(no subject)

[skygiants]

I'm a little sad the cover of the copy of Belva Plain's Crescent City that I snagged off the free bookshelf at the Traveler Restaurant is not as amazingly EIGHTIES! HISTORICAL!! as the one on the Goodreads page, but we can't have everything.

Anyway, I grabbed Crescent City because, EIGHTIES! HISTORICAL!! aside, it's about a Jewish family in New Orleans during the Civil War -- not a thing one sees frequently in historical romance -- and I was super curious how that would play out.

(Sidenote: I'd never heard of Belva Plain before, but apparently she was basically like the Jewish Philippa Gregory and spent the 80s and 90s writing tons of bestselling books about Jewish women having dramatic historical times and/or Contemporary Issues. Reviews seem to think Crescent City is pretty same-old as far as her stuff goes, but it was new to me!)

Crescent City starts out when Ferdinand, a formerly poor European Jew who has Made His Fortune in New Orleans, comes home to collect his two kids David and Miriam from their aunt and grandpa in the shtetl and bring them to their new life of Southern debutante wealth and fortune!

On the way over, a serious Jewish boy named Gabriel befriends David and Miriam and rescues a.) David and b.) Miriam's puppy from drowning (DAVID: Possibly I should have remembered I don't know how to swim BEFORE diving in after Miriam's puppy!) and then remarks on how pretty Miriam is, so you know that he and Miriam are PROBABLY destined to fall in love.

FERDINAND: OK kids, here is the tiny Jewish community where we just sort of round up whoever we can to be rabbi
DAVID: um
FERDINAND: and here is your new Catholic stepmother, don't worry, it's chill
DAVID: um??
FERDINAND: and here is your new personal slave to take care of you and --
DAVID: UM, NOPE. I'm out!

So David bounces off North to study to be a radical doctor, leaving behind eight-year-old Miriam, who grows up to become a Southern Lady with occasional vague twinges of guilty feelings about the fact that she's pretty sure David is right about slavery being bad.

Anyway, Miriam hits sixteen, and marries Extremely Eligible But Deeply Incompatible Jewish Southern Gentleman Ephraim.

MIRIAM: OH NO I AM TERRIBLY UNHAPPY
EPHRAIM: I mean, it's not like I have a secret wife in the attic or hidden leprosy dungeon or anything!
MIRIAM: Yes, I know, I realize readers used to Gothics may have been expecting this, it's just that you're sort of a pompous jerk and we are wildly incompatible and have no physical chemistry whatsoever D:
HANDSOME ANDRE: Hello Miriam, I realize we've spoken all of like twice, and also you are married and so am I, but we have UNDENIABLE physical chemistry!
MIRIAM: ... you are correct. >.>
SERIOUS GABRIEL: >:(((((

Meanwhile, David comes briefly home and helps Miriam deliver twin babies, and then gets involved in abolitionist movements and has a lot of conversations with Gabriel about direct activism vs. slow wait-and-see progress --

SERIOUS GABRIEL: Remember, you are David and the system of slavery is Goliath!
DAVID: ....buddy did you forget the actual point of that story --
SERIOUS GABRIEL: OK FINE MAYBE IT WAS NOT THE BEST ANALOGY.

-- and then accidentally shoots his Catholic stepsister's husband in the face during an abolitionist thing and then has to run away back North again!

David is aided in all this by his free black assistant Lucien. I was very excited about Lucien, who comes across as deeply competent and basically in charge of David's abolitionist agenda; unfortunately he does not appear ever again after this section of the book.

DAVID: WELL it is too bad that I can't continue to work towards abolition in the South, so instead I'm going to get involved in fighting for women's rights!
MIRIAM: ...I guess that's also nice?

However the book is not interested in David's attempt to fight for women's rights, and instead we get Ferdinand's financial woes, which leads through a convoluted series of events to Ephraim getting tragically blinded and Miriam learning how to manage a business while also engaging in a torrid affair with Hot Andre without ever actually having a real conversation with him.

(SERIOUS GABRIEL: >:((((( )

Anyway! Then finally there is the Civil War, and David is fighting for the Union and Serious Gabriel and a whole bunch of assorted friends and relations are fighting for the South and Miriam has divided loyalties because she is sort of pro-abolition, but, like, not enough to really do that much about it besides sort of thinking wistful thoughts about how she would like to free all their slaves if her husband hadn't said no that one time she brought it up.

Anyway she is busy being one of the two people in her extended family & social circle who is actually able to cope with keeping their family alive and fed through the various hardships of war, on account of her tough shtetl roots!

(The other person who can cope is spinster stepsister Eulalie, who is mean and bitter and passive-aggressively anti-Semitic, but also has spent a lot of time learning how to do actually useful things while everyone else was going to parties, so eventually she and Miriam come to a truce of agreeing to cordially dislike each other while nonetheless usefully coping to keep everybody alive. I actually quite liked this story thread.)

Meanwhile, David writes a lot of letters back home about what it's like for Jews in the Union Army, because Belva Plain did a lot of research and would like to demonstrate this fact.

Finally, the war is over! Ephraim dies! Hot Andre comes back!

HOT ANDRE: HELLO Miriam I have made a fortune in the black market and divorced my wife so now we can be wed and engage in blissful sexual passion forever!
MIRIAM: Ummmmmm yes ok but now you are actually proposing, with a ring purchased from your immoral black market gains, I realize that we have never before had a real conversation and I am not really enjoying the real conversation we are having now. So maybe let's not!
HOT ANDRE: Well, you win some, you lose some, I guess.

MIRIAM'S SON: Hey Mom guess what! Now that the war's over, I have somehow magically absorbed abolitionist sentiments despite the fact that you were never brave enough to openly talk about them with me and everybody else around me growing up was firmly pro-slavery! Human rights are just common sense!
MIRIAM: That's great, honey! I'm so glad this magically happened without my having to do anything about it.

FERDINAND: Now that we have lost everything in the war, I have remembered that my Jewish heritage is important to me and started going to synagogue again!
MIRIAM: That's great, Dad! It's cool that this also magically happened without me doing anything about it.

DAVID: I got back safe North after the war! I lost all my teeth from scurvy, but it's cool. Now I'm getting very involved in labor rights!

SERIOUS GABRIEL: I also am home from the war, where I comported myself seriously and honorably. On the downside, I've lost my arm. On the upside, I've grown a serious beard and now I look like Abe Lincoln!
MIRIAM: ... oh no he's hot.

(The fact that the book makes a point to call out that Gabriel now looks like Abraham Lincoln just in time for Miriam to suddenly realize that she's loved him all along is maybe the funniest thing to happen in the whole narrative. How do you know a man's REALLY hot? WELL LET ME TELL YOU --)

So on the very last page Miriam proposes to Serious Abraham Lincoln Lookalike Gabriel, who hilariously after four hundred pages of pining immediately is like "I, A ONE-ARMED MAN, CANNOT POSSIBLY TAKE YOU TO WIFE! YOU DESERVE SO MUCH MORE!!!" and flees the scene, and Miriam's just like "lol what a drama queen, it's fine, I'll wear him down eventually." The nicest of Jewish boys, at last!

I'm not sure I necessarily need to seek out anything else by Belva Plain after this, but I am glad I picked up and read this one. The book is, you know, the kind of EIGHTIES! HISTORICAL!! that it is, and certainly its Jewish-but-nonetheless-extremely-white perspective on the Civil War leaves a LOT of room for intersectional improvement, but it is pretty cool to see historical fiction about Jewish people that has the fact of their Jewishness interwoven into the story without making specifically-Jewish-suffering the entire point and plot. And there's still not a whole lot of that going around.

Comments

[agonistes]

[chinhands]

sooooooo, how many times did judah benjamin come up?

(unfortunately this is A Thing I Know About so now i'm full of curiosity)

also now that Hot Abe Lincoln is a thing and i have been watching too much drag race lately this is now what Serious Gabriel looks like:

[skygiants]

BASICALLY EVERY OTHER PAGE.

No, I exaggerate, but definitely every other chapter. Everyone has so many opinions about Yudah Benjamin.

Also: yes, that's exactly what Serious Gabriel looks like. You are spot on.

[plinythemammaler]

I AM NOW READY TO MARRY SERIOUS GABRIEL

[sovay]

EPHRAIM: I mean, it's not like I have a secret wife in the attic or hidden leprosy dungeon or anything!

He's not wrong that this puts him ahead of the curve . . .

I was very excited about Lucien, who comes across as deeply competent and basically in charge of David's abolitionist agenda; unfortunately he does not appear ever again after this section of the book.

Yuletide!

(The other person who can cope is spinster stepsister Eulalie, who is mean and bitter and passive-aggressively anti-Semitic, but also has spent a lot of time learning how to do actually useful things while everyone else was going to parties, so eventually she and Miriam come to a truce of agreeing to cordially dislike each other while nonetheless usefully coping to keep everybody alive. I actually quite liked this story thread.)

I can see how that would appeal to you. This is a different Catholic stepsister than the one whose husband Serious Gabriel shot in the face?

Meanwhile, David writes a lot of letters back home about what it's like for Jews in the Union Army, because Belva Plain did a lot of research and would like to demonstrate this fact.

DOES HE WRITE LETTERS ABOUT THE THING WITH ULYSSES S. GRANT?

How do you know a man's REALLY hot? WELL LET ME TELL YOU --

So Tennessee Johnson (1942) is not a good movie. I watched about three-quarters of it one night because it was in the TCM buffer and starred Van Heflin (early in his career with MGM, at a point where they were kind of throwing him into different genres to see what stuck; he wouldn't win his Oscar for Johnny Eager until the following spring) and then it expired out of the buffer and it should tell you something about the film that even for Van Heflin I did not try to track it down on YouTube or DVD. It is a heavily fictionalized biography of Andrew Johnson, playing up his more endearing qualities, like his all-American rise from illiterate tailor's apprentice to Vice President of the United States, and flatly erasing his more racist ones, like his well-documented veto of the Fourteenth Amendment; it wasn't as horridly anti-history as Santa Fe Trail (1940), but it ran a close second as it flickered past genuinely interesting episodes in Johnson's life, like his decision to remain in the Senate after the secession of Tennessee—the only Southern senator to do so—or his later, heroic war service as the Lincoln-appointed military governor of Tennessee, in favor of allowing Jefferson Davis to speechify at length about the sorrow with which the Confederate States must of necessity secede from the Union. It's the kind of movie where Lionel Barrymore plays Thaddeus Stevens, legendary abolitionist and advocate for the rights of black Americans before and after the Civil War, as a clean-shaven mustache-twirler, our hero's personal nemesis for no better reason than that Johnson won't wheel and deal with him. I get that national unity was on everyone's minds in the years of World War II, but I still fail to see why this had to produce batshit racist historical pictures. Anyway, the reason I mention it is that by the halfway mark of Tennessee Johnson, Abraham Lincoln had been frequently referred to, and even once quoted at length in a personal letter, but never once seen onscreen. It started to feel as if the filmmakers believed it was impossible to depict the most venerated American president in the person of some random actor. "Perhaps he's like Christ that way," I joked. And then our sixteenth president made his sole personal appearance in long shot and I realized he actually was Christ for all extents and purposes of the movie—a figure glimpsed from a distance, recognizable by iconography and reverent reputation. There was a close-up of his stovepipe hat. There was a historical photograph. Someone actually said, "Mr. Lincoln sees deep into all hearts and he knows yours." There's not even an actor credited with the part on IMDb as far as I can tell. And that was so completely hilarious that I almost forgave the movie everything else wrong with it, although not so much that I actually care about seeing the last quarter unless it comes around on TCM again some night.

it is pretty cool to see historical fiction about Jewish people that has the fact of their Jewishness interwoven into the story without making specifically-Jewish-suffering the entire point and plot. And there's still not a whole lot of that going around.

Agreed!

[landofnowhere]

DOES HE WRITE LETTERS ABOUT THE THING WITH ULYSSES S. GRANT?

I have not read it, but there's a YA novel about that. I'm not quite sure how I found it, but I think it was by searching for the author, who also wrote a YA fantasy/romance (Of Two Minds) that I really liked as a kid.

[sovay]

I'm not quite sure how I found it, but I think it was by searching for the author, who also wrote a YA fantasy/romance (Of Two Minds) that I really liked as a kid.

That's neat! I don't believe I have read Of Two Minds, but the author's name looked familiar enough that I hunted down her website and it looks as though I read Lisa/Lisa's War, because I definitely remember reading a middle-grade novel about the Nazi occupation of Denmark that was not Lois Lowry's Number the Stars (1989).

[skygiants]

Especially the impression I have gotten from Barbara Hambly of wealthy families in Louisiana! There is not a single secret torture attic in this book, can you believe it? NOT ONE.

(It was kind of interesting reading this at the same time as the Benjamin January books; I mean, they both have done their research, and you can tell which of the same sources they've read.)

Yeah, there are two Catholic stepsisters -- the married one is very kind and friendly but a bit useless, and the other one is the bitter anti-Semitic spinster.

The thing with Ulysses S. Grant features PROMINENTLY, along with the thing where Lincoln almost immediately rescinded the order, which is probably part of the reason why everything re: Lincoln is also so hagiographical here. DREAMBOAT ABRAHAM LINCOLN SEES DEEP INTO ALL HEARTS INDEED.

[sovay]

There is not a single secret torture attic in this book, can you believe it? NOT ONE.

Step up your game, wealthy Louisianans!

(It was kind of interesting reading this at the same time as the Benjamin January books; I mean, they both have done their research, and you can tell which of the same sources they've read.)

That sounds really interesting. Example?

The thing with Ulysses S. Grant features PROMINENTLY, along with the thing where Lincoln almost immediately rescinded the order, which is probably part of the reason why everything re: Lincoln is also so hagiographical here.

To be fair, it was a reasonable reaction on Lincoln's part!

DREAMBOAT ABRAHAM LINCOLN SEES DEEP INTO ALL HEARTS INDEED.

Hurray.

[skygiants]

Oh, just all the details they both linger on explaining -- the garconnieres behind the houses is one that stuck out to me, because Hambly takes several paragraphs to explain the concept in just about every book, and Plain drops in almost the exact same explanation.

It was definitely a reasonable and appropriate reaction from Lincoln, and ONE I DEFINITELY SUPPORT. But David's letters also get kind of hilariously 'omg dreamboat Abraham Lincoln will right all wrongs as soon as he finds out they have occurred!'

[landofnowhere]

OK, so it's like a Jewish Gone With the Wind only trying to be less problematic? Huh.

I'm amused by the summaries of the David bits -- he sounds like a dilettante activist...

[skygiants]

Pretty much, yeah! Definitely not NEARLY as racist as Gone With the Wind, and actively trying not to be, but nonetheless falls a little into the same sort of tendencies.

I think the book wants us to both respect David for his virtue and also be a little bit eyerolly about him and the way he is CONSTANTLY OUTRAGED ABOUT EVERYTHING, which I am a little conflicted about because on the one hand yes those kind of people are hard to live with and on the other hand, he ain't wrong, there is a lot to be outraged about! And there is not really another model in the book for ethical progressive behavior -- like, I think it wants us to think Gabriel is an honorable model of manhood, but 'wait and take it slow, don't agitate' is also not a correct response TO SLAVERY.

[landofnowhere]

(That is a excellent profile pic for the comment.)

Yeah, I think I'd be a little more impressed by David if he hadn't decided to move on to women's rights before the Civil War happened (I mean, I guess he decided to fight for the Union, so that's good?) But yes, I'd be happier with an honorable model of manhood who wasn't a Confederate soldier.

[batyatoon]

... JEWISH FAMILY IN NEW ORLEANS PRE-CIVIL WAR

this is the community my grandma's forebears would have lived in :D :D :D

[skygiants]

Oh, cool! I would be happy to pass along my copy of the book, if you want it...

[obopolsk]

I definitely remember seeing Belva Plain books on either my mother's or my grandmother's shelves as a kid, but I had no idea this was the sort of thing she wrote!

[skygiants]

I kept trying to think of a good comparison author -- like, I feel this sort of Dramatical Romantical Historical Fiction is a very clear subgenre and there is one author who sort of defines it, and yet I cannot remember who it is! So maybe I made that person up.

Anyway, it's the kind of Female-Centred Historical Epic I feel like you don't get a lot now, except maybe from Philippa Gregory; historical romance has morphed into its own genre with very different rules.