Work Song
Ivan Doig, 2010
Penguin Group USA
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594485206
Summary
An award-winning and beloved novelist of the American West spins the further adventures of a favorite character, in one of his richest historical settings yet.
"If America was a melting pot, Butte would be its boiling point," observes Morrie Morgan, the itinerant teacher, walking encyclopedia, and inveterate charmer last seen leaving a one- room schoolhouse in Marias Coulee, the stage he stole in Ivan Doig's 2006 The Whistling Season. A decade later, Morrie is back in Montana, as the beguiling narrator of Work Song.
Lured like so many others by "the richest hill on earth," Morrie steps off the train in Butte, copper-mining capital of the world, in its jittery heyday of 1919. But while riches elude Morrie, once again a colorful cast of local characters-and their dramas-seek him out: a look-alike, sound-alike pair of retired Welsh miners; a streak-of-lightning waif so skinny that he is dubbed Russian Famine; a pair of mining company goons; a comely landlady propitiously named Grace; and an eccentric boss at the public library, his whispered nickname a source of inexplicable terror.
When Morrie crosses paths with a lively former student, now engaged to a fiery young union leader, he is caught up in the mounting clash between the iron-fisted mining company, radical "outside agitators," and the beleaguered miners. And as tensions above ground and below reach the explosion point, Morrie finds a unique way to give a voice to those who truly need one. (From the publisher.)
Work Song is the second novel in a trilogy—beginning with The Whistling Season (2006) and ending with Sweet Thunder (2013).
Author Bio
• Birth—June 27, 1939
• Where—White Sulphur Springs, Montana, USA
• Death—April 9, 2015
• Where—Seattle, Washington
• Education—B.A., M.A., Northwestern University; Ph.D., University of Washington
Ivan Doig was born in Montana to a family of home-steaders and ranch hands. After the death of his mother Berneta, on his sixth birthday, he was raised by his father Charles "Charlie" Doig and his grandmother Elizabeth "Bessie" Ringer. After several stints on ranches, they moved to Dupuyer, Pondera County, Montana in the north to herd sheep close to the Rocky Mountain front.
After his graduation from Valier high school, Doig attended Northwestern University, where he received a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in journalism. He later earned a Ph.D. in American history at the University of Washington, writing his dissertation about John J. McGilvra (1827-1903). He now lives with his wife Carol Doig, nee Muller, a university professor of English, in Seattle, Washington.
Before he became a novelist, Doig wrote for newspapers and magazines as a free-lancer and worked for the United States Forest Service. He has also published two memoirs—This House of Sky (1979) and Heart Earth (1993).
Much of his fiction (more than 10 novels) is set in the Montana country of his youth. His major theme is family life in the past, mixing personal memory and regional history. As the western landscape and people play an important role in his fiction, he has been hailed as the new dean of western literature, a worthy successor to Wallace Stegner. (From Wikipedia.)
Extras
His own words:
• Taking apart a career in such summary sentences always seems to me like dissecting a frog—some of the life inevitably goes out of it—and so I think the more pertinent Ivan Doig for you, Reader, is the red-headed only child, son of ranch hand Charlie Doig and ranch cook Berneta Ringer Doig (who died of her lifelong asthma on my sixth birthday), who in his junior year of high school (Valier, Montana; my class of 1957 had 21 members) made up his mind to be a writer of some kind.
• No one is likely to confuse my writing style with that of Charlotte Bronte, but when that impassioned parson’s daughter lifted her pen from Jane Eyre and bequeathed us the most intriguing of plot summaries—"Reader, I married him"—she also was subliminally saying what any novelist ... must croon to those of you with your eyes on our pages: "Reader, my story is flirting with you; please love it back."
• One last word about the setting of my work, the American West. I don’t think of myself as a "Western" writer. To me, language—the substance on the page, that poetry under the prose—is the ultimate "region," the true home, for a writer. Specific geographies, but galaxies of imaginative expression —we’ve seen them both exist in William Faulkner’s postage stamp-size Yoknapatawpha County, and in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s nowhere village of Macondo, dreaming in its hundred years of solitude. If I have any creed that I wish you as readers, necessary accomplices in this flirtatious ceremony of writing and reading, will take with you from my pages, it’d be this belief of mine that writers of caliber can ground their work in specific land and lingo and yet be writing of that larger country: life. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Not one stitch unravels in this intricately threaded narrative… infectious.
New York Times Book Review
Readers who fell in love with Morrie Morgan in The Whistling Season will welcome him back to Montana in Ivan Doig’s latest adventure… Richly imagined and beautifully paced.
Associated Press
If you were looking for a novel that best expresses the American spirit, you’d have to ride past a lot of fence posts before finding anything as worthy as Work Song.
Chicago Tribune
As enjoyable and subtly thought-provoking a piece of fiction as you’re likely to pick up this summer. A pleasure to read.
Los Angeles Times
A classic tale from they heyday of American capitalism by the king of the Western novel.
Daily Beast
Doig affectionately revisits Morris "Morrie" Morgan from the much-heralded The Whistling Season. Now, 10 years later, in 1919, Morrie lands in Butte, Mont.... Scoring a job is a top priority, as is getting more face time with Grace Faraday, the alluring widow who runs the boardinghouse where he stays. Things, naturally, are complicated.... Charismatic dialogue and charming, homespun characterization make Doig's latest another surefire winner.
Publishers Weekly
Morrie Morgan gets off the train in Butte, MT, "the richest hill on earth," run by Anaconda Copper.... Before long, Morrie discovers he's being shadowed by Anaconda's thugs for being a strike agitator.... Verdict: Doig delivers solid storytelling with a keen respect for the past and gives voice to his characters in a humorous and affectionate light. Recommend this to everyone you know; essential. —Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO
Library Journal
Every once in a while, critics are so divided on their opinion of a novel as to leave readers scratching their heads in bewilderment. Witness Work Song. Sure, its plot is a little thin, and it's "history lite." Yet most critics praise Doig, a veteran writer of the West, for his ability to weave a story out of the familiar Montana countryside.
Bookmarks Magazine
As usual, Doig incorporates plenty of large-canvas history into his mix of romance and human drama...and, also as usual, he tiptoes ever so carefully on the literary ledge that separates warm, character-driven drama from sentimental melodrama. He nearly loses his footing a time or two here, unlike in the perfectly balanced Whistling Season, but on the whole, this is an engaging, leisurely paced look at labor, libraries, and love in a roughneck mining town. —Bill Ott
Booklist
Returning to Montana in 1919, ten years after he pinch-hit as a rural schoolteacher in The Whistling Season (2006), Morris Morgan finds the city of Butte roiled by labor unrest. The Anaconda Copper Mining Company has just imposed a 22 percent pay cut that has union leader Jared Evans reluctantly planning a strike.... Morrie is sympathetic...but he's more interested in finding a job and getting better acquainted with Grace Faraday, the feisty widowed proprietress of his boardinghouse.... More atmospheric, pleasingly old-fashioned storytelling from Doig, whose ear for the way people spoke and thought in times gone by is as faultless as ever.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Work Song brings back Morrie Morgan, the beloved teacher from The Whistling Season, and this time he's the narrator. What is gained and what is lost by having him tell the story?
2. Think of the opening scenes in terms of movie shots. How does Ivan bring readers into the Butte of 1919?
3. How do the two Welsh boarders function in the plot? What would be lost if they weren't there?
4. Why do you think Ivan made the library central to the novel?
5. The librarian is loosely based on an actual historical character. Do you find him believable? Do you think he's supposed to be?
6. How does the character of Russian Famine illuminate life in Butte?
7. Rabrab provides a central glue for the plot. Discuss examples that illustrate her importance.
8. Which characters did you most relate to? Can you explain why?
9. Ivan immerses readers in time and place. Does he succeed in making you see and feel Butte?
10. Why show that Morrie can cook with more flair than Grace? (Ivan has a reason for everything he includes.)
11. Are you satisfied with the ending?
(Questions from the author's website.)
Sweet Thunder
Ivan Doig, 2013
Penguin Group USA
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594487347
Summary
A beloved character brings the power of the press to 1920s Butte, Montana, in this latest from the best storyteller of the West
In the winter of 1920, a quirky bequest draws Morrie Morgan back to Butte, Montana, from a year-long honeymoon with his bride, Grace. But the mansion bestowed by a former boss upon the itinerant charmer, who debuted in Doig’s bestselling The Whistling Season, promises to be less windfall than money pit.
And the town itself, with its polyglot army of miners struggling to extricate themselves from the stranglehold of the ruthless Anaconda Copper Mining Company, seems—like the couple’s fast-diminishing finances—on the verge of implosion.
These twin dilemmas catapult Morrie into his new career as editorialist for the Thunder, the fledgling union newspaper that dares to play David to Anaconda’s Goliath. Amid the clatter of typewriters, the rumble of the printing presses, and a cast of unforgettable characters, Morrie puts his gift for word-slinging to work. As he pursues victory for the miners, he discovers that he is enmeshed in a deeply personal battle as well—the struggle to win lasting love for himself.
Brilliantly capturing an America roaring into a new age, Sweet Thunder is another great tale from a classic American novelist. (From the publisher.)
Sweet Thunder is the final novel in a trilogy—beginning with The Whistling Season (2006), followed by Work Song (2010)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 27, 1939
• Where—White Sulphur Springs, Montana, USA
• Death—April 9, 2015
• Where—Seattle, Washington
• Education—B.A., M.A., Northwestern University; Ph.D., University of Washington
Ivan Doig was born in Montana to a family of home-steaders and ranch hands. After the death of his mother Berneta, on his sixth birthday, he was raised by his father Charles "Charlie" Doig and his grandmother Elizabeth "Bessie" Ringer. After several stints on ranches, they moved to Dupuyer, Pondera County, Montana in the north to herd sheep close to the Rocky Mountain front.
After his graduation from Valier high school, Doig attended Northwestern University, where he received a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in journalism. He later earned a Ph.D. in American history at the University of Washington, writing his dissertation about John J. McGilvra (1827-1903). He now lives with his wife Carol Doig, nee Muller, a university professor of English, in Seattle, Washington.
Before he became a novelist, Doig wrote for newspapers and magazines as a free-lancer and worked for the United States Forest Service. He has also published two memoirs—This House of Sky (1979) and Heart Earth (1993).
Much of his fiction (more than 10 novels) is set in the Montana country of his youth. His major theme is family life in the past, mixing personal memory and regional history. As the western landscape and people play an important role in his fiction, he has been hailed as the new dean of western literature, a worthy successor to Wallace Stegner. (From Wikipedia.)
Extras
His own words:
• Taking apart a career in such summary sentences always seems to me like dissecting a frog—some of the life inevitably goes out of it—and so I think the more pertinent Ivan Doig for you, Reader, is the red-headed only child, son of ranch hand Charlie Doig and ranch cook Berneta Ringer Doig (who died of her lifelong asthma on my sixth birthday), who in his junior year of high school (Valier, Montana; my class of 1957 had 21 members) made up his mind to be a writer of some kind.
• No one is likely to confuse my writing style with that of Charlotte Bronte, but when that impassioned parson’s daughter lifted her pen from Jane Eyre and bequeathed us the most intriguing of plot summaries—"Reader, I married him"—she also was subliminally saying what any novelist ... must croon to those of you with your eyes on our pages: "Reader, my story is flirting with you; please love it back."
• One last word about the setting of my work, the American West. I don’t think of myself as a "Western" writer. To me, language—the substance on the page, that poetry under the prose—is the ultimate "region," the true home, for a writer. Specific geographies, but galaxies of imaginative expression —we’ve seen them both exist in William Faulkner’s postage stamp-size Yoknapatawpha County, and in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s nowhere village of Macondo, dreaming in its hundred years of solitude. If I have any creed that I wish you as readers, necessary accomplices in this flirtatious ceremony of writing and reading, will take with you from my pages, it’d be this belief of mine that writers of caliber can ground their work in specific land and lingo and yet be writing of that larger country: life. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Filled with an abundance of rich characters… it is Butte itself, a tough-fisted city of plungers and promoters, bootleggers and union workers, sharpers and window men and crooked boxers, that binds the story together. Doig re-creates one of America's legendary cities and fills it with characters to match.
Denver Post
Doig, who holds a Ph.D. in history, is at his best in his historic novels, and he unspools this compelling tale among the clatter of typewriters and the 'sweet thunder' of printing presses… Marvelous… yet another Montana book worthy of Doig’s prodigious talents.
Seattle Times
There have been many charming rogues through literary history, and Mr. Doig brings us another one: Morrie Morgan… Doig has a gift of making oddballs believable and lovable, as well as a gift for capturing place and personality in deft strokes… an entertaining story at a high intellectual level.
New York Journal of Books
Butte, Montana in the 1920s meant Anaconda Copper Mining Company squeezing the town, its residents, and the land for everything they've got. Doig brings back the charismatic Morrie Morgan...last seen in 2010's Work Song, in this stirring tale of greed, corruption, and the power of past sins.... Doig's attention to detail, both historical and concerning characters of his own creation, is as sharp as ever.... [R]eaders both seasoned and new will fall under the spell of Doig's Big Sky Country.
Publishers Weekly
Morrie Morgan is back, accompanied by our favorite loopy characters from Doig's acclaimed Whistling Season and Work Song. It's 1920, and after a whirlwind honeymoon, Morrie and wife, Grace, return to Butte, MT, where despotic power resides under one mighty thumb, the Anaconda Copper Mining Company.... Verdict: With a master storyteller's instincts and a dollop of wry humor, Doig evokes a perfect landscape of the past with a cast of memorable characters. A treasure of a novel. —Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Palisade, CO
Library Journal
Think Shane but with dueling journalists instead of gunfighters… A stirring tale given a melancholic edge by the fading influence of print newspapers in our very different modern world.
Booklist
Morrie Morgan returns to again confront the evil Anaconda Copper Mining Company, as well as several unwelcome reminders of his checkered past.... Doig also quietly conveys the injustices and cruelties of American history, particularly in the realistically depressing and temporary resolution of the union's struggle with Anaconda.... [W]elcome evidence that Doig, in his 70s, is more prolific and entertaining than ever.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What about returning to Butte worries Morrie, and what about his new post at the Thunder has the potential to put him and Grace in danger? What do you make of Morrie's decisions?
2. Doig's website describes Sweet Thunder at one level as "a domestic romp of Shakespearean proportions" and a "high-spirited, inventive, but historically acute portrait of a conflicted America." Knowing this, how might it affect your reading of the novel?
3. Also by authorial intention, certain of the characters are larger than life. Which ones seem so to you, and what techniques of characterization are used to make them so?
4. When he first starts working at the Thunder, Morrie calls the newspaper a "daily miracle" and a "draft of history." What ideas-about the power of newspapers, of knowledge, and of history-is Doig exploring here and throughout the book?
5. Morrie also says that "A newspaper without a cause is little more than a tally sheet of mishaps," and takes pride in the Thunder as a publication rooted in justice and responsibility. Do you think the same could be said of any media outlets today?
6. A couple of times, Morrie as narrator and protagonist breaks the "fourth wall" between cast of characters and audience to speculate on how the story would suddenly be shown in a new light if one of his assumed or presumed identities was actually the true one. Do you find this a departure from the straightforward storytelling until then, or an enhancement of the novel's imaginative possibilities?
7. How does the struggle between the corporate power embodied by Anaconda and the individual power embodied by Morrie and the Thunder develop and change throughout the novel? How is it emblematic of larger themes in American history? Can you relate their conflict to American society today?
8. The value of fiction has been said to be telling a greater truth by making things up. Is this satisfactorily reflected in any of Morrie's shifting identities in the course of the story? Dubiously in any of them?
9. Morrie, one of Ivan's most popular characters, previously appeared in The Whistling Season and Work Song, along with several other characters in Sweet Thunder. If you're new to Morrie and the crew, which character was your favorite, and why? And if you're new to Doig, what aspects of his style did you enjoy or find unique? If you've read another Morrie novel, whom were you happiest to see again? What are some of the author's touches, especially in characterizations and use of locales and dialogue, that establish continuity throughout the trilogy?
(Questions from the author's website.)
Burning Secret
Stefan Zweig, 1913
Create Space Independent Publishers
132 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781499767308
Summary
While being treated for asthma at a country spa, an American diplomat's lonely 12-year-old son is befriended and infatuated by a suave, mysterious baron.
But soon his adored friend heartlessly brushes him aside and turns his seductive attentions to his mother. The boy's jealousy and feelings of betrayal become uncontrollable. The story is set in Austria in the 1920s.
The book was adapted for a movie in 1988, starring Faye Dunaway, Klaus Maria Brandauer and Ian Richardson. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 28, 1881
• Where—Vienna, Austria
• Death—February 22, 1942
• Where—Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
• Education—Ph.D., University of Vienna
Stefan Zweig was an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most popular writers in the world.
Personal
Zweig was born in Vienna, the son of Moritz Zweig (1845–1926), a wealthy Jewish textile manufacturer, and Ida Brettauer (1854–1938), from a Jewish banking family. He studied philosophy at the University of Vienna and in 1904 earned a doctoral degree with a thesis on "The Philosophy of Hippolyte Taine."
In 1920, he married Friderike Maria von Winternitz; however, they divorced in 1938. As Friderike Zweig she published a book on her former husband after his death and, later, a picture book on Zweig. In 1939 Zweig married his secretary Lotte Altmann.
Religion
His faith did not play a central role in his education. "My mother and father were Jewish only through accident of birth", Zweig said later in an interview. Yet he did not renounce his Jewish faith and wrote repeatedly on Jews and Jewish themes, as in his story Buchmendel. Zweig had a warm relationship with Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, whom he met when Herzl was still literary editor of the Neue Freie Presse, then Vienna's main newspaper; Herzl accepted for publication some of Zweig's early essays.
Pacifism
At the beginning of World War I, patriotic sentiment was widespread, and extended to many German and Austrian Jews: Zweig, as well as Martin Buber and Hermann Cohen, all showed support. Zweig, although patriotic, refused to pick up a rifle; instead, he served in the Archives of the Ministry of War, and soon acquired a pacifist stand like his friend Romain Rolland (recipient of the 1915 Nobel Prize in Literature). Zweig remained a pacifist all his life and advocated the unification of Europe.
Nazism and despair
In 1934, following Hitler's rise to power in Germany, Zweig left Austria. He lived in England (in London first, then Bath). Because of the swift advance of Hitler's troops westwards, Zweig and his second wife crossed the Atlantic Ocean, settling in New York City in 1940. In August of 1940, they moved again to Petropolis, a town in the greater Rio de Janeiro area. Feeling more and more depressed by the growth of intolerance, authoritarianism, and Nazism, and feeling hopeless for the future for humanity, Zweig wrote a note about his feelings of desperation.
Then, in February 23, 1942, the Zweigs were found dead of a barbiturate overdose in their house in the city of Petropolis, holding hands. He had despaired at the future of Europe and its culture, writing...
I think it better to conclude in good time and in erect bearing a life in which intellectual labour meant the purest joy and personal freedom the highest good on Earth.
The Zweigs' house in Brazil was later turned into a museum and is now known as Casa Stefan Zweig.
Work and their reception
Zweig was a prominent writer in the 1920s and 1930s. He was extremely popular in the United States, South America and Europe, and remains so in continental Europe, although he was largely ignored by the British public, and his fame in America has since dwindled. Since the 1990s, there has been an effort on the part of several publishers (notably Pushkin Press Hesperus Press and The New York Review of Books) to get Zweig back into print in English. Plunkett Lake Press Ebooks has begun to publish electronic versions of his non-fiction as well.
Critical opinion of his oeuvre is strongly divided between those who despise his literary style as poor, lightweight and superficial and those who praise his humanism, simplicity and effective style. Michael Hofmann is scathingly dismissive of Zweig's work, which he dubbed a "vermicular dither," adding that "Zweig just tastes fake. He's the Pepsi of Austrian writing." Even the author's suicide note left Hofmann gripped by "the irritable rise of boredom halfway through it, and the sense that he doesn't mean it, his heart isn't in it (not even in his suicide)". See London Review of Books.
A.O. Scott of the New York Times, however, lauded Zweig, calling his work...
Touching and delightful. Those adjectives are not meant as faint praise. Zweig may be especially appealing now because rather than being a progenitor of big ideas, he was a serious entertainer, and an ardent and careful observer of habits, foibles, passions and mistakes.
Zweig is best known for his novellas (notably The Royal Game, Amok, and Letter from an Unknown Woman—which was filmed in 1948 by Max Ophüls), novels (Beware of Pity, Confusion of Feelings, and the posthumously published The Post Office Girl), and biographies (notably Erasmus of Rotterdam, Conqueror of the Seas: The Story of Magellan, and Mary, Queen of Scotland and the Isles and his also posthumously published, Balzac).
At one time his works were published without his consent in English under the pseudonym "Stephen Branch" (a translation of his real name) when anti-German sentiment was running high. His biography of Queen Marie-Antoinette was later adapted as a Hollywood movie, starring the actress Norma Shearer in the title role.
Zweig's autobiography, The World of Yesterday, was completed in 1942 on the day before he committed suicide. It has been widely discussed as a record of "what it meant to be alive between 1881 and 1942" in central Europe; the book has attracted both critical praise and hostile dismissal.
Zweig enjoyed a close association with Richard Strauss, and provided the libretto for The Silent Woman. Strauss famously defied the Nazi regime by refusing to sanction the removal of Zweig's name from the programme for the work's première on June 24, 1935 in Dresden. As a result, Goebbels refused to attend as planned, and the opera was banned after three performances. Zweig later collaborated with Joseph Gregor, to provide Strauss with the libretto for one other opera, Daphne, in 1937. At least one other work by Zweig received a musical setting: the pianist and composer Henry Jolles, who like Zweig had fled to Brazil to escape the Nazis, composed a song, "Último poema de Stefan Zweig," based on "Letztes Gedicht", which Zweig wrote on the occasion of his 60th birthday in November 1941. During his stay in Brazil, Zweig wrote Brazil, Land of the Future, which was an accurate analysis of his newly adopted country, and in his book he managed to demonstrate a fair understanding of the Brazilian culture that surrounded him.
Zweig was a passionate collector of manuscripts. There are important Zweig collections at the British Library and at the State University of New York at Fredonia. The British Library's Stefan Zweig Collection was donated to the library by his heirs in May 1986. It specialises in autograph music manuscripts, including works by Bach, Haydn, Wagner, and Mahler. It has been described as "one of the world's greatest collections of autograph manuscripts". One particularly precious item is Mozart's "Verzeichnüß aller meiner Werke"—that is, the composer's own handwritten thematic catalogue of his works.
The 1993–1994 academic year at the College of Europe was named in his honour. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 8/27/2014.)
Book Reviews
Touching and delightful. Those adjectives are not meant as faint praise. Zweig may be especially appealing now because rather than being a progenitor of big ideas, he was a serious entertainer, and an ardent and careful observer of habits, foibles, passions and mistakes.
A.O. Scott - New York Times
Breathtaking... the final sentence is unlike anything I have ever read before; and transforms not only the book, but, in a way, the reader as well.
Nicholas Lezard - Guardian (UK)
Zweig is the most adult of writers; civilised, urbane, but never jaded or cynical; a realist who none the less believed in the possibility—the necessity—of empathy.
Independent (UK)
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(Sorry, no questions exist for this book. If any reader would like to contribute them, we'd be delighted to include them...and give you credit.)
The Good Lord Bird
James McBride, 2013
Penguin Group USa
432 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594486340
Summary
From the bestselling author of The Color of Water and Song Yet Sung comes the story of a young boy born a slave who joins John Brown’s antislavery crusade—and who must pass as a girl to survive.
Henry Shackleford is a young slave living in the Kansas Territory in 1857, when the region is a battleground between anti- and pro-slavery forces. When John Brown, the legendary abolitionist, arrives in the area, an argument between Brown and Henry’s master quickly turns violent. Henry is forced to leave town—with Brown, who believes he’s a girl.
Over the ensuing months, Henry—whom Brown nicknames Little Onion—conceals his true identity as he struggles to stay alive. Eventually Little Onion finds himself with Brown at the historic raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859—one of the great catalysts for the Civil War.
An absorbing mixture of history and imagination, and told with McBride’s meticulous eye for detail and character, The Good Lord Bird is both a rousing adventure and a moving exploration of identity and survival. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—September 11, 1957
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Oberlin College; M.A., Columbia University
• Awards—National Book Award
• Currently—lives in New York City and Lambertville, New Jersey.
James McBride, an American writer and musician, was raised in Brooklyn's Red Hook housing projects. His father, the Rev. Andrew D. McBride (1911–1957), was African-American and his mother, Ruchel Dwajra Zylska (1921–2010), was a Jewish immigrant from Poland. McBride was the last child Ruth had from her first marriage, and the eighth of 12 children in all.
I'm proud of my Jewish history,...Technically I guess you could say I'm Jewish since my mother was Jewish...but she converted (to Christianity). So the question is for theologians to answer.... I just get up in the morning happy to be living.
Two of his older brothers, Dennis and Billy, graduated with doctorates in medicine, but medicine had no appeal for James. Instead, he attended Oberlin College and received an undergraduate degree in music composition, followed by a Master's in journalism from Columbia University.
Journalism
As a journalist, he was on the staffs of many well-known publications, including Boston Globe, Washington Post, Wilmington (Delaware) News Journal, and People. He has also written for Rolling Stone, Us, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, Essence, New York Times, and others. Mr. McBride is a charter member of the Clint Harding Network, a group of well-known journalists, writers and musicians who periodically have appeared live on a Missouri radio program for the last two decades.
Author
McBride is best known for his 1996 memoir, the bestselling The Color of Water, which describes his life growing up in a large, poor African American family led by a white, religious, and strict Jewish mother, whose father was an Orthodox rabbi, but converted and became devoutly Christian during her first marriage to Andrew McBride.
The memoir spent over two years on the New York Times bestseller list, and has become an American classic. It is read in high schools and universities across America, has been translated into 16 languages, and sold more than 2.5 million copies.
In 2002, he published a novel, Miracle at St. Anna, drawing on the history of the overwhelmingly African American 92nd Infantry Division in the Italian campaign from mid-1944 to April 1945. The book was adapted into the movie Miracle at St. Anna, directed by Spike Lee, released in 2008.
McBride's 2008 novel, Song Yet Sung, is about an enslaved woman who has dreams about the future, and a wide array of freed black people, enslaved people, and whites whose lives come together in the odyssey that surrounds the last weeks of this woman's life. Harriet Tubman served as an inspiration for the book, and it provides a fictional depiction of a code of communication that enslaved people used to help runaways attain freedom. The book, based on real-life events that occurred on Maryland's Eastern Shore, also featured the notorious criminal Patty Cannon as a villain.
In 2012 McBride co-wrote and co-produced the film Red Hook Summer with Spike Lee, and in 2014 he published The Good Lord Bird, a comic novel recounting the life of notorious abolitionist John Brown. It won the National Book Award.
Musician
McBride is the tenor saxophonist for the Rock Bottom Remainders, a group of best selling authors—Mitch Albom Dave Barry, Amy Tam, Scott Turow, to name a few—who are lousy musicians. "Hopefully," according to McBride, "the group has retired for good." However in 2013, along with the with the rest of the group, he co-authored Hard Listening: The Greatest Rock Bank Ever (of Authors) Tells All.
He has also toured as a saxophonist with jazz legend Little Jimmy Scott and has his own band that plays an eclectic blend of music. He has written songs for Anita Baker, Grover Washington Jr., Pura Fé, and Gary Burton.
In 2005, he published the first volume of The Process, a CD-based documentary about life as lived by low-profile jazz musicians.
McBride composed the theme music for the Clint Harding Network, Jonathan Demme's New Orlean's Documentary, Right to Return, and Ed Shockley's Off-Broadway musical Bobos.
McBride was awarded the 1997 American Music Festival’s Stephen Sondheim Award, the 1996 American Arts and Letters Richard Rodgers Award, and the 1996 ASCAP Richard Rodgers Horizons Award.
Personal
McBride is currently a Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at New York University. He has three children and lives between New York City and Lambertville, New Jersey. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/7/2014.)
Book Reviews
[A] magnificent…brilliant romp of a novel about [John] Brown…McBride—with the same flair for historical mining, musicality of voice and outsize characterization that made his memoir, The Color of Water, an instant classic—pulls off his portrait masterfully, like a modern-day Mark Twain: evoking sheer glee with every page…McBride sanctifies by humanizing; a larger-than-life warrior lands—warts, foibles, absurdities and all—right here on earth, where he's a far more accessible friend…In [McBride's] hands, John Brown is a wild and crazy old man—and more a hero than ever before.
Baz Dreisinger - New York Times Book Review
A superbly written novel.... Through crackling prose and smart, wryly humorous dialogue, McBride tells his story through the eyes of the slave Henry Shackleford, who as a young boy is kidnapped by Brown during one of his Kansas raids. Wrapping the ugliness of slavery in a pitch-perfect adventure story is more than just a reimagining of an historic event. McBride, as he did in Song Yet Sung and Miracle at St. Anna, transcends history and makes it come alive.
Chicago Tribune
Absorbing and darkly funny.... [A]t heart, the novel is an homage to a complex and fascinating American hero and a superbly inventive retelling of an American tale.
San Francisco Chronicle
James McBride made a gutsy decision when he chose to retell the rather tragic story of John Brown's failed slave rebellion at Harpers Ferry, Va., in 1859 as a historical romp with a gender-bending male slave as the great abolitionist's sidekick. The resulting new novel, The Good Lord Bird, is not only an irrepressibly fun read, but an iconoclastic exploration of a period in American history, the antebellum slave era, that we tend to handle with kid gloves.
Seattle Times
It takes a daring writer to tackle a decidedly unflattering pre-Civil War story. Yet, in McBride's capable hands, the indelicate matter of a befuddled tween from the mid-19th century provides a new perspective on one of the most decisive periods in the history of this country.
NPR
[A] fresh perspective on abolitionist firebrand John Brown in this novel disguised as the memoir of a slave boy who pretends to be a girl in order to escape pre–Civil War turmoil, only to find himself riding with John Brown’s retinue of rabble-rousers from Bloody Kansas to Harpers Ferry.... [Henry] eventually meets Frederick Douglass...Harriet Tubman...[and] the slave girl Sibonia, who courageously dies for freedom.... Outrageously funny, sad, and consistently unflattering, McBride puts a human face on a nation at its most divided.
Publishers Weekly
McBride continues exploring the long history of America's color line, begun in his landmark memoir, The Color of Water. A young slave in the Kansas Territory, Henry Shackleford must flee with abolitionist John Brown after Brown clashes with Henry's master. Complicating matters: Brown thinks Henry is a girl, a disguise Henry maintains up to the bold raid on Harpers Ferry.
Library Journal
The unlikely narrator of the events leading up to Brown's quixotic raid at Harper's Ferry is Henry Shackleford, aka Little Onion, [who]...Brown whisks the 12-year-old away thinking he's a girl, and Onion keeps up the disguise for the next few years.... At the end, Onion reasserts his identity as a male and escapes just before Brown's execution. McBride presents an interesting experiment in point of view here, as all of Brown's activities are filtered through the eyes of a young adolescent who wavers between innocence and cynicism.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The novel opens with a newspaper article about the discovery of an old document-”a wild slave narrative.” Did having this context from the outset adjust your expectations of what would come? Would you have read the novel differently if this article hadn’t been included?
2. When they first meet, the Old Man misidentifies Henry as a girl, forcing “Little Onion” to disguise himself as a girl for much of the story. How does Little Onion’s attitude toward this disguised identity change throughout the novel? How does he use it to his advantage? When does it become a hindrance?
3. Discuss the significance of the title. Fred tells Little Onion that a Good Lord Bird is “so pretty that when man sees it, he says, ‘Good Lord,’” and that a feather from this bird will “bring you understanding that’ll last your whole life.” What role do the Good Lord Bird and its feathers play in John Brown’s story? In Little Onion’s? Why is the title appropriate for the novel?
4. In what ways is this a narrative about Onion? In what ways it is a narrative about larger issues? How do these two aspects of the novel interact?
5. How familiar were you with John Brown and the events at Harpers Ferry before reading the book? Has the fictional retelling changed your perceptions of John Brown as he relates to American history?
6. The novel includes several historical figures-John Brown, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman. Does the blending of actual, historical events and figures with the author’s fictional reimagining of them make you rethink history? Explain why or why not.
7. Consider the use of dialect in the novel. The narrator, Little Onion, speaks with a very particular dialect; the Old Man, who constantly refers to the Bible, speaks with a different cadence and rhythm entirely. Little Onion says of the Old Man: “He sprinkled most of his conversation with Bible talk, ‘thees’ and ‘thous’ and ‘takest’ and so forth. He mangled the Bible more than any man I ever knowed . . . but with a bigger purpose, ’cause he knowed more words.” What roles do speech, dialect, and elocution play in this story?
8. The Old Man attaches significance to several unlikely objects; among his collection of “good-luck baubles” are the feather of the Good Lord Bird and the dried-up old onion that Henry eats, earning him his nickname. Why does a man like John Brown accumulate such objects? Why does he call them both “good-luck charms” and “the devil’s work”? Do you own any objects to which you attribute good or bad luck or attach other superstitious beliefs?
9. In the abstract, a funny story about slavery might not seem possible. How does the author bring humor to a subject not typically written about in this tone? Is he successful? What does humor allow us to contemplate about history that we might not have thought otherwise?
10. Since the publication of this book, repeated comparisons have been made to Mark Twain. Do you see this similarity? If so, where? Does James McBride’s writing style remind you of any other authors or books? In what ways is this a “classic” American story, and it what ways does it feel more contemporary or otherwise different?
11. Loyalty is a major theme in the book. Political beliefs are a matter of life and death. Even Little Onion feels conflicted about whether to stick by John Brown’s side or flee from him. Where do the major characters’ loyalties lie, with regard to each other and with regard to the cause of abolition? Are the allegiance lines as cut-and-dried as you might expect?
12. The measures that John Brown and his posse take in The Good Lord Bird could be seen today as those of revolutionaries, even terrorists. What would your response to Brown and his actions have been if you had lived during that tumultuous era of American history?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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The Daughters of Mars
Thomas Keneally, 2013
Atria Books
528 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781476734613
Summary
New York Times, Editor's Choice
From the acclaimed author of Schindler’s List comes the epic, unforgettable story of two sisters whose lives are transformed by the cataclysm of the First World War.
IN 1915, Naomi and Sally Durance, two spirited Australian sisters, join the war effort as nurses, escaping the confines of their father’s farm and carrying a guilty secret with them. Though they are used to tending the sick, nothing could have prepared them for what they confront, first on a hospital ship near Gallipoli, then on the Western Front.
Yet amid the carnage, the sisters become the friends they never were at home and find themselves courageous in the face of extreme danger and also the hostility from some on their own side. There is great bravery, humor, and compassion, too, and the inspiring example of the remarkable women they serve alongside. In France, where Naomi nurses in a hospital set up by the eccentric Lady Tarlton while Sally works in a casualty clearing station, each meets an exceptional man: the kind of men for whom they might give up some of their newfound independence—if only they all survive.
At once vast in scope and extraordinarily intimate, The Daughters of Mars brings World War I vividly to life from an uncommon perspective. Thomas Keneally has written a remarkable novel about suffering and transcendence, despair and triumph, and the simple acts of decency that make us human even in a world gone mad. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October, 7 1935
• Where—Sydney, Australia
• Education—St. Patrick's College, Strathfield
• Awards—Man-Booker Prize
• Currently—
Thomas Michael Keneally, AO is an Australian novelist, playwright and author of non-fiction. He is best known for writing Schindler's Ark, the Booker Prize-winning novel of 1982 which was inspired by the efforts of Poldek Pfefferberg, a Holocaust survivor. The book would later be adapted to Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Born in Sydney, Keneally was educated at St. Patrick's College, Strathfield. Subsequently, a writing prize there has been named after him. He entered St Patrick's Seminary, Manly to train as a Catholic priest. Although he was ordained as a deacon while at the seminary he left without being ordained to the priesthood. He worked as a Sydney schoolteacher before his success as a novelist and was a lecturer at the University of New England (1968–70). He has also written screenplays, memoirs and non-fiction books.
Keneally has also acted in a handful of films. He had a small role in The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (based on his novel) and played Father Marshall in the award-winning Fred Schepisi film The Devil's Playground (1976). More recently he featured as a writer in the critically acclaimed Australian drama Our Sunburnt Country.
In 1983 he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO). He is an Australian Living Treasure.
Keneally was a visiting professor at the University of California, Irvine, where he taught the graduate fiction workshop for one quarter in 1985. He taught, again, at UCI, from 1991-1995, this time as a visiting professor in the writing program.
In March 2009, the Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, gave an autographed copy of Keneally's biography Lincoln to President Barack Obama as a state gift.
The Tom Keneally Centre opened in August 2011 at the Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts, housing Keneally's books and memorabilia. The site is used for book launches, readings and writing classes.
Schindler's Ark (Schindler's List)
Keneally wrote the Booker Prize-winning novel in 1982, inspired by the efforts of Poldek Pfefferberg, a Holocaust survivor. In 1980 Pfefferberg met Keneally in his shop, and learning that he was a novelist, showed him his extensive files on Oskar Schindler. Keneally was interested, and Pfefferberg became an advisor for the book, accompanying Keneally to Poland where they visited Krakow and the sites associated with the Schindler story.
Keneally dedicated Schindler's Ark to Pfefferberg: "who by zeal and persistence caused this book to be written." He said in an interview in 2007 that what attracted him to Oskar Schindler was that "it was the fact that you couldn't say where opportunism ended and altruism began. And I like the subversive fact that the spirit breatheth where it will. That is, that good will emerged from the most unlikely places."
The book was later made into a film titled Schindler's List (1993) directed by Steven Spielberg, earning the director his first Best Director Oscar. Keneally's meeting with Pfefferberg and their research tours are detailed in Searching for Schindler: A Memoir (2007). Some of the Pfefferberg documents that inspired Keneally are now housed in the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney. In 1996 the State Library purchased this material from a private collector. In April 2009 a copy of the list (including 801 names) was found in the documentation Thomas Keneally used as research material for his novel. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 8/27/2013.)
Book Reviews
Poignant...masterly...epic.... [Keneally] has rescued forgotten heroines from obscurity and briefly placed them center stage.
New York Times Book Review
A burly, captivating saga of Australian nurses on the front lines of World War I.... Inscribed with the stately, benign authority of an eminent tale-spinner.
Wall Street Journal
An epic, sweeping book.
LA Times
Magnificent… a stunning performance, full of suspense, searing particulars, and deep emotion.... The huge talents of Thomas Keneally are everywhere on display.
Guardian (UK)
The Daughters of Mars is the work of a master storyteller, sharing a tale that is simultaneously sprawling and intimate.
NPR
May be the best novel of Keneally’s career...a book that aims for, and achieves, real grandeur.
Spectator (UK)
Superbly exciting to read.... An unmissable, unforgettable tribute.
London Times
Not only is The Daughters of Mars one of the most ambitious novels in a career that stretches back to 1964, but it might even be the best… The result is something few other authors would aim for, let alone achieve: genuine grandeur.
Telegraph (UK)
A big and brutal book, a new prism through which to think about World War I...breathtaking...magnificent and almost magical. There are moments of joy, of pleasure, that make you look up from their page for a while to arrest and savour their sensation.
Australian
The horrific butcher’s bill of WWI trench fighting, which took a toll not only on the wounded soldiers but on the doctors and nurses who tended to them, is at the heart of this moving epic novel from the author of Schindler’s List. The story is told through the experiences of two sisters, Sally and Naomi Durance, both nurses.... By again using individuals to humanize a larger story, Keneally succeeds in conveying the experience to his readers in a manageable way.
Publishers Weekly
Australian sisters Naomi and Sally Durance volunteer as nurses at the beginning of World War I.... [T]heir service is a testament to the scope of war, as the number and nature of casualties they treat range from shrapnel and bayonet wounds to gassing, trench foot, shell shock, and finally the Spanish flu. Along the way we meet an unforgettable cast of supporting characters.... Highly recommended. —Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis
Library Journal
Sally and Naomi Dorrance, grown sisters, aren’t particularly close. Personality differences nudge them apart.... Their world is opened drastically as they volunteer as nurses during WWI.... Their ship is torpedoed off the Greek islands, and the sisters’ survival of a sinking ship is perhaps the most compelling—and longest—scene in this lengthy novel.... [I]n the end, it is their nursing experiences, their having to face countless horrors of loss of life and limb, that become the true meaning of their sisterly bond. —Brad Hooper
Booklist
[A] Winds of War–like epic.... Naomi and Sally Durance are two sisters who join the Nursing Corps in 1915 and sail off to Gallipoli, where they witness terrible things... [O]n arriving at the Western Front....they discover "a dimension of barbarity that had not existed on Gallipoli...," namely the terror of gas warfare.... Keneally is a master of character development and period detail, and there are no false notes there.... [Fans will find] much to admire in Keneally's fast-moving, flawlessly written pages.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. In writing The Daughters of Mars, Thomas Keneally drew inspiration from actual wartime diaries, historical hospitals, and real hospital ships. How does the novel reflect the author’s diligent research? Which scenes and characters feel especially life-like?
2. Consider the differences between Naomi and Sally Durance at the beginning of the novel. Why has Naomi left home, and why has Sally stayed? What feelings does each sister seem to have for the other? What causes their relationship to strengthen?
3. Consider the impact of their mother’s death on the Durance sisters. How do they express their grief differently? Were you surprised when Naomi contradicted Sally’s version of their mother’s death at the end of the novel? Why or why not?
4. The Daughters of Mars focuses on Naomi and Sally’s experiences, but it also features colorful secondary characters, including brash benefactors, stern hospital matrons, thoughtful doctors, rude orderlies, and nurses of all dispositions. Who was your favorite character of the novel, excluding Sally and Naomi, and why?
5. Revisit the nurses’ first experience of battle: treating soldiers from Gallipoli on the Archimedes. How do Sally, Naomi, Freud, Honora, and Elsie react to the first rush of patients? Which of the nurses seems energized by their nursing duties, and which are overwhelmed?
6. Consider the traumas of battle that the Durance sisters experience, from hearing the bombings of the Dardanelles at a distance to aerial attacks in the French countryside. Which of these scenes conveys the sights, sounds, and feelings of war most effectively? Explain your answer.
7. Aborad the Archimedes, Ian Kiernan comments on Naomi’s last name, Durance: “I think that’s a pretty fine name, he said. I mean, if you put an ‘en’ in front of it, you have one of the most flattering of words” (88). Consider the signs of endurance in Naomi. What traumas can she endure, and when does her strength falter? Why does Kiernan admire her enduring spirit?
8. Naomi tells Sally, “Our cold hearts are what we inherited. That’s not to blame Mama and Papa” (122). Why do Naomi and Sally believe they have “cold hearts?” When does each sister begin to realize that she has another warmer and more vulnerable side after all?
9. As Naomi takes charge of the rescue raft after the sinking of the Archimedes, Sally observes, “Naomi was in the water but superior to it…. It was a grateful wonder. It was a light shining through ice” (151). Revisit Naomi’s heroism during the disastrous events in the Aegean Sea. Which of her actions, gestures, and attitudes helped the soldiers, doctors, and nurses of the raft survive?
10. Consider the challenges that the nurses face on the island of Lemnos, after the Archimedes sinks. Why does the hospital administration treat the shipwrecked nurses differently? Which nurses suffer the most during their stay on the island? How do Naomi and Sally react to the persecution of their companions?
11. As they are leaving Lemnos, Naomi and Sally take stock of their strengths in the war–Sally notes Naomi’s courage, while Naomi praises Sally’s “calmness and valour” (218-219). What evidence of these characteristics has each sister displayed? What weaknesses go hand-in-hand with their strength?
12. Consider the character of Lady Tarlton, who single-handedly founds the Australian voluntary hospital in Boulogne. In what ways is she a victim of her social station? How do gossip and convention hinder her?
13. Naomi remarks that the war has acted as “a machine to make us true sisters” (331). Consider how Naomi and Sally’s relationship evolves during the long years of the war. When do they seem closest? What keeps them apart? When can they finally be considered “true sisters”?
14. The Daughters of Mars has an unconventional double ending, narrating Charlie Condon’s art opening from two perspectives: with Sally as a survivor of the flu epidemic, then with Naomi. What does this dual ending add to the novel? How do the Durance sisters remain connected, even in death? - See more at:
(Questions issued by publisher.)