Such A Pretty Girl: A Novel by T. Greenwood

Mother or Monster?

The headline asks a question, but the implication is clear.

The subject of monsters often leads us to humanity’s deviance, and in this novel, it’s the implication that former child actress Ryan Flannigan’s mother, Fiona, may have involved her daughter in sordid things in the1970’s. This pretty girl was eleven years old (with the face of a woman and the body of a child), when Henri Dubois (beloved father figure to Ryan) took a photograph of her titled Blackout. A ‘powerful, dangerous’ one, as it turned out. What disturbs the most, is that the never seen before portrait has been found, present day, in the hands of a billionaire pedophile and trafficker of young girls, shockingly signed by her mother with a cryptic inscription. What may have been artistic and precocious then, is suspect now. Ryan lives in Vermont, away from all the fame that threatened to swallow her long ago. She is no longer the erotic symbol of fantasies that made her famous, nor is she prisoner of her mother’s needs, demands and hunger for fame. Instead, she is happily raising her daughter without her mother’s influence, in a sense, her mother has become a fiction. She had to disconnect from Fiona, all the coaching, from the abyss of need that summed her up and suffocated Ryan.

Fiona gave birth to Ryan in Vermont at Lost River, a compound built as a summer respite for actors working in the city and for aspiring actors, like her mother who never left, by a former stage actress and her director husband. Acting with the River Kids came naturally, a birthright for Ryan, a seasonal family she grew up with, but her mother’s longing for lead roles inspired her to move them to New York City. Fiona wanted better parts, the right place to audition was in the city, but it was Ryan who was discovered. Fiona needed attention, while she channeled her energy into Ryan’s career, it wasn’t without jealousy, envy. Her parenting was haphazard and as Ryan sinks back into her past, we begin to understand why she trusted and loved Henri so dearly. The novel makes you ponder the meaning of exploitation and parental boundaries. The damage that being partners, pals instead of mother and child manifests through the years, affecting Ryan’s own hopes and fears for her talented daughter. With the headline forcing her out of the shadows, she must comb through her memories, and the relationship she had with both her mother and Henri. What did she miss? Her mother was always theatrical, and that hasn’t changed. Fiona has always claimed she sacrificed for her daughter, never failing to make Ryan feel guilty for outshining her. Was she the ‘good mother’ she presented herself as? What did Ryan’s rise to fame cost? How did her mother know the monster? In her memory, she was the one taking care of Fiona, financially and emotionally. She could never settle into the pride of her accomplishments, facing her mother’s severe barbs and inconsistencies. She wasn’t protected, and her mother’s own needs always left her wrecked but could Fiona have truly been connected to someone so vile? Is she ready to discover the truth?

You only must look at famous child stars to see there aren’t many out there whose parents didn’t sell them out for money and attention. Somehow there are those who make it out stronger for it, others who are left flailing. Expectations are a heavy burden for children, more so in the limelight. Pick any decade, you will find a fame hungry parent somewhere, I don’t care if it’s for performing arts, sports, or intellectual pursuits, someone is being pushed to live mom and pops dead dreams. Here is a glimpse of the incentives that lure such parents into living through their children, at any cost. Also, a tale of the hunger for love and family as well as who controls the narrative and what it does to innocent people. T. Greenwood never fails to deliver. This novel would make for interesting discussions at reading groups.

Publication Date: October 25, 2022

Kensington

The Strange Inheritance of Leah Fern: A Novel by Rita Zoey Chin

They sang “broken luck”, “gathering gloom”, “dogs of doom”, and she felt as if they were singing for her, as if they knew her.

This is a story of abandonment, one that has Leah Fern, on her 21st birthday, ready to start her own death clock. Whose absence could drive the young woman, who at six years old was know as “The Youngest and Best Fortune Teller in the World”, to long for nothing more than erase herself? Her mother, of course. Leah Fern was born in a trailer in the Alabama fields of the Blazing Calyx Carnival to Jeannie Starr, a dazzling magician, but it is Leah who is fated to be something special. Her beautiful mother tells her since she was a baby her big eyes were always looking around, as if she knew even secret things. In this place of mysteries, where her best friends are HerSweet, the Bearded Lady, and Rubberband Man, the contortionist, each day feels like a treasure. Hank, the ‘oily and baleful carnival owner’ and her mother’s lover, is the dark spot in their magical life. Young though she is, Leah knows cruelty when she sees it, and his weak charms don’t work on her. She may not know who her father is, but Hank isn’t a man anyone would dream of calling daddy. As she amazes folks with her insight peering into their future, it is her own that will puzzle and torment her.

Leah never got used to the silence that remained anytime her mother left their trailer, but she never imagined Jeannie’s vanishing would be permanent. She is left in the care of her mother’s friend, the kind, elderly Edward Murphy, who becomes a father of sorts, but it is loneliness they share waiting for Jeannie’s return. Growing up she endured pain, absorbing others’ emotions and feelings, and if it’s enchanting, it leaves her feeling wounded, out of sorts more than gifted. She does not fit the mold in South Carolina, not this carnival born empath. As she comes of age, she begins to feel like an unloved thing, more so after Edward’s death. Believing that she has no one and nothing left, everything of Edward’s goes to his kin, but it is a stranger whose death alters her future. She is shocked to discover that Essie East has left her an inheritance. Essie was an elderly downstairs neighbor, a disheveled, strong character but they didn’t really know each other well. How is it possible the peculiar old woman could make a request of her? What, exactly, awaits Leah in the cardboard box left to her? Will she act upon what Essie is telling her to do posthumously, in letters? What is in it for Leah? This puts a snag in her plan to kill herself and as she sets off, there seems to be more questions than answers about her mother and herself. All this time Essie was a spy in their midst, but why?

The trips are almost like following a treasure map, or ghosts of things past, but will it be enough to root her to the world again? Will it summon her mother? It is a tale of women, art, magic, love, longing, grief, beginnings and endings. She will learn that “we are all just carrying bits of each other” and maybe her mother can become more than a myth in her painful memories.

It’s a sad and beautiful tale, one of how hope can lift us or keep us tied in knots of anticipation. It is about feeling like you don’t belong nor matter. It’s how things can take hold of us and tear us from those who need us, even pride, but some things you cannot come back from. It’s a heavier read than I thought it would be based on the cover and blurb. Beautiful journey back to life.

Published October 4, 2022

Melville House Publishing

Starling by Sarah Jane Butler

People didn’t understand that you had to make your own life for that life to mean anything. Anything else was fake.

What is beautiful about this story is the ideal of living outside the margins of what others deem as worthy of a life. With young adult Starling fending for herself, it brings into question her deep rooted beliefs, molded very much by her mother’s ideas of how human beings should live in the world, in touch with the earth, shirking the ease and comfort of society. There is a superiority and anger that arises, a sort of us against the world mentality. Starling finds that unlike Mar, she may need people and words. Mar is famous for her silence, her inability to remain in one place for long. “Life was in the traveling, in the music, in the joining of journeys one after the other to make something whole, but never finished.” Mar’s leaving is the norm, ever since Starling was a child Mar would head off, but she left maps of where she’d be and Starling had Em (Mar’s former best friend, until a falling out), whose van she would stay in until Mar’s return. But they are alone now, without a community, and Starling is left waiting, working jobs, finding scraps to eat and puzzled over where Mar could be. Mar has always needed to feel the soil on her feet, but this time is different, is it some sort of test? Mar has never been steady with others, preferring instead to hit the road in their camper, unchained from the demands anchoring in place forces on people. The only relationship she has remained steady is with Starling, but something has changed.

Who is Starling without the force of her mother, her strength and guidance? Mar is the one who has always decided the direction their lives have taken. A life that respects the earth, leaves nary a trace, does no harm to the land, takes only what is needed, and disgusted by the destruction human beings leave in their wake. If she never returns, will Starling still be a solid person? So much of who she is has been tied into Mar’s molding but Starling loves being a woman of the earth, her mother has taught her how to live off the land, find food, get water, gather firewood. Starling isn’t a helpless child, she is more than capable, a survivor who doesn’t need much money based on Mar’s teachings. Their van is her home, always has been, but without Mar’s presence, there is a shift, and she must decide whether or not to remain alone or put her toe back in the world, a place of nothing but greed and corruption. Mar is out there, somewhere, so are people Starling was once close to, Luc and others from their tribe (family of friends).

Mar may not have always been straight with her, a woman who decides how she is going to live in the world also chooses who to cut out. There are many truths Starling will need to learn about Mar and about herself. She is free now to make her own decisions about her future, but she is terrified, overwhelmed. Will she muster enough strength to leave the van, the land they’ve been living on? What about their way of life, solitude?

I really enjoyed this, Starling is a well written character, believable in her interactions, her needs, her fears and her struggles. She gets confrontational, like most of us, her criticism of certain people is colored by past hurts, and as open to the earth as she and Mar are, when it comes to people, they can be quite closed minded, making fast judgements and assumptions. Of course, it’s not out of ugliness, but their impassioned belief system, born out of Mar’s soul. Mar, though physically absent, is solidly present in how Starling makes decisions for herself based on what Mar would do. But Mar and Starling aren’t the same person, don’t necessarily need the same things, Starling is finally forced to stand on her own two feet fully, decide her own way of life. I think, living off the land or smack dab in the middle of society, most young adults must search their souls and figure out who they are as a separate individual. Weed out what fits and give birth to what burns within them. Other people are always a challenge, with their own views and decisions, it is something that we cannot control. Mar needs her absences, but it is Starling who benefits from the distance between them. It’s a transformative experience, learning who you are without another making all the big decisions for you.

Yes, read it.

Publication Date: October 1, 2022 Available Now

Fairlight Books

The Family Compound: A Novel by Liz Parker

There were two houses on a property that had been in their family for nearly sixty years. The front doors faced each other, with a two-hundred-foot-long driveway between them. Close enough to tell if someone was home, far enough away to not see into the windows.

When Laurie, Chris and Penny’s father dies, what happens with the Family Compound will be decided through the will. Siblings Halsey and William have their own ideas of what to do with the land, even if their cousins outnumber them. The will throws them all in a bind. Laurie always assumed with the majority, it was going to be her brother, sister and she who had the biggest decision making powers. Naturally, she and Chris are the only Nolans who have real “careers”, and the place isn’t cheap to upkeep. Maintenance is just the beginning of their business problems and the estate funds have dwindled. The rub? The will states they must all agree on any decision that is made, and without money time is of the essence.

Keeping the home means they all must equally contribute, but with unequal earnings, it seems unfair to pay the same amount. Especially if you aren’t working at all. Halsey has plans to stay there forever, it was her grandfather’s favorite place on earth. It radiates family memories, her family. She has never worked, but she knows how to manage things, if not her own failed marriage, but she is a great mother. She hates how her successful cousin Laurie condescends. Laurie is resentful of what she sees as laziness, she and Chris are not about to carry their sister Penny nor cousins Halsey and William, no matter how fond they are of their home. Why should they deal with the financial problems enabling the lifestyles the other three lead? Penny is a fragile mess, with her own complicated drama, always feeling like she is in the middle- forced into the role of tiebreaker. It’s too much pressure. William just wants to focus on his yogi plans, his Instagram followers but he doesn’t want to sell, he is on Halsey’s side. Halsey’s entire life is there, there is nowhere else in the entire world she plans on raising her son Miles. There is a split, but it’s not going to be easy as all their personal lives start unraveling, worse, they are all drifting further apart. Truth be told, none of them are close anymore.

Money and death do strange things to people, live long enough and most of us learn this, sadly it can get ugly. Each of the Nolans feel critical of each other and are hardest on themselves. They hide who they are, run off, deny the truth, and feud; all so they can avoid the critical eyes of their family. Can they truly be diplomatic when there is so much judgement? Laurie and Chris feel superior, with their luxurious lives but are the others less? Penny is an interesting character, lost. But are Chris and Laurie as perfect as they appear? Halsey can be just as self-righteous in her resentment of the power Laurie has. William, for some reason didn’t take up as much space in the novel for me. Can this family come together? Is it possible to make a decision that lets them all win? I thought the ending was good and the characters issues with each other seem realistic. The will is a clever set up, one that demands family communicate. A decent read for those who love family drama.

Publication Date: August 23, 2022 Available Today

Lake Union Publishing

Manmade Constellations by Misha Lazzara

One time, Lo had spent ten minutes explaining to Jean Little, a friend of her father’s, that she tried not to use money to buy things, preferring things that were discarded by others- that she was what people called a freegan.

As her twenties are passing her by, Lo is still trying to figure things out and feeling trapped in her hometown of Elysian, Minnesota. The winters are brutal, so she realizes she must admit defeat and get a car. Nothing exciting ever happens, or maybe she is too wrapped up in herself to notice? Back to her need for a car, it’s a dilemma for someone who doesn’t believe in capitalism, who despises the rat race and wasting money on things you don’t need, destroying the environment with more garbage. As a self-described freegan, imagine her luck when she sees an ad in the paper for a free car. It’s not necessarily a bad idea to repurpose things, to get what you can without wasting money but surviving on the good grace of others, doesn’t someone has to do the work and earn the things you want for free? She doesn’t want to contribute to all the waste, which reminded me of those who seriously leave a very small footprint, it’s a lot of work. Work I cannot imagine Lo doing, seriously, have you ever watched those people who spend a year barely using resources we take for granted and making little to no garbage? It takes serious willpower, not just lip service. Naturally, the car comes with strings attached, as in life it’s quite rare to get something for nothing. Blanche is the giver, but the car is a lure, a means to contact her estranged son, Jason, who she believes is headed for California. Blanche is dying, she just wants to see her son again but is far too ill to venture out and find him herself, that is where Lo comes into the plan. As an aside, Lo is nervous in this dangerous neighborhood, the places she has always been warned to stay away from. Isn’t that a bit of snobbery from someone who wants something for free? Is it just me? The car is hers for the favor of driving out to California and bringing him home. Lo finds a local mechanic named John, Blanche is willing to pay for the repairs on the old car. Then, another idea, John would be the perfect travel companion for Lo, can repair any troubles that arise on the journey, now she just has to convince them. Lo and John both work, it’s a wild plan, a lot to ask of them, getting involved in this family drama but can they refuse the dying woman a chance to see her son before she dies, even though she admits to being a bad mother? Isn’t she supposed to be about the freegan life, wouldn’t that also mean helping others without hesitation? Eventually, they accept. They are strangers at the start of the novel but as they get to know each other there is an attraction. Lo doesn’t seem to understand what boundaries are as she ‘resists the strong urge to check his texts, go through his photos’, it makes me like her even less and she has a strange obsession with fireflies, glowworms. But I won’t ruin the unlikely romance for the rest of you. I spent a lot of time scratching my head when it came to her. She scolds people and seems hellbent on sabotaging every relationship, or the possibility of bonds, by being antagonistic. Why does she think her way of existing is superior? She’s the person you want to shake and say, ‘how’s that working out for you?’, all her brilliant choices? I’m supposed to like her but I don’t. I’m sorry, but she is part of the problem too, as much as the people she judges. In many ways, she is lucky, there are people her age and younger struggling with bigger issues and zero help. That aside, she realizes if she were to be involved with John, sustainability and capitalism will be serious issues between the two of them. ‘She owed it to herself to find someone who accepted this part of her without judgment.’ Boy, the hypocrisy.

Jason’s story is presented at first on a farm in Twin Falls, Idaho where he is living with his girlfriend Alexis in a one room yurt. This life, working the farm, is all he has ever wanted. His tale in told in chapters as we break away from Lo and John’s trip. Alexis suddenly wants something more permanent, wants Jason to teach again, why waste his degree? He can still do some farming on the side, as there are Black Farmer’s Markets in the area. I don’t understand why the author didn’t dive deeper into the black farming community. Yes, Alexis is a ‘hands in the dirt’ sort of person but the reality is that they’re not getting younger, she misses her parents and wants a home, it’s time to settle down. More, she is pregnant, so there are pressing needs. He doesn’t want that life, tied down by loans and a job indoors and expectations of society. Wasn’t that the whole point of why they loved their current life so much? Add a kid to worry about, one he never planned on having, in fact it’s a crippling fear? When she asks for a plan, he is drawing a blank. She furiously tells him she will deal with it and he can remain the rootless guy he is. She thinks he should leave, and just like that, he does. As the story grows, we learn why he is a restless wanderer, it all goes back to the death of his father and issues with his mother. As much as he shirks his responsibility I think about Alexis, who knows full well the sort of person he is. Why? Why force a situation on someone who isn’t ready? It’s a recipe for disaster usually, but what do I know, maybe it will work out? Maybe he needs to leave to find himself, to figure life out but will Lo and Jason track him down, complete their quest to bring him home to see Blanche before she dies? The clock is ticking.

I pushed through the frustration I felt for the characters. No one seemed to have their head on right, maybe it’s the chaos of the world making so many people feel lost. I wanted to care more than I did but by the time I learned more about Lo, I still just couldn’t stomach her. I suppose you can sympathize over someone’s lot in life, their past sorrows, and still find them unlikable. Trauma has laid the foundation for the young people in this novel, you get past it or you sink, I suppose. It’s no surprise feeling trapped or frozen is often what happens but at some point, you have to make choices and take control of your life. You can’t expect someone to step in and save the day or clean up your disasters. It really is a part of growing up. It wasn’t a bad story idea, I just felt at times the plot deviated from where I thought it was going and that the author didn’t deliver on Jason and Alexis. Lo isn’t doing much to change the world she hates so much, despite her views, and that is something that turns me off anyone. Jason and Alexis’s story had potential to be engaging but I never felt they were solid enough as believable people. This is a love story I would not want to be in. Certainly, this is about idealism gone sour. Youth butting it’s head against reality and wrestling with whether to conform or find another way to live (at least in Jason’s case). Again, with Lo she seemed to love problems, not solutions, which is the mark of immaturity. I leave it to the reader to decide.

Publication Date: August 9, 2022

Blackstone Publishing

Sirens & Muses: A Novel by Antonia Angress

“The tricky thing about drawing nature,” Robert said, “is that nothing stays put. The light changes, the shadows shift, the birds fly away.”

The real shift and changes are in the people on the pages of this novel. In Sirens & Muses, art students attending the ‘elite’ Wrynn College of Art, haven’t all sprung from fountains of wealth. Louisa Arceneaux is a scholarship student, a Cajun who feels out of her element. Her roommate, the talented and beautiful Karina Piontek, whose natural confidence and grace seem effortless for the daughter of wealthy art collectors, intimidates her. Louisa is hungry to draw her, even dreams about her but Karina isn’t exactly inviting. Naked under the eye of fellow art students, it isn’t long before the work she loves no longer measures up. Karina’s art is bold, taking up space with a bravery Louisa wishes she had. Eager to befriend her, Louisa is surprised to learn that Robert Berger, a professor whose new exhibit is in the Wrynn Museum, is someone Karina knows through her mother. Karina never imagined she would like someone like Louisa, but she reminds her of an image that anchored her since childhood. Louisa doesn’t feel entitled to her position, unlike Karina, she is lucky to be there at all.

Karina’s life isn’t as charmed as other’s imagine and her parent’s partnership not exactly tender nor equal. She is thrilled to be away from their drama. Robert’s work isn’t as provocative she hoped, either yet she is hurt when he rebuffs her. He is a political artist, who the reader soon sees, has lost his bite. Art hasn’t moved the earth for him, and he fell into his ‘brand’ years ago, so much has changed since his burning youth, how is it possible to stretch beyond boundaries set in the past? How to get back that hunger? Now he has a student named Preston Utley crawling under his skin, challenging him, humiliating him even. Karina is attracted to Preston’s controversial reputation, his sharp, witty humor and the fact that her parents would hate him. They stand for exactly the thing he is against, owning art pieces that only the affluent can enjoy, hanging on their bedroom walls for their own pleasure. Preston’s disgust with the corporatization of the art world is a driving force, is well documented on his popular blog, witnessed through his antics, his own daring work drawing attention of powerful people. His is the art Robert misses and resents, the kind that has the potential to change the world. There is a grudging respect and envy going on between them, jealousy. Robert joins the Occupy Wall Street movement, it gets him away from the problems his Artforum essay caused, a piece that puts Preston on the defense, making a mockery of the student’s passions. It is the perfect movement, one that demands more funding for the art education, jobs and the return of looted artifacts but Robert’s heart isn’t fully invested. Still, when he returns to New York he creates designs for the group. Nothing is working out, his depression is growing in size and a bigger challenge to his life comes from Preston’s retaliation, attacking Robert’s retrospective. Preston’s past looms, there seems to be a sense of self-hate considering he is part of the class system he mocks, rages against. Where does this hatred stem?

Karina and Louisa are becoming much more intimate, spending nights together in the studio, forming passionate secrets. Despite the sordid rumors she catches about Karina, she becomes Louisa’s muse, but the deeper their relationship goes, problems arise in her life. Louisa doesn’t have the comfort of wealth to keep her dreams afloat, she doesn’t want to return home and staying in New York is beyond her means without a job. Her mind is occupied by what her financial difficulties will mean for her future with Karina and reality is, she must factor Preston in. It’s all falling apart, her fears do hold her back, but Karina isn’t as open and free as she pretends to be either. Louisa has been intimidated by Karina’s wealth, her grace and the ease she moves through the world, as if it’s her rightful place but she is beginning to see her more clearly. The truth has a way of killing passion, and desire. Can you truly love someone if you haven’t chipped away at their façade? It is more than their class differences that could tear them apart, each have their own limits to scale, social and psychological.

Is New York really the only place an artist can go? Home doesn’t feel like enough, even if Louisa’s art is Cajun, she is hungry for more than what her own mother settled for. She struggles with loyalty to family and her own vision for her future. Karina is breaking down again and it is Preston she turns to, he is much easier to control, doesn’t bring the heightened emotions Louisa does. Together, they can be something big in the art industry, it is a ride to somewhere great, to contracts. He is preoccupied with ‘dismantling the system’ and his big plan is going to disrupt all of their lives. Robert just wants to feel the way he did in his youth, when his work flowed freely, alive and full of meaning. In this new age of internet presence, he just can’t seem to find solid footing, but Preston is on his way to going viral.

This is about the cost of ambition, the struggle for self-fulfillment, disillusionment, talent vs the times, class, and self-discovery. There is love and betrayal, because what story about artists would be without that? Through Robert we have a maturing artist butting heads with the hunger of youth and through Karina and Louisa, a chance to conquer timidity that is expected of the have nots. There is quite a bit going on in this novel. It begs the question, what is good art and who decides? Is it cultivated from the heart or aimed at the publicity it generates?

Publication Date: July 12, 2022 Available Today

Random House

Ballantine

Belle Greene: A Novel by Alexandra Lapierre, Tina Kover (Translator)

“I’m not accustomed to having other people decide my fate without me,” retorted Belle. “You should get used to it.”

Pretending to be something else, as a survival instinct, is complicated enough but add to that moving among the elite, JP Morgan’s family, where one false move could ruin you, make you a criminal even and the reader gets a taste of life in Belle’s Greene’s shoes. Born the daughter of the brilliant Rick Greener, the first Black student to graduate from Harvard and first and only Black man approved to practice law , by the Supreme Court in South Carolina, it is only ruin that he left for Belle’s mother Genevieve and their brood. Despite his ‘extraordinary rise’ and his passion for educating his people, it is the unforgiveable act of abandonment that changes the fate of his family and puts Belle on the path to becoming the director of JP Morgan’s library.

Genevieve has decided she and her children will pass themselves off as white, but her own mother Hermione knows all too well what a dangerous game it is. For it requires lying and hiding for her entire life, it’s not enough to change how one looks, it is to change the way you behave, speak and even think. It is shaking off the family, herself included, it is madness! There could be no connection that could betray their true origins, Hermione warns her daughter. Genevieve’s thought is, so be it, there is no future for her children, ‘nothing but misery for Blacks’, and she will attain dignity for them all. It is the future of her children she is moving towards, even if they have to lose their identity. It is her light skin that affords her a different future, and her children too. The law is wrong, and sometimes breaking it is the only choice.

So we watch the story unfold around the family dinner table in the year of 1898, at their apartment in Central Park. They must first change their family name, but too they must never have children, as they could have black children despite marrying into white families. Such a mistake would easily give them away. The pact is made to keep their secret safe. They are now the aristocratic family of van Vliet da Costa Greene. There are many color barriers crossed and laws broken, but from the start the laws are unfair. With Belle’s summer cataloguing course at Amherst, she has become a master in bibliography and soars right into good fortune. She knows the opportunities she has are a miracle, even if she works tirelessly to move up, even if it cost them all their past. Being a white woman is a ticket to open doors, especially higher education. Working with scholar and benefactor, Junius Morgan, has her holding treasures in her hand, editions that she would otherwise never be allowed to look upon, let alone handle. Then there is her attraction, love for Junius, but it is his Uncle, JP Morgan, and the chance to direct his library that will be Belle’s greatest challenge. She will earn enough to care for her family, more than she dreamed of, she will finally be free. But is she truly free while under JP Morgan’s thumb?

The most incredible thing about this novel is that it is based on a true story. The man himself was authoritative, the sort people cower from, fearing his power and position. She will find her backbone, ‘face the storm’. Her whole life, however, is one filled with the struggle of submitting and fighting those in power. How long did Belle keep the secrets beneath her light skin hidden? How did she find the strength and use her sharp intelligence to move in such powerful, elite circles at the threat of severe consequences. Passing oneself off as white could be fatal in such times, it’s like living on the edge of a sword. Imagine the fear. What did it cost, to have to hide in plain sight, just for the right to ascend from where others determine your life should be? How did she juggle her fears, the threat that is always present when one reinvents themselves all the while traveling overseas and bidding on more treasures for Morgan’s collection? She truly experienced how race and power shaped the world and the fate all people.

This is one hell of a story and a rich retelling of history. When I really sat back and thought about the time period, the risks, the self-control, ambition and wild bravery of Belle Greene, I was stunned. What a woman! This is someone who chose to determine their own fate, despite the boundaries set in place by those who held all the power. It also cannot be lost that for any woman of the period, it’s an incredible journey and success.

Yes, read it.

Publication Date June 14, 2022

Europa Editions

Woman of Light: A Novel by Kali Fajardo-Anstine

But even with jobs, no matter how much Luz or Maria Josie or even Diego worked, they were still poor, as if their position in life had been permanently decided generations before.

First, we meet the Sleepy Prophet of Pardona, Desiderya Lopez. One night she awakens from her sleep to a disturbing noise, upon her search she discovers a baby boy abandoned in the weeds, cold and dusted with snow. She takes the child with her and raises him to the age of eleven. With her visions foretelling of a future for the child, she tells him he will live on the other side of the Lost Territory surrounded by mines and have “a fierce wife and daughters.” She also tells him not to be vengeful people, but he doesn’t understand, for his mind is still that of a child, and he has yet to leave behind his world for the places all the travelers he interacts with come from. As time passes, he is well respected among his people, a businessman who is destined to make his way, but his elders know how their currency is tainted. He, too, will one day learn.

Chapter one begins in 1933, Denver with Luz Lopez “Little Light” earning coins as a tea leaf reader at an annual festival. She and her brother Diego, the snake charmer, have lived in the city with their auntie (Marie Josie) for many years, ever since their mother sent them away, no longer able to care for her children. Diego’s erotic charm is irresistible on the stage and off, fit from his work as a lineman, many women fall for him but attracting the attention of an important Anglo girl fills his sister with dread. When she isn’t reading for coins, she is washing rich people’s laundry. Living in a tenement, working to stay alive, looking at the big, beautiful houses the well heeled inhabit feels like having her nose rubbed in the fact that she and her people are locked out of a better life. With her Mexican origins, she suffers blatant racism daily, from signs telling her where she isn’t allowed, to the brutal reality of murders committed by those with the power. One night Diego is attacked by white men, beaten to near death, he has no choice but to leave, certainly it’s impossible to go to the authorities who will always support their own people. He promises he will be back, but all Luz feels is loss and great abandonment, with her all-seeing eyes pulled into the past (family origins) and confusing glimpses of the future, the present feels like a weight, a trap. What does it matter, the images she can envision of the future or the past, when she can’t change what will befall them? The past is painful, memories of her father’s violence, her mother’s suffering. How will she manage without Diego now? How can he leave? It is hard for her to accept that each of them have a destiny they must seek.

The story moves between past and present, how Luz’s ancestor Pidre cut a path to where her family ended up. The reader witnesses how hard it was for women living without men, worse how impossible it was to make a living when you were Mexican and Indian, or of any origin that wasn’t part of the white community. There are always boundaries one mustn’t cross and if they dare, blood will follow. Luz musters all the grit she has to find a respectable job, with no help from the community. David may be the answer. Papa Tika’s (the Greek shopkeeper) only son has returned to set up his own law office after working for a large law firm in the east. It doesn’t go unnoticed that David is also incredibly handsome. Will he give her a chance, though she lacks the refinement required for office work? Is it possible a fortune teller can rise above the level society intends for her to remain?

It is a tale of inequality, racial and sexual. It is also about the ugly side of history, class, those who have power and what happens when anyone tries to fight it. Too, it is a tale of family loyalty, deception, hatred, and love. It is for the displaced, longing for their homeland while trying to make a living in a new world, despite facing opposition at every turn. Broken families and bodies, aching hearts- there is violence that must be endured and the intelligence and strength it takes to know when to leave and when to fight. The heart’s guidance isn’t a guarantee, love can lead to destruction just as much as salvation.

It was an engaging historical fiction, so naturally it’s not always pretty. Luz has to be strong, come into her own, and she makes mistakes along the way, of course she does. I only wish the chapters were longer, that more time was spent on Diego and Luz’s youth, as well as more backstory on the ancestors. I sometimes felt rushed along. More visions would have been welcome too but I was still engaged.

Publication Date: June 7, 2022

Random House

One World

The Half-life of Snails by Philippa Holloway

She could become lost in these moments- by the rhythm of them, the realness- if the threat of losing it all wasn’t a constant itch, like nettle rash, in the back of her mind. If there weren’t plans for a new nuclear power station to replace the one that has dominated the coastline since before she was born; land acquisitions and groundworks already underway.

Helen and Jennifer are sisters living in Anglesey, both on opposite sides of the nuclear industry. Jennifer and her partner work there while Helen has been fighting the new nuclear power station’s development, refusing the very idea of selling her ancestral land, the family farm. A single mother, she is obsessed with raising her son to be able to withstand disaster. The home they live in is spartan, there are no luxuries for Jack, like a television or the distractions average children, “soft” children are spoiled by. It is Helen’s purpose, to assure that her son can stand on his own, feed himself, stay alive when their own Chernobyl or any such disaster occurs. Jack is a strange child, his mother’s anxiety growing like a tumor within his small bones. Fearful of ‘indoctrination’ from the plant, ideas a child so young shouldn’t be thinking about, at least to Jennifer’s thinking, it seems the true indoctrination is his mother’s conspiracies. A boy with no friends, except for his snails in a jar, every interaction is awkward. He doesn’t handle socializing well, but let loose in nature, on the farm, he is like an uncaged animal, happy- free. He is a survivalist in the making, his mother’s son to the core, for better or worse. Helen admires that her boy is capable, so far ahead of his peers in self-care and if he isn’t like other kids, it’s for the best. Jennifer and her husband Ioan’s house sits on the edge of the Anglesey coast, Wylfa Nucear Power Station is barely a mile away, and Helen along with her son Jack, often come to help out with the animals on the farm. Five years of never staying with his aunt, suddenly Helen is leaving him while she travels to Chernobyl’s Exclusion Zone. This part of the novel is interesting and only lends credence to much of Helen’s fears, but there is a trauma that changed her long ago. Jennifer is just as nervous as they are about the plan but she doesn’t understand it is a test. Helen has recently discovered something bad, it is time to prep Jack for the possibility of her permanent absence one day. Her family already knows about illness, their Mam has cancer. She sells his stay at her sister’s as an adventure, a challenge. But she cannot imagine how hard the adjustment will be nor that fate may well prolong her trip. No one can ever predict how people will react to change, or how good intentions can sour and turn dangerous.

Jennifer runs into a wall when it comes to Jack, has a hard time connecting. He is often cold, seeming to lack empathy, but like her sister Helen it’s possible he is just practical, grounded. Jack’s outbursts at school becomes a problem and it is on her shoulders to make decisions that are for her sister Helen to make. It disrupts her own work, but she can’t let Jack down, even if it threatens her job. Helen would never forgive her. She loses contact with her sister and with violence and protests rising in Kiev and trickling into the place Helen is visiting, Jennifer is worried. Helen was warned away while touring Chernobyl, but she didn’t listen, and now she is in the midst of danger she didn’t predict, violent crowds fighting state corruption. She must find a way out, to avoid the worst of clashes, but time is running out. The tour guide who warned her is willing to help, but she knows better than to count on anyone. There is an accident she didn’t predict and she loses all contact with home and her son, unsure of who to trust. If she was looking to cut the cord, to use her trip to prep her son, she has lost all control. Now she is trying to make her way back under the threat of her life. The truth is, you can’t always prep for the unknown.

Back home it is all falling apart. Jack is lost without his mother, but he wants nothing more than to prove his worth. Jennifer and her husband Ioan are having a hard time without Helen’s help on the farm, trying to keep a little lamb alive and to take care of Jack, who despite his many strengths, is still just a little boy. Ioan is much better with their nephew than Jennifer is, and to add more worry her mother is not doing well with her cancer. It’s too much pressure, worse, she is slowly coming to discover how Helen and Jack have been living, deeply concerned for the child’s well-being. With the days stacking up and his mother remaining away, Jack is not obeying his aunt and he believes his mom is gone for good. It is time for him to act! Will he survive his own personal disaster?

This is original, I couldn’t warm to Helen at all. I think her hardness makes sense, after we learn the entire story, but she is extreme. It’s hard to live between two worlds, any child would falter. The best intentions certainly go awry. She feels she is raising her child to be strong in any event, surely the point is in Chernobyl they never imagined such a disaster, so why not in Anglesey? Also, her touring such a place and not really comprehending the country itself and it’s heated political issues highlights her tunnel-vision. Her own beliefs often serve as an erasure of realities she doesn’t want to tackle. It’s a decent read, but I was certainly frustrated by the adults. I think Jack and what he does makes perfect sense, poor little guy.

Publication Date: May 7, 2022

Parthian Books

The Children on the Hill: A Novel by Jennifer McMahon

Some monsters are born that way. Some are made.

Grandchildren to Dr. Helen Hildreth, an extraordinary, brilliant psychiatrist and champion for the mentally ill, Violet and Eric bloom under their Gran’s care in the 1970’s. Living on the same land as her patients, privy to her work at the Hillside Inn, located in Vermont, it’s only fitting Violet longs to follow in her Gran’s footsteps and become a doctor. The hospital (a place for lost causes) is privately run ‘more estate than institution’. Dr. Hildreth believes in the most hopeless cases, and knows that mental health treatment involves more than just medications. She and her staff have taken on a more holistic approach, believing in the curative powers of nature, art, music, gardening, meditation and even pottery. Violet’s belief in monsters makes this environment, one full of people who behave abnormally, the perfect backdrop for study, eavesdropping on the doctor’s conversations, wildly curious and hungry for more about the dangerous patient S. Violet has been taught that people do terrible things, not because they are evil, but that they are suffering from illnesses of the mind but could it be possible Gran is harboring a murderer? Who is patient S? Where Violet’s mind bends to investigation and science, a fan of the movie Frankenstein, her little brother Eric is a sensitive savior of animals, particularly those their grandmother keeps in her basement (lab). Dr. Hildreth and her colleagues are pioneers, changing the face of mental health treatment, focusing on individual needs and their future potential. She expects nothing less from her own grandchildren too, giving them lessons in chemistry experiments, evolution, studying under the microscope in her laboratory but only upon invitation into her basement (off limits normally); their Gran provides them with a top education and encourages to hold themselves with pride and self-respect. They consider themselves lucky to be under her protection, full of love and support.

May 1978: Violet and Eric know the Inn doesn’t treat children and are rattled when their grandmother introduces them to a girl, around Violets age (13), named Iris. Like a frightened animal, with evidence of abuse, wound on her head and her lack of communication skills, she is a strange patient. Discovering they are to welcome her as a sister, making Iris the exception to the rule of who Gran treats, she becomes their new project. Helping Iris, her Gran prods her, can only aid Violet in her future dream of becoming a doctor herself. She is clever and kind enough to help the child, together with her little brother Eric, maybe they will learn what has happened to Iris, break her out of the state she is in and help her recall her journey. They know all about trauma and memory loss. Violet wants nothing more than to remember their own parents and past, having survived the car accident that took them. The accident is one Eric doesn’t want to spend a moments thought on, too horrible. Now, with Iris, she can have a sister and a new member for their little clubhouse. There, they will discuss mysteries, study their recordings, and hunt for monsters under the full moon. Evidence is required to be sure of anything, monster and human alike, theories are not enough. Better still their plan to search through private records to discover Iris’s origins, it’s a top secret mission. What they discover will challenge everything Violet knows about monsters and love.

2019: Lizzy Shelley, 53, ran a blog based on her childhood project that has led to her popular podcast: The Book of Monsters. Last season she was a member of the team Monsters Among Us, has been featured in a documentary, been in ads and invited to lectures at colleges on monsters in contemporary society. All of her work and notoriety has afforded her the means to spread her message, ‘monsters are real and living among us’. Soon she will be searching the dark shadows for more than legendary creatures. Young girls are going missing in Vermont, the troubled kind no one cares about, and it makes Lizzy wonder if the monster she has been chasing her entire life has returned to invite her in a game of Hide-and-seek. It all goes back to the Hillside Inn. Who is the monster she is chasing?

This is a creepy, dark story. There are Frankenstein themes running through it, but even more, a twist that is a nightmare, at least for those who are considered inferior. This is a subject that was all too real in history, and immoral. I have been reading Jennifer McMahon’s novels for some time now and enjoy all of her stories, always original and intelligent tales. The Drowning Kind was a wonderful ghost story (add it to your list if you haven’t read it) and now we have a monster tale with The Children On The Hill. There truly are monsters among us, the trick is in how they hide in plain sight. Now I have to wait for her next novel, sigh…

Publication Date: April 26, 2022

Gallery Books

Scout Press