Charles Dickens

A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, and Great Expectations were best-selling books that received critical acclaim and endured to become classics and movies we all love.  We’ve all known a Scrooge and sometimes perhaps been one.  We’ve also been blessed by the pure love of a Tiny Tim and his wish for God to bless us all.  I’m sure I’m not the only woman who has tempted the man in her life with the line from Oliver Twist:  ”please, sir, may I have some more?”

Miss Havisham in Great Expectations had an epic inability to let go after she was jilted on her wedding day.  She is the poster child for a bitter, manipulative eccentric bitch.

Charles Dickens’ classics also include David Copperfield, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop, Bleak House, Hard Times, The Pickwick Papers, and A Tale of Two Cities.  His books have never gone out of print.

Charles Dickens’ tales were calls for equal access to justice and compassion for society’s most vulnerable citizens ~ especially abused children.  He exposed hypocrisy and criticized social policy designed to brutally punish people for the crime of being born poor.  He is a timeless champion for the underdog.

He was 25 years old when he published his first best-seller, Oliver Twist.  He wrote A Christmas Carol in 1843 in six weeks.  The original manuscript is on display at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City.  Black & Blue author Anna Quindlen claims she makes a pilgrimage to be inspired by it every year at Christmas.  Many of his books were first published in serial form ~ a marketing tool similar to today’s blogging.

Charles John Huffam Dickens  was born in Landport, Portsmouth, England on Feb. 7, 1812.  At age 12, his father went to debtor’s prison and young Charles went to work.  His transformed himself and his circumstances by writing compassionately and humorously about his experiences.

His pet raven Grip was Edgar Allan Poe’s inspiration for the poem “The Raven.”  Grip has been preserved and is on display at the Philadelphia Public Library.

Mr. Dickens and his wife Catherine Thomson Hogarth had 10 children.  In 1846, he founded Urania Cottage as a home for “fallen women.”  In 1858, he left his wife for his mistress, actress Nelly Ternan.  He died on June 9, 1870 at age 58 after having a stroke at his home, Gad’s Hill Place in Kent.

Gad's Hill Place

You can read more about Charles Dickens and the Dickens Bicentenary at:

Dickens 2012:  Celebrating the 200th Birthday of Charles Dickens

NPR’s “A Tale of Two Centuries”

“Philadelphia Celebrates Dickens’ 200th Birthday,” San Francisco Chronicle

Original manuscript of A Christmas Carol at the Morgan, NYC

David Perdue’s Charles Dickens Page, an on-line encyclopedia of all things Dickens

Charles Dickens biography

The Google Doodle:  Famous characters from Dickens’ books

Hoda Kotb, Today Show co-host, Dateline correspondent, and breast cancer survivor, has learned lessons that I think will help those of us who are wearing purple.

Her memoir, Hoda:  How I Survived War Zones, Bad Hair, Cancer, and Kathie Lee, is a delightful quick read which is loaded with photos.  She was born in Norman, Oklahoma to Egyptian parents.  When the malignant tumors were removed from her breast, she had the full support of her family and colleagues.  She has experienced the joy of being celebrated as a breast cancer survivor.

Hoda's Pink Ring

Jay Blumenkopf, Hoda, Kathie Lee Gifford

• Surround yourself only with people who fill you up.  Get rid of the toxic ones.
• Don’t sweat the little stuff ~ 90% of what you worry about won’t happen.
• If you’re still standing after surviving an illness or death of a loved one or whatever your cross to bear is, you get four words:  You Can’t Scare Me.  Use them.
• Don’t hog your journey; share it to help others.
• Allow yourself dark days to stay under the covers watching Law & Order reruns and eating junk food.

Catherine Lanigan

Ms. Lanigan launched the Evolving Woman project and published survivors’ stories in The Evolving Woman:  Intimate Confessions of Surviving Mr. Wrong.  I was delighted to read that ten of the evolved women were treated to three days at a spa, which I’ve long thought was more important to survivors than a month at a shelter.

The Evolving Woman has informed and inspired me tremendously.  It is one of my favorite books.   Ms. Lanigan powerfully, vividly, and eloquently shared her own experiences:

When you’re emotionally homeless, you become a squatter in your own life, fighting to stake a claim to happiness, always worrying when ill fate will blow through the door. . .

I was evicted from the sanctity of my own marriage. . .I accepted his coldness, and turned a blind eye to his manipulative behavior.  I was willing to feast on the crumbs of affection he gave me. . .I felt like an unwanted stranger in my husband’s embrace. . .my spirit was dying. . .

I was so preoccupied with giving love, that it never occurred to me that I should be getting some in return. . .I finally started setting my sights on a place of self-respect I could call home.

Her husband’s callous indifference during an acute kidney infection motivated Ms. Lanigan to file for divorce.  She has returned to her hometown of La Porte, Indiana.  It appears she has remarried.

Ms. Lanigan shared her experiences of when angels intervened in her life in her most recent book Divine Nudges.

 She survived.  She’s thriving and has found joy. 

  October is Domestic Violence Awareness month.  Please join me in wearing your purple and celebrating survivors.

Dancing with the Stars champion and entrepreneur Cheryl Burke is a survivor of childhood sexual molestation and dating abuse.  She has recounted her experiences in chapter five of her memoir Dancing Lessons:  How I Found Passion and Potential on the Dance Floor and in Life.  It is one of the most enlightening survivor stories that I have read.

Cheryl Burke and Rick Fox

Richard North Patterson

Protect and Defend is a riveting legal thriller that exposes the hypocrisy of the religious “right’s” opposition to abortion as well as the rampant corruption within our government and legal system:

Religion can yield some curious inconsistencies as to how we value life.  Recently, my colleagues and I surveyed states with the most restrictive laws to curb abortion. . .What we expected to find was that those states compensated with more liberal programs to support the neediest children, encourage foster homes, provide early childhood education, and facilitate adoption of older children and those with physical or mental disabilities.

The reality was just the opposite ~ the states which placed the most restrictions on abortion provided the fewest protections for the children that resulted.  This law provides none at all. . .

I’ve become leery of religious advocacy for laws which only value a “life” until it’s born.

The plot is a complex, behind-the-scenes look at how courts decide cases and how justices get appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court:

No more can we claim that our politics is simply about ideas, or values, or the clash of competing interests.  All too often it is about money ~ the elegant system of quasi-bribery in which those who finance our campaigns become our stockholders, and men like Mason Taylor demand results. . .And, if “results” means ruining whoever stands in the way ~ for whatever private frailty they can ferret out ~ they will use the media to destroy any one of us, and then the next, until the cycle of destruction, turning each of us upon the other, at last drives all decency from public life.  And if their aims require a few “civilian casualties,” they will provide those too.

The book gives a sensitive glimpse into the painful decisions women make about abortion and adoption.  It helped me appreciate how much our right to privacy has been invaded.

FDR and Sara Delano Roosevelt

Sara Delano Roosevelt:  Mother-in-Law from Hell

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, an only child, was the center of his mother’s universe.  She lavished him with attention and criticism.  The Roosevelts and Delanos were part of the Hudson Valley, New York aristocracy.  Her father was an early drug dealer ~ he exported opium from Hong Kong for wounded Civil War soldiers.  His father James’ first wife was Helen Astor, whose mother as queen of New York society created the 400 list.

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt infamously opined, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”  Yet, she never enforced boundaries with her mother-in-law who treated her like Cinderella, criticized and belittled her, and engaged in financial abuse to dominate and control FDR’s life and marriage.  FDR was “insensitive, even spineless” in supporting his wife:

. . .governor of New York. . .the man who would stare down labor leaders and big business, control Congress, and take on Hitler.  But he was unable to say “No!” to his mother. . .

Sara would. . .use her grandchildren as a weapon against Mother. . .she held the purse strings. . .FDR’s lifelong subservience to his mother ~ purse strings entwined with apron strings. . .

FDR and his mother

Sara had doors cut leading from her large bedroom through Eleanor’s very small one, to give her direct access to Franklin’s room, an unthinkable invasion of privacy.  The mama’s boy willingly made his wife second fiddle to his mother.

The elder Mrs. Roosevelt was the first mother able to vote for her son for president.

Martha Young and Harry Truman

Martha Young Truman:  Renaissance Woman

Martha Young Truman was 92 years old when she flew for the first time aboard her son’s presidential plane ~ “The Sacred Cow.”  She was 29 years old when she married John Truman.  Harry was her first surviving son.  The Trumans moved to Grandview, Missouri to help run her father’s large farm.

Young Harry was “blind as a bat” without his glasses.  His mother taught him to read before he was five years old.  He read every book in the Independence (MO) public library.  She also taught him to play the piano.  She was born into a wealthy family before the Civil War, was college-educated, and celebrated the end of World War II with her son ~ the president.  Mother and son were devoted to each other:

His success. . .stems from the wise parenting of a stalwart and uncommon woman, one who had the good sense not to seek perfection in her son. . .She knew that perfect is all too often the enemy of the good.

His father had a volatile temper which was fueled by financial failure.

Harry met Bess Wallace at Sunday school when they were six.  They courted for 29 years.  Bess, like his mother, was from a wealthy milling family.  Her mother Madge lived with the couple for thirty-three cold and critical years:

Throughout her long and crotchety life, Madge Wallace was treated with utmost consideration by the world figure to whom she never showed respect. . .condescension to her son-in-law. . .The president treated her with royal respect at all times. . .Madge’s fine house is now a favorite tourist attraction ~ because Harry Truman lived there. . .at her death Madge’s gentlemanly son-in-law had only kind words for her. 

As a young man, Harry lived and worked with Arthur Eisenhower, who had a brother called Ike.

Eisenhower Family

Ida Stover Eisenhower:  Pacifist Mother of Allied Commander 

Dwight David Eisenhower ~ Ike ~ likely learned how to be a commanding general from his mother Ida Stover Eisenhower, who ably marshaled her sons to complete ”unremitting” farm chores in Abilene, Kansas.  She deplored violence and taught Ike how to cook, sew, and clean.  Although she was a poor orphan, she went to Lane University (where she met her husband) and made a joyful noise with her cherished ebony piano.

Ike’s mechanic father David was somber, withdrawn, morose, austere, brusque, explosive,and antisocial ~ the exact opposite of his wife’s lively, joy-filled personality.  Yet, they were devoted to each other and committed to educating their six sons:

Boys are the best investment in the world. . .They pay the biggest dividends. . .our bank.  We invested in them every spare penny. . .the investment paid rich returns.  All six did well. . .all self-made men. . .prima donnas. . .tyrannical with their own kids.

David, “the czar” of the household. . .focused on obedience and discipline. . .believed in beating his kids. . .Twelve-year-old Dwight, witnessing the merciless beating. . .clutched at his father’s arms. . .”I don’t think anyone ought to be whipped. . .not even a dog!”

. . .Ida was the balance wheel between severe father and resentful sons. . .it was Ida’s values that guided her boys. . .put on a pedestal by her sons. . .Ida knew how to let go.

She became a pacifist in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley during the Civil War:

When Ida was three years old Confederate soldiers stormed into the Stover home, searching for her fighting-age brothers. . .The harrowing experience. . .took its toll when, two years later, her young mother died; Ida always felt that her mother was a casualty of the war.

Although the Eisenhower family was wealthy, Ike’s father went bankrupt.  Since Ike couldn’t afford to pay tuition, he went to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.  Ida hoped Ike would become “an instrument in bringing peace.”  He became the military leader who hated war.  At Ft. Sam Houston in Texas, Ike met Mamie Doud, the coddled daughter of a wealthy Denver family.  Ike had his father’s explosive, high-voltage temper:

Poor Mamie lived in constant fear that Ike would burst out at the wrong time.

. . .Ida’s approach to dealing with [Ike's] outbursts was the opposite of his father’s method.  Where David would wield a hickory switch and gruffly order the boy to bed, Ida would wait out the worst of the tantrum, then reason with him quietly.

Mrs. Eisenhower didn’t live to see her son Ike become president.

I tried to tend the roots as well as the stems.

- Rose Kennedy

Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy:  Competitive Matriarch

Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy did everything possible to assure her children’s success:

The drive to win was instilled in each of them by example and expectation.  Not only was their father a winner in the cutthroat competition of Wall Street, Hollywood, and Washington, but Rose. . .had been a formidable contender.

Rose managed the tribe like a business; she was a human computer. . .she was teacher, nurse, social adviser, lay preacher, drill sergeant, camp counselor, and. . .campaign worker. . .John Kennedy [told Time], “They talk a lot about Dad.  Mother deserves more credit.  She is the one who was there. . .She gave me my interest in history.”

. . .[President Kennedy's] father “was not around all that much.”  The dynamic Joe was consumed with building his fortune on Wall Street and in Hollywood’s nascent film industry, amassing the wealth and power to support his dynastic plans. . .time for extramarital relationships that would set a powerful and destructive example for two generations of Kennedy males. . .

LBJ

 Let’s hear what Mama thinks.

- Lyndon Baines Johnson 

Rebekah Baines Johnson:  Master Manipulator

Dorothy Gardner King Ford

Ford Wedding, 1948

Jimmy and Lillian Carter

 Sometimes when I look at my children, I say to myself,

“Lillian, you should have stayed a virgin.”

- Lillian Carter

Lillian Gordy Carter:  Champion for the Under-dog

 

James Earl Carter, Jr. was the first American president born in a hospital.  His mother Miz Lillian was one-of-a-kind:

 

Full of sass and vinegar, insouciant and irascible, compassionate toward the downtrodden and impatient with the high-and-mighty, Lillian Carter was sui generis. . .she relished being different. . .Lillian Gordy was a girl of the new century. . .a trailblazer, defiant of old shibboleths, ready to accept new thinking. . .the first presidential mother to have a career outside the home. . .nursing was a calling. . .

 

Lillian and Earl [Jimmy's father] were a fun-loving couple.   They went to dances at the Elks Club, drank a little, and played a little poker, even though Earl was a deacon of Plains Baptist Church. . .they liked to put records on the Victrola and dance. . .

 

Jimmy quickly learned that if he was engrossed in a book, his mother let him skip chores. . .Lillian taught her son to read little books when he was four, and he never slowed down.  Books opened the world to him. . .teachers. . .companions, exciting escapes.

 

Miz Lillian didn’t cotton to the local church ladies:

 

They were enthusiastic about sending missionaries to Africa, but they weren’t interested in helping black people right there at home. . .Miss Lillian, wife of one of the biggest farmers in the county, who came into [her Black neighbors'] homes and treated them with dignity. . .Lillian did private duty nursing. . .an innate sense of the injustice, the poverty, and the inequities that gnawed at the human beings consigned to the bottom of the heap.

 

 

Reagan Family (Ronald next to his mother)

 

Nelle Wilson Reagan:  Director, Producer, and Head of Casting

 

Ronald “Dutch” Reagan’s mother Nelle Wilson Reagan was an Illinois farm girl with a thirst for the theater.  His father John Edward Reagan loved rum, and his failures caused the family to become transients.  Like his mother, Dutch craved the spotlight:

 

She had showed him the magic of pretending, she had sent him on his way. . .her son’s accomplishments had given her a status that her husband could never provide. . .Jack’s alcoholic binges made life uncertain.

 

. . .the Reagans. . .were most often holding on by the finger-nails to a cracked rung of the middle-class ladder; while Jack was always a white-collar worker, the collar was frayed. . .intrepid Nelle kept up a good front.

 

Dutch bought his parents a home in California and gave his father a job answering his fan mail.  His career, however, wasn’t as successful as his wife’s ~ Jane Wyman.  She was granted an uncontested divorce on the grounds of mental cruelty:

 

Jane charged that her husband was more interested in politics than he was in her.  And her movie career was going much better than his.

 

Dorothy (L), George H.W. (R), and George W. Bush (center)

Bill Clinton and Virginia Clinton Kelley

Virginia Cassidy Blythe Clinton Dwire Kelley:  An American Original

Bill Clinton began life as William Jefferson Blythe III.  His father had been tragically killed in a car accident before he was born.  His mother Virginia Cassidy Blythe was a registered nurse., but to guarantee her son’s future, she became a nurse anesthetist.

Bill Clinton was reading by the time he was three.

After four years of being a widow, his mother married Roger Clinton over strenuous objections from her family:

“You’re fixin’ to marry a bunch of Buick cars ~ and you’ll have hell from then on.”

. . .ignoring. . .high stakes craps games in his apartment, his first wife’s divorce on grounds of physical abuse, the garnisheeing of his salary to pay court-ordered child support, his vicious attack on a young Puerto Rican in a gambling dispute. . .little Billy was excited to have a father.  . . 

Bill was the center of Virginia’s universe.  He was a golden boy ~ a leader ~ more mature than his classmates.  He played tenor saxophone, and Virginia conducted kitchen table conversations with his friends:

Bill got his sense of justice from his mother.  She was early in understanding that people without a voice must have someone to speak up for them.  She would talk about people who were denied access to the best medical treatment because they didn’t have money. . .a champion for those who have not. . .Virginia treated Bill as an adult, and equal.  She respected him. . .Bill was a uniquely gifted young man and wanted to help him have the fullest range of opportunities possible in life.

Roger Clinton was a mean drunk, and Bill became his mother’s protector:

“Hear me.  Never. . .ever. . .touch my mother again!”

Richard and Virginia Kelley and Bill Clinton

After the couple divorced, Bill legally changed his name to Clinton.  The family dysfunction left its mark:

I had to learn to live with the darker side of life at a fairly early period. . .

I grew up as a peacemaker, always trying to minimize the disruption.  People underestimate your resolve because you go out of your way to accommodate them before you drop the hammer.

. . .He would do anything to avoid punishment.  It offended his dignity. . .

Virginia Clinton Kelley was blessed to pledge Arkansas’ delegates to her son thereby giving him enough votes to become the Democratic nominee in 1992.  Her optimism fueled his reputation as the “comeback kid” during the campaign.

Alice Hoffman

Premonitions

On page 75, the plot finally kicks in:

A halo around the moon is always a sign of disruption. . .a double ring, all tangled and snarled. . .anything can happen. . .Trouble is just like love. . .it comes in unannounced and takes over. . .

Gillian shows up on Sally’s porch with her bad-boy, abusive boyfriend Jimmy’s dead body parked in his Oldsmobile:

Tall, dark, handsome, and dead.

Gillian is convinced she’s killed Jimmy.  The sisters bury him under the lilacs which start blooming profusely ~ out of season ~ in July.  Gillian gets a job at the Hamburger Shack and charms the local teenage boys as well as her niece.

Clairvoyance

If a woman is in trouble, she should always wear blue for protection.

Work. . .Hell with a paycheck.

All hell breaks loose in the last sections of the book.  Jimmy’s ghost refuses to stay buried beneath the lilacs.  And, we hear about the family matriarch Maria Owens, who mysteriously arrived in Massachusetts with a baby girl, a satchel, and a packet of diamonds:

. . .she never backed down or valued anyone’s opinion above her own.

The book is a delightful blend of magic, romance, and mystery swirling around a core of domestic violence.  It seems everyone is happy that Jimmy is dead.  He was mean and selfish:

. . .he liked it when she cried.  When she cried, he knew he had won.

But, he doesn’t win in the end.  Sally and Gillian’s victories are practical magic.

Elissa Wall on her wedding day

FLDS leader Warren Jeff’s trial started today in San Angelo, Texas.  The San Angelo Standard-Times reports he is being tried on two counts of sexual assault of a child.   It appears his attorneys are using every possible legal maneuver to avoid a trial.  The charges stem largely from the raid on the YFZ Ranch as well as charges made by Elissa Wall in her book Stolen Innocence:  My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs.

Elissa Wall and her cousin/husband Allen Steed

 I was repulsed by him.
He hadn’t even held my hand, but
he had already taken my innocence.

- Elissa Wall 

“Keep Sweet” and Marry Your Cousin

When she was just fourteen years old, Elissa Wall was ordered by prophet Rulon Jeffs to marry her nineteen-year-old first cousin Allen Glade Steed on April 23, 2001.  She loathed him.  Her sisters Rachel and Kassandra were teenagers when they were forced to marry the prophet who was an infirm man in his eighties.  They were members of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) which practices polygamy:

 Marriage wasn’t about God, or the prophet, or any of that.  It was about controlling women, trapping them into believing that they didn’t have any other options. . .Mom had been secretly pulled aside and told that it was her responsibility to make sure that the marriage took place. . . “or else.”

. . .many aspects of the religion are based on revoking the rights of women.  If a girl speaks her mind, get her married.  Once she’s married, get her pregnant.  Once she has children, she’s in for life ~ it’s almost impossible for any FLDS woman to take her children if she leaves, and no mother wants to leave her children behind. . .I was still too young and blind to see the pattern. . .enormous sense of entrapment. . .walls closing in around me. . .the bridle had been cinched tight and heaven would be my hell. . .My soul was broken.

As a naïve fourteen-year-old girl,
I had no idea that people did more than sleep in bed.
I knew nothing about sex.

- Elissa Wall

Honeymoon Rebellion

On her honeymoon, Elissa’s predominate wish was to finish ninth grade.  After Allen raped her, she took two bottles of pills in a failed suicide attempt.  He continued to rape her.  Warren Jeffs ordered:

You need to go and repent.  You are not living up to your vows.  You are not being obedient and submissive to your priesthood head [husband].  And that is your problem.

You need to go home and repent and give yourself mind, body, and soul to Allen. . .obey him without question because he knows what’s best for you.

Elissa’s first pregnancy ended in miscarriage.  Allen was abusive and controlling.  His first anniversary gift was to have her arrested and delivered to him as a joke:

Our first anniversary marked a turning point for me. . .Any illusion that I had used to convince myself that it was going to work out was shattered, and all the bottled-up heartache. . .came rushing to the surface.

. . .I knew that you don’t hurt people that you love. . .he viewed me not as a partner and equal, but as a possession. . .no man, woman, or child should be anyone’s chattel and be robbed of their God-given free will.

Elissa had a second miscarriage and a stillbirth.  The sexual, physical, and emotional abuse continued.  She took a vacation to visit her brother and sister in Oregon and lived in the desert in her truck.  In the midst of her third miscarriage, she met Lamont Barlow, who attempted to be a Good Samaritan.  She didn’t trust him, but he didn’t give up:

Lamont turned up at Mark Twain’s [where she worked] several more times that week. . .Lamont had begun to ask questions about me. . .why I had a black eye.  It infuriated him to think that someone would strike a woman.

Lamont left the FLDS.  Elissa felt safe with him because he loved her.  After she became pregnant with Lamont’s child, she was released from her marriage to Allen:

I was making this choice to leave. . .for our child. . .so that our child. . .could grow up in. . .a world where God and faith are instruments of hope, not tools of manipulation.  I was making the choice that my mother had been unable to make for me and my siblings.  I was choosing to give my child the power of choice.

The couple moved to Hurricane, Utah (my youngest sister’s hometown ~ she’s LDS):

Getting out wasn’t just about starting a fresh routine, it was about establishing a totally new way of thinking.  When you leave the FLDS, your whole foundation crumbles.  You have to start from scratch. . .We had gained freedom and each other, but we had lost the ground beneath our feet. . .I wanted to believe God loved me.

Elissa Wall's new family with Lamont Barlow

New Beginnings

On February 18, 2005 their son Tyler was born.  People who had left the FLDS ~ willingly and unwillingly ~ began to gather to take legal action against Warren Jeffs.  Elissa wasn’t thrilled about coming forward as the key witness:

People, girls, were still being put in my position, and I needed to stand up and make it right.  To fight for those who still hadn’t found their voice. . .Those girls were my purpose.  I knew I had the strength. . .

Mr. Jeffs became a fugitive and was added to the FBI’s most wanted list with a $10,000 reward on his head.  He was captured in Nevada, and the case against him created quite a buzz in Utah.  A jury found Mr. Jeffs guilty.

Elissa and Lamont’s daughter Emily was born in December, 2006.

The pattern of punishment of FLDS members who do not submit continues.  Mr. Jeffs will be spending a great deal of time in court defending himself and the FLDS Church against a myriad of criminal charges.

Stolen Innocence does an excellent job of exposing how religion has been twisted and perverted to commit criminal acts.

Jodi Picoult

All of the major characters in Jodi Picoult’s Picture Perfect survived childhood shizza.  Alexander Riveaux from New Orleans becomes blockbuster, heart throb actor Alex Rivers, who won several Oscars for his film about a man who beat his wife before tanking his career:

 He left his childhood in a puddle on a back lot at Paramount and re-created himself to fit the mythic proportions drawn by the press.  The truth was, he became a workaholic. . .because he did not like himself as much as the characters he brought to life. . .he never would have left Louisiana in the first place if he hadn’t believed that he’d killed his own father. . .

It had been one of those weeks in New Orleans when the humidity grabbed you by the balls and blew its fetid breath into your lungs.  Andrew Riveaux [his deadbeat, drunk father] had been gambling for three consecutive days. . .

While father and son duked it out, Alex’s mother was out cold in a “Valium haze.”  On location in Tanzania, Alex married Dr. Cassandra Barrett, a UCLA anthropologist who had been lured from her dig at Olduvai Gorge to become a technical advisor on Alex’s movie.  Their childhoods mirrored each other:

. . .my parents owned a bakery. . .I also helped pick my mother up off the floor every time she passed out. . .A southern belle to the last, but a drunk. . .

Cassie had spent more time as a child taking care of her parents than they had spent taking care of her. . .her husband. . .was the first person who made her feel special. . .

Cassie became an anthropologist in tribute to her childhood best friend Connor Murtaugh, who wanted to become a veterinarian.  They dug up the bones of a neighbor’s dog and kissed shortly before Connor’s father used a 12-gauge shotgun to commit a brutal double-murder-suicide.  Connor’s ghost has visited Cassie for seventeen years:

He shows up whenever things are going wrong. . .

Several nights before the wedding I dreamed that Connor met me on the Serengeti at dusk and told me I was making the biggest mistake of my life. . . “you’re so busy seeing him as a little wounded bird whose broken wing you can fix. . .you collect other people’s problems the way some people collect rare coins.”

Cassie’s best friend is hand model Ophelia Fox, who had been her roommate at UCLA:

Christmas Eve we got drunk on a bottle of Glenfiddich. . .She spoke of the stepfather who had been feeling her up since she was twelve. . .Ophelia began to remake herself. . .I understood what she was trying so hard to disguise. . .

Cassie is rescued and protected from Alex’s abuse by William Flying Horse, a Native American LAPD cop:

Will’s first memory involved bailing his father out from jail. . .

Will’s parents were killed in a car accident [when he was nine] by some crazy drunk wasicun salesman. . .

A skeleton could tell you nothing, but

a survivor could show you her life.

- Jodi Picoult

Although the plot of the book needs work, I loved the author’s ability to concisely and vividly capture the experience of abuse:

When I was a kid, I’d climb the cottonwoods on the water’s edge and listen to the bullfrogs, thinking it was the devil belching up whiskey.

. . .I loved Alex so much that it was easier to let him hurt me than to watch him hurt himself. . .I was not afraid of Alex because I understood him. . .

Rebuffed by his father’s criticism of what he’s grown up to be, he finally explodes. . .he’d never have had to run halfway around the world to find his place [as a photojournalist] if he’d been accepted in his own home. . .the reason his father hurt him as a child was because it was easier for him to let his son view him as a strict, demanding tyrant, instead of seeing him for what he really was ~ a farmer who’d never made anything of himself.  Even being cast as a bastard was better, in his mind, than being seen as a failure. . .

“One last question” Barbara [Walters] said. . .Tell us what America doesn’t know about Alex Rivers. . .Well, Barbara, I could say, for one thing, he hits me.  And his father was terribly abusive.  And he’s going to have a baby, but he doesn’t even know that yet because I’m too afraid of his reaction to tell him the truth. . .I said, “Nothing you would ever believe.”

I used to think my suicide note would have read, You won.

Picture Perfect is on my recommended list because it credibly conveys how wounded children are drawn to each other as they struggle as adults to thrive and find joy.  Ms. Picoult deftly weaves into the plot the myriad of addictions common to dysfunctional families.

However, I was annoyed by the distractions presented by Will’s character.   Ms. Picoult, who was educated at Princeton and Harvard, has the brilliance and literary chops to develop a plot with more self-sufficient female characters fully capable of rescuing themselves.

The Goodbye Quilt by my favorite author Susan Wiggs began as therapy.  Ms. Wiggs dropped her beloved daughter Elizabeth off at college and had an empty nest meltdown.  On her blog, Ms. Wiggs told visitors:

Elizabeth is married now and about to receive her MBA from the University of Chicago.  In February, the mother-daughter duo published How I Planned Your Wedding.

I highly recommend reading both books together.  Like a master quilter pieces together a work of art, the books recount how a devoted family builds a solid foundation and properly launches a child in life.  The Goodbye Quilt is fiction, but the story is stitched with love.  Ms. Wiggs explained how her scribbling became a book:

 I needed the perspective of time and my cold writer’s eye to transform the story from a self indulgent rumination into a novel readers could truly embrace and relate to.

I also needed to find a way to conclude the story that felt true and satisfying.

Saying Goodbye to a Piece of a Mother’s Heart

Ms. Wiggs is having a contest for readers’ favorite quotes in the book.  Mine are the words Linda says to Molly as she says “goodbye” at college ~ they are words every child deserves to hear (page 241):

You’re going to be incredible. . .I’m so happy for you. . .Goodbye, my precious girl. . .You are golden. . .You are sunshine.

They reflect the sentiment in to books’ dedication:

To my curly-headed daughter, Elizabeth ~ you are my sunshine.

Susan Wiggs and Elizabeth Wiggs Maas

I liked the book so much that I’m buying a copy for my college roommate, who loves to quilt.  When I graduated from law school, she gave me a gold Cross pen set which I cherish.  I use the pen each morning to scribble in my journal.

Ms. Wiggs created a video to launch this book which has a phenomenal soundtrack ~ the Byrds gave it an enthusiastic eight wings up.  In the video, she shares what she loves about the book.  I loved the endpapers (the first and last pages in a book) which are quilted.  I also loved the quilt pattern of the actual goodbye quilt designed by Joan Vassiliadis.   This section of the book includes tips on creating art quilts versus quilts people use daily and plan to launder.

Ms. Wiggs is generously offering her readers of her blog and books a signed letterpressed bookplate.  It was created by Atlas & Campbell, who did Elizabeth’s wedding invitations.

I was absolutely blown away to discover Ms. Wiggs logo this morning:  “Laugh.  Cry.  Dream.  Read.”  She writes her books in long-hand using peacock blue ink.  The author photo at the top of this post is by Yvonne Wong, who was the photographer at Elizabeth’s wedding.  The quilt in the background is a family heirloom almost 100 years old.