Call Your Daughter Home by Deb Serpa

CALL YOUR DAUGHTER HOME by Deb Serpa is a work of historical fiction set amidst the rural poverty and segregated society of 1924 South Carolina. Three women share the storytelling: Gertrude Pardee, Oretta Bootles, and Annie Coles. Gertrude, forced to marry as a teen, has four young daughters and an often drunk and abusive husband.  She can barely afford to feed the family until she is offered a job at the Sewing Circle.  That business is owned by Annie through her own family legacy, although her husband Edwin is an influential plantation owner dealing with the cotton crop’s destruction by the boll weevil and trying to make money by converting to tobacco. Retta lives in Shake Rag, with her ailing husband and other former slaves or their descendants. She has long worked as housekeeper for Miss Annie’s family and is a kind soul who often helps others, including Gertrude and her girls. CALL YOUR DAUGHTER HOME is filled with conflict between family members, especially mothers and daughters. There are questions of morality, faith, guilt, and retribution which are adeptly handled and woven throughout the story. At one point, Preacher quotes Ephesians 6:11, “put on the whole armor of God” in order to stand “against spiritual wickedness in high places.” In addition, these women, two of whom have lost children, have to rely on their own mothers’ words (“Mama used to say if you don’t ask for help, nobody will know how to give it”) and the concern they develop for each other. Each experiences both physical and emotional pain and questions her own abilities, as expressed in reflections like: “I wasn’t a good mother, that much is fact, but I was the only kind I knew how to be” or “I can’t see what is to come. … I fear I will stumble over the edge without knowing, and tumble to the sharp rocks below, too late to save my own soul.” In a note on “A Bit of Background,” Serpa explains how her own grandmother and great-grandmother influenced this book, including details like the peach cobbler recipe. She says that she was “humbled and inspired by the ferocity of their motherhood.” Book group members, especially readers of titles like Delia Owens' Where the Crawdads Sing or Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, will certainly empathize with the characters in Serpa’s debut novel which was a LibraryReads selection in June. This title might work for Junior Theme; Booklist recommended CALL YOUR DAUGHTER HOME for teens, too, due to the “complicated mother-daughter relationships.”

The Paragon Hotel by Lyndsay Faye

THE PARAGON HOTEL by Lyndsay Faye is an exciting mystery and a fun read with serious undertones, described as “blending film noir and screwball comedy” by The Wall Street Journal. This new novel, set mostly in the Prohibition-era 1920s, revolves around Alice James (who is called Nobody for her ability to fade into the background).  It alternates between her life in New York’s Harlem, where she works for The Spider and his gang fighting the Clutched Hand and organized crime, and her escape to Portland, Oregon where she recovers from bullet wounds at The Paragon, the city’s Black owned and run hotel.   

On both coasts, readers meet Alice’s friends and associates, adopted families of a sort. These include childhood playmate Nicolo Benenati, Harry Chipchase (a corrupt cop), Blossom Fontaine (an African American singer), and do-gooder Evelina Vaughan (also wife of Portland’s Chief of Police), plus many more. On the West Coast, a little mulatto boy goes missing and the Klan is becoming increasingly active and brazen in their threatening actions. Alice sets out to help her friends and solve the disappearance while also reflecting on the actions which brought her to Portland.  Throughout, her voice is caustic and observant:

“The truth is, I’ve been shoving thoughts underwater like unwanted puppies.  When your world is emptied, you cling to strangers…”

“I remember fleeing New York, still adrift with the shock and clutching my carpetbag as if it were a tree limb midriver.”

And describing the teacher of the weekly Self-Betterment classes at The Paragon as “top drawer in a very tall bureau.”

As the author notes explain, Faye’s historical fiction is based on fact and she uses excerpts from local papers and period speeches to encourage readers to think about Oregon’s racist history, including the Klan’s slogan advocating America First.  For more on the Klan in this time period, especially in the northern states, see Linda Gordon’s The Second Coming of the KKK. Definitely worth a read, THE PARAGON HOTEL received starred reviews from Booklist, Kirkus, and Library Journal.

Masterpiece by Fiona Davis

Recent historical novels by Fiona Davis (The Dollhouse, The Address) have been very popular and feature New York City locations (Barbizon Hotel and The Dakota). I requested an advance reader copy of her newest, THE MASTERPIECE, and found it entertaining and informative. In this novel Davis focuses on the beautiful architecture of Grand Central Terminal (or Grand Central Station as it is often incorrectly, though more affectionately, called) and the art movements of the 1920s through two intertwining stories.  One is set in the 1970s (when the station’s demolition was being adjudicated) with a recent divorcee, Virginia, obtaining an entry level job with the railroad and discovering a hidden painting.  That painting was created roughly 50 years earlier and relates to the more compelling second story about fictional Clara Darden, an aspiring illustrator and instructor at Grand Central School of Art (which did actually exist). There’s a bit of mystery here and some wonderful historical detail, especially for readers who know and love New York City. THE MASTERPIECE received a starred review from Library Journal and was a LibraryReads selection for August 2018.