The Incredible Nellie Bly by Luciana Cimino and Sergio Algozzino

It is December, 1921 and the college periodical of Columbia University wants to publish a special issue celebrating American journalism in honor of the tenth anniversary of Columbia's Journalism school. Miriam, a fictional student at Columbia University's School of Journalism, wants to write about Nellie Bly's investigation of the insane asylum almost thirty years ago. Despite the passage of time, women journalists are still assigned frivolous topics and there are limited employment opportunities. Miriam hopes that by learning about Bly's experiences, she can highlight just how little has changed for women.

Miriam reaches out to Bly but is repeatedly turned away until finally Miss Bly gives in and agrees to see her. Miriam tells Bly that she wants to write an article about her to start a public debate about the issue of so few women admissions to Columbia's journalism school. But Bly remembers how in 1885, she wrote a letter to the Pittsburgh Dispatch, protesting an article denigrating those women who wanted to work. Bly signed her letter anonymously but came forward when Mr. Madden published an add asking the writer to come forward. Madden offered Bly whose name then was Elizabeth Cochrane, the opportunity to write an article about the status of women. She was paid and she got to know Wilson, the author of the offending article better. 

Miriam asks Bly how she came to have these modern ideas back then. Bly tells Miriam her real name and that she was born in 1864 during her mother's second marriage.  Her family lived in Pennsylvania and were well off, until her father's death. Her mother remarried a man who was violent and an alcoholic.Her mother left the abusive marriage and asked for a divorce. Seeing what her mother went through, Elizabeth decided she wanted to make sure she was economically independent.

When Bly refuses to tell Miriam about her investigation of the insane asylum because she believes she is "playing" at journalism, Miriam tells her she is "blinded by her own prejudice." Miriam informs Bly that she comes from a poor family and has had to work in a doctor's office. She reminds Bly that her mentor, Joseph Pulitzer founded Columbia's journalism school.

However, Bly relents and invites Miriam back the next evening to talk.But before talking about the asylum, Bly tells Miriam how she wanted to investigate the working conditions of female factory workers. There were stories about poor working conditions and low wages. Wilson convinced the paper's editor, Madden and suggested Bly disguise herself as a factory worker. Bly's reports caused a stir and threats from angry industrialists to withdraw their advertisements from the Pittsburgh Dispatch.

Bly continues, telling Miriam about her failed attempt to work in Mexico as a foreign correspondent, her decision to eventually leave for New York. In New York, Chief Editor Mr. Cockerill believed Bly to be an amateur and proposed that she prove herself by investigating Blackwell's Island, New York City's female mental institution. Posing as a mentally ill woman, Bly spent ten traumatic days in the institution but her report was ground changing.

Bly also tells Miriam about her investigation of women workers in factories, something she began while in Pittsburgh and her interview with Belva Ann Lockwood, who ran in the 1888 U.S Presidential election! She finally relates the events that led to her undertaking a journey around the world  for which she became famous.

Miriam comes to learn that some of Nellie's greatest accomplishments were ones that didn't garner much publicity. While she continued to cover the Pullman's Factory strikes and interview people like Eugene V. Debs, Emma Goldman and feminist Susan B. Anthony, she also reported from the front lines of World War I and quietly helped abandoned children and women in need.

Discussion

The Incredible Nellie Bly is an engaging account of the early life of Elizabeth Cochran Seaman whose pen name was Nellie Bly. A solid Introduction written by British journalist and author David Randall provides the basics of Nellie's life and is the perfect lead-in to this well done graphic novel. The authors use a story within a story to portray Nellie Bly's remarkable life. Fictitious journalism student Miriam decides to interview Nellie in 1921 in order to highlight the barriers women still are encountering in gaining admission to Columbia's school of journalism. Through these interviews, Nellie tells her story to an admiring Miriam.

Nellie's early family story is a bit unclear from the graphic arts panels: Her father,  Michael Cochrane had ten children with his first wife, Catherine, remarried and had five more children with his second wife Mary, including Elizabeth Cochrane. It was Elizabeth's stepfather, her mother Mary's second husband who was an alcoholic and abusive. However, for the most part the details of Nellie's story are well portrayed in the graphic artwork and the accompanying text.

Cimino and Algozzino incorporate not only the important events of Nellie's professional career but also their significant impact on social conditions of the late 1800s. For example, her investigative report on Blackwell's Island resulted in more funding to mental institutions and major reforms of other public institutions, while her investigation of women workers in factories helped increase the number of women editorial staff at The World.

Nellie also encourages Miriam to be persistent in spite of how she's treated by her editors and by Karl, when she takes her to see Belva  Ann Lockwood's grave. She also encourages Miriam to consider having both a career and marriage after Karl proposes but tells Miriam her work as a  journalist is a "hobby". 

Graphic artist Sergio Algozzino writes in his About The Artist at the back of the novel, that he was looking for a different technique to tell Nellie Bly's story. He "wanted a full, important line..." and after struggling to find the right tool, ended up creating the superb panels digitally.

The Incredible Nellie Bly captures her courage, determination and willingness to break social conventions in order to gain the right for women to be treated with respect and equality. This is still a timely lesson for today's young women and is done beautiful in this excellent graphic novel.

Book Details:

The Incredible Nellie Bly by Luciana Cimino and Sergio Algozzino
New York: Abrams Comic Arts  2019
144 pp.

You Bring The Distant Near by Mitali Perkins

You Bring The Distant Near follows three generations of women from an Indian-American family who immigrated from England to America. The novel explores the challenges they face and is told from various points of view over the years beginning in 1965 until 2006. To aid her readers, Perkins has included a small family tree at the front of the novel. The novel follows Ranee Das who is mother to Tara (Starry) and Sonia (Sunny) Das and grandmother to their daughters, Anna (Anu)Sen and Chantal (Shanti) Johnson respectively.

The novel opens in 1965 with Sonia participating in a swimming race at the British Club in Ghana. They are the only dark-skinned people at the club. Sonia, in the lead, loses the race when Ranee pulls her prematurely from the water. The novel is then divided into three parts.

Part I Strangers 1973-74 skips ahead to 1973 and the Das family is enroute from London, England to New York.  Tara, lighter skinned, loves to pretend she's various famous people, her latest being Twiggy. Once in America, she decides instead to channel Marcia from the Brady Bunch. Sonia, who is darker, younger is the academic. They are met in New York by Baba who takes them to their apartment in Flushing, a part of Queens. Sonia's mother questions the safety of the area when she notices most of the people are black. The Das family settle in, with Ranee making her daughters "American" clothes to help them fit in.

The first day of school, Ranee accompanies her children dressed in a green sari and golden bangles on each arm. The girls are tested, and Sonia is placed in the gifted class in grade nine, while Tara is enrolled in grade eleven. Tara immerses herself in school, Sonia finds solace in her diary and starts an Equal Rights Club at school. However Ranee struggles to be happy and fights often with Baba. Sonia's entries about her mother's treatment of Baba lead to change and to Ranee and Baba moving to a new house in Ridgeford, New Jersey. There Tara enrolls in theatre and Sonia is placed in advanced math, physics, English and French.

Part II Travelers 1976-81 sees the Das family struggle to cope with the death of Baba who is killed in an hit and run accident. This part of the story focuses on the journeys the two daughters undertake. Although pressured to return to Kolkata, Ranee decides to stay in the house Baba bought for her. Sonia meets Lou Johnson, a football player nicknamed "Black Lightning". The two of them fall in love during a trip to Paris after winning an essay contest. Lou helps Sonia come to terms with her Baba's death by bringing her into a Catholic church in Paris where she discovers God and inner healing. Tara travels to Bangladesh to scatter her father's ashes in the Ganges. To help her is Amit Sen, the boy whose marriage proposals she has twice turned down. After scattering her father's ashes, Tara travels to her family's ancestral home which was a jute farm that they lost to Muslims after the Partition. There Tara makes her peace with what happened, giving the family gifts. She agrees to marry Amit. Sonia becomes estranged from her mother after eloping with Lou. Even the fact that she is expecting her first child does not move Ranee to reconcile.

Part III Settlers 1998-2006 tells the story of Ranee's grandchildren, Chantal Johnson and Anna Sen. Chantal lives in Harlem with her parents, Sonia who is a freelance journalist and Lou who is a sculptor. Her cousin Anna lives mostly in Mumbai with her parents, her mother Tara is a Bollywood actress while her father Amit is a banker. They have a penthouse in Manhattan. Chantal's Grandma Rose (Lou's mother) and her Didu do not get along and when Chantal becomes upset over their fighting they decide to make peace. Anna is sent to Carver Independent School where Chantal attends. Anna finds school very different from what she's used to but she enjoys her life at Carver -except for the locker room and its lack of privacy. With the help of Chantal and some new friends, Anna remakes the locker room. Chantal's life is marked by her relationship with a rich, white boy named Martin Larsen in her senior year. Chantal doesn't believe they  have a future because Martin's family is so wealthy and they seem to care more for things than people. But Martin proves Chantal wrong when she wrecks his Porsche.

Anna becomes overwhelmingly distraught when Ranee decides to become an American citizen after the 9/11 attacks. However, Ranee decides to remake herself entirely as a modern "American" woman much to the distress of her family and in particular Anna. She decides to attend Lou and Sonia's Catholic church where she finds friendship and community. The novel ends with Ranee living in an apartment on her own and setting up a meeting with her kind young neighbour, Darnell who is black and who is looking for an old-fashioned girl!

Discussion

You Bring The Distant Near is a multi-generational story which deals with the themes of identity and prejudice as a Bengali family crosses from one culture into another. The focus shifts over time from new immigrants Rajeev and Ranee Das and their daughters Tara and Sonia to their first generation Indian-American granddaughters Anna Sen and Chantal Johnson and returns full circle to Ranee Das, the matriarch of the family. Each character struggles to understand their place within their own families and the world at large. Perkins has stated that the novel is about crossing borders, both geographical borders and the borders of life, from childhood to adult, from culture to culture - and the challenges that entails.

Ranee Das, mother of Tara and Sonia is a Bengali woman who was married at age eighteen in an arranged marriage. When she arrives in America she bears a prejudice against people with dark skin, even though her younger daughter, Sonia is dark skinned. Sonia is well aware of her mother's prejudice against dark skin, something she experiences on the flight to New York. "She...then swivels to take stock of my appearance. I brace myself. Sure enough, that familiar twitch of displeasure passes across her face. It's gone in a moment, but after years of rejecting her Light and Lively skin-bleaching cream, I know what makes her wince. The darkness of my skin." When they arrive in Flushing, New York, Ranee sees the many black children and immediately considers their neighbourhood to be dangerous. She refuses to let the girls go anywhere alone and is eager to move from Flushing telling the girls, "I've seen how those Negro boys look at you girls." Sonia objects insisting there is no caste system in America but Ranee tells her,  " 'All people are not treated equally,...It's like that everywhere in the world. In India, people assume that if you have dark skin, you're from a lower caste. Here, it's the same..."

Sonia's elopement with her black boyfriend Lou seems to cement Ranee's prejudice and it isn't until the birth of Tara's daughter, Anna that Ranee finally relents. Ranee's feelings about dark skinned people change - she loves Lou and Sonia's daughter Chantal, who is dark skinned. And by the end of the novel, Ranee is good friends with a young, caring, black man named Darnell who is her neighbour in Flushing, New York. In fact, Ranee acts to set up Darnell with her granddaughter Anna.

Ranee's identity crisis comes well after she's settled in America. She's still not an American citizen when the 9/11 attacks happen but this tragedy motivates her to become one. Up until this point, Ranee has worn a white sari, the clothing of a Bengali widow and has always stated ,"I'll die an Indian." After the citizenship ceremony, Ranee westernizes her clothing, cuts and dyes her hair, learns to drive, attends a baseball game and even asks Chantal to have a slumber party. She joins the Catholic church that Sonia attends, finding that this makes her feel American because she finally experiences a sense of community. Ranee's family worries but she finally explains to them that the attack changed her and that the city began to feel like her home. "It came nearer to my heart, not so distant."

Both Tara and Sonia struggle to find their identity in America. Tara's strategy is to change her identity completely and model herself after famous stars. In London she took on the persona of famous model Twiggy; in New York she attempts to remake herself into Marcia Brady from the Brady Bunch. These identities help her hide her Bengali identity and allow her to fit in. Eventually she drops the personas permanently but Tara's struggle with her identity continues into adulthood. Tara's mother and an unrelated "Auntie" attempt to arrange her marriage to another Bengali, Amit Sen. Tara refuses Amit's proposals twice because "Then Amit and I would become a Bengali couple in an arranged marriage, playing the same roles as our parents and grandparents and Das and Sen family ancestors have for generations." Amit flees to Bangladesh and later invites Tara to visit so she can fulfil her promise to spread her father's ashes in the Ganges River. In Bangladesh Tara realizes that she's spent her youth repudiating her Bengali heritage, never wearing saris (which she now finds quite beautiful), quitting harmonium lessons and Rabindra Sangreet (a type of India song) lessons. But after seeing her father's ancestral home, Tara finally comes to terms with her Bengali heritage and this frees her to acknowledge her love for Amit and to accept his marriage proposal.

Sonia's struggle with her identity as an Indian American is tied up in the women's rights movement of the 1970's. Sonia's activism likely began when she was pulled from the pool in 1965 so she wouldn't beat the white children in the swim race. Sonia views her Bengali heritage as patriarchal and considers her Ma's keeping of the Bengali restrictions for widows as being caught in a "patriarchal prison." Sonia is happy for her mother to become American but she also wants her to retain her identity as a Bengali too.

Perhaps the weakest part of Perkins story is that of Chantal and Anna. Chantal seems to be the most settled of all the characters regarding her identity, but she judges her friend Martin, on the basis of his family's wealth and their perceived focus on material things rather than people. His love of his Porsche is a "symbol of how my family cares about art and love and justice, while his family cares about...rich people stuff." But when Martin takes the fall for the damage Chantal does to his car, Chantal realizes he does care first about people - especially her, rather than things. In contrast Anna, who has grown up mostly in Mumbai believes they should preserve their Bengali heritage. She prides herself on truly knowing what being Bengali/Hindu means and this makes her very upset when Ranee undergoes her transformation. It is Uncle Lou who helps her come to terms with everything.
 " 'None of us have to be 100 percent American,' says Uncle Lou. 'What does that mean, anyway? Hyphens, for better or worse, are everywhere now. And the good old U.S.A makes space for lots of identities.'
Maybe he's right. Maybe 'being American' means you still have room in your heart for other things. Old things. Good things."

You Bring The Distant Near, takes it's title from a line from a poem, Thou Hast Made Me Known which is about welcoming those who are strangers or foreigners. It was penned by famous Bengali poet, Rabindranath Tagore who won the 1913 Nobel Prize for Literature.  Perkins captures the complex family dynamics, the care and love each member of the Das family have for one another, and the struggle to retain their culture and beliefs while attempting to understand and adopt those of their new country. The result is a story with characters and situations that seem realistic and interesting, a story that sheds light on the immigrant experience, one repeated generation after generation in America.

Book Details:

You Bring The Distant Near by Mitali Perkins
New York: Farrar Straus Giroux       2017
303 pp.

Counting Thyme by Melanie Conklin

Counting Thyme is a sweet, poignant novel about a young girl's struggle to cope with the changes in her life when her family moves from their home in California to New York city so her brother can receive a last ditch treatment for cancer.

Eleven year old Thyme Owen's family has decided to move from their home in California to New York city when her brother Val is accepted into a drug trial that might save his life. Five year old Val was diagnosed nine months ago with neuroblastoma or nerve cancer.

After spending their last week with Grandma Kay in San Diego, Thyme, her mother and older sister Coriander (Cori) and younger brother Valerian (Val) flew to New York where they were met by her dad who had travelled ahead of them. Thyme is not happy about this temporary move because it means leaving behind her best friend Shani, whom she's known since preschool. The plan is for the Owen family to stay in New York for three months; December, January and February while Val is treated. However when Thyme pressed her mother on whether they would be home in time for Shani's birthday on March 6th, her mother was vague.

Thyme and her family move into a three bedroom apartment in a four-story brick walk-up. Cori and Thyme are not thrilled to be sharing a bedroom. Thyme puts up the Calendar of Us Shani made for her. She also unpacks her Thyme Jar, a glass jar containing slips of paper stating a certain amount of free time she's earned due to chores, good grades or helping out. The time slips began after her eleventh birthday, when Val got sick. Thyme used them at first to spend time with Shani, but once she learned they were moving to New York, she began to save them in the hopes she could return home early to stay with her Grandma Kay or Shani's family.

Cori and Thyme start school in New York with Thyme attending MS 221 near their apartment. She is given a tour the first day by Principal Williams and meets Emily Anderson who takes her to her home room class taught by Mr. Ellison. In this class Thyme meets twins Delia and Celia and a boy named Jake Reese who has "brown skin and hair that stuck out like springs all around his head, dark at the root and sand brown at the end." and who gives Thyme "a floaty feeling". Thyme introduces herself but doesn't tell the class the real reason for her move.

While Thyme struggles to adjust to New York, her older sister Cori seems to have no problems, joining the drama club at school. A call to Shani on the weekend is wonderful until Thyme learns that she has partnered with Jenny Hargrove to finish their social studies project.  When Val begins his treatment, Thyme meets Mrs. Ravelli, a feisty Italian lady hired to help take her to school and cook dinners for the family. Val's treatments cause him considerable pain and this is distracting for Thyme at school as she worries about her brother. One day at lunch, Thyme helps Emily and her friend Lizzie copy flyers for Mr. Calhoun for the Wizard of Oz play that will run during Spring Fling. After Thyme rescues the ruined flyers for Emily, she offers to help Thyme settle into the school.

When Lizzie decides to audition for the part of Dorothy which Emily also wants and believes she should get, Thyme finds herself caught in the middle. She shouldn't care - after all she's leaving New York at the end of February, long before Spring Fling. Meanwhile Cori confronts their mother about her silence on what's happening with Val's treatments and they learn that doctors still have no idea whether the treatment will be successful or even if it's working.

But as Val's treatment progresses, Thyme finds herself building a life in New York city with her new friends Lizzie and Emily and coming to the realization that she might not return to San Diego, especially when she learns of the secret her parents have been keeping from her. When Val experiences a setback, suddenly saving time to return to San Diego is not so important when your younger brother may be running out of time.

Discussion

Author Melanie Conklin first learned about neuroblastoma as a new mother. She quickly became involved in baking cookies for the fund raiser, Cookies For Kids' Cancer. Childhood cancer strikes fear into parents like few other illnesses and it is an illness that has a far reaching effect not only on the children but also their families.

 Counting Thyme explores the challenges families experience as they cope with a family member fighting cancer through the perspective of an eleven year old girl. The focus of the novel is on the journey Thyme experiences over the period of several months: that of accepting her family's situation and the life changes that occur as a result.

Thyme and her sister Cori struggle to cope with Val's cancer diagnosis. His acceptance into a drug trial means temporarily moving to a new city, leaving behind friends, family and starting a new school mid-year. Because the move is to be temporary, Thyme isn't interested in making new friends, only maintaining her friendship with Shani. Her focus is backwards rather than towards the possibilities New York might offer. Although Thyme loves her brother, she wants to be back in San Diego and everything she does, whether it's helping her mother or doing things for Val, is to earn time which she hopes will allow her to leave New York City and return to San Diego before her family. She wants to resume her old life.


Mrs. Ravelli helps Thyme recognize the positive changes in her life. She tells Thyme that based on her life experience making new friends is a good start and that soon they will be "old friends". This upsets Thyme because she is still focused on her friendship with Shani. The possibilities of new friends and experiences in New York is unsettling. "...the idea settled strangely in my mind. With every person I helped, with every conversation I had, I was making ties. Ties to school. To New York. That wasn't what I wanted, but it was happening anyway."

Mrs. Ravelli tells Thyme when she first arrived in New York as an immigrant she was told to go to Little Italy for good pasta like that in the old country. However she found she had to make her own pasta for it to taste like what she remembered. Using this analogy she advises Thyme to make her life the way she wants it, despite her brother's illness. Thyme wonders does that mean returning to her life in San Diego or facing "the promise of something new"?  Thyme finds herself being pulled towards the latter as she develops new friendships with Lizzie, Emily and Jake and becomes involved in the school Spring Fling play - the Wizard of Oz.

When Jake mentions that he doesn't understand why Dorothy didn't get out of the way, knowing the tornado was coming, Thyme understands Dorothy's predicament because her life has been caught up in the tornado of serious illness. "Sometimes, you don't have a choice about where you go. Because it's somebody else's story you're living..."

But more and more life in New York becomes less Val's story and more her own story. She and Jake work on recreating the sound of a tornado for the play,  their friendship blossoms with a hint of a first crush and Thyme finds herself caring immensely when her friends Lizzie and Emily have a falling-out.

Thyme is finally forced to accept her family's circumstances when she discovers her parents have sold their house in San Diego and when Val becomes seriously sick. Her parents acknowledge that they should have told her but they also stress that she is an important part of the family and necessary for Val's recovery. Her dad tells her, "You need all the parts to make the press work. All of them together. That means you, too." while her mother says "Thyme, you're the glue. You're the one Val talks to when he's sad. You're so strong and so brave, taking on this whole new place the way you have..." Thyme realizes that "the missing piece wasn't San Diego after all. It was knowing that I counted. Seeing that I belonged."

The time that Thyme has so diligently collected in her Thyme jar takes on a new meaning for her. The Thyme jar represents her old life in San Diego. She was collecting "time" as a way of holding onto that life. But when Val becomes seriously ill, Thyme realizes that Val is the one who needs that time - the time to go through more treatments and get well. Being healthy Thyme go back whenever to see her friend Shani and in fact her parents offer to send her back on spring break. But for Val, time is more valuable. Realizing this Thyme gives the jar to her mother, she lets it go and in so doing, lets go of her desire to return to San Diego.She realizes that Val needs the time in New York and she needs to be with him.

"I worried that I was too late figuring out what mattered. Too late choosing my brother. It was funny how I'd thought my worries would go away if I could just make it home. But I would have the same problems no matter where I went, because I would still be me, and worries attach to people, not places."

The title of the book then is a double entendre referring to Thyme counting up the hours she saves so she can return to her old life in San Diego and to "Counting Thyme" as in Thyme's life also being important to her family and to herself. Thyme believes her parents are "too busy with Val and work and stuff to listen to me." but Mrs. Ravelli reveals that her mama talks about her all the time.Eventually Thyme discovers that she does count to her parents and to Val.

Conklin vividly portrays life for a family coping with serious illness. Thyme's Grandma Kay has told her that when she and Grandpa moved to San Diego "she spent a lot of time eating canned tuna and waiting for life to go back to normal after they moved." However, "she discovered that there was no normal - just normal for now." Thyme realizes that for her family whose life revolves around Val's illness,  "normal for now meant that things were always changing. Cancer had changed everything: the things I ate, the place I lived...what kind of normal would we find when we got back to San Diego?"

When Val spikes a fever, Mrs. Ravelli comes to Emily's Christmas party to take Thyme to the hospital. Her family spends the days before Christmas waiting to hear back from Val's doctor. Their family mood is often affected by how Val's health goes and good times, while relished, can be fleeting. Thyme states, "When good things happened with Val, the happy feelings stuck to us for days, like a coating of invisible fairy dust -- but even fairy dust runs out of power eventually."

Later on when Val begins his second cycle of treatment, Cori tells everyone about planning a fund-raiser for her drama club and Thyme notes that "for a few minutes, dinner felt normal. Like it was okay to talk about other things besides cancer treatments and acupuncture and blood tests."

Thyme doesn't tell her friends or classmates the real reason she and her family have come to New York because she doesn't want to "become the poor girl whose brother has cancer...And then that's all they would care about, because cancer is the most fascinating thing in the world when it isn't happening to you...And they can't help assuming things...Like, that cancer boy's sister wouldn't want to participate in the end-of-year talent show, because, obviously, she's too busy with cancer-y things to do a skit..."

Overall, Counting Thyme is a heart-warming story about looking forward instead of back, about identity, family and figuring out what matters most in life.


Book Details:

Counting Thyme by Melanie Conklin
New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons Ltd.     2016
300 pp.

The Memory of Things by Gae Polisner

On the morning of September 11, 2001, sixteen year old Kyle Donohue watches the first Twin Tower collapse from his classroom in Stuyvesant High School. As he is evacuated across the Brooklyn Bridge, Kyle spots what he first thinks is a bird, but soon discovers is a girl wearing a pair of giant white wings that look like part of a costume. She appears ready to jump but Kyle pulls her up and makes her run with him across the bridge. Kyle's father is back in Manhattan, where two planes have been flown into buildings like bombs. He's part of the Joint Terrorist Task Force, the first sent into crisis situations like this. At this point, Kyle has no idea if his father is alive or dead.

Kyle takes the girl who is covered from head to toe in white ash to their four bedroom apartment in Brooklyn Heights. He tells her that his mom and sister are in Los Angeles and that his uncle lives with them. Kyle is unable to reach his father or his mother by phone. At home, Kyle finds another message on his phone from his father, filled with sounds of crashing, sirens and chaos. His father asks him to contact his mom but also to get to somewhere safe. 

Kyle tells the girl to shower and gives her clean clothes and tells her she can rest in his sister Kerri's room. He then attempts to call his mom and Kerri at Chase Knolls Garden Apartments where they have been staying over the summer in Los Angeles. Kerri has been attending acting camp and her departure was delayed by a week when she got a callback for an audition. He is not able to get his call through though.

Meanwhile the girl gets cleaned up and Kyle notes that she's quite pretty with all the ash cleaned off. He informs her that he will wash her clothing, that he needs to reach his mom and tell his Uncle Matt about her presence. When he asks her her name, she tells Kyle she doesn't know which only puzzles and upsets Kyle more.

He decides to check up on his Uncle Matt who is in the guest room and finds him asleep in his wheelchair. Kyle's Uncle Matt was a lieutenant in the Emergency Services Unit before his motorcycle accident. A kind and very smart man he now lives with Kyle's family. Uncle Matt would defend Kyle from the criticisms of his Uncle Paul and his dad who believe all Donohue men are cops. It was especially bad after Kyle transferred to Stuyvesant. Now Kyle misses the old Uncle Matt. 

The scenes on the television screen confuse Kyle because they are saying that the North Tower collapsed when he knows he saw the South Tower fall. From the television Kyle learns that both towers have collapsed, that a plane was flown into the Pentagon and that a fourth plane believed to be hijacked, crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. Military jets have been scrambled and it is unknown how many other attacks might happen.

Eventually Kyle does receive a message from his mother who is not able to work a cell phone properly and keeps hanging up. She does let him know however that their flight has been cancelled and that they are going to try to find a place to stay in Los Angeles. In the guest room his uncle is watching coverage of the disaster in disbelief. Kyle fills him in on what happened to him that morning and on what he knows so far about the attack, and his mom and dad. 

Later on he also tells his uncle about finding the girl around his age on the bridge and that he has brought her to their apartment. He tells him that based on the amount of ash on her she must have been at the towers when they collapsed. His uncle suggests that Kyle call "Missing Persons" but Kyle tells him it's unlikely he will get through. As the day wears on and Kyle tries to carry on as much as possible, making pizza, taking care of his uncle and trying to reach his mother. What should he do with the girl who doesn't remember her name? Is his father safe? Will his mom and Kerri be able to return home soon? When will it be safe to go outside? Over the next several days Kyle will find himself falling for this mysterious, captivating girl. And he will discover his act of kindness in saving a girl in a moment of despair, gives her a second chance to make things right. In saving her, Kyle saves himself too.

Discussion

The Memory of Things is a poignant story about how,in the face of the incomprehensible, we struggle to continue on with our lives. The terrorist acts of 9-11 certainly can be described in this manner. How do we comprehend the act of hijacking two fully fueled planes, using them as bombs to bring down two iconic buildings trapping and pulverizing to death thousands of innocent people. Polisner was inspired to write The Memory of Things in the years after 9-11 but waited because she required time to process the depth of the tragedy.

To tell her story, Polisner uses the two main characters of Kyle and a girl whom readers eventually know as Hannah. Kyle's narrative is the principle one, written in prose because his memory is intact. Hannah's narrative is inserted into Kyle's and is in free verse. Initially Hannah's narrative consists of simple broken verse, representing her broken memory;
"Wait to fall
but don't
Am tethered here.
Turn.
A boy shouts,
eyes full of terror.
He grabs hold of me...

In the day following the terror attack, Hannah makes many references in her narrative that seem random and meaningless. For example,
(Words slip in, echoing and distant:
emboite,
attitude devant...)

emboite and devant being ballet terms. As Hannah spends time at Kyle's family's apartment, her memory begins to return and her narrative is more fluid and coherent.

The tears come so hard I can't catch my breath,
can't stop my body from shaking.
Kyle hugs me, and I fight him off.
I'm so angry and broken, I can't even bear to be hugged,
don't deserve to be hugged.
But then I give in, because I'm
so
lonely and
scared"

Eventually Hannah's story becomes coherent, revealing a heartbreaking story filled with grief and regret but not without hope.

As the tragedy unfolds, two people who would otherwise never have met, come together and briefly find comfort in each other, helping each other to cope and to begin healing. Their budding relationship is temporary though as Kyle suspects. "Besides I have this aching sense that what Hannah and I have is one of those things that happens in a vacuum, that can't be sustained under normal conditions. Under the pressures of school, and life, and parents, and siblings, and distance. It's something quiet and possessive, that will fall apart once it's diluted." Despite that both Kyle and Hannah have each other's contact information - she his email, he her phone number.

A major theme in the novel revolves around memories and how they are an important part of our lives, defining who we are and even the choices we make. This is demonstrated in the novel especially through the characters of Uncle Matt and Hannah Marconi. Kyle's Uncle Matt was badly injured in an accident, breaking his neck, jaw and fracturing his skull. His speech is slurred and he is partially paralyzed. Uncle Matt has been reciting things that appear to be random but Kyle knows he's working on a "practical skill called the method of loci, a memory trick in which certain types of data get stored in story like sequences." According to Kyle, his uncle "is a genius and a memory expert." Although he's been a cop, the other part of his life has revolved around competing in memory competitions. Before his accident, he was planning to attend the U.S. Memory Championships for the third time with the intention of winning. The fact that Uncle Matt is able to still practice the method of loci demonstrates to Kyle that despite his physical limitations his mind is still very sharp. When Hannah shows an interest in Uncle Matt and talks to him like he's present, she motivates him to practice his memory trick, leading Kyle to recognize that his uncle is healing and to tell his father that Uncle Matt needs to stay with them.

While Uncle Matt still has his memories, the girl Kyle rescues does not. She doesn't remember her name, is suicidal and dazed when he pulls her off the bridge. After a day or so, she tells Kyle "I keep remembering little things. Bits and pieces. Like those things that flash at the end of a movie reel when the film runs out..." She remembers voices, faces, music and dance steps. Her broken memory is reflected in her broken poetry narrative. Eventually Hannah recovers her memory after spending a few days in a safe place. Her memory of her last conversation with her father haunts her. Hannah's father, John Marconi is the lawyer for Harrison Highfront who is accused of raping a girl. Eventually Hannah's memory is restored when she sees a magazine article about her father and the case in Kyle's apartment. She tells Kyle that the last conversation she had with her father was an argument. The memory of those last words haunts Hannah.

For Kyle, the presence of Hannah helps him forget the reality of what is happening. When Kyle and Hannah are practicing Uncle Matt's memory trick, Kyle forgets the attacks, about Uncle Matt's accident, about Jenny Lynch's dad and Bangor's uncle dying in the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers. "I forget that this day isn't normal, that yesterday wasn't normal, that the whole world as we know it has stopped...But then she sits down and sighs, and like that, I'm slammed with the memory of things. The cold hard truth that she doesn't belong here with me, that this is just temporary..." Kyle notes working on the memory trick to remember ten insignificant things makes them happy because for a moment they forget what they can't or don't want to remember.

It's interesting how Polisner has her characters carrying on with seemingly mundane chores and the regular business of living. People need the familiar in times of stress to help them cope. While waiting to hear from his father and his mother, Kyle does laundry and cooks. His father returns home after several days of working at Ground Zero and Kyle wakes in the morning to him making a batch of pancakes. His father explains "It's been tough, Kyle, I won't lie. Brutal. Which is why I needed to get home. See you guys, do something normal. Sit and eat a few pancakes with you and my brother, here." People find comfort in the routine of daily tasks when times are difficult. They also need something to tether them to reality. Kyle is the tether that Hannah needs while she struggles to remember. "Well, it feels like that, Kyle, back there. Like I'm adrift, in soaking wet clothes that are too heavy with the weight of things I don't even know...It's like I'm here, solid, but I'm not connected to anything. I'm completely untethered. I know that makes no sense," she says. It does, I say, 'I think I get it. but you're wrong. You're tethered to me.' "

The Memory of Things is tender, a delicate story about two people who come together unexpectedly and help each other in a time of great distress - the terrorist attacks of 9-11. It is a story about fear, loss, struggle, love and hope. And a brilliant piece of writing by Gae Polisner.

Book Details:

The Memory of Things by Gae Polisner
New York: St. Martin's Griffin    2016
279 pp. 

The Gallery by Laura Marx Fitzgerald

Twelve-year-old Martha O'Doyle has been expelled from Blessed Name of Our Holy Mother parish school for not knowing her catechism and for arguing with Sr. Ignatius in catechism class. Her ma takes her with her to her job as head housekeeper at a Fifth Avenue mansion. Perhaps a year working as a maid will make her see the value in attending school.

Martha's mother's employer is Mr. J. Archer Sewell, owner of one of New York's most successful newspapers. Sewell's wife, Rose Pritchard is an invalid who hasn't left her rooms in years. Her father made his fortune from the West Virginia coal mines and then moved to New York where Rose was sent to the best schools and attended the society parties. Before her marriage to Mr. Sewell, Rose had a reputation for causing scandal, working in a sweatshop sewing neckties or running off to Paris.

The Sewell mansion is more than Martha ever imagined, with turrets and spires. Martha's mother gives her a quick tour of the house, showing off the opulent rooms with their gold pianos and sofas of satin. However, Martha notes that the walls are entirely bare "a chessboard of discolored squares and rectangles on the silk wallpaper, nails left behind like you'd see in a chap boardinghouse." When Martha asks her mother where all the pictures are, her mother tells her that Rose keeps them in her rooms as a comfort to her.

Martha is assigned to work in the kitchen under the supervision of Monsieur Leblanc and after a week she quickly learns the work of the kitchen. The other staff include two housemaids, Bridie and Magdalena and the footman, Alphonse. Besides preparing special meals for Mr. Sewell's guests, Martha also must prepare the same meals every day for Mrs. Sewell. So she is not "overstimulated" her meals of toast and tea and porridge with a "fancy sugar stirred into it that Mr. Sewell secured from some specialty grocer..." are loaded onto the dumbwaiter in the kitchen. The meals are sent to her rooms in the turret on the top floor and when she's finished the empty plates are sent back down in the dumbwaiter. After a month of working at the mansion, Martha meets Mr. Sewell who talks to her about politics and tells her she should read a book about becoming rich.

Then one night, Rose escapes out the dumbwaiter and the kitchen is set on fire. Rose's antics are published in the Yodel. Martha suspects that Alphonse is the one who leaked the story. When Martha brings tea to Rose's rooms she is astounded. "In just a small suite of rooms were crammed dozens of paintings, stacked three or four deep, leaning against walls or tables or wardrobes. Others were hung haphazardly, some big, some small, some dangling so they half jutted across a window. The walls pulsated with life -- no, with something larger than life. Gods and goddesses fought and frolicked. Dukes and duchesses followed me with their eyes. Winds swept through landscapes and bowls of glistening fruit dangled out of reach."

Mr. Sewell tells his wife she doesn't need to use the dumbwaiter to leave her room but she can leave by the door. The doctor notes that Mrs. Sewell has been reading Ovid and Dante's Inferno. When Mr. Sewell expresses his desire to sell off the books in the library, Rose tells him he cannot because they belong to her. As they try to determine what led to Rose's strange behaviour the night before, she complains that the porridge is too salty. But Martha made the porridge and remembers that she forgot the sugar that night. She notes that Rose has an angry red rash on her face and neck. When Dr. Westbrook suggests removing the paintings, Rose becomes agitated and is given a sedative. Afterwards, Martha confesses to her mother about forgetting the sugar and her mother moves her from the kitchen to upstairs as a maid.

Martha's dad, who is in vaudeville, unexpectedly shows up at home. Her father tells her that he's been very successful with his act but that he cannot stay and has to catch the next train to Syracuse. The next day Martha begins her week as an upstairs maid, cleaning the first floor. When she goes in to clean the gallery, she discovers four paintings hanging on the walls, neatly in a row, each draped over with a sheet. Martha finds the paintings intriguing but doesn't know much about them. The first painting, titled Proserpine by Rossetti looks to Martha like Eve holding the apple. However, Alphonse informs her the painting is not about Eve and the fruit is definitely NOT an apple. Before they can talk further, the two are discovered by Martha's Ma who sends Alphonse off and tells Martha that the paintings are Miss Rose's pride and her ticket into New York society. Ma explains that although the majority of the paintings are in her rooms, "Miss Rose gets it in her head that certain paintings need to be downstairs. For Mr. Sewell's visitors." After her ma leaves, Martha looks at the other three paintings which include Nature morte by Gustave Courbet, Still even by Willem Kalf and The Pomegranate by Pablo Picasso.

Proserpine

Nature morte by Gustave Courbet

Still Even by Willem Kalf

The Pomegranate - Picasso

The next day Martha talks to Alphonse about the paintings and he tells her that "Nothing on that wall is an accident." In response to her questions, Alphonse tells Martha that "Invinculis faciebat" means "made in prison" and that pomegranates are a fruit. Alphonse encourages Martha to make use of Rose's library, telling her he will leave the door unlocked for her. Unfortunately, this doesn't work out for Martha because she is quickly discovered in the library by her mother who tells her the books are extremely expensive and that Mr. Sewell would rather sell them and invest the money in the stock market. He cannot do this however, because the books, the house and the paintings all belong to Rose.

In her determination to learn more about the paintings on display in the Sewell Mansion gallery, Martha takes a side trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art after running an errand. A docent shows Martha the many paintings which contain pomegranates but this doesn't seem to help her. On her way home, Martha purchases a pomegranate from a fruit stand and has Bridie send it up to Miss Rose as a treat. It is returned with the word "HELP" pricked into it.  Martha feels "...those grand, expensive paintings held the secret to something. Something dark and threatening. And the pomegranate was at the center of it."

Discussion

The Gallery is an intriguing story about a young girl who quickly recognizes that the unusual paintings in the abandoned gallery in the mansion are a message to the outside world from a young wife who lives on the top floor. Once Martha deciphers the message her mission is to convince her mother about what is really going on in the Sewell mansion and to save Miss Ruth.

In Martha O'Doyle, Marx Fitzgerald has fashioned a smart, determined heroine who refuses to accept Mr. Sewell's version of events in his home. The paintings, the book by the Roman poet Ovid along with the message pressed into the pomegranate are clues to Martha suggesting something is not right in the Sewell household. When her first attempt to learn about the paintings is thwarted, Martha turns to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and then to the public library. "I needed to connect the dots somehow. I needed to go somewhere where I could find all the stories I needed without keys or admission fees or fear of Ma walking in. The public library."  In the library Martha learns about Ovid and his book, Metamorphoses. After reading the story about Proserpina, Martha is convinced that Rose Sewell is trapped in her rooms upstairs and that she is trying to escape. She also becomes convinced that her mother knows what is going on in the Sewell house but because of her attachment to the master, she cannot see the truth behind the events.

The mystery is gradually uncovered as Martha comes to understand the complex relationship her mother has with Mr. Sewell and the alterior motive Mr. Sewell might have for wanting to gain control over his young wife's inheritance. The person Martha needs to convince most is her mother, because her ma truly believes that Miss Rose is mentally unstable. When Martha tells Alphonse what she has uncovered he tells her that Mr. Sewell is powerful and able to create any story he wants because he is wealthy and he controls a newspaper. But he also tells her that "Mr. Sewell has convinced your mother that this bizarre scene is in service to her mistress. So let us just say, the lady of the house is not the only one that Mr. Sewell has imprisoned."

Marx Fitzgerald brings her wonderful story to a satisfying conclusion, tying up all the loose ends and having those who deserve to, get their "just desserts".  In her author's note at the back of the novel, Marx Fitzgerald states that The Gallery came about after she found some fascinating stories in old newspapers from the 1920's and '30's. Into these stories, the author has woven in some of the most famous works of art, giving young readers the chance to learn about them. She also has her main character, Martha learn about the classical Greek myth of Proserpina. This makes The Gallery not only engaging but a great chance for young readers to explore other Greek myths on their own.

In her Author's Note, Marx Fitzgerald answers questions the story in The Gallery brings up, providing background information about the historical setting of the novel. The Gallery takes place in late 1928 and early 1929, before the historic Great Crash of October, 1929. It's a good thing Miss Rose was able to save her paintings and books because had Mr. Sewell sold them and invested in the stock market he would have lost everything in that crash.

The author does mention that Italian immigrants like Alphonso Vanzetti would have been able to easily change their name in this era. This is partly true - immigrants did often anglicize their names - Pasquale became Patrick for example. However many Italian immigrants like my grandfather did indeed have passports issued by the Italian government and young men under the age of 18 in Italy were not allowed to emigrate unless they were travelling with their families. All young men were also registered for armed service at birth and were expected to report on their eighteenth birthday. They had to provide proof as to why they could not fulfill this obligation even if they were in Canada or America.

The Gallery is a wonderfully refreshing and enjoyable novel, suitable for all ages. Well written, completely riveting, complete with a likeable heroine.

Artwork attributions:
Dante Rossetti: Proserpine © [W. Graham Robertson] Photographic Rights © Tate (1940), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported),http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/rossetti-proserpine-n05064

Gustave Courbet:  https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/gustave-courbet-still-life-with-apples-and-a-pomegranate

Willem Kalf: Still Life with Ewer, Vessels and Pomegranate Details of artist on Google Art Project [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Pablo Picasso: The Pomegranate http://www.harvardartmuseums.org/art/222185

Book Details:

The Gallery by Laura Marx Fitzgerald
New York: Dial Books for Young Readers    2016
321 pp.

The Sun Is Also A Star by Nicola Yoon

Daniel Jae Ho Bae's older brother Charlie Jae Won Bae has just been kicked out of Harvard University. Daniel's parents who are immigrants from South Korea are disappointed and angry that their beloved first-born son who can do no wrong has failed. Charlie doesn't like Daniel and the feeling is mutual. As a little boy, Daniel looked up to his older brother but that changed when Charlie pushed him away to be with friends.

Daniel and Charlie's parents Min Soo and Dae Hyun met and married in South Korea and came to New York City to start a new life. With the help of a cousin they opened a beauty supply shop called Black Hair Care which sells hair care products to the African American residents of New York. They expect their children to be successful to be doctors. Now that Charlie has been forced to withdraw, the pressure is on Daniel to gain admission to a good school and to stick to the path chosen by his parents - becoming a doctor. But Daniel doesn't want to be a doctor. Instead he wants to be a poet.  He's refused to apply to Harvard, but has an interview today with a Yale alum.

Daniel dresses in his new gray suit and a bright red tie for the interview and takes the Westbound 7 train to Manhattan where his favourite barber is located. He has the entire day free before his interview and he decides he will "do whatever the world tells him to", that he will "blow in the direction of the wind."  Enroute the train is stopped in a tunnel just before the Times Square station by the conductor who encourages everyone to find God. From Times Square Daniel decides to walk to the barber keeping an eye for a "Sign". He stops outside a church on Thirty-Seventh Street but when it's locked his sits down to people watch. That's when Daniel sees a black girl with a huge Afro and huge pink headphones completely blissed out listening to music. Daniel recognizes that she's passionate about music and finds this attractive. He decides to follow her when she enters a music store called Second Coming Records. 

Natasha Kingsley, her nine year old brother Peter and her parents Samuel and Patricia are being deported tonight. She and her parents are undocumented, illegal immigrants from Jamaica. They were discovered when her father was charged with a DUI.  Natasha decides to try one last time to prevent their deportation by going to the offices of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. On her way into the USCIS offices, Natasha has her personal effects scrutinized by Irene, one of the many security guards. She's late for her 8a.m. appointment with Karen Whitney by five minutes and she is refused. Just as she's about to be escorted out by security, a brown-skinned man by the name of Lester Barnes intervenes. Barnes tells Natasha that her family is here illegally and that she has to leave. He attempts to tell her "Everything is irie there, man" but Natasha questions him about whether or not he saw the real Jamaica on his trip. She begins to cry telling him she planned to attend college and will be returning to a country she doesn't know and hasn't lived in since she was eight. Barnes gives her the name of a lawyer, Jeremy Fitzgerald who can "fix" her situation. Natasha has an appointment at eleven a.m. and so she decides to walk to the lawyer's office and stop in at her favourite record store along the way.

Inside Second Coming, Natasha is disgusted to see her ex-boyfriend Rob and his new girlfriend, Kelly, making out and stealing records. Also watching is a stranger, a Korean boy who is astonished at what Rob and Kelly are doing.Natasha refers to him as Red Tie and together they watch as Rob and Kelly are confronted by a store employee. Daniel introduces himself and shakes hands with Natasha but she's not interested, doesn't tell him her name and tells him to have a nice life. Daniel follows Natasha out of the store and when she goes to step off the curb to cross the street, Daniel sees a BMW running the red light and pulls her out of danger. Natasha is stunned but grateful despite her headphones being broken. Daniel presses her to tell him her name which she does and he invites her to get something to eat. He learns that Natasha is from Jamaica and that she has an important appointment to keep, something that is causing her worry.

While Daniel believes he could have the life his father wants for him and be a great doctor, "something about Natasha makes me think my life could be extraordinary.." Daniel finds himself inexorably attracted to Natasha. In fact, he believes he's falling in love with her even though he knows being with a black girl will never gain his parent's approval. In the coffee shop, Natasha is not friendly towards Daniel and is dismayed to discover that Daniel is falling for her. She tells him not to fall in love with her because she has no intention of falling in love with him. In fact she doesn't believe in love because it can't be measured and is temporary.

So Daniel challenges Natasha that he can get her to fall in love with him. To do this he decides to use some of the questions from a study mentioned in the New York Times. But what Daniel doesn't realize is that time is running out for them. Are they destined to be together? Can Fate intervene?

Discussion

The Sun Is Also A Star is a beautifully crafted novel that explores the way our lives are inexplicably interconnected to one another. Throughout the tapestry that is woven in this story, Nicole Yoon asks her readers to consider the role of God, Fate or chance in what often seems like random encounters in our lives.

The central characters are Jamaican born, illegal immigrant Natasha Kingsley and Korean-American Daniel Jae Ho Bae. Around them revolve a cast of smaller characters that include Natasha's father Samuel, Daniel's brother Charlie and his father, Dae Hyun Bae, Irene a security guard at USCIS, the train conductor, the BMW driver Donald Christiansen, Attorney Jeremy Fitzgerald, his assistant Hannah Winter, a Korean waitress, and the building security guard named Joe. Although Daniel and Natasha affect each others lives significantly so do the other characters and in particular one character who plays an unexpected part in bringing them back together.

Like the string art on the novel's front cover, Yoon weaves a set of colourful, imaginative narratives together that portray the desperation of a girl to stay in America while demonstrating the threads that connect us all. The Sun Is Also A Star brilliantly demonstrates how we are all interconnected and asks us to consider the origin of the meetings that happen between people. Are these encounters coincidence, random acts that happen in the universe or do they happen due to Fate, destiny or God? Of course the main encounter in the novel is that of Daniel and Natasha. Were they destined to meet and fall in love or was it just random chance?

The two main characters view life very differently and thus approach this question very differently. Natasha is intelligent and practical. Like most people today, she doesn't "like temporary, nonprovable things, and romantic love is both temporary and nonprovable." While her mother believes everything happens for a reason, and her father prefers to see the hand of God in things, Natasha believes "that life is just a random series of good and bad things that happen until one day you die. There is no fate, no destiny, no meant-to-be." Natasha believes she's a realist: "It's better to see life as it is, not as you wish it to be. Things don't happen for a reason. They just happen." Natasha intends to be a data scientist but she feels this choice is not destiny. "I chose this career. It didn't choose me. I'm not fated to be a data scientist...I did research on growing fields in the sciences...No fate."

Practical Natasha believes the "poetic heart, the heart of love songs and soliloquies...is fickle and will lead you astray. It will tell you that all you need is love and dreams." Despite this, Natasha's "fickle, nonpractical, non-future-considering, nonsensical heart wants Daniel. I know there's no such thing as meant-to-be and yet here I am wondering if maybe I've been wrong." This sets up an intense conflict within Natasha who believes that "love is just chemicals and coincidence."  Natasha believes in "determinism -- cause and effect. One action leads to another leads to another. Your actions determine your fate." She views the actions of one individual human as inconsequential compared to the forces at work in the vast universe. 

In contrast, Daniel, an aspiring poet  challenges Natasha's practical, less passionate outlook on life. "We are capable of big lives...Why choose the practical thing, the mundane thing? We are born to dream and make the things we dream about." Unlike Natasha, Daniel believes in love and shortly after meeting her, he's certain he's going to fall in love with her. Daniel believes in Fate or destiny - their meeting might have been by chance but once it happened, falling in love was inevitable. When Natasha reveals that she is hours from being deported, Daniel is deeply hurt. He struggles and wonders if "Life is just a series of dumb decisions and indecisions and coincidences that we choose to ascribe meaning to."  He considers what Natasha told him that he's looking for someone to rescue him from his life because then the decisions about his future will be out of his control. "It won't be me defying my parents. It will be Fate." 

But Daniel's faith that something else is at work in their lives is rekindled when he and Natasha find each other a second time that day - he returns to the building where she had the interview while she goes back to his house hoping to meet him there. Perhaps it is destiny or Fate that intervenes but Daniel's brother does the only good thing he will do for his brother in his life, he gives Daniel's phone number to Natasha. They discover yet another coincidence - Daniel's interview is in the same building as Natasha's lawyer and that the interview is with her lawyer, a Yale alumnus.While Daniel believes in God and that the connection people share with one another represents God, Natasha believes only in science to explain that connection. When it becomes apparent that Natasha will have to leave, Daniel has succeeded in his quest but while he hopes there will be "something else that could lead them back to each other" someday. For Natasha, maybe meant to be isn't forever.

 Themes and ideas from Natasha's narratives are explored further in separate chapters. For example, when Natasha meets with Lester Barnes at the Immigration office he makes reference to the Jamaican term "irie" which means good or pleasant. He tells Natasha of his limited Jamaican experience, "I had a nice time. Everything is irie there. You'll be all right." But in the chapter titled "irie. An etymological history" Natasha explores the meaning of irie, but also how words can mean one thing to one person -like Barnes, but a totally different thing to another person. Barnes really doesn't know or understand the Jamaican concept of irie in the same way that Natasha might. "A word can start off meaning one thing and end up meaning another. Is it from overuse and oversimplification, like the way irie is taught to tourists at Jamaican resorts? Is it from misuse, like the way Natasha's father's been using it lately?"

Yoon also shows her readers how the slightest of our actions can influence another person in ways we might not know. Irene who is the security guard at USCIS loves her job because it is the sole source of connection with other people in her life. She slows down each bin she needs to search, forcing people to "look up and meet her eyes." Irene decides that she will kill herself, something she's been contemplating for some time. However, Natasha, believing that Attorney Fitzgerald can save her family from deportation, decides to phone Lester Barnes asking him to thank Irene. Her delaying Natasha getting through security resulted in the chain of events that led her to meeting Daniel. Barnes call to Irene ultimately saves her life, leads her to start on a new path and results in her, years later helping to reunite Daniel and Natasha.

The Sun Is Also A Star is another brilliant, beautiful novel by Nicola Yoon. Her stories are engaging, thoughtful and remarkably well crafted. Nicola Yoon grew up in Jamaica and also in Brooklyn New York. Her second novel makes her a force to be reckoned with in young adult literature.

Book Details:

The Sun Is Also A Star by Nicola Yoon
Canada: Doubleday Canada    2016
344 pp.

The World Outside by Eva Wiseman

Wiseman has crafted yet another interesting novel that informs and engages young readers about the Crown Heights riots of 1991.

Seventeen-year-old Chanie Altman belongs to the Lubavitcher Hasidic community in Crown Heights, New York. She lives in a huge home with her Babba, her mother and father, her twin brother Moishe and her older brother Yossi. Chanie spends much time caring for her twin brother who was disabled during a difficult birth.

Chanie's family, along with others in the Crown Heights Hasidic community, follow the teachings of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson.  Hasidic Jews live by strict rules; boys and girls do not mingle, there is no television and they do not go to movies, they only listen to Jewish music, and they never read non-religious books. The boys do not continue secular schooling after grade five while the girls attend seminary and then marry.

Chanie and her friends, Deborah Leah and Faygie Kauffman are in grade twelve at Bais Rivkah, a Lubavitcher high school in Crown Heights. Chanie is different from her friends as she loves music and especially wants to sing, which is forbidden to Lubavitcher girls. She also is beginning to question all of her beliefs.

One Sunday in March, Chanie, Deborah and Faygie, go to the mall to hand out candles and prayer leaflets to Jews. During this outreach, Chanie meets David Goldberg, a handsome young man with beautiful blue eyes. Although Daniel is of Jewish background, he is not religious. Chanie feels instantly attracted to him, something she terms the "Evil Inclination" which she tries to resist.

Soon after, David begins coming to her home to study the Torah with Yossi, something that shocks Chanie. This leads Chanie and David to begin secretly meeting. At first Chanie plans to tell David she cannot meet him again as it is forbidden. When David overhears her singing to Moishe, he is impressed by her beautiful voice. Believing her to be very gifted, David encourages Chanie to apply to Julliard, despite that fact that, for her, singing is forbidden.

Meanwhile Chanie meets a black girl, Jade, who is from Boston and is staying in Crown Heights with her Aunt Rita Mae. Jade has taken the semester off from her studies at Vassar to decide what she wants to do with her life. Chanie is warned by her mother not to mix with Blacks who do not trust their Jewish neighbours, but Chanie has other ideas. Soon she and Jade are meeting at Yoni's Yummi Pizza Parlour where Jade encourages Chanie to discover what she wants from life. Chanie explains to Jade that members of the Lubavitch Sect believe they must do what the Rebbe tells them to.

Unknown to her parents, Chanie continues to see both Jade and David, developing a strong friendship with Jade and following through on David's suggestion to apply to Julliard. Events come to a climax when a black boy in Crown Heights is struck and killed by one of the cars in Rabbi Schneerson's entourage. Set against the riots against Jews in Crown Heights, Chanie must decide her path in life and determine what matters most to her. Will she follow her dreams or will she remain true to her beliefs?

Discussion

The World Outside is a coming of age story set within the Lubavitch-Hasidic Jewish community of Brooklyn, New York in the late twentieth century. 

The Lubavitch-Hasidic movement was founded in the late eighteenth century in Russia. The movement moved from Russia to Poland, and then with the outbreak of Nazism in Europe, to Brooklyn, New York in the 1940's. The Hasidic movement was brought to America by the then rabbi, Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, who passed away in 1950.

Menachem Mendel Schneerson who became the Rebbe or leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement in 1951, was a Russian-American. Born in Nikovaev, which was part of Russia, in 1902, Schneerson came to New York in 1941,escaping Nazi Europe. In 1991, a car in Schneerson's motorcade, fell behind the lead car and ran a red light. In doing so, the car struck two seven-year-old Guyanese-American children, Angela and Gavin Cato. The children were pinned under the car, killing Gavin while Angela survived.  The accident triggered the Crown Heights riot that lasted three days, from August 19 to 21, 1991. Jews were attacked by the Black residents, homes damaged and businesses looted. An Jewish international student was murdered. The riot had long-lasting implications for both the Jewish and Black communities and the city of New York.

The Hasidic community believes in traditional roles for men and women. Women, while they do work outside the home in secretarial, retail and in teaching in girls' religious schools, are seen as wives and mothers. Hasidic women believe in dressing modestly and those who are married wear wigs and a scarf. Hasidic men are recognizable with their dark clothing, black hats and long beards. Men and women are segregated: boy and girls are educated separately and men and women do not mingle at social events. As shown in the novel, the Lubavitch-Hasidic sect is involved in outreach to other non-sect Jews.

In The World Outside, readers learn what life is like in the Lubavitch-Hasidic community through the character of Chanie who is deeply conflicted. She struggles with the beliefs her Hasidic sect hold dear and her desire to see some of the outside world. While Chanie's choice might disappoint some readers, the reality is that for the type of sect that Chanie belongs to, her beliefs are deeply ingrained and the ties to her large family are deeply held. Wiseman does a wonderful job of portraying the internal conflict Chanie struggles against. Readers will suspect that Chanie's difficult and uncompromising mother has likely faced similar choices in her past. Many of the other characters in the novel are well developed and interesting; Chanie's strict and forceful mother, Jade who is open and welcoming with her friendship, and David who falls in love with Chanie and who demonstrates his love for her by his care for her family.

Chanie's application to Julliard felt unrealistic especially given that Chanie had no formal music training and could not read music. Julliard auditions are rigorous and likely included submitting a prescreening audio recording even back in 1991. Overall though, The World Outside offers a unique look at a section of American society that has chosen to live life very differently from the secular world. The novel asks readers to consider themes of rebellion, reconciliation and coming of age within a strict society that has unique expectations. 

Book Details:
The World Outside by Eva Wiseman
Toronto: Tundra Books    2014
232 pp.

Fever by Mary Beth Keane

Fever presents a fiction account of the woman known to history as "Typhoid Mary" - Mary Mallon. The novel is divided into five parts beginning with a prologue, Habeas Corpus, Liberty, His Banner Over Me Is Love, and an Epilogue.

The Prologue has Mary remembering working at the Kirkenbauer's in the summer of 1899 - the first time typhoid struck a house while she was employed. This incident is to haunt Mary for the remainder of her life, because of the little boy, Tobias, who dies from typhoid.

In Habeas Corpus tells the story of Mary's incarceration and her attempts to secure a release from quarantine. It is 1907 and Mary tells how she is tracked down and arrested, taken first to Willard Parker Hospital where she is asked to submit to gallbladder surgery. When she refuses, Mary is sent to North Brother Island to be quarantined. Eventually she is given her own little cottage and her meals are provided for her. She must provide samples of her urine and feces.

She writes her lover, Alfred Briehof, and asks him to find a lawyer to help her. However, Alfred isn't much help to her, writing to Mary only nine times in her first year on North Brother. In 1909, Mary does eventually get a lawyer, Francis O'Neill, who manages to get a hearing for Mary. O'Neill tells Mary that she should swear before the judges that she will not cook anymore and that this will allow her to be set free.

Mary and O'Neill prepare for the hearing while life goes on for Mary on North Brother. Interspersed are flashbacks of Mary remembering a time when she purchased the exact same hat as her wealthy employer, Mrs. Bowen, the time when the wealthy tried to organize a food collective, and when little Elizabeth Bowen became ill. Other flashbacks in this part of the book include her early life in Ireland as a poor orphan living with her grandmother, her arrival in New York where she lodges with her Aunt Kate and her husband, Paddy Brown, her first jobs as a laundress, and the first time she meets Alfred. The reader also learns about Mary and Alfred's tumultuous relationship that is further strained by his alcoholism and chronic unemployment.

At the hearing Mary manages to meet with Alfred, who misses her but seems distant. Mary is sent back to North Brother and she almost gives up. Eventually Alfred comes to visit her at North Brother and tells her that he is engaged to marry another woman, Liza Meany who is a widow. This is a very low point for Mary in her life. Mary gains her freedom when a new Health Commissioner, Lederle is installed. She heads back to New York and finds employment as a laundress.

In Liberty, we learn more about Albert's life and how he tries unsuccessfully to straighten his life out. When he learns that Mary is set free he tries to see her but she won't have anything to do with him. This rejection affects Albert deeply, causing great hardship and suffering in his life.

In His Banner Over Me Is Love, Mary and Albert eventually find one another but the past cannot be rekindled. Their lives have been irreparably altered and yet the more things have changed, the more they are the same, with Mary basically supporting Albert by earning a living as a cook. This of course, has the expected result of her causing more outbreaks of typhoid and her eventual permanent incarceration.

The Epilogue sees Mary in her old age still struggling to deal with her situation and her conscience revisiting the Kirkenbauer incident and perhaps finally recognizing that she did in fact cause a child to die and that maybe she might have known this all along.

Discussion

Mary Beth Keane presents a riveting fictional account of a young Irish woman known forever to history as "Typhoid Mary". Typhoid Mary was the name (among others) given to thirty-seven year old Mary Mallon who was one of the first people known to modern medical science as a healthy carrier of disease. Mary had never had typhoid herself, but carried in her gallbladder, Salmonella typhi, the strain of bacteria known to cause typhoid. Mary admitted to rarely washing her hands after using the bathroom and when cooking. The bacteria was transmitted to others through any uncooked food Mary Mallon prepared, causing them to become sick with typhoid.

At the time Mary lived, the early 20th century, scientists were just beginning to understand the role of micro-organisms, such as bacteria, in illness. It was not known that a person could be completely healthy yet make others sick by being a carrier of harmful bacteria. This was a relatively new discovery.

Mary's trouble began in 1906 when she worked as a cook for the Warren family at Oyster Bay, a place not known to suffer from typhoid outbreaks. Six people became ill from typhoid. Warren hired Dr. George Soper, a sanitation engineer, to try to find the cause of the outbreak in his home. Soper learned that the family had hired an Irish cook three weeks prior to the outbreak and soon discovered that many other outbreaks followed the employment of this same cook. He discovered the cook was Mary Mallon, an Irish immigrant. When Soper approached Mary, asking her to give stool and urine samples, she refused to believe him, was outraged by his request and refused. Eventually, after several attempts to obtain convince Mary that she was spreading illness wherever she went, Mary was arrested and sent to North Brother Island where her stool samples tested positive for the typhoid bacteria.

After several hearings, Mary was allowed to go free if she promised not to seek employment as a cook. She attempted to work as a laundress, but eventually returned to working as a cook and this led to her infecting more people with typhoid. In 1915, a major outbreak of typhoid at Sloane Hospital for Women resulted in Dr. Soper finally catching up with her and she was once again sent to North Brother Island where she remained for the rest of her life.

It's hard to comprehend Mary's behaviour today, but at the time, Soper's theory was very new and many people did not understand how a healthy person with no sign of disease could cause others to become ill. In addition, public health policies had no way yet of dealing with such a situation, so authorities were at a loss as to how to proceed. Mary was also well aware of the prejudices that existed at that time against immigrants, especially those from Ireland. She felt she was being unjustly targeted.

Keane does a wonderful job telling Mary's story from her perspective providing the reader with an account that is rich in detail and informative. Keane's portrayal of Mary allows us to see how she might have felt, how she might have viewed herself, and those who pursued her within the context of her own time. 

That the author did a great deal of research is evident in her writing. Keane provides vivid descriptions of life in New York City at the turn of the 20th century. It was a fetid, stinking mess, city streets full of rotting garbage, decaying horse carcasses, and overwhelmed with horse shit from the thousands of horses working the streets everyday. She also provides significant details about Mary Mallon and her life on North Brother, as well as the hearings to free Mary.

Fever attempts to give to Mary Mallon, what history has not and that is a measure of humanity. Keane encourages her reader to try to understand how Mary might have viewed her unusual situation, what she experienced as her life was turned upside down by something she didn't understand, in a time when prejudices ran strong against immigrants and those who had stepped outside of genteel society's parameters. Mary feels she is being singled out because she is a single working woman who lives with a man to whom she is not married. Mary notes how the wealthy, when looking for domestic help, don't inquire so much about their skills, but rather seem more focused on their religiosity.

"They all say they want a good cook, but what they want even more is a worthy project."

Mary did not want to be a project and was understandably humiliated and angered at such treatment.

Mary's lover, Albert Briehof was a genuinely unlikable character. Albert was a German immigrant who could not hold down a job, was an alcoholic and eventually a drug addict. He was unable to  commit to anything or anyone in life. Mary's attraction to him was both puzzling and annoying.  Her forced incarceration on North Brother ultimately destroyed their relationship, although Keane implies that it was already failing by the time she was sent to the island.

Fever will definitely appeal to fans of historical fiction and would make an excellent choice for a book club selection. There are plenty of themes and issues to explore for group discussion including the rights of patients with communicable diseases, the prejudice against Irish immigrants, the treatment of Mary Mallon, and social class distinctions in early 20th century America.

Nova ran a program called The Most Dangerous Woman in America in 2004 which was based on the book, Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public's Health by Judith Walzer Leavitt. It provides excellent background into the unusual case of Mary Mallon.

Book Details:
Fever by Mary Beth Keane
New York: Scribner 2012
306 pp.

Threads and Flames by Esther Friesner

The novel opesn with thirteen-year-old Raisa recovering from typhus. She is being cared for by Glukel, the neighbour who took in Raisa and her older sister Hena years ago after their mama died. Raisa discovers her hair has been cut short which Glukel explains was done because "...Too much hair drains away a sick person's strength."  Raisa learns that during her illness, Glukel's nephew, Nathan who lived with them, has also died.

It was because of Nathan that Henda left the shtetl in Poland for America four years ago. Henda had to leave because Nathan refused to leave her alone, determined that she should marry him.

When Raisa begins to feel stronger, Reb Avner, the rabbi comes to speak with her and tells Raisa that he knows Henda has been sending Reb Laski money so that she could also travel to America. Before she left, Henda gave Reb Laski their mother's jewelry and a pair of silver candlesticks. Once there was enough money for Raisa to travel, Reb Laski sent a messenger to the shtetl from Warsaw with the candlesticks and the message that there was now money for Raisa but he didn't know where she lived. Instead he was told by the innkeeper's son that Raisa had died and the messenger and the candlesticks returned to Warsaw. And Henda was sent a letter telling her of Raisa's death.

Glukel accepts that Raisa is leaving for America. During her recovery Raisa is visited by her friends Yitta, Avigal and Dina as well as the blacksmith Yossel and his wife Sarah. When she is well enough, Raisa travels to the train station by peddler trusted by Reb Avner and after various means arrives at the port of Bremerhaven in Germany. There she passes an inspection by the doctor and is allowed to board the ship for America. On board she is taken down into the ship where her berth is in the crowded, smelly belly. There she is befriended by another young Jewish girl, Zusa Reshevsky who is travelling for America to join her mother. Zusa speaks German, Yiddish and Polish and teaches Raisa how to read Yiddish. Their journey is uneventful until a little girl named Brina is orphaned and Raisa and Zusa decide to care for her.

When they arrive in Hoboken, N.J., the three girls along with the other steerage passengers are ferried to Ellis Island where Raisa and Brina become separated from Zusa. Raisa and Brina pass their physical examinations and  enter New York city. There, Raisa intervenes to help Luciana, an Italian girl she met on the boat, from being kidnapped by a group of people. Luciana is freed by her brother Paolo and his friends who arrive to help Raisa. In thanks for her help, Paolo and Luciana help her located Henda's apartment building and tell her that if she should need more help to come to Delvecchio's grocery on Mulberry.

Raisa discovers that Henda has been missing for months. She learns from Bayleh, a Jewish woman who lives on the fifth floor,  that Henda was sorking at the American Pride Ladies' Garment company until the big strike a year ago. Henda walked out but when the strike ended after four months,  she was not hired back because she was so involved in fighting for workers' rights. Bayleh also tells Raisa that her sister received a letter that deeply upset her and that a man Henda was seeing came and took her away. Raisa realizes that Henda received the letter falsely informing her that she had died from typhus.

Raisa and Brina stay for a short time with Bayleh, her husband Mottel and their family while they hunt for a place of their own. After a tiring day with no prospects, Raisa and Brina end up at a synagogue where they are helped by a young student, Gavrel Kamensky. He lives in a tenement with his mother, father and sister, Fruma who works at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory. Mrs. Kamensky offers Raisa and Brina a place to stay and Raisa begins working for a woman in her dress shop. But when the work proves to be tiring and poorly paid, Gavrel takes Raisa to his friend Rachel who teaches her how to use a sewing machine. Eventually an opportunity to work at Triangle happens: Fruma knows of a young woman who is expecting a baby and leaving her job. Raisa is able to secure that position and begins working on the ninth floor of the Triangle factory on Asch.

Raisa continues to search for her sister Henda, begins learning English at the and reunites with Zusa and Luciana, with all three girls soon employed at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory. Raisa also finds herself falling in love with the kindly Gavrel. When disaster strikes at the Triange factory on a March Saturday, Raisa's life is forever changed in ways she never thought possible.

Discussion

Threads and Flames is a fictional account of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire which occurred on March 25, 2011. This disaster forever changed the way factories treated their workers and helped to create support for workers unions and workers rights. At 4:45pm at the end of a Saturday workday, workers were in the process of leaving the building and collecting their belongings when fire broke out in the scraps of material beneath a table of sewing machines.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Company had the practice of locking all the doors and searching employees at closing time to make sure they did not steal from the company. All the doors in the building opened inwards which would have disastrous consequences for those trying to flee. The company also insisted that its building was fireproof and that the fire escape at the back of the building was sufficient to evacuate the building should a fire happen. Only 27 buckets of water were available to use in dousing any initial fire.

When the fire broke out on the eighth floor, it spread quickly due to the large amounts of cloth, bins of rags, hanging patterns and sewing machine oil. Trapped by the locked doors, barred windows and a fire-engulfed stairwell, many young women chose to leap from the eighth and ninth floor windows. The other choice was to burn to death. Witnesses at the scene describe the sickening sound of body after body hitting the pavement. In all 146 people either burned to death or leapt to their death.

More than anything, it was the sight of young women leaping to their deaths that motivated people to seek changes in the fire prevention laws and also in workplace safety laws. Although the owners of the factory were prosecuted, they were acquitted because they broke no existing fire laws.

Friesner's novel starts off slow, carefully building both setting, background and characters. The story opens with thirteen year old Raisa as she is recovering from typhus. There is a foreshadowing of the future catastrophe in Raisa's life in the description of Raisa's illness. "Raisa's world was fire. The blaze was everywhere. She was lost in the heart of the flames. Wherever she turned, walls of heat beat against her like hammers. The air throbbed and rang, filling her head with merciless thunder."

The story follows Raisa as she travels to New York city, taking on the responsibility of caring for a young orphaned girl and finally obtaining a job at the Triange Shirtwaist factory. Along the way she makes new friends in Zusa and Luciana, takes in an orphan named Brina, and falls in love with a young Jewish scholar.  Raisa is shown as an honest, resilient, hard-working young woman. She is also determined to locate her older sister Henda, who has gone missing after learning by letter that Raisa had died from typhus.

Friesner incorporates many details about young immigrants coming to America: the promise and expectation of a better life and the difficulties faced due to language barriers, as well as the poverty and discrimination many faced. Readers learn about the obstacles encountered without the story becoming overwhelmed by details.  Friesner also portrays how segregated American society was at this time, with each ethnic group having it's own insular community often prejudiced towards outsiders as well as the strong class distinctions that still existed at this time.

The novel also portrays the struggles and conditions these immigrants encountered in factories through various characters. For example, Raisa describes conditions in the Triangle factory, " We're packed together at these tables like canned sardines swimming in sewing machine oil, she thought. Then when it's quitting time, we turn into sheep, hereded together to wait our turn apt the exit while they search us, one by one, to make sure we havent stolen anything."  Luciana describes an event at a smaller shop where she used to work, in which a girl was injured by a broken sewing machine needle. "It was a freak accient; sewing machine needles broke all the time under the stress of so much intense use. Who had the time to check for wear and tear during the height of the weekday rush? And who wanted to ask the foreman for a new needle too quckly, especially when the cost came out of the worker's pay? So they ran the machines until something gave, when the needle splintered off and the shard went spinning."  Even the small shops cheat workers as Raisa discovers when she works for Madame doing piece work. And Zusa and Luciana speak of bosses who touch the girls.

The climax of the novel is the fire at the Triangle factory and the loss of Zusa and the believed loss of Luciana and of Raisa's fiance, Gavrel. However, Friesner offers a happy twist to her novel, that involves many reunions. 

Threads and Flames is historical fiction that incorporates a mystery as well as a touch of romance. The mystery which is mostly in the background of the story, is the disappearance of Raisa's sister Henda. The romance involves Raisa's growing affection for Gavrel Kamensky, the young Jewish scholar who rescues her and Brina from destitution. Despite the tragic setting of the novel, readers will find the conclusion satisifying and will have learned something about American society during the early 1900's.

Highly recommended.

Book Details:

Threads and Flames by Esther Friesner
New York: Viking Group 2010
390 pp.