Clara and Mr. Tiffany: A Novel Susan Vreeland (448 pages) It’s
1893, and at the Chicago World’s Fair, Louis Comfort Tiffany makes his
debut with a luminous exhibition of innovative stained-glass windows
that he hopes will earn him a place on the international artistic stage.
But behind the scenes in his New York studio is the freethinking Clara
Driscoll, head of his women’s division, who conceives of and designs
nearly all of the iconic leaded-glass lamps for which Tiffany will long
be remembered.
Never
publicly acknowledged, Clara struggles with her desire for artistic
recognition and the seemingly insurmountable challenges that she faces
as a professional woman. She also yearns for love and companionship, and
is devoted in different ways to five men, including Tiffany, who
enforces a strict policy: He does not employ married women. Ultimately,
Clara must decide what makes her happiest—the professional world of her
hands or the personal world of her heart
Cleopatra: A Life - Stacy Schiff (368 pages)
Her
palace shimmered with onyx and gold but was richer still in political
and sexual intrigue. Above all else, Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist
and an ingenious negotiator. She was married twice, each time to a
brother. She waged a brutal civil war against the first and poisoned the
second; incest and assassination were family specialties. She had
children by Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, two of the most prominent
Romans of the day. With Antony she would attempt to forge a new empire,
in an alliance that spelled both their ends. Famous long before she was
notorious, Cleopatra has gone down in history for all the wrong reasons.
Her supple personality and the drama of her circumstances have been
lost.
The Dovekeepers Alice Hoffman (528 pages)
Her
most ambitious and mesmerizing novel, a tour de force of research and
imagination. Nearly two thousand years ago, nine hundred Jews held out
for months against armies of Romans on Masada, a mountain in the Judean
desert. According to the ancient historian Josephus, two women and five
children survived. Based on this tragic and iconic event, Hoffman’s
novel is a spellbinding tale of four extraordinarily bold, resourceful,
and sensuous women, each of whom has come to Masada by a different path.
Yael’s mother died in childbirth, and her father, an expert assassin,
never forgave her for that death. Revka, a village baker’s wife, watched
the murder of her daughter by Roman soldiers; she brings to Masada her
young grandsons, rendered mute by what they have witnessed. Aziza is a
warrior’s daughter, raised as a boy, a fearless rider and expert
marksman who finds passion with a fellow soldier. Shirah, born in
Alexandria, is wise in the ways of ancient magic and medicine, a woman
with uncanny insight and power.
The
lives of these four complex and fiercely independent women intersect in
the desperate days of the siege. All are dovekeepers, and all are also
keeping secrets—about who they are, where they come from, who fathered
them, and whom they love.
The House of Spirits – Isabel Allende (448 pages)
The
House of Spirits is probably Allende's most famous and important book.
In it, she chronicles the life of a family, as the patriarch grows from a
child to an elder, with the world changing all around him while he
tries to keep it the same. Through the lenses of the Trueba family, we
follow the portion of Chilean history that eventually leads to the 1973
coup. Of course, the author is niece of Salvador Allende, the socialist
president democratically elected that was removed from power and killed
by Pinochet.
The
book is based on clashes; old versus young, communists vs
conservatives, landlords vs tenants. As the story unfolds, we view the
extremist positions that each side takes: landlords attacking tenants,
conservatives attacking communists, and vice versa. From the
polarization of positions emerges a military dictatorship that no one
wanted, but that was a product of the system setup by polarization.
In
the end, the distinctions that originally separated young from old,
conservatives from communists, are removed, as both sides realize the
futility of their disputes in the face on an authoritarian regime.
Warmth of Other Suns The Epic Story of America's Great Migration - Isabel Wilkerson (622 pages)
In
this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize--winning
author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of
American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled
the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life.
From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the
face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the
migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a
thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to
write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American
journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves.
With
stunning historical detail, Wilkerson tells this story through the
lives of three unique individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, who in 1937 left
sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago, where she
achieved quiet blue-collar success and, in old age, voted for Barack
Obama when he ran for an Illinois Senate seat; sharp and quick-tempered
George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, where he
endangered his job fighting for civil rights, saw his family fall, and
finally found peace in God; and Robert Foster, who left Louisiana in
1953 to pursue a medical career, the personal physician to Ray Charles
as part of a glitteringly successful medical career, which allowed him
to purchase a grand home where he often threw exuberant parties.
Wilkerson
brilliantly captures their first treacherous and exhausting
cross-country trips by car and train and their new lives in colonies
that grew into ghettos, as well as how they changed these cities with
southern food, faith, and culture and improved them with discipline,
drive, and hard work. Both a riveting microcosm and a major assessment, The Warmth of Other Suns
is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an
"unrecognized immigration" within our own land. Through the breadth of
its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and
the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein, this book is
destined to become a classic.
