Ladies’ Day

Beth Sawyer has had her share of heartaches, including a runaway daughter named Julie, whose disappearance years earlier brought about her divorce. Though Beth will never give up on finding Julie, fifteen years later she has a pretty fulfilling life teaching college composition, she has begun dating again, and she has the support of her two closest friends who get together to play a round of golf each week on ladies’ day.

Beth’s life changes when she sees a newspaper photo of a promising young golfer named Sky Sawyer who looks just like her runaway daughter, Julie, setting her on a mission to find out more. Could Sky possibly be her granddaughter, and if so, will she lead Beth to finding her lost daughter, Julie?

This is the premise of Lisa Williams Kline’s compelling new novel, Ladies’ Day, a heartwarming, realistic story of four generations of women told from the viewpoints of Beth and Sky. Ladies’ Day is part romance, part mystery, part family drama, with some serious and lol funny competition taking place on the golf course. The novel drew me in with the first scene and had me attentively turning the pages to the very end, cheering for the Sawyer women to reconcile and reunite as a family. Wonderfully written and highly recommended!

Between the Sky and the Sea

I’m always curious about where authors get their ideas and this was especially true in the captivating new novel, Between the Sky and the Sea, by Lisa Williams Kline. Fascinated by the discovery of the shipwreck of the steamship Pulaski in 2018 off the coast of Wilmington, NC, Lisa began to research and uncovered a legend in the Delaware Gazette about two supposed survivors—a Miss Onslow from Savannah and a Mr. Ridge from New Orleans. The legend says the two had never met prior to the ship’s explosion and sinking, but together they survive at sea for four days on a makeshift raft, and by the time of their rescue, they are engaged.

Though the legend was never verified, and the two weren’t listed on the ship’s register, from that tiny little newspaper nugget, Lisa let her imagination run to create this vivid and compelling story set in the 1830s South. Lavinia Onslow is the strong and independent main character whose passion lies in the work she does of managing the family’s millinery shop. If and when she decides to marry, she hopes to do so for love, and not make a marriage of convenience like her younger sister, Sarah, is planning. In a case of ‘be careful what you wish for,’ Lavinia falls in love with Daniel Ridge while drifting at sea and marries him just days after their rescue. This spontaneous decision brings huge complications and heartbreaking circumstances causing Lavinia to question everything she’s ever believed.    

This was a most gratifying novel and I couldn’t put it down, swept away first by the story of surviving the sinking of the Pulaski, but also by the relatable characters, the vibrant descriptions of Savannah and New Orleans, and the author’s knowledge of the history, customs, and speech of the times. I found myself crying in places, but always cheering for Lavinia and everything she endures as she gracefully navigates the impact of her decisions as well as the confines placed upon her at a time in history when women cannot own property and coverture laws are enforced.

Compelling, page-turning, and ultimately hopeful, Between the Sky and the Sea captured my attention until the very end.  

From Strength to Strength

In his 2022 book From Strength to Strength, Arthur C. Brooks, a social scientist and columnist for The Atlantic, writes that half of the people who make it to 65 get happier as they age, while the other half get unhappier by clinging to past successes. His book, subtitled “finding success, happiness, and deep purpose in the second half of life,” is a practical roadmap for the second half of life and addresses seven patterns for moving the needle in the direction of happiness and fulfillment.

Early in the book, Brooks introduces what he finds are two intelligence curves: the fluid intelligence curve which is the intelligence of ideas, innovations, and creative thinking vs. the crystalized intelligence curve which is the collective wisdom of a lifetime. Fluid intelligence is the intelligence of the young, and starts to wan in one’s forties and fifties. Brooks cites many instances of ‘strivers,’ himself included, who were once at the top of their game but start to lose their edge as they age, yet can’t let go of the addiction to success and power. On the other hand, crystalized intelligence continues to grow. He compares it to a library where all the books on the shelf are the sum of our knowledge and experience…though as we age accessing it can take a while longer. Brooks posits crystalized intelligence is the more rewarding of the two curves. It’s the intelligence of maturity, of the teacher brain, it’s the ability to assemble ideas in a new way, and put our wisdom to use in service of others and in giving back.  

In other chapters Brooks writes of the importance of managing our ‘wants.’ While early in our careers we spend much time accumulating the status that comes from ‘things,’ the second half should be about releasing what is unessential, which he compares to a sculptor chipping away at what isn’t the statue within the stone. He goes on to say we should ponder our death, a hard thing for many of us to do, writing that the legacies we think we’re building will wither away, as will our memories, and thinking about our lifespans puts the truly important things in perspective.

As most geriatric studies show, healthy aging includes having a rich social circle. Brooks writes we should be intentional in making friendships, and distinguishes between ‘deal’ friends and ‘real’ friends, the real friends being the ones who know us well, the people who would show up at our funerals. There is a chapter on cultivating our faith which Brooks was hesitant to include. He is a practicing Catholic, but recognizes that organized religion isn’t for everyone and suggests ways to pursue spirituality by taking time to really know what we believe, spending time in prayer and contemplation, and continuously reading and learning.

Brooks, who had a former career as the CEO of a Washington think tank, writes that his research into the subject of aging well and happily caused him to reconsider career paths. As well as writing, he now teaches what he preaches at the Harvard Business School.

Supported by lots of anecdotal as well as scholarly evidence, at 217 pages, I found the book to be highly readable and relatable. As a person well into the second half of life, so much resonated with me especially the conclusion that we have some choice in our future happiness and we shouldn’t leave it to chance.

The Maker of Swans

Paraic O’Donnell’s debut novel The Maker of Swans begins with a bang—late one night in front of a decaying English countryside estate, a chase and a shoot-out result in the death of a scorned lover at the hands of the mysterious writer/philanderer, Mr. Crowe, while trying to protect his latest muse, a singer named Arabella. Eustace, the butler/caretaker, is left to clean things up, learning that the man didn’t die from a bullet wound, but from something else, something much more sinister. Endowed with extraordinary powers, Mr. Crowe is a member of a secret society with a rule that states “they may destroy what they themselves have created…They may not destroy what is living.” Mr. Crowe has misused his powers and now must pay.

In a parallel story, Mr. Crowe has a ward named Clara, a mute girl who is given free rein to explore the estate with all its winding passageways and hidden rooms as well as the surrounding grounds. Clara communicates through writing and shares her imaginative prose with Eustace, her sole caretaker and the only one who takes any interest in her. Though latent, Clara also has the mysterious gift. She hears and sees things others don’t, and in an early fascinating scene with her mirror image, Clara makes her own magic when she gives life to a swan.

Much preparation is made by Eustace for Mr. Chastern—a college professor of English by day, in charge of the secret society by night— who envies Mr. Crowe’s wasted talents. He arrives at the estate with his thug, Navaire, to exact punishment for the killing. The punishment is the kidnapping of Clara who will only be returned when Mr. Crowe agrees to use his talent once again and write something coveted by Chastern.

As twisting and turning as the maze on the estate, The Maker of Swans is told in two parts. In the second half we learn Eustace’s backstory, including the loss of his sister and his first love, and how he comes to work for Crowe and care for Clara. It’s in the second half, while imprisoned, Clara recognizes her powers when through her writing, she brings to bloom a rose garden in winter. She is chastised by Mr. Chastern who tells her, “…one is always disquieted when such things happen other than in their natural course,” and her pen and paper are taken away. However, when Chastern returns to the estate leaving Clara in the care of Navaire, she saves herself by scratching secretive prose on the stone wall underneath her bed using a mislaid tie pin, resulting in the illness and death of Navaire, and opening the way for her escape.  

Originally published in the UK in 2016, The Maker of Swans by Paraic O’Donnell, made its US debut in 2022. Gothic suspense combined with magical realism, at 361 pages, the story ultimately explores the magic of creating through the written word, how it can be used to build up as well as to destroy.

Visual, mysterious, enchanting, this was a book to savor—on any given page I was struck by the beautiful prose and O’Donnell’s use of language: “Above the orchard, as she passes, colours are seeping into the hem of the sky” and “She is blind now, and deaf also, but discovers things by other senses, by a quiet seeping of pulses.” A writer and poet who lives with his family in Wicklow, Ireland, O’Donnell has a second book called The House on Vesper Sands that I can’t wait to dive into.

The Last Ballad

Published in 2017, Wiley Cash’s heartbreaking The Last Ballad, is a historic novel that takes place in the small textile mill towns of the south-central piedmont of North and South Carolina, where the author grew up. The novel is inspired by the true events of the Loray Mill strike of 1929, and the heroine, Ella May Wiggins, is based upon a real-life historical figure.  

Ella May works as a spinner at American Mill No. 2 in Bessemer City. She earns nine dollars for a seventy-two-hour work week for which she must eke out a living to feed her four living children, one of whom is sick. She has already lost a son to whooping cough, her husband has run off, and she is expecting another man’s baby.

The conditions at the mill are horrific—early in the novel, Ella May recalls an incident where she witnessed an underaged worker lose three fingers in a machining accident in which she is compelled to pick them up and give them back. The incident is representative of the larger picture of the poor treatment and working conditions of the employees, and unfortunately the child and the family get no recompense because the parents had knowingly let their twelve-year-old misrepresent his age to get the job, absolving the mill owners of responsibility.  

Ella May and her children live in Stumptown, a poverty-stricken mill housing area. She and her best friend, Violet, work the night shift together. Ella May carries a flyer in her pocket inviting the textile workers to unite, and decides to attend the rally to see what it’s all about. Her life changes when she hitches a ride with two female strike workers and on the way, tells them her story. They ask her to share her story on stage during which she sings a ballad she has written called “The Mill Mother’s Lament.” The ballad becomes the theme song for the cause, and after the event, Ella May unwittingly becomes the face of the struggle, and is offered a job with the union.     

The novel is told in multiple viewpoints. One voice leads to another, a character mentioned earlier comes back to narrate the story from his or her perspective and the concentric circles get wider as the novel gets richer. In the interview that follows the novel, Cash says, “I hoped to give the reader a sense of the historical moment and the many competing forces that collided in a storm of race, class, and gender that gave rise to this violent upheaval.”  

“Equal pay for equal work” for all is what Ella May hopes to achieve, but the union is against allowing Black people to join the cause. After a night of violence and upheaval in which the police chief is murdered and the union representatives are arrested or sent home, Ella May unexpectedly finds herself in the role of union leader. In a final attempt to unionize the Black workers, Ella May’s convoy is ambushed and she is shot in the chest where she dies, ironically, in a cotton field.

Part of my interest in reading The Last Ballad is that the setting of the mill towns are my stomping grounds—I was intrigued by this glimpse into the history of Gastonia, Ranlo, Lowell, Cramerton, Belmont, Cherryville, Waco, Shelby, and Lincolnton. A drive through these towns reveals the skeletal husks of many abandoned mills with blown out windows and collapsing roofs, and the roads surrounding them are dotted with recognizable mill houses. There has been a trend to repurpose some of the massive old mill buildings—in fact, I bought the cabinets for our home at a cabinetry manufacturer housed in a converted mill in Bessemer City. Could it be Ella May’s mill?

To date, I’ve read three of Cash’s four novels—along with The Last Ballad, A Land More Kind Than Home and This Dark Road to Mercy. Known for their Southern Gothic elements and blending of drama with suspense, Cash’s novels have won numerous awards including the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award and two Southern Book Prizes. I’m looking forward to reading his latest, When Ghosts Come Home.

Flowers for Algernon

I’d been wanting to add more classics to my reading list, and was excited when I found the 1959 classic, Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, in The Little Free Library at a park nearby my house. If you haven’t read it, here’s a review—

Charlie Gordon is a man with a very low IQ who, because of his desire to learn and be smart, has been selected to undergo an experimental treatment to increase his intelligence, the same treatment that has proven effective on a lab mouse named Algernon. Charlie was abandoned by his parents and sister, though his sister is located and gives permission for the surgery. Charlie is 33 and has worked in a bakery for 15 years while taking night classes for people with mental disabilities.

The action of the novel takes place in just over nine months. The story is written in close first person in the form of diary entries, or “progress reports,” written by Charlie, a requirement of the experiment as a record of his experience. The novel takes the shape of a bell curve graph, starting with Charlie at his lowest intellectual point, gradually rising to his genius state where he peaks, and then starts to decline rapidly.

In the beginning, the progress reports are full of errors in spelling and punctuation. Charlie is put through a series of tests, including a Rorschach test which he fails because he is unable to think figuratively. His intelligence is measured against Algernon, the mouse, in a competition to see who can be the first to find his way out of a maze. The mouse wins every time.

Soon after the surgery, Charlie begins to show improvement. His diary entries start to become legible. With a thirst for knowledge, his intelligence grows at a rapid pace, to the point where he not only outsmarts Algernon, but his teacher, his doctors, and the director of the study.

I am caught up in the novel almost immediately, my disbelief suspended by the intimate first-person narrative. The most poignant aspects come in Charlie’s remembering of his past and the cruelty he suffered because of his limitations not only from his own family, but from the people he had considered friends in the bakery where he is employed. With his new intelligence, he thinks, “…they look at a feeble-minded person and laugh because they don’t understand there are human feelings involved”(145).

People from Charlie’s old life don’t know how to interact with the new genius in their midst. They feared him when he was simple-minded, and they fear him when he becomes smart. Even Charlie gets confused. “What is my place? Who and what am I now? Am I the sum of my life or only of the past months”(153)?

Charlie experiences sex with one woman, and love with another but complications arise when his emotions don’t grow at the same rate of his intelligence. His once sweet personality changes to anger. He is a man divided between the old not-so-smart Charlie and the new brilliant Charlie.

With his exceptional intellect, Charlie is the one who discovers the fault in the experiment by observing Algernon’s deterioration. It seems inevitable that Charlie will suffer the same fate and regress to his previous state or worse. He makes plans to enter The Warren State Home and Training School, a school where most of the students are beyond help, to end out his days.  

I had hoped for a different ending, perhaps a less predictable one, but as Charlie starts to descend the bell curve, his intelligence and language suffer and his reversion becomes inevitable. As heartbreaking as the novel is, the ray of hope is that the record of Charlie’s personal sacrifice and experience will enrich the lives of others with similar disabilities. “So I gess its like I did it for all the dumb pepul like me in Warren and all over the world,” Charlie writes, on the final page.

Flowers For Algernon was the winner of the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award, and was the basis for the Academy Award winning movie, Charly. As a classic, it has stood the test of time with over five million copies sold. I found it to be an enriching and worthwhile read…so, to the stranger who placed it in The Little Free Library, thank you!

*Cautionary note: Keyes uses the language of the time to describe Charlie, which many will find offensive today.