Stories from Jonestown

Stories from Jonestown by Leigh Fondakowski
University of Minnesota Press, 2/1/2013
Hardcover, 312 pages
ISBN-13: 9780816678082

Overview

The saga of Jonestown didn’t end on the day in November 1978 when more than nine hundred Americans died in a mass murder-suicide in the Guyanese jungle. While only a handful of people present at the agricultural project survived that day in Jonestown, more than eighty members of Peoples Temple, led by Jim Jones, were elsewhere in Guyana on that day, and thousands more members of the movement still lived in California. Emmy-nominated writer Leigh Fondakowski, who is best known for her work on the play and HBO film The Laramie Project, spent three years traveling the United States to interview these survivors, many of whom have never talked publicly about the tragedy. Using more than two hundred hours of interview material, Fondakowski creates intimate portraits of these survivors as they tell their unforgettable stories.
Collectively this is a record of ordinary people, stigmatized as cultists, who after the Jonestown massacre were left to deal with their grief, reassemble their lives, and try to make sense of how a movement born in a gospel of racial and social justice could have gone so horrifically wrong—taking with it the lives of their sons and daughters, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters. As these survivors look back, we learn what led them to join the Peoples Temple movement, what life in the church was like, and how the trauma of Jonestown’s end still affects their lives decades later.
What emerges are portrayals both haunting and hopeful—of unimaginable sadness, guilt, and shame but also resilience and redemption. Weaving her own artistic journey of discovery throughout the book in a compelling historical context, Fondakowski delivers, with both empathy and clarity, one of the most gripping, moving, and humanizing accounts of Jonestown ever written.

My Thoughts:

With the phrase "drink the Kool-Aid" part of our lexicon it behooves us to go back and look at where that phrase originated. In Stories from Jonestown by Leigh Fondakowski we learn that it wasn't Kool-Aid, but was, in fact, poisoned Flavor-Aid that was used in the mass suicide/murder of over 900 followers of Jim Jones People's Temple agricultural project in Guyana on November 18, 1978. About half of those who died were children. Included in the 918 people who died were U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan and three journalists who were accompanying Ryan on a fact-finding mission to Guyana.

 

Jim Jones group began as a Christian church in Indiana. He moved to San Francisco in the 1960s. While the group began as a integrated group who wanted to help the community, it soon changed into a much less altruistic socialist experiment. But this book is not about Jim Jones. It is about the survivors. Some of them still think the Peoples Temple was wonderful, others wonder at their blindness to the warning signs that there were problems and Jones was no longer the man or leader they thought they were following.

 

There are already numerous accounts written about Jim Jones and The Peoples Temple murder/suicide. In Stories from Jonestown, author Fondakowski focus is on interviewing the survivors. She points out that only they "can truly know what it means to survive a tragedy of this magnitude. These are the stories of the survivors. It is a privilege to tell them."  Fondakowski, a playwright, spent over three years interviewing survivors, reviewing documents, and collecting letters trying to compose a complete picture of what happened while gathering material in order to write a play about their experiences. The book is a compilation of the many interviews and stories she collected.

 

Very Highly Recommended - but not an easy book to read

 

Since Stories from Jonestown is composed of interviews and materials gathered for Fondakowski's play, "The Peoples Temple," this book does not include extensive research or a complete chronological record into all the details of Jim Jones and The Peoples Temple. Readers who don't have previous knowledge of Jim Jones and what happened in 1978 might want to look into some other works that cover that information. This book is about the survivors, what they remember and how they are handling dealing with those memories. Recommended books by those who know include: A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Jonestown by Julia Scheere; Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People by Tim Reiterman; Understanding Jonestown and Peoples Temple by Rebecca Moore

 

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of  Netgalley for review purposes. 

Since my copy was an uncorrected proof I am not including any quotes.

Speaking from Among the Bones

Speaking from Among the Bones by Alan Bradley
Random House, 1/29/2013
Hardcover, 400 pages

ISBN-13: 9780385344036
Flavia de Luce Series #5
http://www.flaviadeluce.com/

Description:

Eleven-year-old amateur detective and ardent chemist Flavia de Luce is used to digging up clues, whether they’re found among the potions in her laboratory or between the pages of her insufferable sisters’ diaries. What she is not accustomed to is digging up bodies. Upon the five-hundredth anniversary of St. Tancred’s death, the English hamlet of Bishop’s Lacey is busily preparing to open its patron saint’s tomb. Nobody is more excited to peek inside the crypt than Flavia, yet what she finds will halt the proceedings dead in their tracks: the body of Mr. Collicutt, the church organist, his face grotesquely and inexplicably masked. Who held a vendetta against Mr. Collicutt, and why would they hide him in such a sacred resting place? The irrepressible Flavia decides to find out. And what she unearths will prove there’s never such thing as an open-and-shut case.

My Thoughts:

 

Flavia de Luce is back in Speaking from Among the Bones by Alan Bradley. It is set in the early 1950s in Bishop's Lacey, England, where Flavia resides with her father and two older sisters. In this outing it is the 500th anniversary of the death of St. Tancred whose remains are buried in the church's cemetery. When the tomb is to be opened, Flavia makes sure she is on the scene to be one of the first to see the body. To everyone's horror, the body in the tomb, observed first by Flavia, is that of the presumed missing but actually murdered church organist, Mr. Collicutt. In this cozy British mystery eleven-year-old Flavia, precocious Chemist and investigator, follows all leads, while riding her bicycle, Gladys.

 

After reading the first Flavia de Luce book, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, I'll have to admit that by the end of the book, I found Flavia annoying. That was not the case in this 5th book. I'm glad I gave Flavia another chance because I actually enjoyed her much more this time around. I do think that Bradley is giving us a more mature Flavia. While she has always been competent, she's now relating better to those around her and her reactions seem to also be more sophisticated.  It was refreshing to see this maturity and growth emerge in her character. 

 

Speaking from Among the Bones is fast-paced and is extremely well written mystery. I found this fifth novel in the series very enjoyable and would very highly recommend it.

 

Since I have read the first book and now the fifth in the series, I can say with some degree of certainty that you do not have to read all the books in order, however, as with any series, reading the books in order may provide additional background that can be missed when jumping into the middle of the series.

The five books in Alan Bradley's Flavia de Luce Series are: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag, A Red Herring Without Mustard, I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, and Speaking from Among the Bones. There are five more novels to be published and apparently several made-for-television movies are in the works.


Disclosure: My Kindle edition of the advanced reading copy was courtesy of Random House and Netgalley for review purposes.


Excerpt: first chapter

The Cartel

The Cartel by A. K. Alexander
CreateSpace Independent Publishing, 2012
Hardcover, 494 pages

ISBN-13: 9781466219403 

http://michelescott.com/books/ak-alexander/

 

Description:

What began as an innocent love affair for one young woman, Marta Peña, in Costa Careyes, Mexico in 1969, sets in motion a series of events that spans the next thirty years. This is the story of South American drug lords Antonio Espinoza and Javier Rodriguez, and their violent quest for power. In a sweeping family saga, we meet the women who love them and the children they vow to protect at any cost. With a complex web of interconnected families, this gritty novel delves into the lives of a power hungry clan, following the rise of their business, the destructive path of their torrid and erotic love affairs, and the struggle to balance intense greed with devout family loyalty. Strong women face tragedies that test their will and their commitment to the men they passionately desire. As young girls grow into women, their traumatic pasts will drive their actions and force them to make gut-wrenching decisions. With murder, drug trafficking, dirty politics, illegal gambling, prostitution, obsessive love affairs, and family strife, The Cartel is a whirlwind in the vein of Mario Puzo's The Godfather.

 

My Thoughts:

 

The Cartel by A. K. Alexander follows the lives of Antonio Espinoza and Javier Rodriguez, South American drug lords, and their families. The novel covers their lust for power and women, and the brutal lengths they will go to in order to succeed in business and life. This is a melodrama in narrative form - and like any soap opera has multiple characters with connections to even more characters and all of them are entangled in various dramas.

 

I thought I would enjoy The Cartel, especially since it was compared to The Godfather and described as a "sweeping family saga." It is a sweeping family saga, but the key to a successful novel in this genre is having the readers yearn to discover what happens to the characters they love or hate as they become more and more invested in the story. For me, at least, The Cartel fell short in that area. I just didn't care what happened to any of the characters, which made following their power struggles and family dramas even less appealing. And, quite frankly, I wanted to tell some of the "strong" women to snap out of it. Perhaps this wasn't a good combination of action and romance for me; I like action novels, but avoid romance.

 

On the plus side, there was a lot of action and some twists that were unexpected.

A. K. Alexander also writes mysteries under the name Michele Scott.

 

excerpt: Chapter 1

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Netgalley for review purposes.

The Book of Why

The Book of Why by Nicholas Montemarano
Little, Brown & Company, 1/8/2013
Hardcover, 320 pages
ISBN-13: 9780316188470
http://nicholasmontemarano.com/

 

Description:

A novel that asks if love ever really has to die
The power to solve your problems is within you-with the right sense of belief, the mind's ability to create success, happiness, and health is limitless.
At least that's the philosophy of self-help author Eric Newborn, whose books and lectures have spawned a legion of devoted followers who swear that his ideas have pulled their lives from the brink. But after the traumatic loss of his wife, Eric is left to face the darker side of his own teachings, living as a recluse in the home they shared on Martha's Vineyard, struggling to reconcile his worldview with the pain he has suffered. It's a fundamental question that haunts him: why?
When a fan with questions forces Eric to face the world once again, he's put on a path that might lead him towards the closure he seeks, but in astounding ways he could never begin to dream.
At once a stirring portrait of a soul laid bare by grief and a celebration of coincidence and the magic of real connection, The Book of Why explores the deep powers of the heart and mind to shape the world around us, blurring the lines between loss and love, fate and free will, and despair and joy.

My Thoughts:

In The Book of Why by Nicholas Montemarano protagonist Eric Newborn is a best selling author of self-help books. The only problem is that he no longer believes in the answers he presupposed to others - that positive thinking will prevent bad things from occurring in your life. He knows that despite his previous claims, he doesn't have an answer to why bad things happen to good people. Eric has escaped his life and fame by hiding out on Martha's Vineyard with his dog, Ralph, when Sam, a woman who is searching for him, ends up at his door, injured. Eric tries to keep his identity a secret as long as possible, but she eventually discovers his identity.

 

Interspersed at the beginning of sections in The Book of Why are excerpts of Eric's lectures and/or his books, so you can get a feeling for his philosophy of "positive thinking can cure everything" He believes that if people just believe they can create their own reality. The narrative actually follows several different timelines, jumping from present day to Eric's childhood to the time he spent with his wife. His childhood sections help to reveal the birth of his philosophy. The sections with his wife show his beliefs tested and challenged. The sections in the present reveal his current disillusionment. 

 

I was conflicted on this novel. If I didn't commit to reviewing it, I might have stopped at 50 pages, however, at about half way through the novel it began to mesh together for me and at that point I was engrossed in Eric's story. I found myself less annoyed with Eric's naive beliefs and his casting aspersion on other beliefs or blaming people for their suffering. Then, at the end of the novel, I was back to not enjoying the novel as much, but in this case it was due to a choice Montemarano made in his writing, rather than the plot, that was off-putting for me.

 

Montemarano is a very good writer. The Book of Why is beautifully written, with almost poetic-dream like passages, but it is also a very dark, depressing novel.There are many questions raised but few answers given. Certainly if you have ever wondered if there really are coincidences, if everything happens for a reason, and if can miracles happen, you will want to discover what Eric concludes... and you might be disappointed in the ending. 

 

Eric tells us: "I didn’t know, then, that it would be my final book. Before this one, I mean. Though I don’t consider this a book as much as a letter: to the woman in the yellow dress, to Cary, to Gloria Foster. I didn’t know, then, that I would ever need to write another book; that I would write The Book of Why, after all, though not as an answer but rather as an unanswerable question. I didn’t know, when I thought I knew it all, that I would join the chorus of askers. (Location 1727-1730)"

 

Highly Recommended - but read it with a positive frame of mind

 

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Little, Brown & Company and Netgalley for review purposes.


Quotes:

This is a self-help book. Didn’t think it was, but it is. It’s also a revision, a question, a confession, an apology, a love letter. This book is for you, of course, and now for Gloria Foster, who might read this when she’s older, might chance upon this book online or in a used book store in Philadelphia or New York or San Francisco, open to a random page, and see her own name. She might be struck by that and sit where she had been standing in an aisle and begin reading. Location 11-15

She’ll be twenty-seven by then, a woman.Location 26-27 

Celebrate Life Conference, Phoenix Convention Center, 1996

HELLO AND WELCOME. Thank you all for coming. You are here for a reason. Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and ask yourself why. What would you like to accomplish today? What would you like to change about your life? Maybe you’re drowning in debt. Maybe you’re stuck in a stressful, unrewarding job. Maybe you’ve chosen a career you know isn’t your true calling. Maybe your marriage is falling apart. Maybe you’re estranged from your children or your parents. Maybe you’re battling an addiction or a serious illness. Maybe you’re happy but want to be happier. If any of these are true, you’ve come to the right place. No need to move for the next two hours; the only shift will take place inside you. Location 28-35

Write this down and underline it: Happiness is an inside job. Let me say that again: Happiness is an inside job. Happiness doesn’t depend on what anyone else is doing. It doesn’t depend on circumstances. If only this would happen, I’d be happy. If only that would happen, I’d be happy. No more excuses. Happiness is an inside job. Your mind is the ultimate gift-giver. You need to understand: we live in an abundant universe. The universe is listening to your every thought. You are always broadcasting a signal to the universe, and this signal—this wave of energy—will always return to you. Every request is granted. There are no accidents in this universe, only laws, and ignorance of the law is no excuse.  Location 38-44

She sips her tea. “I was just thinking,” she says. “The man I’m looking for—maybe you know him.”

“I doubt it.”

“He disappeared five years ago.”

“So he’s missing.”

“No,” she says. She leaves the washcloth on the table, walks across the room. She squats in front of my bookcase. “Hey, look at this!” She holds up the book so I can see. “This is him. I’m telling you—this is a sign.”

“What does he look like?”

“Not sure,” she says. “None of his books has an author photo.”

“I haven’t opened that book in years,” I say. Location 161-166

“When I was a kid, I used to cry at happily-ever-after. Because, you know, they lived happily ever after, they weren’t living happily ever after.”

“You were greatly upset by grammatical contradictions.”

“They lived happily—fine. I can accept that. But as soon as you use the past tense lived, you can’t say ever after.” Location 234-237

I don’t remember which magazine I put them in, so I take the entire rack. I spread the magazines on my bed and flip through them until I find the checks—five or six royalty checks with my name and address on them. I haven’t needed to cash or deposit them. Location 285-287

Years later a fellow self-help author got at that. He told me, “On every page of your books there are two things battling for space—faith and doubt. Your faith, as it comes through in your words, must be stronger than your reader’s doubt. Your faith must be stronger than your own doubt. Just as long as you never forget that doubt is faith’s friend, the very thing that makes faith stronger.” Location 426-428

Another rule was, Don’t be afraid. Another was, Whatever you’re afraid of will find you. Location 790-791

Please, listen to me: Don’t allow the weight of the past to pull you down. Don’t allow your past to define your future. It’s time to retell your story beginning with your next thought. Location 985-986

Blast from the Past

Blast from the Past by Lauren Carr
Acorn Book Services, 1/10/2013
Paperback, 260 pages
ISBN-13: 9780985726775

4th in Mac Faraday series
http://mysterylady.net/

 

Description:

In this fourth mystery on Deep Creek Lake; Mac Faraday finds himself up to his eyeballs with mobsters and federal agents.
After an attempted hit ends badly with two of his men dead, mobster Tommy Cruze arrives in Spencer, Maryland, to personally supervise the execution of the witness responsible for putting him behind bars—Archie Monday!
Mac Faraday believes he has his work cut out for him in protecting his lady love from one of the most dangerous leaders in organized crime; but when bodies start dropping in his lakeshore resort town, things may be hotter than even he can handle.

 

My Thoughts:

 

In Blast from the Past by Lauren Carr, character Archie Monday's past connection to the mob is catching up to her in Spencer, Maryland, which is located on Deep Creek Lake. Her testimony helped convict Tommy Cruze, head of a major East Coast crime syndicate. She is a participant in the FBI’s Witness Protection Program. Now Tommy is out and he's after Archie - thus the title: Blast from the Past. Mac, Gnarly (Mac’s German shepherd), David O’Callaghan (Spencer police chief), and Randi Finnegan (U.S. Marshal) are all scrambling to protect Archie and figure out why the body count appears to be rising and who, exactly, is putting out the hit orders on all these people?

 

It is a fast paced, humorous mystery that will appeal to anyone who enjoys a light hearted mystery and dogs. I appreciated that Carr includes a complete cast of characters at the beginning of her novel. Carr's Mac Faraday Mysteries include: It's Murder, My Son; Old Loves Die Hard; and Shades of Murder. Blast from the Past is the fourth book in the Mac Faraday mystery series.

 

While I've mentioned the previous three books in the series, this was my first  Mac Faraday mystery and I didn't have any problem following the action. If you like following a series from the beginning you might want to check out the first three books, though, because I'm sure there are things I missed because I didn't have the complete back story. 

 

Blast from the Past is a well developed story full of intrigue that moves at a brisk pace. The characters are interesting, the villains varied, and the action is as quick as the humor. I have a feeling any of Lauren Carr's mysteries would be pleasurable distractions, as well as entertaining. (I got a big laugh out of the high-priced assassins named Hillerman and McCrumb.)

 

very highly recommended

 

Blast from the Past Book Trailer

Quotes:

 

When she saw the butt of the gun come out from behind his back, Archie, her eyes on the target in her side rearview mirror, fired three shots from her pink handgun, engraved with The Pink Lady across the muzzle, over her left shoulder. The first shot took out the rear driver’s side window before ripping through the gun man’s neck. The other two went through his head before he hit the ground. In one movement, Archie threw her right arm around to fire out the rear window at the partner who only managed to get one shot before she hit him in the lower neck. Her second shot went through his head. The world seemed to stop. Location 336-342

“Lucky thing I know every officer in the Spencer police department,” Archie told David as he knelt to examine the two dead men lying in the road. “When I saw two of them riding together, especially since I didn’t recognize them, I knew that they were in your stolen cruiser and something was up.”

“Or rather going down.” The police chief wiped the sweat dripping from his blond hair down the back of his neck. Location 355-358

 

“A couple of high-priced assassins—just got a match from their prints in the AFIS.” He pointed his computer tablet to the dead driver. “Benny Hillerman—suspected killer in thirteen hits.” He then pointed at the dead partner. “Frank McCrumb—suspected of seven murders. Those are only the deaths the feds believe they know about.” Location 375-378

"This witness had to give up everything—even quit school—to go into the federal witness protection program—but it was what she had to do to stop Tommy Cruze.”

Mac stared down at her. Her eyes were emerald pools of tears. “That was you.”

Wordlessly, she nodded her head. Location 416-419

“I said to get in the car. We’re relocating you. Now!”

“No.”

The federal marshal lowered her cell phone from her ear. “We don’t have time to talk about this. Cruze is out. He knows where you are. You’re in danger. We don’t even have time to pack—” Location 505-508

David drew in a deep breath. “Count of three.”

“Who’s counting?”

“I’m counting.”

“Why do you get to count?”

“Are you serious?” David asked. “We’re pinned down by a maniac wanting to kill us, and you’re going to argue with me about who gets to count to three? If it’s that important to you, you count.”

“Well,” she said, “if you’re going to be that way, you count.”

“No, you count.”

“I can be just as big of a man as you are.”

David’s chuckle held a naughty tone. “I don’t think so.” A shot from inside the window broke off a branch of the tree, and it landed next to them. “Let’s both count,” he said. “Good idea.”

“To three.” They counted in unison. Location 763-775

“No, Mac. I’ve heard it before, but now I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Bullies are chickens. They cover up their cowardice with bravado like a child in a mask on Halloween. Their bullying covers up how scared they really are. Maybe they can even forget it themselves.” She shook her finger, her nail dipped in rose-colored polish. “I called him on it.” Location 888-890

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Acorn Book Services and Netgalley for review purposes.

The Kingdom of Rarities

The Kingdom of Rarities by Eric Dinerstein
Island Press, 1/17/2013
Hardcover, 336 pages

ISBN-13: 9781610911955 
Description:

In The Kingdom of Rarities, scientist Eric Dinerstein poses an intriguing question: What if the way we categorized the living world was reshuffled for a moment, from a system designed to inform us about evolutionary relationships among species to one with two camps based on abundance: the Kingdom of Common species and the Kingdom of Rarities? What new observations and connections would emerge?

The Kingdom of Rarities explores that idea, building a narrative around the concept of rarity and its implications both for our understanding of how the natural world works, and for what it can teach us about protecting biodiversity during a time of large-scale environmental change.
Dinerstein highlights cutting-edge science from remote outposts around the world, focusing on some of the key questions that scientists are asking themselves right now:
 
What are the rarest species?
Why are rare species most likely to be found in certain types of environments?
Which species have always been rare, and which have only recently been made rare?
Which species or places are most in need of saving?
 
As well as a scientific journey, The Kingdom of Rarities is also an adventure story—to meet the rare species that are central to this tale, the reader travels with the author to exotic locations including remote New Guinea, Hawaii, the heart of the Amazon, and the foothills of the Himalayas.
Throughout, Dinerstein explores rarity as a central principle within conservation biology. Looking through this lens not only advances our understanding of the natural world but also inspires the creation of new tools and technologies that can help us both add to our knowledge base and design more effective conservation strategies. He focuses on real-time threats to biodiversity, from climate change to habitat fragmentation, and draws on his long and distinguished scientific career to illuminate the concept of rarity for readers across the spectrum of scientific knowledge.

My Thoughts:
 

In The Kingdom of Rarities, Eric Dinerstein explores rare species and asks some interesting questions, including: Why are so many species rare? Have they always been rare, and, if not, what causes or environmental changes have contributed to rarity? What be done to save rare species? Dinerstein asks “Why, wherever you land, do you always find a few superabundant species and a multitude of rare ones?”  While rare species are found everywhere, we really know very little about why this is the case. Are all these rare species are on the brink of extinction or have there always been rare species?

 

Dinerstein says, "To understand rarity in nature, whether as an artist or a biologist, one of the best places to look is in the tropical belt. The Amazon and Congo basins, Southeast Asia including Sumatra (Indonesia), and New Guinea are the four largest expanses of rain forest; along with some smaller regions, they hold more than 60 percent of the world’s known species—crammed into less than 5 percent of Earth’s surface." 

 

"The island of New Guinea is especially interesting to biologists because so many of its species are found nowhere else." This is especially true of the Foja Mountains in the heart of Papua Province. The Kingdom of Rarities covers Dinerstein's travels, as well as the travels of others, across the world, considering various rare species.

 

Some of the rarities Dinerstein explores include Birds of paradise, the golden fronted bowerbird, the orange faced honey-eater, the Juan Fernández firecrown hummingbird on an island called Más a Tierra, (Robinson Crusoe Island), Kirtland’s warbler, rhinoceroses, including the greater one-horned rhino, and, in South America, jaguars and pumas, the giant anteater, giant armadillo, and maned wolf.

Factors discussed that influence rarity are extreme habitat specialization, an isolated population (especially if this isolation is geographic), and a changing environment due to outside factors introduced, such as agriculture. “Wholesale conversion of land [to agriculture] not only threatens to make no small number of common species rare through human activity, it also threatens the very existence of what is now rare.”

 

Eric Dinerstein is Chief Scientist with the World Wildlife Fund, where he has spent the past 24 years working to save rare species globally. Certainly this gives him the insight and experience to consider the question of rarities across the world. Dinerstein does a superb job discussing the questions in a manner that will capture the attention of a lay person as well as a professional. He includes illustrations, maps, annotated bibliography, and index. The Kingdom of Rarities is a fascinating, entertaining, thought provoking book.

 

Very Highly Recommended

 

 

Disclosure: My advanced reading copy Kindle edition was courtesy of  Island Press and Netgalley for review purposes.

The Drowning House

The Drowning House by Elizabeth Black
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group,1/15/2013
Hardcover, 288 pages

ISBN-13: 9780385535861

Description:

A gripping suspense story about a woman who returns to Galveston, Texas after a personal tragedy and is irresistibly drawn into the insular world she’s struggled to leave.

Photographer Clare Porterfield's once-happy marriage is coming apart, unraveling under the strain of a family tragedy. When she receives an invitation to direct an exhibition in her hometown of Galveston, Texas, she jumps at the chance to escape her grief and reconnect with the island she hasn't seen for ten years. There Clare will have the time and space to search for answers about her troubled past and her family's complicated relationship with the wealthy and influential Carraday family.
Soon she finds herself drawn into a century-old mystery involving Stella Carraday. Local legend has it that Stella drowned in her family's house during the Great Hurricane of 1900, hanged by her long hair from the drawing room chandelier. Could Stella have been saved? What is the true nature of Clare's family's involvement? The questions grow like the wildflower vines that climb up the walls and fences of the island. And the closer Clare gets to the answers, the darker and more disturbing the truth becomes.
Steeped in the rich local history of Galveston, The Drowning House portrays two families, inextricably linked by tragedy and time.

My Thoughts:

In Elizabeth Black's debut novel, The Drowning House,  photographer Clare Porterfield's life is in turmoil. Her six-year-old daughter has died. She is immersed in inescapable grief and her marriage is drowning under the weight of her sorrows. She accepts an invitation to return to her hometown of Galveston, Texas, in order to select the material for a photography exhibition funded by the wealthy Will Carraday.

 

Clare has been gone from the island for many years and, along with others, is questioning her real reasons for returning. In fact, Clare has had a long time relationship with the Carraday family. She had left the island after a tragedy involving her and her friend, Patrick Carraday. He was sent away and they were kept apart.

 

Galveston has a past seeped in tragedy and that feeling imbibes the novel. Part of the novel explores the mystery surrounding Stella Carraday’s drowning during the hurricane that devastated Galveston on September 8-9, 1900.

 

Clare may be in Galveston to look at photographs, but what she really seeks are answers to decades old questions, some of which she didn't even know she needed to ask. She has some questions about her past and her family that need to be answered. As she tries to come to terms with her new life, memories start to come to light in a new way.

 

While the writing in The Drowning House is superb, I'm going to admit that I knew, without a lot of effort, the big secret(s) the novel was going to reveal very early on. If Black had allowed that the reader would have that foreknowledge, leaving us to feel oh-so-slightly-smug at our deductive prowess, and then did a little flip with the plot, I would be applauding her for the extremely well-written novel with the clever plot twist.

 

Black has written a sensitive, atmospheric, southern gothic mystery. While readers might know as quickly as I did the secrets that are going to be revealed, Black has done an amazing job developing her characters, as well as life in Galveston in this finely crafted novel.

 

Highly Recommended

 

 

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Knopf Doubleday and Netgalley for review purposes.

Quotes:

Instead I said, “I’ll drive.” Saying it made it seem like something I could do.

“You’re going to drive to Texas from D.C.? By yourself?” Now I had his full attention. “You haven’t driven anywhere in months.”

I had tried. I’d gone out to the garage, keys in hand. I’d seen through the window Bailey’s blue parka lying on the backseat, one arm flung out in a gesture so vividly like her that for a moment I could almost believe she was alive. Then the truth washed over me. Bright spots swam up from the concrete floor and my legs began to shake. I went back into the house. (Location 140-145)

 “If it will make you happy.”

I didn’t tell him that happiness had always seemed to me to descend suddenly, when you least expected it, like a sun shower. That often it wasn’t until much later you could look back and say, then, on that ordinary morning, with a car full of six-year-olds squirming and kicking, as the station wagon flashed through the dappled light of the tree-lined streets, then I was truly happy. (Location 148-152)

If I had been asked, I would have said that I’d lost my daughter a year ago—two months and three days after her sixth birthday. I lost Bailey. That was the way I thought of it, and the thought was both hopeful and damning. Lost suggested that she might someday be found, as if she had wandered into the next aisle at the grocery store or been forgotten by the car pool, that she might reappear, absently twirling a damp strand of hair around one finger. Still, anyone listening carefully would understand that it was an admission of guilt. I lost her. I also lost the person I was then, the person I was becoming. Lost her completely. (Location 165-170)

Jules, my agent, would have said more positive things. That I was a young photographer whose star had risen suddenly. That I had been invited to Galveston to choose material for an exhibition. To write the introduction to the exhibition catalogue. And it was true. In my camera bag I had the letter confirming everything. (Location 174-176

Natives call Galveston “the Island,” as if there were no other. Those who are BOI, born on the Island, take pride in the fact. My name is Clare Porterfield, but the house I grew up in is known as the Hayes-Giraud house, for the families who lived in it a hundred years ago. (Location 219-221)

 
“That’s right. They can’t send me away.”

Eleanor sighed. “Clare, we’ve talked about this. Your leaving the Island was something we agreed on together, both families. It was a serious situation. The girl died.”

“That wasn’t our fault!” (Location 323-326)

 

“Michael is fine.” To my surprise, it was true. I knew Michael had suffered. I’d seen him, shoulders hunched, sobbing in the shower. But he had completed his task, delivered his burden to wherever it is old sorrows go. While I had barely started. I was beginning to think that grieving the loss of my child would be my real life’s work. Michael’s ease—one of the traits I’d loved and married him for—was now the principal thing dividing us. (Location 364-367)

 

Growing up, I believed I was deficient in a way that I couldn’t identify precisely and that this explained my failure to fit in with my family. It was something inside, not visible, a matter of character or outlook, I thought. And for that reason, hard to come to terms with. But here was a man whose defect was plain to see, and it didn’t bother him at all. I stared as he matter-of-factly measured out the bait shrimp, made change, his sleeve rolled comfortably above the elbow. I hoped that if I studied him long enough, I might learn his secret. (Location 1026-1030)

I wondered if what they really meant was that now people remembered things differently. That was the way in Galveston. Real events were absorbed into the Island’s narrative and in time became something else. So that life there could go on. (Location 1307-1309)