The dark underbelly of the “The Golden State” (Riverside, Southern California; present and past): “Valencias or oranges?” Only a citrus fruit-picker, or a writer was asks what seems like a simple question knows it’s loaded with history.

Perhaps only a writer like award-winning Susan Straight, Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at UC-Riverside, born in and still lives and works in Riverside, Southern California in the Coachella Valley south of San Bernardino, could write such a razor-sharp novel (her ninth), Mecca that beams a spotlight on the “invisible people,” marginalized multiracial and multiethnic people of color, whose centuries-old history reflects America’s agricultural economic engine more than any other state. Only someone who cares deeply about this richly diverse part of the country, also more than any other state, could write this hard-hitting novel about people who’ve largely been ignored others “wanted us to forget.” Straight doesn’t. “The future always looks good in the golden land, because no one remembers the past,” Straight wrote in her 2019 memoir, In the Country of Women.

Mecca is not, though, just about one place in America. Its targeted themes are universal: racism, hatred, violence, abuse, victimization, and oppression – economic, social, and cultural. Along with highlighting the critical importance of history, family, community, and connectedness.

Like the heat blazing in this mostly desert terrain, temperatures soaring 120 degrees for days, Straight’s characters “came from people who worked the fields” toiling, sweating. Mecca is aflame. Hot, angry, fierce like the Santa Anna winds that roar mightily across the desert and the Salton Sea, a toxic brew.

Much like Straight’s academic title that speaks to the scholarly esteem she holds, Mecca, deserves to be held in high esteem literary-wise. That doesn’t mean all the prose is enchanted. To be utterly authentic, many marginalized characters spew embitterment, resentful of their uphill plight in life, haunted and burdened by the racist treatment of their ancestors. Their words not nearly as cringe-worthy as the white contemptuous characters, who utter words that are loathsome, debasing, intensified by MAGA attitudes. An ambitious novel spanning time.

The darkness is starkly contrasted against the beauty of the landscape, its mountains, valleys, and canyons. Hope among the ruins.

The dedication stirs:

“Truly this book is in memory of my brother, Jeff. When confronted with hatred or violence, he used to say: I don’t get that station, man. His inner radio was all about oranges, dogs, and trucks. We always made up life on our own.”

“Inner radio.” What a gorgeous way to think about the voices of people who are not spouting this ugly stuff. Suffused in some of the characters’ rage and despair are do-gooders and elders who hang onto to a more spiritual place. Mecca is a real town, but it’s also a word that conveys a religious pilgrimage seeking awakening and peace.

The protagonist is a do-gooder of the highest sort: Johnny Frigas, a late thirties policeman with the California Highway Patrol. If only the worst racial slur he encounters is Fritos. Made more disturbing since he risks his life policing the congested highways and cliffhanging roads and his dignity every time he pulls over a white driver full of road rage and racial animus.

Johnny calls himself a “moreno,” referring to the dark color of his skin, his Mexican and Native American heritage. His grandmother was from one of the indigenous peoples in California, the Cahuilla Indians from the Torres Martinez reservation in Thermal. California is also the state with the greatest number of indigenous tribes, none likely familiar. Johnny and his father still believe they’re one of the “lucky” ones, still living in a row of “little wooden houses” that are more like “shacks” in the Anza hills on a ranch, where he was once an orange picker too (and cattle driver), while others like them live in worse conditions in migrant camps and trailers.

The author wants us to know that the earliest settlers to SoCal were these indigenous tribes and Mexicans, though not treated as if they belong. Mexican Americans first arrived when Mexico lost a significant portion of its land to the US during the Mexican-American war of 1946-1948. Hardships and sacrifices also toughened and strengthened.

Even when one of the characters is irate, she reminds herself: “It had to be one of the most beautiful places in the world. A gorgeous series of layers and colors – the base of golden sand and white dunes, the silver and green ghost trees and smoke trees floating like strange baby’s breath, the spears of white yucca, and the green creosote bushes.”

Mecca, then, is character-driven. In some ways, it reads like a novel in stories. Stories that may take a while, given the novel runs 370 pages, to recognize they’re tied to one another. Connected to three main characters: Johnny, Ximena, and Matelasse. Once you realize the stories of other characters and their big, extended families are related, the reading and messaging becomes clear.

The diversity of Mecca characters reflects Susan Straight’s diverse family. She too connected, so strongly it’s hard to imagine anyone else writing it as vividly, honestly, brutally, and passionately.

Next up is Ximena. She also has a job no one wants: cleaning up after rich, white women who elect to have facial surgery at a fancy medical “spa,” where they toss around their unpleasant messes and leave something behind that has long-term consequences for her, like Johnny’s newbie days fresh out of the police academy also stumbling upon something that changed his life. We meet up with her again, different job but no less subservient. Fidelia, often by her side, is one of her cousins, struggling too, she bringing out an immigrant’s determination to learn English while speaking Spanish and Mixtec, a language of the “Middle American Indian from northern Mexico to Nicaragua.”

Johnny and Matelasse are single for different reasons. He from a traumatic incident introduced early on that unfolds so we see its impact. Unlike his tight group of friends, all married, some with children, whose stories are also told. Matelasse, part French as her grandmother was a slave in Louisiana, her mother still picking oranges, is a single mother left to count the plastic baggies for the lunches of her boys while working as an ICU nurse when we meet her.

These characters often come to us in chapters or bylines named for real towns, roads, and locations – Fuego Canyon, Bee Canyon, Coachella, Anza Crossing, Route 66 and Cajon Pass. As a literary technique, they serve to help us imagine Johnny riding his Harley on those highways and byways he knows so well, presumably like the author. They also contribute to the sense of connectedness rooted to a place and communities who do NOT turn their backs on each other.

The sizzling heat, not just in the vitriol and abuse, is thirst-wise, echoing the severe drought and climate change out West. Some stories cleverly bring out the need for ice to cool people down as well as ICE illegal immigrants are hiding from. ICE agents are so ferociously blinded in one story they dare to cross into a “sovereign nation.” Most, though, are characters born in America, citizens who deserve the same human rights but don’t get them.

In her memoir, Susan Straight tells us James Baldwin was her “teacher and mentor.” If only he could read the powerful ending, he’d be cheering along with us for those who refused to give in.

Lorraine

An author who also writes poetry magnifies the beauty of an unlikely friendship between young and old that changes their lives (from Durham, northeast England, south to Robin Hood’s Bay, North Yorkshire; WWII aftermath, 1946): If ever there was a year when reading collectively saved the luckiest of us, 2020 is it. So it’s especially fitting that this final post of the year has one of the most satisfying closures for two very different characters – age, experience, personality, gender, social class – and for readers.

The Offing by British award-winning writer Benjamin Myers is only the second of his seven novels published in the US. A beautiful, wise, and poetic novel that looks back on one life-changing summer when a friendship – between sixteen-year-old Robert Appleyard and Dulcie Piper, nearing sixty – blossomed, taking the young man under her wings when she needed him as much as he needed her. But she doesn’t let on that she’s terribly lonely, and that buried underneath her zest for life is a terrible sadness.

Robert narrates this poignant story, looking back at their relationship when he’s now old, to a summer when he was coming-of-age and Dulcie changed the trajectory of his life. On page three, he tells us, “I cling to poetry as I cling to life,” clueing us in how poetry made all the difference. Actually, the first clue to the importance of poetry in the novel, and for Myers, is when he introduces the story with a poem by a 19^th century British poet, John Clare, a “quintessential romantic poet.” Clare, like young Robert, came from a poor family, loved nature, and was a romantic “daydreamer.” Clare resurfaces later when Dulcie introduces Robert to poetry.

When Robert tells Dulcie poetry is not for “people like me” – “coal folk” – she replies, “trust me when I say that everything you’ve felt has been experienced by another human being,” triggering her quest to find him “poetry you can relate to” from her extensive library. Poetry is among the many things he discovers at an uncertain age during an “age of uncertainty.” WWII may have ended, but food was still being rationed and people were downtrodden by the enormity of their losses. But Robert is restless, and also aware “life was out there, ready and waiting to be eaten in greedy gulps.”

The Offing is also fitting to close out the year with for a blog passionate about enchanted prose by an author who lets us know in the Acknowledgments that he has a “passion for the written word,” so much so he literally wrote the novel longhand in libraries. The novel is full of poetic writing since Meyers is a poet with several poetry collections to his name. A diverse writer and journalist, he’s also penned a non-fiction book, Under the Rock: The Poetry of Place, which I’d love to read since it likely contains the same marvelous, atmospheric nature writing and strong sense of place this novel has.

When Robert sets off from Durham, England (where the author is from), he’s ripe for escaping this northern region tied to Britain’s long history of coal mining. His father is a coal-miner, expects him to follow in his footsteps.

Robert’s background resonates with all people whose dreams and desires have been stuck in a cycle of repression and poverty without the resources to break free. Although he’s not an activist, Robert wants a freer life, one not limited in opportunities. Dulcie shows him a way, feeding his hunger, physically, sensually, and emotionally, because of who she is and what she offers.

Roberts dreams of the sea. The novel indicates Dulcie’s seaside village is in North Yorkshire. In a Guardian article, the idyllic village is apparently Robin Hood’s Bay (suggest you save for later as this link has spoilers). The contrast between his bleak homeland and the seaside landscape awakens him. Not nearly as much as Dulcie stirs his senses and spirit.

When Robert sets off by foot all he has is a backpack and a deep appreciation for nature and wildness. The southerly path he wanders along takes him through a mystical, lush landscape of rivers, moors, and bright green valleys. So much “newness of the unfamiliar was intoxicating.” Since England is a country with a “right to roam,” he ends up crossing Dulcie’s property, which includes a well-lived in stone cottage, an abandoned shed, and an untamed, abundant garden that’s so overgrown it blocks the view of the water. Unimaginable to him.

Robert had no intention of lingering long at Dulcie’s home, but she’s a force to be reckoned with, graciously and convincingly initially offering him nettle tea in her garden. The first of much wine and lobster, and other overindulgences new to him. With her “heroic tolerance for alcohol”; love of luxury foods, particularly lobster; drifting music; an endearing servant-like dog aptly named Butler; and eye-opening conversations, he ends up staying the entire season. In return, he takes care of her unwieldy garden and does other odd jobs, anything but coal mining. As he grows comfortable with this colorful woman’s provocative words and declarations, he engages more and becomes invested in their relationship. This was the summer when time was measured only by the “clock of green growth, and marked by the simple routine of working, eating, swimming, sleeping” – and discovering poetry that spoke to him. “Poetry had been one more way of keeping the working men and women in their place,” but “poems belong to the world.” 

Dulcie has a lot to say. But if it weren’t for the deepening bond between the two, what she kept hidden would have remained a mystery. While we do learn about the profound secrecy, thanks to Robert’s perseverance and sensitivity, there’s still so much more we want to know about this extravagant, bohemian character who’s been friends with legendary writers, poets, artists, musicians. The lyrical writing makes it easy to envision a prequel to this novel about her full life pre-Robert. Cinematic, we can also envision a movie. 

The alluring dialogue flows back and forth between these two opposites: Robert is the shy, innocent, respectful young man from “a place where brickwork was dyed black by soot-smoke and whose skies billowed with coke dust.” Dulcie is the one who lives in an iconic British village who “always chose pleasure at all costs.” “A cajoler,” “a prodder,” and a “perfect mentor,” she sees something idealistic, rebellious, and adventuresome in Robert that she embraced when she was young. Unorthodox, she rejects conventions, authority, control. “Let’s cock a snook to time, for time is just another set of self-imposed arbitrary boundaries designed to capture and control.” The fact that she possesses such “literary dexterity” is Myers’ way of showing us the power of prose. Robert and Dulcie also show us the power of mentoring.

“Travel is search for the self,” Dulcie confirms for Robert. Fortunate that she traveled the world, we take pleasure in armchair traveling at a time when our travel options are limited.

“Whatever happens, make sure you live,” she coaches. Just “believe in yourself, Robert. That’s all it takes.” If only it were that simple. But it’s a powerful, uplifting message sent during another uncertain historical time when life is also vividly precious.

Wishing you safe, happy holidays during the year that was so different than any other. Thanks for reading. See you in 2021.

Lorraine

Chance encounters that change lives forever (Manhattan, 1991; Afghanistan, 2012): Blue Hours is a stirring, admirable tale about the sacrifices we make for love of country and someone beloved.

Daphne Kalotay is a gifted writer in control of how much she wants to let us know, or not. Mysteries drive an entangled plot involving several characters we meet in Manhattan 1991 – Mim, Kyra, and Roy – and twenty-one years later, when they find themselves, willingly or not, dangerously mixed up in Afghanistan after 9/11.

Told by Mim, the protagonist, first as reflections of an experimental, coming-of-age time when she came to Manhattan fresh out of college. Then followed by an intense, modern-day war story in places “it is simply too dangerous” to be, “even for the FBI.”

“The heart is a mysterious thing,” Mim says, to explain how confused hers was, how torn it still is. Haunting NYC memories come flooding back when she receives an out-of-the-blue call from Roy decades later saying Kyra has gone missing, somewhere in eastern Afghanistan.

Mim and Roy have been estranged from Kyra all these years, but they both cared deeply about her. So much so they jump into something they’re unprepared for. Mim particularly as she painted herself as an anxious, fearful, struggling-to-belong young woman. As we learn bits and pieces about her new, contented, fairly isolated world, we see she still harbors fears. For someone who also “hates traveling,” it’s a monumental feat of courage and loyalty to accompany Roy to Afghanistan to search for missing Kyra.

Despite years and anxieties that can distort reality, Mim comes across as a reliable narrator. She always wanted to be a writer, so she speaks to us in prose that’s well-crafted to deliver intrigue, suspense, and non-preachy, important messages.

Besides the central mystery of what happened to Kyra, we must first figure out what happened between Mim and Kyra in NYC to cut their ties?

Some background about the two women: They met on an Amtrak train going from New England to Manhattan “when you could move to the city without a job or a plan, just some unreasonable dream, and survive.” Kalotay is skilled at evoking the city in the early nineties when it was gritty, not like it is today. “That city,” Mim says, “doesn’t exist anymore. Just as the girl I was no longer exists.”

Mim arrived yearning to erase “parts of my life.” Though a lonely soul, she came with a college friend, Adrienne, she rooms with. Compared to Mim’s writerly ambitions in the center of the publishing world, Adrienne was already on her way to seeing her movie-star dreams come true, armed with playacting offers in the Entertainment Capital of the World. They quickly learned even in a rent-controlled “walk-up” in Lower Manhattan, near the Bowery, Chinatown, and Little Italy, the rents were still too high if they wanted to eat.

Needing more roommates to share expenses, Kyra became the third – Kyra who had money to feed the homeless on their doorstep and the city streets, hinting at her dramatic turnaround later. Eventually, they took in two more roommates, one whose presence is acutely felt, whose background is another mystery for a while: Carl from Ohio with his buzz-cut, a “big duffel bag slumped in the corner,” and a noticeable “tremor in his fingers.” These too are revealing details, though we don’t know it until Mim becomes privy to his nightmares.

Roy was not a roommate, rather Kyra’s best friend growing up in Rhode Island. Both came from well-to-do families, and are strikingly attractive. Kyra is the one everyone loves, whereas Mim never felt loved. She envied them for how easy their lives were, how easy it was for Kyra to decline admission to Oxford University to be a dancer.

Kyra is the center of attention, while Mim received none. A victim of her mother’s premature death, her womanizing father who didn’t care about her, nor have money to pretend he cared.

Roy’s youthful feelings for Kyra have grown; Mim’s newfound friendship seems odd as Kyra is everything she’s not, though she’s also dazzled by her. The three often hung out together, and then abruptly stopped. Why?

The fifth roommate, an unnamed medical student, is essentially invisible. Adrienne mostly too as it didn’t take her long to land a role in a daytime soap opera. When she shows up in the powerful ending we didn’t expect, we cheer for her performance, how Kalotay brings her back in.

Jack, like Carl, is a Manhattan character absent in the later years, because he fulfilled his purpose: to add some physical pleasure into Mim’s loveless, out-of-place life among peers she felt were on the “brink of something magnificent,” except her. (Her degree amounted to a boring sales job in a clothing store.) In the years of her evolution, she realizes plenty of people hide their inner demons.

Kalotay unwinds her complicated characters’ stories and emotional pain at a time when America is suffering. Pointedly, she uses her characters to tell a highly polarized, disillusioned nation to pay attention to our nation’s foreign policies. To think about what we want our country to be, which means thinking about the damages inflicted on our citizens and others caught up in endless wars. Messaging that’s easier to swallow fictionally.

Jack, also rich, is the “son of diplomats” and refugees. Refugees and the impoverished are at the heart of Kyra’s disappearance, having left her cushioned life to work with NGO’s in troubled spots around the globe – African countries, Central American, The Philippines, Afghanistan, where Mim and Roy dare go.

Roy’s wealth enables the hiring of drivers who know the remote, treacherous Afghan lands, checkpoints, languages, culture, and village clans. Drivers willing to risk their lives for money and love – Asim, Ismail, Rafiq. Graceful messengers for peace, they touch us. On drives and hikes through the “crumpled mountains,” “parched earth,” and surprising “rushing brooks,” they protect the do-good foreigners, while trying to convince them their country is “not hopeless.”

Doesn’t feel that way to Mim, who awakens to the “realization that my country has done this.” A treacherous hunt made messier by humanitarian entities with good intentions too, but “not a lot of coordination.”

Kalotay also puts us authentically into this setting, describing the threadbare clothing of the Afghan women and men, and landscapes. But it’s the assault weapons of war they carry that hit us in the gut, these being the same guns terrorizing America. Again, a very timely plea.

If this all sounds too dark to be enchanted, the prose is. It makes us see what we don’t want to, or have ignored seeing. Kalotay also has a unique way of expressing things, like depicting an Afghan man as having “the face of antiquity.” Or saying “an old woman’s face is beautiful in the way the old become beautiful.” In how she boils down fifty years of the Islamic Republic’s history in one sweeping paragraph. Prose aimed at making thoughtful, penetrating points through her characters’ eyes and development.

The author did her homework, acknowledging Desert Storm and other experts who provided “first hand insights into Afghanistan, the eastern border regions, and humanitarian aid work.” No matter what they told her, she alone created the seat-of-your pants scenes in what feels like the scariest place on earth.

Mim’s journey is candid and raw. She shows us what it’s like to step so far out of your comfort zone, to get a better sense of “things so far beyond us.”

Lorraine

Celebrating a Southern literary giant: We miss you, Pat Conroy. That’s a great big WE like your great big heart and your “big-beaming” smile, and the big shock and loss we all felt when you passed away in 2015 at 70. We’ve been honoring your greatness ever since. Through the establishment of the Pat Conroy Literary Center. Through an annual literary festival in your beloved coastal town, Beaufort, South Carolina. With this little gem of your writings, packed with your bigness.

Meant to be a “keepsake” with an attached red ribbon bookmark, A Lowcountry Heart celebrates Pat Conroy’s literary prowess, convictions, and generous heart. It’s a loving and thoughtfully selected compilation of “letters” – blog posts the long-handed, “language-obsessed” author called them, not liking the word blog at all nor wanting to give up the feel of his craft despite “writer’s cramp,” relented in 2009 when his health was declining limiting his travel. It also includes his speeches and other writings, a collaboration between his long-time (thirty years) editor/publisher Nan A. Talese and Conroy’s writer wife, Cassandra King, both of whom contributed personal reflections adding to his.

It’s a perfect selection to read as the second Pat Conroy Literary Festival kicks off soon, running from October 19 – 22, 2017. Inspiration for this “letter.”

We miss Pat Conroy even if we never met him at one of his legendary book signings, for we’ve likely read one of more of his books. A prolific writer of Southern fiction and memoir, he “often intermingled the two.” You probably figured that out already if you’ve read The Great Santini influenced by his “tyrant” of a father, a Marine Corps fighter pilot who moved the Conroy clan (Pat Conroy was one of seven children) all around the South, the settings for his works. Or, read The Lords of Discipline based on the “four-grueling years” he spent at The Citadel, the military college in Charleston. You may not know, though, that a girl who caught his eye in kindergarten is a character in The Prince of Tides; that the gay piano player in South of Broad was inspired by an “irreplaceable friend” whom Conroy cared so much about he moved to San Francisco for a while since his friend’s southern family disowned him; that The Water is Wide is based on his gloriously happy year teaching poor black kids on tiny Daufuskie Island, South Carolina, a book some call a novel, others a memoir; that a girl he swooned over in 8^th grade appears in Beach Music; or that The Losing Season is about the year his basketball team lost the Southern Conference. The way he went about contacting and uniting his old teammates is one for the books. I myself just found a gorgeous copy of his last published memoir, The Death of Santini, said to put closure on his relationship with his tyrannical father.

There’s a powerful theme here that has everything to do with never forgetting the people who “changed my whole life and the way I saw the whole world,” for good and for bad. Bless his mother who taught her son Pat about “evil” because in this splendid insight into this writer’s world we feel his deep moral compassion and outrage against wrongs. He called it out the way he saw it. “How the world presented itself.” What words of wisdom and eloquence would Pat Conroy be saying about how the world is presenting itself today? Eerily, a world not many years since his searing voice left us, but it sure feels that way.

Which is why we can’t help but be struck by how self-effacing Pat Conroy was, always striving to be “good enough,” to be ”bold enough.” Writing that “generosity is the rarest of qualities in American writers,” it seems just from these memorable samplings and anecdotes, Pat Conroy may have been the most generous of them all.

“Reading became the most essential thing about me,” says the avid collector of 8,000 books. So you’ll find heartfelt tributes to so many writers living and gone. He dubs Anne Rivers Siddons “Queen of Southern fiction.” Says Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto “knocked my socks off.” Speaks of Barbara Kingsolver’s work as “eye-popping.” He’s so very proud, as in “shouting it out to the hills” of his wife’s writings; Moonrise a “fabulous novel.” He calls Phillip Roth a “gift to American letters.” Of Ron Rash’s Serena, Conroy glowingly says: “it made me think of the North Carolina mountains like Thomas Wolfe never did.” Then there are the stages he went through when he was “Faulknered” and “Steinbecked” and “Virginia Woolfed” and “Hemingwayed” and “Fitzgeralded.” The list and accolades go on and on.

Pat Conroy was an equal opportunity praiser. Encouraged by a good friend (he maintained so many friendships, some going back forty years) at 68 to give science fiction a try, a genre he’d stayed clear of all his life, prior to meeting George R. R. Martin on a book tour that stopped in Santa Fe. What joy he expresses discovering this imaginative “genius” of a fantasy writer, reading everything Martin wrote beginning with A Game of Thrones. He admires Gay Talese, Nan A. Talese’s husband, a writer of “impeccable prose.” Pat Conroy movingly thanks friends and their spouses alike, writerly and otherwise.

That may be the key to the greatness of his literary style. So much raw emotion soars in his prose. A terrific example of his wordsmithing and enormous gratitude for literature and those who teach it is seen in a passage from a 2007 letter he sent to the Charleston Gazette:

“The world of literature has everything in it, and refuses to leave anything out. I have read like a man on fire my whole life because the genius of English teachers touched me with the dazzling beauty of language. Because of them I rode with Don Quixote and danced with Anna Karenina at a ball in Saint Petersburg and lassoed a steer in Lonesome Dove and had nightmares about slavery in Beloved and walked the streets of Dublin in Ulysses and made up a hundred stories in The Arabian Nights and saw my mother killed by a baseball in A Prayer for Owen Meany.”

Pat Conroy’s appreciation for his readership is just as strong. This great writer found “one of the greatest things about being a writer” was engaging with his legion of readers. So much so he encouraged them to bring as many of his books to his signings, which notoriously ran on for hours, contrary to the way these events typically go. For he was a contrarian who mischievously admits he’s “obnoxiously friendly,” so he never ran out of steam for his devoted fans. That makes us feel good, particularly when we’ve read other acclaimed authors complaining about the drudgery of big city tours. Since we can no longer tell Pat Conroy what his books mean to us, A Lowcountry Heart tells us what we meant to him.

Pat Conroy speaks of the beauty of Beaufort, South Carolina as a “cult.” That may be true as Southern Living named Beaufort the best small southern town in 2017. But the voters who make up these nominations tend to change their opinions annually, whereas Pat Conroy’s cult will endure year after year.

Lorraine

A lady and her lady’s maid – an unconventional relationship (England and Scotland, WWI and Interwar periods, 1914-1925): What better way to kick-off a new year of blogging than to start with an historical novel by the same author whose historical debut inspired this blog nearly 4 years ago. For The Echo of Twilight echoes the enchanting prose of British novelist Judith Kinghorn’s The Last Summer, also set at the brink of WWI.

Whereas the first novel transports us to a country estate in the south of England, Kinghorn’s newest (her 4^th) takes us to two “pristine and loved” estates: Birling Hall, shining brightly in northern England’s Northumberland (the author’s birthplace) and Delnasay, atmospheric in the “purple mist” of the Scottish Highlands, where so much of the novel’s emotional heart happens.

Echoes of Downton Abbey reverberate here too. With a twist that’s central to the plot. For the customary relationship between a beautiful lady of two grand houses – Lady Ottoline Campbell – and her pretty lady’s maid, Pearl, is intense and complicated, growing in dependency and entanglement. Part servant, part dear friend, part mother/daughterly, theirs is a closeness that strengthens, shifts, struggles, and changes over time and circumstances. Roller-coaster emotions that seem to parallel the timeline of the devastating war – before, during, and after. As such, we see their liaison as sweet innocence in the summer before the war; followed by great pride and honor of dutiful service as Britain gears up to enter the war; then a clinging to each other as the war rages on; later a hardening as the war takes its toll; and a long-lasting aftermath.

Told in Pearl’s refined voice, most of the novel ensues over six years in three Parts. Parts I and II shape four years of Pearl’s life in domestic service, opening when she’s 23 after nine years of service positions, searching for a place to belong (“a small star in transit”). She finds it as a lady’s maid to Lady Ottoline, who treats Pearl as “someone relevant.” Part III takes place over two years post-war when Pearl moves to London and gains employment at the high-class Selfridge’s department store, echoing another British TV drama, Mr. Selfridge. An Epilogue illuminates five more years.

It’s important to highlight the culmination of Pearl’s domestic service at the end of WWI for it coincides with the historical ushering in of the rise of feminism and a changing society. Historically, this is when Britain granted the right to vote to all men and to women over 30.

Which means that besides the winning prose, the author’s strength lies in seamlessly weaving historical details and themes (and evocative landscapes) into an interesting, informative, fast-moving plot. Many faces of many themes run throughout: an “upstairs/downstairs” hierarchical class system; powerful loyalties to those served at home and to country; loneliness, loss, grief, and love. Love of family, friends, colleagues, and romantic love. A profound and moving love story that’s Pearl’s, but like everything else Ottoline is ensnarled in it too.

War is rumored when we meet Pearl, who’s “looking for love and home” and “betterment.” She’s on her way to Lady Ottoline’s beloved 14^th century stone estate, having interviewed and accepted the prized position as her lady’s maid. Exalted because it “took a very superior sort of girl to be a lady’s maid.” Pearl prides herself on being that girl despite her emotionally affecting childhood, driving one of two unspoken mysteries.

That mystery is the identity of Pearl’s father. She’s never met him because her unwed mother committed suicide the day she was born. (Pearl was raised by her Aunt Kitty.) The other mystery that tugs at us surrounds the man Pearl falls madly in love with in Scotland: Ralph Stedman, a painter and Ottoline’s cousin, who lives in a cottage on the estate’s “10,000 acres of rivers, woods, hills, and fields.” These mysteries turn pages.

Some of my favorite lyricism comes when Pearl realizes she’s found the happiness she’s only dreamed of:

“As I gazed out across the glen, the river, beyond the alders and groves of silver birch to the mountains, the peace was overwhelming, newly extraordinary, deeper and more powerful than anything I’d known. And with it came a sense of belonging, a sort of contentment and connectedness. And I thought, even if nothing else happened in my life, this was enough: this sky, these hills, those high-up purples and blues, that dark bird’s wing, those feathery clouds and him.”

As the war heightens and darkens Pearl’s and Ottoline’s lives, so goes their relationship. “I need you,” blurts Ottoline, for whom Pearl responds faithfully and gratefully, reacting to her lady’s maternal warmth and kindnesses.

We’re told some downstairs staff are jealous of their exceptional relationship. Two downstairs characters touchingly prove otherwise: Rodney Watts, the butler, and Mrs. Lister, head cook. They will remind you of Mr. Carson and Mrs. Patmore of Downton Abbey. The Lagonda motor car featured in Ottoline’s shaky driving skills (reflective of her erratic behavior), and Pearl’s chauffeuring role will also bring back scenes from that PBS Masterpiece show.

The rest of the upstairs family includes Lord Hector Campbell, whose fuzzy position in the Foreign Office necessitates stretches of time spent in London, particularly during the war effort; and sons Hugo, 21, Oxford-schooled, and Billy, 19, an Eton student, who we come to know best and care most about as he’s the golden boy Ottoline’s acutely attached to.

Pearl’s initial impressions were of a “very happy household” where every day felt “like Christmas.” Although, she did sense an “ineffable sadness” about her ladyship, which surfaces in ways good and bad.

On the balance between happiness and sadness, the author has crafted a novel of a nation at war that never forgets to remind us of the beauty of life, nature, and experiencing true love.

Speaking of love, if you love historical novels, this one, I think, will inspire your new year’s resolution to read more in 2017!

Lorraine

PS My last post on Victoria cited another PBS Masterpiece show, a mini-series based on the novel. Update on when it airs: January 15^th. Also: After Queen Victoria’s reign, King George V became the next British monarch. Thus, The Echo of Twilight follows the historical timeline of British succession. Mentioned is the King’s Prime Minister, H.H. Asquith, who made the momentous decision to enter the war, and Lord Kitchener, his Secretary of State for War.