Backseat Saints

VERY good. Good just short of Verbena good, but better than Jodi Picoult.

Rose Mae Lolley can't stop thinking about her high school sweetheart, especially now that she's decided to escape her abusive marriage for a new life. On her own (but for her fat little dog Gretel), Rose Mae begins a desperate journey to find the boyfriend who disappeared, but what she finds has more to do with her long-gone mother and her own struggle to define herself.

I loved this book for its subtle magical realism (think of Like Water for Chocolate or Chocolat), its characters' complexity (an abusive history is never simple, but it's often portrayed as a simple victim/victimizer one), and its section set in Berkeley, California. Odd and yet comforting in its familiarity, any books set there remind me of my childhood and strike a chord in me.

A fortune-teller watches Rose Mae use her beauty to get what she wants from a man and comments (p. 37):

"'I remember, in my twenties, especially, how I would feel a young man turn and see me. I'd watch his face become bright and greedy. Always made me feel like a naked Christmas tree, how he'd be hanging things all over me, expectations and wants. Young men, romantics, call it love at first sight, but even then I understood it was only prettiness. Young men see pretty, and they start hanging all the things they hope you'll be onto you till you're so weighed down you can't move.'"

Rose Mae is walking in Berkeley with Gretel when they encounter a homeless man (p. 235):

"'The weird go west,' I tell my dog. Anyone too strange for Berkeley must walk straight into the sea like a lemming to drown. Or possibly grow gills. If they are too odd for this city, there can be no place for them above sea level.'"

Home Repair

Eve's husband leaves her the morning of their garage sale--just goes on an errand and within one sentence he is gone. Now she's got to carry on as if everything's just fine while she cares for all the other people who crop up in her life. I have mixed emotions about this book: the plot feels forced and characters are on the cardboard side. However, I liked the chapters of this book about Eve with her ailing mother; her character is much more real in those spots. Perhaps one would enjoy it more if one's personal history more closely matched that of the protagonist.

p 180: "Eve finished her book of stories, then went right back to the first story and read it straight through again, amazed at how much she had already forgotten. The author, on the back cover, looked happy and beautiful, her blond hair swept back from her forehead. She lived in Ohio with her husband and three pet beagles. Eve devoured every word, the author's bio, even the dedication page. The book was like a giant pacifier she clung to, holding it in her lap or keeping it on the table beside her. Its voice kept her company during the endless night."

The River Wife

Her narrow iron bed, with its lovely white scrollwork--a luxury somehow accorded a girl of sixteen though her father was against it from the beginning--slid back and forth behind the partition as if they were on the river, the roar so loud it was like a thousand beasts from the apocalypse set loose upon the land, just as her father had predicted.

Annie Lark is trapped between her bed and a beam when an earthquake and flood strike her family's Missouri home. When she has given up hope of rescue, French trapper Jacques Ducharmer rescues and falls in love with her. This is the first of many marriages discussed in The River Wife.

Though a story spanning generations could become more of a listing of family history and less so an interesting novel, there is little danger of that here. There are a lot of characters of which to keep track, but the crucial characters are absolutely unforgettable. From dogfighting to piracy to elaborate deceptions to death after death after death...
The majority of the book is set up almost as a journal which the final wife in the tale, Hedi Rails Ducharme, is reading on the nights when her husband is gone on mysterious business. This organization was the only part of the book I found weak; I think I would have enjoyed it more without the flipping back and forth from the 1930s to the 1800's. Otherwise, very exciting book bordering on disturbing.