Call Me Zelda

I bought this book because I was interested in the story of the Fitzgeralds, particularly Zelda. I ended up feeling I'd been sold a bill of goods. Call Me Zelda is primarily the story of the entirely fictional Anna Howard, Zelda's personal psychiatric nurse-cum-friend. Anna has an complex history and she's not an uninteresting character, but she is most definitely the protagonist of a book that purported to tell the story of Zelda Fitzgerald's last, and saddest, decade, as she spun further from reality in one institution after the other. Or so I thought.

I expected something along the lines of The Paris Wife or even The Aviator's Wife. Instead, I found myself tucked into a work of (almost pure) fiction. Happily, the setting for most of the book is Baltimore, and neighborhoods I know - or at least remember - well, appear throughout, from Mount Vernon, to the streets around the Johns Hopkins hospital, to the still very rural Towson. Erika Robuck also did a nice job depicting the relationship between Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (although I cannot say how accurate Robuck's description is - maybe entirely, or maybe colored largely by what she hoped it might have been). In any case, it is fascinating to read about and the way they simultaneously needed and destroyed one another.

Aside from the fact that the book wasn't what I expected, my fault and mine alone, I had one other real quibble. Call Me Zelda is divided into acts; I really enjoyed the first, and longest, and couldn't help but wish that Robuck had ended the story there; not only was the second act often cloying, but the conclusion of the first act really felt like the natural end of both Anna's story and Zelda's.

Overall, Call Me Zelda is a mixed bag. The story feels somewhat contrived, and is (most likely) not nearly as close to the real story as I would have liked, but as a work of fiction, the plot and characters are interesting, particularly in Act One. 

Somerset

Several years ago, I carted Leila Meicham's Roses to Brazil with me. Hard-backed. It was a foolish thing to do for two reasons: 1) At 600+ pages, the tome probably weighed five pounds. 2) I could barely put it down long enough to work. I spent every free minute reading furiously (and if I'm completely honest, crying), hardly even noticing the scenery. So I was just a teensy bit excited to score an advance copy of Somerset over the summer.

Somerset is the prequel to Roses and tells the meandering story of the preceding generations of Warwicks, Tolivers, and DuMonts as they make their way from the antebellum south to the untamed lands of Texas. The star of the story is Jessica Wyndham, a girl-woman of, some might say, misplaced passions who is at the heart of everything that follows. All of Meicham's characters, though, inhabit the pages so fully that one wants to reach into the pages and shake them - or hug them, as the case may be. There are lessons here, as well, in the prices to be paid, both personal and societal, to settle untamed lands...or to resettle them for the white man, at least.

If I cannot claim to have liked Somerset quite as much as Roses, that is merely a testament to the captivating story that books tells, rather than a knock on Somerset. The prequel feels less dramatic, (and therefore less heart-wrenching), perhaps because the reader already has a sense of what comes next - and that something does, in fact come next. In this way, it shares much in common with Rhett Butler's People (the fact that Margaret Mitchell was long in her grave before this prequel was written, aside), another antebellum-postbellum rendering of the South. 

Letters from Hillside Farm

Letters from Hillside Farm is another of the books I picked up at the conference this past summer. The book, written by Jerry Apps, is the story of the fictional Struckmeyer family who moves from Cleveland to a Wisconsin farm during the heart of the Great Depression. Their story is told through the letters 12-year-old George writes to his grandmother back in Cleveland - and her responses to him. To be sure, this is no Worst Hard Time. In fact, and I admit this rather sheepishly, I got about 20 pages into the book (which is only 150 pages) before I realized that this is primarily a children's book - probably aimed at the 12-year-old set.

Nevertheless, I continued for two reasons: 1) Apps does a nice job of bringing farm living, and small town Americana in general, during the 1930s to life. It was fun to read about traveling circuses and one-room schoolhouses regardless of the fact that I've done so many times in the past. 2) This book reminded me why I first loved to read, and why that love has continued through the years. In that sense, it was escapist reading more than even something like Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer - another book best enjoyed by the middle school set.

Would I read Letters from Hillside Farm again? No. But, I don't regret finishing it the first time.

The Summer of Beer and Whiskey

The Summer of Beer and Whiskey (whose full title includes How Brewers, Barkeeps, Rowdies, Immigrants, and a Wild Pennant Fight Made Baseball America's Game) is the history of the 1883 St. Louis Browns. The team, which played in the old American Association, which was itself created by the Browns' German immigrant founder, Chris von der Ahe. Von der Ahe was a saloon keeper first and foremost and he founded the team - and insisted they play on Sundays - for one reason: to see more beer. The league that he then created for them to play in was derisively known as the Beer and Whiskey League, for upstanding citizens of the 1880s did not attend ball games on the Lord's Day - Sunday ball did not come to Philadelphia until 1934.

As for von der Ahe's team, well, with the possible exception of Arlie Latham and Charlie Comiskey (yes, the same Comiskey whose Chicago White Sox would create baseball's biggest scandal), the Browns were a ragtag group of men who won many a game by grit, determination and sometimes knavery, if not skill. They were also plenty happy to be imbibing great quantities of said liquor. Yet, in a story full of colorful characters, the one with the darkest story stands out most: Cap Anson who perhaps singlehandedly forced baseball into decades of segregation.

Edward Achorn does a fine job rendering the atmosphere of 1883 into text. He has painstakingly researched virtually every detail of the 1883 season - too thoroughly in some places. While the characters spring from the pages, reading a pitch-by-pitch retelling of a game that was played 130 years ago was simply too much. I loved the broad strokes by skimmed the minutiae. The final verdict? The Summer of Beer and Whiskey is probably best served to only the most ardent of baseball fans.