The Language of Flowers, by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

In an author interview at the end of The Language of Flowers, Vanessa Diffenbaugh says of her inspiration for the novel, “I’d been a foster parent for many years, and I felt it was an experience that had not been described well or often…. With Victoria, I wanted to create a character that people could connect with on an emotional level—at her best and at her worst—which I hoped would give readers a deeper understanding of the challenges of growing up in foster care.” As someone who worked for seven years with kids in foster care, some of whom aged out like Victoria, and as someone who was briefly a foster parent, I think Diffenbaugh does a terrific job.
We meet Victoria on her way to her “last chance” placement with Elizabeth. “I pressed my forehead against the window and watched the dusty summer hills roll past. Meredith’s car smelled like cigarette smoke, and there was mold on the strap of the seat belt from something some other child had been allowed to eat. I was nine years old. I sat in the backseat of the car in my nightgown, my cropped hair a tangled mess. It was not the way Meredith had wanted it. She’d purchased a dress for the occasion, a flowing, pale blue shift with embroidery and lace. But I had refused to wear it.”
Diffenbaugh’s language as she tells Victoria’s story is full of this kind of rich sensory detail that puts the reader in the backseat with Victoria when she shows us the mold on the strap of the seat belt. And that one tiny, dirty, carefully observed detail suggests larger truths about the foster care system. For that trip to her “last chance” Victoria is still in her nightgown. Because we all feel vulnerable in our nightgowns, we take Victoria’s vulnerability into our own sensibilities.
Victoria is a very specific girl; she’s not a type, and that’s where the charm and intelligence of the story lies. She is memorable. She speaks the language of flowers. She burns down the vineyard and lies to the judge. Against all odds, she becomes a successful business person with her language of flowers. She lives in weird places. The scene where she wraps her baby in moss to give to Grant is such a wonderful, fresh, memorable scene. As is her almost Homeric battle with Hazel to get nursing routine under control. I will never forget Victoria, just as will never forget Dellarobbia in Flight Behavior. 
Yet Diffenbaugh also achieves her goals of giving readers an understanding, generally, of the hardship of growing up in foster care. Victoria’s anger (which is really a mask for terror), her ravenous hunger (a sign of her emotional emptiness), her inability to learn in a normal school setting are normal behaviors of foster kids. The kids are usually terrified, emotionally drained, and unable to concentrate. Victoria makes these generalities specific in the most compelling way. 
We say goodbye to Victoria when she’s a mother and a small business owner and on the cusp of beginning a new and hopeful life with Grant, Hazel, and Elizabeth. And the journey from hello to goodbye is steered by the language of flowers. Victoria finds that language clear and unambiguous—Hazel means reconciliation; moss means maternal love; purple hyacinth means please forgive me. And where there is ambiguity, Victoria sorts it out, nails it down, and records it on two cards. One for her; one for Grant. The language of flowers, which Elizabeth introduces her to, connects Victoria to Elizabeth, Grant, Hazel, and her customers. And that’s where her hope lies at the end of the story. —Sharelle Moranville

Ragtime, by E.L. Doctorow

Published in 1975, Ragtime is an amazing tapestry capturing the spirit of America in the era between the turn of the century & WW1, when … “patriotism was a reliable sentiment … everyone wore white in the summer… the only thing more irritating than immigrants is black folk, specially when they start acting like they was white folk.”

It’s aptly titled too, for Doctorow manages to capture the ragtime music energy of the era. A quote by Scott Joplin, a famous ragtime musician, at the beginning of this novel, affirming that “It is never right to play Ragtime fast”, gives away the style and tone.  It starts very slowly, with descriptions of the main characters, where they live, and what they do., and then proceeds forward.
This colorful semi-historical novel is jam-packed with a myriad of characters, some fictional and some real-life, revolving around the fortunes of three families; a white family who are unnamed (simply referred to as father, mother and mother\’s younger brother), a Jewish immigrant family and a black family. Their lives intersect in both happy and tragic ways. Interspersed are a cast of real life authentic figures such as magician Harry Houdini, Admiral Peary, tycoons Henry Ford and J. P. Morgan, anarchist Emma Goldman, Sigmund Freud, Booker T. Washington, and even a brief mention of Tom Thumb.
There is no inkling of a plot or hint that the book will be anything more than disparate descriptive passages for several early chapters. When interconnections between the characters intermingled with their encounters with some of the famous historical personages of the age begin to appear, these are the first indications that it will evolve into the veneer of a novel.
These strange characters are inextricably linked by unexpected and unforeseen events seemingly outside their control; the young boy’s uncle is in love with a woman who meets a revolutionary who is arrested for creating anarchy when a criminal holes up in J.P. Morgan’s library after his fiancé is killed when she leaves the house of the mother of the young boy’s uncle. And so on.
Maybe it is Doctorow’s genius that he can link together as many characters as he chooses, keeping them intertwined in the fine fabric of turn-of-the-century New York. Or maybe it is because this bedlam and turmoil is intentional, reflecting perfectly the chaos and confusion of the era.
There is an undercurrent of radicalism in the novel and a strong sense of the inequality of society. What I found most stimulating was the fictional character of Coalhouse Walker, a ragtime pianist, and his fight for his rights stands out against an obvious injustice. His fanatical pursuit of justice drives him to revolutionary violence at a great cost to himself, but also to those he loves. It’s about this time that the book begins to become very interesting, and his story dominates the rest of the novel.
Ragtime definitely delivers. This is extrovert writing – witty, active voice, strong verbs, present tense. It is beautifully crafted, a stylistic tour de force, ingeniously pulled together and craftily presented, worthy of the era it captures, and should be enjoyed by anyone interested in the period.
“Writing is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your
headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” – E. L Doctorow
By Ken Johnson, June 23, 2018

Daughter of Fortune, by Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende is known for creating strong, smart, passionate, and occasionally eccentric female characters. In Daughter of Fortune, this includes Eliza and her adopted mother Rose, plus several bit players that make this story like none other of the California Gold Rush of 1849. And the men are no slouches either.

Baby Eliza shows up on in a soap crate at a wealthy family’s home in Valparaiso, Chili—with or without a mink blanket, depending on who’s telling the story—and Rose, who lives alone with her stodgy brother Jeremy, takes her in and raises her as her daughter. For 15 years Eliza is a model child, dressing like a beautiful and delicate doll and following Rose’s guidance on how to become a proper young lady. Womanhood, though, takes her for a wild ride, and she has a torrid affair with one of her Uncle Jeremy’s lowly employees, the serious and romantic Joaquin. She gets pregnant, but Joaquin has already left to find his fortune in California. Eliza, of course, follows him as a ship’s stowaway and spends the next four years impersonating either a Chilean boy or a Chinese boy searching the High Sierras for her lover.

Rose, a spinster at the age of 25, surreptitiously pens lusty stories that eventually also make their way to California to help miners get through the misery that greets them in the gold fields. As it turns out, Rose has her own secrets, mainly a love affair with one of the proteges of the Marquis de Sade, which gives her plenty of material for her books. Rose secretly wishes Eliza luck with her love affair with Joaquin because she herself was banished from England to Chili to save her reputation, and she’s quietly resentful.

Meanwhile Pauline de Santa Cruz, daughter of a wealthy landowner and wife of an entrepreneur, decides to buy a steamship, fit it with dried ice, and use it to transport fresh fruits and vegetables to the gold fields. She makes a fortune.

We’re never clear about the fate of Joaquin—did he die in California early on, or did he become an outlaw? Jacob Todd, who we first meet in Chili when he pretends to be a missionary, ends up in California, changes his name and calls himself a journalist. He earns his living making up stories about Joaquin, so nobody actually knows what’s what. Even, possibly, Jacob.

Eliza’s friend Tao Chi’en is a Chinese doctor who saves her life aboard the ship and also earns the respect of the California community because of his medical wisdom. He helps Eliza maintain her secrecy and hides his own love for her, which, we’re sure, will eventually be requited.

Rose’s other brother, the dashing sea captain John, adds mystery to the plot. Plus there’s the prostitutes who have learned to stay safe in a dangerous occupation and even more dangerous country and the Singsong girls who Tao Chi’en tries to save, earning a reputation as a reprobate because others think he’s using them in one awful way or another—and are fine with it.

The book is a primer on Chinese and Chilean culture and the horrors of the goldrush. We learn much about human nature while reading this book, in which nobody is entirely who we think they are. Except, possibly, boring Jeremy.

— Pat Prijatel