Plum Tea Crazy

Plum Tea Crazy is Laura Childs' 19th Tea Shop Mystery.  The series takes place in historic Charleston, South Carolina.  I have read all of the books in the series and have loved them.

The story opens with Indigo Tea Shop owner and amateur sleuth Theodosia Browning viewing a Gaslight and Galleons Parade from friend Timothy Neville's mansion.  A local banker, Carson Lanier, falls from a rooftop and impales himself on an iron fence. Some observers thought they heard a shot before he fell. However, it is later discovered that Lanier was shot with a bolt from a  medieval crossbow before he fell.  At the request of her friend Timothy Neville, Theodosia becomes involved in the investigation into Lanier's death.

I think this series needs a shot in the arm.  The same events happen in the same order in every book.  While I applaud the author for always having the crime committed in the first chapter so that the entire book is devoted to the whodunnit, after that the book is stale.  We series readers know that secondary character Delaine Dish will host a fashion show where 2 women will have an argument and Delaine will then have a tantrum that can only be soothed by Theodosia. We know there will be 2 extravagant tea events in her shop, although those tend to be rather interesting. We also know that the Heritage Society, chaired by Timothy Neville, will be the place where the crime or a crime will be committed. Usually it is where the crime to be solved in the book occurred. The murder place should be varied.

The main characters are great. Theodosia, her tea blender Drayton Connelley, her cook Haley and police detective Bert Tidwell are awesome. Some of the regular secondary characters are no longer interesting, especially Delaine, and the author should create some new ones. Theodosia has some eccentric relatives that maybe should become more prominent characters. Theo uses her secondary characters to help her solve murders so it is crucial that they not only be interesting but grow as characters.

I was disappointed with this installment of the series. I will give the series one more chance but if the author doesn't mix things up a bit I will stop reading it.

Rosalie Lightning

Tom Hart's story of his 2 year old  daughter Rosalie's death is memorialized in his graphic novel Rosalie Lightning.

He talks about the things she loved, her favorite sayings and activities.  He also goes into great detail describing the grieving process he and his wife shared after her unexpected death just days before her 2nd birthday.  All of his best memories became nightmares after she was gone.  He asks the question "what do you do after your child dies?"

This is a sorrowful book. Anyone who has suffered a loss will appreciate this book.

Brazen

Penelope Bagieu's graphic novel Brazen is subtitled Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World. It contains 30 short biographies of women who challenged the norms of their eras and made changes to society.  As a feminist, I could not help but love this book.

With the exception of Wu Zetian, Nellie Bly, Josephine Baker, Hedy Lamarr and Mae Jamison I had not heard of any of  these women. One in particular surprised me. Agnodice was a female gynecologist in the B. C. era. I didn't know there were gynecologists back then let alone women gynecologists.  She had to masquerade as a man to practice because prior women gynecologists were accused of performing abortions and women were then outlawed from working in that profession. Some things never change do they?

Be prepared to be inspired to dream big and learn how to persevere to reach those dreams of you read Brazen. I recommend this book as a must read for all girls for this reason.  Us older gals like myself could use a good dose of inspiration to either keep us on track or be inspired to find another path as a few of the rebel ladies did.

The artwork is done in a traditional comic book page layout using primarily colored layouts but occasionally black and white drawings. What strikes me about the drawings is how well the author captures women's emotions on their faces.  When a rebel lady gets treated badly or gets bad news, the author has drawn the perfect expression on her face.

Highly, highly recommended!

Public Library Haul

I just came home from the Chicago Public Library with 9 books which is all my briefcase would hold.  There were 5 additional graphic novels concerning the Jews and the Holocaust in a special display area that I wanted to check out but there was no room for them and I probably couldn't carry them all home on the bus anyway.

So, what did I get? I got one cozy mystery: Laura Childs' "Plum Tea Crazy." I also got 3 graphic novels: "Brazen," "Rosalie Lightning" and "Zahra's Paradise." There is one art book in the bunch by Kaffe Fassett who designs quilt fabric and textile patterns. A newly published religious book on being a disabled Christian by Shane Clifton titled "Crippled Grace" caught my eye as I, too, am a disabled Christian. Dan Brown's new mystery "Origin" and a historical fiction novel titled "The Essex Serpent" by Sarah Perry was checked out.  Finally, Ken Follett's latest novel "A Column of Fire" was also checked out.

I have 3 weeks to read all of these books and do not know how I will ever have the time. I felt compelled to bring them home with me just the same.

Palestine

Journalist Joe Sacco wrote Palestine in 1991 and 1992 as a 9 issue comic book series.  He wrote it after spending two months in the Occupied Territories and it is about the first intifada against the Israeli occupation which he says in the Foreward was running out of steam at the time of his visit. The edition that I have read is the 2015 Fantagraphics Books edition. The original comic book series won the 1996 American Book Award.

Sacco interviewed many Palestinian families but heard the same stories over and over. People were run out of their homes by Israeli policemen or soldiers, were arrested and jailed for offenses that they did not commit, lived in squalor, were not allowed to work, and had their businesses razed among other things. That said, he did present their hatred of Jews. The book opened with a discussion he had with a Palestinian about Jewish American tourist Leon Klinghoffer being thrown over the ledge of a cruise ship in his wheelchair by the PLO. The Palestinian only cared about the international news coverage that he felt the Jews were getting over the murder.

The artwork is a little different from what I am accustomed to seeing.  The author used black line drawings and text in full page and double page spreads as well as an occasional traditional comic book page layout.

Had I read this when he wrote it, it would have been newsworthy for me.  However, I have heard these stories from several different news sources and have read one or two books on the Palestinian/Israeli issue. I am aware that Sacco's book was groundbreaking for it's time, particularly for a graphic novel and therein lies it's value.

The Photographer

The Photographer, Into War-Torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders is a reportage comic written by Didier Lefevre. In July, 1986 he traveled to Afghanistan with the French Doctors Without Borders during the height of the Soviet war to photograph their mission. The artwork of Emmanuel Guibert also helps to tell the story of their 3 months in Afghanistan. The book was published in three sections in France between 2003 and 2006. It was translated into English by Alexis Siegel who also wrote the Introduction and was published in English in 2009.

The book is divided into three sections. The first section is the month long trek to the mission location. The second section deals with the provision of medical treatment to the Afghans and the third section is the month long walk out of the country.

The graphic novel begins with the photographer leaving France for Pakistan where he meets up with other members of the mission and helps them prepare to enter Afghanistan. The first glimpse of local flavor is here.  The MSF (French name of Doctors Without Borders) packs up their supplies in boxes so that there is no room inside due to the battering that the boxes will go through during the expedition through the mountains to their post in Badakhshan. I was quite surprised to discover that the contents of a pack of pills could be crushed to a fine powder if they were to shift within the boxes. The boxes then must be covered in waterproof tarp in case they fall into a river. Negotiations over the purchase of animals for the expedition take place, where else, in a refugee camp.

The medical mission itself was pretty straightforward. Most of the harrowing stories dealt with how the group got into Afghanistan and how they got out.
The book ended with an update on what each member of the mission is currently doing with their life.

The artwork is colored in the browns of the region. While some of the drawings are detailed, many are not. They were drawn first in a black outline and later colored in by Frederic Lemercier. The photographs are all in black and white. A few of them are out of focus and I cannot understand why they were used in the book. Most of the photos are dark and I am not sure why.  Lefevre had good cameras with him. I wonder if the brown terrain made everything dark. However, in some places he said he was in beautiful terrain and the photos were still dark. His photos of the wounded and the surgeries were very clear. The comic print style of putting a page together is used regardless of whether there are photographs on the page, drawings or a combination of the two.

The story told here is an important one. It not only is an MSF story and an Afghanistan story, but a story of how the American war on terror began. The Introduction discusses the people involved in Afghanistan at the time of this mission who were also involved in the September 11 attacks in the U. S. The role of the CIA in Afghanistan is also discussed.

I highly recommend this book.

Heretics

Elias Kaminsky traveled to Havana, Cuba in search of the story how his family's Rembrandt painting of Jesus came to be auctioned off in London 70 years after his grandfather Daniel landed in Havana in the late 1930s. Daniel Kaminsky, a Polish Jew, was sent ahead of his family to an uncle, Joseph Kaminsky, who was already living in Havana with the expectation that his parents and younger sister Judith would follow in a matter of weeks. 

Their ship, the Saint Louis, did arrive in Havana in 1939, but none of the 937 passengers were allowed to disembark and after a week of political wrangling they were sent back to Holland where the ship had originally set sail. However, while the ship was in Havana harbor Joseph hired a small boat to get near the Saint Louis in order to speak with his brother Isaiah Kaminsky. His brother mentioned that he had the painting and that he was going to be able to sell it so that the family could pay people off in order to exit the ship. Upon their arrival back in Holland they were placed in a refugee camp and later they were exterminated at Auschwitz. 

Joseph Kaminsky was a religious, Orthodox Jew but Daniel decided on the day that the St. Louis set sail from Havana with his family on board that he would no longer be Jewish.  He grew up in Cuba and considered himself to be Cuban instead of Jewish.  Daniel married a Catholic woman named Marta, even converting to Roman Catholicism only so that he could marry in the Catholic church as his non-practicing girlfriend wished, and they later emigrated to the U.S. and lived in Miami Beach where their son Elias was born.  Marta converted to Judaism while in Miami so when Elias was asked in the story whether he is Jewish he says yes, because his mother was Jewish.  However, Elias was not religious. 

The story followed Elias' search for his parents' story as well as the painting's story. He enlisted the help of former Havana police detective Mario Conde to help him in his search. The author alternated chapters between Elias' time and Daniel's time.

I had read Leonardo Padura's Havana Gold a few years ago and thought it was just OK. I wasn't sure if I wanted to try another book of his but the back cover blurb convinced me to buy this novel as the history of the Saint Louis ship in Havana harbor in 1939 is another one of the heart wrenching stories of the Holocaust.

You could not help but feel great emotion for the main characters, Joseph, Daniel and Elias Kaminsky. They all suffered from the one act of the Kaminsky family's death in Auschwitz. All were heretics in some form with Daniel becoming one by trying to deny his faith and Joseph breaking a commandment. A big one. The Sephardic Jew who posed for the portrait in the 1600s was probably the first heretic in the novel. 

I love family sagas and that's probably one of the reasons I loved this book. Daniel's changing emotions toward his faith tradition was compelling and the reader was able to get inside his head as he grappled with personal decisions when Israel became a nation and when he converted to Catholicism so Marta could have the extravagant wedding she always wanted. 

While the subject matter of the story is serious and the author wrote much emotion into this story, it still flowed effortlessly and was an easy read. If you are not familiar with the St. Louis incident in Holocaust history, you will find the book informative. At 528 pages it's a chunkster but I guarantee that you will love it. I certainly did.