'Tapestry: A Lowcountry Rapunzel' Awarded Coffee Pot Book Club Bronze Medal

I'm tickled that Tapestry: A Lowcountry Rapunzel has been awarded a Bronze Medal from the Coffee Pot Book Club in the category of 20th century historical fiction! https://thecoffeepotbookclub.blogspot.com/2023/11/

Atmospheric Essays in 'House of Steps' by Amy Blackmarr

"Good heavens, honey... it's a hippie house!" -Amy's mother regarding her temporary Kansan home

Sophia Alexander with
House of Steps by Amy Blackmarr

I’ve just consumed The House of Steps while visiting my dear friend Kelly in North Carolina. Kelly keeps an ‘Amy room’ with a sort of shrine to her sister's award-winning books in it—and I don’t blame her one whit, as they are that well-written. In fact, their mother is thought to be descended from the national poet of Scotland, Robert Burns, so perhaps Amy did not pull her writing genius from nowhere!

The House of Steps is an anecdotal collection of short essays about Amy’s experience of moving (for a few graduate-school years) to a remote, cobbled-together house in Kansas with her dog. It’s a worthwhile follow-up to the raw authenticity of her first essay collection, Going to Ground, which sprang Thoreau-like from her pen during her pond residence at her family’s remote, south-Georgia cabin. Both essay collections, quite atmospheric, remind me of those by fellow Aries Southerner, Barbara Kingsolver. Blackmarr's essays fill me with a love for Georgia's natural environment, though I sense no equivalent appreciation for her temporary Kansas surroundings.

In fact, my favorite tales from The House of Steps actually relate back to her family and girlhood in Georgia, but this may be personal bias, since I’m familiar with the family. Nevertheless, I particularly enjoyed reading about their mother’s genteel reactions to Amy’s strange new Kansan house and Amy’s perverse defense of it.  Yet while Amy does allow isolated glimpses into her past life, they come only as she mulls her existing environment and life itself—and I do so enjoy hearing Amy’s unique take on her world. In summary, I do recommend Amy Blackmarr’s books, including House of Steps, as quirky, rich, perception-expanding, sometimes-amusing, regional, atmospheric reads.

Visiting the Yucatán Peninsula

My 'crybaby' necklace from the Ixchel ruins.

Last month, I traveled to the Yucatán Peninsula for the very first time with my son, daughter, and niece in tow. We spent our first week relaxing at our time-share on Isla Mujeres, an island just off the coast of Cancún, and our second week traveling across the Yucatan, swimming in cenotes, visiting a friend on the northern coast, checking out towns, and touring Mayan ruins. It’s only a few hours from the east to the west coast, so we usually spent no more than a couple of hours in the car on any given day.

A statue at our time-share, the pool
behind her and a dock in front of her.

I did go in part for inspiration. I’ve only recently realized how very near we are to this very different country, where there’s a different government and a different language, and it’s a welcome reality check.  I also wanted to give an eye-opening travel experience to my children, who grew up in the American South and have spent precious little time outside of it. Furthermore, I do have some Native American heritage and have contemplated writing a novel inspired by those ancestors, though if I do, that will be years into the future.  Still, I thought that visiting the native ruins in a nearby place currently peopled primarily by North American natives (in this case, Mayans) might help grant me vision.

Iguanas were everywhere!

As pretty as it is, our time-share on Isla Mujeres is not one of those all-inclusive resorts, but this gave us the opportunity to mingle with the locals a bit by eating in their restaurants and shopping at their supermarket. Apparently, many Americans travel for just a few days to Cancún simply to enjoy the beach and resorts, having no more agenda than to have a good time!  For those folks, it seems to work fine to just fly into Cancún, take a taxi straight to their all-inclusive resort, paying in American money and speaking in English, and then leave a few days later the same way.  At least, that is what a friend who’s been to Cancún many times finally told me when I kept trying to pry her tips for traveling in Mexico from her.  She basically had no tips except, “Have a good time!” I spoke with another blissed-out woman on the plane back who had also been there, staying only four days to celebrate her birthday with friends at an all-inclusive resort. That sort of travel seems absolutely valid for R&R, but ours—while it had R&R, too—was also about culture and adventure.

The Turquoise Coast isn't named
that for nothing!
This was our view from the ferry
as a man crooned
Mexican songs for us!

I overheard a man in departures at the airport saying how he’d thought that it sounded like a good idea to explore the Yucatán, but that they’d had a hard time of it.  I can imagine, especially if he doesn’t speak Spanish! (I didn’t ask.)  We stuck mostly to the more popular tourist routes and still found our basic Spanish to be essential.  Turns out that most locals have a Mayan dialect as their native tongue, and Spanish is already a second language.  Conversing with taxi drivers on Isla Mujeres was interesting, and they were quite nice about chatting with me during our rides, but it was in crossing the Yucatán that I wondered what tourists would do who spoke no Spanish!  My son and I had been prepping on Duolingo in Spanish for months beforehand (refreshing our high school and college Spanish), and we used it everywhere we went, out of necessity much of the time. Even though my Spanish was atrocious, far worse than it should have been—conjugations forgotten, along with the polite form of ‘you’ (Usted), which is very much used in Mexico, nobody criticized me for it. I imagine they have to deal with a lot of tourists who can’t communicate with them at all. As it was, I was delighted to be somewhat functional there!

I'd never seen frigate birds before.
They're huge coastal birds.

Mostly we relaxed at the resort that first week, our single group outing being a snorkeling trip.  It was everyone’s favorite experience, all those brilliant tropical fish swimming in droves around us in azure waters. Absolutely marvelous. The kids were amazed. We were all burnt, though, despite buying the most expensive American-brand sunscreen.  I’d also bought a Mayan-Sun brand sunscreen for a fraction of the cost. Later I put the American sunscreen on one foot, and then, running out, put the Mayan-Sun brand on the other foot—and my Mayan foot wasn’t burn at all, whereas the other foot had gotten pink while out at the ruins of Ixchel--a healing, midwife-type goddess whose modest ruins and an extensive statuary are at the very easternmost point of Mexico on Isla Mujeres.

This statue of Ixchel shows
her seated on her symbol,
the crescent moon, which
depicts her crone aspect at the top

As I was leaving the Ixchel ruins, I wandered into a vendor booth, and the woman told me to pick a stone, any stone, and she would tell me my energy and how the stone could help me.  (She spoke English.)  So I looked at the array of necklaces and chose a tiger's eye stone.  She put it on my neck, and then she told me that I'm a 'crybaby'!  Of course, her sheer pluck made me have to buy the necklace!  I should probably wear it more often...

Anyhow, I don’t know if that would be your experience with the American vs. Mayan sunscreen, but it was mine.  And unfortunately, my son ended up with sun poisoning and blisters, so please do be careful out there!  I wore a hat and a thin long-sleeved top most of the time when outdoors and not swimming.

Worried about ‘Montezuma’s Revenge’ hitting us, I'd ordered big filter straws online, and we did use them for drinking glasses of water in the restaurants. We mostly drank bottled water, though, going through countless big containers (sometimes used to refill our bottles), and each of us took a Metagenics Supergarlic supplement daily.  Fresh veggies were still our daily fare (I can’t function without), so I felt blessed that we got through the vacation without any upsets that way.  I’d heard some horror stories from a couple of people who traveled there!

It’s said there’s less risk in the resort area on the coast, and I have my own theory of why that is:  Once we crossed from the state of Quintana Roo (where Cancún is) into the Yucatán state, the toilets generally do not take the toilet paper, and used TP is placed in open trash cans, even at the nicest hotels and the most beautiful homes!  I was so dismayed and still can’t get over that.  Our ex-pat friend lives in a gorgeous home on the beach, with a courtyard and her own private pool, and yet even she has to do that. So while my daughter and niece were thrilled with the place, talking about ‘Life goals!’, I just shook my head, thinking how even the poorest trailers in the South can flush toilet paper—apparently a luxury I’d taken for granted but cannot happily live without.  Again, can you imagine if one of us got sick with Montezuma’s Revenge and had to put the toilet paper in the open trash can? We were all sharing a single hotel room, generally for more than one night in the same place. Agh!

We swam in two cave cenotes with stalactites overhead.

On our way across the Yucatán, we went to two different cenotes, Dzitnup and Suytun, one each way.  These are fairly pristine bodies of water (connected by underground rivers) that dot the limestone peninsula, which is fairly free of surface rivers and is flat like Florida. Some cenotes are open for swimming (for a fee). Stalactites hung over our heads as we swam—though not all cenotes are in caves—and fish were swimming with us. My niece had never been in a cenote, nor a cave, so it was doubly special for her, and she was the one who asked to go to another cenote before we left.  I chose cave cenotes mostly so as to avoid the penetrating sunshine, which had already burnt us.  I was upset, however, by the cashier cheating us at Dzitnup, which made me too nervous to leave my bag and go in the water, but I was delighted with the cenote itself—bats flew far above the swimmers.  Eventually I was a swimmer myself, as my son insisted on taking my things on the substantial trek back to the car so that I could swim, too.  Seriously, the people running it seemed poor and shady, and I didn’t like having to give them my license in order to get a life jacket. They, too, had numerous vendors at booths.  So… apparently I like a more commercial setup, as Suytun was far more in line with the theme parks that we all know and love!  It was cleaner, and they had lockers to store your things, didn’t demand my license, didn’t cheat me, and didn’t have all those vendors.  I mostly remember just a big gift shop there.  Suytun’s cenote didn’t seem quite as lovely itself, perhaps, as Dzitnup—which was quite wonderful and felt more ‘natural’—but perhaps I just missed the bats circling above, maybe due to increased lighting.  I did see one, though!

Our guide was amazing with 
the camera!
My son is jumping 'over'
the pyramid of Kulkulcan!

The Mayan ruins were meant to be the pinnacle of our trip. Chichen Itza and Uxmal were well worth seeing, paying for guides, and everything.  Chichen Itza is the only new Seventh Wonder of the World in all of North America, but we couldn’t touch anything, and the walkways were saturated with so many vendors that I was sure they outnumbered the tourists.  How guilt-inducing having to ignore their continual pleas to buy something.  The first vendor I came to actually tricked me into buying a whole marble mini-chess set (so heavy for toting around there—and in my return luggage) by telling me he’d carved the pieces himself!  “It’s my yob!” he assured me.  Not long after, I passed booths with identical chess sets.  

The Magician's Pyramid at Uxmal

That said, the Temple of Kukulcan is remarkable, and I enjoyed having some of its mathematical and astronomical designs pointed out to us.  I won’t repeat the wonders, as you can watch videos on YouTube about it, but do clap your hands sharply in front of both the Temple of Kukulcan at Chichen Itza and in front of the Magician’s Pyramid at Uxmal, as they reverberate a sharp, distinctive sound that is like the Quetzal bird’s cry. Our second guide, the one at Uxmal, didn’t mention this, and I wouldn’t have known it was true of that pyramid, too, if I hadn’t overheard another guide demonstrating it to a party of tourists.

View from the top of the pyramid at Mayapan

Certainly it’s fascinating to see all those magnificent ruins, but I would encourage you, if you’re anything like me in enjoying a more tactile experience, to visit some of the less-traveled ruins, too.  We stopped at the Mayapan ruins—oh, but be careful to specify ‘ruins’ when you’re looking it up!  We first drove to the town of Mayapan, about 45 minutes away from the ruins!  Mayapan was once powerful enough that at one point it had subjugated both the larger ancient Mayan cities of Chichen Itza and Uxmal. Its ruins were contained in a relatively small area, and they even had a somewhat diminished ancient replica of the Temple of Kukulcan that we were able to climb up on!  I was thrilled to get to do that, and at one point all four of us were on the top of the pyramid. It was breathtaking to be up there, to actually climb those stairs and touch the stone.  We were the only ones at the Mayapan ruins aside from another family and a small film crew for what appeared to be a French-language documentary.  The entrance fee was just a pittance of what it cost to get into the famous ruins at Chichen Itza and Uxmal, too.  There were no guides, though, so I do recommend the famous ruins, vastly bigger ‘cities’, for that experience.

Piramide Hun Pic Tok ruins, in a hotel courtyard!

The yellow city of Izamal was our favorite find, though.  Not that it was the grandest town that we went into. When I mentioned that I'd read that there was an all-yellow colonial city—most of the colonial cities were colorful like Charleston’s Rainbow Row—my daughter had to see it, yellow being her favorite color.  We idled into a hotel’s café on one of the main squares, entering a gorgeous courtyard within. I’d been sitting there for a few minutes before I realized that the ‘wall’ behind us was actually a… pyramid!  The ruins of one called 'Piramide Hun Pic Tok'.  I was amazed.  

Note the preponderance of scooters
and motorcycles in the Yucatan. The
church in Izamal is in the background here.

On top of the pyramid of Kinich Kakmo
in Izamal (my daughter, son, me, and niece)

Izamal is perhaps the oldest continuously operating city I’ve ever been to here in North America. It’s built right on top of ancient ruins, which are simply incorporated into the everyday structures.  Absolutely amazing that we have this city nearly as old as Rome (possibly older), so close to us!  

Izamal’s yellow church, the Monastery of St. Anthony of Padua, was built in 1561 on a stone foundation that previously held a Mayan temple—the destruction and church construction ordered, to my understanding, by the very same bishop who had all the Mayan books burnt (only 3 codices are known to have survived).  

My legendary embroidered macaw 
bag on the pyramid of Kinich Kakmo

A couple of blocks away, right inside the city, a whole block is taken up by the Pyramid of Kinich Kakmo, built in 400 AD.  And you guessed it… we got to climb that immense pyramid, too.  It was even free to go in the gates (which closed by 5 p.m.). I’d happened to buy an embroidered tote bag with macaws on it in the hotel gift shop, not even thinking about the city’s legend—that a flaming macaw would swoop down daily to accept the god’s offerings from the top of the pyramid—and then I went and climbed the pyramid with the vividly embroidered birds in tow!  I was delighted to realize it once I was up there.

Our hotel at Valladolid preparing for Mexican
Independence Day

Valladolid was the final and most beautiful city we stayed in.  A quite nice vegetarian restaurant featured a phenomenal guitarist in the courtyard, making our last evening in Mexico the loveliest.  We slept at a Spanish-style gorgeous hotel there, its balconies already decorated with flags for their Mexican Independence Day. Given that the guitar music had also been contemporary Western, it was more about enjoying being there than ancient Mayan anything!

These charming, modest benches
were common in the parks. This
is in Valladolid.

The colonial cities did remind me vaguely of historic Charleston, SC, in their construction.  I was stunned at visiting the cathedral at Merida that was built in the late sixteenth century, so much earlier than anything of the sort that we have in the USA!  It was massive.  Also in Merida still stands the façade of the Yucatan conqueror’s home, which still has mounted sculptures of Spanish soldiers standing on the heads of Mayans.  Amazing that it’s still there—what a bit of history!  I’d never have noticed, though, if I hadn’t read it in an old guide book.

Check out the broom this fellow
is using to sweep the sidewalk
around a church in Merida!

There were so many places we did not see.  I’d have loved to visit the walled city of Campeche, the pink lakes, Edzna and Ek-Balaam ruins.  There is much to see and do in the Yucatán, and it is fairly affordable to visit.  Even the flights were fairly inexpensive.  On the umpteenth time that I marveled about the ancient ruins, my daughter (an archaeology major) pointed out to me that the reason we don’t have those sorts of ruins in the US is that we don’t have so much stone. Our American Indians built with more perishable items. Such had never occurred to me!

The carts in front of motorbikes

I highly recommend visiting the Yucatán, especially if you know at least a bit of Spanish. Be forewarned that much of it is rundown, especially in the more rural areas, though I was charmed by the thatched huts and the carts that villagers drove around in front of their motorcycles, even as their ‘school buses’. We actually got to see a whole parade of them leaving school one afternoon, the children in their uniforms, sitting on the benches in the carts.

I was glad to get back home, though. In comparison, my folks’ rural town in South Carolina suddenly seems quite grand!  All is relative…

Language Studies for Travel & My Writing Research

I am sporadically studying German and French, hard at work so that I can better decipher centuries-old letters by Sophia of Hanover that haven't yet been published in English. Fluent in neither, I flit from one to the other like Duo the Owl... but now there's Italian, too! One of my novels is set partially in Venice and Rome, and since I'm planning to go see these historic cities for myself, I've just switched to Italian this past month. So... my progress is will-o'-the-wisp from language to language, and I'd actually even reverted to Spanish for a while, too, since I had the Yucatan, Mexico trip last month. That was after our Montreal Spring trip, for which I'd brushed up on French. I was astonished at how essential and useful my broken, rudimental Spanish (mostly learned in high school) was while in Mexico, so much so that I woke up one morning, panicking that I was planning to go to Italy without knowing the first word of Italian. At this rate, it's pretty certain I'll never be fluent in any of these languages, but it certainly helps to be able to read signs and menus, say hellos and goodbyes and whatnot... Italian is very similar to French and Spanish, so while it's perhaps a little confusing, it's far easier to figure out sentence meanings this go-round! Sophia of Hanover and her siblings wrote in a polyglot way, sometimes in one language, sometimes another, sprinkling in words from other languages. She spoke German, Dutch, Italian, English, and French fluently, from what I understand. I haven't touched Dutch yet, but we will see what the future holds! I find the Duolingo app helps me to be consistent, but old-fashioned me does find it helpful to supplement at times with actual language books...

'Meditations' by Marcus Aurelius: Two Millenia Old, yet Relatable

Author Sophia Alexander with her e-book of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

While procrastinating on my own writing, I’ve been reading Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations: A New Translation, which at once scolds about letting small things distract us.  Hah, the irony!  Nonetheless, I am blown away by how so many of his concepts are in alignment with my own. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-190 A.D.) was a Roman emperor and a Stoic philosopher who keeps coming back to the concept of Memento Mori, remembering that you will die—mostly with the motivation of prioritizing what’s important and putting our troubles in perspective.

His thoughts on being a better person—and coping—are presented in a somewhat different structure and light than I’m used to. The meditations begin by summarizing positive lessons he’s learned from a variety of specific individuals in his life.  One man took friendship to a higher level when he showed that he would “not just shrug off a friend’s resentment—even unjustified resentment—but try to put things right.” I’m impressed at how much Marcus encourages patience, even saying, “no one does the wrong thing deliberately.” My wheels start churning a little when he points out that our priority is to protect the spirit from anything that might lead it astray, adding that the “applause of the crowd, high office, wealth, and self-indulgence… might seem to be compatible… for a while. But suddenly they control us and sweep us away.” Certainly a slippery slope, anyhow. 

I'm also impressed when he says to “be attentive to the power inside you and worship it sincerely.”  Yes, he refers to the ‘gods’, as he lives in the time of the Roman pantheon, but I hadn’t thought he’d entertain a concept like this, which reminds me of what I’ve understood the Hindu term namaste to mean: ‘the light in me sees the light in you’.  Maybe an awareness of one’s own divinity was more common in polytheistic cultures?

He begins his ‘Book 4’ (the ‘books’ are more like chapters here) with a motivational talk: “Our inward power, when it obeys nature, reacts to events by accommodating itself to what it faces… it turns obstacles into fuel… What’s thrown on top of the conflagration is absorbed, consumed by it—and makes it burn still higher.”  Just a little thrill-read there!

I get a more general thrill at contemplating that I’m reading the inner thoughts of a man—a Roman emperor, no less—from nearly two millenia ago, mostly because they so often resonate with my own--almost like feelings are universal and always have been, hmm?

All that said, some of his philosophizing creates moral loopholes for his conduct. He tells himself to dissociate his spirit from what his body parts do, which perhaps comes across as worse than it is, though it's hard to know when he's not specific and is continually chiding himself for lustfulness.  A sort of belief in predestination (maybe a ‘Not my fault, even if it’s my hand!’ concept) could assuage any guilt he has about ordering executions and such in his role in the government.  He says at one point: “Three days of life or three generations: what’s the difference?”  To be fair, he does precede this with some insightful conversation about our transience: “For you can’t lose either the past or the future; how could you lose what you don’t have?” He talks about how we become part of nature again, about how the only time we have is ‘now’: the past is gone, and the future is just a concept, and ‘a brief instant is all that is lost’ at death, which is “nothing but the dissolution of the elements from which each living thing is composed… something like birth, a natural mystery, elements that split and recombine… [Y]ou will vanish into what produced you. Or be restored, rather. To the logos from which all things spring, by being changed”. Perhaps he isn’t entirely wrong in his assertion that you’re only losing the present.  However, some postulate that time is just a dimension, that we aren’t so separated from the past and the future as all that, so I’m not buying it entirely.  But it's a comforting thought, in a way—especially in coping with loss.

At one point, Marcus even says that whatever happens is “for the best. So nature had no choice but to do it.” I was stunned at hearing this, as it’s mirrored in the Pollyanna philosophy of a 17^th-century polymath, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, on why God lets bad things happen—a sort of ‘least of all ills’ concept of things, though here Leibniz’s ‘God’ is Marcus’s ‘Nature’, something Leibniz dared not say, after what happened to his contemporary Baruch Spinoza—who did equate God with Nature, only to be excommunicated and likely murdered for it.  Hmm, perhaps Leibniz read Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations at a certain point, absorbing it like a sponge, just as he absorbed Isaac Newton’s Calculus concepts!  (He'd seen some of Newton's early mathematical papers related to this subject, but they’re both credited with inventing Calculus on their own, the f(x) functions and the integral sign ∫ being Leibniz’s version whereas Newton used dot notation.)  I’d blown off Leibniz’s 'All Is for the Best' philosophy when I was first introduced to it, thinking it merely a self-protective effort to prove that his philosophies were Christian and not at all heretical, but Marcus, too, has “a resolve to accept whatever happens as necessary and familiar.” The Roman emperor even refers to the world as “a living being—one nature, one soul.”  Luckily for Marcus Aurelius, he was the emperor and didn't have to worry so much about being persecuted by the authorities.

It's interesting that I cast off Leibniz's 'least of all ills' philosopy despite having been fascinated as a girl by a Hans Christian Andersen tale, "The Story of a Mother", in which a woman is heartbroken about the death of her darling child, only to be given foresight of the cruel future that would have otherwise awaited the child. I dwelled on that concept of 'God knows best', very similar to this one, after reading it, and that story truly is the second most memorable of all those I read in my volume of The Complete Works of Hans Christian Andersen (superceded only by "The Matchstick Girl"). Perhaps that oft-depressed author had been influenced by the philosophies of Leibniz and/or Marcus Aurelius, in one way or another.

Having managed to entirely bypass philosophy in school, I only heard about Meditations from the Daily Stoic, Ryan Holiday, who recommended Gregory Hays' translation as the best. Ryan sells a leatherbound version, but I was able to instantly download it for free to my Nook. Ryan's online videos on Stoicism can be inspiring to listen to, and often he speaks with wonderful zeal, though I've laughed at his sometimes morbid, over-the-top 'You will die!' reminders. He's fond of pointing out that Marcus speaks from experience about grief, that he’d suffered in the death of several of his children—no doubt true, but let me interject that I doubt this busy emperor felt the loss of his children as keenly as the woman who birthed them. Marcus only describes his wife as “obedient, loving, humble,” yet I doubt any loving mother could truly agree with, “Three days of life or three generations: what’s the difference?”  But maybe I’m projecting. I can't fathom being Stoic or expecting Stoicism in that situation.

Marcus sometimes sinks into depression, or rather jumps in head-first. He wants to be detached from even things like music, anything that perks his interest, idealizing being ‘disinterested’ and saying that the way to do it is to analyze it to death, basically. When he’s stressed out and bringing up death constantly, it’s not always in order to put bad things in perspective.  Sometimes, yes.  But often it very much sounds like, “What a relief it would be to just die…”  Just sayin’.  But this wasn’t meant for publication, to my understanding.  He may have struck some of that if he’d known where it would wind up. 

Another critique is that for all his ideas of 'oneness', he certainly thinks about society as a caste system.  Convenient for the emperor, hmm?  I’m sure it helped keep order, at a basic level.  Or at least in their existing empire, it did.  But how easy to spout stuff like that when you’re the one on the apex. Not that it really makes him happy.  He's a bit depressed, I’m sure of it.  Are power-mad people truly happy?  I suspect he's less power-mad than most emperors, but he certainly has his share of it.  He keeps talking about setting people straight in their mistaken ways, and his tone there strikes me--and probably them--as a bit obnoxious.  Yet he's not oblivious to this, saying many people will undoubtedly be relieved when he dies, tired of being judged by him!  Poor fellow. He's doing his best.

Oh, but he strives to be so serious.  I do get where it’s not always appropriate to be joking, that some gravitas is a good thing. But in his case, he needs a good laugh a bit more often…

While I did not find much humor overall in these Meditations, I’ll leave you (hopefully not literally, not yet) with this quote: “Don’t let yourself forget how many doctors have died after furrowing their brows over how many deathbeds. How many astrologers, after pompous forecasts about others’ ends. How many philosophers, after endless disquisitions on death and immortality…” 

'Homespun' Vying for Laramie Award by Chanticleer International

Edit: Yay! Homespun made the Shortlist, too!

https://www.chantireviews.com/2023/11/16/the-2023-laramie-book-awards-short-list-for-americana-fiction/?fbclid=IwAR15gz48j9ZMa538A7qCCKphGzWMSsA6bTnAkFHIltZpbKnRvLzT8FPAQkE

Original post:

Homespun just longlisted for the Laramie Award for Americana Fiction. Much obliged if you'd cross your fingers for it making it to the next round, too!

Here's the link for the longlist: 
https://www.chantireviews.com/2023/10/09/the-2023-laramie-book-awards-long-list-for-americana-fiction/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-2023-laramie-book-awards-long-list-for-americana-fiction&mc_cid=1755091776&mc_eid=59ee6074f9 

My Yucatan Read: 'The Daughter of Doctor Moreau' by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau (2022) is another visceral, intriguing historical tale by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, the author of Mexican Gothic and Gods of Jade and Shadows (click on titles to read my reviews of those amazing works).  I take a certain delight in selecting a special novel to read during each of my vacations, and I’m tickled at having devoured this novel while actually present on the Yucatan peninsula. I listened to Gods of Jade and Shadows again before going, as well, as it’s also set in the Yucatan and would be my pick of the two for anyone going to tour Mayan ruins—just for inspiration, not for comprehensive facts, though terms like Xibalba (the Mayan underworld), city names like Merida, etc. will help familiarize folks to the region.  No doubt her novels put me in mind of going to Mexico in the first place; we’re not really so very far away in Savannah, GA, which is further south (by latitude) than some Mexican cities, to my astonishment!

Carlota Moreau is the daughter of an eccentric researcher who lives in the Yucatan jungle, secluded from almost everyone except the staff and residents of their hacienda.  This docile, graceful, beautiful young woman loves and has faith in her European father and his hybrid research. She’s infinitely content to stay at Yaxaktun, but that may not be possible for much longer. 

The story switches perspectives between Carlota and Montgomery, the flawed overseer of the estate.  His rough-and-ready, jaded viewpoint drew me in, reminiscent of an old Western, not that I have read many of those!  It worked well here, though, a rather unique combination that Moreno-Garcia has created for us.  I kept imagining a somewhat-younger Daniel Craig in his role.  As hopeless as Montgomery is about life, and for all his bad habits, he has my respect by the end.

I don’t want to say too much about the plot, as the author works in surprises from the beginning. She actually did manage to ‘catch’ me with them early on—whereas I guessed the big twist at the end of the novel 😉.  However, this story took more work than her other novels to get into—as she brings up loads of character names without preamble, treating it all like a mystery, as if she’s dropping clues for you to figure out, but it’s disconcerting at first.  Stick with it, though, and you’ll be glad you did (if you’re anything like me).

While Moreno-Garcia’s story is not focused overly much on the historical surroundings, she did help me to understand about the Mayan uprisings of the time (the novel begins in 1871), of the caste issues of the region, etc.  One reviewer calls Moreno-Garcia a ‘virtuoso of the anti-imperialist gothic novel’, to which I nod in agreement, though I should add that so far there is always, at some point, a rather grotesque element to her stories. This Mexican-Canadian author already ranks among my favorites, and this book is worthy of accompanying her other novels on my bookshelf or e-reader, as the case may be.