Books Set in Europe: Spain and Portugal

The Mapmaker's Daughter, by Laurel Corona (2014)

Read: July 25, 2017

3 Stars

Books Set in the United States

Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination that Changed America, by Will Haywood (2015)

Showdown, by Wil Haywood describes the nearly month-long confirmation of Thurgood Marshall to the United States Supreme Court.  In 1967, President Lyndon Johnson was determined to appoint a Black man to the High Court.  Thurgood Marshall had made a name for himself as being a highly-talented attorney who had argued many civil rights cases before the High Court.

The Civil Rights were a hot button political issue in the United States in the 1960s.  As determined as Johnson was to appoint a Black to the Supreme Court, were the several Southern arch-segregationist senators equally as determined to keep Marshall off the Bench.  The Senate Judiciary Committee was headed by Mississippi Senator James Eastland.  Other senators recognized Marshall’s talents.  The battle by the segregationists, however, waged for nearly a month before Marshall was ultimately confirmed.

The author gives plenty of background into the players.  Several of the events that are recounted in the book occurred in Louisiana, although these are less well known than the bombings in Birmingham, and the sit-in in Greensboro.  The author also describes the events in Johnson’s life that led him to be a champion for civil rights.

I highly recommend this book as it gives a portrait not only of the events leading to the confirmation of a Supreme Court Justice, but of race relations in America during the 1960.

Read:  July 9, 2017

5 Stars

Books Set in the United States: Connecticut

Small Great Things, by Jodi Picoult (2016)

Like so many of Jodi Picoult’s novels, this book tackles social issues that have been in the news.  This time the theme is racism and white supremacy.

Ruth Jefferson is a nurse in the maternity ward in a Connecticut hospital.  She is the daughter of a woman who was a domestic and the first in her family to go to college.  She worked her way through college to earn her nursing degree.  She has worked at the hospital for 20 years and is only African-American nurse on staff in the maternity ward.

While working in the hospital, she is also a widowed mother, raising a studious teenage son.  She is saving her money to send her son to college.

Enter Brittany and Turk, a couple of white supremacists.  Brittany has just given birth to a baby boy.  They name their son Davis in honor of Jefferson Davis.  Ruth meets the couple and performs a routine checkup of the newborn.  The parents are taken aback that a Black nurse would touch their son, so insist that that a note be included in the baby’s file stating that no African-Americans are to treat the baby.  The hospital agrees to the parent’s request and Ruth is ordered not to touch the baby.

Nearing the end of a double shift, and when the ward is short-staffed, Ruth is called in to monitor the baby.  When the baby goes into cardiac distress, Ruth is faced with the dilemma of whether to let her nursing instinct to take over or obey orders not to touch the baby.  Soon other medical personnel are called in and a doctor orders Ruth to perform CPR.  When the baby dies, Ruth is charged with murder of the baby.

Ruth is assigned a public defender (I am not convinced that she would be considered indigent for purpose of being assigned a public defender, but …), a well-intentioned white woman with a young daughter, with no concept of racial prejudice.  The prosecutor, however, is a Black woman.  How will this play out before a jury?

As with many of Picoult’s books, there is a twist near the end.  Maybe I have read enough of her writings to look for clues throughout the book.  At any rate, I guessed the twist.  That didn’t take away from the important conversation of this novel.

Small Great Things was a page-turner.  I thoroughly enjoyed it and felt the characters really came alive.

Read:  July 4, 2017

4.5 Stars 

Books Set in Europe/Asia: Russia

A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles (2016)

The novel begins in the summer of 1922 when Count Alexander Rostov, an unrepentant aristocrat is placed under house arrest in Moscow’s luxurious Metropol hotel by a Bolsehvik tribunal.  Although he had a suite in the hotel, after his sentence (for the crime of writing a poem) he finds himself confined to a small room in the belfry.  He settles into his surroundings, initially thinking he can carry on as usual.  When he goes into the barber shop for his weekly trim, he is in for a rude awakening.  Yet he remains ever the optimist.

He soon befriends Nina, a young precocious girl.  Together they regularly dine and play little games.  Nina has discovered all the secret passages within the hotel, and shares her knowledge with Rostov.  She has a copy of the master key to all the rooms that allows the two to enter the various guest rooms and offices as will.

Rostov becomes the head waiter in the hotel’s fancy restaurant, the Boyarsky.  He meets people from the “outside” and develops strong relationships with many of the hotel staff.  Nina grows up, marries and has a daughter, Sofia, of her own.  During a political purge, Nina’s husband is sent off to Siberia.  Before leaving to find him, Nina asks Rostov to watch Sofia for a few days.  A few days turns into years.  Rostov, concerned for Sofia’s future, uses his resources and connections to plot a plan to protect the young girl left in his care.

I found this novel to be very charming.  The characters were well developed and most were very likable.

Read:  June 24, 2017

4.5 Stars 

Books Set in Asia: Calcutta, India

A Rising Man, by Abir Mukherjee (2017)

Sometimes when I am in the library, a book catches my eye and I just pick it up without having a clue what it is about.  A Rising Man by Abir Mukherjee was one such book and it is a gem.

Set in the waning years of the British Empire in India, the book begins in Calcutta in early 1919.  Captain Sam Wyndham, a former detective with the Scotland Yard, was seeking an escape from England and is recovering both from the recent death of his wife and the trauma of having survived the battlefront of World War I.  He has joined the British Imperial Police Force.

Within days of his arrival in India, he becomes the lead detective in a sensitive and political murder investigation.  Senior political officer, Alexander MacAuley, was found murdered outside of a brothel in a seedy party of town.  His body was mutated body was found with a scrap of paper stuffed into his mouth, which contained a not-so-subtle threat indicating that the Indian terrorists opposing British rule were responsible for the murder.

Wyndham has been assigned two other police officers to assist with the investigation ~ Inspector Digby and Sergeant Banerjee.  Digby is an arrogant British officer who strongly supports the British rule over the “natives.”  Banjerjee is British educated, but Indian-born, and because the British are unable to pronounce his name, call him Surrender-not Banerjee.  It looks like a political murder, but is it?

India in 1919 is ready for revolution.  India has been under British colonial administration for a century and the colonials are making a fortune at the expense of the Indians.  The Indians are ready for their own Home Rule and pockets of terrorist cells are beginning to make trouble for the British.  In addition, during the period of British rule, British men married Indian women and now their offspring are outcasts in both cultures.  The author deftly recounts the tensions and between the British and the Indians in this marvelous novel.

The author is grew up in England and is the son of Indian immigrants, thus his interest in colonial India.  Captain Wyndham will appear in a new book, A Necessary Evil, that was just published in June 2017.  I will definitely look forward to meeting up with this detective again!

Read:  June 1, 2017

5 Stars

Books Set in the United States: Oklahoma

Killers of the Flower Moon, by David Grann (2017)

Killers of the Flower Moon, by David Grann recounts the calculated murders of members of the Osage tribe in the 1920s solely for their oil rights in Oklahoma.  By the 1890s, the Osage had been relegated to a rocky area in Oklahoma, basically deemed uninhabitable for the white families moving and settling west.  In the early 1890s, oil was discovered and, because the Osage owned the land, they quickly became very, very rich.  The United States Government determines that the Osage need white guardians to protect them and their money.  Many of the “guardians” however, actual use their status to deprive the Osage from their wealth.

By the 1920s, the Osage begin to die under mysterious circumstances.  The book focuses on Mollie Burkhard, a young Osage woman married to Ernest Burkhart, a white.  In 1921, Mollie’s sister, Anna, was found shot and killed and left in a ravine.  She was the second of Millie’s sister to die.  The first sister died of a “wasting” disease shortly before Anna’s death.  Then, Mollie mother died.  Within a year or two, Mollie’s remaining sister and husband were killed when their house was bombed.

Within 4 years, over 20 Osage were known to have been killed or died unnatural deaths.  There was no single method of the killings.  Local law enforcement was corrupt and offered little hope to the Osage.  Finally, the killings reach the attention of the United States government and the matter is handed over to the nascent agency that would later be known as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, headed by a young J. Edgar Hoover.

Hoover desperately wanted a win, so he handed the case over to former Texas Ranger Tom White.  The book describes how Tom and his team laboriously searched through records and documents looking for clues.  What he finds was a truly cold and calculated scheme to steal the wealth from the Osage.

The author also provides insight into an era of US history that was not taught in my school growing up.

The book is a real page-turner.

Read:  May 28, 2017

5 Stars

Books Set in Europe: England

At Home, by Bill Bryson (2010)

Read: May 17, 2017

5 Stars