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!