Tag Archives: Washington

Washington, 1942: Louise’s War

11 Monday Apr 2022

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Review: Louise’s War, by Sarah B. Shaber
Severn, 2011. 194 pp. $28

American involvement in World War II is six months old, and everybody and her sister flocks to the nation’s capital to find a job. Louise Pearlie, whose husband has died years before and can’t bear to remain in rural North Carolina, has brought her excellent secretarial skills and work experience to the Office of Strategic Services, the intelligence organization. Gossip has it that the Allies will invade North Africa within months, hence the OSS search for maps of the coastline and experts who understand the beaches.

A 1943 poster for the Office of War Information by George Rapp (OWI poster 55, courtesy Library of Congress; public domain)

One such authority is Gerald Bloch, a French Jew married to a school friend of Louise’s. From what little news she’s received, Louise gathers that Gerald and Rachel are stuck in Marseilles, while reports say that the Vichy government has made sure that no Jews will receive exit visas. Deportation looms, and Louise, who owes Rachel a huge debt, wishes she could help.

Theoretically, the OSS could claim that Gerald Bloch would provide necessary information concerning the upcoming invasion. But the file on him goes missing during the confusion ensuing from the fatal heart attack suffered by the director of Louise’s section. At first, she thinks nothing of this, but soon, at tremendous risk, she sets out to discover how and why a sensitive dossier could simply vanish, and whether recovering it would save the Blochs.

It’s an excellent premise, if a mite dependent on coincidence, but Shaber’s narrative has a lot going for it. For starters, I like how she’s drawn Louise. Growing up poor and churchy, Louise doesn’t quite know what to make of the big city, where old values get shunted aside in the business of making war. The tremendous crush of people in a hurry and under pressure, with ambition and money to spend, offers temptations she’s not used to, but which attract her. Her parents want her to remarry, but she enjoys her independence, even if she wonders what it would feel like to have the financial security and creature comforts she’d never afford on her own.

That said, Louise also knows that many, if not most, men expect women to keep quiet and use their brains only to help solve male problems, for which, of course, they’ll receive no credit. But her common sense doesn’t prevent her from wanting what might not be good for her. I like that complexity.

The other winning facet of Louise’s War is the atmosphere. Whether it’s fabric shortages, the bus company’s refusal to hire Black drivers, people trying to get around the sugar ration, or the habit of traveling GIs tossing letters out train windows, knowing that someone will stamp and mail them, Shaber knows her ground and deploys details with skill. Here, Louise rolls her eyes at the portrayal of women in a popular magazine:

In its cheerful stories women skipped off to work in full make-up with neatly coiffed hair pulled back in colorful do-rags, carrying lunch pails full of healthy home-made food. Their overalls didn’t get dirty no matter how filthy the job. If they weren’t married with an obliging mother at home caring for their children, they were engaged to a shop foreman or a military officer. None of them were war widows or lived in boarding houses or had to park their children in crowded day nurseries.

Given that keen eye and grasp of psychology, I’m surprised to stumble across a cardinal error. Louise’s first-person narration works just fine, but, for some reason, Shaber shoehorns brief, usually first-person, sections belonging to minor characters, ostensibly to reveal information Louise couldn’t know. Since these look as clumsy as they sound, you have to ask, Does the reader need to know? I doubt it.

Pretty much everything would have kept until Louise manages to discover it, and her ignorance could have heightened the tension, complicating her attempts to parse conflicting evidence. As it is, the story telegraphs answers to a couple major questions when, with little effort, the author might have shaded the account of events to create doubt and keep the reader guessing along with Louise.

Less glaring to the general reader, though unfortunately common in fiction, the Jewish characters don’t feel genuine, which turns them into a narrative convenience. I also object to how certain authors consistently say “Nazis” to identify those who invaded other countries and committed mass murder and expropriation, as though “ordinary” Germans distanced themselves from those crimes.

I can’t help think that the author, or her publisher, wants to separate people we like from those we can hate with abandon. Too bad. Similarly, the novel presents a likable, admirable protagonist, born and raised in North Carolina, who befriends the Black women servants in her boardinghouse without a second thought. That seems a little easy.

Nevertheless, in other ways Louise’s War brilliantly presents a city during conflict, a heroine whose voice draws you in, and a mystery that will keep you turning the pages.

Disclaimer: I obtained by 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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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.

Amputation of the Self: My Name Is Mary Sutter

04 Thursday Feb 2016

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Review: My Name Is Mary Sutter, by Robin Oliveira
Viking, 2010. 364 pp. $27

More than anything, young Mary Sutter wants to be a surgeon, for which she’s eminently qualified. Like her mother, Mary’s a gifted midwife, known throughout the Albany, New York, region for her skill, tenderness to her patients, and success rate. From a young age, she accompanied her mother, Amelia, on her midwifery rounds, from which she learned to observe, study, and interpret the human body. Mary devours Gray’s Anatomy and other textbooks with a passion other young women of her generation might devote to cooking, music, or embroidery.

But the year is 1861, and mainstream medicine belongs entirely to men, who dismiss Mary’s attempts to apprentice herself–the typical path to medical practice–with contempt, puzzlement, or both. Even Amelia, her sole surviving parent, sometimes wonders why her daughter doesn’t simply accept the barrier, unfair as it is, and continue to do what she does best. Maybe she could also find a husband–not that Amelia’s was a paragon, but Mary locks many feelings inside her, including a yearning for love, hidden beneath a superior mien.

She knew that it was said of her that she was odd and difficult, and this did not bother her, for she never thought about what people usually spent time thinking of. The idle talk of other people always perplexed her; her mind was usually occupied by things that no one else thought of: the structure of the pelvis, the fast beat of a healthy fetus heart, or the slow meander of an unhealthy one, or a baby who had failed to breathe. She could never bring herself to care about ordinary things, like whose pie was better at the Sunday potluck, or whose husband she might covet should the opportunity arise, or what anyone was saying about an early winter or an early thaw . . . .

However, the outbreak of war between North and South changes everything. Mary figures, correctly, that medical practitioners will be in great demand, so she bolts for Washington to look for a posting without telling anyone at home. With typical deftness, Oliveira handles her bold action in its implied feminism: Mary’s flight raises consternation and moral censure, whereas her brother and brother-in-law may go to war without anyone batting an eyelash. Unfortunately for Mary–and the soldiers who don’t know what’s coming-nobody has counted on the complete lack of preparation to care for the sick or wounded. To call the effort disorganized would be a compliment; Oliveira captures this negligence with shudderingly vivid detail.

Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross (and the most famous Civil War nurse), around 1866 (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross (and the most famous Civil War nurse), around 1866 (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

Such disarray might have offered Mary her chance to serve and learn, as she hopes, but there again, she faces stupendous obstacles. Among them is the fear, not entirely groundless, that a woman among hundreds of unruly men would be preyed upon. Even Dorothea Dix, who lobbies for a nursing service along the lines of Florence Nightingale’s, will have nothing to do with Mary: Miss Sutter is too young, she has no letters of recommendation, and just isn’t the right sort. That Oliveira cuts a feminist icon down to size on feminist grounds says a great deal.

In the apparently growing subgenre of novels about socially awkward young women who love science–When the World Was Young and The Movement of Stars come to mind–My Name Is Mary Sutter stands out. I like how the author reveals the inner lives of Mary and two doctors with whom she works closely, and how the relationships with her mother, sister, and brother-in-law have dangerously sharp edges. Oliveira also captures the suffering of wounded men, the incompetent army leadership, and what it takes to tend the maimed and dying despite insuperable odds. The hospital scenes are heart-breakingly raw–be warned–but I, who am squeamish, had to read every word. Meanwhile, the narrative retains an impressive grasp of the historical background, as battles unfold and the confusion and rumor become ever more blinding.

I don’t want to give too much away, but when you have a fictional midwife/nurse with a newly married twin sister and two family members who enlist, certain things are just bound to happen. Mostly, Oliveira gets away with these predictable occurrences through vivid storytelling. But she falls short, I think, in her portrait of Jenny, Mary’s twin, who feels more explained than alive, and I want to know more about what drives Amelia, besides her devotion to family. It’s also a little hard to swallow that Mary gets her foot in the nursing door through a chance meeting with John Hay, Lincoln’s private secretary, though such things did happen in wartime Washington. What’s less forgivable, I think, is how quickly certain characters reconcile their differences. When there’s that much fury and hatred between people who love one another, the author owes the reader a fuller, and perhaps not entirely complete, peacemaking process.

Nevertheless, My Name Is Mary Sutter is a very fine novel indeed, especially for a debut effort, and I’m doubly pleased to say that about a fellow Seattle author.

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