Windy City Newswoman: White Collar Girl by Renée Rosen

In 1955, Jordan Walsh, a recent journalism school graduate, tries to break into the newspaper business as a reporter, but is stymied by the rampant sexism of the era. She lands an entry-level job at the Chicago Tribune, where she works on write-ups of weddings and other events for the society pages, and along with her other female colleagues, edits recipes under a shared pseudonym. From day one, she chafes at the bit, wanting to do more.

Jordan comes from a literary/journalistic family: her mother is a published poet and her father is a journalist working on a novel. Her brother, Eliot, was an investigative reporter until he died in a hit-and-run accident two earlier, leaving the family bereft and broken. Jordan is determined to follow in Eliot's footsteps, but also to make a name for herself.

Many famous real-life names dot the pages of this novel where they are worked in as friends or colleagues of Jordan's parents, but they add color and texture to the story and don't feel like simple namedropping. Actual events of the period concerning politicians and criminals are also part of the stories that Jordan and her fictional colleagues pursue, which add further authenticity.

Renée Rosen's descriptions of the Chicago of the time feel spot on. The seedy bars, diners and dirty streets are very evocative, and of course, everybody smokes everywhere and uses pay phones. It's easy to imagine Jordan confronting cops, political hacks and others...along with her incredibly sexist male superiors and co-workers.

The novel is a fast and compelling read, and covers Jordan's family problems and romantic entanglements as well as her ambition and work. She sounds like a woman that many readers will recognize, if not in themselves, but in the older generations of women who worked so hard to succeed in a man's world.

The author is very careful to provide documentation for the adjustments to the historical timeline, and how she managed to effectively merge real and fictional events. Well done, Renée Rosen.

Note: strictly coincidentally, I recently read and reviewed another novel by Rosen, What the Lady Wants,  also with a Chicago setting, quite enjoyable but not as fast-paced and snappy as this one.  I'll be checking out more of her work shortly.

"On State Street, that Great Street": What the Lady Wants by Renée Rosen

This novel is subtitled "A Novel of Marshall Field and the Gilded Age", and it is true that the legendary Chicago department store entrepreneur is a key character, but the narrator and central character is Delia Spencer Caton, who eventually married Field after she was widowed from her first husband, Arthur Caton, the son of the very rich and influential Chief Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court. 

Delia comes from a leading Chicago family – her father is a partner in a leading retail enterprise and the family hobnobs with the other leaders of Chicago business, many with names that became household words, such as the Swifts and Armours of the meatpacking business, and others less well-known now but incredibly influential in American industry, such as Cyrus McCormick who created a revolution in farm equipment and whose company became International Harvester, and George Pullman, an engineer who developed the Pullman sleeping car (for trains) and was founder of an eponymous company town, and Potter Palmer, who developed and operated Chicago's grandest hotel, the Palmer House. 

Historical accounts state that Marshall Field and his first wife, Nannie, had an unhappy marriage. Their constant fights were well-known and not confined to the privacy of their palatial home. Nannie spent long periods of time abroad, with and without the Fields' two children (a third had died very young). This is made abundantly clear throughout the narrative. The novel also describes her as a laudanum (an opiate) addict, but this may or may not be true.

According to the novel, Delia first meets Marshall Field when she is seventeen years old. It is 1871, and the time of The Great Fire that burned down vast parts of the city. Delia and her family are attending a ball at the Palmer House when the fire takes place, and Bertha Palmer, Potter Palmer's wife, introduces them. Delia is immediately smitten and apparently Field, twenty years her senior, is too. 

The Spencers discover that their home and business were completely destroyed. Rebuilding will take quite some time, but just a few weeks later, with his extraordinary business acumen, Marshall Field and his partner have reopened in temporary quarters. 

Around this time, Delia meets the handsome Arthur, whom she will eventually marry five years later. Their marriage brings together money and social prestige, but is portrayed as unhappy. While Delia and Arthur form a close bond of friendship, the marriage lacks sexual chemistry. Delia wants to have a child but it becomes clear that this will never happen. Arthur drinks heavily and though he is a lawyer, he spends his time with his horses and at his club. Despite this, the Catons build a luxurious mansion that backs up to the property of Marshall Field's even more spectacular home.

Arthur has a close relationship with his friend Paxton Lowry (an invention of the author). The two are nearly inseparable, though Paxton works through an array of girlfriends. When he leaves town for New York, Arthur is bereft. Eventually Paxton will return, marry and have a child, another enormous blow for Arthur. Paxton's and Arthur's relationship weaves in and out through the Catons' lives over the years...but eventually Delia and Marshall embark on their own clandestine affair, which per the plot will last over thirty years, and is lavishly described.

Historic accounts vary about the true degree and type of involvement between Delia and Marshall, but in this novel, they are passionate soulmates. Some real-life rumors about them went so far as to say that they had a tunnel built between their homes to enable their trysts.

Eventually, Nannie Field dies abroad in 1900, leaving Marshall free to remarry. Arthur dies in his and Delia's hotel suite at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York in 1905. Newspaper accounts indicate various causes of death, but there were rumors of suicide and that is one of most the dramatic portrayals of the novel.

Delia and Marshall marry just months later, but the marriage is short-lived due to Marshall's untimely death a year later in 1906.

Historical accounts state that Delia lived on, moving to Washington, D.C., where she became a celebrated hostess. She died in 1938.

Another interesting detail of this novel is the intermittent appearance of Harry Selfridge, a leading employee of Marshall Field & Company, who eventually relocated to London and opened his own celebrated department store, Selfridge & Company, which exists till this day. Selfridge was the colorful subject of a British TV series that ran on PBS's Masterpiece several years ago – Mr. Selfridge.

I enjoyed the true-to-historical detail of Gilded Age Chicago, and the fabulous descriptions of the homes, the clothing and of the surroundings. The author also does an excellent job describing business practices of the period, key events like the Great Fire, The Columbian Exposition of 1893 (Chicago's first World's Fair, and the subject of the superb non-fiction work, The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson), the Haymarket Riots, and more. Arthur Caton and his relationship with his invented friend Paxton add drama, but there is a huge amount of supposition involved – a testimony to the author's skill, but that may also feel heavy handed.  

A Tale of the Blue Ridge: Under a Gilded Moon by Joy Jordan-Lake

I wasn't so sure about this novel at first, but it grew on me...very quickly. My initial concerns with a seemingly formulaic storyline – young woman escapes humble origins, gets a taste of big city opportunity, but gives it up for a family crisis – were eclipsed by the far more intellectual and complex ins and outs of the characters and plot.

Set at and during the 1895 opening of Biltmore, the vast and magnificent Vanderbilt estate and now historic house museum, and its environs near Asheville, North Carolina in the Blue Ridge Mountains, it is partly a study of the haves, the ultra-rich Gilded Age captains of industry, and the have-nots, the poverty-stricken Scots-Irish people of Appalachia who struggled to survive on small farms and in traditional industries.

In addition to the class and social conflicts between those two groups, it is also a commentary on the tensions between the overall dominant "white" Anglo-Nordic population of late nineteenth-century America, and the enormous influx of immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe – the Russian Jews, Southern Italians and others – from its height in the late 1880s and 1890s until legislation in 1920 by a reactionary U.S. Congress slammed shut the Golden Door of immigration for decades. At the same time, freed former African-American slaves were trying to make their way in a society that was using mistrust and prejudice to foil them with the extreme violence of the KKK and other White Supremacy groups, and the Jim Crow laws that arose in the American South to combat the freedoms that had been granted by Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of the Constitution. In addition, Chinese immigrants were suffering under the 1875 Page Act which banned Chinese women from immigrating and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which completely prohibited further immigration of all Chinese laborers. In short, in many aspects, America was a far-from-welcoming place.

The major fictional characters, Kerry MacGregor, the young mountain woman who goes to New York with a scholarship at Barnard College, but returns to care for her sick father and join the staff at Biltmore, Salvatore Catalfamo, an Italian immigrant who comes to work at the Biltmore stables, Lilli Barthélemy (note the play on Edith Wharton's Lily Bart in The House of Mirth), are deftly woven with the historic ones, including George Washington Vanderbilt II, the owner of Biltmore and Madison Grant (who widely promoted the false science of eugenics in his book The Passing of the Great Race but was at the same time an early wildlife conservationist). A full range of secondary characters, authentic or invented but plausible, along with the majors, wind together in an intricate plot that involves two murders, romance, suicide, death by alcoholism, and a Pinkerton manhunt. All this happens while the author also emphasizes her overwhelming appreciation of the beauty of the natural surroundings and the magnificence of Biltmore in lyrical description.

The historical aspects are beautifully presented and feel natural in the context of the action. Readers may feel motivated to learn more about the architecture and construction of Biltmore and the social and financial concerns that continue to haunt Appalachia. As to the plot, all the threads are neatly tied by the novel's end, which concludes with a satisfying romantic touch. Under a Gilded Moon is most definitely a "good read".

Boldly Delicious: Vegetables Unleashed by José Andrés

Alluring, enticing recipes, vivid photography and food styling, and highly personal, energetic commentary from Spanish Chef José Andrés, who is not only renowned for his multi-cultural restaurants and food trucks, but for his humanitarian efforts in dealing with the food shortages in Puerto Rico and Haiti after natural disasters and now here in the United States in the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

I first heard of Chef Andrés in CNN reports of his trips to Puerto Rico after Category 5 Hurricane Maria devastated much of the island, destroying homes, roads and the electrical infrastructure, leaving tens of thousands homeless and destitute in isolated areas. He set up a volunteer network and makeshift kitchen stations all over the island that served millions of meals. That humanitarian work was profiled in his prior book We Fed an Island: The True Story of Rebuilding Puerto Rico, One Meal at a Time. He is a remarkable man, with a truly larger than life personality and an extraordinary zest for living.

I can't wait to try some of Chef Andrés's recipes, which bring together what might sound like unlikely combinations of certain vegetables, grains and seasonings. During the pandemic, preparing almost every single meal every day has become a challenge in staving off boredom, as well as repetition. After a full year in which I can count on one hand how many take-out meals my husband and I have had, and on the other, outdoor dining excursions with him or a friend, I am much more than ready for new culinary ideas, especially ones that have been presented with such color and energy.

Like nearly all the books I have read in the last few years, I checked this one out from the library via an inter-library loan, but it is so good, I have it on my Amazon wishlist for a future purchase. For now, I'll jot down some of the most appealing recipes and go from there.  

Passage to India: The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey

It's always a treat to find a "new" author, and then discover that they have published at least dozen books that you'll want to read. My "new" author is Sujata Massey, a former Baltimore Sun reporter turned novelist.

According to the book jacket, Ms. Massey's parents were Indian and German but she was raised in the United States. Her Indian background must have been invaluable in creating this first-in-a-series novel set in the Bombay of the early 1920s and featuring a heroine inspired by the first woman to practice law there. 

Perveen Mistry is a young woman solicitor from a successful Parsi family of lawyers and a business in real estate construction. Parsis are Indians of Persian descent who follow the Zoroastrian religion. Zoroastrianism dates back to approximately 600 BCE, making it more than 1200 years older than Islam, which overtook it in ancient Persia/Iran. In the 1920s, Bombay had separate religious communities for Moslems, Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Jews and Christians, as well as Parsis. Each had their own parallel society and specific legal requirements. A lawyer needed to understand both the religious and civil laws to represent clients. At this time, India is still ruled by the British and that there is a rigid social and legal system with the white British community at the top, no matter how distinguished, successful and wealthy any Indian might be.

Two parallel threads form the narrative, one for Perveen's work and one for her personal life. They are cleverly interwoven in alternate chapters that move between her present and her recent past. In her present, about 1921, she has recently completed her legal studies and works in the law practice of her father on the paperwork for various cases (women are not yet allowed to appear in the courts – in the British and Indian systems, lawyers who present cases in court are known as barristers, while those who handle all other aspects of the law are called solicitors), and in her recent past, we learn about what happened in her life five years earlier, providing the background for her present circumstances.

One of the practice's clients is a wealthy, highly traditional Muslim family. The husband has died leaving three widows (don't be judgmental – remember that this is 1921) and several children. The widows live in purdah (religion-based seclusion) in a large villa in an exclusive neighborhood. Perveen becomes involved in the details of executing the will for the widows and the man who had been appointed to manage the business affairs of the family. On a visit to the household to conduct business, Perveen discovers that he has been been brutally murdered...

Not only does the novel solve this mystery, but it also introduces an intriguing heroine who explores the societal issues of the rapidly changing times in India, including colonialism and feminism, giving the reader a fascinating window into a complex, diverse and sophisticated culture, presented for maximum appeal with vivid descriptions of the locales, dress, food and more. It is a wonderful opportunity for a journey to an exotic destination in a just distant enough time frame.