Ann Howard Creel - The Uncertain Season

Author: Ann Howard Creel
Title: The Uncertain Season
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing

When I stood on the shores of Galveston in 2013, I was clapping my eyes on the ocean after decades. I grew up in a town that was a little like Houston, only much smaller in scale. It was hot and humid and the seashore was at least an hour's drive away. Absence had made my heart fonder for the sea shore. The proximity of the ocean from the city charmed me. The sands, the rolling waves were the same as they were on the beaches of my childhood.

I have read the 1900 Galveston: Indignities series by N.E. Brown and enjoyed them immensely. I read up on the infamous 1900 storm and a book by Suzanne Morris Galveston. 

Ann Howard Creel's book was recommended to me by a Kindle newsletter that sends me a list of books that are recommended and marked down as a special deal for the day. I usually browse through the newsletter and buy the book if it looks interesting, as this one did. I used the Look Inside option  available on Amazon to get the feel of the book. This option reminds me of flipping through a few pages of a book in a library or a bookstore to see if it looked good. This method has rarely failed me.

The Uncertain Season gives us a prologue where a girl's family is lost during the 1900 storm in Galveston. She is saved thanks to the ingenuity of a fisherman her family is friends with. From the next chapter we learn about the main character, Grace Hilliard who is on her way to the railway station to pick up her cousin Etta. The girls know each other slightly, having met only once before as children. Etta is gorgeous but a poor relation. Grace is true to her name, talented, rich and graceful.  She is engaged to Jonathan, rich and handsome. Etta tries to make a foothold in this rarefied world of the Hilliards, she wants to marry a rich young man and live this luxurious life they are accustomed to.

By contrast Grace finds herself doing charity work among the poor people of the city by the side of  the Methodist Reverend Ira Price and is deeply affected by the life there. She also comes in touch with the Girl who lost her family in the 1900 storm and tries to help her.

The changes that Grace and Etta face changes their thinking and way of life. There are secrets that are uncovered and revealed dramatically which alters them forever.

We can call the book a historical romance. It is the story of Etta and Grace, girls who are related by blood but not class. All the divisions of that age, between rich and poor, colored and white are well etched.  Etta is an outsider trying to fit in, she can hold her own in a conversation with the friends of Hilliards but when they start talking about travel or opera and the art scene, she finds she cannot compete. She isn't exposed to that kind of a privilege. Hence she has to use subterfuge and mystery to augment her appeal. Grace has been so ensconced in her privileged life that when she first steps into the alleys to work with the poor she is taken aback. She has lived her life barely a mile away from the alley but never imagined anything like it.

I liked how well etched the characters were. They seem so real with their angst and anxieties. It is easy to empathize with them even when they are doing something wrong, for we understand why they do it. The story is well crafted and it was easy to read. The writing style is simple and engaging. This a little gem of a book and I am willing to read more books by this author.

I love a good romance but find it hard to find one. There are so many romance novelists who wind up being tedious, most of them are too fluffy and the story feels like flat soda. This one was full bodied and it barely even felt like a romance, it was more like a slice of life story. The best kind in my opinion.

Lynn Bishop - Put Asunder

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@Amazon Asia Pacific Holdings
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We meet Michael Rheese in 1809 at Talavera in Spain.  He is wounded and accompanied by some other soldiers who are badly wounded too.  They have been left behind by the General Cuesta.  Rheese knows they have to keep moving or be taken by the French army that was on their heels.

They arrive at the hacienda of Dona Maria Gutierrez y Valdez.  At one time Dona Maria's hacienda was thriving and rich, now because of war and frequent lootings, Dona and her meager household is impoverished.  She worries about the fate of her beautiful granddaughter Eva.

When she sees Michael Rheese, she thinks up a perfect plan. She asks Michael to marry Eva and take her away to England.  In return, she will care for the invalid soldiers in his company. Rheese and Eva agree to this for their own reasons. Rheese wants his friends to be cared for, as they are wounded and cannot travel. Eva has to agree for her Grandmother's sake.

In a dim light, where they can barely make out each others' faces, they are married. The same night, again in pitch dark they leave the hacienda.  That very night, a few hours later, Rheese is taken by the French and Eva lies in a ditch in a faint.

Six years later, Eva learns that her husband is still alive.  All she has is a marriage certificate and the ring her husband had given her at the wedding.  She travels to England to find her husband who lives in Brigford Manor. On her way there, she runs into a Mr. Denborough who is sometimes helpful, sometimes in the way and sometimes plain annoying.  Eva must not think about this handsome stranger and instead concentrate on getting to her lawfully wedded husband.

Here is a book which is all about romance.  Eva is married to man she has not even properly seen and been without for six years. She is not even sure if her husband remembers being married to her, or worse, if he wants her at all.  She has pieced together whatever little money she could manage to gather and come in search of her husband. Will it end well for her?

The book is well written and the reader is kept turning the pages.  All the characters, Michael Rheese, Denborough, Dona Maria, are very well etched.  I love that it is set in Regency Period, just when Austen's Sense and Sensibility came out.

It could have been a bit shorter.  Romances are not usually such long reads.

The subtitle says "A period romance (War Brides Book 1).  This means we can look forward to many such books by Lynn Bishop which is the pen name of Madhulika Liddle of Muzaffar Jung fame.


  

Suzanne Morris - Galveston

+Random House Publishing Group
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In the year 1877, Claire married Charles Becker after being abandoned by his brother Damon.  She cannot bring herself to love Charles after knowing passion with his brother but she carries on with her married life dutifully.  She even moves to Galveston from Grady (in Oklahoma? The novel does not clarify).

Her deep-rooted unhappiness at being trapped in a love-less marriage makes her unstable.  She forms an infatuation for a parson living next door, Rubin Garret.  She dislikes his wife Janet and can barely get along with her.  To overcome her feeling of ennui, she beings prodding her husband to be more high profile and successful so she may also have the benefit of a glamorous lifestyle.

Will she succeed in her ambition of becoming a high-society woman?  Or will she fail at everything?

Serena Garret is the adopted daughter of Rubin and Janet.  The second part of the book is the story of her nineteenth year, in the year 1899.  Serena has a steady beau, Nick Weaver.  She has no intention of marrying him, though.   She has also become very attached to James Byron, who is the son of Ruth, the daughter of Claire's cousin.  He is like a kid brother and companion to her.

In this year, her heart is stolen by a travelling musician, Roman Cruz,  who is playing at the Seaside Pavilion.  At the end of the year, she decides to run away with Roman. She is not happy about the way Claire seems to be poking her nose into her affairs.

The third part begins in the year 1920 in Houston.  Willa is on the verge of marrying Rodney Younger when she discovers a tattered carpetbag in the attic.  She knows it belongs to her mother.  Before she can bring herself to marry Rodney, she has to find out who her mother was.  She runs away from the parents who adopted her in a bid to uncover the mystery of her past.

In the third part, all the secrets hidden by Claire and Serena tumble out.  We learn the outcome of the unfinished stories of the two women and how they are tied to Willa's story.

The 20-year jump between the three stories is interesting. With the change of each generation, the world changes a bit.  There is a huge gap between 1877, when Claire's story starts, and 1920 when Willa's story starts.  This change is skilfully brought out by Suzanne.  We are able to get a feel of the era that the character belongs to.   The story grips our interest and keeps us glued to the book.

The story of Claire, I feel, could have been shorter.  It seems to be going places quite pointlessly.  It is the longest part of the book (or so it feels).  The stories of Serena and Claire are pithy and neat.  Serena's story is very poignant and tugs at your heartstrings.

All the revelations that happen after Willa starts digging into her past are a bit overwhelming at times. Here too, the author meanders a bit, filling us in on unnecessary details.  Things happen too quickly and too conveniently to allow us to believe them.

These flaws apart, the book is a gripping read.  It is a very good romance novel about the recent past, full of intrigues and secret love affairs.

Tanushree Podder - Nur Jahan's Daughter

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+Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd.

Even if we studied just elementary History in school, we learned about the Mughal Empire and how Nur Jahan held sway over Jahangir.  

I was reminded of my History teacher who loved 'fictionalizing' our history lessons with stories of grand passion between Mughal emperors and their wives.   The best part was, we were allowed to pad our answers with all such stories.  We were required to write very long answers to each question and the padding helped.

Dubey Sir, our history teacher would have approved wholeheartedly of this historical romance about Nur Jahan's daughter.

The book begins in Burdwan where an unhappy Nur Jahan is miserable about her husband, Sher Khan.  He can be moody and aloof.  On top of that, Nur Jahan displeases him by giving birth to a daughter.  But Nur Jahan is made of stern stuff and she manages to draw her husband's attention.

Just when she is enjoying her life in Burdwan with Laadli and Sher Khan, her husband is ruthlessly murdered.  She is asked to be in Agra and serve the dowager queen.

Laadli is miserable in the court in Agra, she has no friends and is very lonely. She befriends Khurram but soon finds him gone.  She loves her grandmother's house but is forced to be with her mother.

Soon, she finds her mother being wooed by the Emperor.  It is very unpleasant for her as she blames him for her father's murder.  She has to watch her crush for Khurram die as she sees him falling for her cousin Arjumand.  She has to watch her mother turn into a ruthless schemer.

Nur Jahan interferes with her daughter's love life and gets her married to Prince Shahryar in the hopes of propping him up as an Emperor after Jahangir's death.

In all this, poor Laadli loses her hold on life.  She is lost in the shadows of her powerful mother.

The story is well told.  As in real life, in this story also, the shadow of Nur Jahan falls over Laadli.  We learn more about her than Laadli.  As it is fiction, the author could have imagined a more detailed life for Laadli, it would have made the tale more satisfying.

The ending was especially chilling.  With Nur Jahan's death, the story of Laadli ends.  What if Laadli really came into her own after her mother's death?  It would have been really interesting to imagine it that way.

However, this flaw apart, the story is very well told.  Tanushree Podder is one of our best writers in English.  I have enjoyed her book 'Boots Belts Berets' immensely.  It is a fine book about a cadet's life in a military academy, and one of my favorites.

N.E. Brown, S.L. Jenkins - Galveston: 1900: Indignities, Book One: The Arrival

Galveston: 1900: Indignities, Book One: The Arrival by N.E. Brown
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Reading books is hobby that is good for the mind. Alas, it is not really good for the body. I tend to lie supine on a bed, or curled up in a chair, glued to a book, eyes darting along the sentences, hands turning pages. Over the time, the eyes feel the strain and I am constrained to wearing thicker glasses. The wee print that was a cakewalk when I was 15 or 20 now looks blurred. I replace books on library shelves with a sigh when I see that the print is too small for me to read.

A Kindle helps. I can enlarge the font and read comfortably. There is one more advantage to owning a Kindle that I just discovered. Buying a book is much simpler now. As an avid book lover, I have often chased books that I wanted to read and find that they were simply not available to me.

Yes, that happens quite often. At one time, I wanted to buy a book called 'Jane Austen Book Club'. I searched high and low in the bookshops close to me, I scoured the libraries around, all without luck. I managed to lay my hands on it, by ordering it in a bookstore. But I had to pay a high price for it, as it was shipped specially for me.

I read about Galveston: 1900: Indignities on a book site which carried an excerpt from it. I found it an intriguing read. My interest was piqued even more as I had visited Galveston on my recent trip to USA. The book was not available easily in paperback for me here in India.

However, a recent gift of Kindle by my daughter suddenly made reading this book possible. The kindle edition was delivered instantly to my reader. A lot of people like to deride the modern way of life, citing that the earlier days were simpler and nicer. Yes, in some ways the early days were nice, the life was slower. But surely technology has made our life richer now. This is one example. In early days I would have sighed and never managed to read this book. But now, I could.

The story is about Catherine Eastman who was born in Sandgate, England. She was brought to USA by her mother, Anne Eastman, when Catherine was 15 years old. A series of tragedies had wiped the rest of their family off. Anne Eastman wanted to make a fresh start in a new place. Her mother was a skilled seamstress and hoped to make her living by it. After a rough sea-voyage, the mother and daughter arrived in Galveston and took their bearings. Anne sought work as an assistant seamstress in The Grande Opera House. Unfortunately, she also meets David Brooke there.

David Brooke is a serial killer and born criminal. He spots the beautiful Anne Eastman and is instantly smitten by her. But the aloof widow does not encourage him. This makes him obsess all the more about her. This obsession proves fatal to Anne. It also alters the course of life of Catherine.

The book is a romance, no doubt. But being set in 1898, it is a historical fiction. It is also placed close to the devastating storm of 1900 that hit Galveston. The historical facts provide a fillip to the story. The narration is so effective, that you actually feel you are witnessing those events of far away times. This engrossing tale keeps you turning pages. I was able to read the entire book in the space of a day!

The story of Catherine Eastman is told in a series of novels. Four have been printed already, and I am on to the next one in the series, Galveston :1900: Indignities - The Aftermath.

The research for the book is done by N.E. Brown and is so well written by her daughter S.L. Jenkins. Do pick up this excellent romance from Amazon.


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