Book Review: March by Geraldine Brooks

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I haven’t read Little Women for at least a decade, maybe two, but I remember it being a heartwarming novel with plucky characters. Geraldine Brooks’ novel, March, takes its basic story from that beloved novel but does not offer the same heartwarming pluckiness. It is a dark book, but in it darkness, we learn about the depths of evil and despair to which the human spirit can descend.

The title character is the March patriarch who is largely absent from the original novel as he ministers to troops during the Civil War. The first person narrative moves from past to present, written in convincing 19th century prose and providing glimpses into the world of Concord, where luminaries like Emerson, Thoreau and Hawthorne debate the issues of the day while slaves huddle in hidey holes waiting to move along the Underground Railroad to Canada.

In March, Brooks has created a complex character whose good intentions lead to unintended consequences. As he surveys the violence and death around him, he is stunned by his own culpability and wonders how he can move back into the world of his loving family. And at points, I wondered the same thing, finding that I didn’t really like him all that much but then discovering that it was because I was pulled in by his own beliefs about himself. He is human being with all the conflicts and paradoxes that we each bring and unlike the sometimes flat characters that I remember from the original novel, here is a rich portrait of a man.

But he is not alone in this novel: we meet his wife both through his own eyes and her own words. She is equally complex, struggling with her own demons as she tries to understand how her husband has been changed by his experiences in the South.

The portrait of Southern life is grittily real as slaves struggle to maintain some semblance of a life in the midst of the horrors of the plantation system. Small glimmers of hope are extinguished in brutal ways and yet they continue to hope and plan even as the war grinds on around them.

Brooks takes some license with history that may offend Civil War purists, but her resource section is full of first person narratives that help provide the human element of this historical novel. It doesn’t hurt that she is married to Tony Horwitz, a Civil War historian and once lived near the Ball’s Bluff battlefield that provides the opening scenes of the novel. She may not get the dates exactly right but her poignant story helps us understand the the humanity that makes the past so difficult to pin down.

Milestones

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The new year brings endings and beginnings…

My father’s oldest brother, Ted, died yesterday in the early morning hours, drifting away in his sleep after a year of declining health. He was 87 years old and while we grieve his passing, we have a sense that it was his time. I’ve been fortunate to spend some time with him over the past few years. We’ll have a memorial service in the new year when my sister and I can both be present.

Meanwhile, we have brought a new puppy into our home. After a week of suffering from a leg injury that kept him incapacitated, Major is back to being a puppy, full of life, exploring everything, and after sleeping through the night for the first time last time, he went on his first leash walk today. He went on the early morning dog walk with Spot and Tina and trotted along, aware of the leash but not fighting it too much. I hope that bodes well for the future. I think he will certainly liven up 2012.

A Year of Books If Not Reading

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According to Library Thing, I read 33 books this year. It’s definitely a low for me. I usually get closer to 50 and last year got close to 75 as part of a challenge. It’s a testament to two things: moving to the farm and getting stuck with a couple books.

While the move to the farm has been great for the books–they are breathing freely on the open shelves for the first time in at least a decade–it did not leave a lot of time for reading. I try to get a few pages in each night but am so tired, I usually fall asleep after a few paragraphs. I have found a few afternoons to curl up in the window seat as the sun sets across the front yard with the same result, dozing off in the rays that slip through the magnolia leaves and reflect on the silver roof.

As I look at the shortened list, I see that I got really bogged down in American history, maybe as a result of the move to an antebellum home. Biographies of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington go along with commentaries about both the American Revolution and the Civil War. It took me all summer to plow through McPherson’s one volume history of the latter, not learning that much more but somehow wanting to connect with the past.

I have been reading fiction as a backlash to all that history. I’m halfway through my second Franzen for the year and finding The Corrections a little less accessible than Freedom. I read two by Pat Conroy and enjoyed them although I often found them ponderous and over written even as I bathed in the lushness of the language. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union: A Novel was the best “found” book as well as the quirkiest. And then there were just fun books: Georgia Bottoms, which my mother has passed around to all her friends who have loved reading a “dirty” book, Must Love Dogs, A Red Herring Without Mustard.

I have the audio of the next Flavia deLuce just waiting for my road trip tomorrow. I’ll bet the rental (my husband was hit by a deer) has a connection for my iPod.

What’s on the reading horizon for 2012? Another attempt at not buying books. I have shelves of unread books that called to me at some point: Edwin Way Teale on the seasons, Wendell Berry on living an authentic life, and lots and lots of fiction. There are 43 books on the To Read list in Library Thing so maybe that’s a good starting point. A good friend recommended Gilead so perhaps I shall start with that once I endure Franzen’s angst and dysfunction. It can be wickedly funny and tragic all at the same time.

My First Christmas Letter

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I usually don’t write a typical Christmas letter, preferring instead to jot short individual notes in each card. With the advent of social media and email communications, many friends both near and far know what we are are up to whether through Facebook status updates, flickr photos or the blog. As for old family friends, aunts, uncles and cousins, my mother makes a good social network node. But I suppose there are folks who are busy living their own lives without time to have much interest in mine.  So if you haven’t been following along, here are the highlights.
We started the year in the same small 1920s bungalow in suburban Williamsburg that we had lived in together since we married nearly 20 years ago. We ended the year in a two-story, rambling 1850s farmhouse in rural Virginia. It came with 18 acres that we hope to cultivate in various ways from pick-your-own berries to farm stand produce to a few pigs and cows.

We started the year with one old dog–Tina Turner the beagle mix still graces our lives–and ended the year with three dogs. Tina welcomed Spot, a large lab/terrier mix, in early April, and just recently, Major, a stray beagle/lab mix puppy probably born somewhere on our property adopted us. I’m still longing for two cats to hang out in the library but we’ll get past raising the puppy first.

2011 saw some major change in our lives. While we miss our Williamsburg friends and neighbors, we are having a great time on the farm. Bob is harvesting gorgeous vegetables from cucumbers to greens to soon-to-be red cherry tomatoes from the sun room that runs along the southern side of the house. We’ve put in some gas logs so we will be cozy this winter since all the chimneys need lined before the fireplaces can be used. We would love to have you visit us here in Waverly. We have a lovely downstairs guest room with its own bath.

We both work from home so usually one of us is here. Feel free to just drop by. We can’t promise it will be dust free but we would love to see you despite that. You can also keep up with us at http://www.bottletreefarm.com.

Our best wishes to your for a peaceful holiday season and a new year full of joy and love.  And just for fun…enjoy some Christmas karaoke!

November?

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I’m not completely sure what happened to November.  Between prepping for the conference and hosting my family for Thanksgiving, it was a crazy month. The conference ended earlier this week and we have no travel plans until Christmas.  So, I can get caught up on cleaning, organizing and writing.

The house is mostly decorated for Christmas thanks to my mother.  My folks visited for a week early in November then came for a few days before Thanksgiving and while my dad refinished two tables, my mother cleaned and decorated.  This is a GREAT house to decorate, from the lighted tree in the front window to the garland on the staircase.  And after having NO mantles from which to hang stockings, we now have four downstairs and four upstairs.  I wonder how Santa decides which chimney to use?

Getting heat going was a major concern.  The furnace works but it is pretty inefficient so we had propane lines installed and inserts put into three of the fireplaces, including the library which is our main hang out room.  It is toasty warm and the heat rises to the upstairs bedroom where we sleep.

Today was a “dog” day.  I walked my two early this morning and Spot was overly excited by some smell down near the silo.  His hackles were up all along his spine. Then, we saw hunting beagles tearing around the front yard and field, their owners in hot pursuit.  We helped them catch one and they said that something had spooked them, gesturing towards the back of our property. Hmmm…we’re wondering about coyotes although Bob has also mentioned a bear.  Better keep my eyes open on those early, pre-coffee walks!

The other dogs that were part of the day are now tucked into the dog crate in the back of my truck, waiting for animal control to open on Monday.  It’s a mother beagle and her adorable puppy that somehow ended up under our lumber pile.  We’ve seen her before but she has always run away and we know she had at least two other puppies earlier this year.  Today, we managed to catch both of them only to discover that the dog catcher won’t come on the weekend unless it’s an emergency.  It is tempting to adopt them, but I’m letting my intellect rule my emotion.  Four dogs would be too many and I’m not prepared for a puppy.  The local farmer who helped us get them from barrel to crate thought she might make a good hunting dog so we have a small bet that he will come back to retrieve them tomorrow.  Meanwhile, they have food and water and the truck will certainly be warmer than outside.  I’ll check on them before I go to bed.  One of the perils of living in the country is that people let their dogs run and aren’t always great about getting them spayed and neutered. But I can’t adopt every stray that wanders through…my two are both rescues and maybe someone will find a soft spot for these two. I’m still holding out for two cats.

 

Instant Yeast & Other Wonders…A Second Try

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In my 20s, when I dabbled in vegetarianism, Diet for a Small Planet was something of the holy book. In those days,  I baked most of the bread I ate with Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book guiding the way .  Then real life intervened with work and higher education and other interests, and I drifted in to the world of industrial eating: plenty of meat, white sugar, and processed flour.

Now, a whole series of books has led me back to those early days of real food, and I’m finding that the farm environment only makes it seem more sensible. Not to mention a not-so-much-older friend whose failed stress test led to a strict vegan diet and just a general desire to feel better and lose some weight.   I suppose it started with Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma coupled with Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.  They were stark reminders of just how far away I personally had moved away from my own convictions when it came to what I put in my mouth.  And the baking impulse can be traced to browsing the King Arthur Flour’s whole grains baking book, fondly remembering the wonders of bread baking and the enticing smell and nutty taste of whole wheat bread.

The most recent book came from the Green Valley Book Fair in Harrisonburg, Virginia.  I wandered through the wooden tables and made it across the walkway to foods and crafts.  And there was Mark Bittman’s The Food Matters Cook Book.  I was taken immediately by his pragmatic tone…he still eats meat but is trying to be less meatatarian.  He has adopted a different relationship to meat and that has made the difference.  His wonderful recipes celebrate all the foods that often take a back seat to the protein and in the section on baking, I found his amazingly simple whole wheat bread recipe that called for something my friend of the King Arthur book had also mentioned: instant yeast.

What a concept.  How many bricks have I baked when the yeast failed to rise?  Even a short flirtation with a bread machine did not make things any more consistent unless I used a mix.  I found sour dough bread to be fool proof but after months of eating it, my husband begged for something else and that really was the end of my bread baking days.

But now I’m back, with two loaves of bread under my belt just this week.  I baked them with the instant yeast, and both of them–one made with white and one made with whole wheat–turned out perfectly.  I can’t wait to get into the kitchen and try something else: maybe some whole wheat hamburger buns.

I’m also experimenting with a healthy muffin recipe as a vehicle for all the strawberries, blueberries and raspberries in the freezer.  My friend on the strict diet ate three of the most recent attempt that included oats, whole wheat, apple sauce and agave nectar instead of the white stuff (flour, sugar) and vegetable oil.  They could have been a bit moister but other than that were quite good with nice flavor and texture.  I sent the rest of the batch home with them and made whole wheat scone with raisins for us to eat this weekend.

And so, the bakery at Bottle Tree Farm is born.

Instant Yeast & Other Wonders

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Fall really arrived with a vengeance yesterday.  We were lucky to be able to spend Thursday introducing old friends to the farm.  We toured the house, took a long walk, then enjoyed a leisurely lunch and coffee and conversation on the front porch before they had to head down the road.  Lovely and then, yesterday, we woke to cold winds, cloudy skies.  It rained through the night and I bundled into the storm slicker and wellies for the early dog walk.  The barn yard is flooded, and it’s too muddy and wet to walk the edge of the field.  So Bob entertained Spot with a truck drive since he won’t be getting the usual long walks today and he does have a bit of energy.

We’re battling fleas.  We started the summer with flea collars and all seemed well until mid-August when suddenly the dogs were scratching and biting like crazy.   The discount priced flea poison we tried  had no effect. We’ve waited  the required 30 days with Bob doing a lot of combing and spraying and are ready to apply the name brand stuff that has been successful in the past.  I haven’t looked to see if they have the same ingredient but I’m hoping this is one of those times when we get what we pay for.  The name brand promises a 12 hour turn around.  Tina has had her dose and now Spot is drying after his bath and waiting for his application.

Spot hates getting a bath and I thought about that old pet monologue that had circulated some time ago where the dog just loves everything and the cat is plotting evil and mayhem. But I remembered that there was a line about the dog getting a bath.  Probably a take off but I can’t find it.  Did I just imagine it?

Here’s a funny thing about these blog posts:  I wrote the title with the plan to tell you all about my bread baking and our transition to a more plant-based diet.  But somehow the change of season caught my attention and my fingers just moved along almost without guidance and you’ve gotten caught up on the mundane aspects of our lives here at the farm.  I’ll save the bread story until tomorrow: not surprisingly, it includes a book and as the title suggests, instant yeast.

There are also a couple book reviews to write: Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom and Joseph Ellis’s His Excellency: George Washington. For now, I’m heading upstairs to do some organizing and moving while I try to decide what to read next.

 

 

The Perils of Too Many Notes

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Pat Conroy has had a lifetime love affair with the English language, and his wonderfully rich prose goes down like a bowl of gumbo, thick, delicious, lovingly prepared. I lost myself in the many varied human stories told in their varied human voices in Beach Music, his 1995 tribute to his own family.

But I also found myself, at times, reminded of Frederick’s comment to Mozart when asked about his music. “Too many notes,” he replied. Mozart is shocked…how can there be too many notes in the music he wrote? It is perfect. The King goes on to explain that humans can only listen to so many notes at a time and Mozart had gone over that limit in his opera. It was still good but just a little hard to listen to. Conroy does that to me as well. Simply too many details, maybe one too many stories, and, in the case of this book, just a tad too much tragedy. From the Holocaust to leukemia to madness, this relatively small group of people seems to share a lot of tragedy and grief. Oh, and I forgot about the shooting in the Rome airport. which came as something of a shock despite pretty heavy foreshadowing that something bad was going to happen. Too many notes.

Yet, like the King, I liked the book for its detail of setting and Conroy is the best food writer I know. I always want to head into the kitchen and do something with shrimp and pasta when I finish one of his books. After some pretty heavy duty reading this summer, I enjoyed the pleasure of sinking into a long, rambling book and if I missed a few notes here and there, I think it’s OK.

Aah…Autumn

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scarecrowsMy favorite season.  Cool crisp days and long shadows that come earlier each evening.  They’ve started harvesting the corn in the field next door, the huge alien creature chewing through the stalks.  There’s pot roast for dinner, and I spent an hour this afternoon making the scarecrows in the picture.  Aren’t they a hoot!  I was in charge of the scarecrow making stand at the Cornwall Manor Fall Festival and learned how to make them with stuffed pantyhose and old clothes.  We made all boys; the girl with her braids, scarf and apron was my idea.  We didn’t have to buy anything except the bales of straw.  The chickens had fun playing in the leftover bale.

The fall festival is always an excuse for a book binge. They sold shopping bags of books for $6.  I felt virtuous limiting myself to two bags but I’m pretty good at packing a bag.  I bought mostly fiction. Did I really buy 30 books? I’ve been craving good stories lately.  A friend recommended the Maisie Dobbs mysteries by Jacqueline Winspear, and I really enjoyed the first one.  Now, I’m pretty far into Beach Music by Pat Conroy and enjoying it much more than the last one I read.

I tucked the books from the festival into the baskets of the window seat I found at a discount store.  I repurposed a futon chair seat to make a comfy spot to read this winter.  The late afternoon sun comes in and you have a beautiful view of the magnolia tree.  The upstairs is more inviting now since it continues to be warmer than the first floor.

I went exploring today, heading east on 460 to visit the Windsor Food Lion, some 30 miles away*.   A nice store and, low and behold, they had a discount book bin!  I took advantage of the 3 for $10 deal to pick up 3 well known writers: Nick Hornby (Slam), Saving Fish From Drowning (Amy Tan), and One Fifth Avenue (Candace Bushnell).  The Bushnell book is marked First Edition but a quick Google search shows that it isn’t worth much more than I paid for it.  I do feel a bit bad paying so little for books but at least I’m giving them a good home and a chance of being read.  Doesn’t that count for something?

I’m sorry to say that my dreams of owning a bookstore are fading.  We watched Paperback Dreams, a film about two independent bookstores and their struggles to make a living.   Plus, I don’t think I have the commitment to run a retail operation.  So, I’m going to check out setting up an online bookstore since I’ve definitely got inventory.  I suppose I could rent space at flea markets but it’s just not the same.

*This is the closest big name grocery store.  There’s another one about 30 miles west on 460.  There’s always the burg but it is crowded and getting there includes waiting on the ferry so it takes an hour each way. Getting access to a wide variety of food has been the biggest challenge for us.  We have some small stores with many people relying on Dollar General for their food. I was craving a chain grocery store.