Thinking About Aretha Franklin

I'll always regret I never saw Aretha Franklin perform live, but it makes me happy to watch her performance as Mrs. Murphy in "The Blues Brothers." That's Aretha's sister Carolyn in the chorus, wearing the striped shirt.

Aretha Franklin "Think"

July's Books

Feliz Navidead by Ann Myers

Chef Rita LaFitte works at Tres Amigas Café in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This Christmas season her mother is visiting from Illinois, uneasy with the different traditions and the spicy foods. She is especially upset that her teenage granddaughter Celia is playing a devil in the holiday pageant. It seems like her fears may have come to pass when the man playing one of the other devils is murdered during the first performance.

Rita’s ex-husband Manny is the cop investigating the crime and her current boyfriend Jake is a lawyer defending the top suspect. There is a lot of local color and atmosphere, and a subplot about missing antiquities. There are five recipes included, and after reading a book, you will want to make a batch of the bizcohitos. Readers who enjoy culinary mysteries will savor this spicy mystery.

 

Dandy Gilver and the Proper Treatment of Bloodstains by Catriona McPherson
Beware Beware by Steph Cha
The Day of the Dead by Nicci French
The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter: a memoir by Holly Robinson
Back of Beyond by CJ Box
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Mining for Justice: a Chloe Ellefson mystery by Kathleen Ernst
Feliz Navidead by Ann Myers
A Major Production! by Thomas Sawyer
Murder Has a Motive by Frances Duncan
Then She Found Me by Elinor Lipman

India Gray

India Gray: historical fiction by Sujata Massey

Two novellas and two short stories, all set in India, span a time frame from 1919 to the early 21^st century. My favorite was the novella “The Ayah’s Tale,” in which a teenaged Bengali girl leaves school to become a domestic in a wealthy British family household in 1920s Bengal. She is cheated out of her wages and time off by the unfeeling mother of the family, who spends her time socializing and carrying on an affair. Menakshi is in charge of the three older children, two boys and a girl. She entertains them by making up stories for them, and the middle child becomes fond of her. They are oblivious to the fact that she has a life outside of their family.

“Outnumbered at Oxford” is the second novella, which takes place at Oxford in 1919. Two young woman, one an Indian and one British, solve a mystery when they set out to find a missing Indian servant who is accused of stealing some valuable mathematical papers.

“India Gray” is a short story set during World War II; an Indian woman is volunteering at a military hospital. Will the patients trust her when they learn her husband is British? In “Bitter Tea,” a teenaged girl in 21^st century Pakistan attempts a rescue of a friend, who is being threatened by a fundamentalist cleric.

Evocative settings and time periods. Massey’s main characters are all exceptional women, strong in different ways.

Eleanor and Hick

Eleanor and Hick: the love affair that shaped a First Lady by Susan Quinn

Lorena Hickok was an Associated Press reporter when she met and interviewed First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. They became professional advisors to each other, caring friends, confidantes, and lovers. Eleanor, who was privately educated, a debutante, married her sixth cousin Franklin. It was a disappointing marriage, to a man who was dominated by his mother, and had relationships with other woman. They had six children, who disappointed her in various ways. She was close to her brother Hall, an alcoholic.

Hick grew up poor in rural South Dakota in an abusive home. Worked as a servant, and eventually became a reporter. She reported on the Depression for the WPA, and encourage Eleanor to write her long running column “My Day.”

Hick had saved both sides of their decades long correspondence, and donated the letters to the Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park to be opened ten years after Hick’s death. In 1978, young adult biographer Doris Faber, was one of the first to read the letters, and was dismayed by the content, which revealed the emotional and physical affair between the two women. In 1999 Blanch Weisen Cook wrote a biography of Eleanor, in which she treated the relationship more sympathetically.