Rainbow Garden

by Patricia St. John, 1960

Perhaps Patricia St. John’s best-known book is Treasures of the Snow. It has been made into a movie. But she has written many excellent books for children. I have read only three of them: Treasures of the Snow, The Secret of Pheasant Cottage, and most recently, Rainbow Garden.

Despite its somewhat namby-pamby-sounding name, and despite the many scenes of beauty within it, Rainbow Garden is not a sentimental book. It’s not about hippy, New-Agey, All-Is-One-style rainbows. In fact the rainbow makes only one appearance, very vivid but very brief, as is the way of rainbows.

Elaine has lived a pampered, but lonely and urban life in London with her mother. Then she is sent to live with a vicar and his family of six children in rural northern Wales – near both the mountains and the sea. In January.
Naturally it’s quite an adjustment. Elaine is not used to being asked to pitch in and do her share of the household chores, as the Owens expect her to do. She is no good at running, throwing snowballs or climbing trees as are the Owen children. One rainy day in the early spring, she looks out the window and notices a very bright rainbow which seems to have its foot behind a stone wall. She quietly leaves the house, runs to the wall, and follows it until she finds a low place where she can scramble over. By the time she does so, the rainbow has vanished. But Elaine has discovered a deserted garden that becomes her place of solace when she needs to get away from the difficulties of her living situation.
Patricia St. John excels at describing scenes of natural beauty in an evocative but not overdone manner. It is clear that she herself loves nature and draws great nourishment from it. And spring in North Wales gives her plenty to describe.

But Elaine is not just being calmed and nourished by nature; she is pursuing a mystery. On her first visit to church with the Owens, she saw an old, ivy-covered gravestone with some words that intrigued her. “In … [indecipherable] … is fulness of joy.” Fulness of joy! … the words stick in Elaine’s mind. She realizes that she longs for fulness of joy. She begins to try to find out where is it is found. She asks Janet, with whom she shares a room. Janet thinks it’s “In heaven is fulness of joy.” But she’s wrong. As Elaine finds out later, the words are from the end of Psalm 16: Thou wilt show me the path of life, and in Thy presence is fulness of joy. This is good news, because she does not have to get into heaven in order to find fulness of joy. She can begin now to discern and follow the path of life.
I cannot remember seeing a verse of Scripture handled so well in a novel. The verse reverberates throughout the story, unfolding gradually and naturally in a way that allows us to feel the mystery, richness and relevance of it, and what a gift it is.

Seven Daughters and Seven Sons

by Barbara Cohen and Bahija Lovejoy
published by Atheneum 1982, Beech Tree 1994

Once upon a time, in medieval Baghdad, lived a man who had seven daughters but no son. To his shame, he was therefore known as Abu-al-Banat (Father of Girls). To make matters worse, this man’s brother was blessed with seven sons. Furthermore, Abu-al-Banat was poor, whereas his brother was rich.
Since he had no son, Abu-al-Banat was forced to teach one of his daughters skills that were normally taught only to boys. He taught her to play chess, so that he would have someone to play against. He taught her to read because she wanted to learn so badly. In the evenings, he would sit and talk business with her, although he himself was not a successful businessman. But his daughter had the gift, and although Abu-al-Banat did not know it, by teaching his daughter he had sown the seeds for future good fortune for his family.

I don’t know why it is, but often the times-and-places that were the most unpleasant for the people who lived in them, make the most romantic settings for stories. I love the milieu in which this story is set. I love the way the characters talk to each other, using the vocative: “O my brother,” or “O father of daughters.” I love reading about the caravans and the spice shops. But I know that, especially as a woman, I would have hated to live there. Not all of us are blessed with the remarkable resilience and survival instincts of Abu-al-Banat’s daughter Buran.
Perhaps one thing that makes such a harsh world seem attractive, is that is it not peopled solely with characters who are bound by their culture. In a world in which the social separation between the sexes was extreme, and in which women were therefore considered barely human, we get characters like Abu-al-Banat, who allows his daughter to dress as a boy and go out into the world to seek her fortune; and like the prince, who when he finally figures out that his friend “Nasir” is a woman, feels attracted rather than repelled. For realism’s sake, we also have characters like the prince’s friend Amin, who considers a reading, chess-playing woman a “freak,” and Buran’s mother, who is completely conventional. But the presence of some choice men who can rise above their culture, as Buran rises above hers (without rejecting it or Islam), make this an adventurous, romantic world rather than just a monotonous, oppressive one.
Apparently there have been such men and women in real life as well, for a note at the end of the book says that this novel is “based on a folktale that has been part of the oral tradition of Iraq since the eleventh century.” It is a well-written, absolutely spellbinding story. I don’t know why it isn’t better known.
See a kid's review of the book.

Hot Off the Presses

Yes, I am jumping on the poetry bandwagon. Good poetry is one of my favorite things to read on others' blogs.

His Dusty Hands

There it stood, near the door,
and if you did not wash just so
you were “not holy” evermore.
A basin of chains.

In He walked, glanced that way,
did not stop to rinse away
the road-dust before He ate.
Ignoring the chains.

The host is shocked, breathing fast:
How could a Teacher walk right past
the holy basin of chains?

Dusty hands yet are clean:
He does not need to wash a thing,
He Himself is purity.

Demonstrating that He can
still please God, though shocking man,
without the ceremonial stand.
Loosing the people’s chains.

The Witch of Blackbird Pond

by Elizabeth George Speare, 1958

Connecticut, spring 1687. No one is less suited to be here than Kit Tyler. She grew up in Barbados, used to blue skies, warm seas, a library full of poetry and plays, and all the work done by slaves. Connecticut offers frigid rivers that no one swims in, hard work for everyone from sunup to sundown, and plays are taboo. Practically the only reading material is the Bible (which gets somewhat short shrift in this otherwise excellent book). It also offers some unexpected solaces.

Kit, who had to sell her family’s estate in Barbados to pay off her grandfather’s debts, is as repelled by the harsh and forbidding New Englanders as they are scandalized by her. Nevertheless, her uncle, aunt and cousins welcome her to live with them, and we quickly see that the Puritans in this story are no caricatures. They have varied personalities and complex characters.

This book has everything … tangled love triangles, a dramatic trial scene (guess what kind?), and cameos by historical figures. If, like me, you like to read about the New World colonists when Fall comes around, check out this Newberry Medal winner.

Fine Legal Satire

The Associate, by John Grisham, 2009

Say you want to write a satirical novel about the world of giant, high-powered international law firms, where mind-boggling amounts of money are billed every day, corruption and workaholism rule, and Sloth is the only one of the seven deadly sins that is not rampant.

Your problem: how do you find a likeable protagonist? Most people who work in such firms do so voluntarily. They fully subscribe to the philosophy that includes padding their hours, billing expensive lunches to clients, maintaining an insane, sleepless schedule, and scorning everyone who does not do the same. These people will be hard to identify with, at least for the rest of us who actually have time to read novels. So, where do you get a protagonist who works in such a firm, but who will also be a plausible good guy, one you and your readers can root for?

John Grisham solved this problem by making his protagonist an idealistic young law student who wants to use his degree to make the world a better place, but who is blackmailed into applying to a high-powered law firm so that he can steal its secrets for the blackmailer.

Yes, this book has some elements of a “thriller,” but arguably the richer part of it is the satire. Although not really a humor book, the satire sometimes gets funny. For example:

The sound of important papers being extracted crackled from the backseat, and Kyle knew something was being reviewed … After ten minutes of [driving in] in downtown traffic, Kyle was wet under the collar and breathing heavily … He found the lot but it was full, and this caused all manner of cursing in the rear seat. … Doug was stuffing papers back into his briefcase. Bard suddenly had business on the phone. “I don’t care. Any street. And if you can’t find a spot, then just keep making the block. Let us out here.” Kyle cut to the curb, and a horn erupted somewhere behind them. Both lawyers scrambled out of the rear seat. Peckham’s final words were, “Just keep moving, okay. You’ll find something.” Bard managed to tear himself away from his phone conversation long enough to say, “And be careful. It’s my wife’s.” Alone, Kyle eased away and tried to relax. … Every inch of available space was packed with vehicles and motorbikes. An amazing abundance of signs warned against parking near any potential space. Kyle had never noticed so many threatening signs. … At 11:00 a.m., Kyle congratulated himself because he could now bill the client $800 for driving in circles.

Stonehenge Decoded

by Gerald S. Hawkins, 1965.

There are no druids in this book, no human sacrifices, no ritual orgies. It is much more interesting than that. If nothing else, after looking at the maps, schematics, and detailed discussion, you will know some hard facts about Stonehenge … its layout, the positions and names of the individual stones and formations.

Hawkins, an astronomer, was not the first to speculate that Stonehenge may have been used as an observatory, but he was the first to demonstrate that and how it was done. He also argues convincingly, but cannot prove, that a lesser-known feature of Stonehenge (the “Aubrey holes”) were used as a “computer” (i.e. a means of keeping track) to predict eclipses down to the day.

“Stonehenge was an observatory” may sound kind of tame. You have to read the book to realize the incredible amount of intelligence, work, and technology that went into setting up this amazing observatory. For example:
• How did they figure out how to position the stones, especially given the notoriously foggy weather on Salisbury Plain, that makes it difficult to observe sun- and moon- rises?
• How did they transport the stones?
• How did they shape the stones, including the niches that kept them from falling off each other?
• How in the world did they position the Heel Stone so that its top lines up with an observor’s view of the horizon, especially since it would settle after being erected?
• How did they know that if they had selected a location much further North or South, the elegant rectangle-within-a-circle that is part of the observatory function of Stonehenge, would have had to be a much less elegant trapezoid?

When you have read all this, you will never again doubt the intelligence of ancient man. After describing the amount of manpower that it would have taken to dig the trench, build the wall, and transport, shape, and set up the stones, and comparing that manpower to the probable population of Britain at the time, Hawkins points out that Stonehenge can be compared without exaggeration to the U.S. space program, in terms of the amount of manpower and resources devoted to it. Not to mention sophistication. Hawkins had to use a computer to unravel the riddle the ancients set him.

This is one of those cases where throwing some light on the mystery makes it more, not less, awe-inspiring.

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