A Dangerous Business

A Dangerous Business by Jane Smiley 224 pages 

I'm a big fan of Pulitzer-Prize winning author Jane Smiley; I'm not sure how I missed this 2022 publication. But if perusing the perusing the reviews on Amazon is any indication, well, it was not a huge commercial success. I didn't hate this novel, but I didn't love it either. It was okay. 

Set in the 1850s in Monterrey, California, this book had a lot of layers. When readers join Eliza, she has gone to work in a brothel after her abusive husband is killed in a barroom fight. Readers are never sure if the man who shot her husband was punished or not. This is the most freedom that Eliza has ever experienced.  And thanks to the wages she earns at Mrs. Parks and the tips the men leave, she has achieved what the majority of women in this era cannot: financial security.  

Eliza becomes best friends with Jean, another prostitute whose brothel services women. This astounded me. I've never heard of brothels for women, but why not?  Smiley did not go into as much detail here, but Jean's customers mostly came in the daytime whereas most of Eliza's customers were at night.

I was also surprised that the majority of women in this novel were educated and could read and write and do math. Eliza and Jean share a love of reading Edgar Allen Poe's short stories, and when the dead bodies of young women begin to be found, the two amateur sleuths use Poe's Detective Dupin's investigative techniques to get involved with the quest to find the killer. That part of the story lacked tension.

The story is rather plodding, educating the reader on the lives of the prostitutes, the brothel and the men who frequented them, the gorgeous locale, and sometimes more graphic descriptions of the deceased women. 

A Dangerous Business receives 3 out of 5 starts in Julie's world.

 

Yellow Wife

Yellow Wife by Sadeqa Johnson  288 pages

I came of age when the Old South was in its final death throes, and I was no stranger to the horror stories of slavery. This well-researched, oftentimes hard to read, story evokes those stories that I heard as a kid.

Pheby Delores Brown lives on the Bell Plantation in Virginia with her mother, Ruth.  Sired by Master Jacob, he has promised Ruth that Pheby would be educated and freed on her eighteenth birthday. Pheby believes that she will have a good life and is in love with one of the other slaves, Essex Henry. But after her mother dies and Jacob is away traveling on business, Jacob’s wife, Miss Delphina, decides that the uppity young woman must learn that she is in charge.

Delphina sells Pheby to a notorious slave trader, Rubin Lapier, who reigns over Devil’s Half Acre, an infamous jail in Richmond where slaves are taken to be sold or to have their spirits broken. The beatings and whippings, described in minute detail, some of the slaves must endure is the stuff of nightmares. After a torturous walk from the Bell Plantation in Charles City to Richmond, Pheby is chosen by Rubin to be his mistress.

Pheby is treated better than most as Rubin sets her up with sewing clothes for the incoming slaves, especially the ones who he puts to work as prostitutes. Rubin wastes no time in making Pheby is mistress. As the year go by, Pheby longs for the promises of education and freedom that were denied her and she longs for her one true love, Essex.

By the time Essex is brought to the jail, Pheby has had several children with Rubin; Children he dotes on. They are raised in his home where Pheby now lives and sleeps in a bedroom across the hall from Rubin. He even introduces her as the the Mistress of the Jail.

But Pheby cannot forget the man who has her heart, and she does whatever she can to make things better for him.

Author Johnson does not shy away from the realities of slavery, from the fears of being sold to harsher masters, from the fear of the whip and from the fear of familial separation that haunt a slave’s every waking and sleeping minute.

This is not an easy book to read. I swear as I read, I could hear the crack of the whip, the screams as flesh is torn open.

I was disappointed in the ending. It seemed like Johnson got tired of writing and just wound it up. I was planning on giving Yellow Wife 6 out of 5 stars, but the ending forced me to lower its rating to 5 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.