Reading Hillary Jordan’s new masterpiece When She Woke is much like reading Hawthorne’s classic The Scarlet Letter at the same time as The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood…..a great mixture, huh?

When I read Jordan’s first novel Mudbound in 2008, I was mesmerized by her description of the Mississippi Delta during the horrible sharecropping years. She is really, really good with setting and creates specific images which remain in your mind for years to come.  I can even remember scenes from Mudbound and how I felt while experiencing the anguish of the character, particularly the female protagonist.

In fact, as I write this, I am thinking about the similarities between the female protagonist in Mudbound compared to the female protagonist in the new When She Woke. The same comparison I would make between the female character in A Handmaid’s Tale with the female protagonist in When She Woke.

Set in some futurist society, probably the mid 21st century (yes, this novel is a dystopia), When She Woke follows the life of Hannah who has had an affair with a super fundamentalist preacher named Reverend Dale, who, of course, is not what his followers think he is: perfect in morals and aspirations and examples of the Godly life. Since I have already compared this novel to A Scarlet Letter, one can already surmise that Hannah is impregnated by Reverend Dale, so she is forced to have an abortion, a HUGE “no-no” in this dystopic world, which in this way, may not be too far ahead in our early years of the 2000s.

Because the prisons have been hugely overcrowded, the current government has decided to “mark” or “color” people for their crimes against society, in order to clear the prison. So, being “red” means a woman had an unlawful abortion in some back room, or being “yellow” means a man committed rape.  Hence, all colors of humanity walk the streets of any given city, marking these sinners as wayward, or evil, or despicable, and to be avoided. To say this novel is a comment upon prejudice or inequality or bias is an understatement!

Hannah does not tell anyone, including the father of her baby, Reverend Dale, that she is pregnant. She arranges her own abortion, and when spied upon and caught by spies for the government and indeed sent to prison, she refuses to incriminate, not only the father, partially because her parents and sister worship him, as well as everyone she knows in her Quaker like previous existence, but also the abortionist. Once she serves her time in prison and her skin is infused with “red”, she is released.

Hannah’s new life begins in a dogmatic boarding house where she is forced to make her own “baby doll” representing her lost baby, name it, and care for it as if it were alive. Shivers and repulsion and sympathy, and a myriad of emotions flood the reader at this point! One can see Hillary Jordan’s talent here at its best, in my opinion.

As the reader follows Hannah’s flee from this horrific cult like religious boarding house, through her numerous skirmishes through the underground network of her rescuers, some to be trusted, some not, the reader altruistically experiences the hopes, disappointments, fear, and repulsion of Hannah.

I am not going to tell whether Hannah survives or not, for the reader needs to experience this novel first hand. To say that most of us here at Lemuria, who read this enticing novel, could not “put it down” is another understatement. It is fast paced and mesmerizing.  When She Woke will probably be chosen as one of the best novels of the year. I know it is one of mine!

When She Woke by Hillary Jordan (Workman, October 2011)

-Nan

Richard Dortch, an avid reader of Tony Horwitz, contributes this review of his latest book, Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War.

The Civil War didn’t start with the firing on Fort Sumter, said the great African-American abolitionist Frederick Douglass. It started with John Brown’s 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry.

In a feat that was at once brave and reckless, brilliant and stupid, a scheme of inspired lunacy – John Brown and a band of 21 dedicated abolitionist fighters managed to capture and occupy a U.S. government arsenal containing a stockpile of over 100,000 rifles. It wasn’t Brown’s capture of these weapons that triggered the Civil War, but what he intended to do with them: distribute them to slaves in northern Virginia so they could rise up, kill their masters and assert their God-given rights of freedom and liberty.

The moral confusion of a nation dedicated to the principles of freedom, yet acquiescent to the institution of slavery, would be reduced in John Brown’s hand from shades of gray to the clarity of day and night.

The raid on Harpers Ferry exposed the precarious position of the few who enslave the many, triggering panic and unfounded rumors of slave revolts across the South. Southern politicians responded with harsh and abusive new slave laws, bellicose anti-U.S. rhetoric, and ultimately, a fateful decision to secede from the Union. Within two years of Harpers Ferry the United States would be convulsed in its bloodiest and deadliest war ever.*

In Midnight Rising, author Tony Horwitz has chosen this epic break-point in American history to explore a poorly-understood phase of our nation’s adolescence and paint a clear picture of one of history’s most obscure and controversial anti-heroes: John Brown, a sober and deeply religious old-line Calvinist whose hatred of slavery grew to consume his life and ultimately destroy it.

Horwitz preps his reader with the saga of Bleeding Kansas: the violence that erupted over whether Kansas would become a slave or free state, and where John Brown cut his teeth as a militant abolitionist. Pauses in the action are filled with rich biographies of Brown, his band of raiders, the women who supported them and the Secret Six: a cadre of wealthy Northern abolitionists who helped finance Brown’s covert operations.

The book hits its crescendo with the raid at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, which Horowitz renders with an unflinching and emotionally devastating blow-by-blow of the 32 hours John Brown and his men controlled the U.S. arsenal. The imagery is stark, the violence vivid; the raiders picked off one-by-one until only a handful remain to make a futile last stand against U.S. troops led by Col. Robert E. Lee (yes, that Robert E. Lee). Horwitz delivers a history lesson that reads like an action film – marking him as a true modern genius in the art of turning ‘boring-old’ history into page-turning literature.

There is one element common to Horwitz’s other books that readers will not find in this one: a great deal of lighthearted humor. In Midnight Rising Horwitz relinquishes his congenial first-person perspective to deliver a straightforward and sobering historical narrative. Those looking for a laugh-out-loud road trip spiked with hilarious characters, vis-à-vis Confederates in the Attic, will not find it in Midnight Rising. John Brown was called many things by the people of his time. Funny wasn’t one of them.

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* It merits mention for Lemuria readers that among John Brown’s personal items were found maps derived from 1850 U.S. Census data showing counties in the South where the slave population outnumbered whites. Among these were Hinds, Rankin and Madison counties in central Mississippi – all of which contained more enslaved people than free people at the dawn of the Civil War.

-Written by Richard Dortch

“All good things, as they say in the trade, must come to an end sooner or later. Please accept my genuine, my honest and heartfelt thank you for the kindness that you have displayed to me during my 58 years. It has been one genuine pleasure to be associated with such a magnificent university.”

– Jack Cristil, Feb. 23, 2011

Voice of the MSU Bulldogs is signed by the author Sid Salter and Jack Cristil.

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In 2002 a little green book was published and just about all of the staff went crazy for it.  If you were shopping with us at that time I’m sure that you will remember it because no one left the store without it in their bag. When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka tells the story of one Japanese American family who are forced to leave Berkley, CA and are placed in a Utah internment camp for the duration of the war.

Well, guess what? Julie Otsuka has a new little book, The Buddha in the Attic.  I started reading it over the weekend and I am just as in love with this one as the other.  One could almost call this a prequel because of the timing and subject matter.  Otsuka tells us the story of a group of ‘picture brides,’ who were brought to the United States to begin a new life with new husbands they have never met, and to escape their lives in Japan.

We follow them as a whole group for the next 20 years, from their journey, their arrival in San Francisco, their first night with their husbands, their new lives which consist of back breaking work in the fields and scrubbing floors for white women, to their struggles learning a new language and culture, their child birth experiences and motherhood, to the beginning of WWII and imminent internment.

We cooked for them. We cleaned for them. We helped them chop wood. But it was not we who were cooking and cleaning and chopping, it was somebody else. And often our husbands did not even notice we’d disappeared.

Reading this is like listening to a ‘chorus’ of women telling their stories as one. I really thought that I would be bothered reading a book that really doesn’t have a plot or even a narrative but I soon realized how strong and powerful this book is.

I will be readily recommending The Buddha in the Attic to all my customers especially book clubs because I believe that so many people will be able to empathize with these women’s plight and how they deal with their situations.