notanotherbookreview

One of the first female Sheriffs before the vote. Jesus Christ in the body of a boy detective  A lover who contemplates his wife's garden LADY COP MAKES TROUBLE by Amy Stewart (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Sept.) is the sequel to GIRL WAITS WITH GUN, a book I completely enjoyed. Based on the life of Constance Kopp,one of the first female sheriffs in the U.S., the debut novel introduced the three Kopp sisters, who had lived on an isolated farm, in an era where women didn't vote, have jobs outside the home, or live independent of male relatives. These sisters were different. Norma, the farmer, who also raised carrier pigeons, was the domestic one. Teenage Fleurette made ingenious dresses and dreamed of a public life. The narrator is the eldest, Constance, a large dynamic woman with an instinct for justice. When their buggy was run down by a powerful factory owner in a motor car, she pursued damages, despite threats that escalated to gang warfare with bricks, bullets...

                   " I got a revolver to protect us," said Miss Constance, "and I soon had use for it."                                                                                                  --New York Times, June 3, 1915 Amy Stewart's novel, GIRL WAITS WITH GUN, rings true. She includes real newspaper articles that give the Kopp sisters' story the authenticity of an era fairly forgotten in 2015. In 1914  Constance Kopp turned thirty-five on an isolated farm with her sister Norma, also a spinster, and 16-year old Fleurette.  It was eccentric that the three sisters and their mother chose to live on this farm, rather than town, where a school and other cultural advantag...

In WONDERLAND by Stacey D'Erasmo (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, May 2014) Anna Brundage is caught between her rock n'roll desire and a hard-won security. At 44, she's a knock-out, tall and thin with long red hair and huge sensitivity. Anna is attuned to the essence of  places and people, whether Janus-faced, loving, limited or something else entirely. She comes by this perception, and the habit of sifting reality, from her father, an art world immortal, whose family's life was an itinerant journey from one country to another, one site to the next, as he made art by destroying derelict buildings. When Anna inherits a piece of his rubble, a valuable relic of this mythic man, she's given the means for a second chance. Anna, who had several albums, walked away from fame for seven years. Now she lives in a tiny but enviably cheap apartment in Manhattan and teaches carpentry at a girl's school. Besides the apartment, she's got an amiable ex-husband, colleagues and...