Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League

by Jonathan Odell

Maiden Lane Press    2015

442 pages     Fiction

This weekend marks the 50th anniversary of the march from Selma to Montgomery. I have many memories of that day, mostly because I wasn't there. Many of my Morningside College friends went to the march on a bus and came back filled with great fervor for the Civil Rights movement. I couldn't go because I had to work but more because I didn't have any money. I remember calling my parents and crying on the phone because of the decision I had made not to go. They, of course, were probably relieved, although they spoke to me with pride about my dedication to equal rights.

The book Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League by Jonathan Odell is a novel whose time has come.  It was originally published as The View from Delphi several years ago, but the author decided to take another look at his manuscript and change the focus a bit. It was published last month by my friend Marly Rusoff at Maiden Lane Press. The reimaging is gaining great favor and marvelous reviews.

Miss Hazel is a young wife in the small town of Delphi, Mississippi. Totally out of her element in this uppity community, she turns to alcohol and a fast car to try to assuage her lack of self worth as a wife of the local car dealer and the mother of two young boys. When one of her sons dies, she descends into a hell of despondency and has to be treated at a mental hospital.

Vida, a young black woman, lives down in the bottoms with her father Levi, who is a preacher. She is living her own hell because her little boy, Nate, has been torn away from her. She becomes Miss Hazel's caretaker when Hazel returns from the mental hospital. She also takes care of little Johnny, Miss Hazel's living son, who is trying to make sense of what has happened to his brother and what is happening to his mother.

Vida doesn't really want the job with this despondent mother and depressed little boy, but she has very little choice in the matter. She needs the job to take care of her father. Meanwhile, her father is looking for a cause. The Civil Rights movement is in its infancy. The black community is hearing tales about "Rosie" Parks and Dr. King, and voting rights. Levi keeps praying to God to "send me a righteous story to live out."  Finally, Levi decides to try to register to vote and is thrown into jail. The black maids in Delphi plot ways to get Levi out of jail and to register to vote themselves. Gradually Vida and Hazel reach an equanimity, and Hazel finds a new self worth by helping the women in their quest to vote and as they form the "Rosa Parks League."  In one telling exchange, Hazel says to Vida: "Vida, you wrong. I do care how you die." Vida responds, "But do you care how I live?. . .Being my friend and all like you claim, you got to want me to live my life free and equal."

This is the bare bones of a plot that is very deep, very intense, and frankly, not too easy to read. For a long time, I could only relate to little Johnny and preacher Levi. I never did like Hazel or Vida. But that doesn't matter. Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League is a powerful depiction of a time in our history that those of us born and raised in the North could only partially understand. My friends who went to Selma to march 50 years ago this weekend came home knowing that they were part of something important, but they marched and came back to their northern lives. They were not trying to live their lives in the middle of a place that was beginning to lose its identity, like the people in Odell's story.

The reviewer for the Book Reporter says that when Odell tells his story for the second time, he gets at a truth that is "both uncomfortable and freeing."  Odell says "When we allow the truth of another's story to enter our lives, we are transformed."

The review in Book Reporter.

Jonathan Odell's video about his views on race in America.

The Gluten Free Revolution

By Jax Peters Lowell

Henry Holt     2015

632 pages     Healthy Living

The Shortlist

The Gluten Free Revolution has everything—and I do mean everything—you need to know about building a gluten-free life for you and for your family. Lowell says, "Fifteen million Americans follow a gluten-free diet, of which three million, myself included, are gluten-intolerant with documented celiac disease." She goes on to say that there is a $4.2 billion market for gluten free, and it is expected to swell to $6 billion by 2017. 

The Gluten Free Revolution includes rules to follow as you are creating a gluten-free life, recipes to try, and ways to create gluten-free families. One of the most valuable parts of the books are the lists of places to find gluten-free foods, lists of brands that are truly gluten free, and lists of gluten-free restaurants. A whole section has been devoted to gluten-free travel and gluten-free cooking schools. I was especially interested in the section on gluten-free baby food. Another section deals with doctors, medical tests, and benefits for some types of chronic illnesses. Additionally, the book has lots of recipes that look truly delicious.

My sister's children have gone gluten-free and so she has had to revamp both her home and her cottage so that she has gluten-free utensils for both places. I noticed when looking through the book that Jungle Jim's, a great grocery in their Cincinnati area neighborhood, has a gluten-free cooking school. This book, which came from the publicist, is going to go to her. 

If you have gluten intolerant family members, or you think you might be gluten intolerant, this definitely is the book for you. Jax Peters Lowell is in the forefront of the gluten-free movement and one of the creators of the gluten-free diet.  

Jax Lowell's website.

A Look Ahead: Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League

A brief note about an event and a book. Today is Rosa Parks birthday, and it is also the launch date of the book Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League by Jonathan Odell. It is the story of the beginnings of the Civil Rights movement in Mississippi, and the relationship between two mothers, Hazel and Vida. Originally published as The View from Delphi in 2004, it is being republished by my friend Marly Rusoff and her publishing company, Maiden Lane Press. Many reviewers say that it is a book whose "time has come."

I intended to have the blog posting about the book done before today's launch of the book, but I am only about half way through. I will have a longer posting about the book later in the week.

The Girl on the Train

by Paula Hawkins

Riverhead Books   2015

336 Pages      Mystery/Thriller

Rachel's life is a mess. She's divorced, jobless, alcoholic. She gets on the train every morning from her London suburb and wanders the city until work hours are over, when she returns  to the flat she shares with a friend. She can't bear to tell her friend that she has no job. One of the daily train stops is opposite the house that she shared with her husband Tom, who now lives there with his new wife Anna and their baby. Every day she stares at the house where she feels her life disintegrated. She also stares at a neighboring house and fantasizes about the young couple that lives there—creating an entire life scenario for them. When the young wife, Megan, disappears, Rachel realizes that she has important information that must be shared . 

Rachel, however, is not the only unreliable narrator of the enfolding story. Anna tells the story from her point of view, as does Megan. They are not the only unreliable people involved in the story: Rachel's ex-husband Tom as well as Megan's husband Scott may also be unreliable witnesses to the unfolding events. To tell any more of the plot would spoil the fun. 

The emphasis of the The Girl on the Train is on the mysteries that surround the people that we think we know, even our spouses.  The reviewer in the Boston Globe says that "Hawkins emphasizes the parallels among these three ostensibly different women, and close the book with the knowledge that they share—as we might—unexpected affinities with people they pass by each day, those who they see but will never truly know." 

Rachel interjects herself into the lives of the people at that train stop in ways that most people would not do, nor would they think of doing. That doesn't keep the majority of us from fantasizing a bit about what it would be like to live in some other place or some other house or with some other person.  Does that make us unreliable witnesses to the events of our own lives?

On a subway ride in New York City several years ago, I sat next to a young couple who were making out rather voraciously. Frankly, it was pretty disgusting. The man on the other side of the couple couldn't stand it anymore and complained loudly to the young man, who jumped up and yelled threateningly into the face of the complainer. When he finally calmed down, he sat back down and ranted on and on under his breath, until the complaining passenger got off the train. What was fascinating to me was not this scene, which was definitely a bit scary, but the reaction of the woman who was sitting opposite me. She was about my age and must have recognized that I was a tourist. She watched me intently through the entire incident, trying to decipher my reaction to the unfolding scene. She was trying to look at the world through my eyes. What is reality, and what is our perception of reality?

I was reminded of a beautiful mansion on the lake shore in Duluth, my home city. Every time I walked by it as a girl, I pretended that I lived there. The lawn, the gardens, the porches looking over the lake—magnificent.  Then, one night, the owner was murdered by her son-in-law on the main stairway in the house.  Suddenly, the house became a tourist attraction, and the beautiful fantasy became an ugly reality. 

Everyone has compared The Girl on the Train with Gone Girl. I think that they are similar only because of the unreliable narrators. I enjoyed them both, although I think that Gone Girl twisted up my mind a bit more than The Girl on the Train. Read them and see what you think.

The New York Times did a very interesting article about the author, Paula Hawkins.

The Shelf Awareness review which calls The Girl on the Train an "intricate, multilayered psychological suspense debut."

The Boston Globe review.

Life from Scratch: A Memoir of Food, Family, and Forgiveness

by Sasha Martin

National Geographic     2015

336 Pages     Memoir/Cookbook

"We come with all kinds of 'baggage' and almost none of it fits in our suitcases." 

After a hardscrabble, sometimes tragic, childhood, Sasha Martin settled in Tulsa, Oklahoma, of all places. She married and had a baby girl but felt lost as a stay-at-home mother. With a flash of ingenuity, she decided that she would begin a blog in which she cooked a meal from one country of the world each week until she had cooked her way around the world. 195 weeks later, she completed her list, had a giant community party, and signed a book contract with National Geographic. That in a nutshell (no pun intended) is the synopsis of Life from Scratch. The memoir, however, is much more than that. It is a meditation on family and on finding a passion as a way of finding self. 

Life from Scratch is basically divided into two parts. The first part includes Martin's childhood, teen years, and marriage. The second part of the book is about her world cooking adventure and the creation of her blog, Global Table Adventure. Martin is still a young woman, so there is much more to come, we can hope.

Martin's childhood was brutal. Among her memories of that childhood were the foods that her mother cooked. As she remembers the things her mother cooked, she fills in the recreated recipes. Although an eccentric, her mother was/is extremely creative, and she did her best to offer her children some of the advantages of families that had more—she did this primarily through food. For instance, a favorite treat was a German Tree Cake, which was so expensive to make that the family had to save money for weeks in order to create it. Those childhood recipes are in the first part of the book.

Martin lived her teenage years with her mother's friend and her family. The husband of the family worked in Europe, so her teenage years were spent in Europe. Tragedy ultimately separates this source of continuity for Martin just as she begins her college years back in the United States. Some time spent in culinary school leads her to a job in Tulsa where she finally is able to settle down and establish a family of her own. The next batch of recipes come from her European experiences.

And then comes a more peaceful life. Martin is a resilient woman, and when she marries and has a baby, she finds ways to resolve the tragedies of her childhood and youth. She realizes that she had lived an insular life as a way of protecting herself, and now what she wants to do was to create community. This she does through cooking and creating her blog. Having completed her first blog journey around the world, she is currently celebrating holidays from around the world. In some ways, Martin's memoir is The Glass Castle meets Julie and Julia. The story is not new, in other words, but it is written in a very appealing way. I found myself compulsively returning to it.

It could be that the reason I enjoyed the memoir was that no one was eating much except roasted rabbit and deer in the magnetic Station Eleven, which I was reading at the same time. I wonder what people eat in Dystopia. (Oh, I forgot, there are a lot of feasts at the capital in The Hunger Games. Now there would be an interesting cookbook: The Food of the Capital.)

One of my students recently gave me a container of Kebsa seasonings, ground by her mother, and I have been trying to figure out how much to use to flavor rice and chicken. (Kebsa, by the way, is the national dish of Saudi Arabia.) I haven't gotten the balance right yet. Kebsa is as adventurous as my cooking has gotten lately. However, on Saturday night, the family is coming over for Grandpa's spaghetti. Now there's an adventure in eating for you! Several years ago, he put kumquats in the spaghetti and the family has never let him forget it! 

By the way, Global Table Adventure is an outstanding blog, and the recipes are intriguing. I read Life from Scratch on a Kindle, and I have discovered that it isn't very exciting to read recipes on a Kindle. I guess I want the security of the nice tidy format that comes from a standard recipe format. However, if you look at the website, the colorful pictures and explicit directions make all the recipes look very appealing. My guess is that when the book appears in March, it will be gorgeous. I would recommend that you buy the hardcover.