Dragonwyck by Anya Seton

This is one of the historical novels by Anya Seton, whose actual name was Anne Seton Chase and who died in 1990.  The book can be characterized as “Gothicism” or as influenced by the “Dark Romanticism” which is represented within Edgar Allen Poe’s writing.  This genre suggests that humans are fated to suffer from impulses that are destructive to their happiness.  Dragonwyck is a mansion on a 19^th century feudal estate of the Hudson River Valley in New York.  The estate and others around it are holdovers from the Dutch Patroon system, where the farmworkers and their families were considered as part of the landholder’s property.  

Seton presents Nicholas Van Ryan, the current owner of Dragonwyck, tall and arrestingly handsome, with noble features.  His eyes, instead of being black, are piercingly blue, which effect makes our heroine uneasy, in spite of her admiration.  For this is a story about love.  The book’s heroine is Miranda, a girl brought up on a farm, but one who always yearned for riches and romance.  Van Ryan is her distant cousin, and she has come to Dragonwyck to live for a time, to benefit from her cousin’s patronage and to help look after his young daughter.  

The duckling Miranda is thoroughly awed by all she sees, and although there are hints and dark foreshadowings that there is no real serenity in Dragonwyck’s luxurious surroundings, under Nicholas’ tutelage she begins her transformation into a graceful and beautiful swan.  The fly in the ointment is Nicholas’ wife, Joanna, who having failed to provide a son and heir to the estate, has been essentially banished from her husband’s esteem.  While he is excessively polite to her, he ignores her, and she has consoled herself in eating, becoming enormously overweight.

Seton sets her story in a time of rapid change on this continent, showing the small towns becoming centers of commerce, with trade increasing due to the railroad and the thriving industrial revolution.  The tenant-landlord arrangement of the Hudson manors is doomed to fall, with the tenants waking up and demanding, not asking, for the right to own their land.  Nicholas’ iron will has to grapple with these changes, and with the people around him who do not suit his desires and ambition.  

Miranda is bound by her own ill-fated desire for Nicholas.  Her fate is happier than his, since she will allow herself to bend under grief and disappointment.  Nicholas, who will not yield, must suffer the tragic consequences of his character.  Seton weaves her story well, making Miranda a sympathetic character by virtue of her unreasoning childishness, which seems realistic given her upbringing. 

Dark Gothic undercurrents thread themselves through the narrative.  The old Creole servant tells of a haunted presence in Dragonwyck, and we hear Edgar Allen Poe’s melancholy poem, “Ulalume”, recited by the poet himself, next to his wife’s sickbed. 

For a satisfying excursion into a simpler time, with characters that engage your interest and your emotions, Anya Seton’s Dragonwyck is well worth the read.  Click here for the entry in our catalog. 

Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourn

Fans of mystery, historical fiction and romance will all find something to like in Deanna Raybourn's highly enjoyable Silent in the Grave (FIC RAYBOURN), the first title in the Lady Julia Grey series.

Raybourn plunges readers into the action from Page 1, where we find Lady Julia's husband, Edward Grey, in his death throes at a dinner party. After her husband's abrupt death, Lady Julia is approached by the enigmatic Nicholas Brisbane, a private inquiry agent recently hired by Edwards to look into a series of written threats he'd received. Brisbane suspects foul play in Edward Grey's death.

Widowhood proves a turning point for Lady Julia, until now a proper Victorian wife who's felt increasingly stifled in a passionless marriage. Although there was affection between her and her husband, their relationship has never gone much further than their childhood fondness for each other. She blossoms into her own as she investigates her husband's murder.

This development is further enlivened by her repartee with the obstinate Brisbane, a loner if there ever was one, who's extremely reluctant to work with Lady Julia. His anti-social tendencies, crankiness and mysterious past (not to mysterious abilities), coupled with Julia's growing self-confidence and her determination to find the killer make for extremely entertaining scenes.

Set in 1886, the story also introduces us to Lady Julia's family, the Marches, for whom eccentricity is a birthright just as much as their aristocracy is. We also meet many of the servants in Julia's household. Many of these people will play important and surprising roles in the secrets that Julia and Brisbane unearth in this story.

Silent in the Grave is a historical mystery with romantic elements. Although the sensuality in this book is mild, when Julia and Brisbane are in the same room together, Raybourn's writing makes their attraction crackle. I quite like the pace of their relationship as well; the author has opted for a slow but steady trickle of development rather than a torrent. This means there's much to look forward to in the four novels that follow in the series.

The Woman In White / by Wilkie Collins

Wilkie Collins was never quite as widely respected as his contemporaries in Victorian England. Despite the fact that his numerous novels and story collections sold exceptionally well and his fan base always held him in high regard, his work never carried the same intellectual distinction as, say, a George Eliot or Charles Dickens. He may have been ahead of his time. Suspense, as a genre, wasn't really en vogue in the 19th century and despite the fact that the Gothic and Romanticist movements paved the way for more intrigue and mystery in fiction, literature remained a relatively more even-paced medium with stories involving more sensational themes relegated to second tier status. The fact that Collins' books outsold many of those same authors wasn't altogether missed by the reading public though critics seemed to diminish the effect that public affection for his work garnered. Nevertheless, in real life, Collins got on well with his peers, Dickens in particular co-authored and edited several serial literary publications with him, and it never seemed to bother him in the slightest that his writing achieved more mainstream success than critical acclaim. Among his two most famous works are The Moonstone (1868), about a mysterious diamond brought from India to England, and The Woman in White (1860), a story of intrigue surrounding a mysterious lady of the night. Of the two, The Woman in White was undeniably Collins favorite.

On his travels one night, young drawing master Walter Hartright meets a mysterious woman dressed all in white, disheveled and apparently in deep distress, whom he helps find the road to London only to discover later that she's escaped from an asylum, not for the first time evidently. Thinking little of it, Hartright sets out for a job he's undertaken at Limmeridge House, an estate in the northern part of the country where he's been commissioned to teach two young wards of a Mr. Frederick Fairlie, an elderly, ailing man who seldom leaves his room. Laura Fairlie, Mr. Fairlie's niece, and Marian Holcombe, Laura's half-sister, are nothing like their reclusive uncle and Mr. Hartright takes great pleasure in their company, discovering them to be fond of art and amiable. And in what initially seems to be an alarming coincidence, Mr. Hartright finds that Laura bears an astonishing resemblance to the woman in white, so much so that he engages the topic in conversation only to find that the woman he met that night on the road is known by his pupil.

The mentally disadvantaged lady is called Anne Catherick and had lived for a time as a child at Limmeridge. She'd been devoted to Laura's mother, a lady who'd also dressed in all white, and had been taken away from the family under somewhat mysterious circumstances after the matron's death. Walter meanwhile has fallen in love with Laura despite the fact that she's already betrothed to a bullish member of the nobility named Sir Percival Glyde, whose engagement to Laura is more a matter of course owing to an agreement between Laura and her uncle. Upon meeting Glyde, Hartright becomes convinced through a series of conversations and correspondences that he was responsible for shutting up Anne Catherick, "the woman in white," inside the asylum, unjustly as it were, to keep her from revealing secrets concerning Glyde's own dubious past and ill-conceived plans for marrying Laura and inheriting Limmeridge House.

With as many plot twists as mysteries involved in the story, Collins weaves one of the more spellbinding novels of the 19th century. It's not all that easy to follow in places and characters like Marian Holcombe and the conniving Count Fosco (appearing later on in the narrative), both of whom can seem marginalized at first, can't be discounted as they end up holding key elements to the plot's development. Keeping track of the various settings--Limmeridge House, Glyde's own estate, Hartright's travels in Honduras, Italy, London and the English countryside--can get confusing as well. But the overall intrigue of the opening sequences, the dramatic conflict escalating with each chapter, the serious undertones of tragedy and impending doom as well as the climactic conclusion are rewarding enough to supersede any of the book's many plotboilers and accommodate its complex structure. (FIC COLLINS)

Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President / by Candice Millard

The irony was that James A. Garfield never wanted to be president. Born into rural poverty in Ohio in 1831, it wasn't an easy road for the future chief of staff who, much like Abraham Lincoln, had to self-educate himself early in life. Limited financially, Garfield would eventually earn a Bachelor's from Williams College in Massachussetts and then a law degree before being commissioned as an officer in the Civil War, rising to the rank of Major General by the time it was all finished. In 1862 Garfield, then only 31, obtained a congressional seat in the House of Representatives and thereafter figured prominently in politics, serving 9 consecutive terms until 1880. Yet all of his merits and conspicuous achievements were, by all accounts, mere window dressing. Garfield was a true public servant, one of the few men who lived to advance the ideals which the country stood for. Never swayed by crooked political machinery and always opposed to "place-seeking" and career advancement, his actions warranted a high degree of public scrutiny but also a hefty amount of sincere praise which culminated in his rather awkward nomination for the presidency in 1880. Despite his personal objection, Garfield eventually capitulated and, though never expected to actually win, campaigned alongside his running mate Chester A. Arthur for the Republican cause. When he did win it was considered a minor miracle and had more than a few people speculating that the new President was merely a puppet in a ruse cooked up by the delegates to get their real man, Arthur, into office.

One person certainly amused at the outcome of the election was Charles Guiteau. Having experienced many of the same setbacks in life as the President himself, the squirrely little man from Wisconsin had tried his hand at many an occupation only to fail or quit at all of them. Many, including Guiteau's own father, considered him insane and various attempts were unsuccessfully made to have him committed. Following the 1880 election, Guiteau, intending to solicit employment in the White House, began stalking Garfield in person. By 1881, after being turned down for an office on more than one occasion, Guiteau resolved it was God's will that he kill the President. On July 2 of the same year, after pursuing Garfield in secret for several months, he encountered the President and Secretary of State James Blaine at Baltimore train station whereupon he fired two rounds of a .44 British Bulldog pistol, one winging the arm of the President and the other piercing one of his lower vertebrae and lodging near his spleen.

Garfield wasn't immediately killed. In fact he initially stood a good chance of survival. Doctors worked around the clock to locate the bullet only to worsen the President's condition with unsanitary procedures and detrimental hygiene, ultimately resulting in an infection which hastened Garfield's death in September of 1881 nearly three months after his assassination attempt. Guiteau meanwhile was immediately apprehended and tried. He persistently maintained he was innocent of all charges, claiming he had only shot Garfield to make Arthur president. An insanity defense was not out of the question as all who stood witness to his trial could see he was clearly deranged. But in the end he was executed in front 2,000 spectators, all watching as the madman danced his way up to the scaffold to be hanged, shaking hands with the executioner and requesting that a poem he had written while in prison be read prior to his death. This, one of the more colorful, though tragic events of American history is certainly a story worth telling and carries lessons worth learning. Millard's previous work The River of Doubt, chronicling Teddy Roosevelt's post-Presidential Amazonian adventure, was highly successful, winning the Best Book of the Year by the New York Times Book Review. This latest outing is as entertaining though perhaps not as discretely rendered. Destiny of a Republic runs in the same vein but the story has so many different dimensions it's hard to find a seminal theme to latch on to. There's two vastly different men on a path to destruction, a country still in post-war turmoil, a shady political climate and then the tragedy involved with the medical negligence. That's not even including the interesting tidbits about Garfield's family life which included the death of two young children and the survival of an unlikely marriage to his wife Lucretia. Or even the potentially life saving efforts made on the part of Alexander Graham Bell whose influential inventions attempted to locate the bullet inside the president's body by remote detection. It's a worthy effort however by an author who's fascinated by her subject and mainstream readers as well as history buffs will be pleased with the riveting manner in which the events are brought to life. (973.84092 MILLARD)

Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd

Although it's safe to say he had as many critics as admirers, Thomas Hardy barely seemed to notice. Unlike Dickens who embraced his many fans with welcomed arms, even seeming to thrive under public scrutiny, Hardy's relationship with his readers can only be described as one of careless indifference bordering on contempt. When his 1895 novel Jude the Obscure, though received moderately well by critics, threw his reading public into a a fit of outrage over the book's morbid content and perceived immorality, Hardy quit fiction altogether, focusing instead on poetry and short form prose until his death in 1928. Far From the Madding Crowd is one of his earliest and best-loved novels, confronting head-on the themes of country manners, feminine virtue, male obsession and unrequited love.

"The only superiority in women that is tolerable to the rival sex is, as a rule, that of the unconscious kind; but a superiority which recognizes itself may sometimes please by suggesting possibilities of capture to the subordinated man." p. 37

In the secluded, pastoral English county of Wessex, Gabriel Oak is a young, hard working farmer whose life becomes indelibly altered when he meets the spry, comely Bathsheba Everdene, a milkmaid from a neighboring farm. Though Gabriel's pursuits and courtship are not unencouraged, his honest proposal of marriage is turned down by the girl who soon relocates to another part of the county. When they next meet some months later, things have changed considerably. A terrible accident has killed off Gabriel's entire flock, forced the sale of his farm and thrust him into a life as hired hand while Bathsheba is now a moderately wealthy landowner, inheriting an estate and a considerable plot of land upon her uncle's death. By chance, when Gabriel happens upon a fire at Bathsheba's farm and spearheads the effort to extinguish it, his efforts are applauded by the locals and he is made the bailiff and estate manager under the Bathsheba's supervision.

Bathsheba's rather unconventional situation--young, single beautiful woman acting as sole proprietor to a large country estate--has caught the ear and eye of more than a few people in neighboring villages and surrounding countryside, most notably the wealthy, distinguished William Boldwood and the dashing Sergeant Francis Troy. Both men's courtship and subsequent entanglement with the immature, capricous Bathsheba are met with staggeringly ill consequences as the young woman's pride and stubborn wilfulness, Boldwood's covetous obsession, Troy's bigamy and hidden secrets culminate in each's bitter self-knowledge, agony and disgrace. It is only Gabriel's solemn, dutiful prudence and discretion which prevents Bathsheba herself from total ruin.

Written in 1874, Far from the Madding Crowd was Hardy's 1st Wessex novel and offers, in ample measure, the details of English country life the author so cherished. Chiefly featured, however, is Hardy's strict devotion to the tenets of realism, his portrayal of man's bitterly brutal lot echoing his deepest convictions as fallible human nature and moral ineptitude form the book's central themes. The price of vanity, unforeseen consequences and a taste for the tragic are on full display: all four or five principle characters endure harsh circumstances--not always unjustifiably--and are invariably certain to suffer from their actions. Incidents such as the young Fanny Robin's pregnancy with Troy's bastard child (and death as a result of), Boldwood's murderous rampage, Bathsheba's humiliating abasement, and Gabriel's quiet longing foreshadow events in Hardy's later novels in which protagonists like Tess d'Urbeville and Jude Fawley are mercilessly plagued by relentless misfortune. In 'Madding Crowd' the fates still favour some semblance of grace and mercy though as the two primary lead characters, Gabriel and Bathsheba, are able to escape affliction, learn from their mistakes, and ultimately find love with each other. But as with all of Hardy's Victorian novels the real draw is the author's master hand at eliciting mood, setting and characterization, his skill, intuition and metaphorical dexterity a wonder to behold. (FIC HARDY)

Buddenbrook: The Decline of a Family / a novel by a Thomas Mann; trans. by Klaus Marie Brandauer

Among the pinnacles of German literature, Thomas Mann is one name which shines exceptionally bright. Born in Lubeck in 1875, Mann was the son of a moderately well-to-do town merchant and prominent baroness. Though he would publicly poke fun and even revile his bourgeios background he was, self-proclaimedly, quite fond of the culture which it preserved. His most recognizable feat was perhaps capturing, with sardonic candor and discerning commentary, the transition of German society from an age of loosely defined aristocracy to a united federation and forerunner to a republic. Published in 1900 after over three years of writing, Buddenbrook is seen by critics as, if not his best, at least his most autobiographical and densely layered novel.

In northern Germany nearing the end of the 19th century the Buddenbrooks of Lubeck represent one of the rich, highly educated families which at the time form the upper class level of Prussian society. Though prosperous and influential, the family is well-grounded in morality, sternly pious and deeply reverential towards established traditions of integrity and hard work. The Buddenbrooks live in a world where strict divisions of society are laid down. Distinctions between the labor classes, bourgeoisie and upper-middle class mercantile families are easily identifiable even within the relatively small town of Lubeck where the Buddenbrooks play a major role in maintaining the status quo in regards to both themselves and everybody else. Unspoken guidelines for whom their children should associate with, which schools they should attend, who they form ties to and, of course, whom they should ultimately marry go hand-in-hand with daily tasks. Both sides of the social spectrum are aware of the often costly implications an inappropriate match could have which is why it is so important that the couple’s youngest daughter Frau Antonia "Tony" Buddenbrook marry Herr Grunlich, a visibly successful businessman from Hamburg and a man seemingly of good taste and distinction, even if Tony doesn't like him.

Tony's poor opinion of her "chosen" mate isn't so inaccurate. As it turns out, within months after their wedding, Herr Grunlich is found out as a scoundrel, unworthy of all good society and especially of being wed to such a catch as Tony. The marriage promptly dissolves in divorce, a lamentable but necessary action which eventually puts the Buddenbrooks back into relatively modest standing among their peers. Other problems crop up though as Christian, the family's middle child chooses a life in the theater, a heretofore unheard-of and near scandalous profession to embark upon. As further indignities cause friction and highlight conflict, the family fortune, once worth nearly 100,000 marks, has now dwindled to an alarmingly low sum as collective debts force the once and still proud family to face reality.

Mann's novel is not so much about the family Buddenbrook epitomizing the ruling class as it is about their decline, a dissolution which parallels the demise of an entire epoch and the ultimate dismembering of the Hapsburgian Empire. Even as shrewd decisions are made by upstanding family members in order to preserve their "place", shifting paradigms of a world beyond their control force the family and indeed the whole of Germany to confront change and transition. Mann was one of the great commentators of his times. The turn-of-the-century changes affecting his native land, the growing nationalism, imperial transitions, political reconfigurations and the creeping advance of German militarism are perhaps best detailed through his exquisite works both fiction and non-fiction.

Something To Do With Death

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C'era Una Volta Il West (Once Upon a Time in the West) DVD (1968) / w/ Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Jason Robards & Claudia Cardinale; a film by Sergio Leone

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Jill: "You saved his life."

Harmonica: "I didn't let them kill him . . . that's not the same thing."

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In an era of change and transition in a land far from civilized, one man bids for his portion of the American dream while another helps try to preserve it and still others aim to obliterate any chance could have. An outlaw fugitive shoots his way out of captivity only to find new enemies at the next turn, a bigger bounty on his head, more battles to be waged. A woman from the east seeking a new life arrives to find her fiance murdered, his children slain alongside him. All the while as ruthless ambitions are collectively played out, a solitary "man with no name" deliberates his own purpose-filled agenda, one not indifferent to morality yet still wrought with necessary evils. It is Once Upon a Time in the West, a time of order and civility striving to overcome violence and corruption, of progress and development in the face of lawlessness as a way of life.

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The Western to top all Westerns, Sergio Leone's masterpiece is not only a staple of the genre, it's widely considered to be one of the greatest movies ever made. The cinematography itself--symbolic imagery, visual aesthetics and soundtrack--warrants instant appeal: barren landscapes as worn and desolate as the figures and faces which inhabit it, winds howling across unobstructed terrain mirroring civilization's unencumbered progress, tattered buildings withering under the elements reflecting man's own imperfections, etc. The cast is likewise distinguished. Henry Fonda, in his darkest role, portrays the very essence of evil as the psychopathic Frank, a ruthless mercenary only too obliged to kill on a whim. Bronson is the mysterious "Harmonica", a man bearing the scars from a wounded past consequently linking him to a singular, irreversible fate. Robards and Cardinale complete the leads as the sympathetic outlaw and sturdy heroine, each complemented by a well-positioned supporting cast all helping to lift the movie to its rightful place in film history.

Shipwrecks & Treasure Troves

The Wreck of the Medusa: The Most Famous Sea Disaster of the Nineteenth Century / by Jonathan Miles

Arguably the worst shipwreck prior to the Titanic and certainly one of the most (in)famous sea disasters ever, the 1816 destruction of the French naval vessel Meduse was nothing if not a testament to the corruption and incompetence of man pitted against the forceful brutality of nature. The wreck and subsequent sinking of the ship near the west African coastline was only the beginning. What followed in the hours, days and weeks aboard the crew's one lifeboat and a makeshift life raft of 150 mutinied passengers would be one of the most excruciating survival experiences ever recorded. French author Miles accurately re-crafts the story of the most doomed voyage in the Age of Sail, not shying from the utterly deplorable accounts of barbarism, atrocity, mayhem and murder.

Sea Venture: Shipwreck, Survival and The Salvation of the First English Colony in the New World / Kieran Doherty

Few people familiar with the story of Jamestown, England's first New World colony, realize the particularly dire straits it experienced in its first formidable years of existence. Illness and harsh conditions had dwindled the burgeoning township of over 500 settlers to a meager 50 by the time rescue aid arrived onboard the cargo ship Sea Venture; and yet the ship's tale of perseverance through adversity had been as harrowing as that of the fledgling colony. Originally the flagship at the helm of 9 smaller frigates embarking for North America, all was nearly lost when a vicious storm obliterated the fleet, destroying all the subsidiary vessels and only sparing the Sea Venture when it washed ashore at Bermuda. Even then it would be a ten month hiatus before the voyage could successfully be re-engaged and the rescue mission completed. Doherty's fantastic narrative of this largely overlooked but incredibly important historical tidbit is a great read for anyone even remotely interested in America's earliest years.

Treasure Ship: The Legend and Legacy of the S.S. Brother Jonathan / by Dennis M. Powers

While the Civil War waged in the eastern United States, the Pacific coast remained largely uninvolved subsequently carrying on with routine matters. Gold was still an avid interest and prospectors, craftsmen and merchants continued unheeded with the business of trading the precious metal. So it was on July 30, 1865 that the S.S. Brother Jonathan, a steamer noted for its efficiency, was traveling north along the California coast with over $50 million in gold bullion when turbulent seas violently heaved it onto an uncharted reef. Only 19 of the ship's 247 passengers survived and the ship's remains along with its lucrative cargo were seemingly lost forever, a presumption upheld through several salvage efforts over the years until in 1993, amid a fluke expedition, the wreckage was discovered. Numerous adventurers, archaeologists and treasure hunters would descend to the site only to have their eager retrieval efforts jutted by a myriad of ensuing legal battles, political proceedings and lawsuits which would be ongoing for nearly a decade.

Treasure Hunt: Shipwreck, Diving and the Quest for Treasure in an Age of Heroes / by Peter Earle

Earle, bestselling author of The Pirate Wars, informs and entertains in this riveting account on the evolution and lasting romantic legacy of treasure hunting and the heralded adventurers who lustfully sought it out. From the early years when Spanish galleons and Dutch traders would trundle vast quantities of gold and jewels from the New World to the years immediately following when commercial voyages and pirates would earnestly seek out the same merchant vessels--sunken, shipwrecked or otherwise--and into the age when primitive diving equipment was employed to retrieve unsalvaged booty, this is a book that will delight fans of the true-adventure novel as well as anyone curious about the real history behind lost riches just waiting to be found. For a non-fiction compendium to Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, this is a great read.

The Man of Property / by John Galsworthy

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'Man of Property' is the first novel in John Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga, an epilogue chronicling a set of wealthy Victorians during the second half of the nineteenth century.

"She is Mine!"
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Among the more pretentious members of the eminent Forsyte clan, Soames Forsyte is a man who desires things to be "his alone”. A noted barrister and wealthy heir to a family patriarch, his whims and wants seldom fail to meet with success. Undeterred by the needs of others, his possessiveness targets his beautiful wife Irene, whose marriage to Soames out of financial want has proved a bitter pill indeed. Jealous of Irene’s friendships and eager to remove her from potential acquaintances, Soames' plan for a relocation to a new home in the country backfires when Irene becomes embroiled in an affair with the architect, Philip Bossinney. Their passionate union and subsequent removal from society ends not just one marriage but intended matrimony of Bossinney and June Forsyte, Soames’ cousin. Meanwhile other members of the family cope with money woes, aging, and further marital discord.

Victorian literature was defined by Dickens, Eliot, Hardy, etc.; but it was (and still is) popularized in retrospect by authors like John Galsworthy. Rather than exacting the technical aspects of the “novel”, Galsworthy reveled in exploring the condescending veneer of that period’s social hierarchy, depicting--with reserved aplomb--the scandal and indignities hidden beneath the surface. Spanning over five decades and four generations, the saga follows the family from its prestigious mid-Victorian seat to its more settled bourgeois status at the turn of the century. While the major figures of Soames and Irene, Bossinney, June, and Jolyon are examined most extensively, Galsworthy does well not to totally override the other, less dramatic family members.

Sons of Texas trilogy / by Elmer Kelton

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Elmer Kelton was raised on a ranch near Andrews, Texas where he was exposed first-hand to life on the range. After graduating from the University of Texas in 1948, he worked as an associate editor for a newspaper prior to beginning his career as a novelist. He has since risen to the pinnacle of the Western genre winning countless accolades for his work. His “Sons of Texas” trilogy is one of his more recent collections of Western classics.

Sons of Texas (2005)
The year is 1816 and Mordecai Lewis leaves his farm in Tennessee for what's intended to be a short trip to Texas to wrangle some wild horses and bring them back to sell. But unbeknownst to Mordecai, his teenage son Michael has secretly joined the party. When the group meets with trouble near the Louisiana border, Michael witnesses the death of his father along with most of the others, barely escaping with his own life. Vowing to settle the score, Michael returns to Texas five years later only to meet up with a young Stephen F. Austin and a new life on the Texas frontier.

The Raiders (2006)
In this second book in the Sons of Texas series, members of the Lewis family resume their hard-scrabble lives in the westward expansion of the American frontier. The elder Michael Lewis is a family man now, keeping a home with his wife Marie and three children even as he himself constantly feels the pull of adventure. Andrew, still a bachelor, remains the reliable one; constant in his devotion to duty and country (and secretly to Marie) amid the forbidding Texas borderlands. Together with other loyal homesteaders, the brothers confront Indian outlaws and Mexican partisans as well as an old Tennessee family they’ve long shared a blood feud with in this riveting tale of early life in the Lone Star state.

The Rebels (2007)
The last book of the Sons of Texas trilogy finds the Lewis brothers still strangers in a foreign land, striving to raise their families and cultivate a living out of the unforgiving terrain near the Texas-Mexico border. Meanwhile race, politics, and outlaws intertwine as both Mexican and American cultures clash in the escalating tensions between the two countries. War arrives soon enough bringing the Lewis boys into the battle for Texas independence. Fictionalized renditions of legends Sam Houston, General Santa Anna, and Jim Bowie are included in this classic western adventure.

Adam Bede by George Eliot (Audio Version on CD); read by David Case

It didn't take Mary Ann Evans too much time to realize she was as good a writer as many of her contemporaries. 'The Movement' of literary realism in reaction to 19th century Romanticism (think Jane Austen) was unquestionably male dominant; forefronted by Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope, Hardy and the like. But her ultimate decision to write as "George Eliot" became redundant, however, as her work proliferated worldwide cementing her legacy amidst the pillars of Victorian literature. Gifted with astute clarity and a sharp eye at interpreting human behavior, Eliot's writing concerns very commonplace rural and small town lives central to her own location in the Midlands.

In Adam Bede, a young carpenter's devotion to a strikingly beautiful farm hand turns sour when she catches the eye of the local landowner. The passions of both men climax at the realization of each's feelings. The real genius of this book is Eliot's use of few characters and even fewer settings as opposed to a Dickens novel where people and places reach into the dozens. Australian David Case masterfully enhances the story's mood and maintains the reader's interest in each character. Though the realism abides throughout, the tone is never somber or cynical and all four protagonists contain just the right amount of ambiguity to create an intriguing plot with no heroes or villains. Even the seemingly victimized are never cast a shadow over as redemption and reconciliation are present by the story's end. (AD FIC ELIOT)