Wonderland Creek

Finished June 16

Wonderland Creek by Lynn Austin

This historical novel is set in 1936. Alice Ripley lives with her parents in a suburb of Chicago. Her father is a pastor and while Alice trained as a teacher, she wasn't good at classroom discipline and went into work at her local public library instead. 

As the book begins, Alice's fiancé breaks up with her, which she has a hard time accepting although she honestly doesn't have strong feelings for him. She also loses her job due to funding. When her aunt and uncle take a road trip to a resort, she gets them to drop her and hundreds of books that she collected for a rural library in Kentucky off at that library, arranging for them to pick her up again a week later. But she finds a situation quite different than she expected. The librarian is a man, which she didn't expect since she'd been corresponding with him and assumed the name Leslie was a female one. There isn't room for her to stay anywhere in the small village without putting someone else out of a bed, and Leslie (known as Mack to his friends) is also looking after the dying black woman who raised him.

When Leslie gets shot and badly wounded, Alice finds herself stepping into his shoes as she manages the household, the library, and even takes on duties as one of the Packhorse Librarians working out of the small library. 

I liked how Alice grew from her experiences, but also had an influence on the community through her love of reading and her dedication to literacy. She overcame many of her prejudices and fears and found real relationships among the hill people as she learned about their struggles, include the union movement, the local feud, and secrets kept close. 

Nothing Left to Mend

Finished April 16
Nothing Left to Mend by Matt R. Weaver

This rural noir novel features Glenn Dempster, the new police chief of a mill town, Verton, Pennsylvania. The union has been locked out of the mill for months, with increasing violence between the substitute workers and the desperate union men. Glenn is respected by him men, but not liked, and he only just barely won the vote against one of his own men for chief, but taking on the corruption of the previous chief as an issue. His marriage is in difficulty, and as the book opens, he is living in a small apartment in an extremely ill-kept building. His wife is using their young daughter, Heather as a pawn between them and Heather is just trying to keep her head down, both at home, and at school where she stands alone, with her father hated by both union blue collar and the white collar workers. Glenn's wife's father is the mayor and he has no love for Glenn, with his actions causing many of the issues in Glenn's marriage.
There is a lot of small town stuff going on here, with everyone putting their nose in everyone else's business and one café a no-man's ground for workers to eat and meet.
As the factory owners finally allow the union back to work, an explosion in the blast furnace reignites the issues between the sides, and has Glenn's team trying to find out what lies behind some of the actions.
Glenn is a loner, a local boy that just wants to do right and earn a living. He's smart but not always lucky, and he begins to wonder if he really has a future in this town.
I quite enjoyed this book and liked how the characters evolved over the course of the book, including young Heather.

C.O.W.L Volume 1 Principles of Power

Finished May 4
C.O.W.L. Volume 1 Principles of Power by Kyle Higgins and Alec Siegel, art by Rod Reis

This is the first volume in a series of graphic novels based around C.O.W.L., the Chicago Organized Workers League, the world's first superhero labor union.
The year is 1962, and as the novel begins the last of the "Six", the biggest group of villains with superpowers is defeated. The city believes this is an opportunity to decrease funding, and the public is disillusioned by the behaviour of some of the group.
As we see inside, we realize that the leadership isn't as dedicated to good as its public persona says, and there is unrest within the ranks. These are humans, despite their superpowers and they have feelings, they make bad decisions, and they don't like being dumped on.
Not all the group is likeable, and there is definitely some questionable behaviour. It will be interesting to see what the subsequent volumes bring in terms of plot.

Tragic

Finished February 10
Tragic by Robert K. Tanenbaum

This thriller takes place around New York City. There is trouble within a longshoreman's union, with the recent death of the long term leader resulting in a divisive election of a new union leader. There are some suspicions of the legitimacy of the union elections, and the new union leader is worried about his role and about the financial fraud he is hiding.
When three young men become involved in a hit on the challenger, the impact on many lives stretches wider.
This book is one in the series featuring D.A. Butch Karp and his wife Marlene Ciampi. While Karp is on the case of the murder, Marlene's involvement in a local women's shelter leads her to the girlfriend of one of the suspects, and a possible break in the case. Karp's family link to a powerful criminal gang also comes in handy when looking for motives and suspects.
A theme running through this novel is that of guilty minds and the aftereffects of murder on the psyches of those involved. This is laid out through references to the Shakespeare play Macbeth. A gripping, action-filled plot that I read in one sitting.

Historical Fiction audiobook

Finished January 2
The Given Day by Dennis Lehane, performed by Michael Boatman
I've been listening to this for a while on my commute (it is 20 CDs!) and enjoying it thoroughly. It is definitely an emotiona read, causing me to feel sadness and rage at various points in the book. The novel follows a couple of characters with depth, with additional appearances by Babe Ruth throughout. The action takes place in 1918 and 1919, mostly in Boston, but also in Ohio and Tulsa, Oklahoma. One of the main characters is Danny Coughlin, a beat cop in Boston. Danny's father is a captain in the police force who has ambitions for Danny. Danny has always thought for himself, and becomes involved in the newly formed police union. Danny also becomes involved in an investigation into radical movements, including both unions and anarchists. Danny finds it difficult to conform to the opinions of his elders when he listens to the issues of the people he works and lives with.
Luther Laurence is a black man from Ohio. He moves to Tulsa with his girlfriend, who soon becomes his wife and makes some bad choices. Fleeing from Tulsa after a confrontation with a crime boss there, Luther ends up in Boston, working for the Coughlin family. Danny befriends him and Luther also form a friendship with the Coughlin's other servant Nora. Even in Boston, however, Luther cannot escape his past and he must deal with new dangers as well as work out how to make his way back to Tulsa, where his wife awaits their first child.
This novel is an epic one, covering events from the great flu epidemic, to the molasses flood, to the terrorist threat and labour unrest in Boston. One gets a great sense of the issues of the day and the feelings of the characters when faced with them. Throughout the book, the main characters keep their hope, despite all that befalls them, and it is that hope that really brings out the emotions I felt.
This is a wonderful book, and one that touches on current issues as well as those in the past.