Rules of Civility by Amore Towles

In the late 1930s, New York City could be an exciting or desperate place to live, depending on your income and background. Katey Kontent, daughter of a Russian immigrant, and Eve Ross, a Midwestern transplant, were in the desperate group. But they were enterprising young women and knew how to stretch their limited resources: by sharing a room at a boarding house, sharing wardrobes, sneaking into movie theaters and stretching three dollars at a jazz club on Saturday night. When they met Tinker Grey, a handsome young banker with classy clothes and an apartment in the high rent district, they were able to expand their social life to include many well-to-do young people and fancier establishments. Unfortunately, an automobile accident disrupted their lives and their outlook on life changed. Eve, badly injured, eventually went her own way. Tinker, feeling guilty, came and went in Katey's life. But Katey, smart, capable and sensible, succeeded on her own, finding better jobs and expanding her circle of friends and acquaintances. Rules of Civility by Amor Towles paints an intriguing picture of depression-era New York City and its residents of all social classes.

Some Luck by Jame Smiley

Jane Smiley’s newest novel is the first in The Last Hundred Years trilogy.  The Pulitzer prize winning author intends to cover 100 years in the life of an Iowa farm family and the first novel, Some Luck, covers the years 1920-1953.  Smiley follows the Langdon family of Denby, Iowa through childbirth, death, the Great Depression and World War II in a unique fashion.  Not only does the author write from many of the different characters points of view, but each chapter itself represents one year. 

We begin with Walter, the 25 year-old father and owner of the farm.  His wife Rosanna is about to give birth to their first child, Frank, and he is ruminating on all of the things that farmers think about: which crops to plant this year, how many animals are there to take care of and can I really afford to farm all of this land? As the years move forward, Smiley introduces us to all of the Langdon children: Frank, Joe, Mary Elizabeth, Lillian, Henry and Claire and their unique personalities.  We see Walter struggle with changing technologies (horses vs. tractors) and Rosanna has her own challenges with loss and religion. 

Each of the Langdon children is different than the last, and we hear a lot from the point of view of Frank, the handsomest and, arguably, the most cunning Langdon child.  When the US gets involved in World War II, he joins the army and becomes a sniper while his sensitive younger brother Joe stays home on a II-A deferment and takes care of the family farm.  Lillian falls in love with a handsome stranger and Henry devours books as fast as he can get his hands on them.  The reader is quickly absorbed into the world that Smiley creates and is soon laughing and crying along with the family. 

Some Luck has been shortlisted for the National Book Award and is a profound family saga.

Quiet Dell by Jayne Anne Phillips

In 1931, a widow from suburban Chicago, Asta Eicher, began to correspond with a man she met through a lonely hearts club advertisement. Deceived by his promises of marriage and financial security, she agreed to accompany him on a trip to his farm in West Virginia. He later returned without her to fetch her three children. None of them were seen again. But Asta was not as alone as the other victims of this serial killer, Harry Powers. Friends and neighbors became alarmed and alerted the police and press to their disappearance. Emily Thornhill, a journalist for the Chicago Tribune, traveled to Quiet Dell in West Virginia, where the Eichers’ bodies had been found. A woman in what was then considered a man’s profession, she used her intelligence, skill, fortitude and intuition to track down Powers’ true identity as well as report the story for her newspaper. Quiet Dell is based on a true crime, one that author Jayne Anne Phillips heard about from her mother who grew up in the Quiet Dell area. Despite its subject matter, this book is neither a mystery nor thriller. It is rather an examination of the human condition, of love, hate, fear, hope, greed, generosity and loneliness. And as Phillips tells the story, some good comes out of unspeakable evil.

Check out Quiet Dell @ the library!

Songs of Willow Frost by Jamie Ford

Jamie Ford, author of Hotel On the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, returns to his Seattle roots in his second novel Songs of Willow Frost.  First we meet William Eng, a lovable Chinese American orphan who lives at the Sacred Heart Orphanage.  All of the boy orphans are given the same birthday when they arrive at Sacred Heart- September 28^th: coronation date of the honorable Pope Leo XII.  On this day, all of the boys are shepherded downtown to see a motion picture as a special birthday treat.  This year (1934) the boys are taken to a showing of Cimarron.  William hunkers down in his seat to share his popcorn and Orange Crush with his best friend when something unthinkable happens.  During the Follies reel, the audience meets a new actress with a sweet, sad voice: Willow Frost.  William is stunned.  Though he can’t explain how, he knows that the woman on the screen is in fact his mother whom he hasn’t seen in five years.  Shaken, William tries to ply information out of the sisters at Sacred Heart but to no avail.  He know his Ah-ma wouldn’t have abandoned him and believes that if he can just get out of the orphanage long enough to see her in person at an upcoming show, she’d take him home again.

Life in the orphanage is not easy.  But William knows that he has it a lot better than many orphans- some roam the streets begging, others are sent off to labor farms or to work in factories.  And while he feels the strong pull to run away from the orphanage in order to find his mother, he knows that if he is caught, he probably won’t be sent anywhere as nice as Sacred Heart.  Bolstered by his best friend, the adorable but blind Charlotte, the two hatch a plan to escape from the orphanage and trek to the 5^th Avenue Theatre to see Willow. 

Charlotte and William manage to sneak out of Sacred Heart and even see Willow’s show.  Afterwards, they wait with a line of other admirers outside the Stage Door.  William gets Willows autograph and calls her Ah-ma and when the actress begins to cry William knows that he’s finally found his mother.  But she is whisked off in a taxi and William is left sitting in the alley for hours.  One of the performers takes pity on William and Charlotte and gives them backstage tickets for the next performance.  There, William gets a chance to speak with Willow before her next performance.  Unfortunately, Sister Briganti arrives to take the two orphans back to Sacred Heart before William can get all of the answers about his past.

Will William find Willow again?  Will he ever find out how he wound up at Sacred Heart?  But most importantly, does Willow still want her little boy?  Songs of Willow Frost is an interesting tale about the bond of parent and child, duty to society and the history of early motion pictures.  While it does not combine the number of issues as did Ford’s first novel Hotel On the Corner of Bitter and Sweet,  Songs of Willow Frost is not a Sophomore Slump of a book.  Ford brings new life to a new era in Seattle and the reader is more than happy to go along for the ride.

Check out Songs of Willow Frost @ the library!

Mary Coin by Marisa Silver

Mary Coin is the story of two women struggling during the Great Depression. Photographer Vera Dare, who began her career taking formal photographs of the society women of San Francisco, left her children in the care of another family and traveled into the rural parts of California, photographing migrant farm workers. Mary Coin was one of these migrants, a widow with six children who traveled from one California farm to another, working for any employer who would hire a woman for his picking crews. When their paths crossed, Mary was at her lowest point. A freeze had killed the crops she hoped to pick. Her car had broken down and money was scarce. She and her children were dirty, hungry and exhausted, living in a tent. The Great Depression and her husband’s death had taken her from poverty to destitution, from a family who never had anything to a family who had nothing.  Vera took several photographs of Mary and her children. One of these pictures became an iconic symbol of the era. Although Vera became famous, Mary remained anonymous and neither woman profited financially. People and families are shaped in part by their experiences, and in later, more prosperous years, Mary’s children were close and protective of her while Vera’s became distant and cool.  More than seventy years later, Walker Dodge, a college professor, has come to suspect that his family has a connection to the famous photograph. He investigates the evidence, but too much time has passed and he is never able to ferret out the truth.
  

The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls by Anton DiSclafani

After a horrific scandal tears her family apart, sheltered, headstrong, fifteen-year-old Thea Atwell is banished from her beloved childhood home on a citrus farm in Florida to the Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls, isolated deep in the North Carolina mountains.  Forced to leave behind her twin brother, Sam, her older cousin Georgie, and, perhaps worst of all, her beloved pony, Sasi, Thea is exiled from everyone and everything she has ever known.

With the Great Depression just beginning, Thea and the other girls at camp, all the daughters of wealthy Southern men, are sheltered from the worst of the storm tearing apart the rest of the nation.  Although Thea hates that she has been sent away from Sam, Georgie, Sasi, and the Florida heat, the mountains of North Carolina are spectacular, she is surrounded by horses, for the first time is receiving formal equestrian instruction, and is discovering how to makes friends with girls her own age.  Although her arrival so late in the summer means gossip about trouble with a boy at home is rampant among the Yonahlossee girls, the real reason behind Thea's late enrollment is known only by the headmaster, Henry Holmes, and his wife Beth, an old boarding school friend of Thea's mother.  Free to start fresh, Thea must decide if she can forgive herself for what happened - and her family for refusing to forgive her - and become a new, different girl, or if she will allow her desires for the things she cannot have to once again consume her.

This suspenseful family drama slowly reveals its secrets against the spectacular scenery of the Appalachian mountains and the late summer heat of Florida.  Beautifully written, anyone who loves period drama, Southern fiction, or can't resist a boarding school coming-of-age story (really, who can? And this one has horses!) should put The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls on their summer reading list!

The Yonahlassee Riding Camp for Girls will be published on June 4, 2013.  The library received its advance reading copy from the publisher.  Check CountyCat in late spring to place a hold on this Southern novel!