Last Known Port: A Southern Mystery

Last Known Port: A Southern Mystery by Sue Anger 276 pages

 

It’s May 1923. Jake Parson and his Labrador retriever, Pilot, have pulled into the port of Beaufort, North Carolina. He is only a week late, and he is eager to see his brother, Wade, who is waiting for him. Upon his arrival, he learns that Wade left a week ago aboard his boat, but never made it to his next port. There are no signs of him in Beaufort except that his dog, Yawg, is there. Jake knows something is wrong; Wade would never leave Yawg behind. Jake begins to do some investigating around town, talking to anyone who knew him.

 

Beneath the surface of Beaufort, things are not what they seem. The idyllic coastal town harbors some big secrets. Jake, a World War I veteran suffering from shellshock, discovers rum-running and smuggling are the biggest trades in the area.

 

As he meets the town’s inhabitants, Jake is drawn to jazz musician Nell Guthrie. Unfortunately, Nell is already engaged, but the two do become good friends. Bottom line is that Jake learns that “local rum runners are piloting small boats in the open ocean to collect illegal booze from ships traveling the “Whiskey Road,” that stretches from Nassau to New York City’s Rum Row.”

 

This novel was more about the booze than it was about finding Wade. He was a secondary plot point. Last Known Port: A Southern Mystery gets 3 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

 

 

 

So Many Beginnings: A Little Women Remix

So Many Beginnings: A Little Women Remix by Bethany C. Morrow 304 pages

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I requested this book from Bookishfirst.com. Like most everyone else in the world, I adored Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women” and was excited to see what author Morrow would do with it.  Well, the cover gives part of it away, but, still, I was curious as so what Morrow would do with the story.

The timeframe was consistent, the American Civil War (1863-1866). But instead of a poor Northern family with their father serving as a chaplain in the Union Army, the March family is living in North Carolina in the Freedpeople’s Colony of Roanoke Island. As a history nerd, I was confused. Every time I read Roanoke, I immediately thought of the attempt by the English to establish a colony on the island in 1587. I had no idea that after the English settlers disappeared, the island became a haven for freedpeople of color. Some background would have been nice, but the story structure really didn't lend itself to a backstory of this nature.

Another thing that confused, and somewhat irritated me, was the title the sisters used to refer to their mother. In the Alcott version, it was Marmee, but in this version, it was Mammy. The first time I read it I was offended, but then quickly realized the timeframe of the story. However, the etymology of “Mammy” is “black woman having the care of white children.” That didn’t fit the story to me at all, but in hindsight, maybe that was what Mammy did before they escaped to the Freedpeople’s Colony, but it’s unclear to me.

The girls seemed both different and alike to Alcott’s version. However, there was something about them that didn’t allow me to care much about them. There was a lack of tension throughout the book, no compelling reason to turn the page---and that is what prompts me to say that “So Many Beginnings: ‘A Little Women Remix’” receives 1 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world. 

 

The Book Charmer

The Book Charmer by Karen Hawkins   368 pages

The small town of Dove Pond, North Carolina, is slowly dying. Most of the shops and businesses have all moved away. But the people who live ther love it; generations of their families have called it home.

Sarah Dove is one such person. A descendant of the town’s founders and the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, Sarah has a special gift. Most people in the town know that she has a unique ability to find the right book for the right person at the moment they need it. But what most people don’t know is that the books talk to her. Sarah and the books don’t have conversations, but Sarah understands the noises they make. It’s really kinda cute. No wonder she became the town librarian.

Recently a new family has moved in down the street: Grace Wheeler, her foster mother Mama G, and her neice, Daisy. Sarah feels, and the books confirm, that Grace is the one who can save Dove Pond.

Grace has other plans. She left a high paying, successful job in finance to care for Mama G, the woman who took in Grace and her sister, Hannah, when no one else wanted them. It wasn’t easy trying to raise two very angry little girls. Now that Mama G has been diagnosed with dementia, Grace is taking her to her hometown of Dove Pond.

Grace has vowed she will only stay a year. She vows not to get involved in making friends and especially not to get involved witht the motorcycle-riding bad boy who lives next door and sends shock waves pulsing through her body when their eyes meet.

I found Grace’s vow alittle strange in that who knows how long Mama G might live. And then there is Daisy. An angry little girl whose mother died and left her. Since there wasn’t a father in the picture, it’s up to Grace to raise Daisy. She doesn’t seem to have any ideas what to do with her, much less if she takes yer back to Raleigh and her eighty-hour-a-work-week lifestyle.

But I need not to have worried too much. Grace, reluctantly, becomes the head committee chairperson of a local festival. The festival is important to the town, it’s tradition to host it every year. The townspeople won’t let it die, no matter what.

All these struggles make “The Book Charmer” a sweet read. I feel that the title  of the novel is a bit misleading because Sarah, the book charmer, is a secondary protagonist.  I expected more of Sarah. I wasn’t overly happy with the ending, But it does set the characters and the town up for a sequel.  Therefore, receives 4 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

Until Proven Innocent

Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case by Stuart Taylor Jr and KC Johnson, 405 pages

On Monday, March 13, 2006, some members of the Duke Men's Lacrosse team held a party at an off-campus house rented by several of their teammates.  The highlight of the evening was to be a performance by a pair of strippers, but one of the dancers arrived inebriated and unable to perform.  An angry scene ensued, ending with the sober entertainer, Kim Roberts, hauling her drunken colleague, Crystal Mangum, whom she had not met prior to that evening, to her car.  Shortly thereafter, Roberts approached police at a local supermarket, complaining that Mangum refused to leave her car.  Finding Mangum incoherent, the policemen called for an ambulance to transport her to a hospital.  Once there, Mangum told concerned health care workers several wildly different accounts of the night's events, converging on the claim that she had been raped by multiple men at the party.  Although Mangum was inconsistent on a wide range of important elements - the number of attackers, their descriptions, Roberts' role - and although her story was contradicted by testimony from Roberts and the team members, as well as physical, DNA, photographic, and electronic evidence, three members of the team would eventually be charged with rape.  The others would see their season cancelled, their coach fired, and themselves threatened by protesters, denounced by professors, and labelled as racist rape-enablers by The New York Times and CNN.

Yet the main villain of the story, as told by Taylor and Johnson, is not Mangum, but District Attorney Mike Nifong.  For Nifong, a white man in the midst of a desperate three-way election battle in which his opponents were a woman and an African-American, Mangum's story represented an ideal opportunity to appeal to women and minorities.  Once set on this course, the prosecutor was determined to continue to pursue the case even if it required the concealment of exculpatory evidence.  The secondary villains are those activists and media figures who, driven by an ideology of racial and sexual resentment, aided and abetted the injustices committed against these young men.  Finally, the authors are deeply critical of the Duke administration's inability to offer even a qualified defense of their students in the face of the angry mob, allowing outrage to trump evidence.

Taylor and Johnson, both of whom reported on the case as it unfolded, carefully detail the story at every stage of its development.  Their intimate understanding of the personalities involved is clear, and it allows them to prioritize the personal over the political, but unfortunately this also leads to some apparent personal animus against certain figures.  There is also a certain amount of necessary repetition - as lies are repeated over and over with slight variations, so too the truth must prove as tireless as the lies.

Miss Julia Strikes Back

Miss Julia Strikes Back by Ann B. Ross    339 pages

After a less than stellar seventh outing with Miss Julia Strikes Back, Ann B. Ross continues the tales of the tales of Mrs. Julia Springer, known around Abbottsville simply as Miss Julia, with Miss Julia Strikes Back. This southern magnolia is anything but quiet and demur; she quite feisty for a woman “of a certain age.”

Almost all of Miss Julia’s family has gone out of town. Her new husband Sam is a long-planned trip to Russia. Hazel Marie is vacationing in Mexico. Little Lloyd and Lillian are there to keep her company as well as keep an eye on her. That’s not enough to keep Miss Julia occupied. So she decides to throw a party. She invites her closest friends.  As always, the food and house are impeccable. Upon her guests’ departure, Miss Julia discovers that her wedding rings are missing.  She turns the house upside down and inside out in an effort to find them. Without any luck. Even Hazel Marie’s jewelry is missing. What the heck is going on?

Soon she learns that other women in Abbottsville are also missing their jewels. She needs Mr. Pikens more than ever, and while he’s also “out-of-town,” everyone knows he’s in Mexico with Hazel Marie. That leave Sergeant Coleman Bates to learn what happened. Fat chance of anything happening with him in charge.

Coleman moves much too slow for Miss Julia. Her investigation uncovers that a professional jewelry ring has been operating all over the county. Soon, she and Little Lloyd have tailed the thieves to Palm Beach and head down there to get her rings back. And hopefully some of others’ missing jewelry.

 Ross scores again with Miss Julia Strikes Back. While not as funny and a tad over the top as the first six books in the series, I’m glad to see her back in all her feistiness. Miss Julia Strikes Back gets 4 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

The Barrowfields

  

The Barrowfields by Phillip Lewis 368 pages

I was attracted to Lewis’ debut novel for two reasons. First, I read that someone thought this is the kind of novel “you’d get if you crossed Shirley Jackson and Pat Conroy; a southern Gothic haunted house tale with a coming of age story.” Jackson, Conroy, Southern, Gothic, haunted house. I admit it, there wasn’t much that could stop me from reading this one.

I had, wrongly, assumed, that Barrowfields was either a) the family name, b) the name of the house, or c) the name of a town. Actually, Barrowfields is a barren wasteland in North Carolina. I “think” it’s near the coast, but I can’t remember right now.

The story centers around the Aster family. They are typical Appalachian folk: poor, hard-working, honest. Helton and Madeline do their best. Their “children were well cared for even if food and clothes were hard to come by.”

The couple has one son, Henry. He is different than other kids; he loves to read (another reason I was drawn to this story). He leaves the mountains, desperate to make it as writer, but gets a law degree, for college, but ultimately returns with a pregnant wife in tow. They settle down to make a life, purchasing a gothic house high on the hill.  

They have a son, Henry, Jr., who narrates the novel. They settle into life. And that’s the problem with this novel. While the writing is beautiful, the plot just moseys along, It’s like reading about a bunch of people sitting around thinking. I think it’s the long sentences and the slow pace that made this such a chore. I wasn’t pulled into the story; I couldn’t find an arc that really enticed me to read. 

Little to no plot in a beautifully written novel are the reasons that  The Barrowfields receives 3 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

I received this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for this review.

First Frost

First Frost by Sarah Addison Allen
296 Pages



"It's October in Bascom, North Carolina, and autumn will not go quietly. As temperatures drop and leaves begin to turn, the Waverley women are made restless by the whims of their mischievous apple tree... and all the magic that swirls around it. But this year, first frost has much more in store. Claire Waverley has started a successful new venture, Waverley's Candies. Though her handcrafted confections - rose to recall lost love, lavender to promote happiness and lemon verbena to soothe throats and minds - are singularly effective, the business of selling them is costing her the everyday joys of her family, and her belief in her own precious gifts. Sydney Waverley, too, is losing her balance. With each passing day she longs more for a baby - a namesake for her wonderful Henry. Yet the longer she tries, the more her desire becomes an unquenchable thirst, stealing the pleasure out of the life she already has. Sydney's daughter, Bay, has lost her heart to the boy she knows it belongs to... if only he could see it, too. But how can he, when he is so far outside her grasp that he appears to her as little more than a puff of smoke? When a mysterious stranger shows up and challenges the very heart of their family, each of them must make choices they have never confronted before. And through it all, the Waverley sisters must search for a way to hold their family together through their troublesome season of change, waiting for that extraordinary event that is First Frost ."

This revist to the Waverly family takes place years after the first book and while still an entertaining read, is not quite as special as the first book Garden Spells.  I think the problem is that the problems presented in this book never really seem to become too threatening and there is no sense of any true adversity for the characters.  This coupled with having so many characters leads to a shallowness that was not present in the first book.

Heirs of Grace

Heirs of Grace by Tim Pratt
271 Pages

Bekah has been left a sizeable amount of money and a house in remote North Carolina by an unknown relative. (If only we all could have this happen).  When she gets there she finds that the house is full of junk and the person who left it to her was her birth father who let her be given up for adoption.  As she explores she discovers that the objects in the house all have various magical uses and if she can solve the mystery, she will come into the powers once wielded by her father.  However, she also discovers that she has other half-siblings who also want the power, at the expense of her life.


A middling book in every way,  Pratt takes an interesting premise but fails to deliver a memorable book.