It's 1935 and Desdemona Hart Spaulding's life is far from what she anticipated after years spent studying art in Boston and Paris. Instead of the bright future she imagined of working as a painter in New York, Dez finds herself locked in a marriage of convenience to a kind but passionless pharmacist in the small town of Cascade, Massachusetts; a commitment made entirely for the sake of her dying father and his beloved Shakespeare theater. As Cascade becomes the potential location for a new reservoir to serve the city of Boston, all of the things Dez has put aside her dreams to work for become threatened, including the Shakespeare theater she vowed to someday reopen. She and the rest of the impassioned townspeople are determined to save Cascade, but when Dez begins to fall in love with Jewish peddler Jacob Solomon, a New York-bound artist just as she aspired to be, she finds out what happens when our heart and morality are stretched in two different directions.
A Thousand Mornings: Poems by Mary Oliver
Something about Mary Oliver's latest collection of poems caught my attention when it was first published in October of 2012; maybe the premise of it, the fact that her poetry in A Thousand Mornings revolves around animals and nature, and her joyful interactions with both. Regardless, I saw it again some months ago at the library and started to read it while I lingered in front of its shelf; when I seemed perfectly content to stay there reading the entire collection, I figured it was definitely one to check out.
Not having a particularly in-depth experience of poetry, I appreciated how instantly I was able to connect with Oliver's work. If you're interested in the art of poetry but don’t quite know where to start, I highly recommend A Thousand Mornings. In thirty-six simple and sparkling poems Oliver muses with grace, delight, and a touch of humor on the sort of subjects we all might be inclined to stumble upon in our daily lives. She writes about the transitions of seasons, the unruliness of nature’s beauty, the truth within the simplistic; she writes at length about animals, plenty of birds and some snakes and two heartbreaking, poignant odes to her late dog, Percy; she writes about spring; and, of course, she writes about mornings. I haven't read Oliver's work before, though I know she’s quite revered, and I understand why.
The Panopticon by Jenni Fagan
Jenni Fagan's debut novel tells the story of Anais Hendricks, a fifteen year-old Scottish orphan being transferred to a juvenile facility known as the Panopticon. Considered a secure home for teenage offenders, the Panopticon is a prison to its young residents; a circular building observed by an unknown audience in a watchtower, the rooms with doors that can be closed - and locked - by only the staff. At the time of her transfer, Anais has been apprehended by police, found with blood on her skirt while a policewoman lies in a coma. An orphan since her birth, Anais has been moved from home to home with such frequency that she disbelieves a true family ever existed for her; she is an experiment, she tells the reader, created only for the purpose of being observed by people she cannot see – people from whom she is convinced she’ll never escape. As Anais adjusts to the suffocating world inside the Panopticon and grows to know her fellow residents, she’s driven to plan for herself what adults have never been able to provide her with: freedom, and a life of her own. What results is a story, at once heartbreaking and inspiring, that weaves through the dreams and horrors of adolescence in the voice of a fearless young woman determined to come to terms with her own worth.
The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian
Laurel Estabrook is a young social worker in Vermont living under the weight of a horrific experience: she was viciously attacked one evening on a bike ride through a northern wood. With the emotional scars still suffocating her seven years later, Laurel immerses herself predominantly in her work securing safe and comfortable residencies for the homeless. But when her job brings her into contact with an elderly and schizophrenic homeless man named Bobbie Crocker, her life changes in ways she never would have expected. After Bobbie’s death she discovers he had possessed a remarkable collection of photography; negatives that he himself had taken throughout his career as a talented and notable photographer from the late ’50s into the ‘70s and beyond. The photos lead Laurel into the truth of Bobbie’s past, a truth that some people will go to great lengths to keep secret: namely Bobbie’s ties to the infamous history of two Jazz Age socialites from Laurel’s Long Island hometown. Thwarted by Bobbie’s last surviving relatives and questioned even by her closest friends, Laurel is on a race to prove the weight of Bobbie’s legacy once and for all.
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
Published in 1905, The House of Mirth was the novel that launched Edith Wharton’s name as a celebrated novelist several years into her occupation as a writer. An instant classic, it remains one of the pillars among her bibliography of more than fifty works. Why it took me this long to read it, I’ll frankly never know. The novel tells the story of bold, ethereally beautiful Lily Bart whose impassioned desire for all things luxurious in life clashes with her meager income and single status. Marrying rich seems to be her only option, and that excludes from her a future with Lawrence Selden, the handsome and inadequately-financed lawyer with whom she feels most liberated to be herself. Scurrying through the maddeningly treacherous formalities of the social sphere, Lily must learn to hoist herself up amid the unkind words and devious schemes of people disguised as friends.
The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian
In 1915 Elizabeth Endicott, a spirited young American, arrives with her father in Aleppo, Syria, as part of a Boston-based organization whose mission is to aid the struggling survivors of the harrowing Armenian genocide. Amid the throes of World War I, hundreds of thousands of Armenians are being quietly massacred and, stationed at the American consulate in Aleppo, Elizabeth finds herself a rare witness to the tragic circumstances of a civilization being driven out of its own existence. As Turkish soldiers and gendarmes briefly usher in the barely-living women and children who have survived thus far, Elizabeth and her comrades do their best to administer food and medicine and otherwise preserve the preciously frail lives. During her plight she meets Armen, a young Armenian man spared the swift death so many have suffered by working as an engineer for the Germans. Armen has carried the weight of his share of suffering, however, having lost his wife and daughter to the genocide. As Elizabeth and Armen work to overcome the terrors of the world around them they find a connection neither had expected, and their love grows strong even after they’re driven apart.