The protagonist, Alice, is English, newly married to Bennett Van Cleve, a Kentucky man. She arrives in the little town of Baileyville to set up housekeeping and start popping out babies, like she’s supposed to. The babies don’t come. She’s bored, so Alice agrees to join the Packhorse Librarians, led by Margery O’Hare, an unconventional native Baileyville resident who speaks her mind and lives life on her own terms. The women get tangled up in a variety of situations, including a baby's birth, a dead body and a falling-out among family members.
The story moves along nicely and is pretty interesting, but it gets romance fiction-ish toward the end. Nevertheless, it was an enjoyable read. I had not heard of the WPA traveling library before reading this. ★★★ out of four stars.
American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins. Lydia and her 8-year-old son Luca have lost their entire family. Fifteen people – people they both loved – middle class law-abiding educated people – including her beloved mother -- were brutally murdered by a drug cartel at an afternoon barbecue while Lydia and Luca hid behind a shower curtain in a bathroom. It was a payback from the cartel because Lydia’s journalist husband, Sebastian, wrote an eye-opening story about the cartel. The cartel wants Lydia and Luca dead too.
Mother and son escape and travel as migrants, something Lydia never thought she would become. They want to make their way north and escape to the United States. On their journey from their home in Acapulco to the U.S. border – some 400 pages long -- they encounter situations and fellow-migrants -- kind people, murderers, rapists, people who are desperate to flee violence and misery. They ride on top of the notorious north-bound train called the Beast. They walk. They find shelter each night. The find food. They make friends.
The story is riveting. This is fiction, but Cummins spent seven years doing research. She depicts migrants as individuals --people with families, backgrounds, fears, goals, stories to tell. Her migrants are not stereotypes. I loved this book in spite of criticism that has been leveled at Cummins for not being the proper person to write it because she’s not Mexican, not a migrant. It’s fiction, for Pete’s sake. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote a story about slavery and she wasn’t a slave. Lots of men write books with a female protagonist and vice versa. It’s fiction, folks! Get over it. ★★★★ out of four stars.
Be Frank with Me by Julia Claiborne Johnson. Alice works for Mr. Vargas, a publisher. THE publisher, in fact, of a Pulitzer Prize winning book, Pitched, by M.M. Banning. Pitched has been a best seller for dozens of years and is on every high school reading list. Banning hasn’t written anything since. (Sounds like J.D. Salinger and The Catcher in the Rye, doesn’t it?) Mr. Vargas asks Alice to travel across the country and live with Banning while she finishes her second book, which of course he is anxious to publish.
Banning has a son, Frank, who is super smart and super eccentric, but is probably on the autism spectrum. Frank doesn’t like to be touched, doesn’t make eye contact, doesn’t get along with other children, and insists on dressing like characters he’s seen in movies. You get the idea. Alice ends up being Frank’s caregiver.
The plot evolves into some unrealistic complications and does not end without a few underhanded literary manipulations, which I didn’t like. I had to finish it however, because it started out with a fire and I had to find out what the fire was all about, who got burned, what happened and why. ★★★ out of four stars.