The Body Farm by Patricia Cornwell (✰✰✰)

Currently, I am reading the nonfiction Death’s Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab The Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales by Bill Bass. Patricia Cornwell wrote the foreword to that book and supposedly used its subject as inspiration for this novel. I was very disappointed in both the plot line and the misnaming of this novel.

Dr. Bill Bass is a real life forensic anthropologist who realized in the course of his early career that a research facility that specialized in human (and sometimes animal and other) decomposition under various circumstances was needed in order for law enforcement to build airtight timelines to effectively prosecute murders. His answer was to begin The Body Farm.

Novelist Patricia Cornwell has heard Dr. Bass present at conferences and has been to The Body Farm, so I looked forward to reading this police procedural novel and seeing how she utilized her research and presented the material in the context of her plot. This was my first novel by her, and I cannot say that I am impressed.

First, The Body Farm plays such a minor role in the novel, I cannot even remember the fictional name she gave Dr. Bass — let alone fathom why she chose to title the novel after the research facility. Second, I felt the plot line was just weak and very rushed in its conclusion.

I am not a huge reader of crime fiction, but I was able to peg the guilty party from their very first appearance in the story. Since I am not a big police procedural reader, usually the whodunnit takes me by surprise. The rushed conclusion of the novel almost felt like the author knew everyone already knew the big reveal long before its unveiling and so decided to just wrap the thing up, ship it off to the publisher, and move along to her next book.

Narrator C.J. Critt was a new narrator for me and the only thing that kept this novel from being a two star read for me. I would definitely listen to another book she narrates. Whether or not I pick up another book by Patricia Cornwell is in doubt.

The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald (✰✰✰✰)

The Beautiful and Damned was Fitzgerald’s second book, published in 1922, following his debut, This Side of Paradise, published in 1920. Unlike most writers, Fitzgerald was an instant success, but he really hit his stride in 1925 with the publication of his most famous — and some say his best — novel, The Great Gatsby is definitely the first book any reader should explore of Fitzgerald’s four novels, but I feel like The Beautiful and Damned is well worth the read. 

Like Gatsby, The Beautiful and Damned is set during the era that Fitzgerald popularized as The Jazz Age. Its story is, in many ways, reflective of the early marriage and lifestyle of Fitzgerald and his wife and perhaps illustrates a subconscious fear of what might become of them. The novel’s main characters, Anthony and Gloria Patch, watch their friends find success and happiness while they themselves wallow in indolence and overspending as they wait for his grandfather to die and leave them an inheritance. The novel follows the effect this lifestyle has on their lives and relationship.

Fitzgerald’s final novel, Tender is the Night, published in 1934, was semi-autobiographical, but I feel that reading The Beautiful and Damned is invaluable for setting the scene and shedding light on the events preceding those in Tender is the Night. Together, the two novels present a portrait of how life-destroying Fitzgerald viewed the excesses of the Jazz Age and give a fictionalized account of his own marriage.

Had I read this novel in print, it would most likely have been a five star read for me. The narrator of the audio I listened to, William Dufris, was really not to my taste. While there is no doubt that Gloria was irresponsible and the architect of her own problems, Dufris’s voicing of her character was nothing short of grating, as were his portrayals of most of the female leads. All of the women came across as whiney little girls. I did not feel he did much better with the men, presenting all of them as brainless, despite their Ivy League educations and the success of most of them. There are numerous recordings of this novel; I highly urge going with a different narrator than Dufris.

Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman (✰✰✰✰✰)

Magic Lessons, the prequel to Alice Hoffman’s 1995 Practical Magic, does not disappoint. If you have not yet read Practical Magic, read Magic Lessons first. However, I read them in order of publication and felt that they work that way equally as well.

Whereas Practical Magic takes place in the present day and revolves around siblings, Magic Lessons is absolutely a work of historical fiction, taking readers back to Puritan Salem, Massachusetts, during the 1600s. The witch trials of 1692 are peripheral to the plot but not the main focus. Although I loved the interplay amongst the siblings in Practical Magic, I preferred the multi-generational aspect of Magic Lessons.

Magic Lessons goes back in time to narrate the early history of where the inherited magic in the Owens siblings in Practical Magic originates. The reader learns that magic is something that Owens witches are born with and also something that requires tutoring to develop. 

If you enjoy historical fiction, you will especially enjoy Magic Lessons, even if you were not a fan of the magical realism that was a hallmark of Practical Magic. I highly recommend the audiobook, narrated by Sutton Foster. She was a completely new narrator for me; I would choose to listen to titles that she narrates even if the book itself was not on my radar.

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi (✰✰✰✰)

Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing, which traced the descendants of two sisters, one a slave and one the
wife of an African slave trader, was an instant hit when it was published in 2016. Her newest offering, Transcendent Kingdom, is a very, very different novel but still strong in its own way. I loved the complexity of plot and characterization that were hallmarks of Homegoing; it was a five-star read for me and its audio took my top slot the year I read it.

I was not nearly as taken with Transcendent Kingdom. Instead of the three hundred years and multiple generations that Homegoing covered, Transcendent Kingdom focuses on three people: a mother and her two children. The novel still bridges the same two continents, Africa and the United States, but the central issues are completely different. Set in the present day, the primary issue in Transcendent Kingdom is that of addiction and the effect that it has on a small immigrant family. Community and perception are also touched upon, but the story is far less involved than Homegoing.

The only thing that saved the novel for me was the narration by Bahni Turpin. She made the utmost of those perfect moments of prose that were far less abundant than in Homegoing, bringing the subjects to life with sympathy and realism. If you are new to Yaa Gyasi, though, I would still recommend the audio or print version of Homegoing over Transcendent Kingdom, simply based on the strength of the former novel.

Banished: Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church by Lauren Drain (✰✰✰)

Banished fell far short of my expectations. I picked up this book because I wanted to understand why anyone would join an organization known for picketing funerals of fallen servicemen and women and first responders to 9/11. It was inconceivable to me that anyone claiming to be Christian could do something so disrespectful. I was also curious how a cult whose members live among regular society manages to keep their people in line.

This book never went below the surface emotionally and analytically. I got the feeling that Lauren herself does not know the answers to my questions. From middle school into adulthood, she, for the most part, did what she was told. Even while describing what it was like to live under the constant scrutiny of her parents and other church members, it was as if she was writing from a perspective that was still too close to the person who thought that was normal. The part of her that got out knows that free people do not live like that, but the part of her that still yearns for the love of her family and the fellowship of the church cannot see how warped it is. The result was writing that was flat and lacking in self-awareness.

When she wrote about the thing the church is best known for — picketing — her prose was so matter-of-fact that it was as if she could not bring herself, even now, to condemn the behavior and see it for how appalling it is. Even in the book’s epilogue, where she offers an apology to the families of the deceased and the other groups, in particular homosexuals, whom she reviled thousands of times, she hedges. Instead of just offering her apology, she tempers it by saying that she will never advocate for the causes she used to advocate against. Why add that? It is her right to still feel that way (after all those years of brainwashing, it is understandable), but it made her apology seem so disingenuous, and that really bothered me.

My thought with this one is that either not enough time has past for Lauren to process her feelings enough to be able to answer all the “why” questions with honesty and depth or she is simply unable to think that profoundly, maybe due to having her every thought dictated to her for eight formative years of her life. Either way, she admits that she never found a scriptural reference to support why the church takes the position they do on homosexuals. Asking others did not get her an answer either. She did say that in one way or another, all of the church’s stances stem from hatred of homosexuality and hatred of the Jews (who they blame for killing Jesus). All in all, the book did give a glimpse into what life is like for members but no substance in terms of their theology or philosophy.

Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High by Melba Pattillo Beals (✰✰✰✰✰)

The poorly chosen, tabloid worthy subtitle of this memoir almost made me give it a pass, but I am so happy I didn’t. Over the past year, I have been reading a lot of books by and about people whose lives are radically different from my own, due either to the color of their skin, their religion, of their politics. I have been deeply disturbed to see the rifts that are developing in the United States in terms of race, religion, and political affiliation. Looking back in history and analyzing how issues were resolved —or failed to be resolved — helps me to understand where things stand in our country today.

The author of this book, Melba Pattillo Beals, was one of the Little Rock Nine, nine Black teens chosen to forcibly integrate Little Rock, Arkansas’s Central High School in 1957. At just fifteen and sixteen, an age when high school is tough enough, she was being ushered to class — on days when she was lucky — by members of the famed Screaming Eagles, the army’s 101st Airborne Division. On not so lucky days, her “protection” came from members of the Arkansas National Guard — who more often than not stood by and made a spectator sport out of the treatment of the Nine.

These young people and their families endured death threats, beatings, broken bones, scaldings and humiliation in locker rooms, flaming paper bombs, and an endless stream of smaller physical abuses, as well as verbal and emotional abuse. Intervention went as high up as the President of the United States, Dwight Eisenhower, who allowed sporadic use of the 101st but was mostly managed by Arkansas officials who were adamantly opposed to integration. They hoped that the abuse the teens suffered would lead to either the students backing down and returning to their Black high school or for adults to refuse to allow them to continue for safety reasons. Every day, these nine young people went to war, not on foreign soil, but in a school. Right here in the United States.

Melba, who was inspired by the journalists who spoke her truth and that of her eight classmates, decided that one day she would become a journalist, too, so she could pay it forward. Despite being encouraged to tell her story, it took her more than thirty years to be able to face her own past. I don’t know who chose this book's ridiculous subtitle (“searing” is such a histrionic word), but the text itself sets the perfect tone. Melba neither champions herself nor lapses into self pity. She lays out the facts in a forceful, organized, and documented fashion, drawing on the diaries she diligently kept and contemporary newspaper reporting.

If you have never read a book about the Little Rock Nine (I never had, despite several languishing on my TBR), I highly recommend this one. Melba left me in absolute awe of these nine young people who showed such strength of conviction and character. The audio, narrated by Lisa Reneé Pitts, perfectly matched the tenor of the text; it, too, gets five stars from me.

The Indigo Girl by Natasha Boyd (✰✰✰✰✰)

At only sixteen, Eliza Lucas is put in charge of her family’s faltering American plantations in South Carolina while her father travels to the Caribbean to attempt to salvage the family’s fortunes on their holdings there. Set in 1739, Eliza battles not only paternalism and misogyny but also the British and the Spanish. Uninterested in marriage, Eliza, despite the tremendous pressure it puts on her young shoulders, gamely picks up the baton and rallies her family, friends, and slaves in an attempt to preserve not only their livelihood but the fabric that holds all of their lives together. 

The novel explores themes of feminism, friendship, racism, master/slave relations, education, and plantation culture. Eliza was an early precursor of the Southern women who would hold together the plantation, slave-based economy of the South while the men went off to fight in the Civil War, only to be expected to step aside once the men returned. 

Based on a real woman, Eliza Lucas is the center that holds the novel together. She is mentally agile and unafraid to step up when her family needs her. Thinking outside the box, she chooses the as yet untried indigo plant and the dye it produces as the vehicle with which to save her family. Drawing strength from some characters and thwarted by others, Eliza’s hands-on zest for her endeavor lends tension to what otherwise might be a slow-paced read.

I absolutely loved this novel. It was rooted in characters without being slowed down by their development. It also avoided a lot of the stereotypical characters that are so common in Southern plantation literature. The science of indigo was lightly woven into the tale, giving a perfect balance of information and plot development. The one weakness was that historical happenings off the plantation with the British and Spanish were a bit too underrepresented. 

I listened to the audio version, marvelously narrated by Saskia Maarleveld. Her interpretation took an already lovely novel and brought it to a whole new level.