Bel Ria by Sheila Burnford

Sheila Burnford is most known for an earlier book she wrote, The Incredible Journey.  That book is in the children’s section of the library, although Burnford did not write it as a children’s book.  Bel Ria, published 16 years after The Incredible Journey, is similar to Journey in that its chief character is an animal.  Interestingly enough, we observe the dog (who ends up with the name Bel Ria) and the other animals in the story without any inside information.  That is, we see their behavior, but can only guess at what they are thinking and feeling.  This is no mean feat for a writer, as the story is about Bel Ria’s connections with and loyalty to the people she meets within the tortured landscape of World War II.   But just as many can “read” animals without speech, so can Burnford, and she passes that knowledge on to us, her readers.  

Interestingly enough, The Incredible Journey was first made into a movie in 1963, and was true to the book in that we just “watched” the animals on their journey.  When the movie was remade thirty years later, Disney decided to give the animals human voices.  Needless to say, no purist’s dissent was heard,  and the movie did very well—even generating a sequel a few years later.  Nowadays the publishing world is full of either books with animals that narrate their stories to us directly, or with a person who speaks for the animal, letting us know their innermost thoughts.  

Keeping this trend in mind, Bel Ria is fully refreshing in that we aren’t given answers about the animals’ behaviors, just explanation and background about the humans in the story.  Not knowing Bel Ria’s inner life builds the mystery of the story, for us and for the people who grow to love this dog with a hidden past.  

Bel Ria was first a performing dog travelling with Gypsies in France, where a British soldier retreating before the Germans encounters their band.  He helps them with a broken axle and they in turn hide him for a day and a half from a German patrol. After their parting, he learns the Gypsies died from bombing and the dog comes after him, as its only link with its former masters.  He doesn’t want it, but it can’t be driven away, managing to even sneak onto the transport ship taking the soldier back to England.  One event follows another, and suffice it to say that a bond is forged with the animal, not a sentimental one but one recognizing the dog’s courage and gifts, and its loyalty.  The dog passes to other humans through further disasters of war and the disruptions in communication and connection that these disasters left in their wake.  

Bel Ria, as the dog is finally known, is worth reading about because he gives that connection back.  He does this by giving his loyalty to those people who just happen to be in his way—either chosen by others or by himself.  But there’s something or someone he’s waiting for, and there are intimations about this throughout the book.  Just from his manner, just from the dog’s time spent watching and gazing far off.  It’s a tribute to Sheila Burnford’s writing that this anticipation is finally fulfilled.  What man and time has torn asunder, is made up in Bel Ria’s life—to find again what he was to his first mistress, and what he was with her.  Somehow, life mends itself, with caring and duty done along the way—to a stray dog, to men struggling in oil-infested waters, to an old woman trapped under a bombed outbuilding.

 

Texas City Reads 2012

This year's Texas City Reads book is Erik Larson's In the Garden of Beasts.

Although In the Garden of Beasts is nonfiction, it reads like fiction: suspense, scandalous love affairs, political intrigue and heartbreak.

It depicts the story of the American ambassador and his family who were stationed in Berlin in the years just before WWII, just as Hitler was gaining his power in Germany. The ambassador, William E. Dodd, was a fairly tame personality, but he had one of the hardest jobs around trying to represent American interests in Germany as Hitler gained political ground.

Dodd's daughter Mary, however, made up in spades for her father's conventionality. She was an inveterate flirt and a very opinionated young woman; later in life she became an author and then ended up fleeing the United States after being accused of spying for the Russians.

Larson does not try to hide the Dodds’ shortcomings or prejudices — for example, they didn't seem to be too bothered by the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Germany when they first arrived — but he also portrays their strengths, such as Dodd's admirable refusal to kowtow to the future Fuhrer.

You may recognize Larson's name; he wrote Isaac's Storm, about the 1900 hurricane that struck Galveston — the greatest natural disaster to ever strike the United States. In the Garden of Beasts has received excellent reviews and appeared on many best books lists of 2011.

Intrigued yet? Here are a few reviews of the book:

New York Times
L.A. Times
Brevity magazine, an online journal
We Heart Reading book blog
NPR

The library will have multiple copies available for check-out at the Circulation Desk. We have In the Garden of Beasts in book, large print and audiobook form. We will host discussions of the book in the Holland Meeting Room of the library in September. All are welcome at the discussions.

G.I.: The American Soldier in World War II by Lee Kennett

Lee Kennett, who died last year, was a history professor at Georgia and a noted historian. He wrote books about French and American military history, from the Revolutionary War to World War II. I read this book because we are in the seventieth anniversary years of World War II, a major event that appears to be passing from our view, as those people whose lives were impacted by the war are now aging significantly.

While this is a book of “straight” history, and not likely to be in the public eye as much as a historical novel, I found it immensely readable. Kennett describes how the United States had to quickly assemble an army after Pearl Harbor. Some early recruits had to share a gun for target practice and others were put to clearing swamps to build their training camps. But by the time the American soldier went marching into North Africa, Europe, and went flying into the Pacific, the quality and quantity of his outfitting and supplies were duly noted by both the Allied and Axis’ armies.

Kennett covers all the bases, from the first drafting of men through their induction, training and deployment. He does not try to defend times when the U.S. Army failed to meet its objectives. An example of this was how Italy, occupied by the U.S. after the war, became a breeding ground for profiteering and organized crime. In America, the local draft boards decided who were to be called up, and complaints didn't usually change their rulings. Kennett reports that the Hispanic and African-American men were given less exemptions than white recruits, probably a function of the more segregated society of that time.

U.S. Army soldiers in Europe had different experiences than those who were fighting the Japanese, and Kennett details for us the essential bleakness of those stationed in the Pacific. They had to fight in a jungle, facing an enemy that allegedly tortured and killed captured soldiers. Interestingly enough, Kennett tells us that documentation on the Japanese Army side also records their soldiers feeling alienated and spooked by the jungle, with its wild animals and pestilent diseases. Many soldiers in the Pacific were not felled by the enemy, but by disease.

Although the book reiterates how varied the G.I. soldier really was, Kennett still manages to make some solid generalizations about Americans in the Army that make a lot of sense. You can almost picture these young men (and women) being so friendly and open that children just flocked to them wherever they went, and how they got the reputation from the other Allies for not having much patience - always wanting to “get moving”. Another thing Kennett shows us, is that for all the hype and propaganda put out by our government, the American soldier didn’t have any enthusiasm for talking about patriotism. In his view, he was just “doing his job”. Kennett has left us with a pertinent portrait of Americans participating in World War II, one that we can use to remind ourselves of what the war meant for them and how they went out to meet it.

Click here for our catalog listing.

Women at War with America: Private Lives in a Patriotic Era by D’Ann Campbell

Dr Campbell, a historian and currently a faculty member at Culver-Stockton College in Missouri, has a special interest in the history of women in the military services. Her book offers some food for reflection concerning how women’s lives in the United States were affected by World War II. For its background, she relied heavily on surveys taken by government and organizations at the time, and cites studies which quantify the percentages of women and their status before, throughout and after the war years.

Because of the nature of her data, the book at times seemed dry, full of statistics, which were not always easily translated (for me) into living and breathing scenarios. However, a good part of these “facts” did give me a detailed picture of what life must have been like in those days. Some of the general themes could be anticipated, i.e., how reluctant our armed forces was to admit women to their ranks. There were ups and downs for women in the military, with some branches more welcoming than others (the Navy was the best, evidently) and it was interesting to note that women’s salaries overall were improved by entering the service; while men on the whole were paid less in the military compared to their salaries before the war. Campbell is at pains to dissemble the idea that women weren’t working before the war – actually a good part were, at least until they got married. Unlike other countries, the United States government was firmly against the idea of women seeing combat. Even nurses in the military, who were more accepted by the public in general, did not tend to the wounded in the field.

While “Rosie the Riveter” is a popular image, Campbell informs us that there were some negative aspects of women’s venture onto the assembly line. With virtual segregation still in effect, African-American women, for the most part, were not hired in factories. Job segregation still existed, with many companies determining which fields a woman could work in. Unions were likely to be leery of women joining their ranks, since the implication was that women’s first priority was their family, and they would not be long-term employees.

Campbell takes pains to illustrate her thesis – that the government at war had its objectives that it wanted women to help with, yet at the same time not wanting to endanger their primary status as the keeper of hearth and home. There was a serious backlash to women’s military enrollment which England experienced as well: around 1943 a substantial number of enlisted soldiers began calling all female military sexually promiscuous. This discouraged many women from enlisting, and discouraged their families from giving them support or permission to enlist.

The book gives you a lot to absorb and with so many ideological tussles going on, it’s no wonder that it’s hard to decide how women’s status improved during war time, if at all. One thing at least is certain, is that it decidedly changed.

Click here for the catalog listing.

The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom, with Elizabeth & John Sherrill

While this book became a best seller after its publication in 1971, it does not enjoy the status of a “great book”, except to readers of the Christian faith and others who are drawn to the book’s spiritual lessons.

Corrie Ten Boom, a Dutch evangelist, had already written some books before this one - compilations of events and experiences illustrate Christian faith. These events were her testimony, as she spent the greater part of her last thirty years traveling, speaking and working with missionaries throughout the world. Although she had told her story many times, Christian writers Elizabeth and John Sherrill worked to make “The Hiding Place” a definitive account of what she and her family went through as defenders of the Jews in World War II.

Over half of the first part of the book is taken up with introducing the reader to the Ten Boom family, who lived in Haarlem. The father was a watchmaker. At the beginning of the war, his wife had passed away, as had three of her sisters who had lived with them. Of his four grown children, two were married and only the two unmarried sisters, Corrie and Betsie, still lived with their father. Betsie, seven years older than Corrie, had a kind of anemia which was not understood at that time, and so was “sickly” and was expected to live at home and not marry. Corrie had suffered an early disappointment in love when someone who she loved and believed to love her in return instead satisfied his family’s expectations by making a “good marriage”. This circumstance gave Corrie her first real lesson in hardship.

As she is sobbing brokenheartedly, her father lovingly comes to comfort and counsel her. Interestingly enough, he does not tell her that there will be other chances. He says she has two choices, one to smother and deny her love, giving rise to bitterness – or to give up her own feelings and ask for God’s in return. Not God’s love for her, but God’s love for this man, which is so much greater than her own.

Moments like these are the kernels of Corrie’s life, which are what sustain her during imprisonment and provide the impetus for her missionary work after the war. During the war, her family shelters Jews from being taken by the Germans. They become involved with the underground movement and have a secret compartment constructed in their house for Jews to hide in during a raid. They are eventually arrested. While in the local jail, their aged 84 year old father becomes ill and dies in an overcrowded hospital, left unattended in a waiting area. Corrie and Betsie spend two months in a Holland prison, and are reunited in a Holland concentration camp where they live for three months before being transported by cattle car to Ravensbruck, a concentration camp for women in Germany. Betsie, already ill, survives only two and a half months there before her death.

Although the flow of the narrative is disjointed, the book successfully illuminates key events for the reader interested in suffering and its implications. In Ravensbruck, Corrie changes. She is human - she hates the enemy, the sadistic guards and the cold and starvation and vermin- but she changes. Partly through her sister, who has compassion for everyone, partly through words in the Bible, which they smuggled into the camp. Corrie’s time and place in our history make the book worth reading. Whether or not it’s a “good read”, it’s a read that resonates.

A German Requiem by Philip Kerr

Named for the poem written by James Fenton about Germany after the Nazi era, this novel is the third in Philip Kerr’s ‘Berlin Noir’ trilogy. Bernie Gunther is the antihero, the ex-policeman who as part of the German police force worked for the SS but asked to become a soldier to avoid being involved in the crimes of the Third Reich. He was eventually captured by the Russians and sent to work in the mines. A year later, he was to be sent back to Germany, but was resourceful enough to jump the train and avoid the pitfalls of repatriation, especially as it was being carried out by the Russians.

The Fenton poem is cryptic and skirts its subject, glancing off and on what was done and what transpired. The poem’s structure seems to mimic our inability to absorb and to process such barbarities. As in Heidelberg, when I visited there: coming down a hill, seeing a small amphitheater sitting there on the grass, all deserted, with no identification, no plaque… “That was where they held the rallies”, my sister said, with all solemnity. Philip Kerr duly mentions throughout the book the horror of the world regarding Nazi atrocities. However, his main focus is to show how life went on in postwar Germany, with new players mingling with the old.

The time is 1947, and Gunther travels to Vienna to investigate a murder of an American officer by a German policeman, one with ties to the underworld. What you find with Kerr is that the “underworld” is almost everywhere. Whether it’s his wife Kristen carrying on in Berlin with an American officer for the material goods he can get for her, or the Allies deciding to work with ex-Nazis to go after the Communists, almost everyone has an agenda – to look after themselves. Gunther finds out the truth about everyone, so there isn’t much to say about anybody, unless it’s the poor girl with a lover who was silenced so that she gets killed almost as an afterthought.

Kerr knows his history, and the reader can be grateful by the end that at least somebody understands who was doing what and for whom. Kerr is clever enough to have some big spoils hinted at to keep us reading – no less than Hermann Goering, who Kerr suggests was never brought to justice, but is alive and well under a new identity, working with the Americans. This twist is just to help nail in the relentless view that Kerr wants us to acquiesce in…that villains may fall, but only new ones take their place.