My 2023 Reading, Part One: Fiction

Posted on January 31, 2024 by Theresa

In 2023, I read at least 46 books. As in previous years, I can’t provide an exact number. Sometimes I forget to add a book to Goodreads, and I usually don’t count the books I read for Publishers Weekly reviewing, a gig I finally ended in the fall after ten years.And I normally don’t include books I read as background material for my own writing projects. So, about 46 for 2023. Not bad. Not great.

In terms of quality over quantity, though, well, even that seemed to fall a bit short. I rarely deliver a tidy top ten list—usually going a bit over that number because of the many books I loved. For the fiction I read in 2023 (which included books published in other years), I gave five stars to eight novels. But I liked many others without feeling wowed by them. This is totally subjective, of course.

Of those eight five-starred novels that I read in 2023, I’ve already identified three for www.shepherd.com , which I posted about on January 1, 2024.

These represent the kind of novel I’m most drawn to: historical fiction written by women with plots heavily centered on women. I loved the expansiveness of Quinn’s story, which ranges over the two world wars of the twentieth century. (A t.v. series is purportedly in the works. Yay!) I loved how Jiles and Moustakis contained their poetic narratives in a briefer time frame. All three authors excelled at both character and place. I still think about these books often.

I consider Paulette Jiles’s novel an example of a new style of Western, and I would put Lucky Red by Claudia Cravens in the same category. It’s a delectable romp about a plucky teenaged orphan, Bridget, who must support herself in Dodge City. Prostitutes and gunslingers populate this entertaining, thrillerish, action-packed coming out story.

Catherine Lacey’s Biography of X is a compelling mash-up of alternative history and love story, with the widowed C.M. Lucca gathering information about her deceased wife, an artist known as X, to write a “true” biography of her life. A stunning riff on how we create ourselves and how much we can ever really know another person.

Leila Mottley’s debut, Nightcrawling, was longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize and was an Oprah Book Club selection. It features a teenaged main character, Kiara, who turns to sex work to support herself, her brother, and an abandoned neighbor boy in Oakland, California. It was a tough story to read but beautifully done.

The same can be said of Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshanathan, set during Sri Lanka’s civil war. As Sashi studies to become a doctor, her family unravels, and she loses her four brothers in different ways. It’s a moving meditation on what it means to be a patriot and/or a terrorist during times of great political upheaval.

I was very late to Amor Towles’s debut, Rules of Civility. I’d really liked A Gentleman in Moscow, so when I found a used copy of his first novel, I decided to give it a try. It takes place in the Depression-era United States, following a young woman named Katey as she struggles to carve out a career and develop a relationship with the enigmatic Tinker Grey, who has links to the wealthy and powerful of New York City. It’s a fascinating story that surprised me in several places.

In addition to these eight, there were seven others that I enjoyed reading in 2023. Most centered on families. For some reason I’d left off reading Anne Tyler, so it was nice to return to her with French Braid, a solid example of her signature quirky family drama. Tom Lake by Ann Patchett is a nicely structured path-not-taken story with a lot of heart. Celeste Ng’s Our Missing Hearts is a chilling parent-and-child tale set in an alternate (but scarily plausible) United States. Day by Michael Cunningham is a heart-pulling piece about the affects wrought by the Covid pandemic. And Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver’s updated, reimagining of Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield, is a sad—and at times grim—story of a young boy’s search for family.

Rebecca Makkai’s sophisticated mystery I Have Some Questions for You takes place at a boarding high school. Bodie Kane, a former student, has returned to teach a short winter session, and in her spare time digs into the decades-old murder of her roommate there.

The only historical of the bunch is The Literary Undoing of Victoria Swann by Virginia Pye. (I posted a review of it in 2023.) I was especially fond of the titular character, a talented Gilded Age writer determined to control her career.

And finally, I read Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. I would describe it as a plus-one to the seven enjoyable books. It’s one of those novels that I always thought I should read, and last year the nonfiction author Laurie Gwen Shapiro, organized an online book discussion of it so I decided to join in. I have to admit that it took some dogged dedication to get through the novel. It has a lot of plot. There are dozens of characters whose names spawn nicknames. There are big political and philosophical discussions. It is a big, big book.

Next up is Part Two: Nonfiction

A Review of The Disquieting Death of Emma Gill by Marcia Biederman

Posted on January 25, 2024 by Theresa

“The experts said a woman couldn’t have done it alone, and they were right. The family had done it together, as they’d always done things. They’d jointly made a mess of it. All their efforts at concealment were undone in a moment. It might have been comical if it hadn’t been criminal.”

So opens Marcia Biederman’s new book, The Disquieting Death of Emma Gill, out from Chicago Review Press this week. It is a page-turning historical true crime drama set in nineteenth-century New England that follows the lives of Nancy and Henry Guilford, husband-and-wife medical specialists in “complaints peculiar to females.” Women of that time knew exactly what those peculiar complaints referred to: unwanted pregnancies. And the Guilfords knew how to help them.

After describing how the evidence of a gruesome crime had been uncovered in 1898 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Marcia Biederman pulls the story back, building suspense through a careful construction of Nancy and Henry’s activities, showing how and why they became engaged in the abortion trade when most states had outlawed the practice. The tension increases as Marcia weaves in the stories of the desperate patients who sought their services. It’s an intriguing look at a small slice of reproductive history that speaks volumes about women’s ongoing struggles to retain control of their own bodies.

I’ve known Marcia Biederman for a few years through an online group of authors who write women’s biographies. (And very recently we met for the first time in real life in New York City.) Her last book, A Mighty Force, chronicled the efforts of Dr. Elizabeth Hayes to bring quality medical care and healthy living conditions to Pennsylvania coal miners in the 1940s.

Marcia has a keen eye for unusual tales about women who have fallen off history’s radar. Returning their stories to the larger historical narrative is a goal we share, and I was delighted when I was asked to provide a blurb for The Disquieting Death of Emma Gill. It will keep you riveted from start to finish.

https://www.chicagoreviewpress.com/the-disquieting-death-of-emma-gill-products-9781641608565.php?page_id=30

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/marcia-biederman/the-disquieting-death-of-emma-gill/

Welcome 2024! (What I’ve got coming up.)

Posted on January 1, 2024 by Theresa

I look forward to the beginning of each new year so I can round up and reflect on the reading I’ve done over the preceding year. Pulling together my own “favorites” lists of fiction and nonfiction will take me a bit longer than usual because I’ve got a big thing happening starting next week.

I’ll be in New York City (for the first time ever) to complete a Short-Term Research Fellowship at the New York Public Library. For two weeks I get to comb through the records of The New Yorker magazine, which was co-founded in 1925 by Jane Grant, the subject of my next biography. I’m thrilled and honored to receive this support from the NYPL.

(Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Nothing remotely like what I’ll be doing in New York.)

(Library of Congress photo. Where I’ll actually spend most of my time.)

This will be the second major research trip for my new book project, which is tentatively titled The Jazz-Age Feminism of Jane Grant. Back in October, I traveled to the University of Oregon to research Grant’s papers, housed in the archives of the Knight Library.

I started to write a blog post about that experience, which turned into quite a different piece that’s still unfinished but not abandoned. So, after I post my 2023 reading lists in late January, I’ll polish the unfinished piece and get that up, then, in time for Women’s History Month, there will be a couple of articles about these research trips and an update on the status of my book project.

Until then, here’s a link to a post I wrote for Shepherd, a reading recommendation site, about my three favorite novels that I read before October 2023. It’ll give you a sneak peek at what will be in my full list.

https://shepherd.com/bboy/2023/f/theresa-kaminski

And here’s the link to the list of the 2023-2024 recipients of the Short-Term Research Fellowships at the New York Public Library:

https://www.nypl.org/help/about-nypl/fellowships-institutes/short-term-fellowship-recipients

I hope everyone finds joy in 2024!

On This Day in 1941

Posted on December 7, 2023 by Theresa

The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, in less than two hours dropping bombs that killed over 2400 Americans and destroyed a large part of the U.S. fleet in the Pacific. This act of aggression brought the United States into World War II.

(National World War II Museum)

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt gave a brief radio address that day, part of it directed at “the women of the country.” She acknowledged the tough times ahead and encouraged women to take care of themselves, their families, their communities. “Whatever is asked of us,” the First Lady said, “I am sure we can accomplish it.”

Peggy Utinsky probably did not hear Roosevelt’s words, but she did not need them to spur her into action. Peggy, a nurse, had been living in the Philippine Islands since the 1920s and had married Jack Utinsky, an engineer working for the U.S. military there. As tensions escalated between the United States and Japan in 1940 and 1941, Jack worried about the safety of the Philippines, located about 1900 miles from Japan.

Jack tried to send Peggy back to the states earlier in 1941, but she refused to go. While Jack was working to fortify the Bataan peninsula, Peggy rented an apartment in Manila and split her days between working at the Red Cross and a soldiers’ canteen.

The Japanese bombed the Philippines the same day they hit Hawaii–though because of the International Dateline, it was Monday, December 8 in the Philippines. Unlike their attack on Hawaii, this was a prelude to invasion and occupation. Peggy Utinsky didn’t wait until anyone asked anything of her. She kept working. Wounded civilians and military personnel crowded into Manila hospitals and emergency medical facilities. Peggy worked until she couldn’t stand up anymore. Then, nearly sightless in the blacked-out night, she picked her way back to her apartment along bomb-ravaged sidewalks. After a few hours of rest, she headed back to the hospital.

As the Japanese occupied the Philippines in early 1942, Peggy Utinsky undertook the dangerous work of smuggling supplies into the prisoner of war camps in the island of Luzon. She lost much during the war: her husband Jack died as a POW, she sold or bartered away her possessions to raise funds for her underground network, she suffered from physical and psychological ailments in the aftermath of her arrest and torture by the Japanese.

(NARA photo)

I wrote about Peggy and three other remarkable American women in Angels of the Underground, and I still remember them every year on this anniversary.

*Note: This is a revised version of a blog post from December 2016.

Another First for Dr. Mary Walker

Posted on October 3, 2023 by Theresa

On August 25, 2023, with modest fanfare, the U.S. Army’s Fort A.P. Hill, located south of Fredericksburg, Virginia, near the town of Bowling Green, became Fort Walker. Dr. Mary Walker, who served the army as a civilian surgeon during the Civil War, remains the only woman to have received the Medal of Honor. Now she is the only woman to have a military installation named solely in her honor.*

(photo: Fort Walker on Facebook)

But that honor originally belonged to Ambrose Powell Hill, Jr., a native of Culpeper, Virginia. Born in 1825 to a family that held enslaved people, Hill graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1847 and served competently enough to earn a promotion to first lieutenant in 1851.

As politicians in Virginia debated secession following Abraham Lincoln’s presidential victory in 1860, Ambrose Hill resigned his U.S. army commission. He signed on as a colonel with the 13^th Virginia Infantry Regiment when Virginia seceded from the United States. He became a brigadier general in 1862 and was promoted to lieutenant general in 1863. During the battle of Petersburg, a week before the end of the war in 1865, Hill was shot dead by a soldier of the United States army.

(photo: U.S. National Park Service)

A.P. Hill did a lot of things in his military career before and during the Civil War. Several websites provide details of his service, there is a lengthy YouTube documentary that labels him the Confederate Warrior, he appears in numerous books about the war, and he is the subject of at least two published biographies.

But the most important thing to know is that A.P. Hill served the Confederacy. He chose to renounce his allegiance to the United States and to make war on its people. Yet some eighty years later, his name was attached to a U.S. military installation. This was made possible because, as historians such as Karen Cox and Adam Domby have shown, white southerners successfully promoted the myth of the “lost cause”—that their forebears nobly fought the Civil War to protect their homes and families.**

Another eighty years later, in response to waves of racial justice activism, Congress established in 2021 the Commission on the Naming of Items of the Department of Defense that Commemorate the Confederate States of America or Any Person Who Served Voluntarily with the Confederate States of America to oversee the removal of Confederate names from property owned or controlled by the Department of Defense. The Naming Commission solicited recommendations for the nine designated military installations and narrowed the suggestions to ninety names. Several women appeared on the list, but it was dominated by men.

Still, Dr. Mary Walker made the final cut, and it is particularly fitting that an army post in Virginia now bears her name. In 1861, during the first year of the Civil War, Mary Walker, an 1855 graduate of the Syracuse Medical College, shuttered her private medical practice in New York and traveled to Washington, D.C. She failed to convince the secretary of war to commission her as a surgeon in the U.S. army, so she volunteered at the city’s Indiana Hospital, run by Dr. J.N. Green of the 19^th Indiana Volunteers, who recognized her medical credentials and gratefully allowed her to work as a doctor.

Dr. Walker expanded her services into Virginia, tending to General Ambrose Burnside’s Army of the Potomac in the wake of the 1862 fighting at Fredericksburg. She treated men at Gettysburg and Chattanooga in 1863 before receiving a contract as a civilian surgeon for the army.

Confederate soldiers in northern Georgia arrested Mary Walker in 1864. She was posted at the time with the 52^nd Ohio Volunteers at Lee and Gordon’s Mills and had been out in the surrounding countryside tending to sick civilians. The enemy soldiers found her activities suspicious. (Indeed, she was also gathering intelligence.) Dr. Walker spent several months as a prisoner of war in Castle Thunder in Richmond, Virginia, and gained her release through a prisoner swap.

(image: F. Dielman, artist; F. E. Sachse & Company, lithographer)

She went right back to work for the army, accepting an appointment at the Female Military Prison in Louisville, Kentucky. Dr. Walker may have expressed sympathy over her patients’ medical ailments, but she meted out punishment for their disloyal talk about the United States and their insistence on singing Confederate songs. During her final contract weeks at a refugee hospital in Clarksville, Tennessee, in the spring of 1865, Mary Walker caused a scene during Easter Sunday at the Episcopal Trinity Church when she interpreted the color scheme of the minister’s holiday decorations as too Confederate.

A few months after the Civil War ended, guided by the recommendations of the secretary of war and the judge advocate general who lauded her contributions to the army, President Andrew Johnson awarded Dr. Mary Walker the Medal of Honor.

(photo: Library of Congress)

Dr. Walker’s opinion of Confederates did not soften with their defeat. While in Paris attending the 1867 Exposition Universelle—a world’s fair—she was physically ejected from one of the United States exhibition halls. She resented a display of photos of Confederate generals, especially the one of Robert E. Lee. Its caption, she believed, was entirely too flattering. The American organizers ignored Dr. Walker’s complaint, so she tore down the caption card, prompting her swift removal.

It’s not hard to imagine how Mary Walker would have reacted to seeing the U.S. military name some of its installations after traitors of her country. She would have had no truck with “lost cause” sentimentalities. She would have known that those Confederate names did not belong on those establishments. She would have known that her name did.

(photo: see below)

*The former Fort Lee, also in Virginia, was renamed Fort Gregg-Adams, to honor Lieutenant General Arthur Gregg, the first Black man to achieve that rank, and Lieutenant Colonel Charity Adams, the first Black woman officer in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps.

**Anyone interested in the history of the “lost cause” myth and how it has reverberated through history should read Karen Cox, Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture as well as her No Common Ground, Confederate Monuments and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice; and Adam Domby, The False Cause: Fraud, Fabrication, and White Supremacy in Confederate Memory.

Sources:

Army renames Virginia fort after woman who treated Union soldiers during Civil War

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/571130-commission-seeks-public-input-on-replacement-names-for-confederate-named-bases/

Theresa Kaminski

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