I AM CANADA: WWI

Another formulaic Dear Canada war book. Boy goes off to war to be like his childhood friend, who was a few years older. Learns that war means having to actually kill people and watch others die and shell shock and all that. He gets caught up with some deserters after wandering off in shock during a battle and the book is framed as him telling his story to an officer that's come to sit with him in his final hours before execution. It's decent as the war books go, I guess, but as I've mentioned before, they don't interest me much.

Next, we've got two books about the Spanish flu epidemic and then I think we're finally through all the crap that happened during the WWI years.

DEAR CANADA: Halifax Explosion

Man, a lot of crazy shit went on during WWI. Not only is there this huge war, but there's the drama of the suffrage movement, this giant explosion that destroyed a good chunk of Halifax, and a nasty flu epidemic that's coming up in a couple books.

Like most of these Dear Canada topics, I didn't know anything about the explosion until I read this. The diary starts out normally, but once that explosion hits, the writer's family is basically wiped out.

I think the author does a good job of showing different types of PTSD amongst the survivors, and the unraveling family mystery keeps the story from being mired in sadness.

This is definitely one of the better Dear Canadas, because it taught me about something I knew nothing about and did so using engaging characters.

DEAR AMERICA: Suffrage

Suffrage is one of those topics that tends to frustrate me, since it's hard to read about the horrible treatment of the women when all they wanted was something so simple.

A Time for Courage handles the topic well, because the main character is too young to really participate and has to live her life while the older members of her family fight for suffrage, go off to war, etc. She writes about simple things like field hockey and Latin, but also family drama involving a divorce between her aunt and uncle, and watching her mother work for women's suffrage.

The book is well-written and engaging, although it still has the same frustrating elements that always irk me about the topic.

Catching Up

I got quite behind in my reviews, so I'm going to put them all together.

Of this batch, the book I read first, Prisoners in the Promised Land, was by far the best.

Did you know Ukrainians and other immigrants from that area were forced into internment camps in Canada during World War I? Because before I read this, I had no idea.

Anya's story is a difficult journey, but it's the most moving and I think the most important of the books here.

Anastasia's Royal Diary brings that reread to a conclusion. I confess that I skimmed this. I've been reading these while sick and recovering from being sick, so I just wasn't in the mood for another story with a sad ending after the three Titanic books! I do remember enjoying this when I've read it in the past, but it's not one of my favorites from the series.

It did get one of the only Royal Diary rereleases and the cover is so crazy that it's worth taking up the space here.

I mean, seriously. The original cover looks like a young teenage girl of that time period. It looks like it was based on actual photographs, which I'm sure it was. Then there's this thing on the left. It's a pretty picture, but that is absolutely not Anastasia.

Dear Canada has the first entry of the three World War I books.

Eliza is an interesting character, as she's the middle child of seven. She has two older brothers, both in the war, and one older sister, plus twins (one male, one female) that are younger and finally, one youngest sister. Her father is a minister, so the family is moderately well off, but not excessively.

About halfway through the book, Eliza loses her eldest and favorite brother to the war. After that, she turns into the confidante of her other older brother, who's involved in some drama over in England. Both he and his best friend love the same woman. That turns into a rather soap opera-level mess.

The story is engaging, but it's not the best home front sort of story, although I do appreciate the different ways the men are shown being affected by the war.

A lot of the war-themed I Am Canada books are rather formulaic. The male character is in his mid-upper teens at the start, goes off for training, goes into whatever type of battle, grows up enduring horrific things. Sometimes a woman is involved. They come home men. This one is more of the same. I ended up skimming it, because I feel like I read it not that long ago, even though it came out back in 2013. Good, but not one of the best. Boys doing war stuff is not the most interesting topic for me.

You can always tell a Dear America from the tail end of the line. The books lack that fabric bookmark I love so much.

I couldn't remember a thing about this book when I picked it up. I doubt I've ever reread it before. Simone is a society girl from New York City who wants to be useful, so she eventually finds her way to being a hello girl over in France. Her time over there is interesting, because it's not something covered in any of the other books. Simone is also very unusual in that she's seventeen at the beginning of the diary. Most DA girls are much younger! But the story doesn't work unless she is that old, because they don't let kids do what she does, of course.

The book is quite short and a very quick read, but it's somehow more fulfilling than others that are much longer. Simone's family is a handful of good characters, she has a love story with some adventure, she has a tragedy that actually got me sniffling, because it's been years since I read this and I'd forgotten. It's a good book. Definitely more than what I was expecting when I picked it up.

Okay, now I'm caught up! And the next DA is...suffrage. *groan*

TITANIC TRIFECTA

I've been sick this whole week, but I finally finished all three Titanic books and it's time for my reviews.

Margaret Ann Brady's diary was one of the first, possibly actually THE first, Dear America I ever read. I started with the Royal Diaries, then branched out.

Margaret is a great character. She's a sassy orphan, whose only living relative is an older brother, who's over in the US. She's in an English orphanage, through which she ends up with a position as a companion to a rich American woman who's returning home early after the birth of a grandchild.

Margaret gets a whole new wardrobe and gets caught up in the posh life. She takes to things with cheek, instead of being overwhelmed, often exasperating her employer. She really doesn't do that much companioning, mostly walks the little dog.

These books are all a bit formulaic. Each one takes the same tour of the ship, where you go see the pool, the exercise room, the fancy staircase, etc. Then you see all the famous people.

Margaret makes it off the boat because she's a young girl, but she has to be forced into one of the lifeboats by her steward, a young man named Robert. Their moment before she gets on the boat is so touching, I typically tear up.

This is by far the strongest of the three books.

It was one of the rereleases, as you can see the cover here. I don't like this art of Margaret. That brooding girl on the original cover looks like someone who could be sassy. This yellow dress chick does not.

Being an English girl, Margaret's book also got into the My Story series (English Dear America). This girl on the cover is a far better Margaret. I'll always favor the original, but this one is definitely good, too.

The My Story version actually has not one but two different reprint covers, but I'm not going to shove them here.

Margaret was one of the lucky four to get a Madame Alexander doll.

Which unfortunately looks nothing like her. The other three dolls (Caty, Mem and Abigail) were all designed to look like the actresses from the HBO specials, but Margaret's book never got a TV special. Probably would have been a bit too high budget to do! Why they made her look like this then, I'm not sure.

The Dear Canada book is depressing. At least with most of Margaret's, she's her cheeky fun self, but Dorothy's book begins in May, when she's been punished and removed from her school for the rest of the year. She slapped a brat who told her horrible things about the Titanic, envious of Dorothy's fame. Nasty little thing never did get any comeuppance. I hate that.

Anyway, Dorothy is supposed to write in the diary she was given and tell about what happened on the Titanic, because it might help her. She refuses to do so for quite a bit of the book.

Instead, we get to read about a little girl who has OCD-type behaviors that are clearly from post-traumatic stress disorder. That's not fun.

Eventually, Dorothy gets to her story and we learn that she blames herself for the death of the woman that was chaperoning her. The woman was an employee of her father's and was going to England, so Dorothy's family sent her along and she stayed with her grandparents, then both were to return home on the Titanic. (The parts describing her time with her grandparents are really the only good ones in the book.) The employee woman is rather insufferable and keeps trying to tell Dorothy what to do, which is not right. In retaliation, after being sent back to their room, Dorothy makes a giant mess of the woman's things and then goes to bed. When she wakes, the ship is sinking. The stewardess rushes her out, while another steward is trying to get the woman to realize the seriousness of the situation. Dorothy and the stewardess get into one of the lifeboats and make it to rescue. It's only later that Dorothy realizes the older woman never made it. She blames herself, because she thinks it was the mess that made the woman run so behind and never make it off the ship.

Thankfully, Dorothy's parents are able to track the stewardess down and they surprise Dorothy with a visit from her. While they're talking, it comes out that the stewardess had cleaned up the mess before the employee woman ever got back to the room. So her death wasn't Dorothy's fault at all.

Apologies for the lack of names here, but I'm too lazy to get up and look them up.

This diary has some enjoyable moments, but mostly, it's rather painful to read.

The final version is from a male point of view. This is a bit of a challenge because there's got to be a good reason for a male protagonist of the age the I Am Canada boys usually are (a bit older) to have made it. Not many men got into the lifeboats.

Jamie's from a well-off family, so this book's got a lot of the same scenery as Margaret's. Jamie's a boy though, so expect the usual boyish trouble. For example, he meets a boy onboard who has a pet rat and the rat escapes, so they chase it, etc.

It's a decent book, but there's something about it that I find much less engaging than Margaret's. Maybe because a lot of these boy-fronted stories seem rushed.

Jamie survives because, while he hits the water, he quickly manages to make it to an overturned lifeboat, which he and a bunch of others stand on for hours until rescue.

The older brother at the end is just a complete asshole, too. I don't think he was a necessary addition.

So. Titanic. Three books. Margaret's is honestly the only one I'd recommend and I do recommend it highly.

DEAR AMERICA: Shirtwaist Worker

I'm going to say right off that this isn't a bad book, but it was hard for me to get through.

It's yet another immigrant book.

Yet another immigrant book set in New York City. (I love New York, but I'm tired of it after all these!)

And it's yet another factory book.

There are two subjects in history that really don't interest me. The first is factory work. It sucks. We get it. I don't need eight books to tell me that it sucks. The second is suffrage, which I'm going to be groaning my way through shortly. Trails are another that I'm not too fond of, but that was mostly because I had to slog through how many of them in a row?

Anyway. Angela's Italian family are good characters and I like her and her friend Sarah. It's just tough to read something that you know isn't going to end well, because you guessed it, this ends with the Triangle fire.

Unfortunately, I'm just beginning a run of This Does Not End Well. The next three are about the Titanic and then we've got the last of the Royal Dairies, which is Anastasia's. It pains me to read things about her, so I may just skim that one! I'll be combining the Titanic books into one big entry, because why not? We've got the Dear America, Dear Canada and I Am Canada versions of the story. I can't remember if I've actually ever read the I Am Canada one. I know there were some of those I got around the time I decided to start this reread/review and I never read them.

DEAR AMERICA: San Francisco Earthquake

One of the newer Dear America additions, A City Tossed and Broken is about the horrible earthquake that devastated San Francisco in 1906.

However, don't look for a lot of information about that here.

The book reads more like fiction than historical fiction. Like several of the newer DA offerings, it has a dramatic story that the author makes take precedence over anything historical.

Minnie Bonner's father loses the family tavern in a card game and the 14-year-old is forced to come with the new owners to San Francisco, working as their maid. But don't get attached to any of the rich family because it's not long after they reach San Francisco that the quake hits. Boom, they're all gone. The daughter had stolen Minnie's suitcase and dressed in her maid's clothing, about to run off with her boyfriend. Minnie, without her suitcase, was wearing one of the daughter's many nightgowns, so when she's found, the family lawyer, who's never met the daughter, assumes that Minnie is her.

Minnie plays the role of Lily while she tries to work out the mysteries surrounding her. It turns out the rich father had hired the man who cheated Minnie's father at cards. The entire thing was orchestrated by them and Minnie finds proof of many crooked dealings in a ledger, which she buries along with a load of cash and a million dollars in bonds.

Despite the heavily dramatic story, the incidents take place over just a handful of days and Minnie does get her happy ending.

Read this one if you're satisfied with more drama than history. It's not a bad book. I just don't think it qualifies as historical.