Delusions of Madness by Kimberly K. Taylor; Harrowing Historical Fiction About The Reality of Mental Asylums and Mistreatment of Women

Delusions of Madness by Kimberly K. Taylor; Harrowing Historical Fiction About The Reality of Mental Asylums and Mistreatment of Women

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews 

This review is also on Reedsy Discovery.

Spoilers: Delusions of Madness by Kimberly K. Taylor is about as skin crawling, creepy, harrowing, and anxiety inducing as any Supernatural Horror book or movie. The most disturbing part of this Historical Fiction nightmare is that it is true. It depicts the lives of patients, especially women in a 19th century mental asylum and it does not skimp on any of the details. Even if you don't have dementophobia (fear of insanity-which I do), you might still have nightmares.

Proper 19th century Ohio wife and mother, Cassie Alexander is institutionalized by her husband, Jed who reports that she has gone insane. She hasn't. She and Jed are having marital problems and he is having an affair and needs to get rid of the competition before he can move onto the Second Mrs. Alexander. He convinces a judge that she needs to be institutionalized, so she is sent to a mental asylum.

When Cassie arrives, she finds a filthy degrading place filled with suffering patients, practices that damage them even more, and a sadistic or indifferent staff that tortures and abuses those under their alleged care. It doesn't take Cassie long to figure out that mental asylums are not there to treat people or help them recover. They are places to put people to forget about them.

Mental asylums have become an important topic in the past year with President Trump insisting that immigrants “from prisons and mental asylums” are being sent to the US, probably confusing mental asylums (institutions for the treatment and care of the mentally ill) with asylum seekers (people fleeing persecution, war, or violence and applying for legal recognition as refugees to another country but whose claims are still pending). Last year he signed an executive order aimed at reducing homelessness and severe mental illness by encouraging the expansion of involuntary, long-term commitment into psychiatric care including reducing community health services and bringing back long-term mental institutions and insane asylums.

It's important to remember that the treatment at such centers wasn't always the best and to understand the history of how people were treated back in the day, to recognize the mistreatment for what it was, prevent such abuse from repeating itself, and remember that there are resources that can be contacted if such abuse does happen now.

Taylor pulls no punches in her descriptions of the horrid conditions that Cassie and the other inmates/prisoners suffer through. We are treated to drafty mildewed walls, filthy floors with rancid odors and waste that is barely cleaned, uncomfortable and filthy beds, rats and other vermin that inhabit some of the rooms, and the sounds of tortured sobbing and screaming. It is not a pleasant place to say the least, said Ms. Obvious.

Then there is the staff who make Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest look like Florence Nightingale. They beat and physically torture the patients and purposely use dehumanizing language to bring them down to their lowest basest level.

Dr. Gooding, the asylum's primary physician, sexually assaults the patients. One of the patients ends up pregnant and he arranges for her to have an illegal, painful, and potentially destructive abortion. Matron Harrow, the asylum director is adept at manipulating and mentally abusing her charges. She has a particular vendetta against Cassie because there is a personal link between her and Cassie's erstwhile husband. She saves the worst punishments for her.

The asylum patients are subjected to various torturous punishments disguised as treatment from the moment they enter. They are branded upon entry. If one steps out of line as Cassie does, they are sedated and deprived of food and water. They are subjected to torture disguised as treatment like dunking their heads in ice cold water, throwing them in solitary confinement, or strapping them to a chair and spinning it around to the point of disorienting them.

 There are also early forms of electroconvulsive therapy and lobotomies practiced by people who do not know what they are doing.All of these are means to break a patient's spirits and remove their free will. If they are constantly monitored, ridiculed, tortured, beaten, and dehumanized, they will consent to anything.

The dehumanization is revealed in various ways in the book. Some are left screaming. Others sit in fetal positions crying. Many just lie inert, no longer giving a damn. One woman whose child has died holds nothing but air in her hands under the delusion that her baby is with her. The sad part is if help and reform comes to the asylum, these women will be too far gone to appreciate it.

In some ways, the asylum is representative of the patriarchy. Women’s sanity is determined by husbands, male family members, judges, doctors, and attendants who make medical decisions for them. Women who help the system like matrons, nurses, and Conservative women can only seize power by siding with men and condemning women who don't fit the program. The results are the women are silenced, isolated, deprived of any agency, and left utterly dependent and complacent to whatever abuse they receive.

Just like other facets of the patriarchy, it takes women to challenge it and reveal what is wrong. While most of the female patients are left dependent and animalistic by the abuse, ironically it strengthens Cassie. She argues with staff when she or others are abused. She stands up for and defends those who can no longer speak or reason for themselves. She still recognizes their humanity. She covertly takes notes on her situation and tries to send hidden messages to authority figures so something legal and permanent can be done to stop it. She's not the only one.

The book is set around the same time that Nellie Bly wrote her famous Ten Days in a Mad House expose in which she faked mental illness symptoms to be institutionalized and was sent to Bellevue Hospital and later Blackwell Island. She took notes of the poor treatment and abuse and compiled them into her book which was such a sensation that reforms in mental institutions began almost immediately. Bly and her book even get a shout out in this book as Cassie and her fellow inmates now have someone speaking out for them and telling the truth. 

Cassie in the book and Bly in real life forced the public to see that the mentally ill, particularly mentally ill and institutionalized women are people with names, histories, and identities. They challenged the people in charge and on the outside to recognize their humanity and change and reform the institutions accordingly.

 

Carrying On by Kali Desautels; She is Woman, Hear Her Roar and See Her Write

 

Carrying On by Kali Desautels; She is Woman, Hear Her Roar and See Her Write 

By Julie Sara Porter 

Bookworm Reviews 

This review is also on Reedsy Discovery.

Spoilers:In this day and age when women’s rights are being challenged and some like, reproductive choice and the ability to vote under married names, are being removed, it is important to remember how women in the past lived. How they struggled to make their voices heard and fought for those rights. These accounts remind us of what we didn’t have, what we won, and what we could lose. Carrying On by Kali Desautels is the type of novel that does just that

Carrying On is a sharp and brilliant character driven Historical Fiction novel about Peggy Brennan, a woman embarking on a journalism career in the mid-1960’s. Peggy is different from her more traditional mother and sisters. They have all been married and expect Peggy to do the same, but she has other ideas. The journalism career that they believe is only a hold over until marriage is Peggy’s ticket for living a professional self-actualized life. If a woman has to choose marriage or a career, she is going for the latter while the other women in her family went for the former. 

The book explores the changes that women encountered during the volatile 60’s. The traditional roles of a house, husband, and children no longer applied and were not looked upon as the sole aspirations for women. Books like Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex and Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and noted events like the release of the Pill are referenced. They are also shown in how this time affected people personally.

One of Peggy’s sisters leaves her closeted husband and moves to San Francisco. Another holds to her values, but also has serious questions about her life. Peggy also asks her mother if she is satisfied with her life and how things turned out. This is a conversation that would never have occurred to her if she wasn’t surrounded by these questions and the decisions that many women of her generation took to answer them.

Peggy herself is surrounded by these changes in her own way. Her roommates struggle with their jobs, relationships, and expectations. At work, she is dismissed for writing important news articles and is worried that she is only going to write the so-called “women’s articles” about fashion, cooking, and childcare. Her contributions are disregarded because the men don’t take her seriously and the women think that she’s acting above her station. Her progressive views are demeaned and dismissed. 

Her new editor, John Grant however is one of the few men that are actually receptive to the idea of change. When he wants to create a woman's section, he doesn't want it to be the fluffy soft news that readers and advertisers expect. He puts Peggy in charge of it because he wants to focus on real news that affects women. News like politics, war, laws, education, work, the various movements, and changes. 

 This egalitarian view interests Peggy as much as John’s genuine interest in her work and opinions. Even though Peggy questions the division between marriage and career, she weighs whether it's possible for a woman to have both. Can she truly have it all with a man who is accepting of that possibility? 

This is a relationship of mutual respect and friendship. It's interesting that I am reading this book at the same time as The Girl From Melodia which also deals with a romance between two people in a similar field. However, The Girl From Melodia explores the concept of the Artist’s Muse and how the Artist is so self-involved in their own art and voice that they deprive the Muse of theirs. Carrying On is the opposite. Someone who is not threatened by their intended’s voice and actively encourages it making their relationship an equal partnership. 

As Peggy conducts interviews and leads focus groups, she sees women of different ages, statuses, political views, goals, and outlooks. They do have one thing in common. They are glad that someone is taking their voices and opinions seriously and they are being shared on a wider scale.

That is what the various feminist movements do. Take seriously the current concerns of women and work to improve them. Whether it's the right to vote, having educational opportunities, to have control over their own bodies, to earn the same amount as men, to stop being assaulted and harassed, or to do away with the patriarchal assumptions of men and women. 

Sure the names change, the specific causes might vary, and the means of sharing information and rebelling fit the era but they all boil down to one obvious function. Anyone who identifies as female fighting for the freedom of agency and choice over their own lives and futures.

Shut Me Up in Prose by Maithy Vu; The Women's Mind in Short Story Form

 Shut Me Up in Prose by Maithy Vu; The Women's Mind in Short Story Form

By Julie Sara Porter 

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Shut Me Up in Prose by Mathy Vu is an anthology that brilliantly explores the struggles that women face including love, family, careers, appearance, gender identity, sexuality, relationships, emotions, mental health, fear, identity struggles, self-reflection, and authenticity. It uses various styles and genres from Thrillers, Mysteries, Horror, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Historical, and Contemporary Fiction to explore the wide tapestry of the female experience. It truly says a lot about women and uses many unique and colorful voices to say it. 

“Little Liability”

The Narrator ruminates about her close friend, Marion who she first met as a child and helped her through a difficult past. Now she’s afraid that Marion’s influence is going too far particularly with her new relationship.

It’s pretty easy to guess the twist but the story is less concerned with who Marion actually is than how much influence that she has on the Narrator’s. She alternates between admiration and disgust at Marion and her behavior.

The Narrator recalls times when Marion protected her from her abusive father, or when she encouraged her to pursue her art passion. However she also had a negative influence on the Narrator by interfering with her relationship then encouraging the Narrator to engage in self-harm and other toxic behaviors during the explosive aftermath. 

A new relationship makes The Narrator’s link to Marion even more questionable and concerning. She tolerated Marion’s existence and even thrived from it when it was just the two of them. Now she is forced to see it through another’s eyes and what was once creative and eccentric is now intrusive and troubling. It makes her unable to socialize with others because she is afraid of Marion’s unpredictability. She wants a stable life and Marion can’t give that to her.

There is another aspect to Marion in the story. Marion is part of The Narrator’s psyche that she tries to repress, tries to fit her into a form and personality, something that can be contained and hidden when she doesn’t want her to appear. What she fails to account for is that The Narrator can’t suppress Marion because she would be suppressing a part of herself. The part that is authentic and alive. She tries to conform to the roles others expect her to but The Narrator can only live a half life without her. 

 It’s worth noting that the short story is written in second person addressing The Narrator as “you.” It involves the Reader saying that we are sometimes filled with the same nervousness and insecurities. We feel split in more than one part and have to play various roles. We have a shadow self that can’t always be hidden inside us. We all have that aspect and have to balance it out with the other side of ourselves. We are Marion, but we are also The Narrator. 

“Gumball on a Sunny Day”

A little girl, Daisie, goes through a typical day. While on her own at a grocery store she meets a boy who puts her in an ambiguously ominous situation.

This story is a tight Thriller that illustrates a reality that females must face every day even as young as childhood. Daisie’s story is a microcosm of those experiences. Her story appears to have a feeling of warmth in childhood nostalgia but it is tinged with adult cynicism. 

 Daisie is self-conscious and preoccupied about her bad posture, stringy hair, and especially her pink braces which embarrass her. Kids make fun of her mistakes and accidents and even when they don’t, Daisie imagines that they are judging her. When her art class is assigned to paint their worst fears, Daisie draws her adult self with braces. 

Through Daisie’s experience, we see the anxieties that start in childhood and never disappear in adulthood. Women especially have these fears about their appearance, weight, manner of dress, behavior, emotions, and thoughts. 

With social media those fears have only multiplied as we are constantly monitored not only by people in our inner circle but everyone in our networks, our platforms, and around the world. Those standards of perfection begin when we are little girls wearing braces, having bad backs, and running fingers through our stringy messy hair. 

There’s another aspect in Daisie’s journey and here’s where the dangerous omens really come into play. Daisie is made to walk home alone when her father neglects to pick her up. The little boy feigns friendship with her by complimenting her, talking about shared interests, then kisses her. 

While sweet on the surface, there is something off about this meeting. The boy is too polite and too forward to someone who should be a complete stranger, especially when he goes in for the kiss. That little thought of “this isn’t right” grows when the boy’s father shows up, offers the girl a ride home, and while in the car the girl is purposely kept from listening to their conversation. 

This is something else that women learn as they age, how dangerous the world can be. Daisie learns that there are many men who will hurt her either by neglect, force, or coercion. In the space of a few pages, she is hurt and abandoned by three men in her life, neglected by her father, manipulated by the boy, and murdered by his father. 

Oddly enough, the boy is also learning from his father how to trap women with compliments, how to isolate and dominate them, then how to dispose of them. This is even shown at the end when the boy and the man find a new target to pursue. It is a vicious cycle of patriarchal abuse that objectifies, controls, and destroys women then moves onto another generation. 

“The Underwater Circus”

The Narrator recounts her time at an underwater circus where she donned a mermaid costume and did water acrobatics for the audience. She recalls several members of the crew and the power struggle between the ringmaster and a former mermaid/seamstress who the other dancers call “Mama.”

This story is a Fantasy allegory about the power struggles between men and women. The Underwater Circus is a bit of wish fulfillment between the performers and the audience. They want to see mermaids, otherworldly creatures so the circus makes that happen. They sell a fantasy that the people buy and particularly the men can ogle over.

The circus is a fantasy that holds everyone under their spell. The mermaids are similar to singers, actresses, models, and influencers who sell an image. That image is to be beautiful, sexy, alluring, seductive, ethereal, and unattainable. Like they come from another world that one can imagine but never approach. 

It’s no coincidence that the performers are dressed as mermaids. In folklore, mermaids are beautiful sea creatures who captivate men while luring them to their deaths. They enchant them by their appearance and sexuality. They are similar to sirens but sirens lure men with their voices not their appearance.

 It’s also often speculated that sirens use their skills to protect their territory to keep men away but men can’t resist. Mermaids seem to have no other motive than to draw men in with their allure playing into their fantasies and expectations. This is revealed in the line (one of the most honest lines in the entire anthology): “When they exist for them, we are called mermaids. When we live for ourselves, they call us sirens.” Both are considered fatal but mermaids are thought of as seductresses and sirens are thought of as monsters. 

This dichotomy of how the male gaze hovers between accepting mermaids but rejecting sirens comes in the exchanges between the Ringmaster and the performers. To him they are to be perfect, ethereal, and inhuman. If they show human frailties like disfiguration, pregnancy, marriage, aging, illness, anger, or defiance, then they are removed. They are products, packages to sell so he can profit off their beauty and the illusion that he creates through them. They can’t show personality, can’t be imperfect, can’t go through regular lifestyle changes, can’t challenge authority, can’t be human. 

There is one character that stands up to the Ringmaster. That is Mama formerly known as Nova the Sea Nymph. She sold the fantasy as well as she started in the circus when she was very young. She became a legend until her age caught up with her and worked behind the scenes. She understands the importance of putting on a show and maintaining the illusion but not at the expense of the performers. She defends them when they are abused, provides comfort when their jobs are threatened, and is a voice of opposition towards their employer. She sees what he does not, that they are women and human beings, not unreal creatures from mythology. 

Mama’s protective nature towards the girls comes forward in a moment when drunken revellers attack the circus in a frantic mob. The fantasy is no longer enough and now these men won’t control their urges. They want the reality and will possess the mermaids to get it. They stop when the women prove to be a powerful force and fight them back, in effect freeing themselves. 

With Mama, they are no longer passive participants. They actively control the narrative, the fantasy that they are selling. Instead of being objects to be ogled and dominated, they inspire girls and their mothers to be confident, strong, and look inward. When they do make themselves up, it’s in front of one another as a private reflection. Their beauty is for themselves, their choices, and their own gaze not others. 

“Sage in Security”

In a future world that is divided by different color cards, The Narrator is offered her dream job in security analysis. Unfortunately, it becomes a nightmarish situation when she wakes up with a different face and everyone assumes that she is someone else. 

There is something Kafkaesque about this story of an office setting that is so dehumanized that they recognize someone not through their appearance but their card identification. It’s pretty on the nose but Science Fiction often turns our daily lives into something harsher and darker than the world that we already live in.

Everyone is separated by color card identification. It’s implied that the color cards determine people’s education, training, careers, and social status. Yellows for example are artists, writers, and other creative professions. There are even different identifications according to shades. While The Narrator is a green and works for a tech company, they are still divided.

 As a Sage, the Narrator is put in a top level security system and is told that there is a hierarchy. Emeralds are on top as the executives. Sages are right under them as security. Limes are in admin/clerical, Viridian are in supplies. Olives do the manual grunt work. People are put in their places and are expected to fit a specific role. Similar to other structured hierarchies like the Brain Waves in Brave New World or the District Numbers in The Hunger Games, the sorting is arbitrary but is an attempt to define a person and fit them into a preselected box. Is it any more arbitrary than minimizing someone's abilities by skin color, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, or gender identity?

The Narrator goes through a transformation as she starts her job. She doesn’t recognize her own face when she looks in the mirror. Her colleagues call her by another name that isn’t hers and her card switches green shades from sage to olive. It is never outright stated why this change occurs. It may be a part of her job that she was never told. During the interview, she is rushed through signing a contract so there could be some amendment that states her identity becomes theirs and through some futuristic technology, they are allowed to change it however they see fit.

There are other possibilities. Since the transformation is not observed by anyone else but her, it could be a manifestation of her own mind. It could be a projection of her nerves brought on by Imposter Syndrome. She is clearly apprehensive at her interview and worried about making a good impression. On her first tour of the place, she second guesses her dress, her reactions, her gestures, and her tone. She has to put up an appearance and wear another face in her workplace relationship. She feels like she doesn’t belong so she thinks of herself as a separate person. This fear could now be real.

The strongest possibility is that the dilemma doesn’t lie in her anxiety about her changed face, but how her co-workers react to it. The answer is they don’t. She is worried that they might call security or freak out but that doesn’t happen. She goes to meetings, gives her reports, meets the bosses, and shares gossip with her colleagues like it’s any given Tuesday. They don’t notice. Granted, she’s a new employee and they might not fully remember her yet, but more than likely they don’t notice her because they are conditioned not to. 

It doesn’t matter who she is personally as long as the work gets done. They don’t even bother to memorize her face or her name so she could be anyone to them. They just see the color card which conforms to their expectations. She is part of an inhuman system that devalues her. Her identity, her personality, her friendships are what makes her human. To society however, The Narrator is just a warm body who could be anybody as long as the work gets done.

“The Daylily Darling”

Aster, a young woman has a strange birth defect of wildflowers growing out of her face. She works in her mother’s theatre where Antoinette, a singer with the same defect, makes her debut. 

This story is very similar to that of the many real life freak show performers of the 19th and 20th century whose oddities made them physically different such as Charles Stratton, Gen. Tom Thumb a Little Person, Chang and Eng Bunker conjoined twins, Robert Wadlow the world’s tallest man, Joseph Merrick, The Elephant Man who had neurofibromatosis, and Annie Jones, a singer with extreme hirsutism. They were often limited with their options: forced into hiding and exile by their families, submit to constructive surgeries when it was available, or accept what they had and dramatize it. We see these options revealed in the story. 

Aster was cast aside by her birth family and isolated by her adopted mother. She was home schooled,now hides in the theater, and works behind the scenes. One of her duties significantly is to shine a spotlight on the performers. She brings light to their achievements and successes but hides in the darkness because that’s where her mother prefers her. She is taught to be ashamed of her peculiarity. Incidentally, this concept of human oddities and someone with a disability who works behind the scenes is also featured in another novel that I am reviewing, Addie's Eyes by Tim Landry. Once again two or more books engagingly overlap in subject, style, or theme.

It’s significant that this condition is one in which flowers grow on Aster’s face. Partly because it’s not an actual condition so there is almost something otherworldly, practically fairy-like about it. Her appearance resonates old fears of other creatures that are beyond human understanding and can't be identified, counted, quantified, controlled, and dominated by their standards.

The other reason is because flowers are usually objects of beauty, wildflowers particularly so. Something so universally believed to be beautiful becomes a sign of ugliness and isolation when it’s on someone’s face. 

Flowers signify many deeper emotions so that some believe that certain flowers correspond to different meanings. Daylilies for example are prominent with both Aster and Antoinette. Aster counts them as one of the flowers on her face and Antoinette is called “The Daylily Darling.” 

Daylilies are symbolic of motherhood which Aster has been deprived of by her neglectful birth mother and abusive adopted mother. Antoinette takes a mentor role with her by talking to her and encouraging her to stand out.

The daylilies are also symbols for forgetting worries and anxieties which Antoinette herself practices. Aster is anxious and self-conscious, always wanting to hide. Antoinette not only stands out but she celebrates and dramatizes her difference from other people. She wears clothes that match the flowers on her face. She sings, dances, performs, and banters with the audience. She reasons that people are going to look at her anyway, they might as well pay for the privilege and she can display her talents. Her face may have put them to the door but her talents and personality kept them there. 

They also symbolize flirtatiousness. Antoinette flirts with her audience and with Aster. She helps Aster embrace her beauty rather than run from it. She gives her beautiful gowns, and advises her on how to fix her hair or accent her peculiar face. She becomes hands on in teaching her to dance suggesting the relationship might be physical. It certainly is emotional. 

When Aster emerges fully dressed in a new green gown following Antoinette’s advice, she has changed from an innocent girl to an experienced woman. Let’s just say that her flowers are in full bloom.With Antoinette, Aster sees the type of woman who she could be. One that can come from out of the darkness and shine a light on herself. Flowers need sun and a chance to grow, so Aster is giving herself that chance. Thanks to the solidarity of a woman who showed her how.

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Desulti: An Epic Fantasy by Ross Hightower and Deb Heim; Fascinating Feminist Fantasy Focuses on Fascism and Infighting.

 Desulti: An Epic Fantasy by Ross Hightower and Deb Heim; Fascinating Feminist Fantasy Focuses on Fascism and Infighting.

By Julie Sara Porter 

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Sometimes when groups get together for a common purpose, it is assumed that they will be on the same page and work together. That isn't always the case. There might still be animosity because of where people come from, ethnicity, political beliefs, separate biases, socio-economic background, or any other reason. They often have to ask themselves if the cause or threat that brought them together were removed, would they still have any other common ground? Would they defend each other? Would they think about one another's circumstances? Would they even be friends and allies or sworn enemies?

That is the central conflict surrounding Ross Hightower and Deb Heim’s Epic Fantasy novel, Desulti. 

Before I begin to summarize the novel, I would like to commend Hightower and Helm for their brilliant clever way of getting the Readers up to speed with the previous novel, Argren Blue. Because Desulti is a prequel to the authors’ Spirit Song trilogy and is itself the second volume in the prequel trilogy, Readers are bound to be lost. No matter, Hightower and Helm offer a very interesting twist on summarizing Argren Blue. In the Introduction, a monk tells his young protege the events of the previous volume as a story. 

The monk gives an oral history lesson to the boy about how Tove, the main protagonist, fled the Inquisition that imprisoned and scarred her and met the Desulti, an organization of women who obtained power through wealth. The Desulti use that vast wealth and their team of warriors, the Murtair, to protect, shelter, and defend other women. After she is helped by a Desulti, Tove decides to seek sanctuary with the organization and possibly join.

This introduction shows how important oral history and storytelling often is in an agrarian Medieval-like Fantasy setting. When many forms of communication do not exist or are sparse, news, history, myth, and legend are often orally repeated. The opening prepares us for the society that we are going to encounter.

Desulti picks up where Argren Blue left off with Tove asking for sanctuary. She is given it and decides to join. Unfortunately, she is faced with a huge stumbling block. The Desulti are a presence within the Empire and Tove was part of the Oss’stera, a group of rebels against that same Empire. Most importantly, she is an Alle’oss or l’osse, the lower caste. Most Desulti are part of Volloch, the upper caste and look down on the Alle’oss. Despite this prejudice, Tove is accepted into the Desulti but does not receive a warm welcome by many. She is the butt of several pranks, given grunt work as an assignment, stereotyped, gossipped about, and is the focus of several rumors meant to undermine her reputation. Most seriously, she is despised by Lyssa, the Chief Executive of the Desulti and Nessa, the Murtair Leader. The pranks and prejudice increase particularly as Tove and her new allies discover a hidden conspiracy within the Desulti that could put the entire group in jeopardy.

Desulti is a fantasy novel with a theme that is all too real in our modern life: a theme of prejudice. People will use any means to put themselves and others into separate groups: race, politics, country of origin, religion, class, anything. It becomes us vs. them and anyone could be considered a “them.” As long as someone is different, an Other, someone else will find a means to hate them and express that hatred. That is what the focus is on in this book.

Tove is determined to prove herself within this group that she sought sanctuary from. She aspires to become a Murtair because she sees women defending themselves and achieving power. For someone who has faced arrest, torture, sexual assault, physical attacks that left her scarred, and emotional attacks that left her traumatized that objective is tantalizing. She is willing to face the most demeaning jobs and her judgemental colleagues if it means that she can excel within the Desulti.

Tove makes some powerful enemies, most notably Lyssa. Tove's arrival could not have come at a worse time for her. She has her own ambitions for what she wants to turn the Desulti into and won't let anyone stand in the way of that goal, especially a newcomer that represents a social caste that she has no loyalty towards. 

Lyssa has the makings of a cult leader or Fascist dictator. She tramples on the Desulti’s values, particularly their goal to protect all women from sexual assault and marginalization. They aspire to be independently wealthy as warriors, priestesses, merchants, and tradeswomen. While they influence the Empire, they try to keep an unbiased approach that advises but doesn't allow the Emperor to seize power over them. 

Lyssa however wants the Desulti to be a central Imperial power. She is willing to move operations to the Capitol City and become an official advisor to the Emperor. She has biases about who should join the Desulti and wants all members to be similar to herself, all Volloch, all uniform, all Imperial loyalists, and all devoted to Lyssa and her goals. 

She wants to deprive the Desulti of the independence that they fought so hard for for her own personal gain. She doesn't like the Emperor but loves control more than she loves the Desulti. Since she can't get power for herself as a woman in a male dominated society, she wants to be the influence behind the throne and sway Imperial rule in her favor. As power hungry as the Emperor is, he wants to let her create a tyranny of conformity and prejudice. 

Lyssa also connives and claws her way to authority within the Desulti. She manipulates by using member's vulnerabilities. She delights in degrading and humiliating Tove though pretends to be a detached leader. She resorts to kidnapping and emotional blackmail to gain allyship. She is someone who pays lip service to solidarity and loyalty but is completely self-centered. She breaks any law or vow to push herself up and forward. 

Tove's presence upsets Lyssa’s ambitions by her mere presence. She gives a fresh outlook to the other Desulti where they recognize that an Alle’oss has a lot to offer coming from a different background, having a different perspective, and therefore carrying a different voice than the others. They recognize that Tove being there carries real value.

Tove makes some strong allies within the Desulti. Soifre, the Chief Financial Officer, has the same prejudices against the Alle’oss as Lyssa and many of their colleagues. However, she is pragmatic enough to see the advantages of recommending Tove for membership. She also has the foresight to see that opening their organization to Alle’oss means new members, more money, stronger voices, and more influence.

Cianna is appointed Tove’s counselor and often provides important information to Tove and other women. She also becomes an informant when she reveals what she knows about the conspiracy spearheaded by Lyssa.

Brie is a Desulti who lured Tove to them and becomes a staunch ally and friend of hers. Most importantly, her sister, Danu bonds with Tove to the point of becoming a love interest. Towards the end, Tove and Danu become committed lovers, practically a married couple. They are aware that Tove’s destiny could constantly put her in danger and Danu will constantly be anxious about her safety. However, they are willing to face this truth together.

One of the most powerful moments in the book is when Tove and other members of the Desulti confess that they come from different parts of the Empire, have their own reasons to join the Desulti, and had to deal with various struggles before signing up and great sacrifices that they have made since. They realize that despite the differences that they had before they arrived, they are now Desulti. They are brought together for a single purpose. The differences are miniscule because they have a common ground to work hard and gain independence and solidarity. It brings a tear to the eye when they all chant, “I am (Alle’oss etc.) and I am Desulti and I'm proud!” 

Desulti is the type of book that gives Readers an Epic Fantasy setting but tells a story that resonates in real life. We all feel like outsiders for some reason. Sometimes we are oppressed because of those differences by people who can seem more powerful. The point is to organize and recognize those similar issues. To unite for not only a common purpose but to give voice to the individual experiences and concerns. To make sure that diverse voices are represented within the main purpose.

 For example equal rights for women is a common purpose for Feminists and Women's Rights activists, but they must also look at individual struggles from all women including women of color, immigrants, working class women, women from different religions and politics, lesbians, and trans women. They have their own individual experiences and issues but they contribute to the main goal of receiving equality for women to earn their own money, receive equal pay, and have the right to make decisions about their own bodies.

It's important to belong to a group but just as important to be oneself within that group. That way true change can finally happen for everyone.

Virtuous Women by Ann Goltz; Contemporary Literature Novel Skewers Religion, Cults, and Restrictive Traditional Gender Roles

 Virtuous Women by Ann Goltz; Contemporary Literature Novel Skewers Religion, Cults, and Restrictive Traditional Gender Roles

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews 

Spoilers: Now we return to a favorite topic of this blog: Religion and Religious Cults. The Quiverfull Movement is a Christian theological position which encourages marital procreation with the intent to create large families. Its followers abstain from contraceptives, family planning, and sterilization reversal. Among the most famous, or rather infamous, adherents are Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar of reality television fame. 

Virtuous Women by Ann Goltz is a brilliant Contemporary Literature Novel that skewers religious cults and the Quiverfull Movement by showing the detrimental effect that they have on the women who are involved within them. In a time when women’s rights are eroding because of interference from Christian Evangelicals, the dangers that such a strict environment can bring cannot be stressed enough. 

Hope Wagner is the oldest girl in a religious family of ten children. Because of her status, she has to fill the motherly role towards caring for her younger siblings left by the death of their mother. However she is soon to approach the marrying age of 18 and her father, Michael will be left without a housekeeper. The elders of the Church of the Covenant order Michael to get remarried and they have the perfect candidate. Enter Jennifer Levine, a newcomer to the Church from an outsider background.

Goltz’s writing is brilliant with how she captures how people fall into such Fundamentalism and how people can be destroyed when they religiously (pun not intended) follow such a path.What is fascinating about the first half of the book is that the Church of the Covenant seems deceptively alright.

If you read a lot of Inspirational Fiction or watch a lot of Hallmark Holiday Rom Coms, you might recognize the pattern: Big city career woman with secret longing for a simple life finds herself in a cute old fashioned town with good old fashioned values. She meets a handsome rugged salt-of-the-earth local, usually a widower with children. Complications ensue but she decides to ditch her old life behind, stay in the town, marry the local, and conform to his ways. Expect quirky locals, beautiful natural settings, a sob story about the couple in question, detailed Holiday seasons, and definitely a trip or two or three to church to remind you that yes these are Faith-driven locals. 

That's all present in Virtuous Women, but something seems off about it. The Wagners seem at first like a decent family albeit very strict. Some details like the kids being home schooled could be attributed to their Conservative upbringing. They seem to be in a community whose members genuinely look out for and communicate with each other. Michael might be stern but he is honest and appears free of religious hypocrisy. 

 In this fast paced world of immediate gratification, ever present technology, and gloomy and doom-driven news, it's understandable why someone like Jennifer would want to be a part of this life, especially someone like Jennifer.

Jennifer is the type of modern woman who has the past in a nostalgia filter. She reads Classic Literature and wears vintage clothing. She works as a nanny and secretly resents her employer’s affluent attention seeking lifestyle. Her career driven parents were more interested in obtaining wealth and status than parenting. She is the type probably much like many of her Readers, who would like to go into a time machine, travel to the past, and stay there. But her vision of the past is not the same as the reality.

There are some early red flags that suggest that life in this Church isn't all that was originally advertised. Those signs are designed to make the hair stand on the back of the mind and eyes narrow in suspicion wondering what Jennifer is getting herself into.

 There's an early moment where Hope is assaulted on her way home from grocery shopping and her father blames her for the attack. There is the moment where Jennifer enters the church wearing period clothing but one that is too ornate and showy for the plain clothes congregation. There are plans to marry Hope off right away to Joel, a young man who comes from another family of believers even though she's only 18 and her younger sisters are also preparing for their future weddings. One of the biggest warnings occurs after Jennifer uses her money to buy her future stepdaughter’s wedding dresses and Michael becomes furious and physically violent, accusing Jennifer of violating his commands as the man of the house. They are present and definitely can't be ignored. It doesn't take long for Jennifer to realize that she may have gotten the old fashioned life that she thought that she wanted but she also got all that came with it including Christian Nationalism and subjugation towards women.

Jennifer is an example of someone from the outside who stumbles into a cult where everything is new and fresh to her and all rules have to be explained. Since she is so new, she questions everything around her when her suspicions and concerns manifest themselves. She sees a patriarchal system where women are second class citizens. Where God's love and forgiveness is minimized and his judgemental wrath and punishment are emphasized. Where education is limited to only what the church allows to be taught and advancement is diminished for boys and practically non-existent for girls. Where distrust in the government is so high that they don't go to hospitals even if they're dying or seek welfare when they are starving. Where girls are raised solely to be wives and mothers and are ordered to breed lots of children and have no choice in the matter. Once Jennifer realizes the dangers that she has gotten herself into, she begins to look for a way out.

Jennifer may have been thrust into the Church of the Covenant but another character reveals the pain of having been born into it: Hope who, after Jennifer leaves the book, becomes the primary protagonist. She had been raised by her father and the Church and never knew any other life. Her brainwashing began so early that she doesn't acknowledge that's what it is. Every time she mildly questions her upbringing, slightly disagrees with the lessons being taught, or considers a career in midwifery, she believes that she is sinning and that she needs to pray and read the Bible to seek attrition. She isn't even allowed the freedom to disagree or think for herself in her own mind. Her father's church has her convinced that as a woman, she is a weak vessel who needs to be controlled and made submissive.

Those nagging worrisome doubts that came into Hope’s head and then disappeared come to surface with the arrival of Jennifer and her subsequent marriage to her father. Suddenly those doubts come in a human form that becomes a catalyst for Hope finding her own independence. She sees the life that she has complacently accepted as one that imprisons and restrains those within it. The seemingly charming old fashioned plot gives way to something darker, more sinister, and more realistic than the life Jennifer imagined and Hope lived with every day.

With such a savage take down of cults, I sort of expected the book to climax in a violent and bloodthirsty manner which resulted in the death of the cult. That is not actually what happens. The cult instead destroys itself. It is destroyed from within as young members grow up and break free from their programming and older members refuse to go beyond their rigid beliefs to accommodate and adapt to the changing world.  

The Wagner Family themselves implode as the children fall into early death, domestic violence, unwanted pregnancy, estrangement, elopement, and rebellion. Some leave and then come back penitent. Others settle into unhappy marriages in which they outwardly follow the values in which they were raised but now makes them inwardly miserable. They become aware that their rigid religious upbringing left them unprepared for the world and in many ways was responsible for the troubles in which they found themselves. 

The only way that some of the Wagner Children can receive any type of fulfillment and contentment is to leave the Church and their family and make a clean break from the way of life in which they were raised. 

Virtuous Women is the type of book that reminds us that religion can be a good thing in small doses but for all too many, it is used as a means of control and oppression. Sometimes the most courageous, faithful, and virtuous thing that a person can do is live outside of and out speak against it.

Gold Digger: The Remarkable Baby Doe Tabor by Rebecca Rosenberg; Another Gold Standard Historical Women's Fiction By Rosenberg

Gold Digger: The Remarkable Baby Doe Tabor by Rebecca Rosenberg; Another Gold Standard Historical Women's Fiction By Rosenberg

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

This book is available on Voracious Readers Only 

Spoilers: Rebecca Rosenberg has made a career of writing Historical Fiction novels about fascinating and captivating women whose names might have skipped under modern radars but who left lasting legacies in their time and in ours. Her previous work, The Champagne Widows series, captured Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin and Jeanne Alexandrine Louise Melin Pommery, two Frenchwomen whose business sense, marketing style, and resilience changed the wine industry forever. 

This time Rosenberg takes her writing talents to the United States and gives us probably her most captivating, controversial, and outstanding protagonist yet in Gold Digger: The Remarkable Baby Doe Tabor. Elizabeth McCourt “Baby Doe” Tabor (1854-1935) was an interesting figure in Colorado history. A socialite, entrepreneur, and miner, Baby Doe managed to inspire controversy because of her willingness to work alongside the male miners and her scandalous second marriage to businessman and eventual Senator, Horace Tabor. 

Gold Digger covers a lot of ground in Baby Doe’s life from her first marriage to Harvey Doe, their move from Wisconsin to Colorado, the opening and backbreaking work at the mines particularly the Does’s Central City gold mine and Tabor’s Leadville Matchless silver mine, the controversies surrounding her divorce from Doe and marriage to Tabor, the rise of Leadville and Denver as big cities,the birth of her two daughters, Lily and Silver Dollar, the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, and the Panic of 1893 which wiped out the Tabor’s fortunes. It’s a tough life going from rags to riches back to rags again especially in the mining towns which became thriving metropolises but still had a lot of toes in the Old West Frontier Town “only the strong survive kill or be killed” mentality. 

Baby Doe is written as someone with a lot of strength, spirit, and independence. This is particularly noticeable when she works at the mine. She dresses in trousers and shirts and works with a pickaxe alongside the men (this incident is where the nickname, Baby Doe was coined).

 Despite many local women and Harvey’s objections, she continues to work. She is not someone who is afraid to get messy and do the hard supposedly unladylike work. These actions show her as resilient and more capable than many of the men around her, particularly her feckless first husband and emotional second husband.

That independent spirit is also revealed in Baby Doe’s stormy love life. When she learns that Harvey is spending time with prostitutes, she isn't afraid to chuck him out and file for divorce.

At times, Baby Doe acts very impulsively without thinking of the long term consequences. Her carelessness manifests itself during her affair with Harvey Tabor since it begins while he is married to his first wife, Augusta. Baby Doe is controversial enough as a divorcee but having an extramarital affair is enough to make her the subject of scorn and render her unacceptable to the growing Denver high society. 

Their affair culminates in Tabor's divorce and his and Baby Doe’s marriage but it does cause some long term ramifications during Tabor's run for Senate. Their financial difficulties are also augmented by Tabor’s former wife and estranged son who refuse to give them much needed aid because of the hurt that they still feel over Tabor and Baby Doe's actions.

Baby Doe’s adaptable nature is present during her second marriage. Once the hard-edged woman in men's clothes that worked in the mines, she transforms into a society matron. Though there are many who are still scandalized by the Tabor's affair and Augusta and her inner circle are quite combative, Baby Doe manages to acquire a good reputation. In the Gilded Age, nothing removes a stain on one's character faster than money and the Tabor’s use their silver mined wealth to their advantage. Baby Doe's fascination with beautiful clothes and the latest fashion make her a style icon. They also make Denver a cultural center by providing funds to open an opera house and host arts events. When she was poor, Baby Doe lived hard and tough. When she was rich, Baby Doe lived ostentatiously and provocatively. Either way, she was someone who left quite an unforgettable impression on those who knew her.

Rosenberg’s next book, Silver Echoes, is a sequel to Gold Digger. Presumably it is about Baby Doe’s daughter, Silver Dollar, who like her mother before her was pretty wild, had a controversial love life, and left quite an impression. If this book is any indication, both mother and daughter Tabor still have a lot to say and memorable stylish ways of saying them.

 

New Book Alert: To End Every War (Book One) by Raymond W. Wilkinson; Complex Occult Academia Feminist Fantasy of Female Friendship is the Best New Book of 2023

 

New Book Alert: To End Every War (Book One) by Raymond W. Wilkinson; Complex Occult Academia Feminist Fantasy of Female Friendship is the Best New Book of 2023

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Well the year is over. Time to close it and open the next one with a bang and a review of the best new book of 2023. That honor goes to Raymond W. Wilkinson’s To End Every War. It's a complex superb Occult Academia Feminist Fantasy novel about a group of women who represent different species in their world and are united for the common cause of building peace and stopping war between the various people and nations.

In 1901, Vespa Academy is the most prestigious and well respected university. Students all over their world attend alongside classmates and faculty of different species. There are Humans, Dwarves, Elves, Fairies, Selkies, Giants, Abraxas, Kitsunes, and Centaurs, to name a few. Many of the countries in which they come from are at war with each other and they all have a shared history of domination and oppression.

 During her first year at the Academy, Esmeralda, the Human Duchessa of Vespa is determined to do something about it. She arranges for four women from different species to be roommates to open up potential friendships and communication and to put an end to the various wars that surround them. After all, if people fear what they don't understand, then understanding is what needs to happen.

Besides Esmeralda, the potential roommates are: Viatrix Corna, a scholarly and devout Dwarf whose parents are professors at the Academy, Zabel Lusine, a quiet and mysterious Elf who is hiding various secrets from her past, Kirsi Takala, a wild Selkie (a water creature like a siren) who is struggling with her addictions, and Alya Panosyan, a serious minded and stern Abraxas (half person half-bull) who has spent much of her life fighting and isn't quite ready to lay down her weapons. Other characters also become important to this newly made quintet like Kamilla “Kam” Ruszo, a saucy Human/Fairy hybrid sophomore who is on academic probation, Bernie, Esmeralda’s loyal assistant, Violeta AKA Doppel, a look alike and spy for Esmeralda, Dina, Alya’s more reserved sister, Erna, a bullying Giant and Warden, and Snow, a naive Centaur. Through their tumultuous first academic year, these women study, attend classes, fall in love, learn things about their families and their world, suffer great loss, achieve mighty victories, and cultivate a deep friendship that changes all of them.

To End Every War is a strange combination of Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, and Mary McCarthy’s The Group. It is an Epic Fantasy with amazing world building and wide sweeping plots. It is also a first rate Women's Fiction novel in which each character experiences personal struggles, challenges, and conflicts that changes their outlook and strengthens their bond with each other. 

Each character is masterfully explored as individuals and as a group. Not in some time have I read a novel about such a memorable team of friends and thought, “I wish that I could be one of them.” The lead seven characters: Esmeralda, Viatrix, Zabel, Kirsi, Alya, Kam, and Bernie are rich and vibrant in a way that transcends genres and makes these women relatable and identifiable to their modern day Readers. There is not a weak link in the chain. 

To illustrate the interconnectivity of the characters, Wilkinson inserts some clever narrative approaches. Incidents are repeated across chapters so each of the main female characters have different interactions and responses to the same events. 

One incident involves Esmeralda, the four future roommates, and Bernie meeting each other on the gondola that takes them to the Academy. They have some serious disagreements and a burst of magic caused by an unwilling Zabel stops their infighting. 

Another incident occurs during a school gathering when the protagonists are faced with various personal, familial, and political complications. It culminates in an assassination attempt and the discovery of a betrayal and a potential conspiracy.

These events are recalled by each character giving her own perspective based on her personality, experience, and biases. Their encounters reflect different emotions such as defensive, rational, anxious, irate, worried, curious, self-absorbed, preoccupied, confused or hopeful among others. It's rather like having several eyewitnesses giving their own accounts of the same event. You probably would have several different versions that describe the basic facts of the event but pepper it with their own assumptions and feelings about it. 

Say a two-car collision is seen by five people (including the two drivers). All will agree that two cars hit each other and the name of the street where the collision occurred but there will be five different versions of who hit who, the amount of damage, the trauma that occurred, and the emotional impact. 

The character’s different perspectives of the same events develops them as representatives of their separate homogeneous communities, students involved in a wider diverse community, and women who are questioning their societal roles, life goals, and separate identities.

The world building is detailed and sneakily subversive. Like many other fantasy works, To End Every War, has a map to provide visual information about the world. It's beautifully illustrated and looks very familiar. The outline depicts some recognizable features such as a large country in the east that covers almost that entire half, a chain of islands and a large peninsula to the north, and a boot shaped nation in the south. Yes, it's actually a refurbished map of Europe. That and the fact that the years are organized similar to how they are in the western world, during the school year of 1901-1902, suggest that To End Every War is not set on a completely new fantasy world, but an alternate version of Earth. Perhaps the time and place setting and the theme of countries in constant war is also a reflection of our history, specifically during the World Wars. Maybe the union of the female characters to work out their issues with communication and discussion rather than weapons and declarations echoes the real life formation of organizations like the League of Nations and United Nations.

It is also very important to note the academic setting of the book. It's no coincidence that the opening features several women leaving their individual countries to encounter each other on their way to college. Going to college is not just an educational experience as students use their studies and major to prepare for their chosen career and life trajectory. It is a social experience as they leave home, taste independence, meet other students and staff that are different from them sometimes for the first time, and become involved in important causes that they become passionate towards. 

In this new environment the characters have to spend a lot of time together, talking to each other, fighting, learning, and gaining a wider understanding. In meeting other people, the characters look at their old worlds and countries with less affection and unwavering loyalty. They recognize the flaws within their nations and how they contributed to the constant state of war that they have been in for generations. They also become aware of those who benefit and profit from the species’s division. They realize that in the various conflicts, their nations failed to unite against a real enemy that might be larger, hidden, and more powerful.

This is a wide sweeping Epic Fantasy with strong themes of developing connections across borders, obtaining knowledge and wisdom through learning and education, and achieving peace and strength through unity. To End Every War is also a strong Feminist novel about the importance of creating and developing a foundation of sisterhood. Vespa Academy is co-educational and there are plenty of male characters. In fact, many are paired off in the end (and the male characters are just as well written as the females). But this is definitely a woman's book. The female characters are the stars and are rich with nuances, development, and good writing. They embrace leadership opportunities within their species and cultures and are individualized by their personal journeys. 

The main characters have their previous world views shaken. In fact, what stands out is not the epicness of political infighting, magical quests, secret conspiracies, and sweeping battles. It's the individual journeys and internal changes that make the book. This is not an Epic Fantasy novel that happens to star female characters. It's a Woman's Fiction novel that happens to have an Epic Fantasy setting. Characters use magic and fight with weapons, but they also fall in love, attend class, fight with family members, and rely on each other for physical, mental, and emotional support.

As they go through these experiences, each character develops and changes. Esmeralda, an idealist, learns how to be an effective leader and future ruler for all people not just her own. Viatrix discovers some heartbreaking revelations about her family and the Dwarves in general that alters her once arrogant worldview. Alya learns that strength can be found in peace and to trust those she thought were her enemies. Kirsi makes an effort to get off of her self-destructive path and gains a more positive forward thinking outlook. Zabel reveals her troubled background and accepts assistance from her friends. Kam learns to reconcile and gain closure with the two halves of her heritage. Bernie steps out of Esmeralda's shadow and makes her own voice heard.

There are wonderful moments as the characters interact with each other strengthening their emotional ties. Viatrix is asked to be Kirsi’s minder, a task in which she is first unprepared but then results in a deeper understanding between the two. Alya and Zabel’s people are sworn enemies, but Alya helps Zabel through a mental breakdown. Kam uses her skills of sneaking around forbidden areas like the Academy’s Dark Library to find important information that will aid Esmeralda and the others. Esmeralda is very protective towards the other women. Bernie is the chronicler of this account and capture her friend's voices and actions out of love and friendship. The main characters in To End Every War are wonderfully written as striking individuals that form into a perfectly working team.

To End Every War combines the immense world building of an Epic Fantasy and the intimacy and emotional core of a Woman's Fiction novel to create a masterpiece that transcends both genres and inhabits one of its own.

New Book Alert: Kutri by Blake Rudman; On Danger, Beauty, and The Future of Reality Programming

 

New Book Alert: Kutri by Blake Rudman; On Danger, Beauty, and The Future of Reality Programming

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Between Dark Beauty and his latest work, Kutri, Blake Rudman knows that there can be danger found in great beauty. His previous book, Dark Beauty, was a psychological thriller about a pair of beautiful twin models turned actresses who take their rivalry to fatal proportions. Kutri shows a future in which women exist solely as objects of beauty by men who use a declining population as an excuse to dominate and control women.

In the future, a Slow Plague killed off millions of women and girls world wide severely depleting the future populations. Females are now a rare commodity and marriage is considered so highly desirable that the Powers That Be created a reality show (figures).called Good Breeding. Good Breeding’s premise is that women are recruited from all over the world selected for their appearance, intelligence, background, ethnicity, and anything to make them desirable to their future grooms. They are selected in a process that reeks more of a sleazy beauty pageant than any promise of eternal love and personal commitment.

Trouble begins when matchmaker Jakob Freeman recruits Kutri Chandigarh, who was selected because she is one of the few remaining female Punjabi around and matching race and ethnicities is very important. (Chandigarh is not even her surname. It was the place where she was found.) She seems really good on paper, so good that Jakob falls in love with her and vice versa.

Like most good science fiction dystopian writers, Rudman crafted interesting details about a world that is in decline. Women in this universe are treated as valuable rare commodities like gold or oil. They are put on pedestals and valued specifically for what they bring to marriage and breeding. Their appearance and abilities to bear children are their only means of collateral. While claiming to respect women to the point that crimes against women are punishable by death or dismemberment, this male dominated society objectifies women by depriving them of freedom or choice in their own destinies. 

Jakob works for The Studio, the real power in what used to be Los Angeles. What studio? It never says. More than likely in this day and age of studios merging and buying each other, it's quite possible that by Kutri’s time, they simply became one gigantic media and entertainment corporation.

 In a government  controlled by corporations in Kutri's world, is it any surprise that the one that openly controls California is an entertainment conglomerate? It is they who feature the Good Breeding series and they who decide which marriages will be arranged and how the population will grow under its tight rule. When entertainment and the arts becomes propaganda to promote the government instead of the channels in which to satirize, challenge, mock, argue against, or even question that same government, it loses its bite and becomes a means of control. It becomes something to fear instead of something to engage in, enjoy, and even escape into. 

Jakob and Kutri are the typical protagonists in this kind of science fiction novel. They are participants of a system that they don't always like but can do little about. Kutri agrees to be on Good Breeding because she has very few options. She was abandoned by her father and her Punjabi heritage makes her stand out. She knows that she is being sold and forced into marriage but it her choices are limited to either being owned in public or assaulted and possibly murdered in private. From the moment that she arrives in California, Kutri is constantly monitored and on the air. People study what she wears, what she eats, where she goes, and who she talks to so they can assess her potential as a bride. Despite the pampering and celebrity treatment that she receives, Kutri is always on, a prisoner of instant fame.

Jakob has his reasons to stay within this system because he literally cannot think of any other options. He is a widower and remembers how his wife died but nothing else about her: her appearance, personality, or even her name. He was given a modification chip inside his brain to forget everything about her except for the fact that he was once married. This chip also causes Jakob and other men to be unable to resist or act with violence towards the Studio and their representatives.

It is only after Jakob and Kutri start to develop feelings for each other, that they decide to actively rebel. In this process they meet other characters who also would like to see The Studio and the rest of these tyrants taken down.

The resistance has many faces and takes many forms. There's Jason's former partner, Sven, who collected memorabilia from the time before the Slow Plague (things like Pokemon cards, old cell phones, board games, acid free paper books, and vinyl records). There's Kirmi Teng, the previous groom who commits an act of violence live on air. There's Jimmy Ching, a pawn shop owner with his own secret connection to Jakob and Kutri. 

In one chilling chapter, the couple encounter the A&L Club, a private club for men who lost their appendages after being convicted of various crimes and now want to restore the right to divorce. Then there's La Vie, a group consisting mostly of former Good Breeding couples who are planning an all out rebellion in which the women will fight to free the other women from bondage and deactivate the chip from men's brains.

The resistors are various individuals and groups that have their own agendas for fighting the Studio. Some are more trustworthy than others and some show that just because they have the same end goal in mind, getting rid of this oppressive government, doesn't necessarily mean that they are good human beings. What they have in common is they want this oligarchy gone and will use any means necessary to achieve it.

Kutri is a sharp warning about the future where beauty is valued too highly, audience dependence on exploitation entertainment becomes destructive,  and love, friendship, and commitment are distant memories. It demonstrates that we have the ability to let our forms of entertainment destroy or save us.

New Book Alert: In The Hands of Women (A Gilded City Series) by Jane Loeb Rubin; Revealing Historical Fiction About Reproductive Rights Resonates In Modern Day

 

New Book Alert: In The Hands of Women (A Gilded City Series) by Jane Loeb Rubin; Revealing Historical Fiction About Reproductive Rights Resonates In Modern Day

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Some Historical Fiction novels are not necessarily about capturing the time period in which they are set. Well that's important as well. But they are written in response to current events. They show how these struggles started, why they are necessary, why people are still fighting for them, and why those who are against them fear accepting those rights. They remind us how far we have come and what still needs to be done.

It's hard to distance Jane Loeb Rubin’s novel, In The Hands of Women from the current events dealing with the controversies towards granting reproductive rights. It was certainly the nucleus of inspiration or at least a reminder of what was lost, gained, re-lost,and needs to be regained.

In the Hands of Women concerns Dr. Hannah Isaacson, an obstetrician and suffragist in 1900 Baltimore and New York City. This situation is dour as many do not take her seriously. Some midwives are even performing illegal and badly performed abortions which seriously hurt the patients more than help. When a close friend dies in childbirth, Hannah decides to take action. 

Hannah befriends Margaret Sanger, birth control advocate and founder of Planned Parenthood. Hannah joins Sanger on her crusade to provide contraceptives and safe early trimester abortions for patients, in defiance of the restrictive Comstock Laws. Unfortunately, after a patient that she is attending to dies from the results of a botched unsafe abortion, Hannah finds herself on trial for murder and is sent to the notorious Blackwell’s Island Prison.

In the Hands of Women has one foot set in the past and another foot set in the immediate present. The historical details of a female doctor's experience in the early 20th century are well written and researched. However, the themes are timeless and serve as a word of caution, a warning,maybe anger that we were not listening, and hope that we will.

Hannah's story is rich with details about the struggles that women had to go through (and some still do) to become and be taken seriously as doctors. Even though Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to obtain a medical degree in the United States in 1849, that was still a long way from accepting her younger successors into the medical establishment. Hannah is such an example.

Hannah is shoved to the sidelines by her male colleagues and is often mistaken for a nurse or a midwife. Many mock her ambitions and dismiss her medical advice. Even when her advice is proven right, either her colleagues take credit or the patient's husband or father downplay it.  Even Hannah's husband who was at one time supportive of her drive and career turns against her and ignores her when her alliance with Sanger lands her in prison and threatens his reputation.

The patients often have it worse. Many of Hannah’s patients are overlooked by male doctors because “everyone has babies.” Hannah isn't always called in unless the situation is dire and by then it is often too late.

Some of the patients are teenage or younger aged girls who have been raped. Some have trouble giving birth having difficult labors that could kill them. Patients have had one too many children and really don't want another one but their husbands insist and some have had miscarriages or stillbirths that are treated like abortions.

Because of the bad treatment from many of the medical professionals, these women often turn to herbalists and midwives who have had very little training, don't always know what they are doing, and are careless when it comes to saving lives. 

The book is filled with bloody surgeries, last minute life saving techniques, and terrified patients on their deathbeds or reduced to victims of PTSD because of the medical treatment. In one chapter, a woman undergoes a torturous abortion only to have a nervous breakdown and be institutionalized (and the mental health treatment is not any better so it is a certainty that she will continue to suffer). It is easy to see why Hannah wants to change things and while she and Sanger work to provide better reproductive care for women, why such a situation takes a long time to improve potentially not in Hannah's lifetime and certainly late into Sanger’s. When the entire  establishment is at fault, change can take several generations.

While this is a book about the past, it is also a call to action for the present. Even now women's reproductive rights are threatened as Roe V. Wade was overturned in several states (though the recent election has resulted in potential changes in that). Many businesses and individuals question paying for contraceptives, wanting to end not only the means to terminate a pregnancy but the means to prevent it in the first place. Planned Parenthoods are forced to charge for services, threatened by demonstrators, and even forcibly shut down so cis and trans women can't always get the proper inexpensive health care that they need. The bad old days from In The Hands of Women are unfortunately not far behind us and could be in the immediate future if we are not vigilant.

In The Hands of Women is less of a historical fiction novel than it is simultaneously a savage look over what happened in the past when reproductive rights weren't granted and a warning of the potential dark future that could happen if they are denied once more.