cloth over it, deprive it of oxygen.”  That is exactly what the Ayatollah Khomeini and his supporters do to Iranian women.

But, in the summer of 1981, Saba does not yet care about all that.  Her concern is Mahtab.  Without her twin sister, Saba feels like an important piece of her body and her soul is missing.  What really happened to Mahtab, and to their mother, who disappeared the same day, is a mystery to Saba.

Saba cannot remember much about that day; everything is “muddled memories within memories.”  She recalls feeling dizzy, and her head ached.  It had hurt ever since “that night on the beach,” but she is oblivious as to what occurred or how she injured herself.  Saba is clear about one thing: she thought they were all going to take a plane to America, her mother, her sister, and herself.  Her father was to stay behind for the time being.

That was not to be.  As Nayeri wisely maintains“memory plays such cruel tricks on the mind.”  Saba can only recall seeing a woman dressed similarly to her mother, holding the hand of a little girl who looked just like Mahtab, getting onto an airplane to America.

Just like that, they vanish out of Saba’s life forever.  Nothing can fill the void of her twin, not Ponneh, not her father, and not even Reza, a boy she has a crush on.

Because Iranians believe that “all of life is written in the blood” and that twins must share the same fate, Saba believes that everything she experiences and endures her twin must also face and live through.  Thus, Saba imagines her sister’s life in America.

America, or at least the America that exists in her mind, captivates Saba.  She comes up with elaborate tales in which Mahtab confronts a problem or learns a lesson that Saba has recently tackled.  Since Saba is so obsessed with American television (Family Ties, Growing Pains, The Wonder Years, and The Cosby Show—all family dramas), each episode of Mahtab’s life lasts no longer than 22.5 minutes, the average length of a 30-minute TV show, minus the commercials.  These chapters help Saba feel closer to her sister, who is surely “conquering the world so many scoops of a teaspoon away.”

Since Saba herself cannot attend a prestigious university (she will marry instead), Mahtab gets accepted into the very best American institution of higher learning—Harvard.  Nayeri expertly personifies Harvard University—“Baba” Harvard.  The university becomes Mahtab’s father since Mahtab’s true father is absent.  Baba Harvard is kind, comforting, stern when necessary, and paternalistic.

Saba holds onto the hope that her sister is living the American dream, an Iranian Tricia Nixon, even though those around her insist her sister’s fate lies elsewhere.  Saba knows this, too.  Yet Iranians place a high value on the art of storytelling.  “At the end of every tale, Nayeri explains in her story, “the storyteller is required to do the truth-and-lies poem, the one that rhymes ‘yogurt’ and ‘yogurt soda’ (maast and doogh) with ‘truth’ and ‘lies’ (raast and doroogh).”  Lying “well is crucial” in Iran, but Saba must stop lying to herself if she is to have a life of her own.

This story is very personal for Nayeri.  A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea is Nayeri’s own dream of Iran, “created from a distance just as Saba invents a dreamed-up America for her sister.”  Saba “longs to visit the America on television” just as strongly as Nayeri longs “to visit an Iran that has now disappeared.”  A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea is Nayeri’s very “own Mahtab dream.”

What a dream Nayeri has invented for us.  A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea effectively transports the reader to post-revolutionary Iran and into this small village.  Nayeri’s passion and elegance are visible throughout her tale as she explores themes such as love, loss, friendship, family, identity, and memory.  Most of all, she illustrates how stories have the power to transform our lives.

Dina Nayeri

Spotlight on A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea by Dina Nayeri

I’ve never been to Iran, but author Dina Nayeri took me there in her breathtakingly beautiful debut A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea.

About the Book:

A magical novel about a young Iranian woman lifted from grief by her powerful imagination and love of Western culture.

Growing up in a small rice-farming village in 1980s Iran, eleven-year-old Saba Hafezi and her twin sister, Mahtab, are captivated by America. They keep lists of English words and collect illegal Life magazines, television shows, and rock music. So when her mother and sister disappear, leaving Saba and her father alone in Iran, Saba is certain that they have moved to America without her. But her parents have taught her that “all fate is written in the blood,” and that twins will live the same life, even if separated by land and sea. As she grows up in the warmth and community of her local village, falls in and out of love, and struggles with the limited possibilities in post-revolutionary Iran, Saba envisions that there is another way for her story to unfold. Somewhere, it must be that her sister is living the Western version of this life. And where Saba’s world has all the grit and brutality of real life under the new Islamic regime, her sister’s experience gives her a freedom and control that Saba can only dream of.

Filled with a colorful cast of characters and presented in a bewitching voice that mingles the rhythms of Eastern storytelling with modern Western prose, A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea is a tale about memory and the importance of controlling one’s own fate.

About the Author:

Dina Nayeri was born in Tehran during the revolution and immigrated to Oklahoma at age ten.  She has a B.A. from Princeton and two master’s degrees from Harvard.  She is a Truman Capote Fellow and a Teaching-Writing Fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Congratulations to Nayeri.  Her book was recently named a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection.

Check back soon for my review and an interview with Nayeri!  A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea is available now.  Don’t miss this story.

Book Review: The Angels’ Share by Rayme Waters

The Angels’ Share by Rayme Waters (Winter Goose Publishing; 282 pages; $15.99).

Cinnamon  Monday is a survivor.  She’s only 25, yet her life has been characterized by drug abuse, neglect, and physical violence.  If her drug addictions don’t kill her, then surely her boyfriend, Kevin, will.  Cinnamon’s world is not pretty; it’s gritty, stained, painful, and dangerous in Rayme Waters’ powerfully provocative, atmospheric and affecting novel, The Angels’ Share.

Waters was born in San Francisco and grew up in Northern California and in Sweden.  Her short story collection, The Island of Misfit Girls, was nominated for a prestigious Pushcart Prize and a Dzanc Award.  The Island of Misfit Girls won a storySouth Notable Story distinction.  The Angels’ Share is her debut novel.

In The Angels’ Share, Waters shows us both the past and present of Cinnamon in alternating chapters.  This method of storytelling adds an element of mystery to Waters’ tale.  There is such tragedy within these pages.  But there is also a great deal of hope.

As a young girl, Cinnamon turns to literature and has two imaginary playmates.  Her parents are hippies: her father, a pothead drifter; her mother, the offspring of wealthy parents who once owned a renowned San Francisco hotel.  Cinnamon makes friends with the characters in novels; they never leave her side, as her parents were wont to do.

When her mother returns to her family home to beg Cinnamon’s grandmother for money, the young child sees the opulence that her mother turned her back on.  Cinnamon’s grandmother is cold and distant, a stickler for proper decorum and ladylike behavior.  Quite the opposite of her mother.

Waters contrasts these two worlds with eloquent precision.  At home, pot occupies a place of honor on the kitchen table.  Her grandmother, meanwhile, has a large cherub that she points in the direction where she will be.  If the angel points toward the stairs, the grandmother is most likely in her room.  If its hand is directed toward the door, then the grandmother is out.    This is Cinnamon’s world, and she is a different person in each environment.

As she grows up, this gets more difficult for her to do.   For the teenage Cinnamon, drugs become a tantalizing escape.  Cinnamon sees drug use almost on a daily basis.  Her father does not even notice when teenage Cinnamon steals a portion of her father’s pot to give to her friends.  She feels like such a social outcast in high school and hangs around the stoners simply because they let her–in return for marijuana, of course.

Before long, though, Cinnamon graduates to the hard stuff, like crack and meth.   Kevin goes crazy on the latter and beats Cinnamon to a bloody pulp.  Later, he has no memory of what he has done.  On one occasion, he abuses her so violently that she ends up in the hospital.

Her hospital stay is really a wake-up call.  She cannot continue down the path she is on.  She must change if she wants to life.  A winemaker takes an interest in Cinnamon and gives her a job at his winery.  He also gives her a new purpose in life and a pride in herself that she’s never had before.

Because Waters was born and raised in Northern California, she brings San Francisco and its environs to life in her richly-imagined story.  Waters’ characters and her setting make this a compelling tale.  The Angels’ Share will appeal to many different readers as it is part mystery, part coming of age, and part romance.

One caveat: This is a hard novel to read because it feels so real.  Cinnamon’s trials and pain become the readers’.  Yet her triumphs become ours, as well.

The title, The Angels’ Share, refers to the alcohol that evaporates out of an oak barrel when stored at 60 percent humidity or higher.  The term alludes to the belief that guardian angels watch over the wine as it ages.  Waters clearly and fully researched winemaking in this story, making it a more flowery, full-bodied tale.  Maybe guardian angels were also watching over Waters as she set out creating this exquisitely rendered debut.

Rayme Waters

Book Review: The Death of Bees by Lisa O’Donnell

The Death of Bees by Lisa O’Donnell (HarperCollins; 336 pages; $25.99).

            Lisa O’Donnell opens her brilliant, stunning debut The Death of Bees with the birth and death dates of a man and woman, the same kinds of information you would expect on gravestones.  Except this man and woman do not have headstones; they are buried in their own backyard.

“Today is Christmas Eve,” O’Donnell writes in her intriguing and explosive opening.  “Today is my birthday.  Today I am fifteen.  Today I buried my parents in the backyard.  Neither of them were beloved.”

Immediately, she grabs you by the throat and does not let go until the very last page as she tells the story of fifteen-year-old Marnie and twelve-year-old Nelly, sisters who have just lost their parents and find themselves alone.

Marnie is the tough, practical, and protective one, the typical elder sister.  Marnie is fifteen going on thirty, though, and as cynical as a sixty-year-old.  Nelly is her complete opposite, charming and so obsessed with Harry Potter that she wears glasses just like his.  “Another little foible of Nelly’s is how she talks.  She sounds like the queen of England most of the time.”  Nelly, fond of words like “hullabaloo,” “confounded,” and “good golly” seems so young next to Marnie.  Their three-year age difference feels more like three decades.

I couldn’t help but wonder if the girls, namely Marnie, killed their parents.  Marnie confesses as she buries them: “I was on autopilot.  I wanted them buried and gone.  I didn’t have time for tears, I knew we had a job to do and mostly I was wishing we’d got rid of them sooner and, to be honest, I don’t know why we didn’t.”

Neither sister misses her mother nor her father.  Most of the time, Izzy and Gene were too stoned to care about their daughters, often leaving the girls to fend for themselves.  Marnie practically raised herself, and now she is raising Nelly.  Their lives are not that much different than they were before…except for the bodies in the backyard, of course.

Marnie knows the upturned dirt will be a tell-tale sign of something untoward.  Ever pragmatic, Marie has a solution.  “When all was done we covered Izzy with two sacks of coal and planted lavender on top of Gene, not out of sentiment you understand, but to better hide what was buried in the earth.”

The girls keep mum about their parents’ deaths.  All the sisters really have is each other.  In just a short year, Marnie will turn sixteen, the age when she will be considered an adult and can legally take care of herself and Nelly.

Things do not go as planned when Lennie, their elderly next-door neighbor, notices the sisters are alone and takes an interest in them.  He is concerned about their parents’ whereabouts and invites them into his home and into his heart.

The reluctant Marnie calls Lennie a pervert and keeps him at arms’ length.  However, Lennie is lonely and loving, and both sisters warm to him when he shows them more understanding and affection than their parents ever did.  But he knows something is not quite right next door.

Gene’s drug dealer knows it, too.  When he begins asking questions and when a long-lost family member turns up, the girls’ scheme begins to unravel.  The girls’ home, the haven they constructed for themselves, is threatened.  Their struggle to stay together and away from foster care seems doomed.  But Marnie, ever resourceful, should never be counted out.

The Death of Bees is an unflinching portrait of how so many young people are forced to rear themselves.  They are forgotten and slip through the cracks of the urban landscape, lost in the sprawl and even lost in their own families.  Lennie is the girls’ savior; without him, the story and their fates would have been very different.

The distinctive voices of Marnie, Nelly, and Lennie alternately narrate The Death of Bees. O’Donnell writes this coming-of-age story in pitch-perfect prose.    Both Marnie and Nelly join the elite club of young girls who literally come of age on the page, a group that includes Ava Bigtree (Swamplandia!) and Lily Owens (The Secret Life of Bees).

Coming-of-age can sting, just like a bee.  O’Donnell gives us painful instances of violence, abuse, and molestation that are achingly real but difficult to read.  The Death of Bees is a grim and, at times, depressing tale, tempered by sisterly affection, humor, hope, and, above all, love.

The author

 

Book Review: The Round House by Louise Erdrich

The Round House by Louise Erdrich (Harper; 336 pages; $26.99).

Louise Erdrich’s new novel The Round House is quite a departure from her previous novels.  Typically, Erdrich writes from multiple perspectives, with each narrative contributing a little window into a larger world.  She switches gears with The Round House, which was recently nominated for a National Book Award in fiction.  Joe Coutts, her primary narrator and an Ojibwe Indian, recalls a horrific crime that occurred when he was thirteen.  A cacophony of voices is unnecessary in The Round House; Joe drives Erdrich’s story, and his voice speaks volumes.

Like Erdrich’s previous works, The Round House is set on a North Dakota Indian reservation.  Erdrich is part Chippewa, and problems facing Native American communities mean a great deal to her, as they should to us all.  In The Round House, she once again tackles difficult subjects, such as violence against women, crime, and, most glaringly, the injustice of the law.  Unlike her other books, though, The Round House features an unforgettable young boy on the cusp of adulthood, who transfixes us with his strong, intimate narrative.

Erdrich sets her story in the spring of 1988.  Joe’s mother, Geraldine, is badly beaten and raped; her body reeks of gasoline.  To the consternation of Joe and his father, Bazil, a judge, Geraldine is reluctant to tell what happened or even where the crime occurred.  Father and son are further dismayed when Geraldine retreats from them and spends her days in bed, eating little and saying nothing.  Suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, she is a shell of her former self.

Bazil begins investigating the rape and enlists Joe’s aid.  The boy is more than eager to help his father find the culprit.  Bazil knows that he shouldn’t put so much pressure on a boy of 13; he knows he has told Joe too much.  It is too late, however.  Joe is already fixated.

“I wanna get him,” Joe tells his friends: Cappy, Angus, and Zack.  Joe wants to avenge his mother and “watch him burn.”  His love for her is so bright and fierce that he seeks to kill his mother’s rapist.  “Mom, listen,” he tells her.  “I’m going to find him and I’m going to burn him.  I’m going to kill him for you.”

You’d think Joe would not have to make this promise.  You’d think the police would investigate, find the accused, and prosecute him.  It’s not that simple on an Indian reservation, where jurisdiction is key.

Geradline was raped in the round house, a sacred space to the Ojibwe Indians, where they practiced religious ceremonies.  And there lies the conundrum.  An Indian did not commit the crime; a white man is to blame, a man who loathes Indians.  A crime was committed, but “on what land?  Was it tribal land?  Fee land?  White property?  State?  We can’t prosecute if we don’t know which laws apply.”

It seems the rapist violated Geraldine in this sacred space deliberately.  He knew what he was doing and where he was doing it.  In all likelihood, he will not be charged with anything.

Joe cannot let that happen and will use any means necessary to get his revenge.  He will enlist his friends; he will sift through his father’s old case files; he will seek advice from his grandfather; he will garner information from the twin sister of the accused.  If the law is unjust, then Joe will seek his own vigilante justice.

The Round House is part coming-of-age story and part crime novel.  Erdrich uses humor and pop culture to show how Joe and his friends are obsessed with Star Wars, Star Trek, and girls.  The boys are so close that they would do anything for each other.  Their closeness reflects the tight-knit community they call home, where everybody knows everybody and where everyone looks out for everyone else.  Whatever happens, they will insulate the boys from reprisal.  In a sense, when Geraldine is raped and beaten, the whole town is violated.

Since Joe looks back on these events from an adult perspective, he is able to view the crime from two perspectives simultaneously: child and adult.  Joe puts an adult spin on things whenever he can, yet Erdrich manages to capture how the crime shattered his innocence.  The offense against Geraldine turns Joe into a man.  The crime affected Joe so much that he went on to study law; eventually, Joe becomes a lawyer.  He can tell the story then from a son’s eye, yet with a lawyer’s keen focus.

The Round House illustrates how a senseless crime can forever change a town, a community, a family, and a young man.  Lives are overturned, and relationships are altered.  Yet a boy discovers the power of friendship and understands the meaning of giving one’s word.  That same youth becomes a man in this tale and finds his life’s calling: to seek justice even in the unlikeliest of places.  Erdrich instinctively knows when it takes a chorus to tell a story and when only one voice is needed.

She Could Fly

An Uncommon Education by Elizabeth Percer (Harper; 342 pages; $24.99).

 

            Coming of age novels are so popular as of late.  They are everywhere.  Just within the last few months, I have read Jennifer Miller’s The Year of the Gadfly, Morgan Callan Rogers’s Ruby Red Heart in a Deep Blue Sea, Amber Dermont’s The Starboard Sea, and others.   The new novel An Uncommon Education by Elizabeth Percer can now take its place beside these favorites.  In some ways, Percer’s book stands head and shoulders above the others.  I think it all has to do with the main character.  In this case, her name is Naomi, and she is a rare breed indeed.

 

One phrase Percer repeats throughout this novel is “she could fly.”  No, Naomi cannot literally fly.  “She could fly” is a metaphor and refers to how this tale allows both Naomi and Percer to soar.  Although she cannot fly, there is something interesting that Naomi can do instead: she just might save your life.

 

Perhaps it is Naomi’s uncommon education that compels her into believing she can save those around her.  But the first thing she saves is not a person, but an object. Maybe “steals” is the better word.

 

Naomi’s father, Sol, holds Rose Kennedy in the highest esteem.  He may even have a crush on her.  As Naomi explains, “My father developed heroic crushes, as my mother called them, where he’d dwell on a person from history exhaustively, or for however long we’d listen to him.”  Sol, though, takes “special care to nurse” his attraction to Rose.  Naomi is uncertain “if his adoration was pure or a front for talking about her as a role model.”

 

Sol has an underlying motive for building up Rose Kennedy to his daughter.  He wants Naomi to have the best education she can have.  For him, that means Wellesley College.

 

Of Rose Kennedy, Sol muses, “‘Now there is an example of a woman with untold potential.’”  Rose was the “matriarch of a nation,” even after her own “early dreams had been squelched.”  Rose wanted to attend Wellesley, but her father, the famous John Francis “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald put a stop to any such notions.  His political aspirations did not allow “his Catholic daughter entering a progressive college during an election year.”  And that was that.  Instead of becoming “uncommon” herself, Rose would have to settle for being a wife and mother.

 

Naomi and her father are frequent visitors to the John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site near their home in Boston.  She finds a letter written by Rosemary to her father in 1939 one day.  Accompanying the letter is a signed and inscribed photograph of Amelia Earhart to Rosemary.  On the back, in the middle of the photo, Rosemary wrote” “She could fly.”  Because she feels the urge to save this memento, Naomi takes it.

 

On this same visit, her father suffers a heart attack.  As Naomi waits for the paramedics to arrive, she frantically makes promises and bargains.  She thinks of ways to “lure him back, of how badly he wanted to see” her “become something he had never been.”  Naomi also thinks of Rose and promises to live her life with no regrets, although she does not understand what that means.  She is only nine, after all.

 

The experience with her father makes Naomi want to be a surgeon.  She knows she wants to save lives.  On her father’s heart attack, she thinks: “And I thought, maybe, that there was a way I could have stopped it.  That maybe there was a way I could learn to stop such things.”  Her desire grows stronger over time and stays with Naomi as she grows up.

 

In one of the strongest parts of the novel, Naomi becomes inseparable from the boy next door, Teddy.  Neither child makes friends easily, and their bond is seemingly unbreakable until tragedy strikes.  Percer writes some heart-wrenching scenes here, especially when Naomi realizes how difficult it can be sometimes to save someone you love, no matter how much you might want to.  I actually hated to see Naomi grow up; the reader, in a sense, grows up with Naomi, too.  My fear was that this coming of age story would fall apart once Naomi got older.  Percer’s tale does not break down, but it does change.

 

Just as Rose Kennedy and Sol dreamed, Naomi gets accepted to Wellesley.  There is a definite lag in the story here.  The decline was so steep I cringed.  However, Percer reclaims the novel’s early promise when Naomi begins her sophomore year at Wellesley.

 

During that time, Naomi sees a fellow student fall into the frigid, freezing waters of a lake on campus.  She risks her life to aid the young woman.  By then, she has “gotten into quite the habit of saving people.”  The rescued student and her friend introduce Naomi to the school’s Shakespeare Society.  Percer’s Shakespearean club lacks mystery, although it is clandestine.  There are no life-threatening or earth-shattering initiation rites or club rituals.  Percer’s decision not to portray the group in those ways was quite refreshing actually.  Some things do not require great mysteries.

 

Since Teddy’s withdrawal from her life, Naomi has had no friends.  But that changes with her membership in the Shakespeare Society.  She finally makes real, lasting friendships with other young women who have bright futures ahead of them.  Naomi’s bonds with these women prompt her to save them, too, whether from things that endanger their lives or from outside forces that jeopardize their futures.  Naomi does not care what the threats are; she only has a kind of tunnel vision where those closest to her are concerned.  If they are in trouble, Naomi will save them.

 

However, there are some perils even Naomi is powerless to thwart.  She comes face to face with this fact when her mother becomes ill.  This realization is difficult for Naomi to accept.  Yet, she must; Naomi cannot save everyone.  But, “…by not allowing herself to be saved,” her mother saves Naomi.

 

Naomi finally comes of age in this moment.  Sometimes being an adult is knowing you cannot save everyone.

 

Percer’s tale is an unforgettable one, all because of Naomi.  She is the glue that holds together this uncommon, graceful, and elegiac story.

 

Spotlight Book: The Year of the Gadfly

I am on page 158 of one of the best novels I have read this year.  Make that any year.  It’s smart, engrossing, well-written, mysterious, and it hooked me on the first page.  It’s Jennifer Miller’s The Year of the Gadfly. 

So far, I’ve taken five pages worth of notes on my advanced reading copy.  It’s that good.  Miller previously wrote Inheriting the Holy Land: An American’s Search for Hope in the Middle East.  This is her first novel and will be published May 8.  Her website is byjennifermiller.com and you can follow her on Twitter @propjen and tweet about the novel using #Gadfly.

Her novel is set primarily inside the hallowed halls of Mariana Academy, in which a secret society wreaks havoc.  Ms. Miller tells the story from the varying viewpoints of Iris, Jonah, and Lily; for me, Iris and Edward R. Murrow steal the show.  Edward R. Murrow?  Well, you just have to read it! 

I recommend it for fans of Amber Dermont’s The Starboard Sea, Carol Goodman’s The Lake of Dead Languages, and Donna Tartt’s The Secret History.

I now have to go back to reading.  Hope to interview Ms. Miller on my blog.  Have lots of questions to ask!

Interview with Morgan Callan Rogers, Author of “Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea”

 

I am reviewing the new novel Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea by Morgan Callan Rogers for the Mobile Press-Register.  Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea is a heartfelt debut.  Rogers gives us a coming-of-age tale set in 1960s Maine.  Florine Gilham is an unforgettable character, and I laughed with her and cried with her.  So will you.  Florine reminded me so much of Fannie Flagg’s Daisy Fay Harper, the main character in her novel, Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man (also known as Coming Attractions).  I sought out Rogers for an interview via email and she kindly accepted.

 

Morgan, thanks so much for letting me ask you these questions!

 

Jaime Boler: When did you begin writing Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea?

 

Morgan Callan Rogers: I began the book seven years ago, in 2004. It was originally a short story that turned into a novella. Actually, it’s ‘backstory’. The original short story involved an adult Florine who was having a conflict with someone in her life. Someone asked me what the source of the conflict was, and I began to write an explanation. Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea is the ‘explanation’.

 

JB: What was your inspiration for this novel and for Florine?

 

MCR: Ooh – this is such a fun question and I love answering it. So – it’s important to pay attention to all sorts of flotsam and jetsam – the weirdnesses that happen in our every day lives. Sometimes, they turn into novels, or pieces of art, or music, and so on. Okay – so the inspiration for this novel came from a letter to the editor in a community newspaper. The writer of the letter wrote as she would speak – in a perfect Maine dialect. The subject of the letter: lawn ornaments that had been stolen from her neighbors. The writer was incensed about the theft and wrote about how special the ornaments had been, and what they meant to her neighbors. I was in the middle of my Masters in Fine Arts degree in creative writing at the time, so I decided to write a story from the point of view of the ‘neighbor’, who turned out to be Florine. I named her right off, and she opened her mouth, and her story tumbled out.

 

JB: You have been compared to both Fannie Flagg and Elizabeth Strout.  How does it feel to hear your name alongside these talented writers?

 

MCR: Humbling. Elizabeth Strout’s book, Olive Kittredge, is an amazing piece of literature. And Fannie Flagg is brilliant and funny. So, yes, humbling.

 

JB: Why was the novel published first in Germany in 2010?  Could you not find a US publisher at the time?

 

MCR: My agent was shopping the novel around the U.S. While she was doing that, a foreign ‘scout’ came into the agency and saw the manuscript, thought it might be a good fit for a small, but awesome German publishing company that just happened to specialize in coastal communities and on the sea. And they loved it, and I had the amazing privilege of working with them for a year before it was sold to Viking. And Viking – I mean Viking. Look at the list of authors that have been published there! Again, humbling. By the way, I have an awesome agent – just had to say that.

 

JB: Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea is set in Maine, where you grew up.  How difficult was it to capture the state’s beauty and its people on the page?

 

MCR: It was a labor of love, and a love letter to the people I grew up with and the gorgeous, tough and tender place where I was raised. It was not difficult at all. I loved writing it all down.

 

JB: As I was reading your book, such nostalgia struck me, both for the idyllic seaside setting and for a seemingly more innocent time.  How would Florine’s story be different if it were set in Maine today?

 

MCR: Good question. Well, everyone would have a cell phone, so her mother could be tracked. The way missing folks are located is a completely different process now. Florine would have a laptop and access to the bigger world, and probably she would whine until she got an iPhone. Coffee would be made with a French press, or Ray’s store might have a Starbucks attend. Florine could download any tunes she wanted, and might be able to ‘friend’ her cousin, Robin, who appears briefly, but is important, none-the-less. Technology rules the earth, now. It was a more ‘innocent’ time, although the fear of being bombed and the threats set off by the Cold War were ever-present. When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, then Robert Kennedy, then Martin Luther King, things changed forever.

 

JB: Do you have a favorite character in Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea?  If so, which one?

 

MCR: Well, I don’t have a favorite character, but I think the one that surprised me the most, that kept showing different aspects of his personality despite the fact that he was supposedly tied to The Point and to his lobster boat, was Florine’s father. He broke my heart. Also, I loved it whenever Dottie walked into a scene. I always breathed a sigh of relief when she showed up.

 

JB: On your website, I read that you’ve been a librarian, a journalist, an actress, an editor, and a teacher.  Wow!  What got you into writing?

 

MCR: I have a gigantic imagination. All of the characters and stories in my head had to go somewhere. Down on paper seemed to be the safest and clearest way to claim some sort of sanity. All of the things you’ve listed above played an important part in writing these books. Librarian = access to all kinds of books; Journalist = research, organization, wide-spread interest in all sorts of things; Editor = Clarity and the ability to cut my precious jewels without crying too much; and Teacher = Confidence and knowledge of character.

 

JB: What is your writing process like?  Can you describe a typical day of writing for you?

 

MCR: I write in the mornings – from about 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., after I take the dog for a walk, clean the house, brew some tea, and so on. I can write for about four hours. Sometimes I’ll work at night for a little while, but morning seems best for me. I take Sundays off.

 

JB: Will you go on a book tour?  If so, which cities will you visit?  (Please come to the South!).

 

MCR: So far, I’m ‘touring’ in Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. If the novel does really well, maybe I can expand that territory.  I would LOVE to come to the South!

 

JB: What do you like to do when you are not writing?

 

MCR: When I can, I sing jazz and blues with a friend of mine who plays guitar. I ride horseback (not well, but I love horses). I read, I walk the dog, I see friends, I like to cook. I like to do many things – time seems to go so fast.

 

JB: Do you have any favorite authors?  What would you say is the one book you would never part with?

 

MCR: I have a lot of favorite authors and I can never remember them when I am asked this question. John Irving, Ray Bradbury, Harper Lee, T.C. Boyle, Amy Hempel, Ann Tyler, Margaret Atwood, George Saunders, James Joyce, Dylan Thomas.  So many… Some of the books I will never part with: A Prayer for Owen Meany, Cat’s Eye, A Child’s Christmas in Wales, Dandelion Wine, Morgan’s Passing, Dubliners, To Kill a Mockingbird, and a little-known but amazing book called The Little Locksmith by Katharine Butler Hathaway.

 

JB: I read on your blog that you are working on a sequel to Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea.  Can you give fans any little sneak peeks?

 

MCR: Um, no.  I never give sneak peaks. All will be revealed at some point down the road.  :)

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Ah, well, a fan can dream…Thanks, Morgan, for a great interview!