Rio, a young Black woman, and her husband, Gibraltar, academics living in Boston, become concerned and disillusioned with their current lives. She finds an abandoned restaurant on top of a hill in western Massachusetts. Heartbroken after the death of her newborn, she is determined to create a safe, new, underground society beneath the restaurant. She finds a benefactor and her dream begins to take place. Via word of mouth, others hear about this safe place for the “lost” and disillusioned and head there. These include two homeless men from Chicago, a successful, young journalist, and a former soccer player.
Can such a society work? What happens if they run out of money? Regardless, can the care individuals have for each other save them?
Note: Depending on what kind of novels you prefer, this may or may not be a book for you. Several of the characters have serious mental issues, some think it is ok to resort to violence to save what they believe in and find ways to justify their actions, some seem very, very “lost”.
While I found her first book, “The Tiger’s Wife” fascinating, I remain uncertain regarding this one. First it is long, 374 pages (I do read long books); second, it tells two different stories which do not interconnect at all until the end of the book. I kept wondering, asking myself, “What?” For me at least, the story picked up about half way through and my interest greatly increased.
One storyline is the life of one homesteading family in rural Arizona in the 1850s told mostly from the viewpoint of the wife. Her husband tends to wander off for long periods of time leaving her on her own with their children. His latest adventure is not only their homestead but also owning and running the local newspaper in the nearest town. The reader also meets some rather powerful but unsavory characters who want to own all the cattle and all the land.
The second storyline deals with the men who were hired by the government to bring camels to the West and manage them, one of whose story–a real historical person–is told. His name was Ali, a Syrian cameleer, who died in 1902. He was called Hi Jolly because people in US seemed unable or unwilling to pronounce his real name correctly. This part is told from the viewpoint of another cameleer, Hi Jolly’s friend, who has a criminal history and is trying to elude the law. Camels were brought to the US by the United States Camel Corps in the 1850s. At that time few roads existed in the Southwest, water was scarce, and camels were known to be able to go long periods without water. The experiment failed so camels were left either in the hands of the individuals who rode and cared for them or left to roam wild. Some of the men, including Hi Jolly, were able to open businesses transporting goods to remote areas via camel. This book details part of that history.
In both storylines one recurring theme is the lack of water. At one point the homesteading family have no water at all. In the other storyline people hire the cameleers to take them to places not realizing that even camels need water occasionally. I find it telling that 175 years later we continue to struggle with water issues in exactly the same part of the country.
If you like the unusual, violence, magic, revenge, stories of racism, classism, and Westerns, this is the book for you. Ming Tsu, a Chinese orphan at the time when the Chinese were building the railroad, is taken in by the head of a crime organization and taught to be an assassin. He falls in love with Ada, the daughter of a wealthy railroad magnate, elopes with her only to have her father (who has hired the crime organization to further his goals) kidnap her and force Ming Tsu into labor for the railroad. He eventually escapes, joins with a Chinese clairvoyant whom he calls the Prophet and a group of touring magic show performers, many of whom have supernatural abilities. He sets out to gain revenge, hunting down and killing all who helped his father-in-law kidnap Ada and put him in bondage. This is the classic Western romance, revenge story with a totally different twist and an unexpected ending.
Want to know how the top 1 percent, the super wealthy live and control nearly everything in the US? Read this book. In a mere 117 pages, McDonell explains his own life and that of fellow 1 percenters. He details his early life, the private school he attended, the family connections, summers taking sailing lessons in the Hamptons, and vacations using private jets to places like the Galapagos Islands. At 18, he was able to get his first novel published in part because of his family connections to a famous publisher. Eventually, he left this life behind to become a foreign correspondent in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In this book he details how the super wealthy hoard wealth, pass it from one generation to another, and how outsiders, the poor and those not white, are kept out. Here are a few quotes from the book:
“I began to see how, in the United States of America and elsewhere, success almost always, and predominantly, depends upon wealth–and frequently comes at the expense of the less wealthy.”
“We in the one percent like to believe in meritocracy, even fairness.” At this point he lists several of famous people who rose to wealth and power from poorer circumstance and explains how this is used to make the “one percenters feel good, they distract from the possibility of a more humane distribution of wealth.”
Why do the one percenters behave as they often do? He interviews several whom he knows through his private school connections. “The fear they share was loss of wealth. Without ever saying so, they were very much afraid of losing their country houses, the barn converted for their kids sleepovers, the space for the grand piano, the green houses, pied-a-terre where their mother-in-law stayed without interfering in everyone’s business, the airport lounge that allowed them to enjoy pleasures among their own, in quiet. They were afraid of supermarket processed cheese, preferred organic stuff which they believed would keep them alive longer….they were afraid of losing their Prada bags…the cashmere….They feared losing wealth not for its own sake but because it was justified, in their own minds, by intelligence, hard work, determination—that is by character.” They truly seem to believe they are smarter and harder working than other people.
This is poem two for National Poetry Month. A friend wrote a poem following the prompt to write a poem about a book the writer has not read for a long time. She wrote about The Scarlet Letter. My poem is about the book, An Imaginary Life.
The Roman Emperor Augustus saw Ovid’s poetry as subversive,
a power threat. He exiled Ovid to a remote corner of the Empire,
somewhere over by the Black Sea, the Carpathian Mountains,
among the destitute, the superstitious, people who did even know
how to read or write. They believed in witches, feared ghosts, saw
evil in everything and everyone different. Different equaled
death.
Paid to host Ovid, the village leader teaches him to ride horses
bareback, hunt, become stronger. Ovid transforms from a weak
revolutionary who hates this place to one who sees the barren
beauty, wanders in the forests, plants a wildflower garden,
survives.
While hunting, they see barefoot tracks in snow, tracks
of a feral child, a boy. Ovid fears for him, finds him,
rescues him. An accident occurs. The villagers blame
This is a book for those who believe in the power of books to transform life, who are fans of Alice Hoffman, and who like time travel. It also about how a charismatic man can ruin the lives of many, especially women, by controlling everything around him through fear and coercion. In his Community books and contact with the rest of the world are banned. Mia is a young woman who sneaks into a local library and finds Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter”. She realizes the life she is living in the Community is like the lives in the book. Through this book she manages to attain the courage to escape such a man, the man who destroyed her mother, Ivy. She makes her way back in time to the period in the book, has a love affair with Hawthorne, and finally escapes the horrible man who tracks her everywhere she goes.
In this dystopian novel white men in Texas run everything and carry guns, have taken over what was the US, eliminated The Constitution, and now use a Blueprint one of the main characters created. There is no choice for much of anything especially if you are a Black woman. An algorithm determines your occupation, spouse, residence, well, everything. Black men have a bit of choice, mainly to be in the military and die young. You can raise to a high rank, have some power, and be honored for your bravery. Sometimes young Black girls around 15 are assigned by this algorithm to be the concubines of powerful white men. This is how the main character, Solenne, ends up living with the most powerful man, becomes his lover. Unlike other circumstances where later she might have a choice, he becomes so obsessed with her that he never wants to let her go. To keep sane she writes about her enslaved ancestor, Henriette, the concubine of a powerful white planter in the 1800s. Women have a tracker implanted in their thumbs so men can see where they are and what they are doing. The only place to escape to is Louisiana, a free state, but even there greed and power can entrap you and force you to return to Texas. The prevailing attitude is this:
“The Councilmen said a nation was only as strong as its hold on its women. They had to squeeze the life out of the women’s liberation movements, give it no air…It begins at home with the wives.”
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