Fictional Appearances By...

Black Mahler The Samuel Coleridge Taylor Story by Charles Elford

2012-01-22T00:00:00.003-06:00

This fascinating book, which deftly toes the line between historical fiction and biography, vividly recounts the true life story of the almost forgotten composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, best remembered for his "Song of Hiawatha" trilogy, which set the famous Longfellow epic poem to music and gave choral societies all over the world a much needed break from religious themed compositions.

Born in 1875 to a white mother and a young black doctor from West Africa, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was adopted by a white Welsh family, the Evans, and grew up in the South London suburb of Croyden. From an early age he showed promise as a musician, his first music teacher fondly recalled discovering the little black boy on the sidewalk outside his house playing marbles with his scruffy little violin case beside him. Victorian England was a much more hospitable climate to African-Americans, though racial prejudices, often rudely expressed, definitely existed there, it was not so bad as America where tolerance didn't equal acceptance or kindness in the decades after the abolution of slavery, and young Samuel was able to receive an excellent education, thanks to encouraging benefactors, and eventually received a scholarship to the Royal College of Music. There he met the woman who would become his wife, the indomitable Jess, and his lifelong best friend William Hurlstone.

While he was still a student, he became entranced by Longfellow's vivid and evocative images of the Native Americans in "the land of the Dakotahs" and decided to set the poem to music for his own pleasure, never realizing it would become a worldwide sensation and the masterpiece he could never surpass. Nor did he realize that selling the piece outright, as he always did with his compositions, would be a catastrophic mistake; while his publishers got rich, all Samuel Coleridge-Taylor earned from his masterpiece was a mere 15 shillings.

For the rest of his life, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor would work himself to death to support his wife and two children, barely managing to keep his head above the water. Despite the mistake with "Hiawatha" he always found it to his best advantage to sell his work outright, but it didn't always pay the bills or stave off debt for very long.

In the more racially tolerant England, he didn't realize how important he was to African-Americans, who hailed him as a hero and inspiration and loved his music, creating a choral society in his name. He visited America three times, always to great acclaim, and even met President Roosevelt.

Ironically, one might consider Samuel Coleridge-Taylor another victim of the Titanic. Though he was not on board the ship, the only copy of his Violin Concerto was. Already worn to a shadow, this stressed and exhausted man worked feverishly around the clock to rewrite this composition and get it to America on time. He met his deadline, but a few months later he collapsed waiting to catch a train and died shortly after. He was only thirty-seven years old.

This is a very readable and engrossing book about a thoroughly likeable man-some might even go so far as to say he was "too nice"-a sensitive, funny, generous, thoughtful, and self-effacing and doubting man who couldn't bear to let anyone down. It is a vivid portrait of a man and artist who should never be forgotten.

For those curious about the title, as I was, it comes from a great compliment paid to the composer during one of his American visits. Gustav Mahler, a conductor from Vienna, was then considered the greatest conductor to have ever visitied America. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was favorably compared to him, deemed by many to be Mahler's only equal, and thus he was dubbed "The Black Mahler."

For more information about the book and its author please visit www.blackmahler.com

A special note to readers of my Ficitonal Appearances blog (http://fictionalappearances.bogspot.com):

Normally only fiction is featured here as the purpose of this blog is to highlight real historical figures appearing in historial fiction, but this book reads like a novel, though it is based on a true story, and the book itself does not specify whether it should be classified as "ficiton" or "non-fiction" and it does not include footnotes or an index like most biogrpahies and non-fiction works do, so I have chosen to include it here. It's a touching, lively, and dramatic story, and I highly recommend it to those who enjoy fact-based fiction as well as biographies.

The Giant, O'Brien by Hilary Mantel

2011-11-07T00:00:00.001-06:00

This novel is loosely based on the true story of Charles Byrne, the real-life “Irish Giant” who exhibited himself in London in the late eighteenth century, and whose bones were coveted, and dubiously acquired, by surgeon John Hunter and are today displayed in the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons alongside the diminutive skeleton of Caroline Crachami, “The Sicilian Fairy.”

The story begins in 1782 with Charles O’Brien and his band of followers quitting poverty and hunger stricken Ireland to make their fortune in London. The giant has a talent for telling Irish folk and fairy tales, songs, and poems, and this puts him a cut above the average giant working the sideshow circuit. Some of these stories are included and are one of the book’s best features. On the advice of his manager, the Giant changes his name to Charles Byrne, to sound more refined and attract a better class of custom.

Entwined with the Giant’s story is that of John Hunter, a poor Scottish farm lad whose ambition and determination pays off when he becomes London’s most renowned surgeon. He is a dedicated, obsessive man who in his quest for knowledge regularly consorts with bodysnatchers, experiments with artificial insemination, and even accidentally inflicts himself with syphilis while attempting to inject a pauper with the virus, but shrugs it off as this will allow him to chart the course of the disease better. He keeps abreast of any of nature’s oddities on display in London, hoping to dissect them and add their bones to his collection when Death calling, and when he sees Charles Byrne he becomes obsessed with adding his skeleton to his collection.

This is a rather sparse, bleak tale of the pursuit of, and fleeting nature, of fame and fortune. The Giant’s time as a star attraction doesn’t last, and neither does the money. More than once he is forced to reduce his price and change to cheaper lodgings and cater to a lower class of customers to keep in business. Friendships and loyalties fray, disillusionment sets in, though life is better than it was in Ireland the Irish are treated badly, and as his health begins to deteriorate, his band of followers, blinded by the glitter of gold, are tempted by Hunter’s offer to purchase the Giant’s remains.

For those who are interested in the history of medicine, bodysnatching, sideshows and human oddities, Irish folktales, and the not so glamorous life in 18th century London, this is certainly a worthwhile read.

The Favored Queen A Novel of the Third Wife of Henry VIII by Carolly Erickson

2011-11-03T00:00:00.001-05:00

The latest volume in Carolly Erickson’s frothy and improbable line of “historical entertainments” is set in Tudor England and tells the story of Jane Seymour, third of the six wives of Henry VIII, and mother to his only legitimate son, Edward VI.

The novel begins with Jane, a devoted to the serene and gracious Queen Catherine of Aragon, who has tried many times, and failed, to give the King the son he covets, enduring her own sorrows over a man. Her engagement to Will Dormer is jeopardized by her father’s seduction of her fiancé’s fourteen-year-old sister. The couple plan to runaway to the Spice Islands to start a new life together, but, for various reasons, this is not to be, so Jane is on hand to be an eyewitness to the rise of the haughty and ambitious Anne Boleyn and the fall of her beloved Queen Catherine, and to surrender her virginity in a midnight rendezvous with a married French glazier she meets when he is hired to make improvements in Anne’s bedchamber.

When the Nun of Kent’s dire predictions of doom drive Anne Boleyn into a paranoid frenzy and her desperation to give Henry a son costs Jane’s lover his life, Jane becomes a quiet enemy waiting in the wings to destroy Anne and the gentle confidante who captures King Henry’s fickle heart.

I have read all Ms. Erickson’s “historical entertainments” to date (I just haven’t reviewed them all yet) and, while I enjoy some more than others, I always find them fun and a breath of fresh air amongst the more ponderous and serious tomes of historical fiction. If you’re not a historical fiction purist and can take them for what they are, and are open to the idea of Jane Seymour as a woman with all too human feelings and longings, neither sinner nor saint, then you just might enjoy this.

Hurricane by Jewell Parker Rhodes

2011-11-01T00:00:00.002-05:00

As promised last year, here is my review of the third and final volume that completes Jewell Parker Rhodes’ Marie Laveau mystery trilogy starring the famous New Orleans’ voodoo queen’s descendant, Dr. Marie Levant.

The book begins with Dr. Marie, who has since changed her last name from Levant to Laveau, driving south, following a disturbing dream. This leads her to a shack deep in the Louisiana bayou where a family of three-father, mother, and child—lie dead; all have been murdered. When she goes to report the crime to the local sheriff, his brother takes her to their home and introduces her to their grandmother, Nana, an old voodoo woman, blind and riddled with cancer, who foretold Marie’s coming.

The town of Delaire has no doctor, everyone has always relied on Nana and her powers whenever they were ailing, and hearing that there is a real medical doctor in their midst, the locals flock to Nana’s house to see Marie. Strangely, many of them suffer from cancer and other diseases and have lived longer than they should have without modern medical care.

Marie does the best she can for them, but when she discovers that the sheriff has covered up the murders, burning the crime scene, she is furious and returns to New Orleans. There the police also show no inclination to investigate and advise her to just let it go. There are other things to worry about. The weather reports are full of a brewing tropical storm called Katrina and everyone is wondering if this will turn out to be “the big one.”

After a colleague is killed, possibly because she was mistaken for Marie, Marie races back to bayou country accompanied by a handsome red-haired Cajun doctor, K-Paul who wants to be more than just a friend to her. Marie is also perplexed by visions of two loas, Voodoo spirits, one half male and half female who freely shifts between the two genders, the other a teal mermaid water goddess.

Marie soon discovers the secret in Delaire that the powers that be hoped to keep buried—the preponderance of cancer and other illnesses in the area is due to environmental factors, oil pollution and damage caused and covered up by Vivco Oil. And Nana helped her people by using her powers as a sin eater to swallow their illnesses until she literally bit off more than she could chew and became sick herself.

And as the great storm of Katrina rages, battering New Orleans, it’s up to Marie Levant-Laveau to save the day.

Though I personally thought it the weakest volume in the trilogy, Hurricane kept my attention from start to end. I confess that, being long familiar with the legends about the real Marie Laveau and the stories told about her being swept up by a hurricane and presumed dead, I hoped the author would tie these into the series finale in some way, but they were never mentioned. But I always liked the heroine she created, and I was a little sorry to see her go, and could not help but wish her well, though at the same time I was also glad that this was not being stretched into an ongoing series. It was time to say goodbye and Ms. Rhodes ended it all upon a positive note.

Note: The first two books, Voodoo Season and Yellow Moon have since been reissued in trade paperback with their titles shortened simply to Season and Moon, you can find my reviews of both, under their original titles by either searching this blog or scrolling through the list of labels on the far right side of the screen.

Immanuel's Veins by Ted Dekker

2011-10-31T00:00:00.001-05:00

With Halloween coming up we’ve got to have a vampire book, so here’s my review of Immanuel’s Veins by Ted Dekker. The year is 1772 and the hero and narrator is Toma Nicolescu, a soldier in the service of Catherine the Great. The Empress sends him to Moldavia, to the country estate of the Cantemir family, seated at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains, just west of Transylvania. With his trusty friend Alex Cardei, he sets out on his mission, to protect the family in these times of political unrest, but, the Empress warns, steer clear of the notorious Cantemir sisters—impetuous blonde Natascha and wise brunette Lucine who, unlike the typical 18th century nobly born girl, have been brought up to live their lives for love, in pursuit of pleasure and passion. A marriage between one of them and a member of the Russian royal family may even be in the works, so they are officially off limits.

Of course, Toma and Alek ignore this and they soon pair up with the sisters, Toma with Lucine and Alek with Natascha. But Alek soon finds he has a rival, Natasha just can’t keep away from Castle Castile and the mysterious men and women who live there, living for pleasure sake and imbibing a special wine that bears a strong resemblance to blood; she repeatedly sneaks out at night to join them. But if you can’t beat them join them and Alek soon joins Natascha on her nocturnal visits and soon he is enthralled as she is and it is up to Toma and Lucine to put a stop to these antics and restore them to their senses. But Alek and Natascha don’t want to be rescued and instead try to convert them to the Russian’s free-love, do-as-you-please, live only for pleasure’s sake, lifestyle: “They are the model of love. The pounding of the heart, the touch of lips. They are God’s gift to the world, to love as you would be loved, with intense affection.”

More complications arise when the lord of Castle Castile, Vlad von Valerik, asks permission to court Lucine and her mother urges her to accept him, and, realizing that Vlad may be the marriage prospect the Empress spoke of, Toma finds himself turn between his love for Lucine and duty to the Empress and his country.

After tasting the Russians’ special wine, Toma blacks out in the embrace of Sofia, one of the mysterious Russian coven, and thus Lucine comes upon him. Soon afterwards, though Toma has decided to follow his heart come what may and damn the consequences, he will risk the ire of the Empress, Lucine decides to accept Vlad’s suit and begins to succumb to his charm and desire to please her. But after he bites her lip and she complains of the pain he suddenly becomes violent, and there are no more words of love and tenderness.

And like the hero of any vampire movie, Toma must save his beloved, but more perils and trials await him, and obstacles to overcome. But with the help of a mysterious old blind man who calls himself Thomas and gives Tomas a mysterious volume called The Blood Book that describes the origin of the Nephilim (the word vampire is never used in the book), the evil beings born of unions between fallen angels and human females, and, armed with this treasure trove of knowledge, and a new-found belief in God, Tomas returns to Castle Castile determined to save the woman he loves and slay the evil Vlad.

There’s really nothing new under the sun or moon where vampire fiction is concerned, but it’s still an interesting and entertaining tale. I personally would have liked a better sense of history as window dressing for the story, there were a few modern words that seemed out of place, like “slacks” instead of "trousers" or "breeches", and I’m not sure the term “party people” was used in 18th century Russia, but these are really minor points, little rocks in the road that shouldn’t be allowed to spoil this stirring tale of romance and adventure and good versus evil.

The White Devil by Justin Evans

2011-10-16T00:00:00.000-05:00

Andrew Taylor thinks his luck has taken a turn for the worse—and quite rightly too it turns out--when his father sends him to London to attend The Harrow School an elite 400 year-old boarding school where the students, all born to wealth and privilege, wear the same style jackets, ties, and straw hats that students wore in the 19th century. It’s a whole new world for American Andrew with the different customs and accents and he finds it very hard to fit in. And when the boy who befriended him on his first day dies under mysterious circumstances Andrew is blamed and shunned as a rumor begins circulating that he gave the boy drugs that caused his death, even though the autopsy soon disproves this.

When another student notices that Andrew bears an uncanny resemblance to Lord Byron, one of Harrow’s most famous past students, he is cast as the lead in the school play. But things keep getting stranger and Andrew wonders if he is losing his mind when he starts having bizarre dreams, visions of, and perhaps ghostly visitations from, a pale effeminate boy with white-blonde hair. Research and clues lead Andrew to identify his nocturnal visitor as John Harness, a poor scholarship or charity student who attended the school during Byron’s time there. Byron took John under his wing, defended him against bullies, and the two eventually became lovers. Is the ghost confused and mistaking Andrew for Byron?

Then the past begins to repeat itself when the ghost mistakes Andrew’s girlfriend for a boy and thinks Byron is betraying him all over again, and Andrew must race against time to solve a 200 year old mystery, to save the lives of his classmates, friends, and teachers as the vengeful spirit unleashes a plague of deadly tuberculosis upon them.

I love ghost stories and this is one of the best I have read in a long time. I thought it breathed new life into the genre and I loved the way it mixed the past and present, the way history and its mysteries and facts long buried, forgotten and obscured by the passage of time, were unearthed or forced their way to the surface to demand confrontation. It blows the dust off the old familiar haunted school stories and gives the reader something novel and new.

The Mozart Conspiracy by Scott Mariani

2011-10-02T00:00:00.001-05:00

Following the trend set by the bestselling The Da Vinci Code, this is yet another novel that blends past and present to create a fast-paced modern-day thriller when secrets and relics of the past can still claim lives centuries later.

When opera star Leigh Llewellyn’s brother dies under mysterious circumstances she asks her first love, Ben Hope, an ex British Special Air Service officer to investigate. Could Oliver Llewellyn’s supposedly drunken fall through the ice covering a frozen lake be connected to his unfinished book about Mozart?

As Ben and Leigh delve into Oliver’s files they disvoer that Mozart’s ties to freemasonry may have led to his murder at the hands of a powerful, elitist splinter group known as the Order of Ra. And the search is on to find a letter, supposed by many to have been a fraud, which, if authentic may prove that the famous composer was indeed poisoned.

When they receive a video of a man having his tongue cut out and then being disemboweled in a ritual sacrifice they learn that the Order of Ra is alive and well and will stop at nothing to keep their secret safe and Ben and Leigh are soon running for their lives across Europe with a band of assassins on their heels.

Overall, this was a pretty good mystery/thriller, it kept my attention and I flew through it. I personally thought it would have been a much better book if instead of being set entirely in modern times it had been interlaced with some 18th century scenes of Mozart’s life and last days, but don’t let that keep you from giving this a try if the storyline piques your interest. If you like thrillers laced with history and are interested in Mozart and the freemasons this might be a good book to curl up and pass some time with.

The King of America by Samantha Gillison

2011-09-25T00:00:00.000-05:00

This novel is inspired by the life of Michael Rockefeller, the millionaire’s son who vanished in 1960 while studying the customs and rituals of the Asmat tribe and collecting native art in Dutch New Guinea.

Stephen Hesse, is the firstborn son of one of the world’s richest men, Nicholas Hesse, and his working-class wife, Marguerite, the daughter of the charwoman who cleaned his rooms at university, born before she was replaced by a more suitably pedigreed blonde wife and a litter of fair-haired children more in keeping with Nicholas’s social standing and political ambitions which later win him the governorship of New York. Stephen grows up a shy, serious, bookish boy who in his loneliness and isolation immerses himself in history and art and spends his summer visits trying to win his father’s love and approval. As a senior at an elite boys’ school he experiences an attraction to the new Latin master that proves mutual when the two share a kiss during a walk on a rainy day. Whether the affair goes any further physically isn’t disclosed as this novel rarely ventures behind bedroom doors. A few years later, as a young man in college, we witness Stephen's first real romance with an older, rather unconventional woman, Sheila, he meets on Fire Island who has a passionate on again/off again affair with an artist boyfriend who lives in Paris six months of every year. But the relationship is doomed to failure when Sheila chooses the bohemian life she has over what Stephen and his father’s money can offer.

Bored and disenchanted, Stephen briefly considers dropping out of college to join the army, until he attends an anthropology lecture on ritual male violence and, using his father’s influence, worms his way onto an expedition to the lush tropical paradise of Dutch New Guinea where naked, painted and befeathered tribes still practice headhunting, cannibalism, and magical rites. His mission is to collect art for his father’s museum, The Hesse Museum For Primitive Art, and to also keep a written record of the expedition. When Stephen becomes captivated by the Asmat bisj poles, elaborately carved and painted totem poles made to honor their dead ancestors, he refuses to listen to common sense and wait until the monsoon season has passed, and thus the stage is set for tragedy with headlines blaring THE KING OF AMERICA SEARCHES FOR HIS CROWN PRINCE as helicopters fly overhead and dugout canoes and Navy ships patrol the water and volunteers beat through the bushes searching for Stephen or his body.

Those who know me or regularly read this blog know I have a fascination with missing persons cases, and the disappearance of Michael Rockefeller is one of what I call “the cases that haunt me,” so I really enjoyed this novel. Though I must stress it is a work of fiction loosely based on the real story and the author has taken numerous creative liberties in creating her cast of characters, I felt it gave me a better understanding of the young man at the center of that tragedy and the events surrounding his loss . There were times when I felt the novel was a tad cold, or dispassionate, when I thought a little more depth or detail would have served it better, but nonetheless I didn’t put it down until I reached the final page, and if I didn’t have so many books piled up waiting for me I would gladly read it again.

Lady In Waiting by Susan Meissner

2011-09-18T00:00:00.000-05:00

Antiques dealer Jane Lindsay was a contented wife, married—happily, she thought—for twenty-two years. But everything changed when her husband, Brad, walked out. He swore it wasn’t an affair; he said he just needed some time to himself to decide if their marriage is worth saving.

While Jane, feeling powerless and bewildered, waits for him to make a decision, she finds an antique gold ring set with sapphires, rubies, and diamonds with the name Jane and a Latin inscription engraved inside the band. She feels an instant, inexplicable, connection to it and sets out to trace its history back to the original owner and discovers that it is a betrothal ring that belonged to a noblewoman in Tudor England.

The story then shifts back to 1548 when dressmaker Lucy Day is sent to outfit Lady Jane Grey with mourning for Catherine Parr’s funeral. The two young women, from very different social classes, become friends, and Lucy learns that Jane loves Edward Seymour, the Lord Protector’s son. Discussions for a betrothal between the pair are currently underway and Edward, gives Jane the ring her 21st century namesake will later discover. But, alas, as those who know the sad history of Lady Jane Grey know, Fate had something else in store for this young woman.

For those who like stories that unravel the history behind interesting artifacts and do not like their historical fiction too ponderous or weighty this is a great book to curl up with and it is interesting the way the author combines the stories of two women with the same first name, one whose lengthy marriage has fallen apart with that of a young girl who died at sixteen, cheated of the chance to marry the man she loved.

Lost by Jacqueline Davies

2011-09-11T00:00:00.000-05:00

This novel interweaves the story of the missing persons case that fascinates me most of all, the 1910 disappearance of heiress Dorothy Arnold from New York’s Fifth Avenue, with the tragic fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory the following year.

Lost is the story of two young women, both, in their own way, lost though they may not know it. First, there is the mysterious Harriet Abbott, a woman clearly too refined and educated for the menial sweatshop labor of finishing sleeves at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory for $6 a week. What is a woman who clearly springs from wealth and means and is unaccustomed to this kind of work and taking care of herself doing in a place like this? Then there is Essie Rosenfeld, a poor Jewish girl from the city’s teeming tenements who dreams of owning her own hat shop someday, but in the meantime is torn between her love for her neighbor Jimmy, a young law student who encourages her love of books, and her preoccupation with providing the best for her little sister Zelda, and her resentment of the mother she believes does all she can to crush her every fragile chance at happiness.

Essie and Harriet strike up an unlikely friendship, but after seeing some old newspapers Essie begins to suspect that Harriet is not the widow disowned by her family and fallen on hard times after the death of her husband that she claims to be. And when her brother Saulie is arrested and Essie goes to the police station to bail him out she sees the Missing poster with a face she knows all too well blazoned on it and realizes that Harriet is really the high society girl Dorothy Harriet Camille Arnold who mysterious disappeared, vanishing in broad daylight, while shopping on Fifth Avenue.

But truths will be obliterated, burned away or laid bare, agonizingly scarred and blistering by the tragic fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory that soon follows on March 25, 1911. And I won’t spoil the story for anyone by saying what those truths are.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, I thought it was such a clever idea, and though it is marketed as a young adult book, I highly recommend it to adults as well. It wonderfully captures the atmosphere of life in New York in 1911 and the deplorable and unsafe working conditions the girls who plied the sewing machines in the sweatshops and factories endured.

Sappho's Leap by Erica Jong

2011-08-27T15:05:00.002-05:00

Told in the first person, this book begins with Sappho, the celebrated songstress, acclaimed as “The Tenth Muse” standing on the brink of eternity, on the edge of the cliff she is contemplating jumping from, a precipice renowned for curing those who leap from it of hopeless love. Some survive the leap, others perish, it is all in the hands of the gods.

For those who enjoy intelligent novels containing elements of adventure, romance, fantasy, and philosophy, this may well be just the book for you, though I recommend brushing up on your Greek mythology first if your school days are far behind you.

A devotee of the Goddess of Love, Aphrodite, Sappho, a rather plain young woman with blue-black hair and a slightly twisted spine, falls passionately in love with the golden-haired poet Alcaeus, though he professes that he prefers boys. She joins his plot to overthrow the cruel dictator and as a result is parted from her lover and exiled from her native Isle of Lesbos on pain of death should she return and married to a drunken fool in the hope that the life of a traditional Greek housewife busy with the loom and larder, supervising the slaves and childrearing will keep her out of trouble. But Sappho finds fame as a singer, which gets her out of the house, and a new love when her daughter, Cleis, her “golden flower” is born from a seed already planted by Alcaeus before Sappho's marriage.

Anxious for her daughter’s future, she consults various oracles and, though her passion for the absent Alcaeus still runs strong, she becomes infatuated with the beautiful Egyptian priestess Isis. The two often make love in the priestess’s sarcophagus to “experience a foretaste of immortality.” Horrified by her behavior, Sappho’s visiting mother kidnaps baby Cleis and takes her back to Lesbos where Sappho cannot go without risking her life.

The rest of the book unfurls like a richly embroidered tapestry illustrating a grand, perilous, and passionate odyssey that takes Sappho to Delphi to consult the famed oracle, then on to Egypt where she is befriended by the famed writer of fables Aesop who helps her liberate her foolish brothers who have become literally enslaved by the wiles of a notorious courtesan, and then to the Land of the Amazons where she is commanded to be a female Homer and write an epic of their history. She loses several years wandering in Hades, the Land of the Dead, seeing the pale ghosts of her father, baby brother, and others she has known, and emerges to become a reluctant priestess of a failed Utopian paradise comprised of Amazon maidens and Egyptian sailors and their offspring.

After encounters with various gods, goddesses, and legendary beings, including the centaurs, the lovers are eventually reunited, but the course of true love never did run smooth. And when at last Sappho returns to Lesbos and meets her daughter, now grown to womanhood and a mother herself, ashamed of the song that has made her famous as her mother’s “golden flower” she finds the great love she has to give her only child rejected. Sappho tries but cannot give up her songs as her daughter wants and settle down into the quietly respectable life of a gray-haired grandmother, and live down her wild days and put them far behind her, and events, including slander, suicide, and an affair with a beautiful eternally young ferryman named Phaon with an “indefatigable phallus” eventually lead her to climb the Leucadian cliffs. Will she leap? And more importantly, will she live, or is Sappho fated to survive only in her songs?

A note for those concerned about sexual content in their reading: Although Sappho's name is today synonymous with lesbianism, in this novel Sappho is unabashedly what we would today call bisexual, which was common in the ancient world. There are some sex scenes, but they are brief and not explicit catalogs of every touch, kiss, and caress, so anyone sensitive to such things should not shy away from giving this book a chance. There are also some orgies with rather brutal and disgusting behavior that are briefly mentioned to illustrate the depravity of visitors to the courtesan Rhodopis's palace. In other words, this is a novel with some erotic elements but not a work of erotica.

Rennes Le Chateau The Road To Sion by D. A. Chadwick

2011-07-30T00:21:00.004-05:00

This book has been sitting on my bedside table beckoning to me for months while I struggled to meet the deadline on my next novel. Reading it has been a pleasure long delayed. If you are, like me, fascinated by the story of Rennes-le-Chateau and the secret that made a poor village priest wealthy beyond his dreams in 1887 and still remains shrouded in mystery and hotly debated to this day and enabled him to embark upon a series of bizarre, cryptic, symbolism-laden renovations and building projects at his church, including the figure of a devil supporting a font of holy water, this novel brings something new to the bookshelf. It deftly weaves in a new theory involving some tantalizing mysteries, contradictions, and discrepancies in the life and legend of France's beloved national heroine and saint Joan of Arc. Secret societies like the Priory of Sion, the Knights Templar, the Illuminati, and the Freemasons, conspiracy theories, royal bloodlines leading back to Jesus and Mary Magdalene, ancient aliens, cloning, and alien technology also fill the pages of this fast-paced, fact-packed, history and science laden thriller set in modern-day France.

The history and the mysteries are the jewels in the crown of a plot concerning the woman who would be queen, Sarah Rolande Cabot, as France stands poised to restore the monarchy it overthrew in the blood-drenched days of the French Revolution. And who the rightful claimant of that crown should be is a hotly debated topic snared in a tangled web of history and genealogy that science, with the help of DNA technology, seeks to unravel.

Despite its length, nearly 500 pages, this was a book I hated to put down, it kept calling to me even when I forced myself to lay it aside and do my own work. And Tabby enjoyed it too.

Like many self-published books, it would have benefited by a gloss of editorial polish as well as more careful proofreading as I found several misplaced and missing words and misspellings that posed momentary stumbling blocks throughout the story, but I urge readers not to let a few rocks in the road keep them from embarking on Rennes Le Chateau The Road To Sion.
!!CORRECTION!! I have just learned that I was given an earlier edition of this book, it has since been reformatted and gone through another round of editing, so most likely many of the errors I noticed have already been corrected.

Note: This book was previously published as Rennes Le Chateau The Point of Origin.

Special thanks to author D. A. Chadwick for sending me a copy and waiting patiently and graciously for this review to finally appear.

For more information please visit http://www.dachadwick.com/ There is also a fascinating article about Joan of Arc on her blog at http://dachadwick.wordpress.com/2009/05/30/was-joan-of-arc-a-peasant-girl-the-evidence-says-no/

Announcement: Temporary Hiatus

2011-03-28T15:57:00.000-05:00

Dear Readers,

I am sorry to announce that I have found it necessary to take a temporary hiatus from reviewing books on this blog. I have a deadline looming ahead, I have an obligation to deliver my next novel to the publisher in June, and due to a combination of personal and health reasons I have fallen behind, so I simply do not have the time to read for my personal pleasure right now, which provides most of the content for this blog, or to write reviews. But Tabby and I will be back in a couple of months, in time for the release of The Tudor Throne (Mary & Elizabeth in the UK), so please don't forget about us.

To any authors who have sent me a book to review: I do apologize for the delay, but don't worry, I have not forgotten about you, all books submitted for review are at the top of my "To Read" stack, they will be the first ones I read when I am able to curl up with a good book again.

Thank you for understanding.

Sincerely,

Brandy/Emily Purdy

The Director's Cut by Christopher DiGrazia

2011-03-13T00:38:00.000-06:00

Toby Swanson, a pioneer in the newborn field of movie makeup, just wants a job when he is hired by the Fox Film Corporation to emphasize the allure of their latest star, Theda Bara, instead he ends up joining forces with her to solve a murder.

The year is 1914, and though it hasn't even started filming yet, "A Fool There Was" is already the hot topic, predicted to be the movie sensation of the year. Leading the cast is the movies' first true sex symbol, Theda Bara, the dark eyed and haired, pale skinned, femme-fatale, known as "The Vamp" who devours men's souls and drains their virility and bank accounts. But after a series of deaths and other calamities, Fox decides to call the whole thing off, and Theda's big chance at stardom and immortality is dashed, unless...

"The Vamp" who is actually a nice, down to earth (except for her belief in Tarot Cards and Reincarnation) Jewish girl from Cincinnati named Theodosia Goodman, "Theo" to her friends, asks her smitten makeup artist to help her save her movie. And together, aided by fellow cast members, May Allison and Edward Jose, the quest for the truth takes them everywhere from movie sets to fashionable New York nightspots, a bank in Baltimore, and down into an underground church crypt where the scions of a once illustrious family are buried, and into abandoned subway tunnels. With cameos from Harry Houdini, Rudolph Valentino before Hollywood beckoned, and songstress Sophie Tucker,

The Director's Cut is a fast-paced and fun tale of murder, mayhem, and the early days of moviemaking. Mr. DiGrazia perfectly captures the sights and sounds of the era, with authentic slang and cultural references, and a bow to the morality of the day when it comes to the risque. He deserves a big round of applause for his first Theda Bara mystery and I can't wait for him to roll out the red carpet and present the next one.

To learn more please visit his website www.kissmemyfool.com

You can order the book at Amazon and also the dvd of the movie that plays a prominent part in its pages, "A Fool There Was" in which Theda Bara "uttered" (it's a silent film so actually the title card said it for her) the immortal line "Kiss Me, My Fool!"

The Tudor Throne by Brandy Purdy a.k.a. Mary & Elizabeth by Emily Purdy

2010-11-13T12:24:00.002-06:00

The Tudor Throne by Brandy Purdy

Bound by blood, torn by devotion...

In the wake of King Henry VIII's death, England's throne is left in a precarious state-as is the peculiar relationship between his two daughters. Mary, the elder, once treasured, had been declared a bastard in favor of her flame-haired half-sister, Elizabeth, born of the doomed Anne Boleyn. Yet the bond between the sisters was palpable from the start. Now reinstated, Mary eventually assumes her place as queen. But as Mary's religious zeal evolves into a reign of terror, young Elizabeth gains the people's favor. Gripped by a tormenting paranoia, Mary is soon convinced that her beloved Elizabeth is in fact her worst enemy. And the virginal Elizabeth, whose true love is her country, must defy her tyrannical sister to make way for a new era...

A brilliant portrait of the rule of "Bloody Mary" and her intricate relationship with Elizabeth I, the adored "Virgin Queen," here is a riveting tale of one family's sordid and extraordinary chapter in the pages of history.

Note: Published in the UK as Mary & Elizabeth by Emily Purdy.

We Hear The Dead by Dianne K. Salerni

2010-10-31T00:00:00.002-05:00

This rich and riveting novel travels back in time to Hydesville, New York in the year 1848 to reveal how Spiritualism, the belief in communicating with the dead, began and launched a craze for spirit rappings, seances, automatic writing, Ouija boards, and mediums who in gaslit parlors reached out to the world beyond the veil to commune with the spirits of the departed to bring comfort to the bereaved or gull them out of their hard-earned dollars.

It all started with Maggie and Kate Fox and a prank to oust their annoying Cousin Lizzie from their bed. Apples dangled from strings to produce a thud on wooden floors and an ability to crack their toe and knee joints helped the girls convince their parents and neighbors that they were in communication with the spirit of a murdered peddler buried in their cellar. When the newspapers got hold of the story and their ambitious elder sister, Leah, with a shrewd eye for the profit potential, took charge it was too late to turn back, and Maggie and Kate became the darlings of the intellectual and artistic sets, eagerly sought after by the bereaved grieving for their departed loved ones, and the object of intense investigation to prove the phenomena they produced either fraudulent or authentic.

Maggie was never comfortable living a lie, she tried to convince herself that she was providing a good, beneficial service to help others move past their grief to find peace and go on with their lives, but Kate persuaded herself that she had a genuine gift, the second sight that was believed to run in their mother's family. Their mother was completely convinced her daughters were in communication with the dead, while practical Leah merely saw the spirit rappings as an escape from poverty.

We Hear the Dead takes us inside the minds of the two sisters and divulges the secrets of the darkened seance rooms with their apparatuses of trickery, like lead balls sewn in hems, and trick candles that suddenly went out, and pianos that seemed to be played by invisible hands, and tables that moved, wobbling and tilting under the sitters' hands. It is also the story of Maggie's ill-fated romance with Arctic explorer Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, a man who claimed to love Maggie but despised her dishonest profession, and insisted that she give it up and better herself if she wanted to become his wife, but the famous and beloved hero was never strong enough to withstand his family's disapproval of their relationship and sought to keep it a secret lest he be disinherited.

I have always been fascinated by tales of the spiritualist mediums, their lives, schemes, and duplicity, and I think this is a wonderful book for someone either new to the subject or who is already intrigued and wants to delve a little deeper into the lives of the sisters who started it all.

Two strong spirit raps of approval for Ms. Salerni's first novel.

Note: This novel was originally published as a print on demand book by iuniverse under the title of High Spirits, the current edition was renamed We Hear The Dead by its current publisher Sourcebooks.

To learn more about Dianne K. Salerni and her work please visit her website and blog at http://www.diannesalerni.com/ and http://diannesalerni.blogspot.com/

The Witch's Trinity by Erika Mailman

2010-10-30T00:06:00.000-05:00

The year is 1507 and the little German village of Tierkinddorf is beset by famine and fear, it is the second year that there has been no harvest. Thus the stage is set for tragedy when a friar arrives brandishing a book he vows will solve all their problems and restore prosperity. The book is that infamous blood-drenched tome the Malleus Maleficarum "The Witch's Hammer," an instruction manual for hunting down, torturing, and eventually killing women suspected of witchcraft.

Gude Muller is the oldest woman in the village, she has outlived all her contemporaries except her best friend Kunne Himmelman, a wisewoman steeped in herb lore and skilled in healing. Gude, has grown old, frail, and forgetful, and the author does a magnificent job of capturing the confusion and frustration of an elderly person's descent into what we would today call Alzheimer's, powerless to stop their own mind from slipping away from them.

Gude's daughter-in-law, Irmeltrud, sees her as a useless old woman, a burden, one more mouth to feed when food is so scarce, and resents her for it; the meager scraps that are given to Gude could have fed Irmeltrud's children. In a fit of anger, she sends the old woman out to beg on a freezing, snowy night, though she later denies this to make herself look better in her husband's eyes.

While wandering in the woods, Gude sees a vision of witches and the Devil himself with his cloven hooves, coarse, hairy body, and "ice cold prick," and is tempted by a pig roasting on a spit, and cajoled to sign her name in His book. But is this real or just her imagination, hunger and fear and the witchfinder acting on a vulnerable mind?

After Kunne, the wisewoman, is tried and burned as a witch, blamed for stopping a hen from laying eggs, Irmeltrud decides to denounce Gude. Gude undergoes the humiliating ordeal of being stripped stark naked and having her head shaved bald being and searched for marks of witchery, she is interrogated and threatened with a fiendish device called the pear, a metal pear-shaped implement made to be inserted inside a woman's vagina where it splays out at the twist of a pin into a series of blades that shred and pierce her.

But bearing false witness does Irmeltrud no good, and she soon gets what she deserves when a barren woman who covets Irmeltrud's two beautiful children accuses Irmeltrud herself and she ends up sharing Gude's cell.

This is one of the best novels I have read about the persecution of women accused of witchcraft. In an era charged with a potent combination of superstition, fear, and malice these tragedies were all too common. Among the numerous novels about the more famous cases, like the Salem Witch Trials, this book, set in an obscure and tiny village in Germany, about ordinary people and their problems really stands out. The author did a wonderful job and created characters I could really sympathize with and feel for, even the ones I did not like I could still understand. For anyone interested in a tale of witchcraft persecution realistically portrayed I highly recommend Ms. Mailman's novel.

Daughters of The Witching Hill by Mary Sharratt

2010-10-30T00:04:00.001-05:00

"Daughters of The Witching Hill" is a spellbinding tale of history and witchery. With this fact-based novel of the Pendle Witches, set in 17th century Lancashire, Mary Sharratt acts as a literary necromancer to give the dead a voice. She truly breathes life into her characters. The women who people this true tale of witchcraft, superstition, suspicion, and hysteria, are so vivid and vibrant, I could see them in my mind’s eye, hear their voices, and feel their wants, needs, fears, dreams, hopes, and pains.

The story begins with an elderly cunning or wise woman, Bess Southerns, known locally as “Old Demdike” who lives hand to mouth on the edge of poverty with her squint-eyed daughter, Liza, until she discovers her powers as a healer, and becomes eagerly sought after to bless and cure the sick, both human and animal. But a blessing can sometimes also be a curse, and with Bess’ gift to heal comes the suspicion that she puts her powers to use for darker purposes—revenge and curses.

But Bess is determined never to dabble in the dark arts--in fact many of her blessings derive from old Catholic prayers now outlawed by the fervent Protestants and Puritans and have nothing to do with Satan or pagan goddess worship at all--but when her best friend’s daughter is imperiled by the unwanted advances of one of the local gentry, Bess breaks her resolution, for love of her friend. But Anne will go beyond protecting her daughter and take everything Bess teaches her about blessings and spellcraft and set herself up as a rival cunning woman, one who is not above dabbling in the dark arts if it brings the coins in. And as Anne, already known as a local eccentric and object of disdain, becomes feared as a witch, and Bess’ own son-in-law believes she has cursed him, the final nail is driven into the coffin of their friendship.

Years later, when the community is suffering hard times, Bess, old, blind, and her powers failing, and her family find that the tide has turned against them, and those who once looked upon them with favor and sought their help, now regard them with suspicion and hostility. After a peddler suffers a debilitating stroke after exchanging harsh words with Bess’ beautiful granddaughter, Alizon, a zealous magistrate, eager to curry favor with King James by becoming the area’s premiere witchfinder, begins making arrests, and the stage is set for tragedy, a mockery of justice, and a trial every bit as tragic as America’s own Salem Witch Trials in which innocent lives will be lost.

Historical fiction fans, as well as those interested in the history and practice of witchcraft, and the witch-hunts that have stained our history with blood, are sure to find "Daughters of The Witching Hill" a fascinating and enthralling read. Though almost everyone has heard of the Salem Witch Trials, American readers may not be familiar with England’s Pendle Witch Hunt of 1612, so I urge those with an interest in such things, or just a love of well-written historical fiction, to give this book a try. It is a story I believe that needs to be told; when the dead are remembered a part of them lives again, and this is a story that should never be forgotten.

The Afflicted Girls by Suzy Witten

2010-10-30T00:02:00.000-05:00

This novel of the Salem witchcraft hysteria and subsequent trials centers around two orphans. If everything were black and white instead of shades of grey, Abigail Williams would be the darkness and her traveling companion Mercy Lewis would be the light. But things are never that simple, and there are many shades of grey between black and white, and both characters are complex and well-developed. First there is mercurial, brazen and lusty, self-interested, attention-seeking, grudge-accumulating Abigail. Then there is good and kind, quiet, pretty, self-educated Mercy, harboring shameful secrets she hopes to keep buried, and longing for love and a better life filled with books and learning.

On their journey to Salem Village to serve in the household of Abigail's uncle, the Reverend Parris, a coach accident brings two young men to their rescue--Ben Nurse a humble farmer, a grandson of the venerable and well-loved and respected midwife Rebecca Nurse, and his profligate and rich friend Joseph Putnam. In mere minutes desires spring to life and are either returned or scorned that will play a crucial part in things to come.

Though a Puritan community, Salem Village could be the prototype for Peyton Place. Litigation and lawsuits, greed, lust for flesh and revenge, gold and property all simmer just below the prim Puritan exterior of Salem. From the pulpit greedy Reverend Parris, who cares more about his tithes than the well-being of his parishioners, thunders about the wrath of God rather than His love and mercy. The local doctor uses his position to molest young women right under their parents' noses. And Goody Osborne, a lonely, crippled, home-bound invalid pays her Irish manservant to share her bed, just to feel the warmth of another body and the touch of a man's hands again. And there is Bridget Bishop the buxom tavern proprietress who in her scarlet bodice stands out like a neon sign among the muted grays, blacks, and browns of the rest and inspires many a wet dream in the boys and men, she is a wise woman, who knowledge of herbs and spells, healing and white magic, a woman who believes in doing no harm lest it come back to you. And Tituba and John Indian, Reverend Parris' slaves from Barbados, who keep silent but know all.

But it is the desires of the two newly arrived orphans, not the town's residents, that will cause quiet little Salem to boil over like a witch's cauldron. Abby lusts for her Uncle the Reverend Parris and Mercy pines for Joseph Putnam, a man who, though his eyes say he desires her, is above her station and already promised to the daughter of local gentry. Befriended by Bridget Bishop, Mercy resorts to a love charm to try to win him.

Abby's eyes are also opened to the supernatural when she spies Tituba dancing in wild, erotic abandon in the woods late one night after ingesting Jimson Weed, also known as Datura, and The Devil's Trumpet. Another night, thinking to catch Tituba again, she sees Mercy bury a mandrake root carved in her beloved's likeness in the graveyard and blackmails her into teaching her what she knows of charms and spells. Abigail steals some little red cakes Tituba baked, auguring cakes, she calls them, and brings them to a picnic with Mercy, to which she also invites a simple-witted farmboy and some other girls of the village. The cakes contain Jimson Weed and all who eat them suffer illness and spells of a kind that will be mistaken for demonic. And a name mumbled by an innocent child being questioned while in this state leads to the first of many arrests. And more follow as the girls and villagers find it is a marvelous way to get out of daily chores and exact revenge on one's enemies.

As the quiet voice of reason, Mercy Lewis is ignored, as is Bridget Bishop, when she tries to help. Both are denounced as witches and imprisoned. And the hysteria and fear continues to mount, whipped along by the attention-seeking antics of Abby. Basking in self-importance and the attention of her uncle, for whom she lusts, she becomes the witch-finder and healer extraordinaire and is seen as a martyr because of her suffering.

The scenes where the accused witches are driven to the gallows on Danver's Hill, and their final moments of life, are truly heartrending and moved me to tears.

This is a book meant to be contemplated and savored. although some readers may find it slow to reach the reach the action I urge anyone who might feel this way to stick with it, I have been reading book about the Salem Witchcraft Trials since I first heard of them as a little girl, and this novel stands out as one of the best on the subject I have ever read.

A Trio of Witchly Treats -- Happy Halloween

2010-10-30T00:00:00.000-05:00

To celebrate Halloween here are three of the best historical novels about witchcraft, and the persecution of women accused of it that I have ever read.

Travel back to the 17th century and revisit the most famous witchcraft trials in American history in Salem in the pages of Suzy Witten's novel The Afflicted Girls. And meet the Pendle Witches and witness England's infamous Lancashire Witch Trials of 1612 in Mary Sharratt's Daughters of The Witching Hill. And, lastly, read the poignant tale of an elderly woman accused of witchcraft by her own daughter-in-law, in a famine-stricken village in early 16th century Germany in Erika Mailman's The Witch's Trinity.

Codex 632 The Secret Identity of Christopher Columbus by Jose Rodrigues Dos Santos

2010-10-24T00:00:00.001-05:00

This is one of those novels that would likely be considered a Da Vinci Code copycat, albeit the action takes place at a much slower pace and without the urgency of a police chase and a murderous monk. If you can overlook that similarity, this is actually a very good and intriguing book centered around the mystery enshrouding the background of Christopher Columbus. It is filled with all sorts of historical tidbits, coded messages, secrets, and forged or altered documents.

Thomas Noronha is a history professor and expert cryptographer based in Lisbon, where he teaches at the university. Struggling to care for a chronically ill child, a daughter with Down's Syndrome and heart problems has taken a toll on his marriage, his wife is tired all the time and they have grown apart, and he finds himself susceptible to the charms of a beautiful blonde Swedish exchange student when he is contacted by a prestigious American historical society dedicated to studying the Age of Discovery and asked to complete the work of an elderly historian who died suddenly before he could reveal the fruits of his research, which he claimed would change everything we thought we knew about that era.

Professor Noronha accepts the challenge, which comes with a generous salary, and embarks on a quest that takes him all over the world to unravel the secret identify of Christopher Columbus, who was, he discovers a man of many names, who even in his own lifetime sought to obscure and hide his real name and origins. Was he an uneducated Genoa silkweaver, a Portuguese Jew schooled in esoteric knowledge, steeped in the Kabbalah, or the scion of nobility forced to flee his home and lose himself because of his role in a royal conspiracy?

Travel along with Professor Noronha and see what the series of authentic historical clues lead you to believe.

Yellow Moon by Jewell Parker Rhodes

2010-10-19T00:02:00.000-05:00

This is the second volume in Ms. Rhodes trilogy about the great-great-granddaughter of New Orleans Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau.

It is three years after the events described in the first book (Voodoo Season) and Dr. Marie Levant has taken her ancestor's name, Marie Laveau, and embraced her voodoo heritage with strength and pride. This time she must conjure up all her power and might to face down an African vampire, a wazimamoto, that is draining New Orleans' citizens of their life's blood and is out to destroy everyone Marie holds dear.

Though I will continue to see the trilogy through to the end, I must admit that I didn't enjoy this book quite as much as I did the first. I sometimes find it difficult to review mysteries, it's a delicate balance, as I do not want to ruin the story for other readers by giving too much away. But I don't want to give a wrong impression about this book either. The central mystery, the African vampire, was a fascinating adversary for Marie Laveau, blending folklore and history into a modern-day tale and giving new blood to the eternally popular vampire, but...STOP HERE AND DO NOT READ THE REST OF THIS PARAGRAPH IF YOU DON'T LIKE SPOILERS! I as a reader was disappointed that almost all the characters I met and liked in the first book were killed off in this one, including the dog. Perhaps the author felt they had served the purpose she created them for, or, losing people is part of life, we shall have to wait for the third book and see what is in store for this modern day voodooienne.

Voodoo Season A Marie Laveau Mystery by Jewell Parker Rhodes

2010-10-19T00:00:00.000-05:00

This is the first book in a New Orleans' mystery trilogy about Dr. Marie Levant, the great-great -granddaughter of the famous (or infamous) 19th century Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau.

A doctor practicing in modern day New Orleans at Charity Hospital, where the poor, needy, and uninsured come for care, Marie Levant denies and resists the gifts of power and "the sight" that are her blood heritage until a series of murders that strangely echo the Quadroon Balls of yesteryear force her to accept and embrace who and what she is and make a stand against evil.

As usual when reviewing mysteries, I would rather say less than too much as I don't want to give too much away and spoil the book for anyone. Although I must admit there was one aspect of the mystery that forms the centerpiece of this novel that I still find difficult to understand, which nags at my mind whenever I think about it, I still enjoyed the book and plan to continue with the series. The characters Ms. Rhodes has created are all interesting people, with their real life struggles and imperfections, good points and bad, and I look forward to getting to know them better in the next two books.

Though not essential for enjoying or understanding this book, I would highly recommend reading the author's earlier novel Voodoo Dreams, a historical novel inspired by the life of the legendary New Orleans Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau as events in that book are referred to several times in this one. It was a novel I read years ago and enjoyed and hope to eventually read again.

Harriet and Isabella by Patricia O/Brien

2010-09-26T00:00:00.000-05:00

The year is 1887 and Henry Ward Beecher lies dying. The popular and eloquent preacher, who espoused a loving and merciful deity rather than a vengeful one, has been felled by a massive stroke. But peace is not one of the stripes on the canopy of sorrow that hangs over the Beecher household. When the flamboyant suffragette Victoria Woodhull accused Henry of committing adultery with Elizabeth Tilton, the wife of his best friend, it created a rift that tore the Beecher family apart.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of the classic antislavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, sided with her brother, convinced of his innocence, but her younger sister, Isabella Beecher Hooker, an ardent suffragette, sided with her friend, Mrs. Woodhull, and insisted Henry publicly admit his guilt.

Now as Henry lies dying, Isabella, ostracized from the family for fifteen years for her lack of loyalty, frantically tires to gain entry to her brother's sickroom, to say farewell and make peace with him.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. It told me a story I was previously unfamiliar with, and the author did a marvelous job of depicting the public fascination with the scandal, the sideshow atmosphere, controversy, and media coverage of the trial, and the umbrella of uncertainty that hovered over it all, and how it tore a formerly solid and united family apart. It was never made 100% clear whether Henry was guilty or not, that was something everyone had to decide for themselves, both strangers on the street and those who knew him personally, and so too, over a hundred years later, is it for the readers of this novel. The author wisely saves her own personal opinion for the Author's Note at the end of the book.

A few years ago, I read and enjoyed Ms. O'Brien's historical novel The Glory Cloak about Louisa May Alcott and her days as a Civil War nurse, I hope she will continue to bring interesting characters and events from American history to life in the pages of her future novels.

Nashville Chrome by Rich Bass

2010-09-12T00:00:00.000-05:00

This fact-based historical novel tells the story of the country music singing sensations The Browns, who rocketed to fame, but not fortune, in the 1950s. The act consisted of two sisters and one brother, Maxine, Bonnie, and Jim Ed, a trio of siblings who grew up dirt poor in Arkansas during the Great Depression and were blessed with perfect pitch, which they honed on their father's backwoods sawmill, always identifying the exact moment when the saw was perfectly sharpened by the sound it made.

They were friends with the likes of Jim Reeves and Elvis, who courted the younger sister Bonnie. At the start of their career, they were taken advantage of by an unscrupulous agent, so they never received their fair share of the money their records and appearances earned.

After a few years of number one hits, their fame faded away, and the siblings went their separate ways and drifted into oblivion. Though Bonnie found happiness as the wife of a country doctor, and Jim Ed did well enough on his own and also found contentment in his personal life, the eldest sister Maxine grew old and frail always yearning for another chance at fame. Dreaming of a movie about herself and her famous siblings, she even goes without air conditioning for a month to pay for an advertisement hoping to interest a filmmaker in the project, but instead has to make do with a precocious young boy and his video camera instead of a big budget Hollywood biopic.

This was an interesting novel to read, and I thank the publisher for sending me an Advance Readers' Copy, as it was a story I was unfamiliar with and might otherwise never have read as I am not a country music fan. I would recommend it to anyone interested in rags to riches stories about the fleeting nature of fame.

The Queen's Fool by Philippa Gregory

2010-09-10T17:50:00.001-05:00

This novel tells the story of a young woman who lives her life perpetually caught in between, and who knows what it is like to live life always looking over your shoulder in fear.

Disguised as a boy with cropped hair and breeches, Hannah Green (actually Hannah Verde) and her bookseller father, left Spain after Hannah's mother was burned by the Inquisition. They are Jews, hiding in plain sight, who have come to make their home in England. But there is something special about Hannah, she has the gift of second sight, she sees visions of things that will come to pass though often in such hazy form she doesn't know or understand.

A chance meeting with Robert Dudley and his tutor, the alchemist scholar Dr. John Dee brings Hannah to court as a Holy Fool, first to serve the frail and dying Edward VI then later Queen Mary.

Here is where Hannah truly begins her life of being caught in between. She is dazzled by Robert Dudley and confused by her like one minute and not the next relationship with her fiance Daniel. She likes her independent lifestyle in boy's breeches working in the bookshop with her father and later at court as a fool and is loathe to give it up for the skirts of a woman and the humdrum life of a wife and mother chained to home and hearth with children at her apron strings and a husband whom she is supposed to view as God's earthly representative whom she is bound to serve and obey without quarrel or question. And she is torn between the Tudor sisters, kind Mary and charismatic Elizabeth who are caught up in their own rivalry that makes thunder roll around the throne.

As "Bloody Mary", hellbent on restoring the Catholic faith to England, descends further and further into paranoia and madness, augmented by jealousy over her husband's attraction to her sister, and the sorrow of her phantom pregnancies, even Hannah becomes suspect in Mary's eyes and comes so close to danger that she almost feels the scorch of the flames that burn the heretics and is driven to flee.

While many quibble about the historical accuracy of Ms. Gregory's novels, I've never felt that is what reading fiction is about. In my opinion, putting a novel under the microscope for this kind of nitpicking distracts and detracts from the story the author is trying to tell. I really enjoyed this novel, although there was one niggling detail I would have liked clarified--Dr. John Dee appears unexpectedly to save Hannah in her moment of danger, but it is never explained how a man known for his alchemical experiments and suspected of dabbling in the dark arts came to be in this position to advise Bishop Bonner when he examines accused heretics and decides who is destined for the stake. Other than this, I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. Of the fictional characters Ms. Gregory has created that I have read, I think Hannah is the most likable and easy to relate to and sympathize with.

Doomed Queen Anne by Carolyn Meyer

2010-08-31T17:30:00.000-05:00

This young adult novel tells the story of Anne Boleyn, portraying Anne as an ambitious girl who grew up always in the shadow of her beautiful older sister Mary. As she endures the teasing of the typical Tudor popular pretty girls, with their blonde hair, buxom curves, and blue eyes, who mock her black hair, the mole she covers with a jewel attached to a ribbon choker, and the nub of a sixth finger, she vows that someday they will all bow to her. And when her sister wins the coveted prize of becoming mistress to King Henry VIII, Anne vows that she will best her by marrying him and becoming Queen of England. And so she does.

The familiar story of the rise and fall of Anne Boleyn is told in the form of a journal written on the eve of her execution in which she looks back upon her life, notes her mistakes, and acknowledges that pride was her greatest sin of all.

I think this would be a wonderful book to introduce a young girl to the personalities, pageantry, and drama of the Tudor court. And while the book does not gloss over things like romance, adultery, and childbirth, and some of the less flattering aspects and episodes in the lives of famous people as many of the biographies of famous people written for children used to do, it is not at all explicit, and I think any parent could safely allow their child to read this book.

The Priest's Madonna by Amy Hassinger

2010-08-31T17:28:00.000-05:00

I have been fascinated by the mysteries of Rennes-le-Chateau ever since I first heard of it, years ago, when I saw a documentary about it, so when I found this book, I had to read it. For those unfamiliar with the story, in the late 19th century, Berenger Sauniere, the priest of a poor French village, presiding over a leaky-roofed, ramshackle church, suddenly came into immense wealth, the source of which remains a mystery today, and began renovating and decorating his church in a rather esoteric manner that still raises eyebrows today. Some believe Sauniere discovered a secret that would have turned religion as the world knew it upside down and blackmailed the Catholic Church to keep it a secret, but went on to encrypt clues about it in the decoration of his church. Mary Magdalene (whose image graces the altar, see picture above) plays a prominent role in all these theories.

But this is a more pesonal novel, it is told from the viewpoint of Sauniere's housekeeper and mistress Marie Denarnaud. It is the story of personal conflict and warring desires, the pull between passion and chastity in a loving relationship, and Marie's own struggle to keep her faith when confronted with the Church's violent past when she learns about the massacres of the Cathars and Knights Templars. It is also the story of Sauniere's struggles with his priestly vows, chastity and his need and greed for wealth, which he splurges on grandiose building projects and luxuries for himself and Marie, causing the poor provincial villagers to dub her "The Priest's Madonna," because he gives Marie the adoration he should have, as a priest, given to the Virgin Mary.

Marie, like the others, is perplexed by the source of Sauniere's wealth, never quite satisfied with the explanations he gives, and troubled by his secretive ways and forays into grave-robbing, which she joins in, though her reasons are different from his. She is intrigued by the mystery, and her curiosity is fueled by some mysterious discoveries, and an Austrian Archduke who takes an unusual interest in the church at Rennes-le-Chatueau and donates money to pay for renovations with the provision that Sauniere inform him of any interesting finds, and by the tales and legends the Mayor's wife, herself an intriguing figure, tells about the Merovingian Kings and a family that may have been descended from Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, and a lost or concealed book of visions kept by a madwoman.

For much of the book, their relationship remains chaste, and Marie tries to persuade herself she is happy with this, while Sauniere battles the temptation, but after they give in and consummate their relationship it is like a dam burst ans Sauniere loses all restraint and Rennes-le-Chateau grows more and more fantastic, he even builds a tower the Tour Magdala to house Marie's library and a fine villa, the Villa Bethania, with a well-stocked wine cellar, and there are jewels and Paris gowns for Marie. In the end, his decadence will be the ruin of him.

The story of Marie and Sauniere is interwoven with that of Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ, here called Miryam of Magdala and Yeshua of Natzaret. This relationship is portrayed in a manner that is somewhat vague, perhaps intentionally so, that leaves lingering questions, for example-- Skip to next paragraph if you don't like spoilers! --after the Crucifixion Miryam realizes she is pregnant, but it is not made clear if this was the result of a physical sexual act or Immaculate Conception.

Ms. Hassinger does a fine job depicting the frustrations and complexities of the relationship between the priest and his mistress/housekeeper. Although, in my opinion, the Biblical chapters are the weaker part of the book, it is nonetheless an interesting and thought-provoking read, and if you are not already intrigued by the mysteries of Rennes-le-Chateau this novel just might inspire you to delve deeper and even read the more complex non-fiction book that inspired Ms. Hassinger to write it, Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln.

The Fan-Maker's Inquisition by Rikki Ducornet

2010-08-15T00:00:00.001-05:00

During the bloodthirsty and paranoid days of the French Revolution, a fan-maker stands trial for her association with the notorious libertine the Marquis de Sade.

Their association began when de Sade visited her shop to order beautifully crafted fans painted with pornographic scenes. In time, the customer became a friend, though never a lover; "my curiosity overcame my disgust," is how the fan-maker, educated far beyond her sex and station, explains this unlikely friendship. And during de Sade's imprisonment in the Bastille the fan-maker visited him bearing little gifts and also exchanged letters with him which are quoted to give readers a window into the "corrupt castles" of de Sade's mind. Later she even partnered with him to write a novel about the barbarities inflicted on the Mayan Indians during the Spanish Conquest of the New World. But the fan-maker's own sexuality also counts against her as her lesbian affair with a free-spirited and unconventional female playwright is exposed.

I really wanted to like this book, the plot and characters sounded so intriguing, but in My Personal Opinion the format, the Q&A style of a courtroom interrogation interspersed with letters and literary excerpts, works against it. If the author had fully fleshed out the story and characters, letting readers experience events as they unfolded, not just recited after the fact in a courtroom, it would have been so much better. This is a book that should have been a banquet not a fast food value meal.

The Bad Queen Rules and Instructions For Marie Antoinette by Carolyn Meyer

2010-08-01T18:08:00.001-05:00

This latest addition to Ms. Meyer's Young Royals Series of historical novels about the lives of famous royal women chronicles the life of Marie Antoinette. From her carefree days as an archduchess at the Austrian court, overseen by an overly indulgent governess who thinks being pretty and charming and able to dance and embroider exquisitely are all the skills Antoinette will ever need to get through life, to the grandeur of Versailles as the wife of The Dauphin later King Louis XVI, it is a life governed by rules and regulations, many of which the rebellious young woman recklessly flouts.

When her marriage remains unconsummated for many years, the finger of blame is levelled at Marie Antoinette, and she tries to console herself by spending vast sums of money on extravagant gowns, flamboyant towering hairstyles, diamonds, masked balls, and gambling. Even after she gives birth to four children the lavish spending continues, though by then it is channeled in various remodeling, redecorating, and building projects centered around the Petit Trianon and her idyllic farm Le Hameau where the cracks are painted onto the walls to give them a quaint, rustic touch. But when reality finally slaps her in the face and, with France teetering the brink of bankruptcy, she tries to economize, it is too little too late, and she is soon engulfed in the flames of the French Revolution.

In my opinion, this would be an excellent book to introduce young girls to the life of Marie Antoinette. It is filled to the brim with drama and romance when Count Axel von Fersen, the debonair Swede, comes onto the scene, although it is a chaste romance as in the pages of this novel Antoinette loyally honors her marriage vows.

The book does have a serious weakness though, in my opinion, when after the royal family are apprehended at Varennes while trying to flee, Marie Antoinette decides that she no longer has the heart to continue writing in her journal and turns the task over to her young daughter, Madame Royale. I think this would have been a much stronger book if Marie Antoinette had continued to tell her own story in her own words right up to her fatal rendezvous with the guillotine. Nonetheless, it is from start to finish an enjoyable and interesting read.

The Afflicted Girls by Suzy Witten

2010-07-11T18:03:00.001-05:00

The scenes where the accused witches are driven to the gallows on Danver's Hill, and their final moments of life, are truly heartrending and moved me to tears.

Still She Haunts Me by Katie Roiphe

2010-06-14T16:37:00.000-05:00

After reading Melanie Benjamin's novel "Alice I Have Been" my curiosity about Lewis Carroll and the mysteries and complexities of his relationship with his child-muse, Alice Liddell, was even more aroused, so I decided to read this earlier novel upon the same subject.

Charles Dodgson (the real name of Lewis Carroll) was a shy stuttering twenty-four-year-old mathematics don at Oxford when he met and fell under the spell of four-year-old Alice Liddell, a dark-haired tomboy, and asked to photograph her. Mr. Dodgson had a passion for taking photographs of little girls, some unclothed and in vaguely erotic poses that disturb even our jaded modern eyes.

To amuse and please Alice, he created the fantastical, nonsensical stories that would eventually become his immortal works of children's literature "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through The Looking Glass."

But when Alice was eleven their friendship was suddenly terminated by Alice's parents and the reason to this day remains unknown. This novel attempts to provide it and explain the peculiar and disturbing relationship between the artist and his muse.

Overall, this is a fascinating psychological drama about obsession, jealousy, and desire, and the emotional turmoil they all cause. The author wonderfully conveys, through her depiction of Lewis Carroll, the pain of trying to hold onto something you can't keep and the sense of relief that comes when it's over and you have let go, either because your grip is forcibly broken, slips, or you just let go. It is the tragic story of a troubled man trying to hold onto his muse, even after he cannot accept that she has grown up, by immortalizing her and making her larger than life in his books as an eternal child, trapping her in a persona and binding her to a fame she can never escape. I also found her portrayal of Alice intriguing, the little girl is aware in her own way of the unique power she has over her admirer and sometimes wields it cruelly, thus increasing his torment and confusion.

Those who may be interested in reading this book but are concerned about the depictions of pedophilia, can, in my opinion, safely read this novel, although in its pages Lewis Carroll grapples with his desire for Alice, this is not a sexually explicit book, his agony plays out in his head and heart rather than in physical acts. I would not hesitate to recommend this book to those who enjoyed the recent novel by Melanie Benjamin, "Alice I Have Been," as this novel gives a different view of the story.

Virgin Prelude To The Throne by Robin Maxwell

2010-06-14T16:25:00.000-05:00

"Virgin" by Robin Maxwell takes readers back to the adolescence of Elizabeth I, to the bud that later blossomed into England's greatest monarch. It is a story of angst and confusion as the teenage princess grapples with the eternal thorn in the side of womankind--not to let the heart control the mind. Unable to help or restrain herself, she falls under the spell of the charismatic and ambitious Thomas Seymour, a man of much charm, wit, but very little commonsense, who is busy as a hive full of bees recklessly plotting to oust his brother as Lord Protector of the Realm and become the true power behind the throne, either as puppetmaster to the boy-king, Edward VI, or husband of a future queen. And Ms. Maxwell does a fine job of showing the callousness behind Seymour's charming facade and the fool lurking behind the blind ambition that drives him ever onwards onto folly.

"Virgin" is an insightful and enjoyable read that paints a vivid and realistic portrait of a young woman falling in love against her better judgment, and the war between passion and reason raging within her mind. It is the softer, weaker Elizabeth before she became the strong and determined mistress of her own fate and found a love that surpassed the yearnings of her own body and heart--England.

Tamburlaine Must Die by Louise Welsh

2010-06-14T16:22:00.000-05:00

This taut little mystery revolves around my favourite Elizabethan bad boy--Christopher Marlowe, the brilliant poet and playwright who not only flirted with danger but took it to bed, leading a secret life as a spy,a bisexual by nature and inclination, dabbling in homosexuality and atheism at a time when both were considered crimes as well as sins and could lead to a fiery death at the stake.

When the novel begins, Marlowe is comfortably ensconced at his patron's country estate, hard at work on his poetry, enjoying fine food, luxurious accommodations, the beauties of nature, and tolerating Walsingham's caresses while avoiding the plague in London when a summons from the Privy Council shatters his peaceful interlude.

A firebrand signing himself Tamburlaine, after the savage Scythian shepherd-kIng in Marlowe's most violent play, has been making dangerous mischief in London, and Marlowe finds himself under suspicion.

Marlowe has three days to clear his name and save his life. Three days in which he will face betrayal by friends and lovers, confront double agents, and even consult the mysterious but learned and respected alchemist Dr. John Dee.

In this brief novella, Ms. Welsh does a fine job of capturing the eloquence of Elizabethan language without making it ponderous for the modern day reader or bogging them down with archaic language and unfamiliar words, with a judicious touch--not to little or too much-- of crudity and slang to authentically capture the world of Christopher Marlowe and the din, colour, and chaos of late sixteenth century London.

Daughters Of The Witching Hill by Mary Sharratt

2010-04-11T00:00:00.001-05:00

The Queen's Governess by Karen Harper

2010-02-27T22:43:00.003-06:00

"Anne Boleyn gave me life, but Kat Ashley gave me love," said Elizabeth I of her beloved governess, Katherine "Kat" Ashley. And Ms. Harper's novel gives a voice to that woman whose name is known to almost anyone interested in the flame-haired Tudor queen but about whom little is actually known.

Now, through a finely meshed weaving of facts and fiction we learn how the daughter of an obscure beekeeper in Devon rose to the rank of royal governess. I won't go into details here to avoid spoiling it for readers, but I will assure you that there is plenty of danger, drama, romance, and royal intrigue along the way, and I was never disappointed.

As both a longtime reader of historical novels set in Tudor England and as the author of one myself (The Boleyn Wife) I know that it's hard to find anything truly new about the Tudors, but this felt fresh rather than like just another recycling of the same old story. I would particularly like to mention Ms. Harper's fictional explanation for Kat Ashley's behavior during the infamous flirtation between the young Elizabeth and Thomas Seymour, it is refreshingly new, and those who are tired of reading about smart women making fools of themselves over Tom Seymour may enjoy this new take on the old tale.

I thoroughly enjoyed "The Queen's Governess" and think it deserves special mention as a stand-out read amongst the breeding like bunnies ranks of Tudor fiction.

Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin

2010-02-14T00:00:00.001-06:00

One of the strangest most haunting and disturbing love stories I have ever encountered is that of Lewis Carroll (the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodsgon) and his child muse Alice Liddell whom he immortalized and kept forever young as "Alice In Wonderland."

When Alice was eleven years old something happened--precisely what we do not know, the pages that might have told us have been cut from Dodgson's diary--that abruptly ended their special friendship. Dodgson would spend the rest of his life befriending and taking some rather disturbing photographs of other little girls as if he were searching for another Alice. The story he told her one lovely afternoon, which she begged him to write down just for her, he eventually published as "Alice In Wonderland," and later followed with a sequel "Through The Looking Glass" as this was the only means by which he could maintain a tenuous bond with Alice, though he never seemed to be able to accept that the child he had loved had become a woman, wife, and mother. Still, he sent her an inscribed copy of each and every edition of the book, including foreign languages ones.

Historians still debate whether the shy, stuttering Oxford mathematics don was teetering, albeit chastely, on the brink of pedophilia, but in the pages of Ms. Benjamin's haunting and evocative novel, he appears to be just that, spellbound and enraptured by his dreamchild as he helps her shed the multi-layered garments of a typical Victorian child and don a gypsy girl's beggarly rags over her nakedness then watches as she romps and rolls on the grass before he takes that unsettling photograph of the dark-haired sprite with the knowing eyes.

"Alice I Have Been" gives that unwitting muse a voice, a voice that grows increasingly weary and frustrated as she ages with being identified as "Alice In Wonderland," and tries to escape it. She never even reads the book, refusing even when her own son climbs onto her lap and asks her to read it to him. She is always aware of Lewis Carroll's sad and haunting stare following her from afar as she falls in love with a Prince, Leopold, the youngest son of Queen Victoria, endures heartbreak as her beloved sister dies and her romance crumbles, in part due to the scandal and whispers surrounding the mysterious unexplained rift and estrangement from Carroll, and eventually marries a country gentleman, Reginald Hargreaves, and bears him three sons. While Carroll himself grows older and greyer alone in musty rooms, saddened because "all my child friends grow up and leave me!" and still dreaming of Wonderland where Alice will never really grow up and he can still have her.

"Alice I Have Been" is a well-written historical novel that gives readers a window into the private world of a woman who never meant to be anyone's muse and never wanted fame and often found its effects detrimental to her personal happiness. It is also a fascinating tale for anyone who likes to know the stories and inspirations behind the books we read and remember.

The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette by Carolly Erickson

2010-01-28T15:47:00.000-06:00

This is a charming chocolate eclair or cream puff pastry of a book, however, it may send those accustomed to facts in their historical fiction into the literary equivalent of a diabetic coma.

This novel marks popular biographer Carolly Erickson's debut in the historical fiction genre. She classifies her 18th century confection as a "historical entertainment" and makes clear in an author's note at the end that "it is not an attempt at historical reconstruction," and a good thing too just in case anyone is tempted to take up this novel instead of a biography to learn about the life of Marie Antoinette.

In October 1793, while sitting in her prison cell in the Conciergerie, the threshold of the guillotine, Marie Antoinette looks back at the journal she began as a young girl full of hope and poised on the cusp of womanhood, before she learned "how cruel the world can be." The Marie Antoinette depicted on those pages emerges as an immature young woman endowed with more compassion than commonsense. She is charming, likable, and guileless, though somewhat vain and vapid, and more interested in fashion and leading a frivolous existence than in politics, her role in the dynastic alliance between Austria and France, or anything else for that matter. Before motherhood instills some maturity, and the French Revolution ignites to destroy her world like an anarchist's bomb blast, her diary entries are as light and frothy as meringue.

The first journal entry ideally illustrates compassion versus commonsense when the thirteen-year-old Archduchess Antonia, as she is then known, sneaks a basket of food to her dying sister who is quarantined with the virulent, and always deadly, black pox. Each journal entry gives us a little window into Marie Antoinette's often self-centered world. After her betrothal to the Dauphin of France, the future Louis XVI, she lines up her fashion dolls and parades before them, imagining them as ladies of the French court bowing to their future queen. We see her share her first kiss with a handsome stablehand named Eric, and weep and wail because her future husband is no storybook Prince Charming--"He is ugly! He looks like a pig!" And through it all she impatiently waits for "General Krottendorf" (the name the Hapsburg archduchesses used to refer to their menstrual periods) to make his first appearance so she can rush out to meet her destiny in France.

In France, she finds her future husband, despite his lack of physical appeal, to be a painfully shy, socially awkward boy who is seized with terror at the thought of becoming king. But Louis' shyness and lack of grace obscure a kind heart and intelligent mind and give the false impression that he is stupid and slow-witted. In truth, Louis is a studious man, crippled by self-doubt and low self-esteem, who shuns the whirlwind social life Marie Antoinette flings herself into with such giddy abandon, preferring instead a quiet, simple life with the study of botany and lockmaking for leisure activities. He is usually in bed by eleven o'clock, sleeping like a log, while his wife's night is just beginning. Unlike other more imperious, self-centered monarchs, Louis genuinely does have a care for his subjects' welfare, but his attempts to economize are often defeated by his retiring personality, and a lack of confidence and backbone, especially when confronted with his wife's staggering dressmaker's bills. He eventually develops what he calls his "Theory of Mistaken Destiny," to explain and excuse his failure as a king. And later, when the cauldron of discontent stewing in Paris begins to boil over, he runs and hides from his ministers and foists all the responsibility of governing onto his wife's fair shoulders.

Their marriage remains unconsummated for years, and Marie Antoinette unjustly bears the blame for this. She becomes the subject of scurrilous verses, diplomatic plots to send her back to Vienna, endures a humiliating physical examination by the royal physician that reveals her hymen is still intact, and the chambermaids and laundresses gossip over her bedlinens. A courtesan is even discreetly brought in to instruct her in the arts of seduction and male arousal, but Louis' libido remains limp, and he proffers no explanation to his bewildered and frustrated young bride, though the royal physician later explains that Louis suffers from a slight and easily correctable deformity of the foreskin, but fears the surgery. With a husband who is more like a brother or a friend to her, Marie Antoinette looks to her handsome stablehand, Eric, for romantic consolation, albeit of a chaste nature. "He cannot give me the love I need," she explains when they discuss her marriage. "I need to know that your love is there, for me to think of, and rely on."

A series of bread riots are the first serious spark to indicate that all is not well in France. Marie Antoinette is momentarily disturbed--"This would never happen in Vienna, the soldiers would prevent it!"--but her pretty-as-a-French-pastry sugar-white-powdered head is still in the clouds, especially after she beholds the angelic vision of Count Axel Fersen of Sweden descending a staircase in all his white uniformed, blonde-haired, blue-eyed glory.

In the years that follow, as political unrest continues to simmer in France, Marie Antoinette revels in the true love she has found with Count Fersen, and finds both satisfaction and heartbreak in motherhood. A bit of chicanery conspired between Antoinette, her brother the Austrian Emperor Joseph, and the royal physician results in Louis having the necessary corrective surgery, and, after years of waiting, a royal child is at last conceived. But it is a princess, not a prince, and as females cannot inherit the throne by French law, many are quick to brand Marie Antoinette a failure. A miscarriage follows before she at last secures the succession with a son. Her heart-wrenching journal entries reveal the agony the crippled and ailing child suffers throughout his short life, and also show how sorrow and the helplessness she feels watching her child suffer leaves its mark on Marie Antoinette . With the birth of a second son, a thriving, hearty bundle of joy Antoinette affectionately calls her chou d'amour, she ensures that France now has an heir and a spare, but sorrow further tempers joy when her final child, a sickly, premature little girl, doesn't live out her first year. And through it all events and agitators continue to fan the flames of revolution, ultimately leading to a tragic end for Marie Antoinette and those she loves. Her journal entries let readers feel the heat of the French Revolution, and the frustration, despair, abuse, and humiliation the captive royal family endured. The inclusion of a former chambermaid with an axe to grind brings it to an even more personal level as the vengeful ex-servant gloats and glories in Marie Antoinette's misfortunes and does all she can to increase them.

Like one of Marie Antoinette's ornately decorated panniered ballgowns, Ms. Erickson's novel contains many romantic and dramatic embellishments, such as the Queen and Count Fersen going off to Sweden together for a romantic holiday, ostensibly to help King Gustavus decorate his new palace, a sort of "Swedish Versailles." This assuredly never happened, but perhaps it is Ms. Erickson's way of posthumously giving the lovers something they never had in life. She also simplifies and condenses the history, and is a tad too sparing with details and descriptions of Marie Antoinette's circle of friends. For instance, unless the reader is already familiar with the life of Marie Antoinette, they may not realize that a woman mentioned frequently but always only as "Loulou" is actually the Princesse de Lamballe; a fact not revealed until Marie Antoinette pens her friend's epitaph in her diary. And the Comtesse de Polignac is little more than a name that appears on several pages. I am sorry to say that these bosom friends who played such important roles in Marie Antoinette's life simply do not emerge as fully realized characters. And, most curiously, there is not a single mention of the monumental powder keg of a scandal known as "The Affair of the Diamond Necklace" that blasted what little was left of Marie Antoinette's reputation into smithereens, though there is a cameo appearance by the charlatan Count Cagliostro who is brought in to try to heal the sickly Dauphin with magician's tricks and gobbledygook about Ancient Egyptian deities. There is even a daring, Scarlet Pimpernel style rescue attempt thrown in for good measure near the end.

All in all, though historical fiction purists will probably deplore it, this novel is like the cake the longstanding and erroneous legend says Marie Antoinette once advised her starving people to eat if they had no bread. And I, for one, happen to like cake, and, despite its flaws, I like this novel too.

Too Great A Lady The Notorious, Glorious Life of Emma, Lady Hamilton by Amanda Elyot

2010-01-15T23:00:00.000-06:00

In the late 18th century, Emma Hamilton's face and figure made her famous. With her changeable eyes and abundant auburn hair flowing well past her hips, she was accounted one of the most beautiful women in the world...until she opened her mouth.

Amanda Elyot's novel gives the fair Emma a voice and, replete with dropped aitches (the letter H) and the rough English country accent, allows her to tell the story of her meteoric rise from nobody to a titular lady who could never quite shake off the trappings of her dissolute past and notoriety. Within ten years she rose from an illiterate, barefoot country girl selling coal out of her apron pockets at the roadside, to become variously a nursemaid, an orange-girl, an "ornamental beauty" in a fashionable brothel, one of the scantily clad beauties who graced Dr. Graham's famous Temple of Health, where men of means paid fifty pounds to spend a night in the quack's Celestial Bed where the "Goddess of Health" would cure their impotence, the mistress of a hedonistic nobleman who hosted cockfights in his drawing room, and the muse of the painter Romney, to become the wife of Sir William Hamilton, the British Ambassador to Naples, a connoisseur of fine art who accounted his wife the greatest and most beautiful of his many treasures.

Emma's life reads like a bawdy version of "My Fair Lady." But, unlike the fairytale of the cockney flower-girl who learns to walk and talk like a duchess, in Emma's case the transformation never fully takes; she constantly slips. The book is written in proper English except when dialogue is quoted, then Emma drops every "h" and never learns to properly pronounce her husband's given name, calling him "Willum" instead of "William." Though she works hard to better herself, taking lessons in French, Italian, music, and drawing, she never eradicates her rough accent. She is alternately refined and vulgar, but always fresh and candid, and by those who get to know the real big-hearted, kind, generous Emma she is both liked and loved. She even becomes the confidante of Maria Carolina, Queen of Naples, and sister of Marie Antoinette, and enjoys renown as one of the most popular hostesses; visitors to sunny Italy vie for invitations to see Emma perform her "Attitudes" in which, wearing a sheer white Grecian gown, she strikes poses depicting famous female figures from mythology.

But love is Emma's undoing. After many years of marital happiness, in which she proves that a fallen woman can rise again, redeem herself, and become a model of fidelity, Emma is gobsmacked when she falls "arse over tit" in love with Horatio Nelson, the celebrated naval hero and darling of the British public. Both Nelson and Emma are married to others, though Nelson's love for his wife, Fanny, is long dead and their union endures in name only, Sir William Hamilton is one of his best friends, but their passion is too strong to resist, even though they fight it, eventually they give in and surrender to the inevitable.

The hypocritical scandal ineradicably stains both their lives. The upper classes, the aristocracy, and the fashionable folk of the "Beau Monde" and "The Ton" freely indulge in a never-ending game of musical beds, mistresses and extramarital affairs are all socially acceptable and commonplace provided a modicum of discretion is employed, yet Emma and Nelson become a scandal. Polite society snubs Emma, and The Admiralty, Parliament, and King George III alternately punish the lovers in one way or another--when Sir William Hamilton is granted his pension, it is stipulated that the sum will not continue to be paid to his widow after his death as customary, and Nelson's dying wish to provide for Emma is pointedly ignored.

Emma is clearly persona non grata in England, and after the deaths of her husband and lover she falls back down into poverty and squalor. It is Emma's fate to outlive her famous beauty and to suffer the cruel disdain of her daughter, Horatia, Nelson's only child. Horatia has nothing but contempt for Emma and never acknowledges the woman she scornfully dismisses as "a fat and slovenly tippler" as her mother. Emma pens her memoirs from debtors' prison in an attempt to raise money to support herself and Horatia before finally dying of the effects of excessive drinking in 1815.

Amanda Elyot does a fine job of resuscitating Emma and breathing life back into one of the great love stories of history without over-romanticizing it or drowning it in sentimentality.

The French Blue by Richard W. Wise

2009-12-17T13:37:00.000-06:00

Almost everyone has heard the legend of the cursed Hope Diamond, but did you ever wonder how it all began, who was the man behind that alluring behemoth blue diamond, what is the truth behind the myths that have been set like the ring of smaller white diamonds that surround the glittering blue mystery on display at the Smithsonian? Well, thanks to Mr. Wise, we now have a novel that nimbly toes the line between truth and literary invention and tells the life story of Jean-Baptiste Tavernier; "The French Blue" is a novel that adheres to the known facts with just a little fiction thrown in as garnish and to fill in the unknown gaps in Tavernier's life.

The son of a cartographer (mapmaker) who never got to visit the far-off and exotic places he incorporated into the maps he made, Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, his wanderlust fueled by the tales of travelers who visited his father, grew up to be a savvy multilingual world traveler, a canny gem merchant with a brilliant eye for the finest stones, and a shrewd bargainer, adept at getting the best prices and reaping a profit.

Like the boy Tavernier sitting by the fire listening to a traveler's fantastical tale, "The French Blue" gives the reader the same feeling. Through Tavernier's words, this leisurely and engrossing novel gives readers a window to the 17th century, and lets us peep into a world of battlefields, bedrooms, court and diplomatic intrigues, and experience the perils of travel in the days before automobiles, airplanes, and trains, and hear the merchants, the buyers and sellers, bargain, barter, and haggle. And we get to see the cultures and customs of Persia, India, and other exotic lands, strange and unknown, sometimes even bizarre, to European eyes and ears. And then there are the gems--turquoise, rubies, sapphires, and diamonds--rough and unpolished, brought up from the bowels of the earth to be cleaned, cut, and faceted, transformed into sparkling wonders to be marveled at, gasped and sighed over, coveted and adored.

This exhaustively researched novel, assembled with the same care as a gem-cutter faceting a precious stone, has the authentic feel of a traveler's journal, however, those readers who prefer a more emotional, soul-baring narrator, may find it lacks the "poetry of the soul." But those who prefer a more factual tone, and deplore the more fantastical and lascivious embroidery worked by historical novelists, may find that "The French Blue" is precisely their cup of tea. As for myself, I just like a good story, and I found "The French Blue," with a cup of hot chocolate and a warm blanket, to be a good companion on these cold winter nights.

Special Thanks to Richard W. Wise for sending me a copy of his book.

The Preservationist by David Maine

2009-12-16T09:30:00.000-06:00

This was a delightful little book, a clever, fresh, humor-infused retelling of the story of Noah's Ark, without the preachiness or solemnity that sometimes mar novels set in Biblical times. The cast of characters come alive as vibrantly human, with all their faults and foibles. There is Noe (Noah), the stern, unyielding patriarch; The Wife, whose name has been forgotten, a fatalistic, pragmatic woman; and their three sons: obedient, superstitious Sem; grumpy, gloomy, sullen but sensible Cham, who, by a fortuitous coincidence just happens to be a shipbuilder; and snickering, slugabed, horny teenager Japeth who tries to avoid work as if it were the plague. The boys' wives are equally individual: buxom, brown-skinned, barren Bera, whose father sold her into slavery as a child; tall, albino-fair Ilya, an educated woman, particularly knowledgeable about cosmology, astronomy, weather patterns, and the natural sciences, from a land of snow and goddess-worshipping tribes ruled by matriarchs; and petite and timid Mirn a shy, soft-spoken teenager usually dismissed as having an empty head but a lovely body.

The story begins when 600 year old Noe comes home late for supper and announces to his long-suffering wife "I must build a boat," despite their being nowhere remotely near the sea. While out in the mustard field God spoke to Noe and informed him that because the world has become riddled with sin and corruption on such a rampant, widespread scale He has decided to destroy it with a great flood and start over fresh. And he wants Noe and his family to survive and repopulate the world with people and animals. In order to do this Noe must build an ark, a great ship, 300 cubits long, by 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits tall, and fill it with breeding pairs of every species of animal from the tiniest to the towering.

After years of putting up with Noah and his special relationship with God, his wife has learned to just nod and go with the flow. And so, trusting God to provide, Noe sets about making God's words a reality.

While he and sons labor to construct this titanic floating barnyard, their wives are given the onerous task of collecting the necessary animals; the non-domestic varieties not readily at hand.

Bera journeys back to her homeland where she finds her estranged father dying; repenting selling his daughter into slavery, he makes her a gift of his private menagerie, which includes such exotic specimens as apes of all sorts, including monkeys and baboons, various jungle cats, crocodiles, hippos, gazelles, elephants, ostriches, anteaters, rhinos, armadillos, giraffes, and zebras. As she is on the verge of departing, Bera receives an even more precious gift, a pair of newborn twins, a boy and girl, whose mother died in childbirth, leading their grief-stricken father to despise them. A miracle then occurs, the barren Bera's breasts begin to spout milk to provide her newly acquired children with sustenance.

Impersonating a priestess of Oda, a blood-drinking goddess, to save herself from rape and enlist the aid of a group of wolfskin-clad barbarains, Ilya returns to the northlands where she was born and brings back a fine collection of foxes, wolves, bears, and deer.

Mirn stays close to home, to help her mother-in-law and gather the little creatures that often provoke shudders of revulsion and are generally regarded as pests--insects, snakes, and rodents.

Meanwhile, a crowd gathers, setting up temporary quarters in hastily constructed shanties, to gape, gawk, and jeer at the great boat rising out of the desert sands. They heckle and laugh at Noe, dismissing him as a crackpot, and touched in the head, but when the rains begin and the flood waters steadily rise they quickly change their tune. Then it is Noe's turn to gloat and heckle them. Even the sight of innocent children condemned to a watery death fails to tug at his heartstrings. The world is being washed clean of sin and corruption and Noe and his family are the chosen ones, privileged to start anew with a clean-wiped slate, and Noe feels only joy and honored to be chosen by God.

For forty days and forty nights they suffer the ceaselessly falling rains and rocking waves. Noe likens Hell to their existence belowdecks. In the close quarters of the family cabin, hemmed in by animals on all sides; animals to the right and left of them, animals above and below them, the odors of dung and urine, both human and animal, pervade and mingle with the miasma of unwashed bodies, vomit, smoke from the cookstove, and the scent of sex when the young couples take to rutting away their boredom.

Each chapter is told from the viewpoint of a different character, and we see how their ordeal upon the raging floodwaters changes and affects them. The philosophical Ilya thinks often of the nonbelievers, especially the innocent children who died, and wonders "Why them and not me?" Bera ponders "Why did God do it?" Each person has a different answer to this question, no two are alike, and in the end it all boils down to "The Lord does what He wants, when He wants to;" any search for deeper or greater meaning is, in the end,just theological debate.

The youngest son, Japeth, sums it up best with his oft repeated words: "We'll have a Hell of a story for the grandkids!" And this reader, for one, thinks he's right; David Maine's "The Preservationist" is a great new spin on an old, old tale.

The Discovery of Chocolate by James Runcie

2009-12-08T10:53:00.002-06:00

"The Discovery of Chocolate" is a fun, swift read about love, loss, and immortality filled with scrumptious nuggets of history about the world's favorite sweet and its evolution from cacoa beans to candy bar, with cameos from famous historical figures along the 500+ year journey.

The story begins in 1518, Diego de Godoy, a young gentleman of Seville, embarks on a quest. He joins Cortes and his Conquistadors to win fame, fortune, and the hand in marriage of Isabella de Quintallina, a spoiled Spanish beauty who demands that he return from the New World bearing a gift for her that no man or woman has ever received before.

In America, Diego ponders many wonderful, beautiful, and special things--gold and gems, exquisite ornaments fashioned from these by the natives, and exquisitely embroidered garments, spices, animals, tobacco, fruits and vegetables--but what is unique enough to be worthy of the petulant beauty waiting for him back home? Then, one night at a banquet hosted by the Great Chief Montezuma, he finds the answer to that question when he is served a drink like no other he has ever tasted before--a bittersweet dark brown concoction that soothes like a drug and leaves him craving more. The natives call it chocolatl, it is made from the precious cacoa beans that the natives use as currency.

Diego is instantly smitten with the Aztec woman who serves him this delicious and intriguing beverage. He calls her Ignacia as her true name, Quiauhxochitl, is unpronouncable, and as memories of Isabella grow dim, he seeks every opportunity to be in her company and learn more about chocolatl. The two fall in love, but despair in the grim face of reality; they come from two different worlds, and Deigo's people have come to conquer and bring death and destruction to Ignacia's people and the land that she loves. But in Ignacia's heart hope springs eternal, and she is prepared to gamble with fate; unbeknownst to Diego she slips the magical elixir of life into his chocolatl and gives him immortality, hoping that somehow, someway, someday, in the centuries to come, their love will survive and they will find each other again.

The lovers part amidst the bloody and violent chaos of the Mexican Conquest. Diego returns to Spain and, despite his yearning for Ignacia, tries to rekindle his love for Isabella. After two years apart, the couple find they have little liking for, and even less to say to, each other. But true to his word, Diego comes bearing a unique gift--a vase filled with the precious cacoa beans pilfered from Montezuma's treasury. But he has made a great blunder--the beans are fakes, fashioned from bits of dried clay, seized by Montezuma's men as counterfeit currency.

Disgraced and a laughingstock, Diego departs Seville and returns to Mexico, determined to start a new life with Ignacia, only to discover amidst the blackened and charred ruins of the once great city what he believes is his beloved's grave. Consumed with grief and longing, he is slow to realize his immortality as the years creep by. With his loyal greyhound Pedro, who licked the dregs of the chocolatl containing the elixir, Diego becomes a solitary and discontent wanderer, fated to traverse the centuries lonely and loveless; touching others' lives temporarily but never truly sharing them as his immortality condemns him to always move on. He cannot settle down and grow old with someone, he cannot bear to watch as they age, sicken, and die while he remains alive, aging only minimally as the decades pass.

As the years slowly unfold, his destiny entwines with chocolate; it becomes his passion, his one true and vital link to Ignacia. He causes a furor that leads to religious discord and murder in a sleepy little Mexican town when he introduces his innovative recipe for hot chocolate. Imprisoned in the Bastille as a madman, he makes dark chocolate raspberry cremes with the Marquis de Sade, and helps overthrow the Bastille and perfect the pain au chocolat as the fires of the French Revolution ignite. In Vienna, he turns a ruined cake into the famous Sacher Torte, and ends up on the couch of Sigmund Freud when the burden of immortality weighs too heavily on his soul. He makes a fresh start in England under the guidance of kindly, fatherly Quaker philanthropist Joseph Fry as they work together to perfect the chocolate bar at his factory in Bristol. And he discusses the intricacies of chocolate mousse with Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas aboard The Mauritania as he sails to start yet another new life in America, in Hershey, Pennsylvania, after a fateful encounter with Milton S. Hershey at the greyhound races results in the birth of Hershey Kisses. Until his long quest for love, redemption, and peace of mind brings him full circle and back to Mexico.

Surprisingly, given the time span it covers, "The Discovery of Chocolate" is, at only 264 pages, short enough to devour in one or two sittings. It's a chocolate bar of a book, easily and quickly finished, but, depending on the reader's appetite and enjoyment of it, it may leave them wanting more.

Farewell to Dreams by Diane Goodrich and Sharon Rich

2009-12-04T12:05:00.000-06:00

"Farewell To Dreams" is a fictionalized account of the secret off-screen romance between one of the movies' great screen couples from the golden age of Hollywood--Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, fondly known as "America's Singing Sweethearts."

The story begins in 1934 when handsome, blonde baritone Nelson Eddy, already a star on the concert stage, mobbed and adored by legions of female fans, arrives at MGM, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the Hollywood studio that boasts it has "more stars than there are in heaven," including Jean Harlow and Clark Gable.

Nelson is a serious singer, an intense, sincere, determined man, whom many mistake for being old-fashioned and naive. He has little patience or use for the shallow and phony Hollywood way of life. He has already reached a point in his career where he can take Hollywood or leave it, he sees the movies as merely a means to increase attendance at his already phenomenally popular concerts. After a few bits parts, acting lessons, the glamour treatment, and exposure to the Hollywood publicity machine where columnists Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper rule the roost, he is ready to kiss Hollywood goodbye when a beautiful soprano voice draws him to the soundstage where Ernst Lubitsch is filming "The Merry Widow."

The moment Nelson Eddy lays eyes on Jeanette MacDonald it is love at first sight. Even though they have never spoken a word, he knows beyond all doubt that he has found the love of his life, the girl of his dreams, the woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with.

With her sea green eyes, flaming Titian red curls, porcelain-pale complexion, vivacious charm, sparkling personality, and a beautiful soprano voice Jeanette MacDonald is already well along the road of success, but her true personality belies her angelic appearance and pure public image. Although she is already a star, Jeanette has but one burning, all-consuming ambition--to be the biggest star in Hollywood. She is an adept and dedicated player of the Hollywood game who fully understands and lives the rules 24/7 and even sleeps with ruthless martinet studio boss Louis B. Mayer to better her chances. Yet she finds herself strangely drawn to Nelson and bewildered by the feelings he rouses in her; she has never been in love before and one look at him leaves her feeling as flustered and confused as a schoolgirl with her first crush. She is alternately driven to push him away and pull him close to her. Jeanette keeps telling herself that her career is everything, that sex is merely a stepping stone to be doled out accordingly to the men who can do the most for her career, love and romance have no place in her life; fame and stardom are all that matter, nothing else must interfere, distract, or come between her and her ambitions.

So begins a tense and tempestuous relationship where quarrels often outnumber kisses. The drama escalates when the two are chosen to star together in "Naughty Marietta," a fun, frothy operetta about an 18th century French princess who flees in disguise to colonial New Orleans and finds romance with a handsome mercenary soldier. When the couple gaze longingly at one another and their voices rise and blend together, like lovers embracing, in the haunting duet "Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life," they are absolute magic. Critics may deplore Nelson's performance as "wooden," but moviegoers, seeking relief from their hum-drum lives and the grim realities of the Great Depression, fall instantly in love with "America's Singing Sweethearts." Audiences thrill to the love that is such a palpable presence between the duo, the way they make love in song, the way they look at each other, and the tantalizing hints of an off-screen romance that sometimes grace the gossip columns. They become number one box office draws, and the studio is swamped with mail begging for more MacDonald-Eddy films; thus one of the great screen teams is born. Nelson and Jeanette become to singing what Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are to dancing, they bring opera to the masses, and, at regular intervals over the coming years, more musical movie magic follows: Rose Marie, Maytime, Girl of the Golden West, New Moon, Sweethearts, Bitter Sweet, and I Married An Angel.

But life is not a movie, and the songbirds who epitomize pure and true love on-screen, are anything but angels, and their life is often more hellish than heavenly. Nelson incurs the wrath of Louis B. Mayer, whose fury at finding that he cannot control Nelson the way he can most of his stable of stars almost broaches on madness; he even goes to the extreme of putting studio profits in peril by sabotaging the couple's films, plastering Nelson's face with unflattering, often effeminate pancake makeup and cutting out some of his best scenes. He warns, threatens, and browbeats Jeanette, making her fear for her own all-important career and Nelson's physical well-being. To make matters worse, the couple fight against themselves as well as each other. Jeanette's obsession with her career does considerable damage to the couple's hopes and dreams of happiness.

When she becomes pregnant during the filming of "Rose Marie" Jeanette vehemently declares that she does not want the baby, that it will ruin everything. The lovers quarrel heatedly, and when Jeanette, always a woman of frail health, with a heart condition she goes to great lengths to conceal, suffers a miscarriage soon afterwards, Nelson refuses to believe her, thinking she has had an abortion instead. In a moment of weakness, and wanting to hurt Nelson, Jeanette accepts a marriage proposal from actor Gene Raymond, a man who, just like Jeanette herself, understands Hollywood and the rules of the game. But handsome, blue-eyed, blonde-haired Gene has an ulterior motive--if he cannot be a star in his own right he is content to bask in the reflected glory of a movie star wife who can afford to give him the lavish lifestyle he has always longed for. And he speaks the words that are magic to Jeanette's ears: He will never do anything to jeopardize her career. To keep her from wriggling off the hook now that he has caught her, Gene promptly calls Louis B. Mayer and asks his blessing. Mayer is so elated that this will spell "The End" for the songbirds off-screen love affair that he magnanimously offers to pay for the wedding, a Hawaiian honeymoon, and a stately home for the couple to start married life in. To the vindictive Mayer, Nelson's suffering is worth every penny.

Despite Nelson's pleas, Jeanette goes through with the marriage, only to realize on her honeymoon that she has made a huge mistake. Kindness and understanding are only roles that Gene plays when it is to his advantage, usually only in public and in the presence of cameras and reporters. He is a closeted but careless homosexual, at a time when homosexuality could ruin a man's reputation and career, with an insatiable appetite for handsome young men which he indulges freely every chance he gets, even on his honeymoon, and he is an alcoholic as well.

In the years that follow Jeanette and Nelson kiss and make up then break up again and again. There are even suicide attempts, which the studio covers up and keeps secret from the press. And Nelson, wanting to hurt Jeanette, makes a mistake of his own. Drunk out of his mind, he marries Ann Franklin, a vindictive money-loving shrew who, once she gets her claws into Nelson, will never let him go. Whenever Nelson even mentions the word divorce Ann threatens to call the press and drag Jeanette's name through the mud. Given the social mores of the era, and the public's ideas about Jeanette and Nelson based on their pure and wholesome screen image, even a hint of carnality, and words like "adultery" and "divorce," would mean instant ruin. The MacDonald-Eddy partnership is a goldmine for MGM and Louis B. Mayer is hellbent on protecting the profits, and both of their spouses enjoy their status too much to ever let them go, thus Jeanette and Nelson are well and truly trapped in their respective marital hells.

It is a sad and ironic truth that two people who brought so much happiness to millions of moviegoers had so little happiness in their own lives. Their romance is a story of two lovers battling the odds, themselves, and sometimes even each other, to be together and find some measure of happiness.

"Farewell To Dreams" is a rare and often costly book, for those unwilling or unable to obtain a copy, I highly recommend the much more reasonably priced "Sweethearts" by author Sharon Rich instead. Though "Sweethearts" is a nonfiction book about the real life MacDonald-Eddy romance, it is a much better book in my opinion, well written and exhaustively researched. "Farewell To Dreams" is an entertaining read that holds interest throughout, but not a remarkable one; in other words: it's an okay book with an often outrageous price tag. The authors do a good job of replicating 1930s slang and dialogue, and the two main characters emerge as painfully real human beings, not picture-perfect like their on-screen images, but complex and flawed individuals, with messy, imperfect lives, who hurt each other, themselves, and are in turn hurt by life and the machinations of others. The book is also laced with love scenes that recall the style of "bodice ripper" romance novels.

You can sometimes find "Farewell To Dreams," if you are willing to spend that much money on a book, at Amazon's used books marketplace:

For a more reasonably priced book that tells the same story, and much better in my opinion, try Sweethearts by Sharon Rich, available at

The Confession of Piers Gaveston by Brandy Purdy

2009-12-04T10:59:00.009-06:00

It would not be appropriate for me to review a book I wrote, but I wanted to include it on this blog.

Back cover description:

The history books tell us that Piers Gaveston was many things: arrogant, ambitious, avaricious, flamboyant, extravagant, reckless, brave, and daring, indiscreet, handsome, witty, vivacious, vain, and peacock-proud, a soldier and champion jouster, the son of a condemned witch, who used witchcraft, his own wicked wiles, and forbidden sex to entice and enslave King Edward II, alienate him from his nobles and advisors, and keep him from the bed of his beautiful bride Isabelle. Edward's infatuation with Gaveston, and the deluge of riches he showered on him, nearly plunged England into civil war.

Now the object of that scandalous and legendary obsession tells his side of the story in THE CONFESSION OF PIERS GAVESTON:

"Mayhap even now, when I have only just begun, it is already too late to set the story straight. My infamy, I fear, is too well entrenched. Whenever they tell the story of Edward's reign I will always be the villain and Edward, the poor, weak-willed, pliant king who fell under my spell, the golden victim of a dark enchantment. There are two sides to every coin; but when the bards and chroniclers, the men who write the histories, tell this story, will anyone remember that?"

The Historical Novel Review did a multi-part feature on the book, you can find the various posts here:

http://historicalnovelreview.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Confession%20of%20Piers%20Gaveston

Nan Hawthorne's review http://allsheread.blogspot.com/2009/12/confession-of-piers-gaveston-by-brandy.html

The Boleyn Wife by Brandy Purdy & The Tudor Wife by Emily Purdy

2009-12-04T10:55:00.007-06:00

It would not be appropriate for me to review my own book, The Boleyn Wife, (published as The Tudor Wife in the UK under my pen name, Emily Purdy) which tells the story of Anne Boleyn's treacherous sister-in-law, Lady Rochford, but I did want to include it on this blog.

Back Cover Description:

Shy, plain Lady Jane Parker feels out of place in Henry VIII's courtly world of glamour and intrigue—until she meets the handsome George Boleyn. Overjoyed when their fathers arrange a match, her dreams of a loving union are waylaid when she meets George's sister, Anne. For George is completely devoted to his sister, and cold and indifferent to his bride. As Anne acquires a wide circle of admirers, including King Henry, Jane's resentment grows. But if becoming Henry's queen makes Anne the most powerful woman in England, it also makes her highly vulnerable. And as Henry, desperate for a male heir, begins to tire of his mercurial wife, the stage is set for the ultimate betrayal. . .

Encompassing the reigns of four of Henry's wives, from the doomed Anne to the reckless Katherine Howard, The Boleyn Wife (The Tudor Wife) is an unforgettable story of ambition, lust, and jealousy, of the power of love to change the course of history, and of the terrible price of revenge.

Here are some links to reviews:

Historical Novel Review by Lisa Yarde at http://historicalnovelreview.blogspot.com/2009/12/boleyn-wife-by-brandy-purdy.html with author interview at http://historicalnovelreview.blogspot.com/2009/12/interview-with-brandy-purdy.html

Elizabeth at http://historicallyobsessed.blogspot.com/ found the book a tad too risque for her personal tastes, but enjoyed the ghosts of Anne Boleyn and her brother George that appear in the Tower of London to torment Lady Rochford. To read her full review please visit http://historicallyobsessed.blogspot.com/2009/10/book-review-boleyn-wife-by-brandy-purdy.html

Robinbird at http://almostcrazymommy.blogspot.com/ found Jane Boleyn (Lady Rochford) to be an interesting and thoroughly unsympathetic villainess. To read her full review please visit http://almostcrazymommy.blogspot.com/2009/11/book-review-boleyn-wife.html I also did a brief interview with her, it can be read at http://almostcrazymommy.blogspot.com/2009/11/author-interview-brandy-purdy.html

Manic Readers at http://www.manicreaders.com/index.cfm?disp=reviews&bookid=5093

Author and historical fiction reviewer Heather Domin posted a detailed review of my novel "The Boleyn Wife" today at
http://teacake421.livejournal.com/59053.html#cutid1

Review by Elizabeth at http://ebogie.blogspot.com/2009/10/boleyn-wife.html

Review by Celtic Lady at http://celticladysramblings.blogspot.com/2009/12/boleyn-wife-by-brandy-purdy.html

Nan Hawthorne, author of "An Involuntary King", posted an in depth interview and implicit review at http://allsheread.blogspot.com/2009/12/boleyn-wife-by-brandy-purdy.html

Reader's Respite's review of the original self-published edition Vengeance Is Mine http://readersrespite.blogspot.com/2009/12/rompin-with-tudors.html

Marie Johansen's Review http://booksbythewillowtree.blogspot.com/2009/12/boleyn-wife-by-brandy-purdy.html

The Boleyn Wife by Brandy Purdy will be published in the USA on January 26, 2010 by Kensington Books, and in the UK on April 1, 2010 by Avon/Harper under the title of The Tudor Wife by Emily Purdy (my British pen name)

All That Lives A Novel of The Bell Witch by Melissa Sanders-Self

2009-12-01T10:02:00.000-06:00

"All That Lives" tells the story of one of the most famous hauntings and unsolved mysteries in American history from the viewpoint of one of its victims--Betsy Bell, the youngest daughter of John Bell, a prosperous tobacco farmer in Adams, Tennessee, who suffered great abuse at the invisible hands of the entity that became known as "The Bell Witch."

The story begins in 1819 when nine-year-old schoolgirl Betsy Bell ventures out into the woods to collect autumn leaves to decorate the schoolhouse for the upcoming Harvest Pageant. A pall of spine-tingling fear is cast over the day when she steps into a pocket of cold air and feels a pair of invisible hands descend onto her shoulders. This is the calling card of the entity that will come to torment Betsy and her family with a vengeance four years later.

The novel then moves ahead four years to a mild spring night when Betsy is thirteen. A persistent tapping on the glass of her bedroom window draws Betsy from her bed, where she is curled up under the quilt with stomach cramps, as she rises to investigate she feels the first blood of womanhood flow between her legs. The arrival of the spirit at the same time as the menstrual blood is perhaps a significant parallel as some paranormal investigators believe there is a strong connection between puberty and poltergeist activity.

The tapping on the windowpane continues in the nights to come, joined by more baffling and inexplicable phenomena--rapping on the walls, a noise like a rat gnawing on the bedpost, the flapping wings of a flock of invisible birds, smacking lips, gulping, choking, and gasping breaths, the sound of splintering wood as if the furniture is being smashed to kindling, and showers of stones that fall down the stairs. The Bell family put all their faith and trust in God and prayer, but nonetheless meticulously search the house from top to bottom for some rational, earthly explanation. The roof is examined for loose shingles that might flap in the wind and the floorboards are even taken up in search of rodents, but no natural cause can be found. The horrors continue to escalate as the unseen entity begins to yank covers from the beds, and violently jerk and twist Betsy's long yellow braid. It slaps her face with such force that a red handprint lingers, stabs her with invisible pins, and hurls her down onto the floor into fainting fits in which she lies motionless, unable to speak, in a state of oppressive breathlessness. Strange lights are also seen floating over the fields and peculiar "witch creatures" bedevil and perplex the Bells, their slaves, and neighbours.

Betsy Bell endures the worst of the torments, but her father John Bell is also afflicted with an intense discomfort in his throat that feels like a twig stuck sideways, preventing him from swallowing. An undercurrent of incest runs throughout the relationship between John Bell and his "darling daughter," though this is more implied than explicit. No actual sexual encounters are described though there are disturbing hints knotted together with Betsy's feelings for her father: "I feared the absence of his love much more than I feared his unwanted touch," she thinks as she lies passively on her bed after suffering the spirit's attentions, and her father unlaces her stays. Each time John Bell carries his "darling daughter" upstairs after a spectral assault an incestuous encounter is implied in discreetly worded language that draws a curtain over a loathsome sight Betsy would rather not have us see and most readers would rather not witness; the knowledge is disturbing enough.

By this point two men of God, Reverend Johnston and preacher Calvin Justice, have been brought in to try to banish the entity. Word of the phenomena quickly spreads and the curious descend on the Bell homestead. The spirit thrives on their attention and quickly finds its voice and begins to regale the eager audience and the beleaguered Bells with recitations of scriptures, songs, stories, gossip, tidbits of prophecy, and malicious taunts. It even reveals a secret adulterous affair in the community which leads to tragedy. And with malicious glee it sends the family on a wild-goose-chase in search of a tooth knocked from the jawbone of an Indian whose grave was disturbed, and later on an even more onerous search for a buried treasure, before it finally reveals its true, blood-chilling, purpose: "I shall torment John Bell out of his life!"

The entity, now commonly called "The Bell Witch," is also intent on destroying Betsy's burgeoning romantic feelings for her handsome young suitor Joshua Gardner. "Betsy Bell, do not have Josh Gardner!" it thunders repeatedly as it tries to tear the young couple apart. But young love, and first love, is difficult to ignore.

When John Bell takes to his bed, the spirit gleefully takes credit; glorying in the role of murderer and boisterously singing "Row me up some brandy o!" as he expires, then seeing him to his grave, and making a mockery of the solemn funeral procession, with a spirited rendition of "Oh here's success to whiskey, drink it down, drink it down!"

But the spirit also shows a compassionate side and stays to nurse his widow, kind, gentle-natured Lucy Bell, when she comes down with a bad case of pleurisy. To tempt her fragile appetite and aid her recovery it makes the roof rain showers of summer fruit down onto her sickbed even as the trees are bare and the earth frozen and carpeted thick with snow.

Betsy is consumed by fear that the spirit means to murder each member of her family one by one. She begins to live only for the moment and takes advantage of the lax parental supervision brought on by her father's death and her mother's illness to meet Joshua Gardner secretly in the woods. Sometimes they make love, other times they play like little children. But Betsy is angered and frightened by Joshua's desire to discuss their future; he begs her to be his bride and cross over the mountains with him to the fertile lands of Kentucky to start a farm, a family, and a new life together. But Betsy hesitates and procrastinates, in tears and fear, as the seed the spirit's persistent cries of "Betsy Bell do not have Josh Gardner!" has planted takes root inside her mind. And is there perhaps something about Joshua himself that, despite his earnest words, waters that seed and helps give it life?

The book ends with an incendiary confrontation between Betsy and her demon, giving full vent to the battle royal raging inside this tormented young girl's soul, and showing that good and evil are not always white and black, sometimes they bleed and blend together to create shades of grey.

Though some may find "All That Lives," to be, at times, a slow read, I think the pace well suited to the mode of life it depicts--a routine and hardworking existence in early, rural 19th century Tennessee interspersed with simple pleasures and Sunday church services--shattered by supernatural events. It also serves to capture the mounting frustration the Bell family suffered day by day as they endured this otherworldly onslaught that turned their quiet, respectable home into a carnival atmosphere and made them the subject of gossip and rumours. Some liberties, in the form of omissions and elaborations, are taken with the actual events, at least as they have come down to us in the historical record, but, in a novel this is to be expected and does nothing to detract from the fascinating history/legend of The Bell Witch. Of the fictional treatments of the story currently available, this one stands the highest in my estimation.

Dust and Shadow An Account of the Ripper Killings edited by Dr. John H. Watson by Lyndsay Faye

2009-12-01T10:00:00.000-06:00

In 1939, fifty-one years after the atrocities of 1888, perpetrated by the fiend known to history as Jack the Ripper, Dr. Watson takes up his pen to reveal the role his friend the brilliant consulting detective Sherlock Holmes played in the investigation of the most infamous killer of all time. He begins with the tantalizing statement: "At first it seemed the Ripper affair had scarred my friend Sherlock Holmes as badly as it had the city of London itself.'

The reader is then transported back to the London of Queen Victoria, hansom cabs, and gaslights to hear a tale peopled with peasoup fogs, penny whores, perplexed police officers, yellow journalists, street urchins, and over-vigilant vigilantes that bear more resemblance to a lynch mob. The story takes Holmes and Watson from the comfortable environs of 221B Baker Street to the dangerous streets of Whitechapel, a world of grinding poverty, dark alleys, pubs, doss houses, and opium dens. They are aided in their investigation by an enterprising streetwalker who was friends with one of the victims and a young man who is not at first what he seems, and are hampered by a muckraking journalist who casts suspicion on Holmes himself.

The game is indeed afoot as readers follow Sherlock Holmes and the loyal Watson through Whitechapel on Guy Fawkes Night as, amidst the celebratory firecrackers, bonfires, roasting potatoes, and burning effigies, the clues begin to fall into place like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and it is a race against time to try to prevent the next murder and bring the killer to justice.

Ms. Faye does a fine job of recreating the style of the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories and evoking the sights, sounds,and smells of Victorian London, and the alternately plucky, pathetic, violent, and colourful denizens of the East End slums.

This is a Ripper story unembellished by the outlandish theories and conspiracies that are all too common in the literature, even that labeled as non-fiction. And although it is never made quite clear in the pages of Ms. Faye's novel what exactly drove the Ripper to kill and mutilate his unfortunate victims, it is nonetheless a fine addition to the shelves of Sherlockiana.

The Lady Elizabeth by Alison Weir

2009-11-29T14:35:00.000-06:00

This wonderful, hard-to-put-down novel charts the life of Elizabeth Tudor from the death of her mother, Anne Boleyn, in 1536 to the day Elizabeth becomes Queen of England in 1558. Historian Alison Weir does a wonderful job of capturing the mind and voice of Henry VIII's clever red-haired daughter even when her head and body churn with confusion and contradictory desires and longings.

The primary focus of the story is Elizabeth's infatuation with her stepfather, Thomas Seymour, the handsome, virile husband of Catherine Parr, a colourful and hot-headed rascal suffering from the disease of soul-devouring ambition as he schemes to snare a royal bride and wrest the power of Tudor government away from his brother, the Lord Protector, Edward Seymour.

One controversial aspect of this novel is that Alison Weir, although as a historian she believes Elizabeth remained a virgin in the full physical sense her entire life, chose in the pages of her fiction to let Elizabeth succumb to Seymour and become pregnant as a result of their one and only sexual encounter. While some historical fiction fans have not liked this, I thought it was an excellent twist and very well done, seamlessly blending with an old tale from Tudor times about a midwife being taken blindfolded to attend the young Elizabeth in childbed.

The novel also vividly recreates the clash of wills between Mary and Elizabeth. As Mary's fanatical determination to restore England to the Catholic fold leads to the burning of Protestant "heretics" and turns England into a country fraught with fear, and her subjects' love for her dwindles and dies, Elizabeth becomes the people's beacon of hope, the woman who will lead the way to a more enlightened future. And Mary's fragile mind becomes increasingly suspicious of Elizabeth, seeing her as the figurehead of every Protestant plot, and placing Elizabeth in danger at the hands of the sister who once loved her as if she were her own child.

"The Lady Elizabeth" is a vivid portrait of the perils this courageous and clever young woman faced on the long, winding, and often rutted and bumpy road to the throne, with a stay in the Tower of London and many brushes with danger along the way.

I have read many novels about Elizabeth I over the years, but this one ranks alongside "Legacy" by Susan Kay as my favorite so far.

Pilate's Wife by Antoinette May

2009-11-29T13:02:00.003-06:00

This novel, written in the first person, from the viewpoint of Claudia, the clarivoyant wife of Pontius Pilate, is an interesting portrait of what life was like for a Roman wife living at the time of Jesus Christ. Though Claudia is by no means the typical, ordinary Roman wife, she struggles with a gift that is also a curse--second sight, and the knowledge that she is powerless to change or prevent what she "sees" from coming to pass, as when her beloved sister Marcella is seduced by their cousin, future emperor Caligula, and forced to become a Vestal Virgin as punishment. Even though the principal qualification--virginity--is lacking, the malicious Empress Livia pulls strings to get her in, which years later leads to an even greater tragedy.

While visiting Egypt with her family, Claudia is called by the goddess Isis and initiated into her cult. On her first visit to the Temple, she meets a dark and intense young man with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge studying to become a teacher--Jesus of Galilee, whose path will cross hers again one day, but for now it is just a brief, chance encounter, and Claudia has other things on her mind.

Two years later, when it is time for her to begin thinking seriously about marriage, Claudia becomes enamored of handsome, ambitious Pontius Pilate, a rising star in the political world, who has something of a reputation as a fortune-hunter and a womanizer. Knowing that her own dowry is not substantial, Claudia's hopes are dashed, but, unable to forget Pilate, she begs a love potion from the mystagogue at the Temple of Isis. She is warned that it comes at a high price, by which the mystagogue does not mean money, but spoiled, willful, heedless, and impatient young Claudia is prepared to pay any cost to become Pilate's wife.

Whether it is the love potion working or fate, Claudia and Pilate soon marry. But their happiness is shortlived. Pilate is ruthlessly ambitious, a man who puts his career above both loyalty and family, and a confirmed and unrepentant philanderer, who is disappointed when Claudia fails to give him a son. She begins to fear he will divorce her, for her infertility and also because her family has fallen into disgrace with the Emperor Tiberius, which has led more than once to death and tragedy. Claudia also starts to lament her lot as a Roman woman whose fate rests wholly in her husband's hands and to long to take control of her own destiny.

While visiting the public baths, Claudia overhears gossip that Pilate is having an affair and again resorts to magic potions to win him back, yet again heedless of the cost and the warning that such things bind the person who casts the spell far more than they do the one it is cast upon.

Desperate for a son and heir, Pilate sends Claudia to the luxury spa of the day, the Asklepion, for a regimine of mud baths, massages, and dream therapy. While there she befriends Miriam of Magdala (Mary Magdalene), a warm and learned woman, who also turns out to be one of the most notorious courtesans in Rome. When the healing God Asklepios fails to visit Claudia in a dream, to guide the temple doctors in her treatment, she is subjected to the Asklepion's most shocking remedy of all--a night in the Snake Pit.

Despite her fear and pleading to be spared this horror, Claudia finds salvation in the Snake Pit and emerges from it a much wiser and more confident woman, declaring that Asklepios saved her, "he gave me back myself." The scales have now fallen from her eyes, and she sees her life with an all new clarity. Most importantly, she realizes now that her "love" for Pilate was never love at all, and the mystagogue at the Temple of Isis was right all along, the spells she resorted to to win him bound Claudia, not Pilate, in the grip of an obsession that the enlightenment she found in the Snake Pit has now freed her from.

But Claudia's ambitions to physically free herself from her marriage, despite the cost and scandal, come to naught, and their marriage continues to be one of alternating periods of estrangement and reconciliation during which Pilate continues to pursue other women and his career and Claudia gives birth to a daughter and seeks solace in the arms of Holtan, a gladiator whose life she once saved, and the true love she should have waited for.

When Pilate is appointed Governor of Judea, Claudia dutifully accompanies him to Jerusalem, and there renews her friendship with Miriam of Magdala and hears the disillusioned courtesan's tale of woe, is in the audience sitting beside Herodias for Salome's dance--or rather striptease--that results in the beheading of John the Baptist, and attends the wedding at Cana where water is miraculously transformed into wine. Through it all, Claudia is troubled by nightmares about a crucifixion that will lead to great misery in the world and damn Pontius Pilate's name forever, and a shadowy figure who she knows, yet does not know, nailed to the cross and wearing a crown of thorns, an innocent man whose fate she is powerless to alter.

For readers such as myself who sometimes enjoy a historical novel with a Biblical setting that is not written to push a religious message, "Pilate's Wife" is an enjoyable book that gives a voice to a woman who makes only a cameo appearance in the pages of "The Bible" and history.

An American Haunting by Brent Monahan

2009-11-29T13:00:00.003-06:00

This novel is cleverly presented as a true account, a long forgotten manuscript unearthed in a dusty attic, with the actual author, Brent Monahan, crediting himself only as editor. It is even peppered with footnotes and 19th century woodcut and engraved illustrations depicting the event and personalities involved to give it an added air of authenticity.

The manuscript purports to be an eye-witness account of the Bell Witch Haunting, which occurred primarily between 1817 and 1822, when a poltergeist bedeviled the Bell family of Adams, Tennessee, focusing its wrath chiefly upon the youngest daughter, Betsy Bell, 13 at the time the phenomena began, and her elderly father John Bell, who later supposedly died as a result of the spirit's machinations. The case is unique in the annals of hauntings as it is the only known instance when a spirit swore vengeance against and later took credit for killing a living person.

The author of this narrative is Richard Powell (1788-1842) the local schoolmaster and future husband of Betsy Bell. Some readers may find the writing style a trifle dry, dispassionate, and antiquated, however, to my mind, given the narrator's personality and the time period it was supposedly written in, this rings true, although it also slows the book down and makes it seem longer than it actually is. Despite this, it is a fascinating account, chock-full of period details about life amongst the good, simple, God-fearing farmers and settlers of rustic Tennessee in the early years of the 19th century, who find themselves up against something--a supernatural or demonic entity?--they are powerless to understand and defend themselves against. They watch in horror as the haunting escalates from noises in the night to physical blows struck against the Bell family. The spirit soon acquires a distinctly feminine voice and a personality alternately playful, vexing, mean, grating on the nerves, and at times prophetic; another characteristic that makes this haunting deviate from the norm in recorded poltergeist cases.

If you are not put off by the writing style and have an interest in ghosts and hauntings, or the Bell Witch in particular, then I urge you to give this novel a try.

Drood by Dan Simmons

2009-11-29T12:59:00.001-06:00

Despite being nearly 800 pages in length this Victorian tale of horror and professional jealousy entertains and enthralls from the first page to the last. The narrator of this strange and twisted tale is novelist Wilkie Collins (The Woman in White, The Moonstone, etc.) a vain, conceited, and peevish man caught in the stranglehold of laudanum and morphine addiction and perpetually tangled financial, professional, and amorous affairs (he maintains two different households with two mistresses). But the primary focus of the story is acclaimed and beloved novelist Charles Dickens (Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol etc.) with whom Collins has a Mozart and Salieri type relationship that is at once a friendship and a rivalry despite many instances of professional collaboration on various literary and theatrical projects.

In 1865 while traveling with his mistress (actress Ellen Ternan) and her mother, Dickens' train derails at Staplehurt. While attending to the wounded and dying, Dickens encounters a ghoulish, cadaverous man of mystery known only as Drood who will eventually provide the inspiration for Dickens' last and uncompleted novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Throughout this lengthy novel one continuously wonders whether Drood is indeed real or a figment of the imagination or, even more sinister, mesmerism being such a dominant theme in the novel, a figure implanted in the mind by hypnotic suggestion. As the novel progresses we learn Drood's history, he is the half-caste son of an Egyptian mother and an English nobleman, brought up in Egypt before he emigrates to London, deeply imbued with the magic and religious beliefs of the Ancient Egyptians, including worship of Osiris and the many animal-headed gods and goddesses, a master occultist, mesmerist, and a criminal mastermind who rules over a Victorian underworld that makes the Whitechapel of Jack the Ripper seem tame, with thousands of vile and violent underlings and minions to do his bidding. He is even said, by a Drood-obsessed former police inspector, to be responsible for more than 300 murders.

As the story unfolds over the course of five years, we watch the two principal characters, Dickens and Collins, deteroriate and sink deeper into madness, jealousy, and ill-health under the quagmire of their own personal failings, vanities, addictions, career pressures, and their joint obsession with the mysterious Drood. On the whole, it is a fascinating tale and I recommend it highly to anyone interested in the subject matter who is not intimidated by thick novels.

The Queen of Subtleties by Suzannah Dunn

2009-11-29T12:53:00.001-06:00

In "The Queen of Subtleties" author Suzannah Dunn offers a new take on the old tale of Anne Boleyn. The story is told in alternating first person narratives interweaving the stories of two strong-willed, plainspoken women: Anne Boleyn, second of the six wives of Henry VIII, and Lucy Cornwallis, the hardworking royal confectioner. The link that binds them is Mark Smeaton, the naive, lovestruck lute player who would end his young life on the scaffold as one of Anne Boleyn's alleged lovers. And taken together, the two narratives give us both an inside and outside, and an upstairs and downstairs, perspective of the royal soap opera that was Henry's reign.

On the eve of her execution, Anne Boleyn takes up her pen to school her daughter, the future Queen Elizabeth I, in life's hard lessons and to tell her the true story of her life; Anne is canny enough to know that Henry would like to eradicate all trace of her and, if she is remembered at all, posterity may vilify her.

Though many readers have been very vocal in their criticism of the author's use of distinctly modern language, including slang, in a novel set in Tudor England, in my opinion, though I did find it distracting, and at times rather jarring, I think it was a brave move; the style suits Anne Boleyn's bold, vibrant, no nonsense personality. This is a woman who boasts more than once "I don't do anything by halves." She doesn't pull her punches and she isn't always nice; she calls Catherine of Aragon "Fat Cath" and is just as cruel and callous to others she dislikes. And in this frank, direct, brisk language that doesn't mince words, Anne Boleyn tells it all, her rise and fall, as she saw and lived it, from the cradle to the threshold of the grave.

When he sets his sights on Anne, Henry's first move is to leave a sugar rosebud on her pillow. He proceeds to woo her with gifts of sugar and marchpane (marzipan) and, of course, jewelry. The sweets are the work of Lucy Cornwallis, the royal confectioner, an artist with sugar. It is she who creates the elaborate subtleties (candy sculptures) that grace the royal table to commemorate every triumph, holiday, or any special event deemed worthy of celebration.

Shy, young, sweet-natured, sincere Mark Smeaton is fascinated by these edible artworks and ventures into the confectionery kitchen at Hampton Court to meet the woman who makes them and to see how it is done. Lucy is surprised, but is nonetheless drawn to the curious youth, and begins to look forward to his visits to the kitchen. She doesn't realize until her shallow, gossipy assistant, Richard, tells her that Mark Smeaton is the wunderkind musician of the Tudor court.

Despite his fame as the "Angel-Voice" of the court, Mark Smeaton is in reality a lonely boy, a dreamer, secretly and chivalrously in love with Anne Boleyn. "She's true to herself," he confides admiringly to Lucy, aptly observing what an unusual, and also lonely, thing this is to be at a court where everyone is two-faced; they say one thing while thinking another. With his head in the clouds and his eyes dazzled by the vivacious Anne, Mark never realizes that Lucy has tender feelings for him; he sees her only as a confidante whose warm, cozy kitchen is a haven from the glittering, busy, bustling world of royal intrigue upstairs.

In the end, while not the book it might have been had the author steered a safer course regarding language, and made the tale of Lucy Cornwallis and her doomed infatuation with the lovestruck Smeaton the focus of the novel, like one of Ms. Cornwallis' entrancing edible centerpieces, "The Queen of Subtleties" is still an interesting read for those who are able to get past the discordant modern tone and the slang that strikes such a sour note.

The Sixth Wife by Suzannah Dunn

2009-11-29T12:48:00.001-06:00

Katherine Parr is a woman renowned for making everything all right. She is prudent, practical, dependable, and wise; everyone knows they can always count on Kate. So why after surviving four cantankerous and nerve-rattling years as the sixth and final wife of Henry VIII does she marry dashing, reckless, impetuous, ambitious charmer Thomas Seymour, a man the future Queen Elizabeth I would later eulogize as "a man of much wit but very little judgement"? That is the question the narrator of this novel, Katherine Parr's best friend Catherine, called Cathy, Duchess of Suffolk,(the widow of Charles Brandon, brother-in-law of the late king) often has cause to ponder. Perhaps it is simply because, as Kate says, "he makes me laugh."

At the time of their marriage Kate is the Dowager Queen, a wealthy widow in her mid-thirties, childless, and apparently barren after three fruitless marriages to men who had all previously fathered children. Thomas Seymour is a fine figure of a man at forty who has never married, the romantics might say he was simply waiting for Katherine, whilst others suspect he was waiting for Princess Elizabeth to reach marriageable age. But either way you look at it, whether a man marries a Dowager Queen or a princess the bride is both a trophy and a lucrative prize.

When Kate becomes ill, nothing can keep her best friend from rushing to her side. She is startled and amazed, and a little alarmed due to her age, to discover that she is pregnant. Cathy visits Kate whenever she can, and during these visits is disturbed by the familiarity Thomas displays towards Elizabeth now that the clever flame-haired princess has joined their household. Both the girl's governess, Mrs. Ashley, and Kate are inclined to laugh it off as innocent, harmless, and just good fun, but Cathy knows that when one is charged with the care and upbringing of a royal princess one can never be too cautious. Cathy also knows what Kate apparently does not, that before he married her Thomas had actively sought the Princess Elizabeth's hand; a fact that makes his attentions to her even more suspect and disturbing.

On the night of January 1, 1548, when they are celebrating the New Year at Sudeley Castle, Thomas makes advances to Cathy literally right behind his pregnant wife's back. As they are going through a door, Kate first, followed by Cathy, with Thomas last, he lifts Cathy's veil and presses a kiss onto the back of her neck, then he is gone before the shock and surprise even has time to fully penetrate Cathy's brain. As rage and disbelief bubble and boil within her, Cathy follows him into the darkened garden to confront him and instead finds herself, against her better judgement, succumbing to his charms.

Cathy finds it surprisingly easy to betray her best friend. She makes excuses and tries to justify her behavior as she lets herself fall under Thomas Seymour's spell. Both Thomas and Cathy take a "what she doesn't know won't hurt her" attitude about their affair and how it might affect Kate. Both declare their love for her and vow "over my dead body" will she ever find out about their dalliance. "This isn't about Kate," they rationalize, "this has nothing to do with Kate," then abandon themselves to a series of secret trysts.

As Kate's pregnancy progresses Thomas cannot resist the pull of his royal ambitions. He plots to buy the wardship of little Lady Jane Grey and marry her to the boy-king Edward VI, to place not only a home-grown Protestant queen on the throne of England but one who is also in his debt and power. And his attentions to Princess Elizabeth escalate until their early morning tickling games in her bedchamber become the subject of scandalized gossip. Suspicion at last takes tenacious root in Kate's mind until she can no longer laugh it off, but it also blinds her to the other betrayal--her husband and her best friend--going on behind her back and under her own roof.

While admittedly the distinctly modern dialogue is jarring in a novel set in Tudor England, given the personality of the narrator I think it works, and it may also attract readers who are sometimes put off reading historical fiction because of antiquated language. Catherine/Cathy, Duchess of Suffolk is a brash, blunt, outspoken, "modern" woman ahead of her time, so her speaking in the English of today doesn't necessarily strike a sour note. Ultimately, the individual reader must decide whether they like or loathe the style, but I think it is fair to say it was certainly a bold move on Suzannah Dunn's part. And, despite the controversy over this issue, the story of the queen who survived Henry VIII only to be betrayed by love is as fascinating as it is tragic. It is a cautionary tale that illustrates the sad truth that for as long as the world has been populated women have been falling in love with men they shouldn't; in matters of the heart not even royalty are exempt.

Mozart's Wife by Juliet Waldron

2009-11-29T12:46:00.002-06:00

This interesting and insightful novel gives Mozart's longsuffering wife, loyal, practical, loving Konstanze a voice and whisks readers back to 18th century Vienna to peer through the verbal window of Konstanze's words and witness what being married to lovable but selfish musical genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was like.

It is a story or trials, of constant ups and downs. Despite the perfection of his music, Mozart is a deeply flawed man; loveable and likable, and in some ways almost child-like, money flows through his fingers like water, and he spends far more than he earns. Just like a child, he insists upon instant gratification of all his wants and whims whether it be new silver shoe buckles or to keep a horse he cannot afford. And always there are bills, bills, and more bills; debts that he cannot pay, and more piling up all the time. When he has money, instead of settling his debts, he fritters it away, and he is a notorious soft touch for a loan. His shifting fortunes necessitate frequent changes of address, borrowing money, and pawning the gold snuffboxes and watches his patrons routinely reward him with. He absolutely refuses to be practical.

While Mozart spends his days giving lessons and trying to curry favor and commissions from the rich, Konstanze is left to her own devices, almost perpetually pregnant, a bored German hausfrau with endless piles of sewing and housekeeping to do. It is also her lot to deal with the endless procession of creditors who come knocking at the door. Mozart's nights are spent at concerts, parties, and the opera, sometimes with, but most often without, Konstanze at his side.

The novel also poignantly illustrates the achingly real perils of motherhood in the 18th century. Konstanze stoically endures numerous pregnancies, fully aware of the dangers that a woman faces in childbed, the knowledge that Death is never very far away, and also confronts the painful reality of infant mortality as, more than once, her children die.

Konstanze also endures her husband's dalliances and infatuations with various female students and opera singers, including her own sister the beautiful golden warbler Aloysia, a worldly prima donna with marital woes of her own. When Mozart protests his innocence, vowing that he loves only Konstanze, and hasn't really done anything wrong, she reluctantly lets the matter drop, even though she knows she should be more forceful and assertive, "but my poor heart still wanted so much to believe."

Konstanze also faces her own erotic temptations in the form of a handsome military officer, and her life doesn't end when Mozart's does. After his death, Konstanze becomes a professional widow, adept at always keeping the flame of Mozart's memory burning bright so that even though the composer is dead the music never dies, and earns a tidy sum to provide Konstanze with the comfortable existence her wayward husband could never give her when he was alive. She eventually marries again, this time to solid, dependable, reliable, Georg Nissen, a Danish diplomat and ardent admirer of Mozart's music.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, I've always found Mozart and his talent fascinating ever since I saw the movie "Amadeus" as a child, and I applaud author Juliet Waldron for bringing his beloved Stanzi out of the shadows and giving her a voice. Also, this is a story it would have been far too easy to romanticize and mythologize as one of the great love stories of history, kudos to the author for resisting that temptation and giving us Mozart and his wife as real human beings with all their flaws and foibles, and showing us the stark reality of their marriage instead of presenting it as a beautiful bed of roses. So, another round of applause for Juliet Waldron!

A wonderful director's cut of the movie "Amadeus" is also available on DVD

The Last Wife of Henry VIII by Carolly Erickson

2009-11-29T12:44:00.001-06:00

"The Last Wife of Henry VIII" is a highly fanciful, fictionalized, recreation of the life of Catherine Parr (Katherine Parr), the sixth wife of Henry VIII. As usual with her novels, which she classifies as "historical entertainments," rather than historical reconstructions, Carolly Erickson lets the filly named "Fiction" beat "Fact" to the finish line and win the race.

This fast-paced and dramatic novel charts the stormy course of Catherine Parr's life from her earliest memory, attending the star-studded Tudor propaganda event known as The Field of Cloth-of-Gold, where the kings of England and France met for a splendid display of one-upmanship, and shrewd, practical Maud Parr sought to arrange a betrothal for her daughter that would keep the floundering family fortune afloat.

Catherine goes on to marry four times before her death at age thirty-six. First to join young Ned Burgh in a gloriously happy love match that ends tragically, then to kindly Lord Latimer who is old enough to be her grandfather.

And shining through it all there is the golden and pompous monarch, Henry VIII, who will make her his sixth wife and Queen of England. He is drawn to Catherine from the start because her honesty, compassion, intelligence, and loyalty make her a trustworthy friend in a court filled with ambitious and avaricious flatterers and place-seekers, and her beauty stirs the embers of his lust. Through his ill-treatment of Catherine of Aragon, his turbulent and tempestuous union with Anne Boleyn, the brief idyll of Jane Seymour, who bore the King's only legitimate son, the debacle of the unsightly pock-marked German spinster Anne of Cleves, and heedless hoyden Katherine Howard who cuckolds her royal husband all the way to the scaffold, Catherine Parr is always in the right place at the right time, to listen to the increasingly paranoid and cantankerous King bemoan his fate and blame others for his misdeeds, and to soothe his sore and putrid leg and supply him with licorice pastilles, olive oil suppositories, and Valerian tea, and also to give a dose of much needed compassion to his wives. And, beginning during her marriage to Lord Latimer, there is also a red-hot romance with Thomas Seymour, Catherine's future fourth husband. Like lovers in a Hollywood screenplay, they "meet cute" and blithely agree that there is no need for surnames, rank, or titles, they will just be "Tom" and "Cat" to each other, and so they are, until the day Tom just up and leaves without a word of warning or farewell. But when he writes her a letter, several months later--months Catherine has spent mourning his loss, enduring the miseries of insomnia and lost appetite, and nursing a broken heart--Catherine's heart soars like a hawk, she dances round the orchard and shouts out her joy, as she instantly forgives everything. She is deaf to the wise words of her shrewd and experienced sister-in-law: "He won your love under false pretenses. Nothing can excuse or explain that."

The book ends with a wildly fictitious and highly dramatic finale that exposes Tom Seymour for the rash, fickle fool he really is, and leaves Catherine, betrayed and abandoned to give birth amidst the boom of cannons, the smoke and stench of gunpowder, the clash of steel, and the screams of dying and wounded men, as her foolish husband wages war against his brother, Edward Seymour, Lord Protector of the Realm, out of jealousy over his preeminent position, then runs away when he realizes he can't win.

Despite the great liberties it takes with the life of Catherine Parr, those associated with her, and events from the vibrant, fascinating era that was Tudor England, "The Last Wife of Henry VIII" is a fun, fast read, though it will probably make historical fiction purists, who deplore an overabundance of fiction overwhelming and altering the known facts, want to echo Henry VIII and cry "Off with her head!" in response to Ms. Erickson's version of the sixth wife's tale.

Elizabeth and the Prince of Spain by Margaret Irwin

2009-11-29T12:39:00.002-06:00

The final volume in Margaret Irwin's Elizabeth I trilogy focuses on the bizarre love (or should I say lust?) triangle between Queen Mary, her husband, Prince Philip of Spain, and her stepsister, Princess Elizabeth, though this is by no means a romance novel. In fact, some modern readers may find it a tad old-fashioned and dry compared to juicy, explicit modern-day fare. But keep in mind that this novel was originally published in 1953. That said, though in my opinion this is the weakest of the three novels in Ms. Irwin's Elizabeth trilogy, the book does a fine job of depicting the ever-mounting tension in Tudor England between the English people and their unwanted guests the Spaniards. For example, children throw stones at them in the street and chant "Spanish apes who stole our grapes," and vehemently protest the Queen's marriage.

As Philip and Elizabeth indulge in a taut flirtation in which Philip toys with the idea of marrying Elizabeth off to various other men, including his own mentally unstable son, Don Carlos, just so long as he can keep her as his mistress, or even marrying her himself should he find himself suddenly a widower, the woman who began her reign as "Merciful Mary" becomes increasingly determined to root out heresy in her realm "by blood or by fire" and thus earns herself the sobriquet "Bloody Mary," by which we still know her to this day. And as Mary grows more aware of Philip's attraction to Elizabeth her jealousy of her younger, prettier half-sister mounts as do her suspicions that Elizabeth is the hen who hatches the Protestant plots that aim to depose Mary and put Elizabeth herself on the throne. And Elizabeth finds herself once again at the center of a maelstrom of danger with the shadow of Death looming over her shoulder in the form of the headsman's axe.

Elizabeth also grapples with her own sexuality during the course of the novel, realizing that as much as she might like to surrender to a man, handsome Robert Dudley in particular, she values being in control even more. Something in her will not allow her to surrender to anyone, she must walk alone through life as "The Virgin Queen," always being the mistress of her own body, mind, and fate.

The novel ends with Mary's death and Elizabeth, "the people's princess," at last achieving her destiny and becoming Queen of England. And even then she still keeps Philip dangling as she entertains his offer of marriage.

Overall, despite being the weakest of the series in my opinion, the book makes a nice finale to the trilogy, though Elizabeth fans might find it a trifle slow-going at first as, except for in brief mentions by other people, Elizabeth herself does not actually appear until page 106 in the edition I read (page numbering may vary in different editions of the book).

Elizabeth, Captive Princess by Margaret Irwin

2009-11-29T12:35:00.003-06:00

Margaret Irwin returns to Tudor England with this sequel to her bestselling novel "Young Bess" chronicling the young womanhood of the future Queen Elizabeth I.

"Elizabeth, Captive Princess," begins with the death of Edward VI and a Protestant coup orchestrated by John Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland, to put the unwilling but devoutly Protestant schoolgirl Lady Jane Grey on the throne in place of the rightful heiress, the ardently Catholic Mary Tudor (Mary I). But Dudley underestimates the English people and their loyalty and sense of rightness and fairness. While Dudley fights a losing battle to keep Jane on the throne, all England rallies in support of Mary. But her loyal subjects aren't thinking of the future, or Mary's determination to turn back the clock and right the "wrongs" her father King Henry VIII did when he divorced Catherine of Aragon to marry Anne Boleyn, and bring England back to the fold of Rome and the Catholic Church, they are only concerned with doing what's right and standing up for Mary.

Meanwhile, the wise and clever virgin, Princess Elizabeth, takes to her bed, feigning illness, waiting and watching to see which way the wind will blow, before she declares where her loyalties lie.

After the rebellion is put down and Lady Jane Grey and her supporters are locked away in the Tower, Elizabeth dresses in virgin-white and rides out to join Mary for her triumphal entry into London. Even at that happy moment the first signs of strain begin to show in their relationship with religious differences and personal jealousy at the fore. Also, Mary sees her victory as the will of God, but Elizabeth sees it as the will of the English people. As the two ride into London together, the people cheer Elizabeth, commenting on her Tudor red hair and resemblance to her father Henry VIII. This throws more logs on the bonfire of Mary's jealousy.

As she did with the Thomas Seymour affair, Elizabeth is again forced to live by her wits as Mary grows increasingly paranoid and suspicious of her and tries to force her conversion to Catholicism. As Mary grows increasingly unpopular as she tries to ram Catholicism down the English people's throats, persecutes the Protestants for heresy, executes sixteen-year-old Lady Jane Grey, and plans to marry Prince Philip of Spain, people begin to look to Elizabeth as a beacon of hope. And each time there is a plot against Mary, including a nearly successful one led by Sir Thomas Wyatt, son of the poet who loved Anne Boleyn, Mary instantly suspects Elizabeth of being the figurehead. This lands Elizabeth in the Tower of London, where, under the shadow of death, never knowing if she will defy the odds and be one of the fortunate few who pass through Traitor's Gate and come out alive, she begins a romance with her childhood friend, Robert Dudley, also incarcerated in the Tower for his role in his father's coup to keep the ill-fated Lady Jane on the throne.

When Elizabeth is released from the Tower and placed in the custody of the trusty Sir Henry Bedingfeld, the people of England cheer her and shower her with good wishes, gifts, and flowers as her litter passes. When they pass King's College at Eton, the schoolboys run out to greet her, and, in defiance of the law that the bells only be rung for a reigning sovereign, the church bells are rung for Elizabeth. Mary may be Queen of England, but Elizabeth is the people's princess.

Though written in a style some might consider a trifle old-fashioned, and lacking the provocative and juicy garnish of sex scenes, explicit language, and minutely detailed blood-vivid violence, "Elizabeth, Captive Princess," is a worthy successor to "Young Bess" as it charts Elizabeth's perilous route to claim her royal destiny.

Next Sunday: the final volume in Margaret Irwin's Elizabeth I trilogy, "Elizabeth and the Prince of Spain."

Young Bess by Margaret Irwin

2009-11-29T12:33:00.001-06:00

Originally published in 1944, Young Bess tells the story of the girlhood of the future Queen Elizabeth I with the primary focus on her dangerous infatuation with her stepfather the dashing Thomas Seymour.

The novel does a marvelous job of painting the perils Elizabeth faced growing up, the stigma of being Anne Boleyn's daughter and declared illegitimate by her cantankerous father, Henry VIII, her relationships with her siblings the overdressed old maid Catholic zealot Mary, and the emotionally frigid Edward VI, and the frequently changing stepmothers that passed through their lives until kind, nurturing Catherine Parr came along like an answer to a prayer.

After the death of King Henry, Elizabeth is sent to live with her stepmother Catherine Parr, who scandalizes many with her hasty remarriage to that handsome rascal Tom Seymour. At first it seems the perfect, safe haven for Elizabeth, a loving home with a caring stepmother, a fun-loving stepfather, her admiring tutor, Roger Ascham, and scholarly little cousin Lady Jane Grey, but Tom Seymour's attentions to the young girl are far from fatherly. He begins to come into her bedroom early in the morning to tickle her awake and chase her about, and at one point he even cuts off her dress in the garden because he finds the solemn black an unsuitable choice.

Elizabeth finds herself falling in love with a man she knows she shouldn't love and grappling with the intoxicating feeling of power she feels commingling with her emerging sexuality. Anne Boleyn was said to have possessed the power to "drive men mad" and apparently her daughter has inherited this quality. Elizabeth experiments with her new-found power over men by enjoying a brief but chaste flirtation with her brother Edward's whipping boy, Barnaby Fitzpatrick.

When Catherine Parr, thirty-five and pregnant for the first time, compares herself with Elizabeth and finds herself wanting compared to this young girl in the first flush of womanhood, likening her to "the sharp sweet flavour of a not quite ripe apple," she sends Elizabeth away for her own good. Already rumours are swirling about Elizabeth and Seymour and these are not good for any young girl's reputation, especially a royal princess who might be Queen of England someday.

After Catherine Parr dies of childbed fever, Tom Seymour's unwise ambitions to win a crown for himself through marriage to a princess (he is willing to take either Elizabeth or Mary or even Lady Jane Grey) and manipulation of the boy-king Edward, lead him to the scaffold and turn the spotlight of suspicion on Elizabeth.

While mourning her first love and forcing herself to mask her emotions for her own good, Elizabeth finds herself separated from her beloved governess, Mistress Ashley, and her steward, Mr. Parry, while they undergo interrogation in the Tower of London, and surrounded by spies and enemies determined to trip her up and extract a confession from her. Elizabeth engages in a battle of wits and wills with Sir Robert Tyrwhitt and it takes all her wits and cunning to save herself. At the age of only 19, as she fights for her honor and good name, Elizabeth learns a hard but vital lesson, that the only person she can truly trust and depend on is herself.

Though some might find the style somewhat old-fashioned and quaint, with its absence of sex scenes and explicit language, "Young Bess" provided many girls with their first introduction to Elizabeth I and Tudor England, and some of those girls grew up to be mothers who in turn recommended the book to their daughters, thus allowing the book to continue its tradition of good and loyal service to history, instilling fond memories in the minds and hearts of women, and promoting Elizabeth I as a worthy role model. "Young Bess" was also made into a film starring Stewart Granger as Tom Seymour, Deborah Kerr as Catherine Parr, and Jean Simmons in the title role as Young Bess.

Margaret Irwin followed "Young Bess" with two sequels, "Elizabeth, Captive Princess," and "Elizabeth and The Prince of Spain," which I will also be reviewing.

See the movie starring Jean Simmons and Stewart Granger, unfortunately not available on DVD yet, only VHS

Being Elizabeth by Barbara Taylor Bradford

2009-11-29T12:32:00.001-06:00

This novel by bestselling author Barbara Taylor Bradford (A Woman of Substance) takes the always enthralling Tudor saga and transplants Elizabeth I to the 20th century as young, brilliant, auburn-haired, marriage-phobic Elizabeth Turner, heiress to Deravenels, an old and esteemed multi-million dollar corporate trading company. Her sister, the late but not lamented Mary Turner-Alvarez, (Mary Tudor) almost ran the company into the ground with a $75 million gift to her husband, Spanish tycoon Philip Alvarez, to use on his overly ambitious building projects. Now that Mary is dead, it is up to Elizabeth, aided by her loyal secretary Cecil Williams (Sir William Cecil), and her childhood friend and lover, Robert Dunley (Robert Dudley), to restore Deravenels to its former glory. Along the way she faces a life threatening illness, competition from rival claimant to the Deravenel-Turner fortune, Marie Stewart (Mary, Queen of Scots), a deluded none too bright Scottish-French mantrap, and rumors about the mysterious death of Robert's estranged wife, Amy Robson (Amy Robsart). But don't worry, there's a happy ending tacked on at the end.

While the premise sounds intriguing, it was enough to make me buy the book without a second thought, somehow, uprooted from 16th century Tudor England, it doesn't really work, the story loses some of its luster and magic. Another problem I had with this book was that every crisis that looms up, making the reader think "now we're getting somewhere" is settled easily, with little muss or fuss, usually within a few pages of first rearing its ugly head, so throughout the book one is left with the feeling of waiting for something to happen.

I find most novels with contemporary settings to be swift reads for me, but this one just seemed to drag. I kept looking at the page count and marveling at my lack of progress; at less than 350 pages I should have been able to fly through this book in a couple of days but instead found myself plodding through it for over a week wishing that either something really engaging would happen or that it would just end.

I really wanted to like this book, I applaud any new spin on the oft-told tale of the Tudors, but despite its clever concept this one was rather a dull and dreary read. I'm sorry to say that I honestly can't even recommend it as mind-cotton-candy happily-ever-after beach-read fluff.

Cleopatra's Daughter by Michelle Moran

2009-11-29T12:30:00.003-06:00

Michelle Moran's third novel tells the story of Kleopatra (Cleopatra) and Marc Antony's sun and moon twins--Alexander Helios and Kleopatra Selene )Cleopatra VIII). Ten years old at the time of their parents' deaths and Rome's conquest of Egypt, they are taken to Rome as Octavian's prisoners/guests. Too young to pose any real threat, they are adopted by Octavian's kind sister, Octavia, the wife Marc Antony spurned for the Queen of Egypt, to be raised and educated alongside her children while they await their monumental fifteenth birthday, the age at which they will be considered adults, and when Octavian will decide their fate--will they live or die?

Although the characters are interesting, this novel lacked a certain something, to me the pace felt somewhat slow and the emotion and drama lacked the necessary depth and emphasis to make the story truly sparkle. For example, although it is mentioned repeatedly that Selene suffers the pangs of unrequited love for Octavian's nephew and heir apparent, charming, generous, handsome Marcellus, I never truly felt the angst of a teenage girl in the throes of her first love. And the siblings' transition from Egyptian royalty to Roman citizens went a little too smoothly, in my opinion, to be completely believable. Though the young are adaptable and said to heal quickly, I think the twins would have suffered more through their various ordeals and life-altering changes. Nonetheless, though not of the same caliber as Ms. Moran's previous novels, "Cleopatra's Daughter" is still an engaging and enjoyable read especially for fans of Ancient Egypt and those who are fascinated by its most famous queen and have wondered what fate befell her offspring.

The Heretic Queen by Michelle Moran

2009-11-29T12:27:00.001-06:00

"I'm just a leftover princess from a dynasty of heretics," bewails brilliant but childishly rambunctious Princess Nefertari, niece of the infamous Nefertiti, wife of the "Heretic Pharaoh" Akhenaten, and daughter of the ill-fated Mutnodjmet (see Ms. Moran's first novel "Nefertiti" for her story). Regarded as an omen of misfortune by most of the court, who superstitiously shun anything associated with the heretical reign of Akhenaten, Nefertari is only tolerated because she is the closest friend of the crown prince, future Pharaoh Ramesses the Great.

But when Ramsesses falls under the spell of a court beauty, Iset, Nefertari sees her dreams of becoming Ramesses' wife crumble, until she is taken under the wing of Woserit, the wise Priestess of Hathor, in sort of an Ancient Egyptian version of "My Fair Lady," and tutored in the ways and manners that become a queen.

Happily, love conquers all, and Ramesses marries Nefertari, but problems persist, because of the people's mistrust of Nefertari's heretical heritage, Ramesses bows to pressure and delays naming a Chief Wife, a queen, so the rivalry between Iset and Nefertari persists, and it is up to Nefertari to win the people's trust and respect and prove herself a capable queen and helpmate in the Audience Chamber where she hears petitioners and her fluency in several languages stands her in good stead.

"The Heretic Queen" is a worthy successor to Ms. Moran's first novel, "Nefertiti," and I encourage fans of Ancient Egypt to give both a try.

Nefertiti by Michelle Moran

2009-11-29T12:25:00.002-06:00

Though the title is "Nefertiti" this is really the story of two very different sisters. Nefertiti is the beautiful one burning with ambition, the star destined to rise high and shine bright. Mutnodjmet, the narrator of this tale of blind ambition, religious turmoil, and royal intrigue in Ancient Egypt, is the plain one who longs only for love, a husband and a child and a quiet life tending her medicinal herbs and dispensing them to those in need. But circumstances force Mutnodjmet to live in her sister's shadow and play handmaiden to her ambition.

When Nefertiti is chosen to be the Chief Wife of the young mentally unbalanced Pharaoh-to-be Amunhotep the Younger, whom history would remember as Akhenaten "The Heretic Pharaoh," everyone hopes she will curb his foolish excesses, and put an end to his insane obsessions with worshipping the sun disc Aten, setting him above and abolishing all other gods and goddesses, especially Amun, and destroying the all-powerful priests of Amun. But rather than displease her royal husband and see herself relegated to the dim recesses of the royal harem with all the other women who live only for the Pharaoh's pleasure, and shut away where her beauty can no longer shine, or be forced to play second fiddle to her rival, Secondary Wife Kiya, Nefertiti supports her husband 100% in his mad folly, egging him on to greater acts of audacity and daring, dominating him, and transfiguring herself into an icon, and a living goddess, along the way. Thus the stage is set for tragedy; it's plain from the start that this story cannot end happily.

II thoroughly enjoyed Ms. Moran's rendition of this controversial era in Egyptian history; she makes the characters come vividly and sympathetically to life. Even those who have few likable characteristics are still human beings readers can in some way relate to, even if it is only sibling rivalry or jealousy, or a case of the grass looking greener on the other side, Ms. Moran's characters come off the page as real people with wants, needs, ambitions, desires, and dreams.

The Lost Flight of Amelia Earhart A Novel Based on Historical Evidence by Carol Linn Dow

2009-11-29T12:15:00.003-06:00

Fascinating though the subject matter is, this book strikes me as the literary equivalent of a multiple personalities case. Although the book is subtitled "A Novel Based on Historical Evidence," well...let's just say this does not read like a traditional novel. Some pages read like encyclopedia entries or a school report on Amelia Earhart. Other pages dramatize or fictionalize incidents, such as Amelia and Fred Noonan in the cockpit of the doomed Electra or imprisoned and subjected to brutal treatment by the Japanese, or a group of reporters discussing the mystery over Chinese food in a restaurant conveniently run by a supposed witness to their capture. Then there are pages that read like an article from a scientific magazine about radio frequencies and technology of the era. There are also several photos, footnotes, and over 100 pages of supportive notes and evidence in back. When dramatized scenes do appear, awkwardly plunked down between these lengthy factual sections, the dialogue is written in a very minimalistic style, more suitable to a playscript than a novel.

Example:
(Major) Moto, "You spy! You Amelican (American) spy. You spy for Navy. You fly over islands to spy on Japanese."
Earhart, "No, no I'm not a spy."

Descriptions between dialogue are sparse and kept to a minimum, like notations to set the scene in a play or movie. Perhaps this has to do with the author's plans to make a movie and this novel was born of a pre-existing screenplay?

I was eager to read this book and wanted to enjoy it, but regrettably its choppy, distracting style proved an insurmountable barrier, and there is nothing new or groundbreaking about Earhart's fate to help overcome this. The Japanese capture theory has been around for a long time and explored and depicted with greater depth and drama elsewhere.

If Ms. Dow's book is indeed made into a movie, I am sure it will be quite interesting to watch, but as a novel I am sorry to say it leaves much to be desired. But I commend the thoroughness of her research and dedication to the project and finding a solution to one of America's most enduring and famous unsolved mysteries.

Lizzie A Novel of Lizzie Borden by Evan Hunter

2009-11-29T12:14:00.001-06:00

This novel by Evan Hunter a.k.a. Ed McBain tells the story of a little known event from the life of Lizzie Borden, her Grand Tour of Europe in 1890, two years before the axe murders of her father and stepmother that assured her place, to this day, in the annals of infamy, crime, and history.

Factual details about Lizzie's Grand Tour are scarce, so it is fertile ground for a novelist to weave a tale around. In this novel, Lizzie falls under the spell of a free-spirited English woman and lets her latent lesbian tendencies surface and blossom under this worldly and sophisticated woman's expert tutelage.

The story is told in alternating chapters that move back and forth between Lizzie's Grand Tour and dramatized but actual testimony from the murder trial in 1892-93 leading up to Lizzie's return to dull, dreary, prim, narrow-minded Fall River, Massachusetts after the excitement of Victorian London, Paris, and the Riviera, and, of course, her sexual awakening. The later chapters detail the murders of Andrew and Abby Borden and the motive for them, about which I will say nothing so as not to spoil it for anyone who might want to read the book. I personally felt that the insertion of the trial testimony, though interesting in its own right, disrupted the flow of the story, but that is merely my personal opinion.

For anyone interested in the Lizzie Borden case this fictional account will doubtless make interesting reading.

Breathe The Sky A Novel Inspired By The Life of Amelia Earhart by Chandra Prasad

2009-11-29T12:12:00.002-06:00

Of the three novels about Amelia Earhart I have read recently, "Breathe the Sky" is my favourite. It paints a revealing portrait of the dark side of fame. Courting the public and press was a necessary evil in the life of Amelia Earhart; in order to finance her flights speaking engagements, writing books and magazine articles, product endorsements, and public appearances were a must. Ms. Prasad's novel shows us the private Amelia, a woman approaching forty but still bedeviled by feelings of inadequacy, a need to prove herself, to push herself to achieve more and break records, egged on by her husband/manager G.P. (George Palmer Putnam) the ringmaster presiding over the circus of her life. This Amelia is a tired woman, intensely aware of the pressure to keep up appearances, who feels spread too thin between her various commitments to flying, fame, and family. This is a woman who sometimes pulls her car over to the side of the road to catch a quick nap or checks into the hospital for recurring sinus infections just to snatch a little peace and quiet away from the clamor of grasping hands and the adoring masses. Even her mother and sister take advantage of her and even sell stories about her to press.

The novel shifts between the story of her ill-fated last flight and revealing vignettes from her past. Through these tantalizing windows we catch glimpses of her beloved ne'er-do-well drunken father; her friendship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt who pays for secret flying lessons with baskets of blueberry muffins at Amelia's request; her harrowing solo flight across the Atlantic through thunderstorms and equipment failures; we go inside an illegal doctor's office with Amelia when she has an abortion; attend the funeral of a dead cat with G.P, Amelia, and the socialite wife he would divorce in order to wed Amelia; the six marriage proposals it took before she would say "yes"; and we see firsthand how G.P. bamboozled the President of Purdue University into buying Amelia a new plane with a bottle of cognac he claimed was 100 years old but was actually made in a none too clean bathtub not even a year ago.

And there are vivid scenes recreating that famous last flight. Unlike many other accounts of that voyage into oblivion and enduring mystery, this is not a chronicle of details and data or mishaps and misadventures inside the cockpit of the gleaming new Electra, readers get to eavesdrop on conversations between Amelia and her navigator Fred Noonan, in whom Amelia sees the shadow of her alcoholic father, and upon whom Amelia has what she describes as a "ridiculous, even masochistic little crush," as the pair share exotic meals and go see the sights during their pitstops in South America, Africa, Indonesia, Singapore, India, and Australia. We see Amelia vexed with the unfamiliar new gadgets in her new plane, including the radio, which Amelia, with her live and learn philosophy, cannot be bothered to take the precious time to master, and we see Noonan battle the demon rum that has him in its thrall. Then there are stomach upsets, romantic tensions, and monsoons to contend with before the couple vanish into the realm of real-life mystery.

If you are fascinated by the enigma of Amelia Earhart, I highly recommend you give "Breathe The Sky" a try; I don't believe this slim little novel will disappoint.

I Was Amelia Earhart by Jane Mendelsohn

2009-11-29T12:10:00.001-06:00

This surrealistic little novel was the book I was reading, or rather trying to read, when my mother died back in 2002. With the buzz about the new Amelia Earhart movie roaring like an airplane engine and feeding my longstanding fascination with her still unresolved fate, I decided to give this tiny volume another try.

In its pages, Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, find themselves marooned on a desert island. Here time, without calendars and clocks, proves elusive and as slippery as an eel, darting randomly between past, present, and future, and this may confuse readers to some degree. The narrator, Amelia Earhart, with her hair grown long as it was before she became famous, thinks of her former life as like a dream, almost as if it had all happened to another person, hence the title: I WAS Amelia Earhart.

She sees herself and Noonan as two damned souls; the drunk navigator who didn't care where he was going and the reckless pilot who didn't care if they ever got there. The two dislike each other almost from first sight, and they alternate between constant bickering, giving each other the silent treatment, and separate accommodations on opposite ends of the island. But circumstances force them to come together; on this minuscule godforsaken little island, which they jokingly name "Heaven," each other is all they really have. Noonan, who began his career as a kitchen boy when he went to sea at fifteen, cooks their dinner every night on the beach, serving up the catch of the day--fish or crabs--or, in times of empty-bellied desperation, stringy rats, all washed down with toothachingly sweet coconut milk. Afterwards, he plays his harmonica and Amelia sings Shirley Temple's theme song "On The Good Ship Lollipop" or advertising jingles. Sometimes the two even make love, but "it's understood that it doesn't mean anything," even when they both know that it does.

The whole book has a hallucinogenic quality; reality blurs and time drifts and shifts. The tale told within its pages could just as easily be a hallucination suffered by the aviatrix flying at too high an altitude, or it might all be a waking fantasy or a sleeping dream, or, as the immortal bard once said, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy," it might even be true. After all, stranger things have happened, and the castaway theory is not new to the list of possible fates for Amelia and Fred.

Mary of Nazareth by Marek Halter

2009-11-29T12:08:00.002-06:00

After penning a popular trilogy about lesser known women from the Old Testament (Sarah, Zipporah, Lilah), Marek Halter now turns his pen to the most famous biblical female of all--The Virgin Mary.

Halter spins a dramatic tale of a bold, spirited, temperamental, free-thinking, strong-willed young woman who sharply contrasts the pale and placid beauties artists have been painting for centuries to depict the beatific, serene Virgin. Halter's Miriam--she is called Mary only in the title of the book and in the final pages--lives in a time of crippling taxes, rampant poverty, and bloodshed during the reign of King Herod, a cruel and unjust monarch, who, wielding his might through his army of mercenaries and tax collectors brings great suffering to the Jewish people. The mercenaries regularly descend on Nazareth to pillage, burn, destroy, beat, rape, capture, and kill. During one such nighttime raid, young Miriam saves the life of Barabbas, a biblical version of Robin Hood who steals from the rich and gives to the poor.

When Miriam's beloved carpenter father, Joachim, one of the kindest and gentlest men who ever lived, kills a soldier and wounds a tax collector during a skirmish in which he tries to defend an elderly woman trying to safeguard her most precious possession--a Hanukkah candlestick--he is sentenced to crucifixion. Ignoring the entreaties of her mother, Hannah, and their friends, Miriam travels to Sepphoris and seeks out Barabbas. Remembering the young girl who once saved his life, Barabbas arranges a daring nocturnal rescue and one of his most devoted followers, Obadiah, the young leader of a dirty, ragtag band of street-Arabs, snatches Joachim right off the cross.

Unable to return to Nazareth and resume their old lives, Miriam and Joachim join Barabbas to organize the oppressed people of Galilee in a rebellion against Herod and free Israel, once and for all, from the yoke of Rome. But negotiations break down when the leaders of the various sects (Zealots, Essenes, Sadduces, Pharisees) and Barabbas cannot agree. Out of the various candidates not one man emerges who is clearly capable of uniting and leading the Jewish people to freedom. And they part ways, agreeing only that they disagree. But before he goes, Joseph of Arimathea is greatly impressed by Miriam and her conviction that war is not the answer--violence and pain beget only more violence and pain--and arranges for her to study with the learned women in Magdala, where she acquires a lifelong friend, Mariamne (Mary Magdalene).

Two years later, Barabbas comes back into Miriam's life when he appears in Magdala with the mortally wounded Obadiah. They journey to Damascus to seek the aid of Joseph of Arimathea, a renowned healer and leader of the Essene brotherhood, but arrive too late. Obadiah dies in Miriam's arms, after confessing his love for her and promising to be her angel. Indeed, he never truly leaves her; according to Miriam, he begins to visit her in visions, bringing her comfort, and jokingly calling himself her "little husband." Concerned friends begin to suspect that losing Obadiah has caused Miriam and her sanity to part company.

The final chapters cover Miriam's return to Nazareth and her rather atypical pregnancy and the reactions of her family, friends, and the villagers. The book ends rather abruptly and, to my mind, unsatisfyingly. In an epilogue that, in my opinion, has a tacked on feel, the author explains that while visiting Warsaw he met a woman named Maria, who saved 2,000 Jewish children from the Nazis, and had a son of her own named Jesus who perished in the holocaust. Before they parted, this Maria gave Mr. Halter a scroll, handed down for generations, called "The Gospel of Mary," and it is with this gospel, written in Miriam's own words, that Mr. Halter ends his novel.

Based on other reviews I have seen for this book, many readers have been offended by it, but I was not one of them, perhaps because I am not a religious person and I accept fiction as fiction regardless of the genre and amount of facts mixed in. To me, this was just another novel to pass the time, I found it neither shocking or especially memorable; I liked the author's earlier novel "Sarah" much better. I found "Mary of Nazareth" to be a quick and interesting read, not at all ponderous or pushy, but ultimately lackluster. Besides the abrupt ending, the one glaring fault I did find was the usage of some very modern words, such as "chat" and "kid" and expressions like "for sure" that just seem really awkward and out of place in a biblical novel; a ragamuffin boy commenting on Joachim's ordeal on the cross observes "a whole day up there must really knock you out." However, as most of these "slips" come from the mouth of Obadiah, the leader of a gang of roving street-urchins, I am guessing this may be intentional on either the author's or translator's part, to perhaps make the character seem more like his modern-day counterparts.

The Secret Life of Josephine Napoleon's Bird of Paradise by Carolly Erickson

2009-11-29T12:06:00.001-06:00

In "The Secret Life of Josephine" Carolly Erickson spins a fanciful tale from the life of Napoleon's empress. Embroidering on facts, and inventing from whole-cloth, she shows us how Rose Tascher, from the lush and lazy tropical island of Martinique, went to Paris and evolved into the sensual, charming enchantress Josephine, marrying first a cold, fastidious cousin to enable him to obtain his inheritance, surviving the French Revolution and escaping the guillotine by a hairs-breadth, becoming a lady of fashion and the mistress of powerful men along the way, before her marriage to power-mad Corsican General Napoleon Bonaparte, who ultimately crowned her Empress of France. Their marriage is a stormy story of both battlefields and bedrooms, adultery and abuse, both physical and verbal, that escalates as Josephine's beauty fades and Napoleon's ambitions swell, until his dynastic pretensions (the need for a male heir born of a royal bride) leads to divorce. The novel ends with a rather implausible climax in which Josephine pursues Napoleon to Russia to make his destruction her personal mission and fulfill a prophecy made in her girlhood by a powerful voodoo sorcerer.

After years of writing biographies, Carolly Erickson has thrown the facts away to scatter on the winds and let fancy and fantasy replace them on the printed page. While entertaining, her novels are definitely not the place to look for facts about the lives of the famous women of history, and generally score poorly with readers who require a larger dose of fact in their historical fiction. Personally, I find them fun, escapist fare, swift, easy reads that help pass the time, and I know not to take them seriously.

Innocent Traitor A Novel of Lady Jane Grey by Alison Weir

2009-11-29T12:02:00.002-06:00

"Innocent Traitor," the first novel by popular historian Alison Weir, tells the story of England's "Nine Days Queen" Lady Jane Grey.

The novel does a wonderful job of making history and its players come alive. The pageantry and intrigue of Tudor England are all there in vibrant display.

A pretty and precocious little girl, gifted with brilliant scholarly intellect, Lady Jane is the niece of Henry VIII, and the product of ambitious and abusive parents who expect nothing short of perfection from her and brutally punish even the most minor mistakes, real or imagined.

At sixteen, in a plot to prevent the obsessively devout Mary Tudor or the strong-willed Elizabeth from inheriting the throne after the death of their brother, Edward VI, Jane's ambitious parents join forces with the ruthless and even more ambitious Duke of Northumberland and hatch a plan to put Jane on the throne as the homegrown Protestant queen, for Jane, though just a young girl, is a pig-headed Protestant, as stubborn and obstinate about her religion being the only right one as Mary Tudor is about Catholicism being the one "true" faith. Since many of the nobles have profited by the dissolution of the monasteries and converted to Protestantism for reasons of faith or profit, few relish a return to the Catholic fold.

To tighten his control and ensure his position as the power behind the throne, Northumberland schemes to marry Jane to his bad apple, spoiled rotten son Guildford Dudley. But poor Jane finds no happiness in marriage to this cruel, whining mama's boy. The consummation of her marriage would more aptly be called rape. Afterwards she suffers from a bevy of stress-related illnesses, which lead her to believe that she is being poisoned.

When Northumberland's Protestant coup falls apart and the loyal people of England rally around Mary as the rightful queen, Jane is abandoned and left to face the music alone, an "Innocent Traitor" accused of usurping a crown she never wanted, and to pay the ultimate penalty for her treason.

Though I enjoyed Ms. Weir's second novel, "The Lady Elizabeth," much more, "Innocent Traitor" is also an interesting and compelling read. The only real fault I found with it was Ms. Weir's decision to tell the story in alternating first person, dolling the story out to half a dozen or so narrators. This is just my personal opinion, but I thought this gave the novel a "too many cooks in the kitchen" feel; I think it would have worked much better if the story had either been written in third person as "The Lady Elizabeth" was or restricted to one or two narrators at most.