A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812

How will historians learn about 'ordinary' life in 2010?  Much of what we know about daily life in earlier eras comes from letters and diaries.  We may write more e-mails than our great-grandparents wrote letters and perhaps there are more current bloggers than historical diarists, but will they be useful to 23rd Century historians?  Will my hotmail account be readable in 2150, and will anyone be able to sift through the spam and bacon and forwarded jokes to draw an accurate picture of my life?

Martha Ballard kept a diary, and from that we learn a lot more about Federalist New England than merely the business of birth.  An 18th Century midwife was part nurse, part doctor, part herbalist, and part mortician, responsible for preparing bodies for burial.  Additionally, during the peak years of Martha's career she and her teen aged daughters and niece wove lengths of fabric, supplementing her husband's income from surveying and their son's income as a miller.  We think of the 18th Century as a time when men earned income and women stayed home, but the hearth was vitally important to a family's economic survival.  The shillings Martha earned from delivering babies and the produce and meat given in exchange for fabric and nursing were vital to the family's economic survival, and when Martha's business declined due to her age and ill-health, her family encountered financial hardships including her husband's imprisonment for debt. 

Martha's diary also pokes a hole in the image of insular, self-sufficient, repressed, peaceful Puritans.  Hallowell, ME was a tight community as a matter of necessity, and young adults often spent a few months or years living in the home of a relative or family friend, and her diary contains several entries mentioning overnight guests.  38% of first children were conceived out of wedlock, and a midwife's job included questioning a laboring mother (under the assumption that the pain would act as a sort of truth serum).  We also learn of ordinary squabbles between neighbors over property and more serious conflicts over religion and politics.  Most shockingly, Martha's diary includes a mass murder - one of her neighbors killed his wife and five of his six children before killing himself.  

Future historians may have to deal with information overload when they try to reconstruct our society; we're lucky that diaries like Martha's somehow survived.  Her daughter Dolly Lambard apparently kept the diary, passing it to her daughters upon her 1861 death.  23 years later, Dolly's great-granddaughter Mary Hobart received the diary from her great-aunts upon her graduation from medical school, later explaining that "as the writer was a practicing physician, it seemed only fitting that the Ballard diary, so crowded with medical interest, should descend to her."  Who knows what would have happened to the roughly-bound volumes if the author's great-great-granddaughter had not become one of the first women licensed as a physician in Massachusetts and donated it to the Maine State Library.

Arabella: England's Lost Queen

I've read several Tudor/Stuart biographies, but I don't think I'd heard of Arabella Stuart until I wandered the aisles at Daedalus and picked up Sarah Gristwood's biography of her.   Arabella was the great-granddaughter of Margaret Tudor and the daughter of Lord Darnley's younger brother, making her Elizabeth I's first cousin twice removed and niece-by-marriage to Mary Queen of Scots.  (Royal family trees tended not to branch...)  Arabella spent most of her life as the centerpiece of various Catholic and Protestant plots to make her Elizabeth's successor and living in the shadow of her formidable grandmother, Bess of Hardwick.  Her one act of independence, an attempted escape from virtual house arrest to marry for love ended with her imprisonment in the Tower of London because her lover was William Seymour, great-grandson of Mary Tudor, grand-nephew of Lady Jane Grey, and an equally strong candidate for the throne.

Arabella's life was rather dull and spent mostly in the seclusion of semi-arrest, but Gristwood's book is not.  Like Alison Weir and Antonia Frasier, her crisp prose clarifies the convoluted political machinations of the era and enlivens passages of dry diplomatic history.  Arabella herself doesn't come across as particularly sparkling character.  It's as if the Tudor brilliance diluted over the generations and left each successive woman with a claim to the throne as a slightly blurrier copy.  Elizabeth I was a brilliant woman with an incredible education, Mary Stuart was bright and educated to be a Queen Consort.  Their younger kinswoman Arabella comes across as bright but nothing special, indifferently educated, and somewhat stunted by her enforced seclusion.  She would have made a mediocre monarch at best, but Gristwood's biography is an enjoyable and enlightening read.

A Friar's Bloodfeud

I'm not sure what to do about Michael Jecks.  His last few books have been disappointing, but I've got 7 unread installments in his Sir Baldwin de Funshill and Simon Puttock series sitting on my shelf, most of which I bought from amazon.co.uk with the exchange rate and international shipping fees you'd expect.  Maybe Jecks needs to slow down a bit (he releases a book every 9 or 10 months, where most authors wait a year or so between books), because the last two books I've read have felt rushed, with poorly integrated subplots.

Yes, it's still the Year of the Subplot in my personal library, and Jecks's editor should have removed the 40 pages or so devoted to Lady Jeanne's maid.  If Emma had been mentioned in earlier books, it was only in passing, and her only role here is to exasperate Baldwin.  

The main plot is a little tighter.  Two years before the novel opens, Simon's servant Hugh had married a young woman who'd been released from her vows as a nun.  Their hut is attacked and burned, apparently killing Hugh and his wife and son.  Baldwin and Simon travel to investigate the crime, and find that a wealthy young widow has been killed as well.  Both crimes turn out to be part of a property dispute which Baldwin and Simon solve while Baldwin's servant Edgar helps insure that justice is served.

I enjoyed A Friar's Bloodfeud more than I enjoyed The Butcher of St. Peter's, because the main plot was clearer and more engrossing and the characters better fleshed out.  Maybe Jecks is pulling out of his slump.  I hope so because I like Baldwin and Simon and wish Jecks would return to giving them stories worthy of their characters.

And Only to Deceive

I've been looking at Tasha Alexander's books for the past few years - she's shelved near Stephanie Barron - and they looked interesting.  They're also published in 'quality paperback' format, and I'm cheap, so I decided to pass until I found a used copy at The Book Corner.  It was a worthwhile investment, and I'll probably pick up the next books in the series the next time I'm in Borders.

Well-born widows had more freedom than most women in late Victorian England, so Emily Ashton almost felt lucky when her husband, Vicount Phillip Ashton, died while on safari a few months after they married.  As long as she followed the strict mourning rules of the era by withdrawing from society and wearing black, she (and not her husband or father) had control over her life and her property.  18 months after Philip's death, his best friend Colin Hargraves visits Emily and begins to tell her about Philip's interest in Greek and Roman antiquities.  Her interest piqued, Emily begins to study ancient art and, eventually Greek - studies which lead her to wonder if her husband was involved in art forgery.

Emily barely knew Philip when he died, but (against the advice of her friend Cecile, a Parisian grand dame) she's fallen in love with him through reading his journals.  This is how Alexander sets up the mystery, because if Emily didn't love Philip, she'd have no motivation to clear his name.  With the help of her Bryn Mawr-educated friend Margaret, Emily discovers the extent of the forgery scheme and aided by Cecile and her society friends, brings the forger to justice.

I feel like I've left a lot out of this review, but I don't want to give away the delicately balanced plot.  Alexander doesn't rely on coincidence, but she ties together the disparate threads of the plot in such a way that revealing almost any detail risks spoilers.  Perhaps the only plot point I can safely reveal is Renoir's presence as part of Cecile's circle of friends.  I'd seen an exhibit on Renoir's later period a few weeks before I read And Only to Deceive and was struck by how clearly Renoir loved women and everything about women.  Alexander must have seen the same thing because she portrays the artist as a man who appreciates the beauty of all women, and passionately loves his wife.  Reading the passages set in his studio felt like stepping into one of the paintings I'd seen at the PMA.

The Three Pound Enigma

Science books can be a crapshoot.  Sometimes, the prose is crisp and clear, and the author's complete grasp of the topic is even clearer.  Other times, the author is intimately familiar with the topic, but less so with sentence structure and pacing.  When I read the jacket to The Three Pound Enigma and discovered that Shannon Moffett was a medical student when her book was published, I was afraid I'd stumbled onto the latter.

I couldn't have been more wrong.  Dr. Moffett is a brilliant writer, and smart enough to start out her book with a profile of Dr. Roberta Glick, a professor of neurosurgery and nothing short of a force of nature.  She's one of the first women to make her name in neurosurgery and as an established expert in the field, mixes her technical skill and knowledge with a sense of spirituality and a fascinating personality.  This is the chapter in which Moffett lays the basic, physiological groundwork for her book and without Dr. Glick, she wouldn't have had the same hook.

Moffett explores both the "how" and the "what" of the brain - the mechanics of neuroimaging and what it tells us about how we thinks; the roots of multiple personalities and the effect on the patient; the mechanics and the ethics of neuromarketing.  Even the potentially dry chapters, like the one discussing the intersection of science and philosophy, were crisp and enjoyable.  The Three Pound Enigma belongs to the upper echelon of science books - equally enjoyable to the layman and the scientist.

The Chameleon's Shadow

The protagonist can't be the killer, can he?  The author can make it look like the protagonist is the killer, but when you get to the last page, it's someone else, right?  Especially with an author like Minette Walters who somehow manages to find a happy ending to particularly dark thrillers.

The Chameleon's Shadow opens with a tank driving over an IED in Iraq, killing two enlisted men and leaving their lieutenant, Charles Acland, clinging to life with severe burns and head injuries.  As Charles recovers, we suspect that his physical injuries are not the only cause of his psychological problems.  He exhibits remarkable self-control but rages at women - especially his mother and ex-fiancee - and his problems worsen after he is discharged from inpatient care.  Severe, frequent migraines and the loss of his left eye have left him unfit for military duty and he spends his days living ascetically and running as if training for an ultra-marathon.  While Charles is running through London with nothing but his rage to accompany him, the police are investigating a series of murders of gay and bisexual men.  With his blackouts and rage, Charles is a natural suspect, but is he the killer?

Walters leaves us guessing.  She relies on coincidence once - when Charles attracts the attention of the police by attacking a Pakistani man in a pub which happens to be owned by the partner of a doctor who acts as a locum for the neighborhood.  Jackson treats him during the migraine that occurs shortly after the fight, and he tells her more in 15 minutes than he told his assigned therapists in months.  A few days later, the two women take him in and he and Jackson edge towards the solution to the murders as the police approach the same conclusion from another angle.  Justice is served, and while The Chameleon's Shadow doesn't end with Walters' traditional happy ending, it's open-ended enough for the reader to believe that Lt. Acland will find some peace.

As I read The Chameleon's Shadow, I was struck by the contrast between Lt. Charles Acland and Capt. Nancy Smith, the heroine of Fox Evil.  Both are army officers from farming families, but Lt. Acland apparently entered the army to escape the failing farm while Capt. Smith looks forward to being the fourth generation to work the same successful concern.  Capt. Smith's mother used her experience as a gardener on a large estate to add a successful nursery to her husband's business; Lt. Acland's mother believes herself to be a 'lady of leisure.'  Capt. Smith is an engineer, and you get the feeling she entered the army as a way to do some good before joining her father in the family business; Lt. Acland seems to have joined the infantry to escape.  The two officers have very different military experiences, but I was fascinated by the contrast between the two characters' personalities.  Walters wrote the two books about five years apart (with three novels between them), and I wonder whether the contrast was intentional.  

The Beauty of the Beastly

I usually read and enjoy Natalie Angier's columns in the NY Times, and I think that may have affected my enjoyment of The Beauty of the Beastly.  It's a compilation of (mostly) re-worked newspaper columns and as a result, nothing felt fresh.  Angier has a crisp, readable prose style, and I enjoyed learning tidbits about snake venom and cheetahs, but as a whole, the book felt slightly disposable.  Perhaps it would be more enjoyable as a time filler - an 'emergency book' left in a car so that one could randomly pick an essay to read while waiting for someone or something - than as a cover-to-cover read.  Maybe the problem was in the editing.  Either way, a few weeks after finishing the book, I remember more about reading it (standing on the platform at Suburban Station waiting for a train that came 25 minutes late, carrying it into a movie theater in case I arrived before the friends I was meeting) than its actual contents.  I enjoyed it, but (unusually for me) retained almost nothing.

Blindman's Bluff

There's something nostalgic about Blindman's Bluff.  It's Faye Kellerman's 18th Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus Decker novel, and it finally struck me that it's been more than 15 years since I picked up The Ritual Bath while on a layover in Pittsburgh, devoured it, and quickly read the three other books available at that point.  

Back then, Rina was a 20-something widow with two small boys; Peter was a police detective in his late 30s, divorced with a teenage daughter.  We've seen them age in approximately real time, marry, and have a daughter who's now sixteen.  Rina's sons are nearly grown, one in college and the other engaged to a fellow med student, and Peter's daughter is married and after nearly a decade as a police officer has been promoted to detective.  Peter's colleagues are aging too, and the book has a bit of a 'changing of the guard' feel.   I suspect that Peter will retire around book 20, and Detective Cindy Decker Kutiel will follow her father's footsteps into homicide.

That's in the future - in the present, we have the particularly brutal murders of a real estate developer, his wife, and a member of their household staff and the serious wounding of one of their sons.  While Peter deals with department brass and press attention, Rina is serving on a criminal jury.  During a break, one of the court translators (the blind man of the title) asks her to describe two men he's eavesdropping on.  It's a bit too coincidental that they're discussing Peter's case, but Kellerman manages to prevent this from sinking the plot.   She does this by both traditional methods (multiple suspects with multiple motives) and by making the translator seem a little creepy, and maybe a little too interested in Rina.  

Blindman's Bluff is an average entry in the Decker/Lazarus series.  That's actually a complement, because I've enjoyed every one I've read to date.  Peter (with the help of his former partner Marge Dunn and her partner Scott Oliver) solves the case through a combination of plodding and luck, and using only clues which the reader sees.  Maybe Kellerman could have mentioned age a bit less, and I would have liked a phone call from one or both of Rina's sons during the family scenes.  Still, it's an enjoyable, well-paced novel which left me ready for book #19.

Sizzling Sixteen

Stephanie Plum considers herself lucky - she has a job which doesn't require pantyhose, an off-and-on relationship with Joe Morelli, and something inexplicable with Carlos "Ranger" Manoso.  And, thanks to her Uncle Pip, she has a lucky bottle - it's red and looks like a handblown beer bottle, and at least Uncle Pip didn't leave her his false teeth.  Grandma Mazur got those, of course.

Steph isn't feeling very lucky, despite the bottle, as Sizzling Sixteen starts.  Her cousin/boss Vinnie has been kidnapped, and since Vinnie's father-in-law Harry the Hammer has sold the bail bonds business to venture capitalists, if they don't find Vinnie, Steph, Lula, and Connie will all be unemployed.   This isn't one of Evanovich's more tightly plotted books, but it's fun.  There's the usual minor FTA (in this case an octogenarian polygamist), a crazy Lula diet (thankfully dropped by the middle of the book), Car Death, an encounter with Ranger, and an argument with Joe (over peanut butter) which leads to Steph doing the unthinkable and actually having groceries in her fridge.  All this (and cameos by Joyce Barnhardt and Moon Man Dunphy - who's running Trenton's largest HobbitCon out of a decrepit RV) floats around Steph, Lula, and Connie rescuing Vinnie (in his underwear), losing him again, and using illicit means and a garage sale (seriously) to free him again.  I'm not sure, really, how to review any books in this series, but how can you not love a book that includes Connie's talent for stink bombs and hundreds of Hobbits storming a mobster's mansion?