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Tag Archives: Theodore Roosevelt

The Northwest woods

20 Thursday Oct 2022

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cover reveal, forest preservation, Lonely Are the Brave, national parks, Pacific Northwest, Theodore Roosevelt, U.S. Forest Service

When Theodore Roosevelt signed the American Antiquities Act of 1906, the law granted him and successive presidents the power to create national parks and set aside forest lands. During his presidency, he preserved 150 national forests, totaling 150 million acres, and created the U.S. Forest Service to administer them.

Ever since, Washington has benefited greatly. I’m comforted to know that my home state’s magnificent forests are protected under law and count as a delightful respite from city life the hours I’ve spent hiking in them, watching birds, and listening to flowing creeks and waterfalls. When I see a tree trunk measuring yards in diameter, as in the Hoh Rain Forest in Olympic National Park, I stand in awe; I’m looking at a living monument older than many events that have shaped the modern world. And when I crest a steep hill in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest and view a sun-dappled valley where wispy fog burns off at the treetops, I’m glad to be alive.

I’ve tried to portray wonder at and love for natural beauty in Lonely Are the Brave, my novel set in a fictional Washington logging town in 1919. Both main characters love the woods as their Northwest heritage; the irony, which they recognize, is that one’s a former home builder turned woodworker, and the other’s an heiress to a timber fortune.

I’m pleased to share the cover, above, which I hope conveys the novel’s spirit.

Blackmail and Murder: Hot Time

25 Monday Jul 2022

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1896, blackmail, book review, historical fiction, Minnie Gertrude Kelly, murder, mystery, New York City, Otto Raphael, police, presidential election, Theodore Roosevelt, W. H. Flint, William Jennings Bryan, William McKinley

Review: Hot Time, by W. H. Flint
Arcade, 2022. 267 pp. $27

August 1896 witnesses a record “hot wave” in New York City, as the newspapers call it, searing temperatures that kill thousands of people as well as horses that drop in harness, blocking the streets. Political temperatures run almost as high, as a presidential election campaign prepares for its autumn stretch. William Jennings Bryan, the Democratic candidate opposing William McKinley, will speak at Madison Square Garden, expected to draw an overflow crowd, and the police have uncovered purported plans by anarchists to stage a violent demonstration there, maybe even to kill Bryan.

Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt, who makes little secret of his ambitions to ride McKinley’s coattails to a coveted government post, perhaps with the Navy Department, is also trying to weed out the corruption among New York’s constabulary. Aiding him in this Herculean task is Otto (Rafe) Raphael, the first Jew to wear the uniform of New York’s Finest, and Minnie Gertrude Kelly, the department’s first woman stenographer.

Jacob Riis and Theodore Roosevelt tour the slums, 1894 (from Riis’s book, The Making of an American, 1901, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

Complicating matters is William d’Alton Mann, whose dead body has been found near the Brooklyn Bridge. The police report ascribes the motive to robbery, and Commissioner Roosevelt accepts the judgment, even when Rafe, who’s had the chance to investigate on his own — overstepping his authority — points out a key fact. Mann’s gold cufflinks, likely the most valuable items on his person, remained untouched.

What’s more, Mann was an infamous blackmailer, gathering poisonous secrets about the rich and powerful, perhaps even Commissioner Roosevelt himself, and threatening to print them unless sizable sums are paid. Rafe, who admires Roosevelt without being blind to his faults, doesn’t know what to think — and keeps digging.

For me, the chief pleasure of Hot Time is the political and social atmosphere. Flint, a pseudonym for a well-known historian of the Gilded Age, has lovingly re-created that era and many of its figures, well-known or otherwise, the latter including the blackmailer, our inquisitive constable, and ground-breaking stenographer (though the author has taken license with biographical fact).

It’s not just that J.P. Morgan, Mark Hanna (senator, kingmaker, and McKinley’s handler), Bryan, and Jacob Riis, the reporter who exposes the degradation of New York’s slums (and wrote How the Other Half Lives), float through these pages. Flint has underlined how even reformers like Riis disliked and distrusted immigrants, Jews especially, and how the populist Bryan wanted the United States to close its borders.

I’m a little surprised that Flint has ignored Tammany Hall, which ran the police department like a fiefdom and brought about the corruption Roosevelt’s trying to counter. (I’m also curious about how Tammany, a Democratic machine, would have viewed a candidate who wore the right party emblem but opposed immigration, to which the organization owed its roots and power. Maybe too complex for a mystery novel.) But otherwise, the author portrays an engaging portrait of a time when bigotry and fears sound all too familiar to us today.

I also like the depiction of New York itself, of the Lower East Side and what was then “uptown,” the area in the lower Thirties. Flint brings to life the hard existence of newsboys, usually homeless young children, whose welfare was one of Roosevelt’s pet causes. One boy, called Dutch, figures heavily in the story:

At the Bowery, [Rafe] crossed under the elevated tracks, grateful for a moment’s respite from the sun. His usual newsboy was on the corner. Brown hair stuck out from under his woolen cap, and he stood with a habitual hunch, like a stray dog wondering whether the next passerby was good for a handout or a boot in the ribs.

But Hot Time, though intriguing as a historical novel, falters as a mystery. The narrative implies the killer’s identity fairly early on; only the motive remains unclear, and though it turns out to be politically satisfying, I find it somewhat hard to credit. The real tension comes from remarkable chase scenes involving Dutch’s acrobatics, and though they’re hair-raising, I wanted more of a puzzle. It’s as though the narrative can’t decide whether it’s a mystery or thriller.

As a detective, Rafe is dogged, intelligent, and good-hearted. There’s a whisper of attraction between him and Minnie, the stenographer, which can go nowhere, for religious reasons. For the most part, I believe Rafe’s Jewishness — thank you, Mr. Flint — and his family’s living conditions seem real too.

However, certain conversations feel like information dumps, and I wish Rafe’s interior narration depended less on rhetorical questions, sometimes a half-dozen or more in a row. Whenever an author resorts to that device, I sense a perceived need to remind the reader what’s been learned (or not) and uncertainty as to how best to convey this, except in shorthand.

Consequently, if you read Hot Time, concentrate on the atmosphere and the derring-do, and you’ll see the narrative in its best light.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Who Knew Politics Could Be so Much Fun?: Empire

23 Monday Sep 2019

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1898, book review, cynicism, Gore Vidal, Henry Adams, historical fiction, John Hay, literary fiction, money in politics, newspapers, politics, power, Theodore Roosevelt, Washington, William McKinley, William Randolph Hearst, yellow journalism

Review: Empire, by Gore Vidal
Random House/Vintage, 1987. 486 pp. $17

Caroline Sanford, recently arrived from Paris, where she’s spent most of her life, hits Washington in 1898, and that city will never be the same. It’s not just that Caroline has the requisites to advance in society or make a brilliant marriage — youth, looks, charm, and money. In fact, society bores her, unless it provides the means to a different end, and she’s convinced that wedlock would be even duller. Rather, she possesses yet another trait, worth more than the others put together, an iconoclastic way of thinking about men and women, which therefore makes her difficult to shock. Moralists ascribe this “improper” outlook, and the plans that result, to her foreignness. But Caroline’s American enough to understand that where her countrymen fear to tread — or, more particularly, countrywomen — creates an opportunity, which she’s European enough to seize with panache. As she says, life’s not easy for a woman who wants more than anything to be interested. Her scheme to achieve that takes everyone by surprise: to publish a newspaper.

William Randolph Hearst as a New York congressman, 1906, photo by James E. Purdy (courtesy Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons)

Naturally, she does not intend to print stories about doilies or the right way to entertain, or even politics, of which she has an innate sense. No; she desires to publish a scandal sheet that outdoes William Randolph Hearst, the king of so-called yellow journalism, whose latest coup, if it may be called that, is fomenting the Spanish-American War for no good reason other than to augment his own power.

Family rivalry plays a key role, here. Caroline’s half-brother Blaise, works for Hearst. Said half-sibling is also trying to deny her the rightful share of the fortune their father left them. So for Caroline, buying and running a successful newspaper means not only fulfilling her dream of being someone other than wife or socialite, but socking Blaise where it hurts — and believe me, he deserves it.

Lucky for Caroline, she’s immediately taken up by one of the first families in Washington. John Hay, former private secretary to Abraham Lincoln and soon to be William McKinley’s secretary of state, has a son, Del, who’s sweet on her. Hay the elder also has significant friends and political bedfellows, the likes of Henry Cabot Lodge, William Jennings Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Adams and his brother, Brooks (descended from two presidents and noted for their historical and political writings), Henry James, and various others.

So Empire offers the reader a close-up view of politics during the McKinley years and after, which is to say much like today: “… it’s the way that things are made to look that matters now,” not the substance of what anybody says. Vidal takes this huge cast of historical figures, just about everyone except Caroline and Blaise, and renders these movers and shakers in their heads and skins. The result is electric, and often very funny. The humor is biting and caustic, and when these famous wits trade ripostes, the dialogue runs away with you. (Theodore Roosevelt provides the butt of many such sprees, even from his daughter, friends, and supposed allies.) Like a latter-day Dickens, minus the treacle or the moralizing, Vidal re-creates these people in their passions, urges, and appetites, as with this portrait of William McKinley at table:

Lunch was as simple and as enormous as the President’s dove-gray waist coated paunch, which began very high indeed on his frame and curved outward, keeping him from ever sitting close to the table, which accounted, no doubt, for the single shamrock-shaped gravy stain on the black frock-coat that hung in perpendicular folds to left and right of the huge autonomous belly, like theater curtains drawn to reveal the spectacle. Quail was followed by porterhouse steak which preceded broiled chicken, each course accompanied by a variety of hot bread — wheat muffins, corn sticks, toast, and butter.

It helps if you’re familiar with the history, but even if you’re not, Empire is a delight either way, and an education. Vidal takes a very dim view of American politics and the influence of wealth upon it, and if perhaps he overstates his case at times, he’s always entertaining. The way most of the characters manage to overcome their scruples—even Caroline, at moments—lends a cynical tone to the proceedings, which may not please everyone. Is nothing sacred? Are there really no heroes and no principles, where power and money are concerned? But readers will immediately see our present day in all this too, and besides, you’ll laugh out loud. Who knew that politics could be so much fun?

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Larger Than Life: The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King

29 Monday Apr 2019

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Badlands, biographical fiction, book review, dime-novel narrative, father figure, historical fiction, Jerome Charyn, literary fiction, Mark Hanna, New York City politics, nineteenth century, physical versus emotional courage, Theodore Roosevelt

Review: The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King, by Jerome Charyn
Liveright, 2019. 283 pp. $27

Imagine that Teddy Roosevelt is telling his life story, and you have the premise of this enthralling, imaginative novel. Simple, yet anything but. Predictable, to a point, if you know the man’s past, yet not really. Maybe I’m more interested in TR than most, having read Theodore Rex, the final volume of Edmund Morris’s biography. And if you asked me which historical figure I’d invite to dinner, TR would be first on the list.

But none of that entirely prepared me for Charyn’s bravura narrative, which begins when our hero is four. The story goes until 1901, when, in the immortal words of Republican fixer Mark Hanna, which don’t appear in the novel, “That damn cowboy is now President of the United States!” So those hoping to hear just how rex Theodore was, in Charyn’s invented voice for him, will be disappointed.

From the second story of their grandfather’s mansion on Broadway (facing the camera), six-year-old Theodore Roosevelt and his brother Elliott watch Abraham Lincoln’s funeral procession in April 1865 (courtesy New-York Historical Society and the New York Times, via Wikimedia Commons)

Never mind that. Cowboy King reads like a dime novel (or so I assume, never having read one). The fabulous cover, one of the best I’ve ever seen, has a mock 15¢ sticker on it. So you know what you’re getting: a rough-and-tumble narrative about a rough-and-tumble life. You see little “Teedie,” as he’s known to intimates, wheezing from asthma, and how his larger-than-life father, known to many as Brave Heart, grabs him and wills the air into his body, bundling the boy up for a breakneck carriage ride around Manhattan at all hours, if a stream of wind is deemed necessary. There’s the boy collecting zoological specimens, never without his pet garter snake, Zeus, in his pocket, activities that shape the future trustee of the American Museum of Natural History and the Bronx Zoo, and the president who preserved national parks as a gift to the nation.

Through these scenes of youth, Charyn shows the man who would later drive himself physically to prove he was no weakling, and whose response to loss or rejection would invariably involve action rather than reflection or emotional confrontation. Hence his two-year sojourn in the Badlands as a rancher and sheriff following a tragic, early death of a loved one, leaving behind an infant child. Astutely, Charyn gives his protagonist disturbing dreams, because the pain will out; these nightmares provide the emotional threads that bind the narrative.

But if TR shies from emotional confrontation, he relishes the other kind, and not just in the Badlands. In this tale, Teddy, having boxed bantamweight at Harvard, readily trades blows while building his New York City political career, battling henchmen and even kingpins of both Democratic and Republican machines, a dangerous hobby. Whether this is real or dime-novel legend, I can’t say, but you do get the pugnacity, the preference to go down fighting rather than be anyone’s pawn.

Interestingly, TR’s charitable impulses lag well behind his hatred of corporate or political bosses. Brave Heart, who tries to teach him greater generosity, has set up a house for orphans who become newsboys, and he’s forever watching out for them, to Teedie’s chagrin. And when the young man comes rushing back from college at the news of his father’s imminent death, he finds this scene:

There was an ominous vigil in front of the house; a hundred newsboys stood waiting in the slush and snow, cap in hand, like a choir robbed of song.… They were each clutching a candle, every one. The flames flickered in the wind and revealed their unwashed faces with a crooked glow. Their pockets were loaded with coins, I could tell. They’d come right from their routes to Papa’s vigil with penny candles. They didn’t cry… The newsies swayed with their candles that burnt down to a nub. I cursed their devotion to Papa. It frightened me. But I could hear their silent chorus.
Too late, Teedie, you’ve come too late.

For all these marvels, Cowboy King’s a little too clean in its presentation. You don’t see TR’s credo of the triumph of the “Anglo-Saxon race,” his belief in eugenics, or his mistrust of immigrants, the “hyphenated Americans,” whom he thought should assimilate as quickly as possible. You don’t see his efforts to provoke the Spanish-American War, though other characters blame him for that. But this isn’t nonfiction. It’s how TR might have narrated his life before becoming president, given a cigar, a fire, a comfortable chair, and a willing audience. I’m there.

Disclaimer: I obtained by reading copy of this book from the public library.

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