Denver Noir

 Cynthia Swanson, Editor

Akashic     2022

264 pages     Noir

Denver Noir is this spring’s offering from Akashic Books and their marvelous Noir series. There are over 100 books in this series, each one set in a major city in the world, each one featuring a local set of authors, and each one with a different take on the concept of noir. The Oprah Magazine says, “Each volume in the series reveals a city’s distinctive inner darkness.”

One of the fascinating aspects of Denver Noir is the diversity of the story authors and the diversity of the characters—as diverse as the city itself. The noir-ness (is that a word?) is also very diverse. There is a Native attorney and a female private investigator. There are crime-ridden streets and wealthy neighborhoods. There is beautiful scenery and scrubby apartments above taquerias. There is history and there is gentrification. My favorite story was “On Grasmere Lake” by Mathangi Subramanian, about a young woman college student and an unsolved murder.

The editor, Cynthia Swanson gives a remarkably good introduction, and says that working with these authors has been one of the highlights of her career. Although all of the story authors have all been published beyond Denver Noir, this book was my introduction to their talent.

 This is a great collection of stories, and Swanson has done an excellent job introducing Noir readers to the neighborhoods of Denver, a city I visited many years ago. It is a fun, diverse, and immersive read.

A Crazy, Holy Grace: The Healing Power of Pain and Memory

 By Frederick Buechner

Zondervan     2017

141 pages     Spiritual

I can’t imagine my writing a book blog without including something by the master of spiritual writing, Frederick Buechner.

Buechner is now 96 years old, and has written in his lifetime more than 30 books, fiction, theological, and spiritual. This is not the first of his books that I have read, but apparently the first that I have written about. We are discussing it in my spiritual growth book group next Tuesday.

A Crazy, Holy Grace is a compendium of Buechner’s writings on pain and loss. He discusses “the power of hidden secrets, loss of a dearly beloved, letting go, resurrection from the ruins, peace, and listening to the quiet voice of God. And he reveals that pain and sorrow can be a treasure—an amazing grace. Buechner says that loss will come to all of us, but he writes that we are not alone. Crazy and unreal as it may sometimes seem, God’s holy, healing grace is always present and available if we are still enough to receive it.”

I came to Buechner’s book following a very bad week.. My friend’s 40-year-old daughter had died of cancer. She had a two-year-old son, and her death brought back for me all the pain I had suffered many years ago when my 41-year-old husband died, leaving me with a two-year-old, as well as two older children. That sort of pain never leaves a person, and Buechner speaks to that type of pain as he describes the suicide of his father and the resultant anxiety all these many years later.

I just kept underlining passages that meant a lot to me personally. An example. “If God started stepping in and setting things right, what happens to us? We cease to be human beings. We cease to be free.” He goes on: “But I sensed the passionate restraint in the silence of God, which was both silent and yet eloquent.” He closes the chapter: “Joy is the end of it. Through the gates of pain we enter into joy.”

I especially appreciated the final chapter: Reflections on Secrets, Grace, and the Way God Speaks. I like how Buechner is liberal in the way he speaks of God. A non-believer in the word “God” can find as much to appreciate in this final chapter, as the passionate evangelical. In this chapter, he speaks of death, suicide, funerals, and each person’s sacred journey. “In other words, all our stories are in the end one story, one vast story about being human, being together, being here.”

A Crazy, Holy Grace meant a lot to me because I had a lot of anxiety that needed calming. His words can have a powerful impact on hearts in need of grace and peace.

The Wedding Veil

 By Kristy Woodson Harvey

Gallery     2022

412 pages      Historical Fiction

When I was offered a copy of The Wedding Veil by Kristy Woodson Harvey, I grabbed it immediately because the lead-up book information indicated that the book was about a family heirloom made of Belgian lace. My family has an heirloom Belgian lace wedding veil that is a family treasure, and I wanted to read about another family’s veil. Of course, our family veil never resided in the Biltmore Mansion in Ashville NC, but it is treasured none the less.

The Wedding Veil follows four women who all have a connection to a Belgian Lace veil. Two are connected to The Biltmore Mansion as members of the Vanderbilt family, and two who inherited a wedding veil  that appeared in the family under mysterious circumstances.

Edith Vanderbilt was the widow of George Vanderbilt who built the Biltmore Mansion between 1889 and 1895. After he died, Edith struggled to maintain the grounds and the community the couple developed until her daughter Cornelia Vanderbilt turned 25 and inherited the property. Cornelia was a socialite and a free spirit, who ran away from her marriage to John Cecil, never to return to the estate. (By the way, the mansion and estate remain the property of the family all these years later.) When she left, she dyed her hair pink and traveled off with her most prized possession, the Belgian wedding veil. The wedding veil then completely disappeared from the family. That’s one story.

The other story happens in the present day and concerns  an elderly woman named Babs and her granddaughter Julia. Julia ran away from her wedding, tore off the family wedding veil and escaped to the Virgin Islands, where the couple was supposed to spend their honeymoon. Her greatest supporter is her grandma Babs, who encouraged her to give up on a marriage that was destined to be a failure. Upon her return, Julia and Babs visit the Vanderbilt mansion and view an exhibition that includes a reproduction of Cornelia Vanderbilt's wedding veil. Shocked at how similar the Vanderbilt veil is to her family’s veil, Julia begins to research her family’s veil and finds that it may be the missing Vanderbilt veil.

Of course there is romance in the book--stories of enduring love and stories of failed love. This is not the kind of book that I usually read, but this one intrigued me because of the wedding veil. Harvey is a good storyteller, and the book moves along, even though there is a great deal of historical information about the Biltmore mansion. It is easy to see how the author’s curiosity was piqued by a visit to the mansion, but it is her creativity that translates the history into a delightful novel. The reviewer from the NY Journal of Books suggests that “In the end, the message is that no matter how ‘fairy-tale perfect’ our lives may appear on the surface, nothing is ever as flawless as it may seem. And that living fearlessly is always the best bet.”

Below you will find a picture of my great aunt Helma who brought our veil into the family following a trip to Bruges Belgium. Below it is a picture of Cornelia Vanderbilt in her veil.. Helma wore the veil for her wedding in 1930, and it has since been worn by ten family members. What a heritage!