If ever there was a timely novel, this is the one. Since banning books has become a strategic weapon in our national culture wars, here comes an entertaining satire set in a quintessential southern town. Framed as a battle over books and a free-standing little library, it is about the influence books have in its residents’ lives and the town’s cultural norms.
This novel is an absolute page turner. It encompasses many of the elements of what we think of as compelling historical fiction—context, a crime, a trial, a cover up, a disavowal of the rights of women. In its way, it is also a love story. It's also a tribute to women in history whose lives and achievements are left out of the history books. The protagonist is Martha Ballard, a real midwife and healer who lived and worked in colonial America. The seeds of this story were formed when the author, Ariel Lawhon, discovered her diaries.
This novel is the second in the Hearts of Glass series that I assume will continue. I did not read the first one, The Artist’s Apprentice, but The Artist's Wife easily stood on its own. World War I is beginning, Britain is wholly unprepared for war and what its threat means, and the fabric of Edwardian society is unraveling. The title reflects women's standing. True, the protagonist Alice was married to an artist with whom she apprenticed, but she was the creative force of the duo.
I am always amazed by what I learn from historical fiction and how it illuminates diverse perspectives and little known events. Given what is going on in the world right now, regardless of your personal viewpoint, fiction and poetry can make us think in a way we can’t get from other sources. Sure, the horrific images shown over and over inform us, but some writers have a way of making us expand our thinking.
Deadly Depths has all the ingredients of a great read. It has vivid, well-developed characters, twists and turns you might not see coming and great pacing. It is rooted in a dark history that has lived in the shadows.
Hollywood was in the news last week but not forthe usual glamor, gossip and new movie roll outs. Actors joined writers, for the first time in sixty years, in calling a strike to address some of the new issues of our changing media world. They seek to protect themselves from the emerging threat of AI in co-opting their likenesses and desire to get a meaningful piece of residuals in the new age of streaming services. I thought it interesting that this new novel, DO TELL, was released the very same week. To give some historical perspective, it looked back at the Hollywood studio system of the 1930s and 40s. I think its safe to say it was set in a time when actors and writers clearly had no agency at all.
Reader’s Cafe 