Worthy Brown's Daughter

For fans of the legal thriller and courtroom drama, Philllip Margolin brings us something very unique.  Based on actual events, Worthy Brown's Daughter is an historical fiction set in Oregon on the eve of the Civil War.  Worthy Brown is a slave brought to Oregon which prohibits slavery.  He negotiates a deal with with his master that he will be free after a year of  unpaid work. His unscrupulous master agrees to free Worthy Brown, but keeps Worthy's daughter. Worthy proceeds to hire an attorney to sue in court for his daughter's freedom. Reminiscent of Dredd Scott, Margolin puts forth the Constitutional issues of whether or not a slave can sue for freedom after being transported to a a state that has outlawed slavery. That being said, can  he sue in a court of law when he has no legal rights?  The courtroom drama and the image of frontier justice will keep you focused until the last page.
Sometimes, the practice of law is about torts, mergers and acquisitions.  Sometimes, it is about justice.

Let's talk about race.

Race is often the proverbial elephant in the room among educated Americans.  We have a President who is a man of color, yet we had another unfortunate shooting of a black teenager  in Missouri. It seems we can talk about anything in this country except race.  It took an author from Nigeria - Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche to talk about race and how we see ourselves and other.
Adiche who is from Nigeria brings us Americanah, a love story, but a really effective book about race.  Her heroine, an educated, attractive, middle class young woman from Nigeria comes to the Unites States where she discovers that she is black. Told through a series of blog entries, our heroine Ifemelu relates the perceptions of Americans toward blacks, towards immigrants, towards Africans, towards anyone from a Third World Country. Do we see the person or the color? Which African country do you come from? Do you have schools there? How nice that you speak English! Why don't you straighten your hair?
Americanah is never preachy or judgmental.  It is, however, a good beginning for a meaningful dialog about race. And, by the way, it is a love story between two individuals for each other and for their homeland.

The Boys in the Boat

My sister recently recommended to me a new non fiction. The Boys in the Boat is about the  University of Washington crew team who qualified for the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Writing good and readable non-fiction is difficult.  Laura Hillenbrand did it with Unbroken. Daniel James Brown did it with The Boys in the Boat.  The background stories of the crew members is both inspiring and touching.   These young men, children of the Great Depression, did not come from a life of privilege.  Instead, they milked cows, felled trees, paved roads and caught salmon.  Nonetheless, they succeeded in defeating the well-financed crew teams from elite California and East Coast schools for the privilege of representing the United States at the 1936 Olympics. Brown gives enough details about crew racing and boat building to add reality to the story without causing the reader to glaze over.  He also juxtaposes the crew team's preparations against the propaganda machine of Adolf Hitler. The result is a non fiction book that reads like a novel and is impossible to put down until the photo finish.

Two New Ones from Favorite Authors

Top Secret Twenty One by Janet Evanovich

Fans of Janet Evanovich will not be disappointed by this latest in the Stephanie Plum series. With exploding cars, rocket launchers, polonium,Russian thugs, feuding grandmothers and feral Chihuahuas, Evanovich continues to entertain readers.Once again, Stephanie’s romantic life careens between Trenton cop Joe Morelli and Ranger with his mysterious past.  This time, Ranger;s life is threatened by an assassin from his dark past.  It is up to Stephanie to save Ranger.

Sometimes, you need to laugh out loud and this book delivers the quirky characters and comic situations that make the Stephanie Plum series so enjoyable.

One Plus One by Jo Jo Moyes

On the surface, Jess Thomas has nothing going for her.  She is a single mother, working two jobs with no money, no education, no job skills, no child support. Her stepson is being bullied by the local toughs and her math prodigy daughter has just been accepting into an elite math school which they cannot afford.

Nonetheless, Jess possesses an unflagging sense of optimism and an unfailing faith in “doing the right thing.”

Ed is a millionaire software geek who inadvertently committed insider trading and is now faced with criminal charge and the loss of all his material goods.

Jess, her children, and smelly dog embark on a road-trip to a math Olympiad in Scotland where her daughter will hopefully win enough prize money to pay the entrance fees to the elite school.  When Jess’s car breaks down on the road, Ed rescues the group and drives them to Scotland. 

These four individuals embark on an odyssey that alternates between hilarity and and tragedy. At times touching, at times funny, this book would be an excellent choice for a book club. Moyes' last novel, Me Before You  required at least two boxes of tissues.  This one will only leave you with a few tears in your eyes.

What is Visible by Kimberly Elkins

We are all familiar with the inspiring story of Helen Keller, the first deaf/blind child to become educated in America.  Aided by her teacher, Annie Sullivan, Helen Keller graduated from Radcliffe College and launched a career as an author, speaker and advocate for the disabled.


However, in the mid-19th century, there was another deaf/blind child who was at one time the most famous woman in America.  Charles Dickens was one of many dignitaries who came to see Laura. Yet today, she has faded into obscurity. Laura Bridgman lost four of her five senses to scarlet fever at age 2.  At age seven, Laura was taken to the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston. 


Relying only on her sense of touch, Laura learned language skills and through her own intelligence and will communicated her thoughts on religion, philosophy, sex, and  the rights of handicapped people.  At the Perkins Institute, Laura was taken in by its founder the educator Samuel Gridley Howe. At times, Howe was her champion. At times, he used her to advance his own priorities.   Howe was married to the poet, suffragette, abolitionist and author, Julia Ward Howe.


This first novel is thought-provoking. Peopled with characters from real life such as Charles Sumner, John Brown, Charles Dickens, Dorothea Dix and Julia Ward Howe, this book gives great insight into Victorian era  America the author takes a great deal of literary license with Laura's inner thoughts and feelings, bur she explains her reasoning very well. More importantly, it really makes the reader think about the disable and how we treat them.  Do we allow handicapped people the human dignity make their own decisions? Can we see past the handicap and see the person inside?


For book discussion groups looking for an historical fiction, this book would be an excellent choice because it would generate a very meaningful discussion.

Alan Furst brings us another one - Midnight in Europe

Alan Furst, author of over a dozen historical spy novels, has brought us a new one.  Furst often starts at the Spanish Civil War which was a rehearsal for Nazi Germany.  In his latest novel, Midnight in Europe,  Furst  takes us through Europe in the years immediately preceding the invasion of Poland.  As stated by Sir Edmond Grey, British Foreign Secretary in 1914, "The lamps are going out all over Europe." Furst takes this quote as the theme of his book in which people and places are not what they seem and the treat of war is almost palpable.  Ordinary people such as the protagonist, Christian Ferrar, an international attorney, are drawn into the dangerous game of espionage and weapons smuggling in order to protect what is still honorable. 
Anyone taking one of those Europeans river cruises should read Alan Furst.  His scenes in cities such as Istanbul, Warsaw, Gdansk and Brno give a unique insight into Europe then and now.

Two little known, but extraordinary women- The Invention of Wings

When we think of abolitionists, we remember some familiar names from our history books - William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Robert Gould Shaw and the Massachusetts 54th, Bronson Alcott(father of Louisa May).  Of these folks who were white, they were all upper class, Northeast liberals. However,  two women from South Carolina, Sarah and Angelina Grimke, who were born into a wealthy slave-owning family came to abhor the South's "peculiar institution."  These two remarkable sisters opposed their family, friends and society to speak their conscience about the evils of slavery which they personally witnessed.  Moreover, they campaigned for the abolition of slavery, racial equality and women's rights years before Seneca Falls!


In her latest novel, The Invention of  Wings,Sue Monk Kidd, author of the Secret Life of Bees and The Mermaid Chair,  gives voice to the Grimke sisters as well as a fictionalized slave who was given to Sarah Grimke as a birthday gift on her eleventh birthday. In beautifully written dialog, Kidde brings to the page a woman born into slavery who managed to survive a brutal system which divided families and dehumanized both  the slave and the slave owner. Kidd also uses the quilts often made by slave women to tell their stories, several of which are currently on display in Washington and Boston.  Denmark Vesey, a freed slave, who organized one of the few documented slave revolts is also a character in this book.


All in all, this is an eye-opening book, which is difficult to put down.  This would be an excellent choice for a book discussion group and I hope Hollywood starts working on a movie version.