Miss Kopp Investigates by Amy Stewart #misskoppinvestigates #amystewart #netgalley

How many women would it take to replace one man’s salary?

Miss Kopp Investigates by Amy Stewart

WWI is over, and the Kopp sisters have plans. Constance has a job opportunity in Washington D.C. Norma misses her dear friend, still in Europe as a nurse, and thinks about returning to join her. Fleurette is recovering from an illness that has left her voice in ruins, so her plans for going back on stage is on hold. But she has arranged for an room rental and an independent life.

Their plans come to a halt with the death of their brother, Francis; his wife Bessie is pregnant with their third child. Norma takes leadership and decides the sisters will sell the farm, buy the house next door to Bessie, and support her family.

The sisters find drudge work, but Fleurette discovers her brother owed money all over town. And, it appears he took out a mortgage on the house and they don’t know where the money went.

In 1919, there were few choices for women on their own. Fleurette accepts work for a lawyer, posing in photographs with men seeking divorces. The pay is good, but it puts her in peril.

In Miss Kopp Investigates, Fleurette get top billing. The girl is grown up and longs to be out from under the control of her elder sisters. She has a flare for disguises, but more than that, she has an inquisitive mind and a good heart. She follows a hunch and unearths a scam and, yes, saves the day! Hooray for Fleurette!

Amy Stewart has gifted her readers another fun historical fiction mystery based on the lives of the real Kopp sisters and their world. I love these characters. And I enjoy how Stewart uses their stories to bring us into the lives of women a hundred years ago.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Miss Kopp Investigates
by Amy Stewart
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/Mariner Books
Pub Date September 7, 2021
ISBN: 9780358093114
paperback $15.99 (USD)

from the publisher

Life after the war takes an unexpected turn for the Kopp sisters, but soon enough, they are putting their unique detective skills to use in new and daring ways.

Winter 1919: Norma is summoned home from France, Constance is called back from Washington, and Fleurette puts her own plans on hold as the sisters rally around their recently widowed sister-in-law and her children. How are four women going to support themselves?

A chance encounter offers Fleurette a solution: clandestine legal work for a former colleague of Constance’s. She becomes a “professional co-respondent,” posing as the “other woman” in divorce cases so that photographs can be entered as evidence to procure a divorce. While her late-night assignments are both exciting and lucrative, they put her on a collision course with her own family, who would never approve of such disreputable work. One client’s suspicious behavior leads Fleurette to uncover a much larger crime, putting her in the unlikely position of amateur detective.

In Miss Kopp Investigates, Amy Stewart once again brilliantly captures the women of this era—their ambitions for the future as well as the ties that bind—at the start of a promising new decade.

#TheAmbassador #JosephPKennedy at the Court of St. James’s by #Susan Ronald #StMartinsPress

When I was a girl, I had a comic book about the life of the newly elected president John F. Kennedy. One frame I always remembered with wonder depicted the Kennedy family at the table, their father at the head. It told that JFK’s father led mealtime discussions on political news and current events.

It was so unlike my experience, I had to marvel at such a father.

Well, over the years I have read biographies of President Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy and Ted Kennedy and learned more about that awesome father. Joseph P. Kennedy (JPK) taught his family core values, like loyalty to family comes first, and winning was everything–and that married men needn’t give up womanizing. His own life demonstrated these values. And, he was determined his son would become president, a revenge against anti-Catholic, anti-Irish prejudice he had encountered.

The Ambassador gave me all the details of how Kennedy used the ambassadorship to Britain to promote his own agenda and to propel his children into society. Kennedy was an isolationist; he didn’t want his sons in war, and he was convinced that another big war would destroy civilization. His primary concern was with economic stability and growth. Since the Nazis had brought economic security to the Germans, he didn’t see fascism as a problem. In fact, he said it was inevitable, even in the US, that capitalism had failed. As an anti-Semite, he was unconcerned about the plight of European Jews under the Nazis.

More than that, I learned that before he wanted his son to be president, Joseph P. Kennedy wanted to be president himself. And that is where his ambassadorship comes into the story. He had supported Franklin Roosevelt’s presidential bid, even self publishing a book about why people should vote for FDR. He expected a high governmental position as a reward. President Franklin D. Roosevelt knew JPK was only concerned about himself and would be a political rival. The ambassadorship was a reward that kept the troublesome JPK out of the states.

JPK was unequal to the task. His arrival in Britain was a media sensation; his defeatism alienated them. He bluntly spoke for himself, and not for the president. He was unable to feel compassion for the victims of Nazi Germany. He left his post for months, and moved into the countryside to avoid the Blitz. FDR couldn’t stand him. JPK blamed everyone else for his failings.

He was always the shrewd hard business man, & still thinks in terms of dollars against the terms of human feelings…Money & material things are of no account, in relation to life. The others can be replaced but not life.

George VI on Joseph P. Kennedy, quoted in The Ambassador by Susan Ronald

The more I read, the more repugnant Kennedy became to me. How could Ronald have spent so much time with him?

It’s a well-rounded portrait, including Kennedy’s alliance with powerful and glamourous women, including Greta Garbo, Claire Booth Luce, and Marlena Dietrich. And the stories of his children’s experience in England is covered, including Kick falling in love and Rosemary finding a safe and loving haven.

Eldest son Joe Jr. was unimaginative and adopted his dad’s beliefs. As Ronald writes, had he become president, just imagine what would have happened when Joe McCarthy went on his anti-communist rampage? Luckily, the curious John F. Kennedy went his own way with his own insights.

And somehow, they all came from Joe Sr. By making a strong family, and providing the wealth to pursue politics, John became president, then Bobbie entered politics, and finally Ted, each son taking up his deceased brother’s mantle, carrying on his tradition and furthering the family’s legacy.

What a complicated, flawed, maddening, and amazing family they were.

I received an ARC from St. Martin’s Press. My review is fair and unbiased.

The Ambassador: Joseph P. Kenney at the Court of St. James’s, 1938-1940
by Susan Ronald
St. Martin’s Press
On Sale: August 3, 2021
ISBN: 9781250238726

from the publisher

Acclaimed biographer Susan Ronald reveals the truth about Joseph P. Kennedy’s deeply controversial tenure as Ambassador to Great Britain on the eve of World War II.

On February 18, 1938, Joseph P. Kennedy was sworn in as US Ambassador to the Court of St. James. To say his appointment to the most prestigious and strategic diplomatic post in the world shocked the Establishment was an understatement: known for his profound Irish roots and staunch Catholicism, not to mention his “plain-spoken” opinions and womanizing, he was a curious choice as Europe hurtled toward war.

Initially welcomed by the British, in less than two short years Kennedy was loathed by the White House, the State Department and the British Government. Believing firmly that Fascism was the inevitable wave of the future, he consistently misrepresented official US foreign policy internationally as well as direct instructions from FDR himself. The Americans were the first to disown him and the British and the Nazis used Kennedy to their own ends.

Through meticulous research and many newly available sources, Ronald confirms in impressive detail what has long been believed by many: that Kennedy was a Fascist sympathizer and an anti-Semite whose only loyalty was to his family’s advancement. She also reveals the ambitions of the Kennedy dynasty during this period abroad, as they sought to enter the world of high society London and establish themselves as America’s first family. Thorough and utterly readable, The Ambassador explores a darker side of the Kennedy patriarch in an account sure to generate attention and controversy.

#TodayaWomanWentMadintheSupermarket by #HilmaWolitzer

How have I gotten through life without having heard of Hilma Wolitzer? The stories in Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket are so delicious! I laughed even when I guiltily recognized the truthful honesty behind these stories which first appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, and literary magazines in the 1960s and 1970s.

When I found the title story online, shared by The Saturday Evening Post on their website and first published in the magazine in 1966, I knew I had to read more. A woman has a nervous breakdown in the grocery store, her son clinging to her skirts, her purse empty, while the pregnant narrator tries to help her. “You can’t mother the whole world,” her husband consoles his sorrowing wife. Oh, how many times have we seen a crisis and felt powerless? But where better to lose it than food shopping? Woman carry so much, especially in 1966, the family needing to be feed and the house cleaned and the dog walked and so on and so on. It’s enough to crush any woman’s spirit. The relentless need and the never ending futility of it all.

The story of Paulette and Howard is told through the stories: their shotgun wedding, the struggles of marriage, depression and anxiety, in-laws and kids, and finally, old age in the pandemic and the losses it inflicts.

I found myself glancing over to see if Howard was still alive, holding my breath while I watched for the shallow rise and fall of his, the way I had once watched for a promising rise in the bedclothes.

~Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket by Hilma Wolitizer

The last story, The Great Escape, opens with Paulie watching Howard sleeping, reminiscing of the days when she would wake him up for a quickie before the kids woke up. Now, she checks to see if he is still breathing. It is hilarious and heartbreaking all at once.

She captures the routine of old age, their days reduced to the same endless routine, “as if it would all go one forever in that exquisitely boring and beautiful way.”

The kids order them to stock up on toilet paper and hand sanitizer and to fill the freezer, the book club switched to Zoom meetings (as did the bar mitzvah), hair cuts are skipped, and masks and gloves became a part of their wardrobe.

It is like the story of my 2020 life, down to the Zoomed bar mitzvah attendance!

In the Foreword by Elizabeth Strout (Olive Kitteridge, My Name is Lucy Barton), she writes that Wolitzer “is largehearted in her work, judging no none.” And I loved that about these stories. Like Strout’s characters, Wolitzer writes about ordinary people, with great honesty and sympathy and insight. I loved these women and I loved these stories. Wolitzer’s brilliant writing is not to be missed.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket: Stories
by Hilma Wolitzer
Bloomsbury USA
Pub Date August 31, 2021
ISBN: 9781635577624
hardcover $26.00 (USD)

from the publisher

The uncannily relevant, deliciously clear-eyed collected stories of a critically acclaimed, award-winning “American literary treasure” (Boston Globe), ripe for rediscovery–with a foreword by Elizabeth Strout.

From her many well-loved novels, Hilma Wolitzer–now 90 years old and at the top of her game–has gained a reputation as one of our best fiction writers, who “raises ordinary people and everyday occurrences to a new height.” (Washington Post) These collected short stories–most of them originally published in magazines including Esquire and The Saturday Evening Post in the 1960s and 1970s, along with a new story that brings her early characters into the present–are evocative of an era that still resonates deeply today.

In the title story, a bystander tries to soothe a woman who seems to have cracked under the pressures of motherhood. And in several linked stories throughout, the relationship between the narrator and her husband unfolds in telling and often hilarious vignettes. Of their time and yet timeless, Wolitzer’s stories zero in on the domestic sphere and ordinary life with wit, candor, grace, and an acutely observant eye. Brilliantly capturing the tensions and contradictions of daily life, Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket is full of heart and insight, providing a lens into a world that was often unseen at the time, and often overlooked now–reintroducing a beloved writer to be embraced by a whole new generation of readers.

#Books #TBR #Bookmail

I have not done any real quiltmaking but my hand and wrist are healing nicely and I hope to do some more handwork soon even if limiting how long I sew. I do need to get on the ball and layer my Michigan Lighthouse quilt for machine quilting.

But books have been coming in.

I bought two books. The Cape Doctor by E. J. Levy, which I reviewed as a galley and wanted on my shelf. And a book I did not get as a galley, Appleseed by Matt Bell, which sounds pretty amazing.

New on my NetGalley Shelf are:

• How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu, which is compared to Cloud Atlas and Station Eleven, so it has my interest!
• Groundskeeping by Lee Cole, which the publisher offered me based on my review of Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
• The Last House on the Street by Diane Chamberlain, whose novel Big Lies in a Small Town I read
• Making Darkness Light: A Life of John Milton by Joe Moshenka; I had an honors course on Milton at Temple

Book mail includes

• City of Incurable Women from Bellevue Literary Press
• How it Happens by Jean Alicia Elster, an ARC sent me from Wayne State Press. I meet Jean at a book and author’s event in town some years ago and have read her children’s books Who’s Jim Hines and The Colored Car. This new book is a fictionalized story of her family.
• The Last Diving Horse in America by Cynthia A. Branigan, sent by the publisher

It has been hot and dry. The apples are growing big. The smaller birds have left the yard; we have seen a hawk around. But the Grackel have flocked to the bird bath. And this week a pair of Turkey Vulture found something to dine on two doors down the street.

I saw a lovely black swallowtail on the zinnia and later a hummingbird came!

Its hard to believe that August is nearly over. Can I face another winter in pandemic isolation? Will we have to?I know several couples how had hoped to take a vacation but wonder if it will happen. Now that the covid vaccines are being approved, will more people get vaccinated? Will the children be safe in school? Life is unpredictable right now.

Stay safe.

Find your bliss.