Early Americans at Odds, 1689 – Out Front the Following Sea by Leah Angstman

A novel of American history from before the American Revolution, and before the time of the French and Indian War which made George Washington a future leader... The year was 1689 and King William's War had begun, a fight between the Protestant English colonists of what we know as New England, and the Catholic French colonists of what was referred to as New France. As you probably realize, the English eventually pushed the French back to beyond the Mississippi River, and north to Acadia (central Maine and beyond into what are now the provinces of Canada). South of New England, the Dutch were colonizing present-day New York, and northern New Jersey, and were also a threat to the English. The various Native American tribes were being impinged upon by all of the Europeans, and at various times, aligned with the different colonists in order to retain their lands and autonomy. As we know, they were not successful.

This was the era of pirates and highwaymen, witch trials, and violent punishments for small and large infractions. Women, of course, had no rights to own property, and in fact, were the property of their husbands.

Ruth Miner, a brilliant young woman of English background, was accused of witchcraft in her town, along with the murder of her parents, and had to flee in self-preservation or be put to death. Her only hope and friend was a young sailor, Owen, of French descent, with whom she had been raised, and now shared a mutual attraction. She stows away on his ship as it travels along the Connecticut coast to Stonington (located just south of Rhode Island), and finds refuge there.

A series of shocking and unfortunate events spin out, with Ruth experiencing violence, abuse, and heartbreak, though she makes a friend of a Pequot Indian she meets in the woods, and the Stonington couple who take her in. Owen moves in and out of her life in unexpected ways.

In the end, despite tremendous suffering and loss, Ruth endures.

This is a rich and beautifully written book by historian Leah Angstman, whose obvious efforts in research of the period gives this story authenticity, vividness, and no shortage of drama. Highly recommend.

So Tender – Maman's Homesick Pie: A Persian Heart in an American Kitchen by Donia Bijan

This was the most beautiful book...it brought tears to my eyes more than once. The author, Donia Bijan, has written a lyrical memoir that describes her early life with her parents and sisters in Iran, before the Islamic Revolution, their move to the United States, and her complicated quest to become a professional chef, or as her father and she sometimes called it, a cook. It is also the story of her relationship with her parents, primarily her close bond with her mother, who must have been an amazing and formidable woman, and was a loving supporter of Donia's ambition.

Her parents were a dedicated obstetrician (her father), and nurse (her mother) who established and ran a small hospital in Tehran. They had living quarters on the building's grounds, which sounds like an idyllic Eden, though her parents worked long, hard hours caring for their patients, and on top of that, her mother was an extraordinary cook and hostess. Amy (her mother, as she was known in English) was a fervent believer in women's rights and became one of the few female politicians elected to the Iranian legislature during the Shah's reign. Of course, after the Revolution, women were completely oppressed and had the Bijans remained in Iran, she would surely have been executed as an enemy of the new government. Fortunately the family was on vacation in Spain at the time the Shah's government fell, and family members were able to alert them not to return to Iran, but as a result they became exiles.

Her parents had already sent Donia's two older sisters to college in the U.S., and Donia went to high school, then college, in California, this after her parents had immigrated. Her father never adjusted to his new country, was unable to sufficiently master English to take the medical boards, and became angry and bitter. Amy, on the other hand, who had been trained in England, and spoke strong English, was able to study, pass the exams, and become the support for the family. 

The chapters progress through Donia's college years, her training at Cordon Bleu in France, and her apprenticeships at various restaurants throughout that country. When she returned to the United States, settling near her family in San Francisco, she eventually merged her French training, Persian roots and food memories, and American experiences into a restaurant of her own. It is a remarkable, and vivid story of an atypical life. 

As I read, I thought frequently of an Iranian couple who had been my ESL students. They too left their home after the Shah was deposed, and lost much of their family's property and assets to the revolutionaries. Despite the pain they might have felt, they were so positive (at least outwardly) and thoughtful. I remember the little tubs of halvah and other treats they brought me, and I have kept a gift  bottle of rosewater in my pantry closet, which always brings them to mind each time I see it.

I can not praise Maman's Homesick Pie: A Persian Heart in an American Kitchen enough. It is one of the best books I have read over the past few years, and certainly one of the most moving.

As a bonus, there are some wonderful recipes included, though this is in no way a cookbook. The recipes feel more like a gift. I expect to try a few when I can. 

On Broadway – Nothing Like a Dame: Conversations with the Great Women of Musical Theater by Eddie Shapiro

This is a series of twenty-one chatty interviews, by theater journalist Eddie Shapiro, conducted from 2008 through 2012. He began with the late Elaine Stritch and Carol Channing and worked his way to Sutton Foster and Laura Benanti, with stops along the way for Patti LuPone, Audra McDonald, and Idina Menzel, plus many others. If you enjoy musical theater, you’ll be entertained by this collection…and the photos are fun too.

Roughly ten years have passed since the book's initial publication, and it's time for an update, along with some more interviews. Certainly Bernadette Peters is a major omission, and he could add additional profiles for Lea Salonga, Sara Bareilles, and Kelli O'Hara, to name just a few.

When I'm feeling nostalgic, I like to flip through my collection of Playbill theater programs, remembering performers who might have appeared as an unknown and later became famous – one great example is Glenn Close, who appeared as the opera singer Jenny Lind in "Barnum" around 1980, making her singing debut. It's also bittersweet to consider performers (in plays and musicals), who have passed on, including such luminaries as Lena Horne, Madeline Kahn and Gilda Radner – so grateful to have seen them all.  

Three Among Many...Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon – and the Journey of a Generation

Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon, along with Judy Collins and a score of women who made their musical mark primarily during the singer/songwriter era (the late 60s/early 70s) were and are the soundtrack of my life. I read somewhere that the music we hear and embrace in our late teens into our late twenties becomes "our music", and I agree. 

These three women are the core for so many women of my Baby Boomer generation (though they are just a little older than most of us). When the trio of some of their most important albums, like "Tapestry" (King), "Court and Spark" (Mitchell), and "No Secrets" appeared in and around 1971, they seemed to instantly begin playing in bedrooms, dorm rooms, and studio apartments everywhere.

The award-winning journalist Sheila Weller researched and wrote this triple biography of Carole King (born 1942), Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon (both born in 1943). It hopscotches back and forth between the lives of the three women, all of whom almost simultaneously became household names around their thirtieth birthdays, even though King had already had more than a decade of great success as a Brill Building pop music composer with songs like "Up on the Roof", "The Loco-Motion", "One Fine Day", and more. Their lives sometimes intersected in the music business, through complex personal connections, and crisscrossed friendships and romantic relationships. 

Weller's book takes us deep into the culture of the period, and the music scenes in Los Angeles and New York, through extensive interviews, and adds a wealth of anecdotes and insights about the three women from many of the people who had close relationships and attachments to them. It is a kind of comfort read too, if that was your era, when so much seemed to be changing and possible for women. We can each consider what it means to "feel like a natural woman" and go from there.

No one could have predicted how that would play out for women in the five decades since the early 70s, with so many broadening opportunities and fewer restrictions (on the whole) for us. We accomplished so much, yet now after forty-plus years of advancement, we have been faced with some troubling attacks on our personal freedoms during the last five or six. I read the book when it first came out in 2013 when it was first published, with a second read just recently – a decade later. So much has happened over those ten years. 

On the plus side, despite the current social and political wars, if we look solely at women in music, we have so many huge names: Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift immediately come to mind. Each is a great example for their female peers in their 20s and 30s. Their success gives me hope.

Vanished Worlds: The Piano Teacher by Janice Y.K. Lee

This novel follows two timelines: Englishwoman Claire Pendleton comes to the British colony of Hong Kong in 1953 with her new husband, and finds work giving piano lessons to the daughter of a wealthy Chinese couple and falls into a love affair, and in 1942, when Englishman Will Truesdale and Trudy Liang, a Eurasian socialite, the daughter of a Portuguese mother and Chinese father, find the Japanese invasion of the island upending their relationship and everything around them.

Claire has never before traveled far from life with her mother in the pedestrian London suburb of Croydon, and Hong Kong is an exotic and confusing adventure, and she soon gets caught up in its expatriate life and society, with all of its class- and race-conscious unwritten rules. She is bound by her past life and its narrow views, yet she wants to take chances and break free. 

Will and Trudy have a far different sort of existence, but even though Trudy comes from great wealth, and is extraordinarily beautiful, she can't escape the stigma of her Eurasian background, which influences every aspect of her life. Will, as an Englishman, moves between her world and the club-like English expatriate society, where as a white man of the ruling government, he has far more latitude.

The paralleling plots unfold and eventually intersect, but not before the horrors of World War II and its aftermath settle themselves on the very complex, brittle and rigid world of this society.

While much of the description of the setting at both times can be beautiful, the author does not subdue the horrific conditions of the war and its effects, both on the physical environment and on human behavior, which reaches new lows, much as it did in Europe. It is very clear that people are the same everywhere, good and bad, no matter what they look like or where they come from.

Friends and Lovers: Musical Chairs by Amy Poeppel

Here is a delightful "friends and family" contemporary novel focused on classical musicians well into their 50s. Bridget, a cellist, and Will, a pianist, are two legs of the Forsyth Trio, a chamber group forever in search of a violinist they can count on. The two have maintained a close, non-romantic, best friendship for more than three decades, since they were students at Juilliard, and have been each other's mainstay of emotional support though all of their personal triumphs and disappointments.

Bridget comes from great wealth and a musical background, with a nearly ninety-year-old composer father who lives resplendently in a castle-like mansion in Litchfield County, Connecticut. She is the never-married mother of twenty-nine-year-old fraternal twins, Isabelle and Oscar. She became pregnant after undergoing artificial insemination when she felt her biological clock ticking away and a more conventional romantic relationship appeared not to be in the cards. She has a spacious Manhattan apartment and a somewhat ramshackle country house not far from her father's.

Will, on the other hand, lives in a typically tiny West Village (Manhattan) walk-up apartment. Money is always an issue for him, and he scrambles to survive on freelance gigs and teaching. Bridget has always been financially helpful, and in fact, he has a dedicated space reserved for him at her Connecticut house.

Bridget is anticipating a romantic summer alone with her latest boyfriend, but everything is upended when he breaks up with her at the last minute, her daughter Isabelle abruptly leaves her job abroad and comes home to crash, followed by her son Oscar, who has left his husband, Matt, thinking he has been unfaithful...and Will experiences unexpected twists and turns in his life as well.

There is a sort of Shakespearean-like comedy air to the further developments that occur that summer, but all will eventually work out and be revealed, though how that takes place is for the reader to find out. 

It's enjoyable to spend a little time with these musicians, their friends, and relatives, in a pleasant setting. It's a novel that mainly entertains, without stress or heavy questioning. 

An American Scene from Another Age – Willa Cather's The Song of the Lark

I am a long-time admirer of the late Willa Cather's work and have read nearly all of her books. Some of her most enduring classics of the American experience are My Ántonia and Death Comes for the Archbishop. Her descriptions of the natural world and the settings of her books are beautifully composed, simple and spare yet evocative and transporting. Though her work appeared a century ago and before, it does not feel dated, perhaps because of that exquisite prose – she doesn't waste a word. 

The Song of the Lark (published 1915) follows an ambitious young woman from a small Colorado town who goes to Chicago and abroad to Germany to pursue a career as a pianist and piano teacher, but eventually emerges as a professional opera singer, an unusual (and inspiring) life choice for a woman of her time.

I encountered Cather briefly as an English major in the mid 70s, but discovered more of her work when there was a series of paperback reissues in the 80s. Since then, I have been collecting vintage hardcover editions of her work. It's always a thrill to come across one in a used bookstore.

Cather always struck me as brave and independent, a role model from a far more repressed era, and some academics seem to think that Thea, the singer, might have represented Cather herself, though in a different profession. The Willa Cather Center in Red Cloud, Nebraska, is dedicated to her life and work. https://www.willacather.org