Book: Summer Shift by Lynn Kiele Bonasia

Fried clams

Mmmmm, a basket of fried clams with some macaroni salad to carry down to the rocks along the shore sounds might good right now.  The main drawback to reading this book on a Cape Cod Beach would be the constant temptation to stop reading and have a fried clam break.

You see, the book’s heroine owns a restaurant in a small town in Cape Cod (redundancy alert–are there any large towns on Cape Cod?). She has run the restaurant for 17 years, and her alcoholic husband wrapped his car around a tree a short time after they were married, so she’s discontentedly single.

As you may remember, I’m not crazy about romances, but this one has the virtue of presenting a few serious issues along the way. Her aunt has Alzheimer’s, her neighbor has Parkinson’s disease, and a cook at the restaurant has synesthesia–which isn’t as scary as it sounds–he feels shapes in things he tastes. Then there is the problem of letting go of the past, reconciling with an old love, and accepting her own maturing.

Sounds pretty interesting, and I love the setting, but I couldn’t warm up to the main character. That creates a real problem. I really didn’t like her very much. And she didn’t go out of her way to persuade me that I should like her.

As you may recall, I’m not crazy about romances, anyhow. But I’m trying not to over analyze a book that probably will be read with sand between the pages and grease marks from the fried clams on the pages. Here’s a nice description of the sea, that also tells us  the main theme of the book. Time softens rough edges.

“She got out of the car and made her way down the narrow path that led from the house to the beach.  When she got there, the horizon was defined by a deeper shade of black. Covered by a thin veil, the moon threw off enough light for Mary to see something blue near her foot, perhaps a dried jellyfish that had gotten tangled in a clump of eelgrass churned up in a recent storm. Somewhere out there, a baby winter flounder had lost its home.  Mary bent down to examine the blue object, a shard of glass, Noxema blue, not officially sea glass yet, too clean and sharp at the edges.  She picked it up and tossed it out into the water, where it, like everything else in time’s cauldron, would be sufficiently pulverized.”

Saltwater Grille

Oh, yes, Bonasia includes some recipes from the clam shack at the back of the book. Although the clam shack is a fictional place, the recipes were developed at the very real Saltwater Grill in Orleans, Massachusetts.

Enormous thanks to Alexandra Grabbe for scurrying around the Cape and taking these nice photographs. If you’re heading to Cape Cod, I hope you’ll visit Alexandra’s web site  about a green B & B in Wellfleet on Cape Cod that she and her husband own. When her customers want something to read, Alexandra supplies a collection of books which she talks about in her blog, Wellfleet Today.

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Hannibal MO

See where The Great American Road Trip 7-2010 has been in a larger map.

The Great American Road Trip

Destination: Missouri

Book: Pudd’nhead Wilson by Mark Twain, in The Library of America Edition

Mark Twain, who captured America like no other American writer, wandered the globe and lived abroad nearly as many years as he lived in the United States. As a matter of fact many of his most American books were penned while he luxuriated in villas in the Italian countryside.

He wrote follow-ups to his popular Tom Sawyer novel from a villa near Florence while fiddling with what was to become the final of the four masterworks of the Mississippi River, sometimes known as “The Tragedie” of Pudd’nhead Wilson. Of course I could have chosen to talk about his memoir of Life on the Mississippi or Huckleberry Finn or Tom Sawyer, all memoirs to some extent of his years in Hannibal, Missouri, but being a contrarian, I wanted to read the lesser-known book as a salute to the state of Missouri.

Pudd’nhead Wilson made quite a journey itself, starting as a farce about conjoined twins, based on a pair of Italian sideshow noblemen that drew crowds in the nineteenth century Europe. However, by the time Twain finished his story, his interest had drawn elsewhere, the story had perhaps been influenced by his wife’s influence, and the twins, still noble, were no longer conjoined. The subsequent editing tends to rather sloppy and confusingly show glimpses of the previous “Siamese” twins.

As usual, Twain presents the accents and mores of his home town and the state of Missouri faithfully, although he was living in 1893 in a villa in Florence and had been for many years when he wrote this book. This is a book of memory. He is recalling the bad old days (1830) when a person like Roxy, the story’s main character, could be sold “down the river” because she is 1/16 black. “To all intents and purposes Roxy was as white as anybody, but the one sixteenth of her which was black outvoted the other fifteen parts and made her a negro.”

Even This long after the Civil War, such a strong condemnation of slavery sold more copies of Twain’s books in the north than in the South. He leaves no doubts of his feelings, not only about slavery but about the damage the aristocracy of the South wrought on the white population as well as the black.

Echoing his earlier story, The Prince and the Pauper, he switches two children but in this case, one is white and one is black (but in this case 1/32nd black, which serves just as well) and proving Twain is always up to date, he uses the latest science, in this case finger printing, to solve both a murder and the swapped-at-birth cases.

Despite the sloppiness in converting the Italian twins from conjoined to merely noble, this story deserves more attention than it generally gets.  For one thing, Twain has created a really interesting female character for a change in Roxy. And if his cynicism towards American’s racial attitudes began to emerge in Huck Finn, it came to full flame in Pudd’nhead Wilson. See how he weaves a detective story, social satire, Americana and vintage Twain into a story that makes a good addition to the traveler’s road trip history library.

What is your favorite Mark Twain novel? Why do you think this one never gained the popularity of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn?

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A waterfall like the Cave Dweller's shower.

Destination: Arkansas

Book: Farther Along(2008) by Donald Harington

This book’s characters talk through musical instruments.Which makes it a natural to pair with Kerry Dexter, my partner on this Great American Road Trip. See what music she recommends for your drive through Arkansas at Music Road.

Farther Along may puzzle you and challenge you, but surely it will tell you about life and the links between generations and in the end, it will  have you humming along and considering your own life. Not to mention laughing out loud. If you want to see more of Harington’s humor, see the video in the News section of his web site

Summarizing the plot puts a reviewer on dangerous ground, because each reader will want to make his/her own discoveries. Even the publisher’s blurbs venture only into the very early portion of the book. What author was it, when asked what his book was about, replied that he couldn’t say–that’s why he had to write a whole book? (Or words to that effect).

So… after a divorce, the main character leaves his job as an expert on “vernacular” furniture to live as a prehistoric native in a cave in the Arkansas woods, thus becoming “The Cave Dweller.” A waterfall serves as a shower. He has a dog, and he plays the comb. The comb requires a lot of toilet paper and the dog resents it when the man kills deer. He befriends an old woman who used to be the postmistress of the village, and a young man who makes moonshine. Through them, and a few other characters, he is drawn into the life of this nearly deserted town and its past.

In real life, (such as it is) I have only visited the northern part of Arkansas. Very pretty, but mostly populated by retirees from other parts, and condos and golf courses vie for space along with the native woods. The descriptions in Farther Along of the hills, waterfalls and mountains make me want to go back and explore some more.

In post-modern fashion, Donald Harington allows his characters to comment on the style of the novel. His characters are clear and distinct and speak with individual voices. His discussion of their various odd lives makes the reader think about modern life and its meaning and the thin line that separates the living from the departed. If it is hard to understand life now, we are supposed to understand “Farther Along.” That phrase comes from a funeral hymn, (You can see a video of the song at the link) whose entire music and verses are reprinted in the front of the book.

Farther Along we’ll know all about it; Farther Along we’ll understand why; Cheer up my brother, live in the sunshine; We’ll understand it all by and by.

Will we? That is the question. An the story without an end leaves you to find your own answers.

I do not read about the author, or read other reviews until I have figured out what I think about a book. Harington has an intriguing background. He has been deaf since childhood, which makes his reproduction of the rhythms of speech and his fascination with music particularly notable. I was also intrigued to learn that he has written 12 novels about a small town he calls Stay more, which echoes a reall town in Arkansas, Drakes Creek, where his own grandmother was the postmistress. I liked the description by Entertainment Weekly that called Harington, “America’s Greatest Unknown Novelist.”

The photograph above, comes from Flckr complements of Creative Commons license. Click on the photo to learn more about the location and the photographer.

For road trips IN Arkansas, see this Road Trips for Families article. Next stop on OUR road trip: Mark Twain’s Missouri.

Farther Along talks a bit about preservation vs. restoration. I found this interesting article about the restoration taking place at Drakes Creek. Hmmm, it does not mention Harington. Wonder if he approves of what is being done?

Have you traveled in the Ozarks? Are there times when you would you like to live in a cave?

Leave a comment for a chance at the “I guess there are never too many books” t-shirt.” Entries through Friday.

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Road Trip Book Cover

Destination: Alabama

Book: Gods in Alabama (2005) by Joshilyn Jackson

There are gods in Alabama: Jack Daniel’s high school quarterbacks, trucks, bit tits, and also Jesus.

Sorry, guys, but this book is going to quack like Chick Lit to you.  The retelling of a road trip that more or less proves that you CAN go home again, centers on the relationship between two women, and mothers play the supporting roles.  If that does not cinch the deal, be further warned that a great deal of the book takes place in flashbacks to high school, which definitely does not make it teen chick lit.

While the women are interesting characters, the author has made the supporting role of boyfriend to Arlene, the main character, perfect waaay beyond belief. One other male character only appears in the high school scenes and the other shuffles on as a sweet contrast to his strong wife, Lena’s Aunt.

Gods in Alabama weaves a suspenseful tale that explains why Arlene (or Lena her up-north-in-Chicago name) has refused to return to her home town in Alabama for more than ten years before she makes this life-changing road trip.  The author explains the motivation with a plot structure that double dares you to figure out how it is going to end.  Jackson mixes humor with a deeper purpose of investigating the meaning of truth in the midst of Bible Belt mores.

I read this first novel because of a suggestion from Twitter. (In the 5 years since it was published, Joshilyn Jackson has published three more novels, one of them a mirror image of this one.)While I am not as enthusiastic as the person who recommended it, I breezed through and frequently laughed out loud at either the self deceptive contortions of Lena or the revealing attitudes of her small town family members.  The recreation of small town family doin’s made for a good stop on our Road Trip through the South.

The thing that I found most distracting about Gods in Alabama (which definitely has the best opening sentence I have read in a long time–see opening of this post), was the perfection of Lena’s boyfriend, Burr.  In Lena’s family’s eyes, Burr is a lawyer (good), a Baptist (good), an American Baptist rather than a Southern Baptist (bad) and black (unforgiveable). Whether to ameliorate Lena’s family or to toe the politically correct line, author Jackson creates a man without personal flaws. (Unless, of course, you are a Southern Baptist). Setting him down next to the neurotic and seriously misbehaving Lena or her whacked out family makes it even more obvious that he is not a real person, but a foil.

But then, you shouldn’t pick too hard at a boiled-frosting-topped chocolate cake or the whole thing will collapse. Just enjoy the visit to rural Alabama, say your prayers, sip your sweet tea, and eat your cake. But this being Joshilyn Jackson, watch out for what’s hidden in the cake.

Remember to check out the Musical road trip at Music Road, where Kerry Dexter always has something interesting for our ears while we’re on the road.

Thanks for sticking around the Library while I’m on a road trip of mine own.  Since I won’t be here to keep reminding people to read A Traveler’s Library, I would consider it a real big favor, if you would please remind people for me. Just use one of those buttons below, post it on Twitter or Stumble Upon, or e-mail a few friends. Thanks!

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Atlanta Midtown

Destination: Atlanta, Georgia

Book: A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe (1998)

Tom Wolfe is not only a writer, but he plays one on T.V. Dressed in a white linen suit and white homburg hat, he chats amiably–those perfect southern manners on display, of course. And I will happily read anything he has written. So although he actually hails from Richmond Virignia, I’ve picked his book A Man in Full, which is set in Atlanta, Georgia for our road trip travel plans to that state.

Wolfe took his newspaper reporter’s eye for the telling detail and moved on to book-length discourses on icons of American culture–Manhattan lefty socialites and American racism (Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers), Hippies (The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test) astronauts (The Right Stuff), among the titles that added to the American vocabulary. And his work set a standard for a new school of non-fiction: The New Journalism. Who can hear “the right stuff” without thinking of the astronaut culture? And Radical Chic became the perfect put down for the faux-sincere backer of causes. He moved into fiction with a novel that pinned to the wall the finance industry, Bonfire of the Vanities, written LO-O-O-NG before our present banking crisis. Then he took on his own region– the modern South and its class and race friction hidden under a veneer of politeness and its focus on doing bid-ness– A Man in Full.

Tom Wolfe lays his characters out on the table and slices them open with a sharp wit–laying bare every foible and pretense. And in A Man in Full, he not only paints sharp portraits of a vast array of human characters, but also slices and dices the city of Atlanta, symbol of the modern South.

The book is long and the plot is complex, but nothing Wolfe every writes is ponderous.  His individual sentences and phrases are delights. It takes him a long time to shape a book, and if you pause to ponder as you read the perfect word choices you will understand why.  He is in his eighties now and some doubt that he has enough time to finish a final work because of his meticulous approach–not because of any lack of energy.

If you need proof of his still lively, sharp mind, read this article printed about a year ago in the New York Times about NASA.

If you have never read Tom Wolfe, take a look at one of his books. If you want to know how a born and bred southerner sees the new South, and you’re ready to visit that most un-typical part of Georgia on your own road trip, read his novel set in Atlanta, A Man in Full. It’s a peach. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

Tom Wolfe

Charlie Rose interviews Tom Wolfe and you can see a copy on the Tom Wolfe website . Charlie Rose talks a bit too much in this half-hour show, but it gives you a good view of Tom Wolfe, nevertheless.

The portrait of Tom Wolfe, is filched from his publisher’s web site. The gorgeous picture of Atlanta at night above is from Flickr compliments of Creative Commons license. Please click on the picture to see more of that photographer’s work. Good stuff!

Don’t forget to pick up your road trip music over at Music Road. Kerry wrote last week about music for the two states, South Carolina and Georgia.

To begin at the beginning, you can go back to Blue Highways, or to start the trip south, see Virginia. And please, don’t miss any of the Road Trip,or the other travels at A Traveler’s Library. Subscribe! you now have three ways to follow along–

• I will e-mail you each post;
• you can get it in your RSS feed,
• or you can click on the Facebook widget over to the far right (with all the pictures) and follow me on Facebook.

Are you already a Tom Wolfe fan? Tell me what you’ve read, and how you like the “New Journalism” style. I’d love to have a conversation about one of my favorite authors. Alabama is coming up–suggestions??

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Writing Jane Austen Cover

Destination: England

Book: Writing Jane Austen by Elizabeth Aston (April, 2010)

For the Jane-obsessed, or for those just wondering what tourists are doing in Bath these days, Writing Jane Austen could be a handy tour guide. The author’s education and her long list of published Jane Austen sequels guarantees accurate descriptions of Palladian homes, country gardens and Edwardian clothing over tightly corseted figures. Disappointingly, it does not guarantee a fun romp through Austen land.

After that long string of successful faux Jane Austen novels, Elizabeth Aston felt inclined to write something based in her own age, she says in the author interview at the end of this book.  After all, Jane herself was not a writer of historical books.  She based her stories firmly in her contemporary life.  While I rather enjoyed the tourism aspects, almost nothing else worked for me in this novel.

Dialogue: You cannot tell one character from another, even though some are from different countries. American sounds like Brit sounds like Pole, for goodness sakes.

Plot: If there was any action unforeseeable in this novel, I did not see it. The American writer, Georgina Jackson, who takes on an impossible contract so that she can stay in England, dithers so long in unbelievable writer’s block, that I got reader’s block.

Character: While the Goth-one-day and Punk-the-next teenage character was interesting, most of the characters were either not credible or cut from cardboard.  Georgina, the main character,  supposedly is a bright, highly educated university teacher with a highly-praised book under her belt, yet she acts like a wimpy dolt most of the time.  Henry, her landlord has to explain to her the essential parts of a novel. She has never read a word of Jane Austen and resists doing so for most of the novel, then instantly falls in love with them. (I suppose you could consider that last sentence a spoiler, except that the reader has been waiting for it to happen for about 100 pages.)

Jane Austen’s women are notoriously witty, spunky, attractive and focused on what they want. The author creates a basic problem when you do not like the heroine.  I found this heroine to be tedious, whiny, lacking insight, disorganized, with about as much spunk as a wet dishrag.

And yes, I DO get that the novel is satirizing the mad rush to replicate Jane and over-the-top fandom.

Honestly, I wanted to like this book. But it let me down.

P. S. I did like the cover art.

P.P. S. The author’s other books are probably swell.

A review copy of this book was provided by the publisher, Touchstone Books, an imprint of Simon and Schuster, who may be wishing they had not done so.  A copy of the book went to one of the winners of the May Giveaway, and I’ll be delighted to run a opposing review if the winner thinks I’m all wet.

I much preferred the Jane Austen book based on a novella, that I wrote about earlier. Lady Vernon and her Daughter, by Jane Rubino and Caitlen Rubino-Bradway yielded an interesting interview with the mother/daughter authors.

So, are you a Jane Austen fan?  Are you a Jane Austen-revisited fan? Which is not at all the same thing! If you approve of this review, please give it a boost by clicking on one of those buttons below to share with Stumble Upon, Twitter, or other social networking sites.

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Destination: Route 66

Book: The Leisure Seeker, A Novel, by Michael Zadorian

This new book about a road trip on Route 66 is not for everyone. If you want to think about aging and how to handle it; if you liked the movie Tuesdays with Morrie; if you think the elderly have a right to determine their own destiny–then dive right into The Leisure Seeker . If any of those things make you nervous, you may want to pass up Michael Zadorian‘s new book.

Before I give you the overview, which may sound entirely too serious, let me assure you that the book’s charm includes some laugh-out-loud humor, based on Ella’s feisty persona; frequent right-on-the-mark analyses of aging and medicine; and a terrific portrait of contemporary roadside America. Zadorian seems to have visited a lot of diners in order to draw an accurate picture of the variety of waitresses, out in country where “servers” haven’t been invented yet.

Near Gallup New Mexico, Ella says:

The vastness of the mesas, the stillness of all this stone soothes my wretched body, makes me feel part of the earth.  The angling light reveals the character of the rock, how every inch is mottled and etched with time.  I look at my arm, run my fingers across the million tiny folds that cover my skin like endless lines of faded calligraphy.  There’s something written in both places, but I can’t read either.

The concept is simple. Mostly we read a monologue delivered by Ella, the wife who is afflicted with so many things that she likens her finish to a horse race between ailments. She pops little blue ills for her frequent “discomfort” which is what the medical team calls pain. She has decided that she and John, her husband of  60  years, are going to drive the length of Route 66 in their Leisure Seeker camper, and make a side trip to Disney Land. John is the driver-in-chief who also happens to have detached from the world. Although she never calls it Alzheimer’s, we can see what’s going on.

When they stop at night, they frequently put up a slide projector and watch family pictures from long-ago vacations. That and occasional calls to their scared and disapproving son and daughter, fill us in on the couple’s history. Despite setbacks, Ella plows on, indomitable–the only fear she has is being alone, but she still has John, and thank goodness, he has her.

I can’t help thinking that if he had not self-destructed long ago, Kerouac would have enjoyed just such a road trip. Ella’s life lessons fill this slim book to overflowing, and she damned well does what she pleases. Zadorian is so skilled a writer that I could swear I have met Ella and John–not to mention the waitresses.

Disclaimer on the Leisure Seeker: The books publicist made the book available for review. And do you like the little “look inside” widget? That came from the Harper Collins pages.

So are you a Rt. 66 afficiando, or are you pretty much unaware of its role in American transportation history? Fess up. Either way. (And remember, when you leave a comment, you can leave your Twitter address as well. You can follow Michael Zadorian on Twitter @MikeZadorian. You can follow ME on Twitter @pen4hire)

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Destination: Thailand

Book: Currency by Zoe Zolbrod (May, 2010)

Once again life overtakes art. On the day after the new novel, Currency by Zoe Zolbrod is released, Bangkok is burning. I finished reading my advanced review copy the  day after the release date, and then settled in to watch these horrendous images on the computer.

For a while, it will be necessary to work hard to push down those images of Bangkok burning as you read about the gentler side of Thai culture in Zolbrod‘s terrific new cultural travel book.  But the gentleness changes as the character play a dangerous game. As a first novel, this book truly is amazing. The author gets under the skin of both the main characters–a backpacking American girl who has maxed out her credit cards, and a handsome Thai man who has learned to make a living off farang girls.

What results is a love story that helps drive the thriller plot as the couples’ desire for some currency drives them deeper and deeper into harm’s way. With a smooth-talking African businessman and a disgusting pig of a Russian scoundrel surrounded by his overweight paid girlfriends to round out the plot.

The will she/won’t she and will he /won’t he of the love story keep you guessing, and each time the duo feels attracted or pulls apart, the adventure they have stepped into expands or contracts. It is difficult to talk about a plot like this without giving something away, so let’s talk about dialogue and setting.

We hear the story alternately in the voice of Piv and of Robin. He is cool and detached, proud of his command of English. But his method of expression is definitely a Thai-tinged English, which Zolbrod captures perfectly.

I buy food from street vendor–egg yolk that they make sweet–and I lean on one wall to eat this.

World traveler Robin, frantic to assemble some money so that she can leave the country and get her visa renewed, meets Piv at Sukothai, when she is at her most vulnerable. She falls hard for him–wanting “to make something with him” as Piv would say, and they stay together much longer than most of the farang girls Piv has attracted. Besides being flighty about paying her credit card bills, Robin panics at every sight of danger. And there is plenty of danger.

Zolbrod shows us backpacker’s Bangkok, but also Jim Thompson’s house, a ride on the canals and even some country places in the north (where the present demonstrators came from and where, as I write–they are burning buildings.)

Here’s an example of Zolbrod’s descriptive powers:

No first-class buses routed through Pai, so at dawn Robin and Piv climbed on the third-class one.  The paved road through this part of the mountains had been laid about twenty years ago, but the rough state of it made it seem biblical, an archaeological find, and the bus staggered and  slowed with every gear shift. The marigold and jasmine strung from the rearview mirror jerked so rapidly they looked like hummingbird wings.

Currency definitely interfered with my tasks because despite all my promises to myself, I could not put it down at the end of a chapter. I would call it a good summer/beach read, but don’t want to diminish it. I also predict that it will be standard fare in every backpacker hostel in Southeast Asia before very long. But it deals with important subjects like the trafficking that the couple gets involved in and cross-cultural relationships, so the readership should be broad.

Follow the author on Twitter @zoezolbrod or see her fan page on Facebook

We just discussed February the novel that imitated life with a story of a ocean drilling accident. Have you read other books that echo current events?

Have you been watching the news about the demonstrations in Thailand? Any thoughts about the contradiction between the outward calm valued in the society and the present violence?

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Reflections of the Capitol

Destination: Washington D.C.

Assorted Movies Plus Books by David Baldacci

Screen tours of Washington D.C. This web site has a lengthy list of movies and TV shows filmed in D.C. and when you are in D.C. they will take you to see the locations of many.

The Washington Post, who ought to know, says that 185 movies have been filmed in D.C. (However the article was written in 2001/02, so we may have reached 200 by now.) They list those that received good reviews or did well at the box office or both.

Favorite movies set in D.C. at About.com

I might quibble with the choice of Born Yesterday, as I doubt much if any was actually shot in D.C., but the author does say “Set” in D.C. as well as filmed in the city. I liked  Spy Game that shows Langley, the CIA headquarters, and a bit of D.C. Personally I would have added Pelican Brief to the list of bests.

Here’s another Best 10 Movies Set in D.C., this one from Planet Prose. Five are on the other list, five aren’t. They get props from me for including Pelican Brief.

Here’s a rant about mistakes movies make when they film in D.C.

And of course along the same line, we interviewed Simon Cox, author of Decoding the Lost Symbol. His book points out a lot of small errors of city geography in Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol.

But when it comes to books,  I’m sticking with my recommendation for Washington Reading that I gave back when this site was a pup and Barak Obama was being inaugurated. Here are four Baldacci thrillers for a feeling of Washington.

Bethanne Patrick taped  some awesome conversations with Baldacci. I introduced my post on her videos this way: David Baldacci’s novels are not just set in Washington D. C., they grow organically out of the compost heap of rotten scraps created by corrupt federal officials and businesses that thrive off of government. The characters know the back alleys and non-public spaces as well as the public glitz of Washington D.C.  In other words, setting is important. (read more)

And believe it or not, Kerry Dexter has come up with a great story and music for the road trip to D.C. Check out Music Road.

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On Galway Bay

Book: Galway Bay (2009)by Mary Pat Kelly, Grand Central Publishing

A GUEST POST by Kerry Dexter

“We didn’t all die. Some of us escaped, one reaching back for the next… we saved ourselves…”

Those words of Honora Keely Kelly, born in 1822 in the west of Ireland, form the core around which the ideas in the novel Galway Bay circle. Honora was a real person, whose words came down her family to her great great granddaughter, Mary Pat Kelly.

Taking readers back in time through her imagination, the younger Kelly begins when her great great grandmother was a young woman in a fishing family on Galway Bay, just on the point of meeting the man who would become her husband, Michael Kelly.

The year is 1839, in the ‘before times,’ the years before the Great Hunger. The harsh attitudes and uneasy relations between Irish people and the English who owned almost all the land in Ireland at that time come into play even as Honora and Michael marry, entangling her family and her older sister Maire with the local landowners while at the same time strengthening the bond between the two sisters, a bond that will be tested and tried but stay central through the story, as two women with differing approaches to life face hardship, hunger, joy, and that central fact of nineteenth century Ireland, emigration.

Irish Famine Memorial in Boston MA

Kelly sees the events of famine times through Honora’s and Maire’s eyes as wives, mothers, sisters, daughters, and members of a community whose differences and connections come into sharp relief as people face unprecedented hardship and hunger. One of the strengths of Kelly’s writing is her ability to make secondary and even passing characters vivid, while keeping the tale centered by Honora’s and Maire’s thoughts and experiences.

When they finally take the decision to set out for Amerikay, it’s not without regret and not without danger. Fetching up at the bustling port of New Orleans, they  head north to Chicago, where they believe Michael’s brother Patrick, a rebel leader in Ireland, has settled.

Patrick does return to the story several times, and to powerful effect, but in Chicago in the days before the War Between the States, the sisters are on their own as they and their older children find work, and friends, and prejudice and hardship aplenty as they face unsettled and changing conditions.

The story follows Honora and Maire and their children as their sons go off to fight in the war, and old friends and enemies from Ireland reappear in their new country, and as they face building lives in Chicago. They must choose what of the family life and old ways and old stories to keep what to change, and how to pass all that on.

World's Columbian Exposition: Ferris Wheel

Honora and her family visit the Chicago Exposition of 1893. Honora welcomes the prosperity and growing acceptance of Irish people, but she also thinks of those left behind, and she has the bittersweet experience of seeing Irish life in the before times shown as exhibits. As the story ends, Honora’s granddaughter, whose real life counterpart became Mary Pat Kelly’s cousin, asks Honora to tell her stories of the real Ireland, the one across the sea.

Will this book make you want to visit Galway, or Chicago? It might, although it’s certainly not a scenic travelogue on the west of Ireland or the history of the Second City. It will make you care about the characters and want to keep reading. As someone who’s been immersed in Irish history and stories most of my life, I’ll say that Kelly gets the facts right and the tone of the history right as well, which I’ve found is not all that common in fiction about Ireland. She also, in a subtle point, gets the cadence of the language right, and has a natural inclusion of words in Irish now and then also.

Galway Bay may or may not get you thinking about going to Ireland. It may very well get you thinking about your own family’s stories, though, what you’ve heard and what you’re passing along.

Kerry Dexter is an expert on the music of Ireland and Scotland, and many of the musicians of the United States as well. Follow her at Music Road. Thank you Kerry, for bringing your knowledge of Ireland to this review of a book that obviously touched you deeply.

The Photographs are used courtesy of Creative Commons and were obtained through Flickr. Click on the photos to learn more about the photographers.

Readers–are you gathering family stories? Where did your family come from? Have you ever traveled to Ireland to trace your own family?

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