Charlotte Illes is Not a Detective

Charlotte Illes Is Not a Detective by Katie Siegel 352 pages

“Nancy Drew” was the first book series I read as a child, and, if memory serves, I did read all fifty-six of them.  Maybe it was because the back cover copy tells us that it is nostalgic (albeit a much younger nostalgia than mine) that Nancy resurfaced in my memories. Still, it was fun to relive those wonderful days of lying on the couch consumed with the latest un-putdownable episode that evoked such warm feelings for Charlotte.

When Charlotte “Lottie” Iles was ten years old, she solved a small mystery at her elementary school.  She became an overnight sensation and was soon helping lots of people solve little mysteries at school and in the community.

But now Charlotte is twenty-five years old. She is unemployed, lives with her mom, had no love life and a small social life. She is worried that she has “peaked.” But the universe is giving her one more chance to get her act together.

It seems that the company where her brother’s girlfriend, Olivia. works is trying to organize. Seems outdated in 2023 that unions are still considered a threat and that companies will do anything to stop it. But once I started reading this book, I saw it everywhere on the news. And so a dead body of one of the other employees turns up.  But that’s not the thing that captures Charlotte’s attention. It’s the murder and the disappearance of Brian, one of Olivia’s co-workers that lures Charlotte back into detecting. Joined by her two best friends, Lucy and Gabe, the trio pits their heads together and gets to work.

A cozy mystery disguising itself as a mystery, this mixture of past and present amateur sleuthing gives “Charlotte Illes is Not a Detective,” a wonderfully innocent, yet amusing, aura that last until all the mysterious elements are resolved.

Therefore, “Charlotte Illes is Not a Detective,” received 5 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

Release date is June 27, 2023. 

Gateway to Equality

Gateway to Equality: Black Women and the Struggle for Economic Justice in St. Louis by Keona K.Ervin, 269 pages

Ervin frames the book with two national protests in which black women in St. Louis organized an effective worker strike in 1933 and a renters strike in 1969. Before and between those major successes, Gateway to Equality identifies the backgrounds and passions of about a dozen major female organizers in St. Louis who had national experience and impact. The book highlights major justice work in the twentieth century and the central roles of female St. Louis activists during this time. 

Before cell phones and text messages, hundreds of women organized a strike across different plants because their wages were unlivable at $4.60 per week and had been lowered six times. Despite the general conceptual and organizational divide between church and communist perspectives, the women combined insights, organizing and emotions in their leadership. They organized to focus on issues of survival and justice, and to include rather than isolate different perspectives. 

Gateway reviews movements where women led in CORE and Southern Tenant Farmers Union; organized strikes for garment workers; organized boycotts and strikes for jobs against a defense contractor, banks, drug stores and neighborhood shops; ran effective campaigns for city and state political positions; created fair housing legislation; wrote reports on Missouri prisons; and organized unions.

In 1969 black working-class women led thousands of public-housing tenants from Pruitt-Igoe, Carr Square, Vaughn and Cochran developments in a strike against St. Louis Housing Authority (SLHA). The substance of their strike was an expression of dignity and a public demand for respect: the public needed to know that working women who made $75 a month in wages could not afford to pay $55 per month to house, feed, clothe and transport themselves and their children. They and their supporters carried signs that read “Sure Fire Riot Control—Lower Rent,” “March Now—Eat Later,” “Make the Roaches Pay Rent Too!” They demanded lower rents, increased representation on housing board commissions, improved maintenance, better pest control and police protection, improved utility services and financial transparency of the SLHA. Their protest was covered by national news, drew from a rich history of organizing by black women, gained almost all of its objectives, and influenced local, state and national housing policies.

Keona Ervin’s Gateway to Equality is important justice history, women’s history, and St. Louis history.