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2010 Reading #18: Early Candlelight by Maud Hart Lovelace
Books 1-10.
11. The Dream Years by Lisa Goldstein.
12. Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow.
13. The Bone Forest by Robert Holdstock.
14. Con Men and Cutpurses: Scenes from the Hogarthian Underworld by Lucy Moore.
15. Fredrick L. McGhee: A Life on the Color Line, 1861-1912 by Paul D. Nelson.
16. Little Scarlet by Walter Mosley.
17. East by Edith Pattou.
18. Early Candlelight by Maud Hart Lovelace. I never read the Betsy-Tacy books, myself, but yes, this is that Maud Hart Lovelace. She was from Minnesota, as it turns out; my interest in this particular novel--her first--is that it's an historical, set in the area of Fort Snelling in the late 1830s. I have to admit that I wasn't expecting a lot (I mean, just look at that cover), and so I was surprised to find that it wasn't a bad book. It was published in 1929, so it's not what you'd call racially sensitive, and there's certainly a pride-in-Manifest-Destiny thing going on. But there's a gleeful depiction of the voyageurs here, and a romance that's unexpectedly modern, at least in parts. Lovelace is also strong on the sort of physical/domestic details that I appreciated in East, something which her contemporary critics were apparently less than enamored with. I don't know that I'd recommend it to anyone who wasn't already interested in the history of this area, but given that I was going to read it anyway I was happy to find it more than readable.
11. The Dream Years by Lisa Goldstein.
12. Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow.
13. The Bone Forest by Robert Holdstock.
14. Con Men and Cutpurses: Scenes from the Hogarthian Underworld by Lucy Moore.
15. Fredrick L. McGhee: A Life on the Color Line, 1861-1912 by Paul D. Nelson.
16. Little Scarlet by Walter Mosley.
17. East by Edith Pattou.
18. Early Candlelight by Maud Hart Lovelace. I never read the Betsy-Tacy books, myself, but yes, this is that Maud Hart Lovelace. She was from Minnesota, as it turns out; my interest in this particular novel--her first--is that it's an historical, set in the area of Fort Snelling in the late 1830s. I have to admit that I wasn't expecting a lot (I mean, just look at that cover), and so I was surprised to find that it wasn't a bad book. It was published in 1929, so it's not what you'd call racially sensitive, and there's certainly a pride-in-Manifest-Destiny thing going on. But there's a gleeful depiction of the voyageurs here, and a romance that's unexpectedly modern, at least in parts. Lovelace is also strong on the sort of physical/domestic details that I appreciated in East, something which her contemporary critics were apparently less than enamored with. I don't know that I'd recommend it to anyone who wasn't already interested in the history of this area, but given that I was going to read it anyway I was happy to find it more than readable.