A White Wind Blew

I seem to be reading a lot about late 19th/early 20th century disease lately. There's yellow fever, typhoid fever, and now, at the heart of James Markert's A White Wind Blew, tuberculosis. More specifically, this is the story of life and death in that most dreaded of institutions, the sanatorium. I have been fascinated by the idea of tuberculosis sanatoria since I was a little kid visiting Mammoth Cave for the first time and - right there in the pitch black, damp interior - the National Parks guide spun the tale of the consumptives sent underground to improve their chances against TB. (The NPS website tells the full story.) But I digress.

A White Wind Blew is the story of a Louisville sanatorium, the patients who live there, and the doctors who tend them told through the lens of Prohibition and Jim Crow laws. The Klan has begun to rear its head, angered by both the quantities of sacramental wine procured by and for the quasi-clergy as well as the treatment of black patients, treatment which the Klan perceives to be too good in some cases. Set in the late '20s, there are also veterans of the first World War struggling to cope with both the ravages of war and the knowledge that they survived the carnage of the Western Front only to be struck by the White Wind itself.

And then there is our protagonist, Dr. Wolfgang Pike, a man whom many patients call Father, but who has abandoned the seminary once for the love of a woman and is considering doing so again. More than woman, wine, or holiness, though, he loves his music. Dr. Pike determines to form an orchestra comprised of TB patients, an unlikely scenario perhaps, but one which Markert is able to imbue with authenticity - and unexpected outcomes. A White Wind Blew is a much lighter read that its topic would suggest. This is not a book about TB (for that, I recommend selected chapters of Farewell to the East End), but about living with TB in one of the most isolating places man hath ever created - but even then, it was not without hope.

American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee

Blame it on living under a rock, but although I've long heard of the musical Gypsy, I was clueless about its content. Gypsy, in case anyone else lives under the same rock, is the story of Gypsy Rose Lee, a mediocre vaudeville performer in childhood who became America's most famous burlesque dancer during the heyday of that, um, art. American Rose as the subtitles suggest, is a biography of the same said woman. I can't remember where or when I heard of the book (maybe one of last year's summer reading lists?) and found it interesting enough, I suppose, although nowhere near as riveting as Once We Were Brothers. I actually started reading the latter as I was becoming bored with Gypsy.

So, why did I finish? American Rose is an interesting look at vaudeville, New York, and Broadway during the interwar years. It explores the influence of la belle ville (Paris, bien sur!) on theater, especially burlesque, in the U.S. And, on some level, American Rose is also about the complicated relationships between mothers and daughters (and sometimes sisters), i.e., food for thought for any girl with a mama. That said, I just barely finished it and, while it is certainly well-research and written, it surely won't be on my Best of '13 list at the end of the year. Unless you're a Broadway history fanatic, you can easily skip this one and not miss a thing.

Once We Were Brothers

It's been a long time since a book kept me up so late past bedtime, to say nothing of waking well before the alarm (or the early summer dawn) to try to finish it before work. Once We Were Brothers did both. Written by Ronald Balson, Brothers is the story - part historical fiction (the early chapters, especially, recall In the Garden of Beasts) and part legal thriller - of a Holocaust survivor, Ben Solomon, intent on bringing a former Nazi, Otto Piatek, to justice. The twist is that the former Nazi was raised by the survivor's family, a non-Jew among Jews, until turning against the family during the war.

Balson's strength is the plot. Fast-paced and lively, the book moves. The student who recommended it to me promised me it was a quick read, and he wasn't kidding.The twists and turns come quickly on the heels of one another; hence, the reading-induced sleep deprivation. In addition to his plot, Balson's characters are a real strength. There are, essentially, few enough to count on a single hand (Ben, Otto, the accuser's attorney, Catherine, and the PI, Liam), with other more minor characters sprinkled liberally throughout both the past and present stories.

I did have a couple of (relatively minor) complaints. Many of the chapters rely too heavily on dialogue, as opposed to narrative, to move the story along. As a result, Ben is often delivering history lessons to his attorney, Catherine, who therefore comes off as a little thick. The background is probably necessary for most readers, but I would have preferred it to be woven into the narrative. By including it in the dialogue, Ben's speech often comes across as lecture-y. I also found Catherine to be the least sympathetic character. Her constant self-doubt is grating (honestly, if she has that low an opinion of her talents, she really shouldn't be in law), and I was no fan of the (somewhat contrived) romance between Catherine and Liam.

Given that this book was recommended to me while I was in Japan, I would be remiss not to add that perhaps the most interesting thing I learned was of the presence of Jews in Japan. Balson, through Ben Solomon, states that there have been Jews in Japan since the 1860s. My curiosity was piqued. It turns out Balson may have been selling the Japanese Jews short; according to Wikipedia (yes, I know, only the finest sources for my blog) Judaism has been practiced in Japan since the sixteenth century. Really. So maybe the Star of David I saw in Japan and automatically dismissed as being something else was actually a Star of David. Who knew?

An excellent airplane/beach/rainy weekend read. Starting in the middle of the work week was a mistake.

Four stars.

The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea

So this book was, like, $1. And I was heading to Japan, meaning 28 hours on a plane, plus many more on trains, etc. I like whales. I like whale watching (most recently in Maui last March at right and below), and I like science writing. (See my review of David Quammen's brilliant essays, for evidence of this). So, I figured why not? The answer is that, I'm sorry, but it was really, really boring. As in, at one point I was hoping that hour-after-hour might lull me to sleep, but no dice and so I continued, awake but bored all the way to Detroit.

Much of the book - or at least of the first half - read like an erudite book report on Moby Dick, which I didn't read for a reason. The history of whaling in America was fascinating, especially knowing a different side of the industry from The Richest Woman in America.  Occasionally, Philip Hoare would offer some nice insight, such as his observation that, "through whaling, America reached across the world for the first time; whaling exported its culture and ideas," but mostly I was bored. Also, his case -  or mine - was not helped by my visions of whale bacon, a Japanese delicacy on display at the Tsukiji Fish Market (and whose picture I have helpfully included below), and which I could not sufficiently banish, especially during Hoare's descriptions of rending the blubber. On the other hand, the comment about America exporting itself through whaling probably stuck because of the way our Tsukiji market guide noted that it was the Americans who taught the Japanese to hunt whales. Whatever the case, between my visions of whale bacon and the tiresome Moby Dick, I was done for.

Call the Midwife: Farewell to the East End

Farewell to the East End is the last of the three books chronicling nurse Jenny Lee's time as an East End midwife in 1950s London. (It is also the basis for almost all of season two of the show Call the Midwife on BBC/PBS.) It follows the same structure as the first memoir, Call the Midwife, with each chapter detailing the story of a patient - usually, but not always, a woman in labor. Jenny Worth (nee Lee), the author, also does a commendable job of providing background chapters on some of the issues, both social and medical, that nurses faced in 1950s Poplar, such as tuberculosis and access - or lack thereof - to safe, legal abortions.

In many ways, Farewell to the East End reads like a continuation of the original book, making the placement of Shadows of the Workhouse, the second book of the series, seem awkward or ill-considered. In total, though, the trilogy is very well-written and informative, both humorous and heartrending, and well wroth the read for anyone with an interest in Cockney history or even British social policy from the Victorian age forward.

The Boilerplate Rhino: Nature in the Eye of the Beholder

I have spent the last several weeks in Japan leading a group of undergraduates on a study abroad program. It's been an amazing experience and great for both personal and professional development. It's been less great for reading (and blogging). I did manage a couple of books, though, the first of which is The Boilerplate Rhino. I have my dear friend Clio to thank for introducing me to the world of David Quammen a few years ago. (She was also responsible, in college, for introducing me to my husband, so she's clearly a great lady to know!)

David Quammen is a nature writer. Sometimes the thinks he writes about are fascinating and sometimes they are, excuse, less exciting than watching grass grow. Boilerplate Rhino, which is a collection of essays written for his monthly during his time at Outside magazine, has some of each. His account of the perfect durian fruit is fascinating, for example, as is his essay on the original boilerplate rhino. On the other hand, if I'm being perfectly honest (always my goal), I didn't even manage to read time-and-motion study in its entirety (and these are not especially long essays). From bat watching on Guam to speculating on the owl's absence of a penis (all owls, not a particular owl) to luminescent beetles the size of a human finger the essays run in terms of topics.

Even when the subject seems less than entirely interesting, though, Quammen can always be counted on for his beautiful prose. He describes military jets as "smearing the sky with carbon" during take-off and notes succinctly in an essay about Henry Thoreau that "the human reality is always more complicated than anything that can be put down on paper." Quammen is a writer's writer, a man whose every word seems to be carefully considered before appearing in print. I have loved each book of his I have read (The Song of the Dodo and Wild Thoughts from Wild Places, in addition to Boilerplate Rhino) and am looking forward to my next Quammen pick, just as soon as I read the other 20-odd books on my list.

4 stars.

Fever

A lesson: there used to be (and in some parts of the world, still are) innumerable dread diseases in the throes of which one regularly might die. For example, there was tuberculosis (aka consumption), there was yellow fever, and there was typhoid fever. Fever is the story of Typhoid Mary, the Irish cook who was the first asymptomatic typhoid fever carrier identified by U.S. health authorities.

Essentially, Mary Mallon left illness - and death - in her wake, with outbreaks at virtually (literally?) every home where she was hired. Once the authorities caught on, she was arrested and confined to Brother Island - a leper colony of one, except the leper carried typhoid. After doctors determined she was only a danger to society when she cooked, she was released with the agreement that she would never cook again. This lady loved cooking so much, though, that she couldn't keep her promise. (I know, I don't get it either.) You see where this is headed - more jobs, more outbreaks, until she was caught again and and sent back to Brother Island where she lived for the next 20-odd years, until she died as a rather old woman of pneumonia.

As for Fever by Mary Beth Keane. I liked it. A lot. It's similar in style and tone to Doc (which I linked to in the first paragraph), or even to Paris Wife. My one complaint, and it's relatively minor, is that unlike Paris Wife and Doc which seem to have been researched within an inch of their lives, it's hard to know where fact end and fiction begins with Fever. I read an interview with Keane where she talked about her mind being piqued because of the lack of first-person accounts about the case, so I knew going in that it was more a work of fiction than the others, but still I wanted to know what degree of truth there was to Mary's relationship with Alfred Briehof, whether she had ever worked for the Kirkenbauer family (she did work for the Bowens, another of the families mentioned in the book), and some of the other minor characters.

Keane has done a great job of building a complex and nuanced character in Mary Mallon. While the exact degree of truth versus fiction may be impossible to know, she was undoubtedly a complicated woman, probably not wishing typhoid on anyone, but certainly not taking the preventative measures necessary to prevent spreading it. I ended up feeling like she got what was coming to her, but they certainly were different times.

I should not that, having read about Hetty Green immediately before reading about Mary Mallon, I was fascinated at the contrast between Hetty Green's New York and that of Mary Mallon. Considering those differences was very interesting.