Elisabeth Grace Foley

Historical Fiction Author

Friday’s Forgotten Books: Rest and Be Thankful by Helen MacInnes

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Sarah Bly and Margaret Peel, a pair of well-to-do American friends with literary tastes who have spent a number of years as expats in Europe, impulsively decide to host a retreat for struggling writers at a Wyoming ranch…which becomes slightly complicated when a couple of snobby literary critics of their acquaintance invite themselves along. The interactions of the outsiders with the more down-to-earth ranch hands and local townsfolk, plus the personal and creative struggles of the writers at the retreat, form the bulk of the story—during which Sarah and Margaret each take unexpected steps forward on their own personal journeys as well.

This is such a unique, unexpectedly pleasant book, especially surprising given that the English MacInnes’ usual fare was Cold War-era spy thrillers. If I had to guess I’d say that this book was an author’s just-for-fun project—a love letter to Wyoming, and a chance to air her opinions about literary trends and critics of the day. On my second reading, I wondered during the first few chapters if my recollection of the novel was a little rosier than it merited—MacInnes’ writing can be a trifle clunky at times—but the further I got, I warmed to the story just as much as I had the first time. I mean—literature meets Wyoming, in 1948? That sounds like a book that was written to order for me. [Read more…]

Book Review – Cattle Kingdom: The Hidden History of the Cowboy West

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First off, as I suspected even before I began reading the book, the subtitle “The Hidden History of the Cowboy West” is a bit hyperbolic. Perhaps a more accurate subtitle would have been “An Economic History of the Cowboy West,” but of course that wouldn’t have sounded nearly as sensational. The history here is not “hidden” in the sense that the author makes any startling new discoveries or revelations, but rather turns the spotlight on aspects of Old West history that few Americans have read or heard much about.

The book opens with a few chapters on how the open-range era began—the post-Civil War demand for beef, the development of the big Texas drives to move the cattle to market, and the subsequent growth of the boom towns and railroads in consequence. But the book’s main thrust is a fascinating look at the massive investments of capital (on the level of millions) in cattle ranches by wealthy stockholders from the East and across the Atlantic, with a particular focus on the investments made by English and Scottish aristocracy and nobility. And how a combination of too-rosy sales pitches, financial mismanagement, ignorance about ranching, and sheer overgrowth of the industry led to an ultimate collapse of the cattle boom, with the devastating winter of 1887 providing the death-blow. I found one theory of Knowlton’s particularly interesting: that one reason for the eventual collapse may have been the industrialization of a livelihood that was in essence agricultural. The emphasis on mass-production, faster delivery, higher profits and so forth went along with overlooking the variables of weather, disease, natural predators, and what would happen if the projected herd growth didn’t materialize—and in the end, the top-heavy cattle companies reaped the consequences.

It puts a thought-provoking new complexion on the concept of the range war that we’re familiar with from fiction and film when you realize that the “big ranchers” fighting the small rancher or homesteader were not necessarily just tough individual men trying to strong-arm their way to prosperity, but rather multi-million-dollar corporations with millionaire industrialists and foreign aristocracy for its investors, trying to keep their profits from being cut in on. [Read more…]

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Hidden Gems

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This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic might have been made especially for me, because I feel that a good half of my reading and book-reviewing involves books considered overlooked or obscure. Yet I had a harder time with this list than you might imagine, simply because as I looked back over my book diary and my yearly favorites lists, it was hard to pick just ten! I feel like I could do a “hidden gems list” for most of the genres I read—but for this one, I stuck mostly to general fiction.

Rest and Be Thankful by Helen MacInnes

A totally unique, unexpectedly pleasant novel (especially unique coming from MacInnes, a British author better known for writing Cold War-era thrillers). Sarah and Margaret, a pair of well-to-do friends with literary tastes who have spent a number of years as American expats in Europe, impulsively decide to host a retreat for struggling writers at a Wyoming ranch…and a couple of snobby literary critics invite themselves along. The interactions of the outsiders with the more down-to-earth locals and ranch hands, plus the personal and creative struggles of the writers at the retreat, form the bulk of the story, during which Sarah and Margaret each take unexpected steps forward on their own personal journeys as well. It may not be brilliant literature, but this book just made me come away with a smile and a happy, satisfied feeling.

Greensleeves by Eloise Jarvis McGraw

This young-adult novel from the 1960s took me utterly and completely by surprise with how much I loved it. A teenage girl struggling to figure out her own identity embarks on a summer of self-discovery when she undertakes a most unusual job: investigating the legatees of an eccentric will for a family friend, a lawyer who’s like a surrogate uncle to her. I know it’s a cliche thing to say in a book review, but Shannon’s struggles and adventures made me both laugh and cry. Here’s my full review.

Saturday’s Child by Kathleen Thompson Norris

This beautifully-written novel follows the fortunes of an utterly real and relatable heroine coming of age in turn-of-the-century San Francisco: her struggles to reconcile poverty and family obligations with dreams of wealth and luxury; her navigation of relationships and friendships that don’t turn out as expected; and her attempts to find a purpose for her life when it appears that romance and marriage are not in her future. I’ve enjoyed several of Norris’ books (as well as given up on one that was a real dud), but this is my favorite; it seemed the deepest and most lifelike.

Long Live the King! by Mary Roberts Rinehart

Rinehart is best known as a mystery author, of course, but I think what I admire most about her is her ability to jump confidently into just about any genre she wanted—screwball comedy, romantic drama, even a bizarre attempt at alternate history. In Long Live The King! she goes Ruritanian with aplomb, pulling together almost all of those elements in one novel, as a large and colorful cast of characters scheme and maneuver to either protect or overthrow the small crown prince of an imaginary country in volatile pre-WWI Europe. If The Prisoner of Zenda left you wanting more, then here it is, with perhaps a touch more sophistication.

Thorofare by Christopher Morley

A rambling, nostalgic novel told from the perspective of a young English boy who travels to late-19th-century America to live with a college-professor uncle and a spinster aunt who keeps house for him. It’s less about happenings than it is about evocation of times, places, and moods, all described in rich detail; and hovering over the whole is the theme of the complex and often funny relationship between English and Americans. Here’s my full review.

Pastoral by Nevil Shute

Probably my favorite Shute novel I’ve read, Pastoral is both a quiet and touching love story, and a page-turning evocation of the strain and tension involved in the lives of an R.A.F. bomber group flying missions from a post in the English countryside during WWII. My review here.

The Turmoil by Booth Tarkington

I’ve made a case for The Magnificent Ambersons as an overlooked American classic, but The Turmoil is even more overlooked and maybe just as good. Amid the roar of the early-20th-century industrial explosion, the novel focuses on the conflict between the brash, overbearing patriarch of a nouveau-riche industrial family and his sensitive youngest son; and the consequences of a friendship that develops between that son and the daughter of a respected old family desperately trying to hide their genteel poverty.  Here’s my full review.

Quality Street by J.M. Barrie

Yes, this is actually a play; but it reads delightfully, as Barrie (rather like A.A. Milne) fills the stage directions with witty asides and commentary on the characters. A woman masquerades as her own (imaginary) niece to teach a bit of a lesson to an inattentive former suitor, but finds herself getting deeper and deeper into a comical predicament the longer she continues in the role! It’s rather like a mix of Cranford and Georgette Heyer, with its street full of gossipy maiden ladies and genteel nearly-screwball comedy of mistaken identities.

Fräulein Schmidt and Mr. Anstruther by Elizabeth von Arnim

This quirky, bittersweet epistolary novel is told entirely through one-half of a correspondence: the letters of a German girl to a young Englishman who was a student of her father’s and with whom she has fallen in love. Their relationship does not at all develop in the way one might expect from the first page, but the letters go on, chronicling the ups and downs of Rose-Marie’s daily life, her decided opinions and her resilient and humorous outlook on life. There’s a few little things about it that annoy me, but by and large I was charmed by this book. I’ve got to read it again sometime soon.

Friendship and Folly by Meredith Allady

I’ve gone with mostly older books up till now, but here’s a recent release that is a true hidden gem and deserves more attention. Just about every Regency book out there is touted as being “like Jane Austen,” but the Merriweather Chronicles are the only books I’ve read that truly feel like the next best thing to Austen. There is a London Season, there is a romance that gradually manifests itself; but there’s also a large and close-knit family of all ages, awkward and even painful interactions with less pleasant relatives, sincere but misguided attempts by a sharp-witted young woman to arrange her friends’ affairs, and a wonderfully authentic setting woven through with references to historical events and personages. It took me two readings to fully come to appreciate this book, but it’s firmly on my list of favorites now. (And there’s a splendid sequel.)

Any of your favorite hidden gems on this list?