Top Ten Tuesday - Fictional Families for the Holidays

Today's Top Ten Tuesday focus is on Thanksgiving:

November 24: Thanksgiving themed Freebie -- ten books I'm thankful for, authors I'm thankful for, Ten fictional families I'd like to celebrate Thanksgiving with, a personal non-bookish thankful list, etc. etc.

I took the hard one--the top ten fictional families that I would like to spend Thanksgiving with.

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, and you can see how others handled the meme here.

This was hard for me because I kept to American and Canadian families since Thanksgiving is a North American holiday, and a lot of the books I read take place in Europe.  Also, most novels are about dysfunctional families, and I really didn't want to do that for my top ten list.

So here goes:

1. The Wilders of Malone, NY, circa 1860 from Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy - hands down, this family knows how to eat well.  Mother is an excellent cook, and all the children will be respectful at the table. Father will say a long prayer before we eat, but that's okay...this one time!
2. The Ingalls of DeSmet, Dakota Territory, circa 1880, from Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little Town on the Prairie - the blizzard is a couple of years in the past, but everyone still remembers how close the town came to starving.  Pa will bring home some pheasants, Laura and Ma and Carrie will make wonderful, simple food, and Pa will play the fiddle while Mary plays the piano and we all will sing.  There will be both onion and sage dressing.
3. The Frasers of Frasers Ridge, North Carolina, circa 1760, from Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series (The Fiery Cross or Drums of Autumn) - Jamie and Clare will put on a great spread, with all the clan families and various dependents feasting on the bounty of the New World.  Ian will bring some Indian friends, and the homemade hootch will flow freely.  There will be dancing and magic and music and stories after dinner.
4. Doc and the boys from Monterey, CA, circa 1935, from John Steinbeck's Cannery Row - the boys will plan an elaborate dinner, will beg, borrow or steal from the local store, the girls from Flora's establishment will save the day, using money Doc has slipped to Flora to buy ingredients, and everyone will feast on canned goods and good intentions and enjoy themselves immensely.
5. The Gilberts of Ingleside, PEI, Canada, circa 1900, from L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Ingleside - Gilbert is a hardworking successful doctor, Anne is a wonderful mother and a superb cook, but she doesn't have to lift a finger because Marilla Cuthbert and Rachel Lynde are visiting and putting together a Thanksgiving feast, Avonlea style, with toothsome cakes and mouseless custards.
6. The March family of Concord, MA, circa 1861, from Louisa May Alcott's Little Women - a fictional family list wouldn't be a fictional family list without the Marches.  Everyone is still healthy and optimistic that the war will be over soon.  Marmee won't lay a guilt trip on so everyone can actually eat the wonderful meal that Meg has made while Marmee is out doing charity work.  Jo will cajole her sisters into putting on a play after dinner, Beth will play the piano while we all sing, and Amy will draw sketches of the day and the family at play.
7. The Spencers of Spencers Mountain, Virginia (aka The Waltons), circa 1932, from Earl Hamner, Jr.'s Spencer's Mountain - we're deep in the depression, but Mama has managed to grow and preserve what the family needs for the winter, and Daddy and the boys have gone fishing.  There is plenty to eat, and afterwards everyone gathers around the radio to listen to FDR address the nation.
8. The Finch family of Maycomb, GA, circa 1935, from Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird - Jem's arm is still healing, but Calpurnia produces a wonderful dinner for the family, and Atticus reads aloud after dinner.  Boo Radley leaves a pie on the steps that he has made for the family, and Scout takes him over a plate of food.  He declined to join them for dinner.  Tom Robinson stops by to tell Atticus that he is moving to California, and thanks him for defending him.
9. The Sawyers of Hannibal, MO, circa 1855, from Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - we're talking a good old-fashioned covered dish church supper with loads of pies, cakes, breads, plus turkey and gravy, smoked ham, and fried fish.  Lots of preserves and pickles.  Huck and Tom are there, eating to their hearts content, and everyone is too busy to bother them about minding their manners.

You'll notice that I stopped at nine, stumped to come up with another family that I wanted to be with for Thanksgiving.  Who am I missing?

Best wishes for a happy, safe, stress-free Thanksgiving - I am thankful for books, the time to read them, and the ability to share my thoughts about them with all of you!  I'm especially thankful for you sharing your book recommendations, musings, and thoughts with me.

Happy Thanksgiving

Best wishes to all my bookish friends for a Happy Thanksgiving.

I'm looking forward to finishing up my various reading challenges for 2014.  I am pretty much done with the Back to the Classics challenge but might get one more optional category (the movie!) under my belt before I call it done.  TBR Pile is still daunting with four books left to finish.  I also am reading the December book in the GoodReads TuesBookTalk group, and want to read The Chimes with the Pickwick and Victorians GoodReads groups.  Thank goodness I've got three plane trips next week, so that will give me some extra reading time.

Be sure to check in on Friday for my stop on the Jane Austen's First Love Holiday Book Tour.  I've done an interview with author Syrie James and I think you'll find her answers to my questions interesting.

If you're looking for some great Thanksgiving fiction, check out my review (from last year) of Ellen Cooney's Thanksgiving, short stories that span generations of a New England family.

Travel safely, eat hearty, count your blessings, and start your making your 2015 reading lists!

Thanksgiving by Ellen Cooney

There just aren't that many Thanksgiving stories, even though so many people name it as their favorite holiday, so I leaped at the chance to download Ellen Cooney's wonderful novel, Thanksgiving, earlier this fall.  I read it slowly, not more than a chapter a day, and often not even that.  It was warm and interesting and an exceptionally good book for October/November.

Thanksgiving lends itself to this kind of slow savoring because of its structure.  Each chapter takes place in a different year, and chronicles a family, the Morleys of Massachusetts, from Pilgrim days to 2012, as its members, usually the women, prepare for the coming Thanksgiving feast. I love this idea, which is somewhat similar to the Edward Rutherford books I enjoy so much--he, however, spends more time at each stop along his journey through time, whereas Cooney devotes just one short chapter to each year she visits.  Often characters straddle chapters, so that a baby who is born in one chapter, shows up as a young adult in the next, and then a grandpa or grandma in the third.

I confess that I found the first third of the book a bit hard to read.  It's written in present tense, which can be a bit challenging anyway, but in the early chapters Cooney had a penchant for jumping into the middle of a scene and relaying the internal musing of her main character.  There were times when it took me awhile to figure out what the heck was going on, and then the chapter was over and I had to learn about a new character in a new time all over again.  However, about a third into the book, it clicked for me and I found the rhythm and groove of the narrative and I was able to really enjoy each visit to the family as they marched through time.

The pace really picked up after the Civil War, and I could relate more to the characters and their Thanksgiving stories.  I especially loved the chapter in which the character Emily makes pies in the early twentieth century.  Cooney did some really outstanding, lyrical writing in that chapter and moved me to tears with her words.  Other memorable chapters are those when the dishes arrive from England and when the glasses arrive from an estranged husband.  Mostly though, the stories are about food--finding it, growing it, preparing it, serving it.  The bonds that are forged in the kitchen, at the hearth, are ones that can withstand hardship, loss, and time.

Cooney did a wonderful job of linking together the characters and their traditions and foods, all within the same house, even though many of the later characters didn't know who their ancestors were.

Thanksgiving is a marvelous book that reflects the holiday perfectly--it is about family, traditions, home, and evolution,  It makes me think of the saying by Heraclitus — 'No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.' 

A holiday like Thanksgiving, a family like the Morleys, evolves but some things remain constant, just as some things about a river are constant, regardless of what constitutes it at any one instant of time.

I can see myself rereading this book every fall, in anticipation of our great American holiday.  Now I'm eager to see what else Cooney has written.