books I have just read:
THE GENUINE ARTICLE A Historian Looks At Early America by Edmund S. Morgan
a collection of pretty dry book reviews that I skimmed thru, there were a few interesting tidbits about the Salem Witch Trials, etc.
my favorite thing? this observation:
In pre-Revolutionary monarchial society people labored only out of necessity/poverty.
further proof that I was born out of my time...
&
THE GOOD JOURNEY A Novel by Micaela Gilchrist
a real tear jerker. the stubborn southern belle spinster in her (gasp) early 20s whose mother sets her up with a crusty old general, they fight & bicker & have some good sex, but can't open their hearts & souls to each other. and he is old enough to be her father. she is jealous of his mysterious connection to the beautiful young Indian girl who translates for him, she thinks they are having an affair & that he is the father of her 2 young children ---you find out at the end, after watching Mary & Bright Sun having to co-exist in the wild frontier of Jefferson Barracks Missouri in the 1820s, Bright Sun's 2 children being shot at point blank range in front of her by the evil little shit whose father is the major of the militia, watching Mary & the General fall apart when he returns as "The Butcher of Bad Axe" after the engagement, & their 2 oldest children dying from cholera in 6 hours, Mary finding the secret Indian medicine bundle in his secret desk drawer & burning it after he told her not to get into his desk..it was made for him by the Cherokee girl... Mary taking the youngest son & leaving him, his 2 most loyal soldiers that he recruited when he formed his regiment taking their first ever leave to find her & tell her the General needs her to come home...
Bright Sun is NOT his lover. she is his daughter from a brief relationship with a Cherokee girl he met when he first joined the service, who was murdered by Black Hawk, because she wouldn't surrender to him & be a hostage, so he took her sister Singing Bird (who he later married) & they raised the infant Bright Sun as their own. the General arrived just in time to see Black Hawk kill his woman, & later Black Hawk arrived just in time to see the General kill his son, & they spar off throughout the book.
Mary tries to do right by her, before she knows the truth, (& since her mother was in a marriage where all 13 children knew daddy was messing around & a good woman does what she must) she gives her some of her clothes & money after her children are murdered so she can go somewhere else & start a new life, & in the clothes, she almost passes for white. AFter the General dies, when Mary finally finds out the truth, she moves Bright Sun in as a boarder, but they eventually become room mates & friends.
At the end, she is dying & the General comes for her, she sees him against the wall of her room, she is embarrassed because it has been so long since he died, she is now all old & liver spotted.
this was based on the real life letters of Mary Bullitt. I found it cleaning the closet---I have book shelves stashed everywhere, & a few times when I started the book, it seemed vaguely familiar, but this is my fave type of book to read, & the farther I went, the more I was drawn in, until I just couldn't put it down.
