For the Love of Lit

Posts Tagged ‘historical’

When I created my @FortheLoveofLit Twitter account recently, I was browsing around looking for other book bloggers and authors to follow.  I came across an author named @Joe_Wallace, saw some Twitter chatter about his newest novel, and decided to check it out! It turned out to be cheaper for me to buy it as a used paperback from Amazon (plus free super saver shipping!) rather than buy it for my Kindle.

I’m not a baseball fan.  My fiancé is a HUGE baseball fan, but I just find it incredibly boring.  I go to baseball games to people watch rather than to actually watch the game.  Anyway, I digress.  From the reviews I read online, this book didn’t seem as much about a history of baseball as it was a story about a unique young girl in a man’s world.  The story starts out with Ruby as a young girl back in the 1920’s.  She attends a professional baseball game with her family and ends up catching a ball during the game.  She was in awe of the players and how they could throw the ball, so when she got home, she went to the park to give it a shot and realized she had an amazing throw.  Ruby had been teased as she was growing up because she had really long arms and they called her “Monkey girl”, but now she realized that her arms had a purpose.  Then a devastating influenza pandemic sweeps through New York City.  Unfortunately, Ruby loses both of her parents, one of her brothers, and her other brother’s wife to the disease and is left with her other brother, Nick, and Nick’s two daughters, Amanda and Allie.  Ruby takes over the role as the girls’ mother while Nick is out getting drunk and going through jobs like someone goes through socks.  Ruby takes a few jobs here and there in order to get by and feed her nieces, but it’s not enough.

With some effort and struggles, Ruby ends up taking a job on Coney Island with a “freak show” of sorts where she is called “Diamond Ruby” – they built a pitching area for her in one of the buildings where people could come and pay to pitch against her to try to beat her speed and accuracy (which is practically impossible).  She is a huge hit and even garners the attention of some of the Yankees players including Babe Ruth himself.  Since baseball is still a men’s only sport back then, she faced some harassment and threats from different people to try to get her to stop throwing.  When she is finally able to get away from that situation, she is asked to join one of the minor league baseball teams as their pitcher; the Brooklyn Typhoons and that whole entire league were struggling and they thought that adding Ruby to the roster would help make their league popular again.  Well, it worked!  Thousands of people would show up to watch Ruby play and after awhile, she did earn the respect of her fellow male teammates and the other teams.  When she is faced with some serious threats, she has to make some difficult decisions…. you’ll have to read the book to find out what they were.

This story was based upon the true story of a girl named Jackie Mitchell back in that same era who was signed to a baseball team in Tennessee and struck out both Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.  After that, women were banned from playing baseball.  I really enjoyed the story and didn’t find the baseball theme boring at all because there were so many other things going on with Ruby’s life.  And of course, I liked the historical part of it.  It’s also one of those stories that makes you want to be all “Girl Power!” and stuff.  I think that men could enjoy this book too though, so guys, don’t get scared off by my last statement.

Joseph Wallace actually responded to be on Twitter when I tweeted that I had started reading his book.  I think it’s awesome when authors interact with their readers either through Twitter, Facebook, blogs, whatever.  He’s written a number of other books, including books about baseball history (see, now there’s something that my male readers can enjoy!).

I had been hearing good things about this book for awhile, but just never got around to reading it until recently.  I wasn’t really sure what it was about (I tend to skim over summaries on book jackets or online) but if it was supposed to be good, I figured I’d check it out.

“Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet” is one of those books that jumps back and forth between time periods.  It is helpful that the year is stated at the beginning of each chapter.  Forgive me if I don’t follow the jumping back and forth between years exactly; it’s hard to remember.

The book starts with Henry as an older man; Henry is a Chinese American living in Seattle whose wife recently passed away from cancer.  He is struggling with the loss when he hears that a local hotel that had been boarded up for years recently was purchased and the owner found some items in the basement.  You then find out more about when Charlie was a young child.  His parents forced him to speak English, even though they only spoke Cantonese, so that he would fit in  and his strict father also made him wear a button saying “I am Chinese” so no one would mistake him for Japanese, who we were in a war with at the time in the 1940’s.  He was also made to go to an American school and worked in cafeteria serving lunch to get away from the other kids.  He met a friend there one day who was a young Japanese American girl named Keiko.  Although his father had given him strict orders to stay away from anyone who was Japanese, and especially to stay out of that neighborhood, Charlie and Keiko forged a friendship.  They also bonded over a the music of a local jazz musician who Charlie hears about from his African American friend, Sheldon, who played his saxophone on the street in the different neighborhoods.

When the war starts to get worse, the Japanese in Seattle are being “evacuated” to camps more inland.  Keiko and her family are forced to leave and Charlie tries everything that his 12-year old self can do to help them, but they still must leave.  Charlie manages to get a job helping the woman that he works with in the cafeteria; they will be serving food at the Japanese camps.  He goes there looking for Keiko and her family, and after awhile, finally finds them.  When Henry’s father finds out that he’s been associating with a Japanese person, he disowns Charlie and refuses to speak with him anymore.  Keiko is then moved to a different camp, and Henry and Sheldon make a bus trip to pay a visit and at that time, it seems like Henry is officially courting Keiko.  Once he goes home, they write to each other often, until the letters start coming less and less.  Henry writes one last letter to Keiko once the war is over and it is rumored that the Japanese are coming home from the camps.  He asks her to meet him in front of the hotel at a specific time.

I will leave off there and you can read the book to find out the rest!  As you know, I like historical fiction.  Other than the fact that I did learn some things about what was going on in the 40’s during the war, it was just a really good story.  The story does switch back and forth between young and old Henry, and my summary above left out most of the old Henry story.  It’s one of those books that really drew me in so that I didn’t want to put it down.  It was also a sweet love story that shows you how powerful love can be (even between two teenagers) in difficult times.   Loved it!

As you know, I like reading historical stories based on the lives of women, especially if they’re from different cultures.  This book kind of falls into that category, but it’s based on a true story.

“Booth’s Sister” is based upon the memoir of Asia Booth, the older sister of John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln’s assassin.  It starts out right after Lincoln was killed; Asia had some visitors come to her house asking where her brother was, convinced that she knew details that could help the investigation.

The story then reverts back to Asia and John’s childhood.  To be honest, this part of the story was realllllly slow to me.  I almost put the book down (well, I didn’t have the actual book, so I guess you could say that I would have just moved onto the next book on my Kindle book list).  The story is told from the first person perspective of Asia.  As a child, she envied her brother, who was going to follow in their father’s footsteps and become an actor.  I guess back in that time, women could not be actors/actresses.  The family is really into Shakespeare, and his quotes are peppered throughout the dialogue.   From the get go, it seemed to me like Asia had more than just a jealousy or admiration of her brother, it almost seems like she is in love with him – it’s kind of odd.

Finally, after learning about Asia and John as children and teenagers, we get to their young adulthood when John becomes a pretty famous stage actor.  Asia tries to go see his plays as much as possible and is in awe of her brother just like everyone else.  When Asia gets married and invites her brother to dinner, a huge argument ensues between John and her husband (also named John) and the other guests regarding Lincoln, slavery, and the government.  That’s when you start to see the signs that he has a bone to pick with the Prez.  Next thing you know, men are beating down Asia’s door looking for John and hold her captive for about almost two weeks before they finally find and kill him.

Coincidentally, at the same time I was reading this book, my boyfriend is reading a book called “Manhunt” about the search for Lincoln’s killer (which he says I “must read”, which I will, eventually).  ”Booth’s Sister” was interesting; it wasn’t exactly what I expected.  The beginning parts about their childhood didn’t seem entirely relevant to the rest of the story of their lives (some thing did, but not all), but maybe I was just missing something.  Maybe it was because this book was BASED on the true story, so perhaps some things were “fluffed” for entertainment value.  For all of you men out there (okay, probably only a few who actually read this), this is a book that you could read – it’s not targeted specifically toward women, even though it’s told from the woman’s perspective.  You’d probably like “Manhunt” better, though.

This book is currently atop the NY Times Best-Seller List under “Paperback Trade Fiction” (whatever that means).  It intrigued me and that’s why I had to download it on my Kindle.

Disclaimer: “A Reliable Wife” is NOT a happy book.  It is dark, depressing, sad, and any other synonym to those words.  If you don’t like those sort of books, then this one is definitely not for you.  This is probably one of the most depressing books I’ve ever read.  Yet as painful as it was to read, I had to finish it.

The story starts in 1907 with Ralph Truitt, a very wealthy man in his 50’s, waiting at the train station for a woman.  This woman came to him from an ad he put in the papers for a “reliable wife” (meaning a simple woman who could live with him and be a companion of sorts).  A younger woman named Catherine had answered his ad and sent a picture and he paid for her to come to Wisconsin and live with him.  When Catherine arrives, she is not the same woman in the picture (it was actually her cousin), but he keeps her anyway.  They “bond” immediately after he is injured on the ride home and she has to care for his wounds.  Little does Ralph know that Catherine isn’t who she says she is and she has other intentions for her new relationship.

I can’t go into the details of the storyline any further, but I’ll say that the story winds a tale of selfishness, passion, debauchery, sex, drugs, grief, and death (not necessarily in that order).  The book didn’t make me cry or anything, but it was just a very heavy read.  It was an interesting story and shows you the darker sides of city life back in the early 20th century.  Okay, I’m ready to read a light-hearted chick lit book now!

Do you like reading historical romance fiction (is that a genre??)?  I do!  If you like the novels by Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, etc, then I think you might like this book.

“The Apothecary’s Daughter” is based in England during the Regency era.  Lilly Haswell helps her father, Charles, run his apothecary shop in Bedsley Priors; her mother left the family when Lilly was a young girl.  Lilly’s estranged aunt and uncle suddenly come to visit, hoping to “adopt” Lilly’s brother Charlie as an heir to their estate, but then they find out about Charlie’s disabilities (based upon my limited medical knowledge, it seems like he may be Autistic) and decide that he will not work for their plans.  Instead, they offer to bring Lilly to London to teach her lady-like things and to hopefully marry her off to a rich young man.  In those days, women were not allowed to be apothecaries and her knowledge of Latin, medical terminology, and science was not seen as a good thing, so she had to try to keep that secret.

Lilly is enjoying her time in London, going to parties and meeting potential suitors, until she gets a letter from a friend of her father’s asking her to come home because her father is “not himself”.  When she arrives home, the apothecary shop is in shambles and her father is a mess.  Lilly decides to stay with her father and tries to help him recover from his mystery illness and she brings the shop back to life.

Throughout the story, Lilly has gotten herself involved with several men.  I won’t go into too much detail about that because that’s one of the items that kept my attention… I wasn’t sure who she would end up with at the end.  Lilly also struggles with new laws for apothecaries that go into effect which cause huge problems for the Haswell Apothecary.  I know that I’m leaving out a ton of little things, but again, I hate giving out too many details because I don’t want to ruin the book for anyone who goes out and reads it.

I really like books like this; I think it’s fun to think about what it would be like back in those days (and then think how lucky I am to be alive in this century!) and in other countries.  Although I reference Jane Austen and Charlotte and Emily Bronte above, this book is not written the way those books are (from what I can remember from when I read them back in high school).  The book is written in a way that is very easy to read with no fancy old-fashioned language to have to decipher.  I also noticed when reading reviews that this book was sometimes classified as Christian fiction, but I didn’t notice any major Christian undertones like I’ve seen in other books.  It just seemed like a good romantic fiction.

Julie Klassen has authored several other books that seem to go along the same theme of Regency England.  Haven’t read any of them yet but may put them on my list!