dark_phoenix54

The Red Address Book, by Sofia Lundberg. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2019

Doris, 96, still lives on her own in Sweden, with the assistance of delivered meals and daily helper calls that clean and help her bathe. She visits with her only relative, her American grand-niece Jenny, via Skype. One day she decides that she’d like Jenny to know more about her past. Flipping through her address book, she finds most of the people in there crossed out with “dead” written beside them. How did she outlast them all? She begins to write her memoirs, meaning for Jenny to find them after she is gone.

But Doris has a fall, lands in a hospital, and Jenny flies to her side, bringing her baby with her. She finds Doris’s memoirs- losing her father at a young age, being sent to work as a maid at 13 by her addict mother, being taken to Paris by her employer, becoming a high fashion model, falling in love, losing her love, fleeing to America, and finding her way back to Stockholm- and is deeply touched. She’s most touched by the love of Doris’s life- what ever happened to him? It’s the biggest loose end in Doris’s adventurous life.

I liked the book; Doris’s life was very interesting although I did wonder at a couple of things, such as, why did she continue to leave her kid sister with their unstable mother, once she’d started earning good money? The end was lovely, but kind of predictable in a Hallmark Channel sort of way. The message in the story is live your life well; in the end, all you have are memories, good or bad. Four stars.

dark_phoenix54

Pocahontas and the English Boys: Caught Between Cultures in Early Virginia, by Karen Ordahl Kupperman. New York University Press, 2019

Most Americans have some vague recollection from school that Pocahontas was taken from her people to England. In fact, even as a 10 year old girl, she learned English quickly (as kids do) and served as translator and go between for her father. At least three English boys were given to the various tribes to absorb their languages and facilitate communications. For the most part, these exchange children were well treated, but there were many incidents where one side or the other told lies to the children, which they then carried to their hosts. It got so neither side trusted the children. As they became adults, their situations became even more suspect. Pocahontas of course married an Englishman and went to England, where she died, but the English boys had varied fates. In the conclusion, the author compares the children to Stockholm Syndrome sufferers, whereby they are put in a terrifying situation but then are treated with kindness by their captors.

While the book wasn’t difficult reading, the author goes into great detail about the actions of the colonists and the Native Americans, and I would sometimes become confused as to which group or person she was talking about. It’s a great book, though, for showing the kind of misleading things the English did to take advantage of the Native Americans, as well as the situations the colonists found themselves in, in an area with different plants and animals from what they were used to. Four stars.