Tempest Endurance

For every moment of our lives together Xena has been my barometer.  If a weather change is coming her behavior is directly affected.  As she ages her movements are slower when a front is on its way.  Her nose will lift skyward as if she can smell the shift.

If bird song dies away you can be sure a storm is advancing.  A light breeze will still as the air gets heavy.  Over in the Wetlands:  A Hurricane-on-the-Bayou Story (Schwartz & Wade Books, July 14, 2015)  written by Caroline Starr Rose with illustrations by Rob Dunlavey takes readers on a striking tour of a vital ecosystem.

Over in the wetlands
where the silky mist weaves,
Dragonfly lights on a slender reed.

By all appearances everything is well in the bayou but the wind softly speaks otherwise.  As the speed ever so slightly increases a crab family moves.  Varieties of birds continue to feed in shallow water but the ripples have become waves.

A mother gator carries five babies toward a hidden hole.  As clouds move toward the wetlands so do fish seeking safety in deeper water.  A hurricane is approaching landfall as winds grow wild.

Turtles scramble toward security.  Graceful egrets lean low in shelters of green.  It's as dark as night within the blowing trees.  They and the wind, an eerie orchestra, create a haunting melody.  It seems as if this fierceness will go on without end.

The harsh hurricane finally fades.  Mothers and babies play, glide, bask and settle as sunset red colors the now still waters.  As stars shine and reflect Dragonfly glides.


With every reading the writing of Caroline Starr Rose takes us deeper and deeper into the Louisiana wetlands teeming with flora and fauna.  Her word combinations are a true sensory experience.  If we close our eyes and listen to her narrative we are transported.  As the storm intensifies we are acutely aware of an ever-growing tension due to the shift in her sentence structure.  Her use of punctuation creates a nearly musical rhythm of life before, during and after the hurricane.  Here is another sample passage.

Wind-whipped waves
smash up debris.
Turtles swim for safer seas.
Dark clouds snarl, press down the skies.
The hurricane grumbles,
the hurricane writhes.


Portions of interior illustrations are placed on the front and back of the matching dust jacket and book case.  Each, the egrets and the diving fish, portray a growing sense of unease in the wildlife.  Their movements are indicative of the impending storm.  Shades of teal and wetland green are used on the opening and closing endpapers.  Tiny, almost imperceptible, wavy lines stretch across both, row after row.  It's an interesting texture much like the changing water of the bayou area.

A paler, muted shade of green supplies the canvas for the verso and title page.  A narrow oval picture of the bayou and Dragonfly is placed between the text on the right.

Rendered in watercolor ink, pencil, paint, collage, and Adobe Photoshop  

the images span edge to edge across two pages.  Rob Dunlavey heightens the words of Caroline Starr Rose.

We feel the humidity, feel the changing air, hear the crabs crawl, hear the splash as pelicans dive, gaze in wonder at mothers and babies, watch the shifting sky colors and clouds, and hear the roar of the hurricane as it wages a windy war on the wetlands.  Varied perspectives bring us near to the animals or depict the vastness of the area.  A blend of fine, flowing lines, hues prominent in the region in all kinds of weather and naturalist-like details on the animals and plants draw readers to Louisiana.

One of my favorite pictures is the first one.  Against the backdrop of the trees, water, reeds and leaves of the bayou we zoom in on Dragonfly resting.  One wing is dipped to make ripples on the otherwise smooth surface.  It is most definitely the calm before the storm.


Over in the Wetlands:  A Hurricane-on-the-Bayou Story written by Caroline Starr Rose with illustrations by Rob Dunlavey is a breathtaking look at a habitat probably not known by others except those living near to the area.  It's a tribute to the strength and adaptablility of both the flora and fauna.  It's a plea for preservation.  At the end an Author's Note further explains the wetlands of Louisiana including five websites for more research.  On the opposite page more information is given about the highlighted animals.

To learn more about Caroline Starr Rose and Rob Dunlavey please visit their websites by following the links embedded in their names.  They both have an online presence in other venues.  At the publisher's website you can view more interior illustrations.  When I read Caroline Starr Rose's post at Nerdy Book Club  today about this book, I knew I had to write a post.  A four-page printable discussion guide is located here.

Much Depends On The Word Go

There have been many times when walking through a field, along a sandy shore or down a forest path or traveling across the waters of a stream, river, lake or ocean, I've thought of all the people and animals from the past that've done the same.  It's not uncommon for me to think, if only this tree or that rock could talk.  While it's important to live in the present, it's also critical to value the past as a guide for our future.

In order to be better we need to build on what we know to be true.  There are, however, mysteries from history yet to be solved.  One of them is the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island.  In Caroline Starr Rose's newest novel in verse (Her first was May B. A Novel, Schwartz & Wade Books, January 10, 2012), Blue Birds (G. P. Putnam's Sons, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA), March 19, 2015) through the voices of a Native American girl of thirteen, Kimi, and twelve year old Alis, a girl with the group of English settlers, we are shown possibilities.



July 1587
Alis
Almost three months we've journeyed,
each wave pushing us farther
from London,
every day moving us closer 
to Virginia.

But now we're anchored on sandy banks
in a place we're not to be.

The enormity of our circumstance
comes crashing down around us.
Though this is Virginia,
it's not our new home.

We will be forced ashore
miles from where 
our pilot, Ferdinando,
promised to take us.

Yet our Governor
does nothing to stop him.


Not only have the one hundred seventeen men, women and children landed in the wrong spot, but they discover the remains of a burned building, the bones of a human man and the fifteen soldiers left at this settlement have vanished.  Unease wraps around the newcomers.  Watching from the forest, Kimi notices the women and children accompanying the men this time.  She wonders about the show of affection between Alis and her mother.  Looking toward the forest, Alis sees the shadow of movement.

The leader of the Roanoke, Wanchese, who traveled to England with Manteo after the first settlers arrived but later returned to his people, listens to Kimi's news.  Manteo, of the Croatoan, has remained with the English and is with this fourth group.  The two Native American men have a difference of opinion about the arrival of these settlers but are still able to converse with respect.  Wanchese and his people remember the beheading of Kimi's father, Wingina, their previous weroance and the disease the English brought killing many members of their people, including Kimi's sister.

Curiosity overcomes the admonishments of adults and Alis ventures into the nearby woods, picking flowers for her mother.  She is startled when Kimi appears at her side. In her haste to leave she drops a wooden bird carved by her beloved Uncle Samuel, one of the missing soldiers.  It is a likeness of the blue birds seen in the forest.

Kimi believes the carving carries Alis's spiritual power.  It represents the beginning and continuing connection between the two.  It also symbolizes the love they both have for the beauty of the land.

The two girls keep meeting, without anyone knowing except for Manteo and an English boy, even though their alternating chapters reveal tensions are mounting.  When a settler, George Howe is killed on the beach while crabbing by the Roanoke, the English try to ease the severely strained relationships using the Croatoans as intermediaries for peace.  As the ten day period expires without a response from the Roanoke, the English decide to attack their village.  At great risk Alis goes to the woods but Kimi is not there.

A grave error is made by the English.  Another settler is slain.  Danger mounts for both Kimi and Alis.  Words like betrayal and traitor float in the air.  Secrets are no longer silent but spoken in anger.  A leader leaves for help.  One of the English, a boy, kills one of the Roanoke.  What will become of these two girls who each carry the sorrow of family losses?  What will become of these two girls who find comfort and companionship with each other?  What will become of these two girls who see each other as friends, friends from different worlds, but willing to seek peace?  What will happen between the English and the Roanoke?


Two weeks ago I completed reading this title for the first time.  I finished it again today.  Even knowing the outcome, the verses penned by Caroline Starr Rose resonate in their intention to recreate the events of those three months and the return of Governor White three years later.  Rose gives us knowledge of background events which define the girls' initial thoughts about each other.   With careful pacing as the bond tightens between Kimi and Alis, the distrust between the Roanoke and the English grows larger.  This moves the story into page-turner mode.  The reader's need to know is great.

In dialogue spoken by key figures on both sides, woven into the girls' poems, we come to understand the circumstances and how decisions were made.  We feel the courage it took for Alis and Kimi to continue their relationship.  We feel the compassion they have for each other.  We feel the joy they had in finding similarities and in embracing differences.  In the course of several chapters, Rose has both girls speaking, creating a larger emotional impact.    Here are a couple of additional passages.


Alis
I stay
long enough to study
the patterns on her arms,
close enough
to meet her eyes
with no urge to lower my gaze.

We are not together,
but neither are we apart.

Three times 
I have come here.
Three times
we have met.

Something
fascinating, fragile
grows between us.

Kimi
I kneel by the stream.
Water flows over my hands,
loosening my tired fingers,
washing away
a day's labor
in the fields.

From behind me
there's a sound,
but I 
see nothing.

Mother and her sisters
stand together,
laughing as they cup the water,
letting it run down their arms.
I watch them
crowded about Nuna,
the first baby born to us
since the English illness
killed so many.

Do English women
gather together
after work is done?

Do they form ties
with one another
that cut as deep as rivers?

If their women are like ours,
are we so different after all?

Again I hear it,
a voice
repeating
one frantic word.

Could it be Alis?
To come this close,
to risk discovery.
What would bring her so near?

Mother and sisters are occupied,
absorbed in one another.
I slip away.


In Blue Birds a novel in verse written by Caroline Starr Rose the facts of English arrivals on Roanoke, specifically the fourth in July 1587, are threaded through the fabric of this story.  It puts forth ideas for discussion and consideration which I believe good historical fiction does for its readers.  In her extensive (six plus pages) author's note Caroline Starr Rose states in the first paragraph

Why do I write historical fiction?  For the same reason I used to teach history.  I'm nosey, plain and simple.  While this is not an especially polite thing to admit about myself, it's what makes historical fiction a beautiful fit for me.  Research lets me dig into other people's experiences and live in their world.  It's a perfectly respectable way to satisfy my curiosity.

To learn more about Caroline Starr Rose and her other work please take the time to visit her website by following the link attached to her name.  This link to the publisher's website allows you to read an excerpt from the book.

Maybe...The Best

I love reading; in fact when a friend suggested I watch a new show the other night I calmly replied I had not had my television on for more then three months.  Nonfiction or fiction, any genre will do.  But growing up I had a steady diet of historical fiction supplied by my Mom and Dad passing on their own favorites in addition to those titles I was able to pick up at the library for my age group.

The best of historical fiction, like any well-written or spoken story, has the ability to transport the reader or listener to a specific place or time, to create characters with whom one can easily identify and to bring the past into the present as if it only happened yesterday.  When a reader's senses are awakened to the point of a deep emotional involvement, that's storytelling at its finest.  On every single page of May B. A Novel (Schwartz & Wade Books) by Caroline Starr Rose, a debut author, make no mistake, you are there.



I won't go.

"It's for the best," Ma says,
yanking to braid my hair,
trying to make something of what's left.

Ma and Pa want me to leave
and live with strangers.

I won't go.

This first chapter, this first page, grips you with the complete frustration of the narrator, Mavis Elizabeth Betterly. Twelve years old living on the prairie of Kansas in a sod home, she is being sent to stay with neighbors fifteen miles away until Christmas.  It seems that the new Mrs. Oblinger is not adjusting well to the isolation of this life; May B.'s paid companionship will ease the financial burdens of her own family.

Arrival at the Oblinger's soddy reveals the new bride to be little older than May B. herself.  Aloof, unkind and completely lacking the basic skills necessary to manage a home, May B. soon realizes most of the tasks will fall to her.  Any thought she had of practicing, perfecting her learning, her reading skills, so as not to fall any further behind than she already is, are quickly forgotten.

Days pass in sameness until two things happen which threaten May B.'s very existence.  Mrs. Oblinger takes a horse for a ride but does not return.  It is only later May B. discovers the note.  Making haste her husband hitches the other horse to his wagon, taking his gun, to find his wife before she leaves on a train back to Ohio.

After four days May B. comes to the stark realization she has been abandoned; she will be living alone from August until the end of December.  Wrapping her mind around this reality is a test of her strength and determination.  In subsequent chapters readers follow her day to day mental struggles, her elation at finally having time to do as she wishes, her fear of running out of supplies, keeping warm and staying safe in the soddy.

Intermingled with her chores, trying to keep busy, May B.'s mind wanders to her inability to read.  Two different teachers, two different philosophies give May B. first hope then a sense of utter despair in her capacity to learn.  What is wrong with her?  Why can't she read words?

Days melt one into the other; May B.'s sense of time is becoming fuzzy.  Supplies are running low and first frost, then a sudden dusting of snow, cause her to wonder if it is now October or even later.  Sounds in the night and prints in the dirt show she is not as alone as she thought; a wolf has found her. 

So much seems to be against May B., dwindling food, proper fuel, adequate shelter for the colder temperatures, the nearly constant thoughts of her problems at school but when an early blizzard blows across the prairie, one truly fears for her.  Page by page tension builds as readers wonder about her chances for survival.  Will this adventure, not of her choosing, be the ultimate test of her true character?

Writing in verse, in a style research revealed as appropriate for the time period,  Caroline Starr Rose has crafted a setting, a series of events and characters so believable it's like stepping back in time.  Her use of words, sometimes as little as a single sentence for a chapter, make readers acutely aware of the details of May B.'s life.  As we are privy to May B.'s every thought, we can not help but cheer, feel an admiration, for this young woman. 

Here are several examples of her impressive way with words in verse.

I am afraid
in the dark
all alone
I am afraid


From the calendar I tear away
one month,
then two.
Is it October
or November?

Time was made
for others,
not for someone
all alone.

So many things
I know about myself
I've learned from others.
Without someone else to listen,
to judge,
to tell me what to do,
and to choose
who I am,
do I get to decide for myself?

With a storyline completely riveting from beginning to end, the harsh beauty of life on the prairie of 1870s Kansas is brought home to readers in May B. A Novel written by Caroline Starr Rose.  Chapters in verse disclose a testament to the will, heart and very soul of a twelve year old girl faced with seemingly insurmountable adversity.  May B. A Novel comes with high recommendations from this reader.  Rose has created a teacher's guide on her website which is linked to her name above.