January Book Club, Part I: The Undertaker's Daughter and Kentucky
Welcome to the HerKentucky Book Club!
January's book is The Undertaker's Daughter by Kate Mayfield. Oh my goodness, did I love this book! It's so quirky, and so quintessentially Kentuckian!
This is such a fun and fascinating book, and I did feel that, even though it could be enjoyed by a very wide audience, there are aspects of the book that are perhaps best appreciated by those of us who've grown up here in the Bluegrass State. So, the format for Book Club this month will be two posts: this week, we'll focus on the Kentucky connections to The Undertaker's Daughter; in two weeks (Thursday the 28th), we'll focus on more thematic, traditional book club questions. Please feel free to comment below, and encourage your friends to pick up with us for the month's second post!
Here are the thoughts and questions that arose for me as I read the book. I'd love to hear your perspective on any of these themes, as well as any discussion you'd like to start! Feel free to discuss in the comments section below this post!!
1. I absolutely loved this passage from Chapter 2: "There were no Appalachian Mountains in this town, nor coal miners, hillbillies, or holler dwellers. Neither were there white fences bordering exclusive horse farms, nor tony Derby breakfasts. It was just a sleepy, little tobacco town..." Did you, as a reader, feel that this description set you in mind of a very specific corner of Kentucky?
2. The story is set in the fictitious Jubilee, in Beacon County, near Lanesboro, yet it isn't all that hard to figure out which Southern and Western Kentucky towns the author is actually referencing. Did you find that this slight fictionalization within the memoir was distracting? Were you googling to see where Mrs. Agnes Davis and the Bibb House Museum were actually located?
3. The Undertaker's Daughter is set in a truly bygone era. I found myself thinking of Southern novels like The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and The Help in everything from the Jubilee townspeople's views on race to the ladies' devotion to hairspray and proper bridge party food. Lily Tate and her friends' views on Northerners and Catholics felt exclusionary, while the townspeople's views of African-Americans were outright racist. Do you feel like this is an accurate depiction of the attitudes in small Kentucky towns in the 1960s? Do you think things have changed in the past 50 years or so?
4. The depiction of small-town Kentucky life in The Undertaker's Daughter was realistic felt very believable that everyone in Jubilee knew each other's business and the middle class folks gossiped about the Country Club set. Because of this, I often found myself (also a small-town Kentucky girl) gasping when the narrator told her family's secrets. As a writer, I often have that reaction to memoirs that air the writer's dirty laundry, like the works of Pat Conroy. Did you find the small-town setting made the author's revelations of family mental illness, substance abuse, and infidelity more shocking?
5. There's a great line early in The Undertaker's Daughter where the narrator vows that she will not become one of Beacon County's widows. Time and again, she references getting out of Jubilee and making a life for herself elsewhere. Could you relate to young Kate's desire to flee small-town Kentucky and see the world? Were you surprised to learn that she now lives in England?
I can't wait to hear what y'all have to say about these questions, or any other thoughts and ideas you may have about the book!
Banned Books Week: Uncle Tom's Cabin
This week is Banned Books Week, a celebration of Americans' access to books that have been deemed controversial, unacceptable, or otherwise restricted or censored.
Our beloved Bluegrass State has the dubious honor of being the setting for the first section of one of the most controversial and frequently banned books in the history of American literature. Uncle Tom's Cabin, written in 1852 by a Connecticut native and abolitionist named Harriet Beecher Stowe, the book was a response to the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, which required the return of runaway slaves to their masters.
Uncle Tom's Cabin would go on to be the second-best-selling book of the 19th century (second only to the Bible), but it did not receive universal praise. At the time of its publication, many slave owners and Southern sympathizers felt that the harsh depictions of slavery found in the book were unfair, while abolitionists considered the work a catalyst for social change. In fact, when President Abraham Lincoln met Mrs. Stowe, he said: “so this is the little lady who made this big war.”
In recent years, the novel has come under fire for use of racial epithets and for the reduction of African-American characters to tropes. However, the role that Mrs. Stowe's novel played in heightening awareness of the conditions of slavery cannot be underestimated.
This week, HerKentucky urges you to read a banned book and to remember the crucial power of controversy in the written word.
The Bourbon Kings
JR Ward's The Bourbon Kings sets unapologetic melodrama in the heart of the Derby City.
Welcome to J.R. Ward's Kentucky, where the bourbon is served up with a side of crazy sauce.
Ms. Ward, a self-professed "Yankee who now lives in the South"and alumna of Smith College and Albany Law School, did what all women who marry Louisville natives eventually do: she moved to Louisville. The corporate attorney-turned romance novelist usually pens novels with a paranormal edge, but has embarked on a new series set in a slightly fictionalized version of The Bluegrass State. The city of Charlemont serves as a stand-in for Louisville, where the University of Charlemont Eagles basketball team (whose team color is red) are in-state rivals with Kentucky University (blue, natch). Charlemont's spaghetti junction leads you down river road to the Easterly Estate, while Spirehill Downs is the home of the Charlemont Derby. We all know what she means.
JR Ward. Image via the Courier-Journal.
I reckon the Baldwines live somewhere around here.
When we meet the titular Bourbon Kings, the three Baldwine sons and their cartoonishly evil daddy, there's plenty of drama. Brother Max's whereabouts are unknown; I'm sure he'll get a Gary Ewing-style spinoff book of his own down the road. Meanwhile, eldest brother Edward has let the family business slip into quite a mess. He suffered horrible injuries after a South American kidnapping, as you do. Now, he spends his days training thoroughbreds, drowning in booze and self-pity, and employing call girls who resemble the love of his life, the scion of a rival bourbon house. THESE THINGS HAPPEN, y'all.
Younger sister Gin -- that's right, a "gin" in a House of Bourbon -- is Lucy Ewing meets Connie Corleone in Valentino RockStud Pumps. Only, kind of more vapid and self-sabatoging. There's a never-ending supply of wealthy litigators to serve Gin's appetites, but she pines for the father of her secret daughter. On behalf of every one of my single girlfriends here in the Derby City, I've got to say that Charlemont trumps the real Louisville in the availability of eligible gentlemen alone. A girl can find herself two or three dashing dates for the Derby in a moment's notice, complete with seersucker suits and vintage Jaguars.
As for the business end of it all, who even heard of independent operators handling operating expenses in the 21st Century? If the family label is suffering, you sell to a multinational corporation and retain a Presidency role for one of your offspring. Ol' JR Ewing taught us that trick in 1987 with his Cartel buddies.And why would your risk your personal fortune on the family company? Maybe Evil Daddy Baldwine is getting a bad rap: he might not be as evil as he is just plain dumb. He should've paid less attention to decking himself out in University of Charlemont red and a little more time listening to his business professors.
is the Upstairs, Downstairs romance between Bourbon King Lane Baldwine and Easterly's horticulturalist, Lizzie King, who characterizes their love as "Sabrina without the happy ending, darlin'." Lane's a playboy with a heart of gold -- he leaves New York City for his old Kentucky home when he hears that the family's African-American cook, whom he considers his "real mother", is in failing health. Lizzie's just folks, and she's got a farm across the river in Indiana to prove it. She keeps Graeter's ice cream in her freezer; lax copyediting keeps shifting whether that Graeter's was Peach or Candy Cane, but every real Graeter's fan knows that it would make no sense to have either of these seasonal flavors around at Derby Time. One would be 10 months out of season, and the other 5. But, that isn't as important as Lane and Lizzie's forbidden love, which peels the paint off the walls -- or at least destroys a priceless family painting in Lane's boudoir. You get the picture. Oh, and there's the pesky matter of Lane's spoiled, Virginia-bred wife (and possibly his evil daddy's mistress) to complicate things further. Y'all keeping up so far?All the elements of a good soap opera are there in The Bourbon Kings -- gorgeous, rich bad boys with hearts of gold, forbidden love, family intrigue -- and it would be easy to dismiss Ms. Ward's Kentucky as a fantasy world of privilege, lust, and Southern stereotypes. But, there's just one small problem with that analysis: the story kind of works. As a reader, you root for these two crazy kids to bridge the gap across the Ohio River and fall into one another's arms. You cross your fingers that Sad Ol' Edward will find a way to leave his madams behind and find love with rival bourbon heiress Sutton Smythe. You hope that Gin will take a stiff drink of espresso or sparkling water and get her life together.
NBC has purchased a television project based on The Bourbon Kings, and additional novels in the series are expected. I, for one, couldn't be more excited. Ms. Ward's manuscript comes out and describes Lane as a "Channing Tatum lookalike", so the Eye Candy quotient promises to be high. (BTW, Endemol Shine Studios, if you're looking for a sassy Kentucky native lady blogger to add some local color to the writer's room, I'd love to talk to y'all!) I love a good soap opera, and I hope that this one plays out as self-aware and campy, on the grand scale of 80s dramas like Dallas or Dynasty. It would be nice to see bourbon in primetime, even with a crazy sauce chaser.
A Conversation with Irrepressible Author Emily Bingham
HerKentucky editor Heather C. Watson interviews Louisville native author and historian Emily Bingham.
was at the top of HerKentucky's list of the summer's must-read books. The story of a charismatic Jazz Age debutante who scandalized Louisville society by kissing girls at the city's most exclusive clubs while charming London's elite Bloomsbury intellectual set , Irrepressible reads like a tightly constructed novel, deftly weaving through continents and eras to tell a lovely and ultimately tragic story.The second child and only daughter of Louisville politician, judge, and publishing magnate Robert Worth Bingham, Henrietta was born in 1901 into a Kentucky of thoroughbreds, cotillions, and country clubs. Her Louisville was a world most of us have only experienced in myth -- her grandmother Henrietta Long Miller owned an imposing mansion in Old Louisville and an equally impressive summer home in Peewee Valley -- but which was often too rigid for her tastes. Upon graduation from Louisville Collegiate School, Henrietta sought refuge first at Smith College (where she began an affair with magnetic young composition professor and heiress Mina Kirstein, whose family co-founded Filene's Department Stores), then abroad, where her gracious disposition and violet eyes captivated the free-spirited intellectuals of the Bloomsbury group. Among her confidantes and lovers were Wimbledon champion Helen Hull Jacobs and actor John Houseman; her complex and co-dependent relationship with her larger-than-life father cast a decidedly Southern Gothic shadow over her life of privilege.
Henrietta Bingham (image via The Daily Beast)
Ultimately, the societal norms of Henrietta's era -- it's heartbreaking to remember that, less than a century ago, gay Americans were forced into the closet by the imminent threat of criminal charges and physical violence -- along with a lifelong history of mental health and substance abuse issues ultimately dulled Henrietta's flame. The outré flapper and muse became known as a sad and embarrassing branch of the Bingham family tree. When Henrietta's great-niece, the writer and historian Emily Bingham, announced her plans to name her daughter for this relative whom she'd never known, the story goes, her family blanched. Henrietta's name was considered an unwelcome burden to saddle upon a new generation of Binghams, so Emily started reconstructing her great-aunt's story. In a twist so fortuitous that it seems torn from the pages of a Hollywood script, Emily Bingham found two perfectly preserved trunks in the attic of her family's estate. Henrietta's story unfolded through the trunks' contents -- a glamorous story of love, heartbreak, and adventure. Emily graciously answered some questions about Irrepressible for HerKentucky readers.
Henrietta's partner, Helen Hull Jacobs
HK: What was going through your mind when you discovered Henrietta’s trunk of memories?
EB: That day in 2009 was probably one of the greatest experiences I'll ever have as a historian. I went to that attic in my childhood home very reluctantly. I had peeked into the trunk some time before and seen a lot of very old shoes, hats, that sort of thing, and it was pure duty to spend hours on a frigid January day in the uninsulated space full of soot and lit by a single dangling bulb. The house itself was empty and did not contain my happiest childhood memories (though I did love exploring the vast attic where servants had once lived and where my father and his siblings had a lot of toys and books and old saddles stored).
The first amazing find was a massive silver flask with Henrietta's initials. It holds about two fifths of bourbon. Nothing like the discreet flapper flasks you might imagine.
Then I came across the tennis outfit that turned out to have belonged to Helen Hull Jacobs, the 1930s lesbian tennis champion. Her monogrammed shirt suggested a more intimate relationship than I knew had existed between her and my great aunt, and the clothes, which I sent to the Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, RI led me to her diaries and scrapbooks and the "joyous and satisfying life" she shared with Henrietta in the 30s and 40s.
There were some little tiny folded papers containing white powder. I thought I'd come across some illicit drug but on closer inspection they proved to be "dog powders" for Henrietta's beloved border terriers and Pekingese!
And then, as I was about to leave for the day to relieve my babysitter, I saw that another trunk was hidden in the shadows in a corner of the garret room. At the very bottom is where I found the carefully tied up and almost perfectly-preserved collection of love letters from the sculptor Stephen Tomlin and the actor/producer John Houseman. Seeing Henrietta through their besotted eyes was one of the utter thrills of my experience with this book.
Young Henrietta. Image via The Daily Beast.
HK: Was there ever a time when you thought of turning back and keeping Henrietta’s story in the past?
EB: Absolutely. My editor didn't think the book was even possible given that I had no diaries and almost no letters from Henrietta herself. So it was almost DOA. But I pushed past that with some of the discoveries in the attic and elsewhere. There was a point when her depression and addiction melded with a sad and confusing time in my life and I wondered if the project might not make me ill.
Henrietta Bingham (image via Courier-Journal)
HK: I’m a Jazz Age buff, and a Kentucky native, so as I read, I was thinking both of the timeline of some of my favorite authors and historical figures (thinking, e.g., “OK, Scott and Zelda would have been here, or Gerald and Sara Murphy would have been here”) and of a very local timeline (saying things like “the Miller house was a block down from the Woman’s Club” or “of course they all thought Henrietta was a gracious hostess; she was a Louisville girl!”) It almost felt like Henrietta lived two completely separate lives –freedom in London and duty in Louisville. When you were working on the book, how did you feel that place played into Henrietta’s story?
EB: Henrietta felt very connected to her Kentucky and southern roots. There is a remarkable passage in the pages John Houseman cut from his memoir: see page 180-181. He was drawn in by the romance of Kentucky but later he came to see things in a more nuanced way. Here's a bit more of it: "I discovered that Louisville was, in reality, a typical middle-Western American city, indistinguishable from Indianapolis or Cincinnati, and that its main claim to national fame -- Churchill Downs, scene of the Kentucky Derby -- was ringed with factories and power plants that made it, without question, one of the most squalid hippodromes in the United States. Yet, for close to a century, from Foster to Fitzgerald, the legend of Louisville's romantic fascination had persisted--and not without reason. For in its own mysterious way the spell worked -- not only on public occasions such as the long Derby weekend, when the entire population, swollen by streams of visitors, lived in a state of collective alcoholic hallucination, but also, in a more intimate way, each time the natives came together and succeeded, through sheer emotional energy, in generating and sustaining an atmosphere of glamour and gaity that was no less magical for being achieved almost entirely with Bourbon and mirrors."
Henrietta loved her Miller grandmother. She also loved having a mansion to throw parties in. She dared to make passes at girls at the Louisville Country Club and kiss her lover in the elevator at the Pendennis. She went sledding in Cherokee Park and was pushed in a stroller in Central Park in Old Louisville. I was stunned when I figured out that for at least a year she and her father and elder brother occupied an apartment 5 doors away from me on Cherokee Road! London and Manhattan were much freer places for her, for sure, but I think she always wanted to come back and her thoroughbred breeding farm at Harmony Landing was the way she hoped to find her way in -- brave as a woman, a lesbian, and someone without direct experience in bloodstock (though her great uncle Dennis Long had two Derby winners in her childhood and that may have set her ambitions early).
Emily Bingham. Image via author's website.
HK: You do an amazing job of, as you say in the preface, not presuming to speak for Henrietta. Yet, you’re very fair with your assessments of her mental health and her likely dyslexia. Was this a hard line to walk?
It's always hard to walk the line between empathizing with your subject and wanting to protect them and being frank about their weaknesses and shortcomings. I believe that readers don't just want "models" and can appreciate lives that are as complicated and imperfect as their own.
HK: If you had the chance to talk to Henrietta, what would you say to her?
EB: Sing for me. Play the sax. Tell me the stories of the musicians you loved and who, doubtless, found you pretty interesting, too. What was your favorite bar, show, concert, player? Where did you feel most free? Who did you really love? Finally, "You are in the world again and people still find you lovable and irresistible and are so glad not to have lost you altogether."
Thanks so much to Emily for the amazing interview, and for writing the summer's best book. Check back later this week as HerKentucky takes you on a photo tour of Henrietta's Louisville.
Follow Your Dreams Friday: 10 Questions with Robyn Peterman
Today's Follow Your Dreams Friday interview is with Lexington native and New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Robyn Peterman. Robyn is one seriously cool and interesting lady -- a former Broadway actress turned writer of paranormal romance novels. And, it seems that "being fascinating" is her family business: her husband is actor Steve Zahn, who's been in just about every movie you've ever loved, from Reality Bites to You've Got Mail to Dallas Buyers Club, while her father, John Peterman, founded the J. Peterman Company, which produces the greatest catalog of all time. Robyn graciously answered our questions about life, writing, and family.
Image via robynpeterman.com.
HK: Tell us about yourself.
RP: Hello my name is Robyn…I’m a wife, mom, taxi driver, dish washer, clothes folder, bed maker and a NYT best selling author of snarky sexy paranormal and contemporary romance. Actually, I never make the bed. Ever.
I write because the people inside my head won’t leave me alone until I give them life on paper. My addictions include laughing really hard with friends, shoes (the expensive kind), Target, Coke Zero Cherry with extra ice in a styrofoam cup, bejeweled reading glasses, my kids, my super-hot hubby and collecting stray animals. I am a former professional actress, with Broadway, film and T.V. credits. I now live in the south with my family and too many animals to count. Writing gives me peace and makes me whole, plus having a job where I can work in my underpants works really well for me.
HK: You trained as an actress; when did you first get interested in writing?
RP: I spent most of my adult as an actress, but I’ve always written. However, I never actually finished a book until two years ago! Now I have seven books published with two more coming out this fall.
HK: Your fiction isn’t for the faint of heart. Tell us a little bit about it.
RP: I write the books I want to read. Yes, they are snarky, profane and people have been known to do the nasty in them, but they are funny and I adore writing them. I had no clue if readers would enjoy them, but I have been delighted with feedback, sales and reviews.
Fashionably Dead by Robyn Peterman
HK: You come up with some absolutely hilarious turns of phrases, a lot of which I can’t really quote here on the blog. Things like this gem on the perks of immortality: “Now I’m a Vampyre. Yes, we exist whether we want to or not. However, I have to admit, the perks aren’t bad. My girls no longer jiggle, my ass is higher than a kite and the latest Prada keeps finding its way to my wardrobe.” My takeaway from your books is that none of us should take ourselves too seriously. Is that a fair read on them?
RP: Yes. Yes. Yes.
HK: You come from a family of big personalities; is storytelling everywhere in the Peterman-Zahn household?
RP: My family is fantastically nutty. We are loaded with actors, screen writers and maverick entrepreneurs. My kids are a riot and we are a very happy bunch!
John O'Hurley as "J. Peterman" on Seinfeld.
HK: Like so many folks, I still can’t get over Seinfeld. I had the pleasure of meeting your father when he spoke to my management class in college; he was a fascinating guy, and far less insane than John O’Hurley’s character. What was it like seeing a fictional version of your dad on Seinfeld?
RP: It was great seeing my dad spoofed on Seinfeld. He got a huge kick out of it! Ironically I ended up doing a movie called Sour Grapes (directed and written by Larry David, the creator of Seinfeld) He had no clue I was J. Peterman’s real life daughter until I told him the first day of shooting.
HK: My favorite Steve Zahn character is Davis from Treme. Which of your husband’s characters is your favorite?
RP: It’s hard for me to pick a favorite character for Steve. I am biased and I think he’s amazing in everything. However, I do love to watch him in Happy Texas and Saving Silverman.
HK: Do you have a favorite character you’ve written, or is that like asking a parent to choose a favorite child?
RP: My favorite characters are always the ones I’m writing about at the time. I fall in love easily and adore them all equally.
HK: Do you have any warnings for potential readers of your series?
RP: Not really. Readers can read the description and read a sample of the book. I know when I look for books, I read a sample and often check out the reviews. People love me or hate me…they are very rarely neutral.
HK: What advice do you have for HerKentucky readers who are working on a novel of their own?
RP: My advice to writers is simply to write. You have nothing to lose. I am forty-blahblahblah and I have a new successful career. Write what you love, but be aware of the market to a certain degree. You may have a passion for writing about the magical unicorns that helped win the Civil War, but you might have a hard time finding an audience.
Writing groups are essential for me and honest critique partners and beta readers are heavenly. First drafts can suck the wad—don’t worry. That’s what second, third and fourth drafts are for. AND editors are a must.
It’s a wonderful time for authors right now. There are a variety of ways to be published. I am a hybrid author. I am both indie and published through NY. I am a member of Romance Writers of America and KIW (Kentucky Independent Writers).
Writing rocks and if you want to do it, just do it. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t…
In addition to the fascinating stories and amazing advice, Robyn has offered four e-books of her title Fashionably Dead Down Under to lucky HerKentucky readers. You can enter using the Rafflecopter widget below!
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