"The Swamp Fox, Francis Marion" by Noel Gerson

I am pretty sure that The Swamp Fox, Francis Marion was on my to-be-read shelves longer than any other book I currently own.  I believe I bought it back when we lived in Wisconsin.  We left Wisconsin in December of 2007.  That means I have packed up and moved this book three times.  

Well, I'm glad I hung onto it for nearly twenty years, rather than getting rid of it along the way, because I quite enjoyed this book!  Even though it was not quite what I was expecting.

I thought this book was going to be a non-fiction account of Francis Marion's guerrilla warfare against the British soldiers during the American Revolution.  Instead, it's written like fiction, and starts off in 1752, when Marion is a very young man!  It traces his on-again, off-again romance with the beautiful Esther Videau over several decades, while also showing how a young South Carolina plantation owner could become the kind of man who would basically invent guerilla warfare.

I did a scanty bit of research after finishing the book and found that a lot of what this book includes was true -- particularly that he really didn't get married until he was in his 50s, after the war had ended.  Since it's written in a fictionalized style, I didn't expect it to adhere strictly to facts, but it looks like the biggest thing they invented was saying that Marion only employed freedmen on his plantation.  In reality, he was a slaveowner like the vast majority of South Carolina plantation owners; this was published in 1967, during the tail end of the Civil Rights Era, so I'm guessing that may have played some part in that particular aspect.

Overall, this was a fun book, but I was disappointed that only a few chapters dealt with his Revolutionary War exploits, since I was expecting the whole book to be about that.  I'm glad I've finally read it, though!  And this marks my fourth book read for my #RevolutionaryWarReads challenge!

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for descriptions of warfare and death.  It's pretty tame and generalized.  There's a bit of mild cussing here and there, too.  No smut or overt gore.

"Or Give Me Death" by Ann Rinaldi

Whoa.  How is it I've never read an Ann Rinaldi book before?  I guess our small-town library must just not have had any of her books, even though her first book was published the year I was born, because I would have devoured everything of hers I could find.  Historical fiction has been my jam for as long as I can remember, and I read all the historical fiction in the teen section of our library.  Sometimes repeatedly.

Well, you can bet her books are going to show up on this blog after this.

Or Give Me Death is a novelizational look at several very hard years in Patrick Henry's family life, seen through the eyes of two of his daughters.

Did you know Patrick Henry's first wife battled mental illness?  Did you know the family had to eventually lock her up in a suite of rooms they set up in the basement so she couldn't harm the children or herself?

I mean, this sounds like something out of a Charlotte Brontë novel.  Except it's totally true.  While reading Or Give Me Death, I kept looking things up and discovering that, yup, that new-to-me sad or strange fact was true.  Over and over.

The first section of the book is told from the perspective of Patrick Henry's eldest daughter, Patsy.  It begins in 1771, with Patsy gradually realizing her mother is mentally unstable and becoming dangerous.  It shows how much weight descends on Patsy's shoulders as she has to take over mothering her younger siblings and running the household.  She grows up very quickly once they have to confine her mother Sarah, and marries young.  She and her new husband take over running the family estate because Patrick Henry is often away either practicing law or debating revolutionary things with other important leaders.

The second half begins in 1773 and is from the perspective of a younger daughter, Anne.  Anne resents how bossy Patsy has become, resents being told she must grow up and stop living as a carefree child, and resents how many secrets she must keep for the various members of her family.  She has to grow up too quickly and suddenly, but unlike her sister, she has a harder time resigning herself to this.

I felt a lot of sympathy for both sisters, and wished often in the second half of the book that Rinaldi had not made Anne quite so stridently antagonistic toward Patsy.  They are both enduring a really hard reality, as are the rest of the members of the family.  I'm not sure how much of the sibling discord is factual, though I do know that there's a note at the end from Rinaldi saying that Patrick Henry and his family left very little by way of a paper trail, so she had to work mostly from things written about them by their relatives and friends and contemporaries, and extrapolate a lot from what would be common parts of life in Colonial and Revolutionary Virginia.  

While I found the sibling antagonism less than pleasant at times, I still very much enjoyed this book.  And I didn't find that antagonism unrealistic, I just... would have preferred less of it, because then the characters would have been happier, and I generally just want characters to find ways to be happy!  But that's not always realistic or feasible.

Particularly Good Bits:

Dark, unexplainable things happened all the time in the outlands of Virginia (p. 7).

"Ah, we all could do with a little divine vengeance at breakfast," Pa said.  "What better way to start the day?" (p. 51)

When do you keep a secret, and when do you tell?  Do you tell the truth, knowing it will hurt someone?  Or tell a lie to keep from hurting them?  How much does keeping it inside cost?  Eventually it will come out, won't it?  And hurt the person you are trying to protect, anyway (p. 117).

"Our family is broken, Anne.  It happens betimes with families.  So what we must do is know that while other families get to enjoy the whole, we can only enjoy the pieces.  But don't hold them too close.  broken pieces have edges and can hurt.  Look outside the family for your happiness" (p. 164).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for some non-gory violence, scary scenes involving children in peril, descriptions of madness and mad behavior, talk of ghosts and 'second sight,' and a horribly cruel death inflicted on a slave girl (off-page and lightly described, but thoroughly awful).  Definitely a teen read, not for kids.

This has been my first book read from my #RevolutionaryWarReads list!

"Cleopatra VII: Daughter of the Nile" by Kristiana Gregory

I picked this book for my 3rd-5th grade literature class at our homeschool co-op to read because I am focusing on the importance of settings this year.  I'm having the class read books set in a variety of places and times so that we can see how books expand our horizons, and how a book's setting can impact the story itself.  But I hadn't read this myself before, I'd just heard good things about this Royal Diaries series, so I had to read it first to be able to lead discussions in class.

This was a solidly entertaining and informative look at what life could have been like for Cleopatra VII when she was between the ages of 12 and 15.  She was one of several daughters of the Pharaoh, and although I knew she would eventually be the queen of Egypt, that future wasn't at all assured, according to this book.  Over the course of several years, she navigates some tricky political and social situations, including an extended visit to Rome and a burgeoning attraction to this cocky dude named Marc Antony.

This was a fast read, and I feel like I got a good taste of life in both ancient Egypt and pre-empire Rome, which was really cool.  The historical details were fascinating and very naturally woven into the texture of the story.  I was especially intrigued by Cleopatra's friendship with Theophilus, a young Jewish scholar, and how much of the Jewish religion was explored here, as well as Greek, Roman, and Egyptian religions.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for murders (including stabbings, chokings, poisonings, and snakebite), drunkenness, and descriptions of crucifixion and gladiatorial games.

"Streams to the River, River to the Sea" by Scott O'Dell

I loved this book as a teen.  I loved this book again now.

Streams to the River, River to the Sea is a fictionalized account of Sacagawea's life.  It begins with a fictional description of her life beginning as a pre-teen when she is captured by an enemy tribe and literally groomed to become the chief's son's wife.  A half-French trapper named Touissaint Charboneau wins her in a gambling game and decides to make her his second wife.  Shortly before she gives birth to their first child, the Lewis and Clark Expedition shows up at the village where Sacagawea lives.

From there on, the book mostly follows the known account of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, but tells it from Sacagawea's perspective.  

Things I particularly love about this book:

+ the extremely well-researched depiction of American Indian life

+ getting to see a real-life adventure through the eyes of a young woman

+ Sacagawea herself.

Things I'm not so fond of in this book:

+ the portrayal of Sacagawea as a young teen, maybe 14 or 15 -- she was actually more like 19 at this point in her life

+ the portrayal of romantic feelings between Sacagawea and William Clark -- they're not historically accurate, they're based on a novel from the early 20th century that has since been debunked by historians as having fabricated a lot of things, including the supposed romance between Sacagawea and William Clark

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-10 for a non-detailed depiction of childbirth, cruelty to animals, and for the portrayal of domestic abuse.  No bad language or spicy scenes, but does contain some frontier violence.

"King of the Wind" by Marguerite Henry

It's funny -- I remember this being one of my favorite books as a youngster... but I only remembered the first third or so of it.  As far as I could recall, the whole thing took place in the Middle East, but that's not true at all!  Most of it takes place in France and England.  Huh.

King of the Wind tells a fictionalized version of the life of the Godolphin Arabian, a horse whose bloodline runs through a huge number of race horses right down to modern day.  Both Secretariat and Man O'War came from his line, if that means anything to you.

In this book, a stable boy named Agba raises an orphaned Arabian colt he calls Sham in the stables of a capricious sultan.  Sham is faster than any other horse in the stables, leading Agba to nickname him King of the Wind.

The sultan decides to send some stallions to King Louis XV of France as a gift.  He chooses Sham as one of the gift stallions, and Agba gets to be one of the stable boys who accompany the horses.  They arrive in France looking terrible after the long voyage, and King Louis XV has Sham used as a cart horse.  One thing leads to another, with Sham being sold from one owner to the next, used for menial jobs and never valued for the race horse he ought to be.

Agba manages to stay with Sham through all the changes of ownership, and acquires a cat friend called Greymalkin along the way.  Agba is mute, and horses and cats don't talk, so the story gets told without loads and loads of dialog -- and it works beautifully.  Eventually, Sham gets sold to the Earl of Godolphin, and finally is recognized for the valuable horse he originally was.  Now, the real history of this horse, known as the Godolphin Arabian, is not quite so complicated or so fraught with misery, but most of what Henry adds is there to emphasize the theme of a person or a horse's true worth sometimes being hidden or unrecognized.

Gotta say, I suspect that much younger me probably read the whole book once or twice, but reread the first third over and over and over, when things were all going really well and both Agba and Sham were happy and valued, and that's why I remembered that part, but had forgotten the rest.  And I did still like that part best :-)

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for some depictions of cruelty to horses, mentions of a sultan having people beheaded, and a sequence involving jail.  Nothing too grisly or horrible, but might be hard on readers younger than 8 or 9.

This has been my 30th book read and reviewed for my fourth Classics Club list.

"The Legend of Bass Reeves" by Gary Paulsen

Funny thing: I thought I had read this book before.  I assigned it to one of my homeschool co-op classes to read for this month, remembering it as an exciting recounting of Bass Reeves's adventures as a U. S. Marshal in the Old West.  I started reading it this week to have it fresh in my mind for our discussion next week... and discovered I had actually only read the last 50 pages or so before.  About half of the book is actually about Bass growing up in slavery in Texas.  Then it explores why he ran off to Indian Territory as a young man, and how he found friendship and belonging there among the Creek tribe.  Only the last third is about his career as a lawman.

The book is fictional in that Paulsen writes about Bass's life as if he was writing a novel, with all kinds of situations and dialog that are supplied by the author.  Historians really know very little about Bass Reeves's early life growing up in Texas, so a lot of that is filled in based on typical conditions and experiences of that time and place.  The subtitle of the book is Being the True and Fictional Account of the Most Valiant Marshal in the West, which gives you an idea of how this is a blend of real and imaginary things.

It's actually a deeper, richer book than I remembered... but also a bit sterner stuff than I would ordinarily have assigned to my 3rd-thru-5th-grade class.  I don't know if the reading level is above them, but there's some content here that I might have shied away from for them, such as a handful of bad words, mentions of torture and massacre (very lightly described, but could be really hard for very sheltered or sensitive kids to read about), and a pretty serious look at life as a slave.  (There's also a whole introduction that I would just advise most kids skip, to be honest.)  It does address the kinds of racism that Bass faced, and did an okay job pointing out that black, white, and native peoples all had different prejudices that worked against their getting along together.  It felt a little heavy-handed with that once or twice, but overall I think it was a really fair and sensible depiction of the era.

Anyway... class time next week could be interesting!  Happily, most of the kids in that class are into books like Goosebumps, so I don't think they'll find it scary.  And none of them are what I would consider quite sheltered.  We shall see how it goes!  I do know one of the nine-year-olds was about half done with it when I bumped into him earlier this week, and when I asked him what he thought of it, he said it was really interesting and not hard to read.  SO... it will probably be fine.  But I have definitely learned my lesson about relying on my memory about books I haven't read/reread within the last few years!

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for the aforementioned scattering of bad language, as well as non-detailed descriptions of torture and massacre (naked dead bodies and scalpings are mentioned, along with vague description of mutilation, such as referring to "people being cut up").  The word 'rape' is used once in the book, but not defined, and the word 'prostitute' is used in the introduction, but not defined. 

Because it turns out I actually hadn't read most of this book before, I am counting it as my first read for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge this year.

"The Detective's Assistant" by Kate Hannigan

Remember when I read Girl in Disguise by Greer McAllister a few years ago and lamented that there are no biographies about Kate Warne, the first female Pinkerton Detective?  There still aren't any good adult biographies of her, and that still bothers me.  BUT there are a few more books around these days that involve her, and that makes me really happy, because she wows me.

The Detective's Assistant is a middle-grade fiction book that is a great way to introduce younger folks to Kate Warne.  In the book, Kate's (fictional) orphan niece Nell Warne lands on her doorstep, demanding to be taken in and not shipped off to an orphanage.  Nell is a spunky and clever 11-yr-old who, over the course of the next two years, proves to be a valuable help to her Aunt Kate in solving some important cases and doing some important spy work.

The cases in this book are all based on real ones that Kate Warne really was instrumental in solving.  Thieves and scoundrels make up the first few baddies that Kate and Nell take down, but the climax of the book revolves around The Baltimore Incident, Kate Warne's real-life discovery of a plot to assassinate President-elect Abraham Lincoln on his way to take the oath of office.  And if that doesn't sound like a thrilling and exciting climax for a book, I don't know what does!

This book also touches on the abolitionist movement and the Underground Railroad, and I thought it did a great job of showing why people had such strong opinions about slavery without getting preachy.  Better than so many adult books I have read, actually!

Particularly Good Bits:

"There is always work to be done in this life... You can be the hands that lift the load, or you can be the burden itself.  You choose" (p. 136).

Aunt Kate once said that family is the folks we choose to be with, not the ones we're stuck with.  But I had my own notions about family now.  To me, family meant taking the folks we're stuck with and choosing to love them anyway (p. 339).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-10.  There is some violence depicted, including a discussion of a man being killed with a hammer and a depiction of the blood involved.  A tween girl fires a pistol and talks about hunting for food.  No cussing or improper situations.

"A Deed of Dreadful Note" by Patricia Meredith

Not only is this a rousingly good mystery in its own right, but this book has made me aware of a classic mystery author I can't wait to try:  Anna Katharine Green.  I've done a bit of looking into her and her books, thanks to this one, and I expect to try her mysteries soon!

A Deed of Dreadful Note is a fictional account of how Anna Katharine Green could possibly have gotten her ideas for the first mystery she ever wrote, The Leavenworth Case.  Anna's father is a lawyer who represents a young woman suspected of killing her wealthy uncle.  Anna befriends the young woman and tries to help her father and a private investigator named Sokol learn the truth about the murder so that her new friend can go free.

Not gonna lie: Sokol was my favorite character in this.  He's abundantly intelligent, socially awkward, afflicted with rheumatoid arthritis, and possessed of unsuspected kindness and charm.  I fell for him quite quickly.  The fact that Meredith created him as someone that Green could have used as inspiration for her first detective really has me wanting to try The Leavenworth Case!  

But that's not to say that Anna herself wasn't an awesome character.  I liked her a lot, and I am glad to see this is the first in a planned series because I would love to spend more time in her company.

Meredith has an easy, conversational style, and reading this book was a delight.  I actually read an advance copy of it, but when it releases on May 30, I plan to order a paperback copy for my shelves because I liked it that much.  And you can bet I'll be reading more by Meredith in the future!

I was given an advance copy of this book by the publisher, but I was not required to write a review.  All thoughts and gushing are my own true opinions.

Particularly Good Bits:

"The bloom upon a handsome sister's cheek will fade with the roses of departed summer.  But a woman who trains the mind builds up an endless storehouse of wealth from which she can produce treasures for her own enjoyment, as well as those about her."

Why is it that the only way for God to teach us patience is by throwing us into situations where we must practice exactly that?

Sokol might say he wanted to know my thoughts, but I knew he didn't mean it.  No one ever really wanted to know what another person was thinking.  There was a reason why God had given us mouthpieces that opened and closed.

"Let God handle the 'ifs.'  He's had more practice."

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for a couple of murders that are not depicted in a gory way, but which are also not glossed over.  There is one mild cuss word.  No smut or on-page violence.

"Carry On, Mr. Bowditch" by Jean Lee Latham

I remember reading this book when I was in my early teens and thinking it was absolutely fascinating.  I read it about the same time as Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling, and the two of them made me a fan of tall ships.

The funny thing is, when I was reading this aloud to my kids this fall, I remembered almost none of it.  I thought it took place mostly aboard ship, but it was actually mostly about how Nathaniel Bowditch grew up self-educated and the struggles he went through to learn and understand things.  Not struggles because he had a learning disability, but because he was incredibly smart but not rich enough to afford a good education.  So, he taught himself Latin and higher mathematics and navigating and all sorts of complex things.

I didn't realize this as a kid, but Nathaniel Bowditch was a real person, and this is basically a biography written like a novel.  That made it more interesting to me this time through, though I do think the whole book was not nearly so exciting as I remembered.  I definitely appreciated the themes of never giving up and not letting others discourage you, but my kids had trouble staying engaged with the book.  Partly because all the side characters kept dying off in the most abrupt ways possible.  Once we learned this was based on a real person's life, that became a little more understandable, I guess.

Overall, this is one of the rare occasions where I remember loving something as a kid or teen, but discover I now only like it okay.  I'm glad I reread it, but I doubt I'll reread it again.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: G.  Nothing untoward here.

"Miss Kopp Just Won't Quit" by Amy Stewart

This was such a fun, fast read!  I am happy to report that I liked it MUCH better than book three in this series, Miss Kopp's Midnight Confessions.  Largely because this was once again written in first person in Constance Kopp's voice, which is so delightful.

Like the previous three books, this book is based on the actual lives and adventures of Constance, Norma, and Fleurette Kopp in New Jersey just prior to World War One.  Constance's job as female deputy at the Hackensack jail has always been a bit tenuous and open to a lot of scrutiny and scorn, but now Sheriff Heath's term as sheriff is up and there's a big election coming to see who will replace him.  

Meanwhile, Constance is working behind the scenes on her own time to try to get a woman freed from a mental institution where her husband placed her under dubious circumstances.  

Also meanwhile, Norma Kopp is trying to convince the US Army that they need to use her new designs for a homing pigeon transport to support soldiers in the war she feels America will inevitably enter.

And while all that is going on, Fleurette continues to use her sewing skills to earn money, as well as putting on several musical acts with friends to entertain prisoners at the jail at one point, and future soldiers at another.

I'm so glad this book returned to the fun, engaging form set by the first two books.  I don't think I liked it quite as well as book two, Lady Cop Makes Trouble, but I might have liked it just as much as book one, Girl Waits with Gun.  Book five is sitting on my TBR shelves, and I'm now very much looking forward to reading it!

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for discussions of things people did that landed them in jail, a subplot involving a man who takes mistresses, generalized descriptions of treatments at a mental hospital, and several scenes of danger or peril.  No bad language or lascivious scenes.

This is my 17th book read for #TheUnreadShelfProject2020 -- almost halfway to my goal of 36!

"Freedom Train: The Story of Harriet Tubman" by Dorothy Sterling

I got a copy of this from a yard sale when I was a kid, and I read it and read it and read it and read it.  Harriet Tubman was a big hero for me -- I bonded to her stubbornness, I think.

Anyway, I went to see Harriet (2019) this weekend (my review here), and it made me want to re-read this book so that I could reacquaint myself with the truth of her story, since I knew the moviemakers were smooshing things together and reimagining some of her life.  So I re-read it this afternoon, and I loved it all over again.

If you're looking for a good place to start in learning about Harriet Tubman's life, or if you want your kids to know more about her, this is the book for you.  It's awesome.  It touches on the evils of slavery in ways that kids can understand, it shows Harriet's faith in God and her indomitable drive to be free.  And it gives you a great sense of how she wanted freedom for her people so much, she was willing to risk recapture and even death to help as many as she could to reach freedom too.

This is written like a story or novel, not a dry recitation of facts, which makes it very readable and enjoyable.  I loved it as a kid, and I love it now.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for a couple mild cuss words and depictions of violence such as beatings.

"Everything She Didn't Say" by Jane Kirkpatrick

Eva Schon has such good taste in books.  And she's so good at figuring out what I will like.  While I didn't love this as much as the last book she gave me, I still enjoyed it so much, I devoured it in three days.  Though partly that's because my kids finished their school year last week, so now I have more reading (and blogging) time, and I spent a big chunk of Monday reading this while my kids played and played and played.

Anyway.  This is a cool bit of fictionalized biography.  It centers around a real person, Carrie "Dell" Strahorn, who wrote a memoir called Fifteen Thousand Miles by Stage in the early 1900s that detailed her life travelling the country with her railroad-promoter husband.  That book is now on my TBR list, as the excerpts included at the end of every chapter in this book were really intriguing.  

What Jane Kirkpatrick does in this book is imagine all the things Strahorn DIDN'T put in her memoir.  She fills in the gaps, as it were, with the not-so-shiny, not-so-happy parts of life.  She takes clues from both Carrie Strahorn's memoir and that of her husband, plus from several biographies, and weaves them together to build a plausible, if fictionalized, portrait of a woman travelling all over North America in the late 1800s and early 1900s.  What her emotions might be, what her spiritual life might be like, what her marriage might have been like inside, and so on.

Now, you know that I love both nonfiction and fiction about pioneers and the Old West.  So I'm basically the exact audience this book is aimed for.  And I definitely enjoyed it.  But I must admit I didn't love it.  Partly that's because Carrie Strahorn was... not exactly someone I could be friends with in real life, I think.  Maybe because she's a lot like me?  Secretive, often putting a bright face on over a bad feeling, and generally taking a very long time to let people in.  

Also, I felt like Strahorn's faith was sort of... an afterthought?  Like, kind of injected here and there when there was a moment, but not an integral part of her life?  This is something I struggle SO MUCH with as a writer, because I can't stand preachy books and refuse to write them, but I also don't like books where a person's faith and beliefs aren't intertwined in their lives, either.  Because that's what real life as a Christian is like -- I don't sit around all day thinking about Jesus and reciting hymns, but my faith permeates my daily life in little ways.  Praying before meals.  Teaching hymns to my kids as part of school.  Reading a devotion while I brush my teeth.  Doing family devotions in the evening.  Praying with my kids when I tuck them into bed.  Studying the lesson I'll be teaching to my Sunday school kids.  Searching for just the right Bible passage for a particular scene in a book I'm writing.  Praying little prayers throughout the day when I need patience or wisdom, when I'm grateful for a blessing, when I'm worried about something, when I see an ambulance or firetruck and ask God to bless them and the people they're going to help.  And that's what I didn't get during most of this book.  So... I didn't love it because of that, too.

But you know what?  I don't have to love every book.  Totally okay to just like some.  Right?  Right.  So we'll say this was a sold "liked it" and go with that.  I did enjoy Kirkpatrick's writing style overall, and I'd like to read something else by her sometime.

Particularly Good Bits:  

I missed my hometown.  But then, I often longed for where I'd been and where I wasn't.  It was a lesson of living I hadn't yet learned about, finding the blessings of each moment (p. 22).

What I really longed for was purposeful activity.  A life without a purpose is a story without an ending (p. 66).

True pioneering requires staying through the hard times, not just flourishing through the joy of new beginnings.  It's thriving during the muddle in the middle that marks a strong character (p. 242).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for some danger and hardship, and because it does discuss things like a woman's monthly cycle and a couple's attempts to conceive a child, though both are handled tastefully and somewhat obliquely.

"Caddie Woodlawn" by Carol Ryrie Brink

This book is every bit as fun as I remembered it being!  I chuckled aloud more than once.  And my two oldest kids thoroughly enjoyed it too.  In fact, my 9-year-old promptly read the sequel, Magical Melons (recently retitled Caddie Woodlawn's Family).  My 11-yr-old liked it so much, he said he'd like it if I read it out loud to everyone on vacation this summer.  Warmed my heart!

Also, this solved a semi-mystery for me.  For all of my adult life, the phrase "If at first you don't fricasee, fry, fry a hen" has popped into my head whenever someone says "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again."  And I knew it was from some book I read as a kid, but I could NOT figure out which one!  Well, it's totally from this.  Which makes sense, as I read this over and over.

Caddie Woodlawn is a spunky pioneer girl living in the woods of Wisconsin.  Think of 11-yr-old Laura Ingalls Wilder if she was still living in the Little House in the Big Woods and had brothers to pal around with.  Caddie's family moved to Wisconsin when she was very small, and she was a sickly child, so her father convinced her mother to let her run around outside with her brothers until she was ready to be "ladylike."  She has lots of adventures, like saving her Indian friends from being killed by angry settlers, racing her uncle down the river on a raft, and fighting a prairie fire.

I can see now why I loved this book as a kid.  I was also a tomboy.  My dad also let me run "wild" as often as I liked, and I thought the description "ladylike" was a pejorative.  So I know I identified strongly with Caddie.  Also, the whole book is a lot of cheerful fun, and I think it'd be hard not to enjoy it.

I did not know until reading this to teach it to our homeschool co-op that this is basically a true story!  Caddie Woodlawn was really Caddie Woodhouse, the author's grandmother, who really did grow up a tomboy in the Wisconsin woods.  Published in Caddie's lifetime, with her assistance and approval, it won the Newbery Medal, and deservedly so.

Reading this with my 9-yr-old :-)

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  G.  Good, clean, cheerful fun!

This has been my 31st book read and reviewed for the Classics Club on my second go-round with them!

"Miss Kopp's Midnight Confessions" by Amy Stewart

I loved Girl Waits with Gun.  I adored Lady Cop Makes Trouble.  But I only enjoyed Miss Kopp's Midnight Confessions.  And I think the main reason is that it was not told in the first person by Constance Kopp!  Instead, it was third-person.  And it delved into the point of view of not just Constance, but also Fleurette Kopp and a variety of other characters.  And those characters were central to the story, but they weren't wonderful like Constance.  I'm happy to see that the next book in the series, Miss Kopp Just Won't Quit, looks to be back solidly in first person.  I hope to read it soon.

Don't get me wrong -- Constance Kopp is still the sort of resourceful, level-headed, determined woman I have always striven to be.  And she's finally a full-fledged deputy, with a badge and everything.  I just wish she'd been more central to the story.  Instead, we spent a lot of time with two women who got themselves arrested on charges of improper behavior, basically.  One of them was innocent.  One of them was not.  The book spends a lot of time delving into why a young woman would want to strike out on her own, how limited her options for self-sufficiency were in the early 1900s, and how unfair it is that, even though it takes two to tango, the men involved are never called to account for immoral behavior.  Not that I'm adverse to delving into such unfair truths about the past.  But... I missed Constance.

Still, I flew through three hundred pages of this in just a few days, so it was not boring or something I'm sorry I read!  I just wasn't enchanted by it.  I did really love the historical notes at the end, where Amy Stewart detailed what was totally historical and what she'd fictionalized here and there.  And I liked that World War I played a role in the distance.

Particularly Good Bits:

Mothers go about constantly wondering:  How did this child of mine become a man -- or woman -- of the world? (p. 116)

Nothing -- not a tour with a theater troupe, and certainly not an offer of marriage -- stood a chance against Norma's formidable vocabulary of refusal (p. 151).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  A very stern PG-13 for a lot of discussion of unmarried people behaving like married people.  None of it is lascivious or meant to be titillating, but it's more information that even young teens might need to read about.  Can we call it PG-16 instead?  Anyway, no bad language and not really much violence to speak of at all.  For mainstream fiction, it's astonishingly clean, just like the previous two books in the series.

This is my second book read and reviewed for the 2019 Mount TBR Reading Challenge.

"Death Comes for the Archbishop" by Willa Cather

This book has been on my to-read list since 2002.  At least.  I'm not even kidding.  I know, because I got a little book for my college graduation from my advisor/mentor that was for keeping track of stuff like the books you want to read.  I promptly gathered up all my little scraps of paper where I'd previously kept titles of books I wanted to read and entered them very nicely into that book.  And Death Comes for the Archbishop is on the first page. 

I have no idea anymore where I first heard of this book -- possibly from that same professor.  She taught Lit and Creative Writing, so it would make sense if she recommended it to me since she knew I loved the Old West.  Anyway, I somehow ended up with the impression that this books was a lengthy allegory about Death on a Pale Horse hunting down some evil archbishop.  Or possibly about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.  And so I've spent more than fifteen years wanting to read this book and thinking that's what it's about.

That is not what this book is about.

So, yeah, that was a surprise.

This book is actually about a GOOD archbishop.  And there's no personification of death, it's just that, at the end of the book, he dies.  This may sound a bit anticlimactic, and in a way, it did feel that way.  Do you ever do that?  Get ideas of what a book or movie is going to be like, and then discover they're way off base?  And then feel a little disappointed, because what you'd imagined they would be like was really cool, and maybe the real story is really cool too, but it's not what you were expecting, so you're just a teeny bit bummed that you're not going to get to read the story or watch the movie that you'd imagined this would be?

I hope you don't do that, because it's an annoying habit.  I know, because I have that habit, and it annoys me.  The same thing happened to me with Captain America: The First Avenger, which for some reason I decided was going to be a fish-out-of-water story about what happened when Cap woke up from being frozen in ice, and was mostly going to be about him adjusting to modern life.  I'm still waiting for that movie, because I really want to watch it, and it turns out that's not at all what The First Avenger is about.  I'm still disappointed in that movie because it's not what I thought it would be.  Which is ridiculous of me, but true.  So, yeah, I hope nobody else does that.

(Obligatory Bookstagram Photo by me)

Anyway.  Despite the fact that it was not about Death riding around on a Pale Horse hunting down some archbishop who needed to die, I did appreciate this book.  I read most of it on the ride down to Colonial Williamsburg and back home again on my birthday, so that was fun. 

It's based on a couple of real-life Roman Catholic priests taking over the diocese in New Mexico Territory after the United States wins that territory from Mexico in the 1800s.  One of them gets named Bishop and then Archbishop for that area, and the other one is his best friend and assistant.  The book just kind of rambles around, following them as they interact with Native Americans and Mexican-Americans and Spanish-Americans and Kit Carson.

Yeah, Kit Carson is in this.  Aging, but still awesome.  You probably don't know this, but Kit Carson has been a HUGE hero of mine since I was a little kid.  Like, six or seven.  He was an amazing dude.  So him popping up on this was a big bonus for me :-)

The book doesn't really have a plot, exactly.  It follows these guys and what they do, and takes little sidetracks to talk about local history, and it spends an incredible amount of words on describing the American Southwest.  So.  Many.  Descriptions.  Of.  Landscapes.  And don't get me wrong, they were gorgeous descriptions.  I made myself read as many of them as I could.  But I did skim a lot of them because... long descriptions bore me.  I don't care so much about what a place looks like as about what's happening there.  It's probably sad, but it's definitely true.

The biggest thing I took away from this book was how amazingly devoted the early missionaries to America were.  Staggeringly brave.  Not being Catholic myself, I haven't learned a lot about their mission work here, aside from knowing that there were a ton of missions all over the place in California and Arizona and Mexico, which I mostly know from TV shows like The Lone Ranger and Zorro because they're always getting help from the padres or helping the padres or whatever.  So that was pretty cool to learn about.

All in all, I can see why this book is famous and well-respected.  And I think I will read it again one day, now that I know what to expect from it for real.  But I also think I am just never going to be a Willa Cather fan.  I didn't really like My Antonia or O Pioneers! much at all -- they were too melancholy for my taste.  I liked Death Comes a lot better than either of those.  Enough to want to reread it at some point.  It had a stark beauty that impressed me.  But I think Cather and I just have different worldviews or something, and I never quite click with her books the way I want to, or the way other people do.  Such is life!

Particularly Good Bits:

The thick clay walls had been finished on the inside by the deft palms of Indian women, and had that irregular and intimate quality of things made entirely by the human hand (p. 33).

Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky (p. 232).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for non-explicit discussions of non-celibate priests, torture, and violence.

This is my 17th book read and reviewed from my second Classics Club list, and this is also my 8th book read and reviewed for the Mount TBR Challenge 2018.

"Girl in Disguise" by Greer MacAllister

I've had such a great string of reading luck lately -- book after book that have been awesome!

Girl in Disguise is a fictional book based on the life of Kate Warne, the first woman detective hired by the famous Pinkerton Agency back before the American Civil War.  She walks into the Pinkerton agency to ask for a job, wows Mr. Pinkerton himself, and goes on to become one of his finest operatives.  Her career takes her all over the US and spans decades, though most of the book occurs during the Civil War while she is spying for the Union Army as part of her Pinkerton duties.

I finished reading this and set out to find a non-fiction biography of Kate Warne because I wanted to know just how much of this book was based in reality and how much was made up.  And then I learned something disturbing:

There aren't any biographies of Kate Warne.

In fact, we know almost nothing about her.  We don't even for sure have any photographs of her.  All we know was she existed, she was the first woman detective, Pinkerton hired her and eventually made her head of his female detective division, she worked as a spy for the Union during the Civil War and helped Pinkerton smuggle Abraham Lincoln through Maryland on his way to his inauguration, and that she's buried near Pinkerton and his family.

ARGH!  

So much for me learning all about Kate Warne.  Or learning more about her, anyway.  Still, I really, really enjoyed this book and look forward to re-reading it one day.  

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for bad language, some violence, and a lot of innuendo and adult situations.  It never crossed the border into explicitness, but it sure danced around that border a lot.

"Lady Cop Makes Trouble" by Amy Stewart

You might remember how much I ooohed and ahhhed over Girl Waits With Gun this summer.  I snatched up a copy of the sequel while I was on vacation, but didn't have time to read it until we got home.  However, once I was in it, I was really in it, and I think I liked it even better than the first book!  Girl dragged a little in places, as the Kopps waited and waited to catch Henry Kauffman.  But Lady never felt draggy at all.  Yay!

Once again, what I liked best was Constance Kopp herself, the lady cop -- or at least, she wants to be a lady cop, but there's some confusion as to whether ladies are allowed to be cops yet, this being the early 20th century.  But she's still the sort of resourceful, level-headed, determined woman I have always striven to be, and I quite admire her.  The fictional her, I mean -- I have no idea how close the personality of the character is to the real Constance Kopp, but whatever.

In this book, Constance kinda sorta accidentally lets a prisoner escape, gets removed from her tentative post as deputy, and sets out unofficially tracking the prisoner down.  Because she's awesome.  Norma and Fleurette are back again as well, and of course, Sheriff Heath.  Poor Sheriff Heath, he's beset from all sides in this, and I felt quite sorry for him at times.


Particularly Good Bits:

I carried a gun and handcuffs.  I could make an arrest, just like any deputy.  I earned a man's salary.  People did find it shocking and I didn't mind that one bit (p. 13).

It occurred to me that there was something admirable about a man in his late thirties.  He was old enough to know his own mind and still young enough to do something about it (p. 46).

"Yes, well, he's a man of limited intellect, and if he had more than one idea at a time they'd die from overcrowding" (p. 71).

How often would I have to run to get away from my own mistakes? (p. 174)


If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 again, for some hints and allusions to unsavory behavior, violence, and suspense.  Little or no bad language, and astonishingly clean overall.

"Girl Waits with Gun" by Amy Stewart

So... I didn't like this book as much as I was expecting to.  I liked it so much more!!!  I had read something about it somewhere a while ago (gee, can I vague that up for you a little?), and when I saw it at the bookstore last week, I said, "Aha!  That sounded good, I think," and bought it on a whim.  I almost never buy brand new books on a whim (you know what a cautious fellow I am), but I had a coupon...

Anyway.  Great book!  Really, really fun.  It concerns the three unmarried Kopp ladies, Constance, Norma, and Fleurette, who live on an isolated farm in New Jersey in the 1910s.  They have a literal run-in with a dreadful man named Henry Kaufman when his motorcar smashes up their buggy.  Instead of paying to have their buggy repaired like he obviously ought to, he starts harassing the women with drive-by taunts, bricks through windows, threatening notes, and eventually more.  Constance and Norma Kopp learn to shoot pistols and have a series of adventures that involve not only Henry Kaufman, but also an unwed mother whose baby boy has disappeared.  

And it's based on a true story.  Did I mention that?  Yes!  The Kopps were real people -- there's even a photograph of Constance at the back of the book.  The title comes from the headline of a real-life newspaper article written about their efforts to protect themselves from Kaufman and his associates.  

But all that isn't why I loved the book.  I loved it, of course, because of the characters.  Constance Kopp is precisely the sort of resourceful, level-headed, determined woman I have always striven to be.  Had I been in her situation, I would have armed myself and set out to protect my family much like she did.  Her sister Norma is a homing pigeon fanatic, but equally sensible and down-to-earth -- in some ways, she reminded me a great deal of my best friend.  Fleurette... at first, Fleurette did annoy me.  She's just a teenager, while Constance and Norma are in their 30s, and she's flighty and frolicsome and fashion-obsessed.  But she grew on me, with her frog-catching and -cooking, her knack for sewing, and her calm confidence in Constance and Norma's abilities to save her from being kidnapped and sold into white slavery.

And then there's Sheriff Heath.  Oh, Sheriff Heath, with his mustache and his eyes, and that name that makes me think of a certain Barkley Boy.  He wasn't exactly a love interest, but he did provide some nice manly scenery.

A sequel, Lady Cop Makes Trouble, is getting released this fall, and you can bet I'll be buying that one too -- and not on any whim!

Particularly Good Bits:

I worried that I was destined to die in the same bed my mother had died in, leaving behind nothing but a cellar full of parsnips and uneven rows of stitches along cuffs and collars that nobody even remembered me making (p. 27).

In my mind, Henry Kaufman existed only in those moments when I had seen him, and the rest of the time he was still and quiet, like a marionette hung backstage by his strings, motionless until someone took him up and sent him skittering back to life (p. 83).

The granite courthouse behind us, the rows of brick offices and shops across the street, and the trolleys running along their tracks, all seemed to speak of a crisp and orderly world in which people could walk the streets in peace (p. 404).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13.  There are two unwed mothers in this story, and while there are NO detailed scenes of how they came to be that way, there are oblique and veiled references to such things, and to white slavery as well.  There is some violence, including gunplay and arson.  There are some very tense moments, and not a small amount of danger.  However, there is almost no bad language -- only one curse word as far as I can recall.

"Becoming Jane Eyre" by Sheila Kohler

I've had this for a couple years now, but never got around to reading it until now.  (I should post a picture of my TBR bookcase so you can see just what I'm up against.)  I decided the time had finally come, as I'm gearing up for my Jane Eyre read-along that starts in May.  The back cover said it was a sort of fictional biography, which I liked the sound of, as I don't know much about Charlotte Bronte herself, I must admit.

Becoming Jane Eyre traces Charlotte's writing of her famous novel, her efforts to publish it, and how its success changed her life.  It also shows Emily and Anne publishing their first novels before her, only to be eclipsed by their sister's success.  Their father's health problems and their brother's mental disturbances also play significant roles.

I really wanted to like this book, but alas, I didn't.  It was well-written, thought-provoking, insightful, and intelligent.  I feel now as if I knew a good bit of what life was like for Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte.  I sympathize with them greatly.  Kohler did a masterful job of weaving the Bronte novels in with their lives, showing how reality influenced story for them, and vice versa.  It was quite fascinating, really.

But I didn't like it solely because there was the occasional sordid passage that would sort of pop up unannounced, though none of them involved the sisters themselves.  These were entirely unnecessary, jarring, and made me blush.  So now you know.

However!  Sheila Kohler did make one observation that I loved, and I'm hoping I remember to bring it up again during the JE read-along.  Here it is:

Jane must choose between love without marriage or marriage without love (p. 147).

Not the entire point of the novel, but for part of it, that's huge.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  R for explicit sexual material, and alcohol and drug use.

"West of Sunset" by Stewart O'Nan

I didn't think it was possible for me to feel sorrier for F. Scott Fitzgerald, but I was wrong.  This jewel of a novel depicts his last few years, as he struggles toward oblivion in Hollywood, working on a string of mediocre scripts for unappreciative filmmakers.  I've never read a lengthy biography of Fitzgerald, so I don't know how many details here are pulled from life and how many are added by O'Nan -- this is a novel, after all, not a strict biography.  I would assume that the bones are real, and O'Nan has simply given them flesh and motion.

The bones, then, are these:  The Great Depression is on, and Scott's beloved wife, Zelda, is descending into hereditary madness.  She's living at a mental hospital near Asheville, NC (not far from the Biltmore, if you've heard of that).  Their daughter, Scottie, is off at prep school.  Scott himself moves to Hollywood to earn money by writing screenplays.  He's trying to pay for Zelda's care and Scottie's schooling, plus pay off debts he incurred with the Roaring Twenties lifestyle he and Zelda were famous for.  In Hollywood, he meets a younger woman, a society columnist, and has a tempestuous affair with her.  He lives next to Humphrey Bogart for a while, and I think the scenes with Bogie were my favorites, as O'Nan captured his speech rhythms beautifully.  Anyway, Scott works on his last novel and tries to make a go of screenwriting, and eventually dies a dissipated, middle-aged shadow of his youthful self.

O'Nan takes this bleak story and crafts it into a cautionary tale of what happens when talent gets wasted and opportunities get squandered.  But more than that, he makes all the major characters heartbreakingly sympathetic.  Scott, Zelda, Scottie, even the new girlfriend Sheila -- I cared about all of them by the end, and didn't want the looming tragedy of Scott's death to befall them.

But then, when Scott did die, it wasn't depressing at all.  His death felt inevitable, but not tragic.  Not quite the emotional outcome I was expecting.  Huh.

Obviously, there's a lot of unsavory stuff going on in this novel.  Marital infidelity and alcoholism are the biggies, and the story as a whole is not what I'd term "nice."  There's very little bad language, which surprised me.  Oh, and of course Ernest Hemingway is here, angry and bitter and sometimes downright mean.  Nothing unexpected, I must admit.  I love the way both Hemingway and Fitzgerald wrote, but they themselves were less than admirable people.

Particularly Good Bits:

There were years like phantoms, like fog.  Often he wondered if certain memories of his had really taken place (p. 28).

He was a writer -- all he wanted from this world were the makings of another truer to his heart (p. 53).

He was over at Universal, adapting his last play, a task Scott imagined was like slowly poisoning your own child (p. 74).

If he'd ever belonged anywhere, those places were long gone, the happiness he recalled there as fleeting as the seasons (p. 208).

For years her dabbling had struck him as slapdash and glib, lacking the discipline of the professional.  Now he envied her simple love of creation.  He'd written too much for money (p. 247).


If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  R for adult dialog and sexual situations.