Read In July 2019

Summertime and the reading is easy - just less of it.

The Book Woman Of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson is one of the best books I've read in some time. So good, I gave it its own blog earlier this month, July 5th.

The Pioneers by David McCullough is an interesting account of the colonization of The Northwest Territory, specifically, Ohio, once it was opened to settlement.

A Pattern of Lies by Charles Todd is #7 in the Bess Crawford Mystery Series. This series is still one of my favorites as is the mother/son writing team.

Lies That Comfort and Betray by Rosemary Simpson is the second Gilded Age Mystery book. I am liking this author and series very much.

How to Forget: A Daughter's Memoir by Kate Mulgrew is an honest, often painful, recollection of her experiences when she returns to Iowa to care for her ailing parents. Though cancer took her father, it was relatively quick. It was the several years journey of Alzheimer's with her beloved mother that was the most poignant for me to read.
I've always admired Mulgrew as an actor, now I admire her as an author.

This month's reads may have been fewer - but they were all good.

Instead of Worrying

Sunrise - 6:36 July 18, 2019

I Worried

I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shall
I correct it?

Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?

Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well, 
hopeless.

Is my eyesight fading, or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?

Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang. 
    (By Mary Oliver)

A Natural Leafy Bower

A week ago today, on the way home from a short trip to Eastern Missouri, we stopped at the Locust Creek Covered Bridge State Historic Site off Highway 36 between Laclede and Meadville.

Because of a change in the river channel many years ago, you actually cross the creek on a foot bridge. The covered bridge is about a quarter of a mile down what once was a main thoroughfare in Northern Missouri. Now it is a narrow footpath which, according to the warnings, could be muddy, even under water, during a heavy rain or a wet season. Indeed, as we walked down the path you could see where the water had washed away some of the gravel and there were some puddles and muddy places.

The bridge which once crossed Locust Creek now sets above the wetlands. It is the longest covered bridge I've ever seen. And while many covered bridges, like Madison County Iowa's, are celebrated, this one seemed almost forgotten.

Missouri had a very rainy spring. On the signage near the bridge you can see how high the water had been.

On the way back to the car I noticed what looked to me like an almost perfect natural bower. But for the mud, I would have been tempted to follow it to? A secret garden? A trysting spot?

"And bid her steal into the pleached bower
Where honeysuckles ripened by the sun
Forbid the sun to enter ....."
  (Wm. Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing.)

The River of Your Imagination

For years every morning, I drank
from Blackwater Pond.
It was flavored with oak leaves and also, no doubt,
The feet of ducks.
And always it assuaged me
from the dry bowl of the very far past.

What I want to say is
that the past is past,
and the present is what your life is,
and you are capable
of choosing what that will be, 
darling citizen. 

So come to the pond,
or the river of your imagination,
or the harbor of your longing,
and put your lips to the world.

And live
your life.

Mornings at Blackwater
  by Mary Oliver

A Day In January
My photo of Walnut Creek
West Des Moines, Iowa
Thirty Years Ago

A Recommended Read

Once in a while I read a book so good I have to comment on it before the end of the month round-up of reads.

If you enjoy well-researched and well-written historical fiction, as I do, give this book a try:

I rate it a solid five and put it in the same category as Where The Crawdads Sing which has been #1 on The NY Times Fiction Best Sellers list for weeks.

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson combines the history of a WPA job creation enterprise for women known as The Pack Horse Library Project, which lasted from 1935 to 1943 in the poorest and most isolated areas of Eastern Kentucky, with the lives of the remaining descendants of a family whose skin was blue. (Based on the real Fugate family - The Blue People of Kentucky.)

I vaguely remember once hearing/reading about the blue skinned people, but I think I related them as part of the Melungeons of Appalacia without learning my error. As for the Pack Horse Library Project, I had never heard/read of it. (Only the New Deal WPA and CCC projects for men.)

When I began this book, reading about the poor, mostly illiterate, proud, clinging to the old ways, people, I felt as though I was reading about life in the 1800's. I had to remind myself the book was set in the 1930's. I thought surely by then things were much better for them. Then I remembered a class I took at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids. One of my classmates was a woman who had been working as a visiting nurse, tending to people in the hills, hollars and back woods of Kentucky. Her stories of families still living without electricity or running water and distrustful of 'outsiders' were remarkable - almost hard to believe - and that was in 1967!

There are eight pages of photos of the real women of the Pack Horse Libary Project at the end of this book. Regardless of weather conditions, they went by horse, mule and shanks' mare, traveling many miles, to deliver reading materials to their patrons* - all for wages (sorely needed) of $28.00 a month. I know how much I would have welcomed a Book Woman had I lived there and then. What an amazing service they provided.

This is Richardson's fourth novel and the only one available through my two libraries at this time. I would love to read her first three. I will return my books to Gibson Memorial Library some time next week, so consider adding it to your reading list. I don't think you will be disappointed.

*Now that I am a Patreon of at least one author, material is delivered fast and on time via E-mail - no mules involved. 😉