JUNE 2021 BOOKERS MINUTES & MUSINGS, THE SECOND MOTHER, Jenny Milchman

 

“Opportunity: Teacher needed in one-room schoolhouse on remote island in Maine. Certification in grades K-8 a must.”

Bookers on the fly changed homes for our annual evening meeting as Melanie’s son, Greg, was displaying COVID type symptoms, although fully vaccinated, but in an abundance of caution, we felt it best to move locations. Bonnie Magee once again held up the hand that is perpetually in the raised position volunteering to host the group and we all appreciate her willingness to open her home especially on short notice.

So, 14 Bookers armed with our beverage of choice descended on St. Andrews Drive East to enjoy the goodies provided by our members. Once again, many thanks to all who participated, and Bonnie did another excellent job with her book review – code word for being our food czar.

We welcomed Judy Short to the evening sadly filled with our farewell to our own Beverly Dossett, her passing leaving a void in our hearts, but she would want us to continue to love our book club as she so passionately did. In her honor we gathered in a circle each saying one word that described our friend and passing a ball of twine between each comment resulting in a crisscrossed web showing how we all are intertwined. Judy was gracious enough to be our photographer and commented on our heartfelt tribute to Bev. Many kudos to MN Stanky for sharing this idea with us! (By the way for those of you who know MN she’s having hip replacement surgery, June 16^th and I’m sure she’d love to hear from you…Post Office Box 106, Dauphin Island, Alabama 36528)

As of May 25^th, Daryl Daniels reports they will be staying in Houston another six weeks as she started another new treatment using UV light to hopefully take care of the graft versus host rash that has been plaguing her for quite a while. However, the June 11^th report from Barry paints a heartbreaking scenario. “We still don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel…very weak, fatigued, experiencing level 8 pain some days….” After being an outpatient for five weeks, “she’s back in the hospital with a bacterial infection…the acute graft versus host disease (started in March) never goes away but may be controlled in 3-12 months…no idea when we’ll be back home…day by day.” Healing prayers welcome.

The Second Mother resonated in many ways with our reviewer, Jane Shaw, who loved the book, and was impressed with the skill the author presented in the descriptions of scenery and setting… “you could feel the texture of the sand on your feet walking with protagonist Julie as she navigated her way around Mercy Island.” Jane, growing up in Northern California, attended a one-room schoolhouse for grades 1-8 – her father the first to attend and Jane the last one. As in this novel, her teacher wore many hats, was creative with her lesson plans, conducting hands-on science classes with nature at her beck-and-call.

Jane with piercing insight and depth walked us through this story of grief and healing tracing Julie Weathers Mason’s journey from a guilt-filled bottomless pit tied to the death of her infant daughter to a place of growth where she found the only way to cope was to somehow find her own ladder out of the darkness. After taking this leap of faith, Julie found her salvation, not in a bottle of scotch, but in children – the ones she taught in her one-room schoolhouse on a remote island off the coast of Maine cut off from the mainland by a choppy unforgiving sea – much like the residents of Julie’s new home.

The novel for me was certainly a page turner, giving me a few anxious moments, a nightmare or two, the necessity to make sure nothing lurked behind a closed door, and the need to twice take a Dramamine, a nod to the author’s storytelling and vivid descriptions of riding the wave trains from the crests to dropping to the bottom of the troughs. The Second Mother proceeds like a deadly spider web of corruption, control, and classism pitting “old money” against the “newbie” who threatens to upset the apple cart. Resilience and determination to right all wrongs run from page one to the end as Julie risks her own life to save a child – at least with this one she won the battle.

Although most of the storylines were tied up in a neat package at the end, a few loose ones begged the question about a sequel to which Ms. Milchman responded, no. Her five books are all standalone novels although there is a common thread running through all of them – where they are set, and her characters are all outsiders trying to fit into small communities. She hopes to someday get back to Mercy Island and see how Julie and her rescue dog are doing, but not in the next book.

If there is such a thing as being born to write, Jenny Milchman would fit the bill dictating bedtime stories to her mom at the age of two. She pursued writing steadily hoping her creative writing ability would classify as a special talent making up for her woeful grades and SAT scores when applying to schools – it didn’t. After her parents asked how she was going to make a living writing and not buying into her vision of writing poetry in a secluded cabin, she decided to pursue a double major in psychology.  While a psychotherapist in a rural outpatient clinic, she wrote her first suspense novel, 180,000 words of unpublishable content, resulting in an eleven-year drought before selling one word, and the rest is history with the publication of her fifth – our June Bookers’ Book furnished by BookTrib!

Our discussion:

Our group offered mixed opinions of the novel – some citing it was too long with too many references to walking along paths and feeding the dog while others loved the detail of setting and scene leaving little to the imagination. The genre, psychological thriller, explores the minds and motives of a cast of unstable characters prompting the reader to ask, could this happen to me and who do you trust as opposed to Stephen King’s psychological horror novel in The Shining…which scares the bejesus out of you…one I’ve unsuccessfully tried to finish seven times.

We discussed some of the characters – Callum McCarthy, the island’s sole bachelor, square-jawed handsome lobsterman who evolved into Julie’s love interest. Ellie, the faux-friend, fellow boozer who basically turned out to be another pawn in the Hempstead family chess game, the matriarch more like Cruella De Vil of 101 Dalmatians fame – narcissistic and a slightly insane old bat. Her husband, the wacky Captain, had a soft side which surfaced in the end by standing up to his wife – his last act of kindness before he died. Of course, all dog lovers bonded with Depot rooting loudly when he faced danger.  Julie’s ex-husband, David, who later we find out was drowning in his own guilt making him less than likeable in the beginning…but I liked him less at the end because he let his wife wallow in pain and scotch before confessing his perceived role in their daughter’s death. Her growth displayed when she forgave him and by doing so, forgave herself.  And, Peter, one screwed up young man – there was a good heart buried deep, but his sadistic side gathered more attention – most poignant when he left Depot on the beach with no way to escape…if he really wasn’t evil then how did this make sense? Was he the island sociopath or a sweet sensitive (misunderstood) boy suffering unspeakable torment? Some of the logistics in scenes like the real difficulty of tying up a dinghy were “underplayed,” and the drama of Julie steering the lobster boat a little over the top…to mention a few.

One critical review pointed to the tone of the author’s writing reading like a Wikipedia page someone would use for a book report.  An Amazon five-star review succinctly said, “Take a drunk, maybe a couple of them, a big dog, a rich narcissist, an island full of terrified pawns and a classroom full of kids of all ages, mix together in the rolling ocean and you have a perfectly prepared thriller.”

Per request, I’ve attached a list of books our selection committee has chosen taking us to May 2022. Please keep in mind, these are subject to change if we come across one of those “unputdownable” books we’ve yet to discover.

On the business side:

COLOR CODING SYSTEM

WHITE:         LIGHT READ

PINK:             MODERATELY CHALLENGING

RED:              CHALLENGING

Summer Read:          Clementine, The Life of Mrs. Winston Churchill, Sonia Purnell

                                    PINK

A long overdue tribute to the extraordinary woman who was Winston Churchill’s closest confidante, fiercest critic, and shrewdest advisor. Later in life he claimed that victory in World War II would have been impossible without the woman who stood by his side for fifty-seven turbulent years.

September 14:           Welcome to Bookers 18^th year!

                                    Clementine, The Life of Mrs. Winston Churchill, Sonia Purnell

Discussion Leader: Patty Evans

                                    Home TBD

JoDee

MAY 2021 BOOKERS MINUTES & MUSINGS, PEOPLE OF THE BOOK, GERALDINE BROOKS

 

“A book is more than the sum of its materials. It is an artifact of the human mind and hand.”

17 met at the home of Jane Shaw for this month’s selection color coded Pink but proved to be a deep Red in hindsight. My apologies. This was a difficult read for some as the author linked past and present in a fictional account of a historical fact. The Sarajevo Haggadah exists and is still on display in the museum, but most of the plot and all characters are imaginary. Without a show of hands, most had mixed reactions to the story with little wiggle room between couldn’t get into it, was confused by the back-and-forth narratives, or didn’t want to get into it. However, on the positive side, it provided a look at life from 1480 in Spain, through Austria to Bosnia in1940 and to Jerusalem in 2002 and a contemporary Australia. A few reviewers posted it felt like a homework assignment, a ladies’ book club member commented that by the second chapter she knew the “less than desirable content” would not fly with her group, while another labeled it as quick fiction, fun and easy to read – what??

The Australian-born author of People of the Book, Geraldine Brooks, won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for March, a story told from the viewpoint of the father in Little Women. Her first novel, Year of Wonders, is an international bestseller, translated into more than twenty-five languages and currently optioned for a major motion picture. Caleb’s Crossing, which Bookers selected in October 2011, is also a bestseller, a historical fiction accounting of real-life Caleb documenting his crossing from pagan life to Christian culture and how he accomplished being the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College in 1665. Brooks and her husband live by an old mill pond on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. In the author’s words, she is drawn to stories from the past where we can know something, but not everything – a factual scaffolding with room for the imagination to work. The Sarajevo Haggadah was created in Spain when diversity was tolerated and it found its way centuries later to a similar place, Sarajevo. Brooks dedicated People of the Book to librarians, “There, where one burns books, one in the end burns men.” German poet, Heinrich Heine.

Last month’s “lucky prize winner” and therefore first-time reviewer, Debbie Yarger, did an outstanding job creating a visual storyline unrolling a picture scroll in reverse chronological order following the story from salvation back to creation as in the book. That is only half of Brooks’ intricate undertaking, adding thirty-year-old Australian, Hanna Heath, an expert in rare books who is lured over eight-thousand miles for the opportunity to conserve and analyze the ancient manuscript, the Sarajevo Haggadah one of the first illuminated Jewish texts telling the story of their exodus from Egypt customarily read during Passover.  Debbie and I alternated between Hanna’s story as it unravels her personal life among the relics while examining the priceless artifact that has appeared, disappeared, and reappeared numerous times, the final occasion discovered in war-torn Sarajevo as a result of a Muslim librarian saving the Jewish holy book. As she carefully inspects the binding, she discovered a tiny fragment of an insect wing taking us back to Sarajevo at the dawn of World War II as the Nazis were stealing Jewish treasures and Hanna noticing the oddity of grooved boards which should have been fitted with clasps, but none were there; the wine stains lead us to Venice in 1609 where a tormented priest executes a papal order to burn most books written by Jews; the salt residue takes the story to 1492 and the Hebrew scribe who writes the text on the eve of the Jews’ expulsion from Spain; and finally, the fine white hair harks back to Seville, 1480 and the unmasking of the artist. By following the journey of these items, readers uncover the miles the Haggadah traveled, and the stories associated with it reaching its final resting place. Debbie’s visual was a big hit as it put the story into an understandable format…there wasn’t a peep in the group as she walked us through this. She has been hired as a permanent discussion leader…she just doesn’t know it yet. It truly was a wonderful presentation, and our hats are off for her ability to tackle this complicated project with knowledge and grace!

Hanna’s personal story involved a caustic relationship with her high-profile mother, the discovery of a father she never knew and a family she could finally claim, her attitude toward casual sex with an unlikely partner turned cold, then blissful, her professional credentials questioned led to a loss of confidence in her skills, and all in all Hanna landed on her feet.

This epic novel of sweeping historical grandeur was compared to Dan Brown’s, The Da Vinci Code, but with “less flash and more substance.” We’ve got a murder in a museum, a baffling riddle left with the body leading to a trail of clues hidden in the works of da Vinci, visible for all to see but disguised by the painter.

Bookers’ Sunshine Report

Daryl Daniels reported she has been dismissed from the hospital and is at the apartment to sleep but back daily at MDA. She’s still experiencing a severe rash fighting to get the graft versus host under control. She reports feeling good and it’s wonderful being in the apartment instead of a hospital room. As always, many thanks to everyone for love and support.

Rosemary Farmer’s trial residency at the Belmont in Dallas is over. She has decided to stay and we all will miss her, but she is under the capable wings of our own Melba Holt.

Cherry and Ray Fugitt are settling into their new residence close to family in Flower Mound. She has taken another tumble and is bruised but nothing is broken. Her therapist says she must learn how to slow down a bit…good luck with that! She misses everyone but is enjoying her new “life.”

On the business side:

COLOR CODING SYSTEM

WHITE:         LIGHT READ

PINK:             MODERATELY CHALLENGING

RED:              CHALLENGING

 June 8:                      The Second Mother, Jenny Milchman (BookTrib book)

A young woman loses her baby and after months of mourning her child and drowning her pain in alcohol, her husband wants to separate and go their own ways. She decides to start anew and takes a teaching position in a small school on a remote island in Maine.

Discussion Leader: Jane Shaw

Evening Wine & Cheese Meeting at the home of Melanie Prebis 6:00 pm

Bonnie Magee, our food czar extraordinaire, will again coordinate the menu for our farewell to Bookers’ 17^th year and to Melanie’s lake house and a welcome to her new golf course home.

Summer Read:          Clementine, The Life of Mrs. Winston Churchill, Sonia Purnell

                                    PINK

A long overdue tribute to the extraordinary woman who was Winston Churchill’s closest confidante, fiercest critic, and shrewdest advisor. Later in life he claimed that victory in World War II would have been impossible without the woman who stood by his side for fifty-seven turbulent years.

September 14:           Welcome to Bookers 18^th year!

                                    Clementine, The Life of Mrs. Winston Churchill, Sonia Purnell

Discussion Leader: Patty Evans

                                    Home of Beverly Dossett

Happy Reading,

JoDee