A Deadly Endeavor

A Deadly Endeavor by Jenny Adams, 341 pages

Edie Shippen has just returned to Philadelphia from California, where she was recovering from her bout with the Spanish flu. What should be a happy homecoming is marred, however, by the fact that her former beau is now engaged to Edie's twin sister. In the midst of the engagement celebrations, Edie connects with a new crowd of artistic women, hoping they'll help bring her spirits up. Unfortunately, they keep disappearing, right around the same time some horribly desecrated corpses show up along the river. Soon Edie and a handsome city morgue doctor are teaming up to track down the killer.

I read this book about a week ago, and already, the details are sliding away from me — likely overshadowed by the absolutely bonkers ending. Overall the book was OK, nothing great, though I did enjoy Edie as a character. So there's that?

All We Were Promised

All We Were Promised by Ashton Lattimore, 368 pages

It's 1837 in Philadelphia, and after four years in the city, Charlotte's father James is finally establishing himself as a renowned businessman. The only catch is that Charlotte and James are runaway slaves from Maryland, and while James is passing as white, Charlotte has been stuck in the role of his black housemaid, unable to pursue the activism and education she longs for for fear of exposing her father's secrets. But when their former mistress arrives in town with one of their close friends still enslaved, Charlotte realizes that she must act to help free her friend and walk a tightrope to avoid getting herself or her father captured.

This book does a good job of highlighting the frustratingly slow abolitionist movement and the slaver-friendly laws in "free" states (for example, you could bring your slaves with you and keep them enslaved, as long as you didn't stay more than 6 months) in the years leading up to the Civil War. However, there were elements of the story that just felt a bit too unbelievable (particularly near the end), which took me out of the story. A better book on a similar topic is James by Percival Everett (check out my blog post for that here).

The Conductors

The Conductors by Nicole Glover, 422 pages

During the war, Hetty and her husband Benjy used their celestial magic skills to help slaves escape to freedom. Now that the war is over, they've settled in Philadelphia, where they take on investigative cases ranging from finding loved ones to dealing with the odd dead body. When the body of a prominent member of the Philadelphia Black community turns up with a cursed sigil carved into his body, Hetty and Benjy are on the case, one that makes them suspect everyone around them.

This was an intriguing premise for a novel, and I love that Glover used the same constellations that helped so many escape slavery as the basis for her magical ideas. Honestly, I would have loved to get more detail about that practice. Instead, Glover seemed to try to juggle too many ideas and plotlines, making the fantasy element suffer. As such, this one's hard to categorize: it's a historical mystery with fantasy elements? Not bad, but also not the best fantasy I've read recently.

Long Bright River

Long Bright River by Liz Moore, 482 pages

Sisters Kacey and Mickey grew up being raised by their grandmother since their parents were addicted to opiods. Mickey managed to break the cycle, avoiding drugs, graduating from high school, and becoming a patrol cop in the rough Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, near where she and Kacey grew up. She's even the mom of a super-smart four-year-old son. Kacey, however... well, she didn't fare so well, becoming addicted on her own, eventually becoming a prostitute to feed her addiction. After years of trying, Mickey knows she can't change her sister, but she does try to keep an eye on her during her patrol. But when Mickey finds a strangled prostitute on her rounds, she realizes it's been a few months since she's seen Kacey, and starts searching for her while simultaneously trying to catch the killer.

This thriller/mystery is also a beautifully told story of a real-life, hard-on-its-luck neighborhood and the people who live there. Moore does an excellent job of weaving the story of a family, a city, and a nationwide crisis into a page-turning mystery. Definitely a great read.

Long Bright River

Long Bright River by Liz Moore, 482 pages.

An excellent novel that inhabits a space between a police procedural and  the tale of a dysfunctional family.  Mickey is a police officer in Philadelphia, patrolling in the area near where she and her sister grew up, where the remnants of her family still live. Mickey becomes obsessed with a series of murders; the victims are young women, most of them addicts or prostitutes. Part of Mickey's obsession has to do with her concurrent search for her younger sister, Kacey whom she knows to be both an addict and a prostitute. Mickey tries to keep the remnants of her family safe as she searches for her sister, tries to protect her job, and reconcile what she remembers of her past with her possible futures.
An excellent book with unexpected turns on what can sometimes appear to be a well-worn path.

The Dutch House

The Dutch House: a Novel / Ann Patchett, 337 p.

Siblings Maeve and Danny spend early childhood in The Dutch House, a spectacular Philadelphia mansion.  They live there with their distant father and two loving servants after their mother disappears.  Maeve becomes a surrogate mother to Danny in their mother's absence, and life is good until their Dad surprises them with stepmother Andrea, a cartoon-like evil figure straight out of the Brothers Grimm. 

As they move into adulthood, Maeve and Danny remain extremely close to one another, and unable to leave the bitterness of their childhoods behind.  When their mother surfaces many years later, their equilibrium is tested. 

I loved aspects of this novel; Patchett's writing is always a pleasure, and Maeve and Danny's relationship is beautifully rendered.  Other elements were unsatisfying, though: the stereotypical Andrea was hard to believe, and the saintly (and complicated) mother Elna never came into focus.  Ultimately, while the surface plot of the novel seems to say that materialism is empty, the characters' lives revolve around material achievement in a way that gives the reading an incoherent feel.

Disgruntled by Asali Solomon

Disgruntled by Asali Solomon, 285 pages.

When this story begins, Kenya Curtis is eight. She lives with her mother and father in West Philadelphia. Her father, Johnbrown, is a self-described housepainter and philosopher, and her mother, Sheila, is a librarian (yay!).
Johnbrown and Sheila are part of an activist group of like-minded friends that call themselves the Seven Days. They have taken the name of the group from Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, and their aim is to advocate for their black neighbors against the injustices they see around them. As the story progresses, and Kenya grows, the group itself, and Kenya's parents find their aims and goals changing and unraveling. Kenya has to find a way to navigate her own life when those around her become, in a variety of ways, unreliable.
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The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards: Poems / Rachel Mennies, 79 p.

Mennies' poems treat her grandparents' Holocaust experiences as well as her own contemporary life in Philadelphia. Fluid and technically pleasing, they are for my taste too emotionally overwrought. I suspect in isolation any single poem might have seemed interesting, but as a collection she is too insistent on the dramatic kick in the teeth effect. My favorite was "Schonewetter & Grunewald, Coatmakers," a fine picture of her grandfather hemming coats for Gentile women. It's highly visual and suggestive without trying to make the lines bear too much weight.

The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even / Chris F Westbury 312 p.

Isaac lives a narrow life, spending all day sitting in art museums, washing his hands, and generally avoiding the rest of humanity.  He makes friends 'in group,' his outpatient group therapy for those with OCD.  Together, he and his best friend Greg, who is obsessed with spoons and the artist Marcel Duchamp, hatch a plan to purchase an authentic chocolate grinder, made in the style of a portion of a piece by Duchamp.  (Don't ask - I didn't even try to follow some of the logic here, and I don't think the writer fully intends us to.  Just let it be.)

So the plan involves a brand-new sterilized Winnebago to make the drive from Boston to Philadelphia, where the bulk of Duchamp's work can be viewed.  But Isaac and Greg can't drive, so they hire Isaac's new non-group friend, Kelly, a doctoral student in religious studies who shares Isaac's love of a sculpture of the Biblical Abraham and Isaac that they've been gazing at together.

This is apparently Westbury's first novel, but it doesn't read like one.  Circuitous mental processes aside, this is delightful.  Westbury clearly is indulging some of his own obsessions, and yet his characters are full of sweetness and depth.  And the construction of the book is far more controlled than the wild thematic shifts would make it seem.  Not for everyone, but if you're looking for something unusual, give it a try.

The Twelve Tribes of Hattie

. The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis, 243 pages. This was our December book discussion title. I listened to the CD, narrated by Adennele Ojo, Bahni Turpin (my all-time favorite cuz of her work on Smekday), and Adam Lazarre-White, for about half the book and then read the rest. Hattie and her young husband move from Gerorgia to Baltimore when she was just 17. The first two of her Tribe, Philadelphia and Jubilee, die as infants and break Hattie's heart. All her children that follow long to see the love she showed her first two babies, but Hattie's never really capable of that kind of feeling again. Each chapter follows another of her children (and one grandchild) through their mostly tragic lives; and through those chapters we see the story of Hattie and her husband, August as their love dies but their shared lives continue. An engaging, if somewhat depressing book that chronicles children and parents wanting for love,  and sometimes food and material things. Check our catalog. Ebook Downloadable audiobook.