The following is part of my post for this week over at “Be a Cactus” on Substack. LulaDean’s Little Library of Banned Books is not a YA book. However, it does have some teen characters, one of whom incites the action of the book. Since it’s about a topic near and dear to librarians and readers alike, I thought I’d add it here.
Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books
A few weeks back I found Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books. I don’t know where I saw this—it wasn’t a review. I knew nothing about the novel, but I bought it just for the topic. Reading it, I realized it was very different from what I’m trying to do in writing about book bans. When I read the publisher’s blurbs, I found that it’s advertised as a hilarious summer read.
The novel is set in the present day in the small town of Troy, Georgia which is full of racism and has a statue of one of the town’s principal men, Augustus Wainwright, a Confederate Army general who owned a plantation and accumulated wealth on the backs of enslaved people. A few Gen X women have a longstanding feud based on their oppositional worldviews. One of them is Lula Dean, whose argument with the world is that she isn’t getting the attention she deserves. Decades after she was cut from the cheerleading squad in favor of a girl who was raped at a party while drunk (thus, Lula thinks the girl is a whore and not worthy of representing the squad), Lula still holds a grudge.
Lula finds that she can get the attention she craves through challenging books in the public library. Books are removed from the library but kept in storage while the battle is active. The argument is one based on the reality of book bans: the book banners feel young people shouldn’t be exposed to books with sensitive topics as they say these aren’t age appropriate. Lula goes even further suggesting that no one should have these books available. So nothing about queer people (specifically gay and transgender here), nothing about human bodies or their functions, nothing about violent crimes like rape, and nothing factual about history that makes (White) people feel bad.
In a fit of self-righteousness, Lula decides to place a little free library in her yard. She purchases discarded books from a charity shop very cheaply. These are not titles anyone is interested in, things about how Southern ladies should conduct themselves and the like. Out of date and out of touch—like Lula.
Major spoilers ahead
Early on, a college-aged woman, the daughter of one of Lula’s ‘enemies,’ replaces all the books in the little library with some of the books that were removed from the public library. She leaves the original book jackets on the replacement books. So now instead of books on Southern life or decor, there are books like Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret and The Diary of Anne Frank as well as a spell-casting instructional, books on gay romance, etc.
Being who I am—a librarian with practical experience in processing books—when I read this, the first thing I thought was: how fortunate that all the books were hardcovers with book jackets and that all the replacement books were exactly the same size. (I’m guessing no one but a librarian would pause over this.) That bothered me until I read further and realized the novel isn’t supposed to be realistic. It aims to have a crisis and an ending much like the final fun in The Maid—everything works out splendidly in the present for the good guys and they will go on to have fabulous futures. The bad guys get their comeuppance. Its goal is to poke fun at a certain element of society.
When I finished Lula Dean, I found it to be very much a morality play. The characters each represent one dimension or characteristic. There is the sexual predator town mayor, the innocent man who’s been criminalized, the activist college student, etc. Lula herself is a villain.
Book lessons
When the townspeople pick up books from Lula’s little library, each happens upon the perfect book to change their life. It seems no one knows anything about any of the books. (Did no one ever check any of them out of the public library while they were there on the shelves?) This gives the author the opportunity to tell her readers about each book and why it matters. Still, it makes most of the townspeople look pretty ignorant. That there is a woman whose husband is a White supremacist and who doesn’t understand the meaning of the flags he has around the house feels implausible. That she doesn’t know anything about Anne Frank before reading her diary is truly strange. The fact that she missed the last semester of high school because she was pregnant is meant to account for this.
Some variation of the above scenario repeats with multiple books. For each of these books, we receive a summary lesson about that book (e.g., Are You There, God? = a young boy learns that menstrual periods exist, they are normal, most women have them at some point, and that’s why his mom has those large cotton pads in her bathroom cabinet).
This came in my email the other day, reminding me that I might be giving people too much credit for basic knowledge and common sense. Lest we in California get cocky, as I write this, one of the largest fires the state has ever seen is burning. How was it started? It appeared that a man pushed a burning car into a wilderness gully. So, yeah. Bad ideas know no geographical bounds. (Image from LA Times website)
Lula the loser
Ultimately Lula loses her battle to ban books. She is publicly humiliated and proven to be a hypocrite whose own taste in reading materials tends to pornography. (To be clear, there’s no pornography in this book. It’s a fun read for teens as well as adults.) And once she loses, all the good guys win big, transforming their town, removing the Confederate statue, and setting racial relationships on a better path.
So, yes, it’s a feel-good read with an abundance of joy at the end. Which, I believe is the mission of the book—to spread joy and teach a bit about some iconic titles in the process. It achieves its goal.
A review of “The Well-trained Wife” and book challenge/ban news
I fell out of my decades-long practice of giving blood every three months when I moved 18 months ago. Depression has had a pretty solid hold on me, but I’m starting to do better and getting back to the ‘helper’ in me.
A Well-trained Wife
A Well-trained Wife details Levings’ descent from strict Baptist to Gothard woman (think the Duggars) to Calvinist following the model of Puritan Jonathan Edwards. Levings quotes “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,”(1) a sermon I know because we taught it in high school junior English (American Literature) to give the students a sense of Puritan beliefs. Edwards (1703-1758) was a Great Awakening (1730–1755) minister, so he came after the earliest American Puritans, after the Salem witch trials (1692-3). But his fire and brimstone homilies drove some believers to suicide.
It’s hard for a modern secularist to imagine why anyone would find themselves in a position to think this sort of spirituality could be righteous or in any way helpful. Levings’ narrative of her experiences show the reader exactly how this happens.
Before I go on, I want to note that I’m adding this book review to my School Library Lady blog as well as to Substack. With all the craziness going on right now in the book challenge/ban arena, there will be those who believe, considering what happens to Levings, that a book like this has no place in a high school library. Clearly I’m not one of them. As I’ve said often, terrible things happen to adolescents and pretending they don’t puts them in danger. Levings was very young when making her life-altering decisions based on her understanding of God and God’s plan for her. Some teens, particularly girls, will see themselves in Levings. So, I’m going there. If we can teach the origins of American Calvinism in high school English, we can also have a look at how it plays out hundreds of years later.
From Baptist
Levings grew up in a strict Baptist household, albeit one that was within the norms of conservative evangelism/Christian patriarchy. Not fulfilling for a girl with ambition, but not physically dangerous moment to moment.
In her desire to serve God as that mission is granted in Christian patriarchy (subservient wife/dutiful mother), Levings falls further into unhealthy religious views and depends on her (seriously unwell) husband for guidance, ultimately landing in two cults. Out of fear, she looks for a “new mentor to help me solve my personal ambition, before I headed for hell and took my babies with me. I knew I needed more help—books and Bible verses weren’t enough to prevent dents beneath the wallpaper when Allan slammed my head.”
To Gothard woman
She finds her first cult through Gothard women at her church, followers of Bill Gothard and the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP) which holds that women should obey men in every way in all of life’s forums: home, school, workplace, and marriage. TV’s “Nineteen Kids and Counting” Duggars are IBLP followers/Gothard folks.(2)
“I’d asked Judith if I could sit at her feet and learn, like it said about older women teaching the younger in Titus. I got to join the mother club of Gothard women spreading through First Baptist. We sat together and nursed our babies, discussing Scripture, child training, recipes, and household rules.”
Levings learns that the group follows “biblical principles, not instincts.” By this, they mean to have ‘quiverful families’—that is, lots of kids (a quiverful). They don’t use birth control, ever. They practice blanket training, which is basically child abuse of infants. (Putting them on a blanket with a toy out of reach and then hitting them if they try to crawl off the blanket to get it.) Levings is even told that she can’t wear jeans, not only because it’s tempting to men, but is even tempting to her two-year-old toddler.
When Levings refuses to blanket train her kids, Judith nodded. “‘That’s fine. But setting up your child to be rebellious puts them in danger of hell. Is that what you want?’ Hot acid rose in my throat, triggering an old and familiar stomachache. What if my children were left behind? What if they burned in hell, and it was my fault? What if Y2K came and the clocks never rolled over and everything exploded, and we died? Was I being the kind of mother who could bring her children to salvation? Maybe I should try one more time.’”
Levings has babies in rapid succession, with one particularly tragic result. (3)
To Calvinist
Levings’ husband isn’t satisfied with their relationship and seems to need to degrade his wife further. He loses jobs through his temper, removes the family from support systems, and physically abuses Levings. He decides to become a Calvinist.
”Our new pastor explained. Humans are depraved worms in need of a savior but we’re such filthy sinners—insects, really—that we don’t deserve to be saved. Thankfully, a limited few are elected for heaven. Christ and His grace are irresistible to the chosen—we’re unable to say no to God. Even if we try, it’s only a matter of time and suffering until we’re broken and returned to Him. This is why Christianity hurts. Suffering aligns us with Christ, and it’s a good thing when love hurts—that’s how you know it’s real.”(4)
At this point, the abusive relationship becomes bizarre, unthinkable. Allan has determined that it’s okay for women to have sexual pleasure, so he will command Levings to have orgasms. But women also need direction and that means they need “spankings.” I’m using the quotes because there is serious physical abuse involved.
“‘They have threads on what constitutes spankable offenses. How to conduct a spanking, how to use time-outs and the corner, and what happens afterward.’
“‘You want to put me in time-out?’
“‘It’s often used in conjunction with physical discipline.’ He hurried to his next point. ‘CDD repairs problems in the marriage. And it’s done in love. Every spanking resolves with intercourse.’
“‘So, it’s sexual.’ My stomach clenched. Wife-spanking was kink in church clothes.
Levings believes that a good wife protects the family image more than her own safety. She goes along.
To seeker
The reader wonders how Levings will find her way out of this. She quotes Fred Rogers on looking for the helpers. But Rogers was quoting his mother telling him what to do in scary situations. Normal scary situations, where there would be helpers in the environment. As we know, the helpers don’t come from inside the cult. The abused have to look outside. Levings is able to do this online, through a community called Trapdoor. “The topics we studied there taught me women supporting women led to ideas. To underground networks and whispers that led to freedom and change.”
Levings starts to have two lives and her husband doesn’t know about her experiments with freedom. She marvels at the hypocrisy of her church fellows during the aughts.
“The Christians we knew were angry about the burkas we saw on the news. It was un-Christian, they said, to force women to be invisible and uniform. But I silently laughed at that. American Christians had burkas too. I wore one. The denim jumper was the American burka.”
Even religious instruction is out of bounds if it is conducted by women. “Leah shared she also wanted a woman’s Bible study or book group, but she’d been cautioned to stop asking. ‘The elders feel that women getting together is dangerous, because of our propensity to stray from spiritual topics into gossip when unattended by a head of household.’”
Levings reminds the reader that patriarchy isn’t actually good for many men. (My feeling is that it generally exists to feed one ego, that of the ‘prophet,’ church leader, etc.) “Winning didn’t feel like having won. At the end of his religious quest for covenantal belonging, Allan appeared more whipped and exhausted than triumphant patriarch, without spark or fight, without spirit or zeal. His shoulders bent with burden and regret, like an ox caught belly-deep in mud.”
To finder (of the helpers!)
Levings finally comes to the most important questions about her cult.
“What was I getting from this faith? Peace, love, joy? No—that’s not how I felt at church. Reassurance of eternal security? No—I still begged God to save me anytime the intersection of death felt close. A sense of belonging with Special Christians doing life right? I belonged, alright. I belonged too much. But what if we weren’t ‘doing it right’?”
Levings does step outside the cult on a very dangerous night when it appears her husband is about to kill her. She finds the helpers.
“Every day it was as if the more I made choices that saved me, the more others showed up to help save me too. The world, actually, was beautiful.”
And that is an excellent lesson for teens to learn.
Footnotes
1) The basic idea is that God is doing all he can to hold back from sending man into the pit of a literally fiery hell. Not only is he not that into you; he loathes you. Some images that struck me when I first read it were God about to open the floodgates upon man; man dangling as a spider over the fiery pit. It is also a call to seek forgiveness in Christ, who can save mankind from its deserved fate. (But only the few elect will receive that salvation, so be afraid anyway.)
2) Of course, now we know how well that worked out, with oldest son Josh incarcerated for child pornography. He also molested his sisters, but the statute of limitations ran out on that.
3) She stops for a beat to show how mean medical professionals can be to postpartum women, another bit of info I can vouch for and that it might be good for teens to read and prepare themselves for when the time comes.
4) I happened to read this the same day I read: “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” – 1 John 4:7 Just thought you might want a counterpoint.
Library and book challenge/ban news: what I found interesting this week
Ban This Book, a children’s book written by Alan Gratz, will no longer be available in the Indian River county school district since the school board voted to remove the book last month.
Gratz’s book, which came out in 2017, follows fourth-grader Amy Anne Ollinger as she tries to check out her favorite book. Ollinger is told by the librarian she cannot, because it was banned after a classmate’s parent thought it was inappropriate. She then creates a secret banned-books library, entering into “an unexpected battle over book banning, censorship, and who has the right to decide what she and her fellow students can read”, according to the book’s description on Gratz’s website.
In a peculiar case of life imitating art, Jennifer Pippin, a parent in the coastal community, challenged the book.
… Pippin is also the chair of the local Moms for Liberty chapter, … Besides Pippin, two of the school board members who voted in favor of banning the book, Jacqueline Rosario and Gene Posca, had support from Moms for Liberty during their campaigns.
This LA Times High School Insider article from Corona Del Mar High School doesn’t have new information, but is a nice overview that can be shared with students. The author also discusses their reading of Looking for Alaskaby John Green, an often challenged and removed (banned) book.
The work is long. It is tiring. It is at a high personal cost. We’ve got enough awareness campaigns and resources. We know that in the last four years, how to fight book bans and challenges hasn’t changed — you need to vote, you need to show up to board meetings (and/or be involved on the board if possible), you have to get into your elected officials’ ears, you need to stay on top of the news, and then, choose one more thing if time and energy permit. One of those choice things might be getting involved with groups who can collaborate on a bigger mission than can be accomplished by an individual alone.
That way forward is most likely through legal and legislative actions.
If you are interested in book challenge/ban news, please subscribe to my Substack, Be a Cactus, where I include information each week.
What I’m Reading
Although I haven’t read Looking for Alaska by John Green in a looong time, it’s the often challenged book discussed in the high school article above, so here’s the link from the review I wrote back in the day. I had many copies and book-talked Alaska regularly. It was super popular with students. For many, it was their introduction to the author. They became fans. When The Fault in Our Stars, also by Green, came out, I got a grant to buy fifty copies for my two libraries (hello, budget cuts, double that job!). We had a poster contest. It was so much fun.
The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes Four Irish sisters are left to struggle as teens when their parents die tragically. The novel is about how that pulls them together and apart, and—hopefully—together again. A bit of philosophy. A lot of sisterhood.
A Well-trained Wife by Tia Levings (reviewed above).
Books I bought yesterday at the local library’s ’local authors’ book fair.
I wanted to share the link from my Substack this week because it comments on YA literature and censorship.
If you’ve been here with me, you know I’m worried about book censorship in general. And that a good percentage of book challenges these days are of work by and about LGBTQIA and Black Americans. But another type of teen book that’s being challenged is one that includes sexual violence. I think about this a lot because my upcoming YA novel takes place in a polygamist colony controlled by a sexual predator ‘prophet.’
I’m not one who enjoys gratuitous violence in any medium, but I want to discuss patriarchy and the things that happen to girls. I workshopped my novel repeatedly with a group that included an editor and a probation officer because I didn’t want it to be too much, too triggering. That workshopping helped a lot.
Why not just skip over the topic of sexual violence?
Please read the post here. Each week there is a round up of library/book challenge news, so if you’d like to keep abreast of that, please click on the link and subscribe. Thanks!
From Ash to Ashes by Krishna Tuli Arora is the story of an immigrant Sikh family in Long Island, New York during the 1990s. It moves through multiple POVs, but is centered on the life of protagonist Mira. I picked it up because I’m reading books from small presses and this one is from Apprentice House, a student-run publishing group out of Loyola University, Maryland.
Siblings Ritu, Mira, Jeet and Jazz all suffer discrimination after their parents move from India to the United States. They take on roles in the family: Mira is the well-behaved, spiritual kid; Jeet is the academic superstar; Ritu is obedient, but has fallen in love with a Muslim guy; and Jazz is the rebel who drinks, smokes weed and fails classes. Their parents try to hold the family together through strict rules and religious dogma. They worry a lot about what the Sikh community will think of their family’s behaviors–and that worry about what others think is the very thing that causes the family’s troubles.
The novel opens with Mira heading back to New York University after spending time at home. While commuting on the train, Mira’s mind wanders through her family’s troubles as she takes note of everything around her and how it now looks different. She’s in crisis, evaluating her life and her relationship to the family she loves, a family that isn’t serving her best interests. Her emotional state as a part of her coming-of-age is relatable and realistic. But we don’t know what events are causing her to feel the way she does.
The novel moves back and forth in time before it settles into the present, making the first chapter something of a prologue. These unconnected scenes are meant to create suspense. Terrible things happened while Mira was at home, but the reader doesn’t know what they are (and won’t know for at least one third of the book). Rather than move into the heart of the story, the novel focuses on Mira’s anguish, her ruminations about her family’s background, and her strict, religious immigrant parents. When Mira arrives back at college, her relationship with Dev—an Indian guy, but also Hindu, so unapproved by Mira’s parents—is fleshed out. Like her older sister, Mira is dating on the sly and keeping Dev a secret.
Each of the family members has a secret. How the family deals with its dysfunction will interest teen readers. I had some trouble with the novel as a whole because I felt the structure didn’t serve the story. The first chapter works mightily to be literary with numerous descriptive passages full of imagery. Most of these passages are unsuccessful at drawing the emotion that would justify their inclusion. Because—again—the reader doesn’t know why they’re there. If the first chapter had been cut entirely, the novel would have had better pacing. Since the reader doesn’t yet know Mira or her family, they can’t imagine what has taken place to cause Mira’s depression.
Spoiler Alert
I’m reviewing From Ash to Ashes because it’s the first YA book about a Sikh immigrant I’ve read. I think school libraries might want to add it to the collection so that they have something available in this subject. Eventually, the novel takes a hard look at religion, hypocrisy, and bigotry/prejudice. So, it has very worthy subjects for the reader who hangs on. Knowing what topics are covered is important for the librarian who is considering buying the novel, so here comes some giant spoilers:
Mira’s sister Ritu is caught seeing a Muslim guy. Her parents arrange her marriage to an affluent Sikh without considering why he is available. He turns out to be abusive, the marriage a failure. In addition, Jeet (the family superstar) is outed as gay by Jazz. His parents, particularly his father, are furious, worrying about what their friends and community will think. Distraught, Jeet dies by suicide. These events cause further breaks in the family and its faith.
While Mira’s parents (again, particularly her father) never accept responsibility for the family’s tragedies, blaming them on fate, Mira learns to accept responsibility for her own behaviors.
A purple milk thistle with white-veined leaves reminds me of the beauty in the protective self.
About half of my weekly Substack posts are on the latest news in book challenges and bans in the U.S. Please find the last two weeks at the links below and consider subscribing:
Links to articles I’ve written about libraries and librarians
A few of my book buttons
Over on Substack, I post weekly on topics of interest to readers and writers. Often, those posts are about my experience in the library. Pretty much every week, I also include a round up of that week’s book banning news.
Below is a collection of articles on my library experiences followed by recent book banning news. If you’d like to receive book news each week and the article that accompanies it, please subscribe to Be a Cactus.
Some posts I’ve written about libraries, librarians, and censorship
Posts on my experience with book challenges and challenging (thoughtful) books
I wonder what librarians will do as the book challenges and book banning conflicts continue. In my fantasy world, I’m thinking some librarians, instead of removing books because of anticipated challenges, will become a part of an underground resistance. I think it’d be great fun to write a novel about these librarians. I’d have them foil the censors. Th…
While most people are not in favor of banning books, people who are have an outsized effect on which titles are available in the library. Not only because they have formed a powerful national coalition with big money backers, but because they scare those who are responsible for book selection and curation. Someone who is afraid of a jail term for select…
“In other words, when we look at history’s major censorious regimes, all of them—I want to stress that; all of them—invested enormous resources in programs designed to encourage self-censorship, more resources than they invested in using state action to actively destroy or censor information.”
Created in collaboration with dozens of publishers, Unite Against Book Bans book résumés are easy-to-print documents that summarize a banned book’s significance and educational value, including a synopsis, reviews from professional journals, awards, accolades, and more.
“By making wild accusations about public schools as evil, while making equally wild statements about Christian schools as perfect angels, Republican senators are fomenting rancor without evidence to support their claims,” Epstein said. “Their goal is to sow fear around public schools, unwarranted fear.”
A transgender teen wants the quinceañera of her dreams
No Place for Fairy Tales is a short novel in verse that will appeal to a diverse group of readers. I picked it up in my ongoing efforts to read outside the box of the Big Five. It’s from West 44 Books, an imprint of Enslow publications. While readers might be unfamiliar with Enslow, librarians are quite familiar. Libraries are a pretty big market for this publisher. But since No Place is a hi-lo book (a genre that is tough to write for high school teens), I wanted to try it.
The book cover copy is a very good overview:
“Yuriel’s poor neighborhood in Monterrey, Mexico, isn’t a place where fairy tales happen. Yuriel and his cousin Azul work each day doing laundry to help their family make a living. So when Azul, a trans teen, decides she wants to mark her transition to womanhood with a quinceañera, Yuriel is sure it’s an impossible dream. They don’t have the money, and besides, Azul’s father would never support her transition. But as an openly gay artist in a traditional family, Yuriel sees how important this rite of passage is for Azul. As Yuriel risks everything to play fairy godmother to Azul, he realizes it’s going to take a little bit of magic to pull off this once-in-a-lifetime quinceañera.”
Community is family
In No Place for Fairy Tales, the realization of a dream comes through the community working together to support one another. The obstacles to the dream of a perfect quinceañera, one that is symbolic of public recognition of Azul’s female gender, are community members who only look out for themselves, who are greedy or prejudiced.
High school housekeeping
Many teens will connect with this short novel in verse (183 pages). The two main characters are a trans girl (soon to celebrate her fifteenth birthday) and her gay cousin (our narrator), an artist who helps envision a beautiful dress. While it’s a quick read with a happy ending, serious issues are embedded: financial stress, parents accepting or not accepting their LGBTQ+ kids as they come out, parent/teen friction, learning the hard lesson of whom to trust and who to avoid, the importance of community.
I recommend No Place for Fairy Tales for anyone interested in the topics above as well as for reluctant and emerging readers. (The West 44 imprint “offers hi-lo middle grade and YA novels and novels-in-verse for struggling or reluctant readers.”) There are a few Spanish words sprinkled thought the book. Most people who live in areas with Latine residents will know many of these words whether or not they speak Spanish (e.g., pan dulce, chica, mujer, carnicería). However, there is a very brief glossary in the front which lists the words in order of appearance.
A book-centered community that acknowledges the real challenges of publishing and celebrates the journey.
Respite for those who haven’t always found conventional inspiration and advice helpful.
A discussion of books and writing that includes work outside the bestseller/literary giants milieu.
I am not going to move the School Library Lady subscriber list to Substack because you may only be interested in book reviews and a discussion of books that includes those from small presses. By highlighting those books here, I’m hoping to do a service for readers and YA/ middle and high school librarians who would not learn of these small press books otherwise. I’ll try to continue posting on those books monthly.
High school junior Adriana Herrera Bowen lives for rodeo competitions. She participates in pole bending, barrel racing, calf breakaway, and goat tying. While she’d like to do more, “in senior division, only boys are allowed to ride bulls and broncs. So sexist.”(10) Plus, her family is struggling to get by. Horses are notoriously expensive and each area of competition has its own entry fees. Despite all the obstacles, Adriana is a serious contender in her events.
Rodeo at the heart of the novel
The rodeo sections are the heart of Breaking Pattern, with great visual detail, fast-paced action, intense emotionality, and fabulous horses. The competitions highlight Adriana’s circle including her handsome crush, some gossiping acquaintances, and several classmates, all vying for rodeo wins. Whenever he can, Adriana’s dad watches her compete. Her mom is far less enthusiastic and doesn’t attend for reasons that become clear midway through the novel.
The title of the novel refers to mistakes in pole bending and barrel racing where the horse and rider break forward motion to retrace their tracks to finish the pattern and/or pass the plane of the barrel on the off side. But it’s also symbolically indicative of Adriana’s life. Because her family is in transition, Adriana fights continually with her mother. More and more, she finds her parents’ goals in opposition to her own. While weighing her choices, she realizes she has her own set of values.
Though the family is in turmoil, they manage to keep Adriana’s rodeo ambitions alive through self-reliance. Adriana’s horse, Pearl, was trained by her uncle. Because he is a skilled mechanic, her dad keeps an old truck and a rusting horse trailer in shape to transport Pearl to events. Adriana is able to board Pearl in exchange for barn chores at the stable of an old family friend, Fiona.
Goals, dreams, and obstacles
Adriana’s dream is to continue the life she loves riding horses and competing in rodeos. She sets a goal of attending college on a rodeo team scholarship and then going to veterinary school. If she can win the championship saddle and the title of best all-around cowgirl, she’ll qualify for the scholarship. But there are so many obstacles in the way of that saddle that self-reliance alone can’t overcome.
Pearl is aging and not as fast as she once was. While feeling guilt about wanting to replace her, Adriana doesn’t have the money for a new horse, so she feels it’s a moot point. In addition, because of her rodeo training, side jobs, and preparation for her cousin’s quinceañera, Adriana has a hard time keeping up with school. It often ranks last in her priorities because, other than biology class, she doesn’t like it. That choice—that pattern—can separate her from her dream.
“‘What if I don’t want the real world, Barb? I want this one. Mine. … But my parents have other plans.'”
Compounding her problems are wealthy teen competitors. There’s Clay Campbell and his spoiled brat roping partner. Clay “stands there with his tight Wranglers and snakeskin boots while someone else unloads his horses for him.” (14) He has a brand-new four horse trailer with a dressing room that matches his late model truck. Cute, but an arrogant flirt and user who flashes his wealth and preens, Clay gives Adriana the opportunity to win on his horse if she will be his roping partner. While this would be a big step toward earning the saddle and scholarship, Adriana knows it would also be a betrayal of her friends as well as a near guarantee that Clay would win all-around cowboy.
Life lessons
It slowly dawns on Adriana that Barb, the farrier who lives with Fiona, is actually Fiona’s life partner. She remembers her mother and others saying cruel things about the two women. But like Fiona, Barb takes Adriana under her wing, acting as her conscience about school work, helping her with the care of her horse, and reminding her of the requirements of living in the real world. When Adriana complains, “‘What if I don’t want the real world, Barb? I want this one. Mine. … But my parents have other plans,” (229) Barb refuses to take the bait.
One of the young competitors tells Adriana, “‘You take the good, you take the bad. … That’s good advice for life.’” (227) But it’s hard because her dilemmas are becoming more and more complicated. When her parents choose their own dream at the expense of hers, Adriana is rapidly pressed into adulthood. She takes a lesson from Fiona: “‘You’re going to learn quickly that everyone makes bad choices. It’s how you handle the consequences that determine your true character.’” (92)
High School Housekeeping
Breaking Patternis a lovely coming-of-age novel with a protagonist whose circumstances force her to understand that not all dreams can be realized, an important lesson for all teens. With its rodeo settings and scenes illuminating the bond between riders and their horses, it’s a good book to update YA library ‘horse novel’ collections.
Five years after she graduated from high school, Kathy Leissner Whitman was stabbed to death by her husband Charles Whitman after he killed his mother and before he committed a mass shooting from the tower at the University of Texas, Austin. Unheard Witness, which is framed by Hurricane Carla (1961) and the Texas tower shootings (1966) that left 15 dead and 31 injured, is the story of how Kathy became a victim of domestic violence and then murder.
From Ideal Childhood to Nightmare
Reading about Kathy’s childhood and teen years, one might envy her. Her mother, a teacher, records her babyhood milestones in minute details, including the outfit she wore for her first outing to a doctor’s appointment. As a teen, Kathy is involved in so many high school clubs and service organizations that it would be easier to list those in which she is not a member. She is voted most “Ideal Girl” by her classmates. She has boyfriends and an active social life. Younger girls look at her example as something to aspire to.
Kathy leaves for college and new adventures a single day after Hurricane Carla. Less than a year later, she marries Whitman, also a UT Austin student. While he publicly appears to be a catch (good looking, one-time Eagle Scout and Catholic Church altar boy), privately he has a history of violence and misdeeds for which he is not held accountable. His father is also a domestic abuser. After the wedding, Kathy’s brother, Nelson, stays with Kathy’s in-laws and witnesses constant fighting, dishes hurled across the room at dinner time, and more. He understands that Kathy has made a mistake in marrying Charles.
A Life of Abuse and Uncertainty
The marriage quickly turns ugly with Charles constantly trying to exert control over Kathy (he goes so far as to dictate what her fingernails/manicures should look like). He wants to have a baby although Kathy knows their relationship is too unstable for that. He is on a military scholarship at UT Austin, which he loses due to poor grades. This upends Kathy’s life as she leaves school with him. Nevertheless, she is determined to finish college in four years and does so despite being abused and in a constant state of uncertainty.
Author Jo Scott Coe has carefully researched Kathy’s story. Kathy’s brother Nelson preserved over 600 letters concerning Kathy (her own letters to her parents, siblings, and Charles; their letters to her; Charles’ letters to Kathy’s parents) and he gave Scott Coe access to them. In her letters, Kathy’s dreams and daily life, her issues with Charles and her efforts to correct them are voiced. In some letters, it appears Charles, who writes addendums, is monitoring what Kathy writes.
Particularly poignant is a letter from Kathy’s mother, Frances, to Charlies, where she argues that Kathy doesn’t need psychiatric treatment as he has suggested. That, in fact, Charles should understand that she was a happy, vibrant girl before marrying him. Reading this letter, we can see how careful Frances is in her writing—trying to get Kathy help while not provoking the explosive Charles into more violence. Frances suggests marriage counseling, probably feeling that a third party could show Charles that the cause of his problems was himself.
Scott Coe previously wrote about Charles Whitman in MASS: A Sniper, a Father, and a Priest (2018). In her introduction to Unheard Witness, she states: “That sobering work well-prepared me to comprehend the milieu wherein Kathy, like so many women, faced unspeakable cruelty and dysfunction in places where they were supposedly most safe—in their churches, in their families, and in their closest relationships. Kathy’s humanity was threatened immediately by a relationship with a man whose notions of ‘love’ had been warped by childhood trauma and profoundly twisted by ideologies of ownership, objectification, and abuse. Unlike most victims, he perpetuated the damage.”
High School Housekeeping
While this well-researched nonfiction book is directed at adults, high school students will benefit from reading it. It’s a good book to recommend to students tasked with finding the deeper story behind a historical event. More importantly, it shows how young people are often unprepared to recognize dangerous relationships and how social bias and norms can blind girls to dangerous boys and men. I’ve noted many times on this blog that allowing teens to read widely and about difficult subjects is a safe way to introduce them to the unfamiliar. It also helps them to understand the dangers that threaten them without actually exposing them to that danger. Like The Sociopath Next Door, which I reviewed here, Unheard Witness details how ordinary bullies are and how easy it is to be caught in their web. In addition, it brings the story of one individual to life with empathy, correcting the false narrative of the last half century. Its importance to teens lies in helping them to understand the world.
