Red at the Bone, by Jacqueline Woodson

Red at the Bone, by Jacqueline Woodson

Reviewed by NC Weil

Jacqueline Woodson, well-established as a children’s book author with numerous awards to her credit, has taken her next step, into adult fiction. Her new novel, Red at the Bone, aptly demonstrates that she has plenty to say to this larger audience. Into the tale of a pair of African-American Brooklyn teenagers who fall in love and get pregnant, she expertly weaves the backstory of their lives and families.

Aubrey has grown up in many places with his single mother, while Iris has always lived in the Bushwick house occupied by her mother and grandparents. So it makes contradictory-human sense that Iris, after giving birth to Melody as a fifteen-year-old, finishes her education (with some prodding from Aubrey’s mother) and goes off to Ohio to college – being tied down to a place and family doesn’t work for her. Aubrey, meanwhile, is happy to settle in with Iris’s kin, and raise their baby.  

In the background is the issue of generational wealth – Aubrey has none; Iris’s grandmother has what she has put together and hoarded following the Tulsa Massacre of 1921, in which wealthy black Greenville was burned to the ground, and hundreds of its residents murdered, by jealous whites from neighboring Tulsa. The harsh lesson survivors drew was that financial security beholden to the white establishment could be erased in a moment – gold and property were their surest assets, the ones safest from racist attack. The fact that until 20 years ago the Tulsa Massacre was a largely unknown chapter of American history, is testament to the deliberate silence of a record written by the perpetrators.

Woodson’s writing style is replete with open spaces. I was reminded of Robert Cole’s style of sculpture, which he called Essentialism – from an iconic sculpture, The Thinker, he removed an arm here, belly there, until what remained, pared-down, was all the eye required to evoke the complete image. Woodson does the same thing in words, sprinkling memories and deeds, leaving it to the reader’s mind to put the picture together.

The story ranges from the Tulsa Massacre to the September 11 attacks, yet because the focus is on characters, we don’t feel rushed, and the pages are not crammed with more than we can absorb. Each new detail adds another brushstroke to our impression of these people, until by the book’s end we know them well. Woodson has mastered her medium, and it’s a joy to read. Brava!

Less, by Andrew Sean Greer

Less, by Andrew Sean Greer

Winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Less is a rarity for that honor: a comic novel. Generally award committees gravitate to heavy fare: violence, misery, catastrophe. So it’s refreshing to discover that a tale both funny and very well written has sneaked into the select company of that short list, going so far as to win.

Not to give away too much: our hero, Arthur Less, is a gay writer on the brink of turning 50. His younger boyfriend of nine years has just left him. Less and his older longtime paramour, a noted poet, still love each other, but after twenty years together stopped sharing living quarters. And now Freddy is gone – ready to marry someone else. Knowing he will be invited to the wedding, and not wanting to provoke anyone by either refusing to attend or attending, Less accepts every speaking or teaching engagement that’s recently been offered to him. He doesn’t have to worry about the heartbreaking event, because he’ll be in New York, Mexico, then Italy, Germany, Paris, Rome, Morocco, India, Tokyo – by the time he gets back to San Francisco he’ll be fifty and Freddy will be married.

Less has published a few midlist novels, but was stung in a review as a “magniloquent spoony.” Meeting with his agent on the New York leg of his jaunt, he learns that his publisher is dropping him. He’s not PC enough. “I’m a bad gay?” he asks, incredulous. Apparently they are after less traditional endings than the one he supplied, so he is Out. He hopes to undertake a rewrite of the rejected novel on this hejira – a month in India at the retreat should do it. But this news is a tough start to his trip.

Arthur Less is a naif, even at his age, and people love him for this quality of startled sincerity. His share of misunderstandings, struggles with modern travel – airports, hotels, language barriers, luggage – are all dealt humorously: nothing catastrophic, but he’s forever making embarrassing mistakes. In short, he is Everyman, losing his dignity and bumping into people he’d rather forget. Interwoven with his awkward moments are memories – of his life with the Great Poet, the unexpected nine years with Freddy, the impression he makes on those around him. Here’s a taste:

“Name a day, name an hour, in which Arthur Less was not afraid. Of ordering a cocktail, taking a taxi, teaching a class, writing a book. Afraid of these and almost everything else in the world. Strange though; because he is afraid of everything, nothing is harder than anything else. Taking a trip around the world is no more terrifying than buying a stick of gum. The daily dose of courage.”

Not only is this book delightfully witty, it is also a good story, with poignancy and a satisfying ending. The Pulitzer Committee was right – it’s a winner, and you should read it!

The Story of Red Cloud

The Heart of Everything That Is, by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin

The subject of this book, Red Cloud, is less known than Sitting Bull or Crazy Horse, though they fought in some of the same battles against US forces. This history captures the period of time starting in 1851 when the tribes came to Fort Laramie to parlay with Congressional representatives, up to Red Cloud’s emergence as a pre-eminent warrior and war chief through his victory against the Cavalry in Wyoming at Fort Phil Kearny in 1866.

Unlike most of the Indians, who preferred to ride in fast, steal horses or kill braves or kidnap women, then go back home, Red Cloud studied the strategies of the whites and applied them in battles against them. He did not trust the whites. At one point he said, “They kept only one of their many promises to us. They said they would take our land, and they did.” Some he respected as warriors, but for the most part he recognized that the tribes would always be overmatched: the whites seemed in neverending supply, and they had better guns.

Red Cloud was an upstart. His father was an alcoholic, and this disadvantaged him in tribal culture. But he was brave and adept, and earned the respect of his band despite enduring slights that must have rankled. The first part of the book chronicles his development into a leader, and his relationships with young Crazy Horse, the better-connected Sitting Bull, and other chiefs.

The meat of the story, however, is the US Army’s establishment of the Bozeman Trail, threading from Fort Laramie north and west, through the Bighorn Mountains of north central Wyoming, to the gold fields in Montana. Prospectors and the merchants who followed used this route, but without Army protection were being killed in lands previously ceded to the Sioux. So the Army drew their map, and situated Fort Phil Kearny in the Bighorns. From the start the outpost was understaffed, undersupplied, and its recruits, fresh from the Civil War, unprepared for harsh winters or isolation.

The officers in command, Colonel Carrington, who took a defensive posture against the Sioux, and Captain Fetterman, fresh from Civil War service and eager for battle and promotion, who preferred attack over waiting to be picked off, underestimated Red Cloud again and again. When they did finally muster to ride out against the tribes, most of the post’s men were massacred.

The authors are sympathetic to the Indians, describing the introduction of smallpox, cholera, and measles; liquor; and slaughter of the buffalo, making clear the genocidal character of white advancement westward. Attempts to appease the tribes were only stopgaps until they could be subdued by starvation, disease, and some of the harshest winters in recent centuries. Every treaty was broken when whites found reason to covet lands ceded to the Indians, including the “Heart of Everything That Is,” Paha Sapa: the Black Hills. Red Cloud beat the whites at their own game for a while, but he too was eventually pushed onto Pine Ridge Reservation. Read it and weep.