Wilde Lake by Laura Lippman

“The truth is not a finite commodity that can be contained within identifiable borders. The truth is messy, riotous, overrunning everything. You can never know the whole truth of anything. And if you could, you would wish you wouldn’t.”

As a child, you often see the world through rose colored glasses blocking out all of the items that make life imperfect and messy.  As you grow older, you realize the truth about life and your family and realize that you’ve discovered things you wish you never knew.  This is the case for Luisa “Lu” Brant.

Lu has just been elected the first woman state’s attorney of Howard County, Maryland, a position that her father, Andrew Jackson Brant had held while she was a child.  He was a famed state’s attorney raising his two children, AJ and Lu as a single father after their mother’s death.  Their mother was a beautiful, but troubled woman.  Andrew Brant had met her in law school, married her, and lived with her parents for years before buying a historic home and moving it to the new community of Columbia, Maryland.  Situated in a great location between Washington DC and Baltimore, Maryland, Columbia was a new community being built in the latter half of the 1960’s with liberal ideals of equality for all.

Wilde Lake switches the story back and forth between a first person narrative from Lu telling the story of her idyllic childhood and hero worship of her brother AJ, who was eight years her senior, and his friends.  A friendless, motherless child, she is intrigued by the older kids and also mystified by a couple of circumstances in AJ’s senior year that will haunt them all for their entire lives.

In the current day, Lu investigates a case that seems open and shut on the surface, a middle aged waitress has been murdered by a homeless man.  As Lu delves into the case, she discovers that there is more to the story and to her family’s past than she previously realized.  What is the truth and who are the heroes?

I literally could not put this book down.  I love Lippman’s writing style, and the story swept me in.  I would get done with one chapter and need to read the next to find out what would happen next.  The story kept me guessing until the end.  I loved that it was a coming of age story more than anything.  It was relatable as the characters were fully three dimensional, warts and all.  There were times I thought Lu was condescending as a kid and as an adult, but she realized it in the end.

“’Your house was like a castle to me,’ Randy said.  ‘It was like you were living in some palace, high above everybody else.  I thought you were royalty.’

We did too, Randy.  We did, too.”

I also loved that Lu had two children and one of them was named Penelope like my own daughter.  I wish more time would have been spent on the stress of being a single parent herself, but I liked how the book had her slowly take her blinders off through the book of what her family was really like for her as a child and how she has perpetuated the myth to her own children.

Overall, Wilde Lake is a highly enjoyable mystery and coming of age story that you will not be able to put down!

Book Source:  Review Copy from William Morrow – Thanks!

The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street by Susan Jane Gilman

Malka Treynovsky is a young Jewish girl who feels Russia with her family for America.  Living in New York City is much tougher than the immigrant family imagined, tougher still after Malka is crippled in an accident with an ice wagon.  Malka is taken in by the ice man’s family and rechristened as Lillian. Lillian later marries the handsome Albert Dunkle and the two start an ice cream empire.  Lillian recounts the tale of her youth in later years as she awaits trial for not paying taxes.

I enjoyed the story and how Lillian’s life paralleled the American dream.  I also really enjoyed several underlying themes.  One of these was the power of media.  Media helped to bring Lillian up in the world with her TV show for kids and the ads for the Polio Vaccine supported by Dunkle’s.  The media also helped to bring her down in the end by portraying her life inaccurately or interpreting things falsely.  It’s kind of scary when you think about it – how many celebrities that we feel we all “know” have had their characters crucified inaccurately in the media?

Lillian had a bad father.  A father that abandoned his family and was always looking for the next con.  A father that had many wives.  A father that wanted to use his daughter for his own advantage whenever he could get money from her.  This reminded me of my Great-Grandma Kile and her own contentious relationship with her father.  Lillian was forever hopeful that her father would want a relationship from her until the end.  I think that this abandonment was why Lillian had such a hard time letting people get close to her.

I loved Lillian’s relationship with her Grandson, although I don’t really approve of Grandma’s leading their grandkids into vice.  I think it was supposed to be cute because she is rich, but it wouldn’t be so cute if Lillian lived in a trailer.  Indeed it is Lillian’s problem with alcohol that causes all of her woes at the end of the novel.  I was sad for Lillian that she could never seem to believe that her husband Albert truly loved her. 

I’ll admit there were a couple of items that really annoyed me about this novel.  Lillian really likes to tell her audience (the reader) “So sue me” and call the readers “darlings.”  That would be okay one or two times, but it was used excessively and was very annoying.  I also thought the cover was strange.  Malka/Lillian is paralyzed in an accident at the very start of the novel and has a brace on her leg for the entire rest of the novel.  The cover photo shows a woman with perfectly fine legs and an ice cream cone.  It doesn’t go with this story.

The Ice Cream of Orchard Street is our book club book’s pick for the month of April.  I can’t wait to see what everyone else thought about this novel.

My favorite line in the novel was:

“I have journeyed from Russia to the United States.  From poor to rich.  And now I will be given a number and a uniform.”

Overall, The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street was an entertaining historical fiction novel with some very interesting themes, but a couple of annoying ticks in the writing style.

Book Source:  The Kewaunee Public Library

America’s First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie

Thomas Jefferson was a founding father, President, and author of the Declaration of Independence.  He was also a very complicated man, husband, and father.  Patsy (Martha) Jefferson, promises her mother on her deathbed that she will care for her father during his darkest moments.  When she takes on this job as a child, she doesn’t realize where this will lead her life and how it might compromise her own chances for happiness.

After her mother’s death, Patsy and Thomas Jefferson travel to France where Jefferson serves as America’s minister to France right as France starts to rise for its own independence.  Patsy comes of age in France, starting as a child and blossoming into a young woman who is full of ideas of her own.  She also falls in love with her father’s secretary, William Short, a man set on a career in diplomacy and ending slavery. “Was there ever a time or place for love better than spring in Paris?”

 Her father starts a scandalous affair with a married woman while in France, and Patsy is even more horrified to discover that her father afterwards starts a relationship with her mother’s half-sister, Sally Hemings, who is also their slave and the same age as Patsy.  

“Of course, I’d also heard him say that a person ought to give up money, fame, and the earth itself, rather than do an immoral act.”

Patsy has to determine what is most important for her and her family and what kind of life she would like to have.  As the years pass by, she loves her growing family more and more, but she wonders if she has made the best choices overall.  After her father becomes President of the United States, she serves as her widowed father’s first lady and helps to make the politicians act in a more civilized manner.

I loved this book.  I loved Patsy’s romance with both William Short and Thomas Randolph.  I loved that the romance didn’t end even as Patsy grew older.  I also loved the real life figures such as the Marquis de Lafayette and Dolley Madison as they appeared and were characters throughout the story. I’ve had a lifelong fascination with Dolley Madison and it was wonderful to see her brought to life.

“Lafayette studied Papa and nodded, thoughtfully.  ‘Tell me.  How did you feel on that glorious day you took your own honest and manly stand and signed your name to the Declaration of Independence?’

Papa’s expression turned wry.  ‘I felt a noose tightening around my neck.’”

There were many parts of the story that I admit, I thought were too fantastical to be true.  There is an author’s note at the end of the novel which points out that these things did happen and that truth is sometimes stranger than fiction.  I also used the internet at various points to look up facts for myself during the middle of the book.

I still have the hardest time with Thomas Jefferson’ relationship with Sally Hemings.  I realized I probably romanticized it in my own mind, but reading this book from his daughter’s prospective, I was even more horrified.  Sally was the same age as his daughters and his wife’s half-sister.  She was also owned by him.  It was wrong on so many levels.  There are points in the story where Thomas Jefferson could have made things right with Sally and he didn’t.  I was horrified when basically all of the slaves were sold off at the end to pay for Thomas Jefferson’s debts.  I felt like he liked to be the “father of freedom” when it suited his intellectual purposes, but not when it would not suit his wallet.

That was actually my other fascination with this book, how bad Jefferson’s finances were.  Patsy’s were also throughout her marriage.  A lot of it on all sides was inherited debt.  I was baffled how someone could inherit debt and not the estate that accrued the debt (happened to Patsy’s husband).  It seems so unfair.  But unfair is also living a life of luxury and not thinking about the consequences for your children, grandchildren, and slaves such as Thomas Jefferson did.

I visited Monticello when I was ten years old and again when I was twenty-four.  This book made me long to return with my children.  Hopefully in a few years when my youngest (Penelope is five right now) is old enough to enjoy it.  It’s hard to put together the full portrait of someone who could design a house so beautiful with someone who was just a contradiction to himself.  No one is perfect.  I also enjoyed that the book used Jefferson’s real letters.

Overall I greatly enjoyed America’s First Daughter.  It had complicated real historical characters, a great setting in time, and a great love story.  It was a story that really made me think about my perceptions of Thomas Jefferson.  I highly recommend it.

Book Source:  Review Copy from William Morrow.  Thank-you!