Mrs. Jeffries Speaks Her Mind by Emily Brightwell

Servants are frequently un-noticed as they go about their daily tasks in the wealthy homes of England.  Mrs. Jeffries, Inspector Witherspoon's housekeeper is aware of this and has gathered her staff to surreptitiously assist their employer with his murder investigations.  In Victorian England there are no DNA tests, fingerprint databases, etc.  Scotland Yard and the police just talk to and interview witnesses and suspects and then come to a conclusion.  Because of the servants "invisibility" Mrs. Jeffries musters her staff as they go about their normal business of maintaining the house to question their fellow servants, shopkeepers and the like.   Mrs. Jeffries carefully gives the information to the inspector with his before dinner sherry.  Inspector Witherspoon is an intelligent, kind but naïve man whose life as a policeman has not destroyed his basic belief in the goodness of others.  He has a colleague, an Inspector Nivens who is out to prove that Witherspoon just uses blind luck or has someone else solve his cases.   Mrs. Jeffries and her staff protect the Inspector, whom they admire because of his kindness and the way he treats his household staff and everyone else for that matter with respect.

Mrs. Jeffries Speaks Her Mind is one of many (29 as of today) Mrs. Jeffries Victorian mysteries.  In this one a totally disagreeable woman is murdered in her garden and there are many, many suspects who can give a good reason as to why she should be done in.  Inspector Witherspoon interviews the gentry and the servants of the household, while Mrs. Jeffries sends her staff to interview the hansom cab drivers, the neighbors' servants and the local shopkeepers. Each day the staff meets to discuss what they have found. Mrs. Jeffries adds what she has heard from the Inspector and they plan what to do next.  Each servant has his or her way of eliciting information from their unwitting help.  The cook plies her informants with food.  The footman has a young innocent look and he talks to the maids and the garden boys.  The maid has a pretty face and she is able to talk to shop assistants, while she is buying groceries for the household.  The coachman talks to other coachmen in the pubs as he buys them a pint or two.

Mrs. Jeffries Speaks Her Mind is a cozy mystery with likable characters (except for Inspector Nivens and the victim).  If you like historical fiction such as Downton Abbey and the like, you may very well enjoy following the servants throughout London and environs as they help their Inspector solve this mystery.

Recently I picked up The Dressmaker by Kate Alcott and was immediately drawn into the story of a woman who by sheer stroke of luck got passage on the Titanic and by another stroke of luck got into a lifeboat when the great liner began to sink.

Tess Collins is severely under-employed.  A dressmaker by trade and talent, she's duped into a job as a scullery maid in Cherbourg and literally escapes to the docks as the Titanic is preparing to sail.

 
By another stroke of luck (Tess is a very lucky woman!) she overhears Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon tell his wife that her maid suddenly quit and Lady DG will be without a maid for the voyage.  This is Tess's chance to not only get passage to America but to also work for the celebrated dress designer Lucille Duff Gordon.

Amidst the chaos and confusion of the sinking, Tess and the Duff Gordons are separated but when they all arrive safely in New York, the news of the terrible tragedy has preceded them and the Senate hearings into the disaster begin almost immediately.  Tess is torn by her loyalty to her employer and her questions about what happened on the Duff Gordon lifeboat that arrived at the Carpathia with just twelve survivors aboard.

In this novel the Titanic is the catalyst for an exploration of classism and privilege and how each of them can cloud the truth, even 100 years later.

Miss Dreamsville and the Collier County Women's Literary Society

Now I did spend two weeks in Birmingham, Alabama awhile ago and learned a lot although I do realize that does not make me an expert on the South (that takes three weeks).  But I believe that the author has captured what small town life in the South was like.  Miss Dreamsville and the Collier County Women's Literary Society is about a particular time in Florida; the early 60s.  The story takes place in Collier County, near the Everglades, when Florida was still mostly the South and not a Northern retirement community.  In fact, at this time the Southerners were still suspicious of Northerners and other troublemakers; just ask Dora, a divorced woman working at the Post Office.  When Jackie Hart moved from Boston to Florida, she really stirred things up. Her husband was the business manager for the richest family in the area and even though she had children (which with a husband she had everything a decent woman needed), she was bored and unhappy.  So she decided to start a literary society.  Seven people showed up, all an outsider or outcast in some way.  Dora was divorced; Plain Jane wasn't even married; Mrs. Bailey White was a convicted murderer finally out of jail; Priscilla, a young black maid; Miss Lansbury a librarian, a newcomer to town, (only been there ten years); Robbie-Lee Simpson, a handsome gay man, and Jackie the Northerner.  The Literary Society with the books they chose to read were the catalysts for change.  The titles were The Feminine Mystique, Silent Spring; Their Eyes were Watching God, Breakfast at Tiffany's and Little Women.  I'll leave you to decide what the changes were in the characters and the little Florida town. Miss Dreamsville...is a funny, charming story that doesn't shy away from the difficult and volatile issues of the early sixties.  Enjoy.

The recently widowed Lady Kiera Darby is hiding out at her sister's castle in Scotland.  She is in hiding because her late husband, an anatomist and surgeon, forced her to use her artistic talent to illustrate the autopsies that he performed.  A job most unsuitable for a lady!  The gossips of the time (1830's) enjoyed turning her contributions to medical science into a large scandal. ( A note about the gossips' concerns, this was the time when the two notorious grave robbers Burke and Hare were robbing graves and selling the bodies to anatomists and when they ran out of dead bodies they began killing to increase their inventory).  Her sister, the Countess of Cromarty invited a few of those gossips to the castle for a party.  She figured that by having a party and showing how the family supported Lady Kiera the gossip would die away.  Well that's not what exactly happened.  One of the gossips was murdered!  All eyes turned to Lady Kiera, figuring that if she could draw a dead body she could make a dead body.  However smarter heads prevailed and the inquiry agent Sebastian Gage accepted her help in looking at the murdered victim and in trying to solve the murder.   First and foremost The Anatomist's Wife is a murder mystery; however there is a touch of romance here.  Well the romance is strongly hinted to be coming in the next Lady Darby book, which is in progress.  If you like murder mysteries with a strong forensic feel and in keeping with the knowledge of the times you may enjoy The Anatomist's Wife.  I sure did.

Alaska, 1920. 

After Mabel and Jack's only child died at birth, Mabel was desperate to flee from her grief, the pity of her extended family, and the haunting presence of other children. She talked Jack into leaving their farm in Pennsylvania for a homestead in Alaska, hoping that the isolation would provide relief.  It did not. Indeed, without the friendship and practical help of a neighboring family, they might have perished altogether.

At winter's first snowfall, a rare moment of levity brought a child into their lives, in a way.  Jack and Mabel made a snow girl that night, adorned with a red scarf that Mabel had knitted.  In the morning the scarf was gone.  They began to notice a girl in the woods, wearing the scarf, always accompanied by a red fox. Gradually they came to know this wild girl, named Faina.  Jack grew close to Faina, but Mabel wavered, remembering the old Russian folk tale of the snow child.  Faina seemed real enough, but nobody else in the area had seen her, and their friends worried for Mabel's sanity.   Was Faina real? Would she share the fate of the snow child in the folk tale?

These questions puzzled Mabel, and puzzle the reader as well, all the way through to the satisfying conclusion.  Robert Goolrick, the author of A Reliable Wife, summed up the tenor of this wonderful book: "If Willa Cather and Gabriel García Marquéz had collaborated on a book, The Snow Child would be it."

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

When an abusive, older Afghanistani man marries a second younger wife the last thing one would expect is that his two wives would develop a bond.  But their shared hardships eventually draw them together.  Mariam grew up in exile with her mother who was impregnated by a wealthy businessman when she worked as his maid.

When Mariam turns fifteen, her father marries her off to Rasheed in an attempt to get her out of the picture.  He is nearly 3 times her age and physically brutal to her.  Mariam is unable to bear any children to birth.  Her multiple miscarriages disgust Rasheed who then takes a second younger wife, Laila, a girl of 14 orphaned in the Afghan Civil War, who has few other options.

Laila was raised by liberal intellectual parents and fell in love with a neighbor boy Tariq.  Before Tariq's family fled to Pakistan to escape the violence in Afghanistan she made love with him, but she didn't realize she'd become pregnant with his child.  Rasheed believes the child is his and is delighted until Laila gives birth to a girl, Aziza.

In a culture fraught with violence and few options for women, Mariam and Laila eventually support one another.  They even attempt to flee from Rasheed, but aren't successful.  Hosseini's depiction of Afghanistan in the second half of the twentieth century draws the reader right into the setting.  This is one male writer whose female voices ring true, especially in his development of the friendship between these two women.

These are the kinds of questions that historical fiction authors ask themselves as they plan and research novels.  Susan Vreeland, an accomplished historical fiction writer, also blends in an artistic element to her stories, often setting them in the workshops and studios of great artists.

In Clara and Mr. Tiffany, Vreeland uncovers the (until recently) virtually unknown story of Clara Driscoll, who may well have been the talent behind the Tiffany lamp.  Several years ago a relative of Driscoll's donated an extensive collection of her correspondence to a museum, sparking interest in the artistic world as well as in the mind of Susan Vreeland.

 
The book weaves known facts of Tiffany's life and business practices as well as historical events with likely situations involving Clara and her staff of female glass cutters.  The novel is rich with period details as well as the process for making stained glass windows and lamps.

Pair your reading of this with Marilynn A. Johnson's book Louis Comfort Tiffany:  Artist for the Ages to see photos of Tiffany's wide variety of projects, including the dragonfly lamp and the wisteria lamp you will read about in Vreeland's story.

The productions were similar because each one uses multiple readers to portray the various characters narrating the story.  The stories are similar because they are both set in the South and each portrays a time when racism was much more openly accepted than it is today.

At the end of the 1780's Lavinia comes to the United States on a ship from Ireland, but tragically, her parents die on the voyage.  At the docking, the ship captain, who is also a plantation owner, takes Lavinia in as a bond servant to pay off her passage. 

When they arrive at Tall Oaks, seven year old Lavinia is given to the slaves who work the plantation as an extra hand.  She meets Mama Mae who runs the big house, the twins Fanny and Beattie who become like her sisters, and Belle who manages the kitchen house and they all become her adopted family.

 
She grows to love them and yet as she gets older, it becomes more and more apparent that she will always be different from them because she is white.

In an era where slavery was common practice and the races were deeply divided, this tender story of family and loyalty will draw you in and make you indignant on behalf of many of the characters.  The author successfully combines suspense and tragedy with love and friendship in an unforgettable story.