Fifteen Wild Decembers

Fifteen Wild Decembers, by Karen Powell, is the story of the Brontë family with Emily as the first-person narrator. I've read a lot of Brontë bios and fictional renderings over the years, so there wasn't anything new or startling regarding the basic outline of the story but oh, the writing. It is lyrical, incredibly moving, and such a strong voice for Emily. Absolutely loved every minute I spent reading this book. I knew the ending, but Emily narrates her own death as only Emily Brontë could do. Incredible.

My main takeaway is that the portrayal of Emily in this novel meshed perfectly with my view of Emily and all of the Brontës. She doesn't reinvent them; she honors their words, and when there are no words or facts, she finds plausible words and motivations based on what we do know about them. Definitely a 5-start novel.

The title comes from Emily's poem Remembrance, which was included in the book of poems self-published by the three sisters. Below is the third stanza of the poem, which was originally written about one of the characters in the fantasy country, Gondal, that Emily and sister Anne created and expanded on over at least fourteen years. In Fifteen Wild Decembers, Powell has Emily realizing that the poem is actually about the deaths of the oldest Brontë sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, who died while Emily was still a young child. 

Cold in the earth—and fifteen wild Decembers, 
From those brown hills, have melted into spring: 
Faithful, indeed, is the spirit that remembers 
After such years of change and suffering!

 This is truly a work of fiction, and Powell does come up with a reasonable inspiration for Heathcliff and his and Cathy's story in Wuthering Heights. In a nutshell and I hope this doesn't constitute spoilers, but Powell has Emily encounter a wildish boy on the moors, then years later, she sees him as a young man, still on the wild side, and then as the inhabitant of Top Withens, the abandoned farmhouse on the moors above the Brontë parsonage at Haworth. She is fascinated by him, and his presence repeatedly pulls her up to spy on him, to hope to see him, to want to understand him. 

Below is the painting of Top Withens that is in my office--I picked up this copy when I visited Haworth in 2009.

I'm starting to feel like I need to create a Brontë page that collects all my various posts on this remarkable family.

I'm also starting to feel like I want to rewatch To Walk Invisible, the excellent biopic from BBC in 2016. Has it really been almost ten years since I watched this?

Emily, Anne, and Charlotte in To Walk Invisible

Travelogue: Tacoma and Port Townsend

 

Aboard Zodiac, Puget Sound, WA

The Pacific Northwest is always such a fun, interesting place to visit.  For this year's trek to the Wooden Boat Festival in Port Townsend, we decided to tack on an extra night in Tacoma at the front end so that we could visit the Glass Museum and just enjoy revisiting parts of the town we hadn't been to in a while. Our older daughter went to University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, and we always liked visiting her there.

Since reading The Glassmaker by Tracy Chevalier earlier this summer, I particularly wanted to see a glass blowing demonstration, and I wasn't disappointed. We watched the crew make a cat pitcher out of glass like the ones shown below--they weren't available in the gift shop yet, or I would've bought one!

After enjoying Tacoma, we headed north, stopping in Port Ludlow for lunch, where we saw this very cool totem pole. 

Then on to Port Townsend for the Wooden Boat Festival. This was our 4th time attending the festival, and it never disappoints. We stayed about a mile from the marina where the festival is held, right on the water where we watched herons and gulls as well as a herd of deer each morning. We got well over 10k steps a day--walking to/from the festival, as well as roaming the docks, walking to various venues, etc.

The highpoints of the trip:

1) Chatting with a boat builder who built virtually the same boat that my husband, Jeff is currently building. He was a wealth of valuable information. 

2) Going for a sail on this 160-foot, 101-year old beauty. The Zodiac is based in Bellingham, WA and has an all-volunteer crew who were amazing. They also do multi-day cruises over the summer, so maybe next year we may opt for something more than a 2-hour cruise.

Zodiac 

3) Attending two absolutely terrific bird talks - one on puffins, by John Piatt, marine biologist and director of the World Puffin Congress, and one on the world of seabirds, by Peter Harrison, renowned seabird expert and author of the definitive guidebook on seabirds.

4) Discovering a couple of great new restaurants--if you are ever in Port Townsend, try Finistere for an upscale meal (we had a sampling of small plates and sides to share), and Tommyknockers for delicious Cornish pasties.

As always in the Pacific Northwest, we had a great time with mild weather (only one rainy afternoon) and found interesting, friendly dogs and people, including Bug and owner!

Austen at Sea, Island Queen

Happy September--commence the Pumpkin Spice season. 

I have never had a pumpkin spice latte (does not appeal) but I love pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie, pumpkin cookies, butternut squash soup, etc. Anything to which I can add liberal doses of cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and cloves.

Garden Notes

I've been making tomato soup, green chili (my latest was with poblano peppers, chicken, and cannelloni beans--very yum!), and I'm hoping to have enough ripe tomatoes to make a batch of tomato sauce for the freezer before I head up to Washington state on Wednesday. Yes, that is only two days away, but I can dream!

The asters and goldenrod are blooming, and the butterfly weed is still going strong. We have had rain almost daily for about 10 days, which has been lovely although the hot, dry days are back. 

Book Notes

I read two books for the JASNA Denver/Boulder book club's September meeting. 

Austen at Sea by Natalie Jenner was a disappointing three-star book with some terrifically good parts but infused with nails-on-chalkboard weirdness that I just can't get over. Here's most of the GoodReads blurb:

In Boston, 1865, Charlotte and Henrietta Stevenson, daughters of a Massachusetts Supreme Court Justice, have accomplished as much as women are allowed in those days. Chafing against those restrictions and inspired by the works of Jane Austen, they start a secret correspondence with Sir Francis Austen, her last surviving brother, now in his nineties. He sends them an original letter from his sister and invites them to come visit him in England.

In Philadelphia, Nicholas & Haslett Nelson—bachelor brothers, veterans of the recent Civil War, and rare book dealers—are also in correspondence with Sir Francis Austen, who lures them, too, to England, with the promise of a never-before-seen, rare Austen artifact to be evaluated.

The Stevenson sisters sneak away without a chaperone to sail to England. On their ship are the Nelson brothers, writer Louisa May Alcott, Sara-Beth Gleason—wealthy daughter of a Pennsylvania state senator with her eye on the Nelsons—and, a would-be last-minute chaperone to the Stevenson sisters, Justice Thomas Nash.

It's a voyage and trip that will dramatically change each of their lives in ways that are unforeseen, with the transformative spirit of the love of literature and that of Jane Austen herself.

Great premise and some meaty, interesting subjects. I loved reading about women's rights, suffragettes, and the legal stuff (i.e., when an American woman marries a British man in Britain at this time, she forfeits her American citizenship and all her property becomes her husband's), but the plot that Jenner came up with for this premise was weak. I simply didn't buy the idea that Frank Austen had a letter written by Jane to her good friend and his second wife, Martha, in which she reveals something that I just couldn't swallow. I won't share it so as not spoil the story if anyone is planning to read this book.

I did think it sort of cute that Frank was cast as an Emma-esque matchmaker, but even that defied believability. This was an aged admiral of the fleet for crying out loud, not a bored Regency rich girl.

My favorite parts were the scenes on the ship over to England with Louisa May Alcott (aka Lou) directing an amateur production of A Tale of Two Cities. Personally, I think the story would have worked so much better if Jenner hadn’t hijacked Austen and just told a story without the Austen connection. Granted, she needed something of incredible value that the American woman who married the British man would have lost control over after they married, but I just didn't like what Jenner came up with.

And, the ending was so contrived that my ability to suspend disbelief simply gave up.

Island Queen by Valeria Riley was a solid four stars, verging on five. Again, here is the GoodReads blurb:

A remarkable, sweeping historical novel based on the incredible true life story of Dorothy Kirwan Thomas, a free woman of color who rose from slavery to become one of the wealthiest and most powerful landowners in the colonial West Indies. 

Born into slavery on the tiny Caribbean island of Montserrat, Doll bought her freedom—and that of her sister and her mother—from her Irish planter father and built a legacy of wealth and power as an entrepreneur, merchant, hotelier, and planter that extended from the marketplaces and sugar plantations of Dominica and Barbados to a glittering luxury hotel in Demerara on the South American continent.

Vanessa Riley’s novel brings Doll to vivid life as she rises above the harsh realities of slavery and colonialism by working the system and leveraging the competing attentions of the men in her life: a restless shipping merchant, Joseph Thomas; a wealthy planter hiding a secret, John Coseveldt Cells; and a roguish naval captain who will later become King William IV of England.

From the bustling port cities of the West Indies to the forbidding drawing rooms of London’s elite, Island Queen is a sweeping epic of an adventurer and a survivor who answered to no one but herself as she rose to power and autonomy against all odds, defying rigid eighteenth-century morality and the oppression of women as well as people of color. It is an unforgettable portrait of a true larger-than-life woman who made her mark on history.

Vanessa Riley is one of the plenary speakers at the upcoming JASNA annual general meeting in Baltimore, and so I wanted to have read one of her books before the event. 

Not only did I learn about Dolly (aka Dorothy and Doll), who is truly remarkable, but I learned about the West Indies and South America during the Georgian/Regency years. The map of the islands at the front of the book was so useful as I charted Dolly's movements from Montserrat, where she was born, to Demerara, on the northeast coast of South America (now part of Guyana), to Granada, Barbados, Dominica, and other islands. 

I learned about the dynamics between the colonists and the countries who fought over the colonies (Britain, France, the Netherlands), and, of course, slavery and the road to abolition that was marked by rebellions, martial law, retribution, brutality, and courage.

I loved reading about Dolly's dedication to not only making her dreams a reality but her absolutely fierce protection of her extended family. She has 10 children (mostly daughters), a mother, a sister, grandchildren, and nieces who all need to be protected from being abducted back into slavery. Being a free woman meant being ever vigilant.

I read that Island Queen has been optioned for adaptation. I think it would make a terrific mini-series, if put in the right hands. 

As a lifelong reader of Jane Austen, reading Island Queen has definitely enriched my understanding of the world of Austen.

At a whopping 592 pages, this closes out the Big Book Summer challenge for me!

Heartwood

Perfect cover for this book!

I loved Heartwood by Amity Gaige, which I just finished listening to. This is a multiple POV story, and the different main characters each had their own actor reading their part, which I think added to my overall enjoyment of the book as I felt connected to each of the main characters.

I loved all the stories--starting with Valerie, aka Sparrow, the forty-something woman who becomes lost while hiking the Appalachian Trail in Maine--we get to know her through the journal she writes to her mother during the 11 days she is lost, while she struggles to survive. She is a poet, a nurse still recovering from the trauma of treating patients during the COVID outbreak, a kind and generous person, whose kindness and generosity is part of the story of how she got lost in the first place.

But Heartwood is also about the people who are searching for her--Bev, the logistic and strategic lead of the search and rescue organization tasked with trying to find Valerie in the wilderness. Bev is totally dedicated to her job and will never give up looking for Valerie. We learn about her two younger sisters and how she took over raising them when her mother went off the rails when Bev was a teen. We also learn how she is always the outsider--the tall girl who reached six feet before high school, the Massachusetts native who will never be fully accepted by the Mainers she works with and supervises, the first woman in the organization, the first woman supervisor...you get the picture. She wore men's clothes for years before the department finally started making uniforms tailored to the female body.

And it's about the hikers she met and bonded with on the trail who are interviewed by Bev's team, particularly Santo, an overweight New Yorker from NYC, who became her main hiking partner until he had to quit the trail to return home when his dad became ill. 

Of course, it's about her family--husband and parents and their grief, hope, faith, and profound decency in the face of the unimaginable. And the husband is always first on the list of suspects! 

And, finally, it's about the people who become fascinated with Valerie's story through the press conferences, online chat groups, TV pleas for help from law enforcement and the family. Lena is the main character in this category. A resident in assisted living, wheelchair bound, a curmudgeon. a birdwatcher and naturalist and forager, estranged from her daughter, her fascination with and concern for Valerie help to pull her out of her self-imposed isolation so that she can live again.

So, I loved the stories, but I also loved learning about the mechanics of how search and rescue operates. I enjoyed hearing about how rescue dogs are trained, how grids to search are laid out, how teams of volunteers are mobilized.  

I liked the theme of mothers and daughters--Valerie was very close to her mother and talked to her and listened to her in her head while she was lost, whereas Bev's mother stopped parenting her children after her husband died and is now dying without Bev by her side, Lena's mother survived abuse within her immigrant community and wasn't able to make it not Lena's problem too. 

I am a sucker for wilderness survival stories, and this was one of the best because it was so multifaceted. It's not just how does one survive, but how does the community mobilize to help them survive. I like that.

The only time I've ever experienced being lost was when I was at summer camp in the Colorado mountains during my elementary school years. We were playing capture the flag and so were supposed to evade capture by the other team. This encouraged me to roam away from my team and hide and I got turned around and nothing looked familiar. I walked for a while and came across these huge, flat-top boulders. So, I sat there for a bit, and then started walking again, and somehow ended up back at camp. The weird thing is that no one noticed I was missing and so it wasn't a big deal when I found my way back. I was totally scared and sure I was lost-lost. I like to hike (not scarred for life), but I never leave sight of the trail!

Dog Days of Summer

Three Sisters Garden in July

Garden Notes

It happens every year, August hits and I am ready to harvest and move on to other things, like working on the Civil War Underground Railroad quilt (lying dormant since May) and practicing the piano. But, there is a lot of work to do before I hang up my gardening apron for the season.

I picked a colander of Anaheim peppers yesterday, roasted, peeled, diced, and froze enough for three pots of green chili. I expect to do the same in another week and then a third time before I start donating peppers to the local food bank. I have loads of jalapenos, which I will pickle, and then I need to figure out what to do with the poblanos, which my son insisted I plant. Maybe a multi-pepper salsa...

The tomatoes are coming in, so that means I will be making tomato sauce next week and the week after to fill the freezer with sauce for the winter. I use tomatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, and herbs from the garden, only needing to buy celery and balsamic vinegar to add some punch to the sauce.

The zucchini is doing what it does best, and I've been making zucchini bread as well as adding it to a wonderful pasta salad recipe in which I parboil diced carrots and zucchini and add them to diced artichoke hearts, cherry tomatoes, feta cheese, peas, diced bell pepper, and spiral pasta with a vinaigrette and a splash of lemon juice. I have my eye on a high-altitude chocolate zucchini cake that sounds amazing.

Our Three Sisters Garden seems to be doing okay--we planted the corn first, and the tassels are darkening nicely, meaning we can pick corn maybe next week. The pinto beans have lots of pods--I've never grown pinto beans before, but I read that you need to wait until the pods dry out before you harvest them. The yellow squash went in last and is just now flowering. This was an experiment this year, and I devoted only one raised bed to see how the Three Sisters would do. If you're interested in Three Sisters gardening method, here's a good description: Plant a Three Sisters Garden: Corn, Beans, and Squash | The Old Farmer's Almanac, although I planted pinto beans instead of pole beans mainly because I wanted to see if I could!

The native flower garden is looking a bit tired, probably from the repetitive strings of 90+degree days that Colorado has endured this summer. I am letting most of the plants wither instead of deadheading so that they drop their seeds and spread their goodness for next year. It may look tired, but the pollinators are still working the blossoms that are left...and I did see a Monarch butterfly this morning. So, happiness all around.

Reading Notes

I'm in the middle of quite a few books right now, so not much completed to talk about...

Three Days in June, by Anne Tyler - very short but very enjoyable. Literally, three days in June - before the wedding, the day of the wedding, and the day after the wedding. Great premise in which the story of Gail, the main character, her ex-husband Max, and their daughter Debbie unfolds as Debbie gets married. 

I haven't actually read a lot of Tyler--I had mixed feelings about Vinegar Girl, her take on Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew--and I read The Accidental Tourist so long ago, I can't really remember if I liked it all that much. But Three Days in June was a fun respite from the long books that are currently filling my reading life. And I did really like the ending! That makes all the difference.

My friend Pam Mingle recommended a couple of Mrs. Mallory mysteries because she knew I would enjoy them and she was right. I started with Mrs. Mallory and the Fatal Legacy, by Hazel Holt. Here is the GoodReads blurb:

When Shelia Malory ran into her old college chum, Beth, now a bestselling novelist, she expected a pleasant lunch, some reminiscing, and a little harmless gossip. What she didn't expect was her friend to wind up dead shortly after their meeting. Now Sheila must act as literary executer, which means sifting through Beth's papers and letters, writing her biography, and preparing her short stories for press. But in her attempt to keep her friend's work alive, she discovers something deadly...the means and motives for murder!

And Mrs. Malory will have to read between the lines to find out the truth, before someone else dies for this legacy...

Hazel Holt was actually Barbara Pym's friend, colleague, biographer, and literary executor, making this mystery a bit meta.

It was a fun, easy, relaxing read set mostly in London, circa 2000. Seemed like the same world that Rosamunde Pilcher's and Josephine Tey's books describe. 

Travel Notes

Gearing up for two trips, one in September and one in October. 

We'll be going to the Port Townsend Wooden Boat festival again this year just after Labor Day. We are adding time to visit a couple of cool looking gardens north of Tacoma as well as the Glass Museum in Tacoma, plus birding sites between Tacoma and Port Townsend. Look for a travelogue mid-September!

In October, I am going to Baltimore for the JASNA Annual General Meeting, and then my husband is joining me for sightseeing in Baltimore after the AGM and then three days in Gettysburg where I can put all that Civil War reading I've been doing to good use. Fingers crossed for a travelogue in mid-October.

Enjoy the rest of these Dog Days of Summer.

Heirloom Gardener and Washington Black

The Heirloom Gardener, by John Forti - I've been following John Forti, the Heirloom Gardener, on Facebook and Instagram for a few years, and I always enjoy his posts, which range from seasonal markers to info on native plants and their significance in American history and society to tips on kitchen and garden craft. I got his book as a requested gift and have slowly been reading it over the past couple of months. 

The chapters, A to Z, are short essays and are illustrated with woodcut drawings. A perfect nonfiction read to supplement the various novels I usually am reading simultaneously. I learned a lot and found reading this book to be so relaxing, enriching, and soul-satisfying.

Washington Black, by Esi Edugyan - I learned about the mini-series based on this book from Susan at The Cue Card and was so intrigued by the premise that I decided to read the book before watching the mini-series. Here's the GoodReads blurb:

Washington Black is an eleven-year-old field slave who knows no other life than the Barbados sugar plantation where he was born. When his master's eccentric brother chooses him to be his manservant, Wash is terrified of the cruelties he is certain await him. But Christopher Wilde, or "Titch," is a naturalist, explorer, scientist, inventor, and abolitionist.

He initiates Wash into a world where a flying machine can carry a man across the sky; where two people, separated by an impossible divide, might begin to see each other as human; and where a boy born in chains can embrace a life of dignity and meaning. But when a man is killed and a bounty is placed on Wash's head, Titch abandons everything to save him.

What follows is their flight along the eastern coast of America, and, finally, to a remote outpost in the Arctic, where Wash, left on his own, must invent another new life, one which will propel him further across the globe.

From the sultry cane fields of the Caribbean to the frozen Far North, Washington Black tells a story of friendship and betrayal, love and redemption, of a world destroyed and made whole again--and asks the question, what is true freedom?

It was an intriguing story, which at times almost felt like science fiction. Wash is a brilliant boy--a self-taught engineer and marine biologist. He carries not only the burden of being a black man in the prejudiced, hostile, dangerous white world of the early 19th century, but he also carries the physical and mental scars of his early enslaved years as well as the guilt of leaving behind those he loved as a boy and who loved and cared for him.

I just read about how the mini-series differs from the book, and while I am usually a purist when it comes to book-to-move adaptations, I think I might like the mini-series even better than the book. The endings are different, so I understand, with the mini-series version more upbeat and hopeful.

July Key Words: Bee Balm, Italian Art in WWII, Civil War Stories

Garden Notes

This week's star native is Bee Balm (aka Wild Bergamot). This fragrant perennial comes in lots of colors, has spikey flowers, and it blooms for a long time. Right now, my native garden is mostly yellow and purple, with my Bee Balm providing the purple canvas on which the yellow blooms can shine. 

Bee Balm is a perfect native alternative to the ever-popular Butterfly Bush, which is actually an import from Asia, which means it may look stunning, but it isn't helping the local ecosystem and is invasive.

Bee Balm is also an edible plant. John Forti, author of The Heirloom Gardener, says:

All aerial parts of the plant can be used fresh. The tender leaves can be chopped finely and added to salads and summer vegetable dishes or made into teas and balms. However, the flowers (particularly the red ones) are my favorite edible part of the plant; they are full of an Earl Grey–like floral nectar and offer a fun kid candy from the garden. They are beautiful frozen into ice cubes for summer drinks or turned into a simple syrup for refreshing cocktails and confections. 

On to Books...

The Last Masterpiece, by Laura Moretti - Moretti is an art historian and historical novelist who focuses on the Renaissance and Italy, and I have read just about all of her books. This latest is set during WWII, featuring two young women, an Austrian and an American, on opposite sides of the war but both working to preserve the art treasures of the Italian Renaissance from destruction and looting during the war.

I loved it. In fact, I think it might be my favorite of Moretti's novels. The Nazi part of the story begins in Florence, with Eva, the Austrian woman, newly arrived with a job to photograph the paintings and sculptures that the German art historians are cataloging and putting into storage, with the help of the local Italian art historians. Her father is actually heading up the operation to store art from around Europe in the Austrian salt mines, and Eva truly believes that the Nazis are trying to preserve and protect the art for the Italians. Turns out she's wrong about that.

Josie is a WAC from Connecticut who is assigned to provide secretarial support to the Monuments Men. In the course of her duties, she comes to learn about and then love Renaissance art. She also learns to love Italy, particularly Florence.

Now I am all primed to finally read Saving Italy, by Robert M. Edsel, who also wrote The Monuments Men, the book on which the movie is based.

The March, by E.L. Doctorow - this is much-lauded novel is about General Sherman's 1864-1865 campaign in which his army of 90k+ subdued Georgia and the Carolinas and helped bring the Civil War to its end. 

Definitely a 5-star book, and not just because of my abiding interest in the Civil War, but because of the breadth and scope of character and story, the insight and compassion, realism and historical accuracy, and eloquence.

Doctorow tells the stories of a cross-section of people involved--the generals and other officers, of course, a smattering of soldiers from both sides, both the brave and the not-so brave. He tells the stories of civilians whose towns, farms, and homes were invaded, sometimes burned, almost always violated. He tells the stories of newly freed African Americans as well those who had enslaved them, and those who are on the periphery of the fighting but still a part of it--the British war correspondent, the itinerant photographer. 

My favorite story was that of a German doctor who came to America to find personal liberty and found himself tending the wounded and dying of both sides. I also loved the story of Pearl, an African American girl whose skin was so pale that she could pass but struggled with whether she wanted to live in the white world as a white woman.

Here's my favorite passage, which stopped me cold, near the end, when Sherman is negotiating terms of surrender with his Confederate counterpart, Joe Johnston.

And so the war had come down to words. It was fought now in terminology across the table. It was contested in sentences. Entrenchment and assaults, drum taps and bugle calls, marches, ambushes, burnings, and pitched battles were transmogrified into nouns and verbs. It is all turned very quiet, Sherman said to Johnson, who not quite understanding, lifted his head to listen.

No cannonball or canister, but has become the language here spoken, the words written down, Sherman thought. Language is war by other means. 

Ragtime is the only other one of the many noteworthy books by Doctorow that I've read, but I mean to remedy that, although some of them seem mighty grim. Any suggestions?

The Glassmaker - Tracy Chevalier

Author Tracy Chevalier not only never repeats herself when it comes to her historical novels, diving into drastically different time periods, locations, and characters with each novel, all that require extensive research, but with her latest, The Glassmaker, she shows a courageous, creative willingness to play with the time/space continuum.

Overwhelmingly, I prefer realism over fantasy in fiction, with just a few magical realism exceptions, so at first I struggled with what Chevalier was doing in The Glassmaker, but the end result was a triumph.

So, what does she do? The Glassmaker tells the story of Orsola Rosso, daughter of a maestro glassmaker in Murano (one of the Venetian islands) in the 1480s. Her family have been glassmakers for generations, with the craft being passed from father to son in a tightly controlled industry. We learn about Orsola's family--her brothers, her savvy mother, her baby sister, and how the family handles the untimely death of her father, who dies during a glassmaking accident. 

We learn how the glass works produced by the Rosso family are sold throughout Europe, through a German middleman, Klingenberg, who resides in Venice. Orsola becomes a glass bead maker herself, one of just a few females who learn to work with glass. We learn that a handsome stranger is hired on to the Rosso workshop and Orsola cannot stop looking at him. 

And then the timeframe of the story shifts from the late 15th century to roughly 100 years later, to the 1570s. Orsola is now a young woman, in love with Antonio, still handsome but no longer a stranger, but not appropriate for the daughter of a glass maestro to marry. 

Plague descends upon Venice and Murano. Orsola and most of her family survive not only the disease but the quarantines enforced on them when members of their household fall ill. Life is difficult, but the family survives and Orsola becomes a skilled bead maker and entrepreneur.

Throughout the rest of the novel, as Orsola ages from a young woman to a wife and mother, then on to middle age and beyond, the time period in which the story is set shifts as well, sometimes by a 100 or so years, sometimes more, taking us from the time when Venice was a trading capital of the world through the time of Casanova and the growth of casinos and Carnival, then the French invasion of Venice and the dissolution of the Republic, then into the wars of the 20th century, and finally to 2020 and Covid.

The Rosso family and Orsola evolve as families do, with births and deaths, marriages and intrigues, jealousies and reconciliations. Their basic family history remains intact--they are a glass-making family, their father died in an accident, they live and work on Murano and visit Venice for business more than pleasure. I found it fascinating that Chevalier was able to tell the story of this family intact as she skipped from timeframe to timeframe, which gets to the heart of why I love stories. The setting is the window dressing, it adds flavor and interest, but the stories of people and how they love, grow, and dream are timeless.

I also think this was a super cool way to tell the history of Venice and glass-making as an industry. I loved hearing about how glass works are made, distributed, sold, and treasured. And, I loved seeing how she handled social changes over time (e.g., a character who was a slave in the 15th century is not a slave in the 20th, but he is still restricted by how others perceive him).

I do think Chevalier was both creative and courageous in how she chose to tell the story of Orsola and her family against the backdrop of the history of Venice, Murano, and the glass-making industry. It took tremendous skill as an author to present both stories in a realistic way. Bravo!

Now I am ready to return to Venice, and this time, I will go to Murano!

Niccolò Rising - Dorothy Dunnett

 Constance at Staircase Wit mentioned Niccolò Rising, by Dorothy Dunnett, as a potential summer read, and that reminded me that it was on my own TBR shelf so I decided that it would be my first big book of the summer, clocking in at 470 pages.. 

Book one in a trilogy, it is set in 1460 in Bruges, with forays into Geneva, Milan, and the Abruzzi region of the Italian peninsula. I confess that I struggled through the first 60 or so pages--there are a lot of characters, from all over Medieval Europe, and it took me awhile to even figure out who the main character was and whose story was being told.

Part of the confusion lay in the fact that the main character, Niccolò of the title, was called Claes and then occasionally Nicholas, and very rarely Niccolò. 

Claes is a distant poor relation of the widowed owner of a textile company in Bruges and works in the dye shop (yes, he works with the urine used to set the dyes). He is a clown and comic--hanging out with the son of the widow and other members of the firm--playing pranks, getting into outrageous mischief, and being beaten regularly for his antics.

But there is so much more to Claes. He is a charmer with a winning smile framed by adorable dimples, he is big and strong, quick and energetic, both mentally and physically. He is basically a savant when it comes to business--able to see the big picture, able to grasp how obstacles can be manipulated into opportunities, able to rapidly do the math and make canny speculations. Despite his seeming gregariousness, he can keep his own counsel as well as the secrets of others, which turns out to be a very profitable activity. And he is, apparently, phenomenal in bed. Women adore him.

I am hard pressed to come up with a similar character in literature. Dare I say that he is unique? Part Machiavelli, part Harpo Marx, part Warren Buffet, Claes who becomes Nicholas (his given name, Claes was a nickname) as his fortunes rise gives the reader a rollicking good time.

I won't give you any spoilers, but suffice it to say that he survives an avalanche (which he may or may not have triggered on purpose), several assassination attempts including a harrowing experience in a wine cask in a canal which is on fire, and an absolutely hilarious ride on the back of a hairless ostrich...but you have to read to almost the end of the book to reach this scene.

Final note: Nicholas could have coined the phrase, "revenge is a dish best served cold." It isn't until near the end of the book that it is revealed that Nicholas has been playing the long game...in fact, a very long game.

Now, I need to get and read book two in the series, The Spring of the Ram.

As I said at the beginning, this is the first book for the Big Book Summer Challenge, 2025.

Top Ten Tuesday: Books to Reread & Blanketflower

Blanketflower

First, a Garden Note

This week's star native is Gaillardia, known to her friends as Blanketflower. She loves full sun and is very low maintenance. She spreads quickly and is often used to restore damaged areas. And, she is so pretty.

Fun Fact: Gaillardia even has her own moth...

"A moth (Schinia masoni) camouflages itself for protection on the heads of blanketflower - the head and thorax of the moth blend with the ray flowers, while the crimson wings blend with the disc flowers." From Blanketflower

Now we can talk Top Ten 

Being in the middle of a bunch of books but not having finished anything since the Ina memoir, I thought I would do this week's Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl.

This theme was super easy for me--only ten?! I am a rereader and so like to revisit favorites regularly.

1. The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame - this was one of several books my Dad would read to me and my siblings when we were young. I've reread it as an adult, but not in a few decades. Cannot wait to spend time with Ratty, Mole, Badger, and Mr. Toad.

2. Middlemarch, by George Eliot - one of my all-time favorite novels. I have read it either four or five times, and it is a treat every time. I reread it in 2016--can you believe that's already almost 10 years ago. Here's my post from that reading.

3. North and South, by Elizabeth Gaskell - my favorite novel by a favorite novelist. I have 18 posts in which I discuss N&S to some degree, with an in-depth, multi-part series on how it compares to Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

4. The Girl with the Pearl Earring, by Tracy Chevalier - Chevalier is a favorite author and this was the first book I read by her, decades ago. I would like to enjoy it again.

5. Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon - I didn't actually finish the series, getting bogged down in book eight and never actually recovering. But...my husband and I are putting together a trip next summer that will take us on foot and by boat through the heart of Outlander country, from Oman to Inverness (along the Caledonian Canal), so rereading Outlander will be required reading before the trip.

6. East of Eden, by John Steinbeck - another favorite novel from a favorite novelist. I love the setting and the characters, the rich and varied plot, the historical stuff, and the heart and writing. Here's my post from 2014.

7. Favorite Dickens's novels - see, I am cheating because I want to reread Pickwick Papers, Nicholas Nickleby, Little Dorrit, and David Copperfield.

8. The Reluctant Widow, by Georgette Heyer - my first Heyer and so my sentimental favorite. I've read it at least three times and my copy is literally falling apart because it was well-used when I acquired it. Must get new, pretty copy!

9. The Hobbit, by JRR Tolkien - I read this many times as a teen and for some reason have a hankering to revisit Middle Earth. Will see how long this yearning lasts, but I do want to spend time with Bilbo.

10. All of Austen - as an active JASNA member, rereading Austen is de rigueur and never a chore. I no longer keep track of how many times I have read each of the novels. Not enough fingers.

I love spending time with old friends. How about you?