don't let it fester

The Girl Who Could Breathe Under Water by Erin Bartels

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction

Review: Kendra has written a very popular semi-autobiographical novel.  Unfortunately, it's not nearly "semi" enough for at least two people: Tyler, the antogonist of the story behind the novel, and a Very Disappointed Reader who writes Kendra a letter calling her out for not being fair in her retelling of the past.  The letter sends Kendra back to her grandfather's house on the lake, the scene of the crime, to see if she can overcome the writer's block the letter had engendered.

This is a book that can't decide what it's about.  Is it about Kendra's attempt to find out who wrote the letter, and why?  Is it about her attempt to come to terms with Tyler?  Or is it about what happens between her and the her German translator who unexpectedly (and implausibly) shows up at her cabin to complete the translation work?  Or about what happened to Cami, Tyler's sister and Kendra's childhood best friend, after their last summer on the lake together?  Or about what happened to the families on the lake before Kendra was born?

The book tries to be about all of these things, and Bartels does manage to answer all the questions and tie up all the loose threads by the end.  The result is more than readable, if not terribly satisfying, and, one hopes, cathartic for Bartels.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

leap off the page

The Women of the Copper Country by Mary Doria Russell
Rating: 4.5 stars (out of 5)
Genre: historical fiction
Review: What do the women of the copper country do while the men are down in the pits mining?  It takes no great imagination to picture them cooking, cleaning, mending, caring for children, and, if in much less dangerous conditions, generally working just as hard as their men.

According to Russell, though, they also organized.  At least in Calumet, Michigan they did.  When male union organizers got very little traction with the workers of the Calumet-Hecla mining company, where death or serious injury happened weekly, the latest death, with the resultant orphaned children, is the straw that breaks the back of Annie Clements's patience.  She organizes the women, and the union and most of the workers follow, if somewhat reluctantly.  Annie is a striking figure, though (no pun intended), and the walk-out soon becomes national news, thanks to the efforts of an aspirational photojournalist.

All of Russell's characters leap off the page, as anyone who's familiar with her work already knows.  Everyone from Annie to her anti-union husband, to James McNaughton, the manager of the mine, is shown to have at least one or two layers.  Incidentally, Russell pulls no punches in her descriptions of McNaughton's callousness toward his workers, a characterization Russell assures us is firmly based in historical reality.

Russell is known for the quality of the research she puts into her books, and this one is no exception.  But she also has the gift of communicating the knowledge she has accumulated without being didactic.  Having turned her attention to the beginning of the labor movement, she treats her readers to a heart-breaking look at what it cost the people who fought for the rights of all workers.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.