Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktWelcome to the launch of our first ATiM Book Review. This is something I’ve been thinking about since we first envisioned ATiM and honestly, I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to get around to it. I’m going to pull a popular Presidential move and choose our first book by “Executive Order” and have therefore chosen Suite Harmonic by Emily Meier. Next time we’ll take suggestions and vote or something. I’m reading I,Judas next, by Mark’s son-in-law, but don’t let that influence your vote.
Emily Meier (AllButCertain here at ATiM) has not only published six books, but has also launched her own publishing company, Sky Spinner Press, in the past year. Suite Harmonic is her longest novel so we’ll get back together the weekend of April 13th for a discussion, that should be enough time for everyone to read it. In the meantime, be thinking of suggestions for our next reading assignment……and try not to think of it as homework.
From a recent interview:
Her honors include Minnesota State Arts Board and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships and Loft Mentor and Loft McKnight awards. Her stories have been published in national literary journals, and she’s won national fiction contests at Florida Review and Passages North. One of her stories is in “The Second Penguin Book of Modern Women’s Short Stories.”
From her website:
During this 150th anniversary year of the beginning of the Civil War, Suite Harmonic: A Civil War Novel of Rediscovery is the indispensable novel for readers interested in discovering the intense experience of both battlefield and homefront in the teeming world of the Civil War.
Excerpt from Chapter One:
It was eleven charged days since the 25th Indiana, Volunteer Infantry, had left St. Louis on the Continental and traveled with the fleet down the Mississippi. The men had watched warily as flatboats edged between ice floes. They’d rushed to fill buckets to keep the deck wet beneath the boat’s fiery chimneys. Steaming past canebrakes and turkeys perched on tree branches, they’d kept a lookout for guerrillas and spotted herons and red-tailed hawks flying at water’s edge, eyed pignut hickories and saw Judas trees not yet in bud. A steamer suddenly crossed their bow, and the captain reversed engines just in time to avoid a collision.
At Cairo, its broad levee swarming with soldiers, they escorted angry mutineers to quarters. One of them, hearing the west of Ireland in John’s voice, cursed him in Gaelic. At Paducah they saw an otherworldly boat, brightly lit: plumed officers and beautifully gowned women strolling its upper deck. Then, the Iatan had turned from the Ohio into the Tennessee. It had pushed down the western knob of Kentucky. It had steamed into Tennessee. It had entered the Confederacy itself where the citizens weren’t just wavering but gone. When at last the boat came into view of the Stars and Stripes newly flying on Fort Henry after the navy’s victory, a thunderous, foot-stomping yell erupted around John. The wood of the boat shuddered clear through him. He was cheering so loud his throat hurt. A big fight was coming. He knew it. They all did.
Now, after a night bivouacking at Fort Henry and the march to Fort Donelson and the long, sleepless hours in front of the Confederate rifle pits, the fight had arrived.
You can purchase Emily’s book, Suite Harmonic, from Amazon here, or from her website here. I hope many of you will read it and enjoy it, and then we can have a lively discussion afterward, beginning the weekend of April 13th. I’ve added a sidebar under the log in feature as a friendly reminder of our (my) choice of book and the date we’ll have our discussion as well as links for purchasing the book.
Filed under: 2012, Book Review, Emily Meier, Suite Harmonic | Tagged: Book Review, Emily Meier, Suite Harmonic |
All Things in Moderation 
ABC – any local booksellers carry it? I’m near minnehaha park.
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I read and it recommend it to others. Looking forward to the discussion on April 13th and thereafter.
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If Barnes and Noble doesn’t have it–some stores do–they can order it, bsimon. It’s at Common Good Books in St. Paul. If you have a favorite indie bookseller, they can order it as well. And interest often means they’ll stock it, which some stores may do after the recent Mary Ann Grossmann article.
ashot–I’m pleased you read it and can recommend it.
And lms, thanks for this idea and following through on it. Can a girl be a mensch?
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You’re welcome ABC. As I said it’s something I’ve been wanting to do for quite some time. I’m wondering if April 13th. is too far away for everyone. The weekend before is Easter, and March 30th. seemed too quick to me as I know it’s a “longish” book. I think having an open thread over a weekend is a good idea though. And I can’t wait to begin reading. I finished another book last night, so I have time to start.
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Thanks for the info. Magers & Quinn’s website says its online only, which I assume to mean its shipped from Itasca…
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Not into book groups. Sorry.
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I can’t wait!!! (lms, April 13th definitely is not too far off for me. I’m still going to be crazy at work through March at least. The good news is today I got my 4th grant application this month finalized and submitted, just 2 more to go. Which will leave me very little time to get ready for the ones due in early March. Sigh.)
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No problem msjs, I don’t expect everyone to participate. I know okie and michi are going to and with myself, bsimon and ashot and anyone else who wanders in, we’ll have a group. I’m hoping to finally drag BGinCHI away from the baby long enough to join the discussion as he’s already read the book as well. As a writer he’ll be interested in the discussion I think and maybe Ruk will be also.
I’ve been finding since we started ATiM that it’s taking me quite a bit longer to read a book, so I just hope I finish it in time.
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Congrats okie and yeah I thought the date was probably okay with you and michi, I know how busy you both are. I’ve been reading the same two books since Christmas and am just now finishing……………………so I probably need the time also.
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I know you’ve been quite busy too. How do you manage your time to get so very much accomplished (work, volunteering, blogging, extensive gardening and canning, baking, who-knows-what-else)?
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I don’t sleep very much, seriously. I only need about 6 hours a night and then on weekends I might take a nap one of the days. I’m generally out by 10 pm and up at 4 am. My dad was the same way. Unfortunately, when I stay up past 10 I still wake up at 4, which kills me and hence I need a nap at some point. I’ve never been much of a sleeper, don’t know why. It’s easier to manage my time during the winter as our business is slow but once things pick up in March or April, you won’t see me as much around here as I’ll be out in the warehouse working instead of sitting at my desk for a large part of the day. We’ve actually wound down one of our volunteer efforts, the senior food bank, as it was only temporary to make up for the lack of COLA increases. It really hit our local seniors hard but things seem to have settled down now and what we’ve done instead of a full on Food Bank every two weeks is a canned goods donation and honor system. The staff at the complex (senior housing) is overseeing it to make sure no one takes more than their fair share. So far it seems to be working.
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I wanted to pass this bit along as background for people who’re thinking of reading Suite Harmonic and joining the April discussion. It’s from the answer I wrote to an interview question Greg Sargent was nice enough to send me for my website several months ago: “As far as whether my interest in politics is reflected in my fiction, I think only in the broadest sense. I may be a political junkie, but politics interests me partly as story. It can be compelling. It can be fun . . . . I also care a lot about what political decisions mean for people’s lives. Yet it’s not the job of a fiction writer to address political issues as an advocate. It would deaden the work. As a writer, I’m more interested in how and why people do things than in what I think they should do . . . . And I like it when readers take their own truths from a story.”
I’ll also add that if you’re drawn to local and national history, genealogy, inter-generational stories, America’s 19th century love affair with establishing utopian communities, immigration (Irish in this case) or the Civil War itself, these are all strands in the book. I hope I’ll be able to jump in some on the discussion. I always learn something here.
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abc, my grandfather (who I did not know) was an Irish immigrant circa 1900. I look forward to learning anything I can about the daily life of that circumstance (even if the time frame is a bit different). We have recently (w/in last 6 months) reconnected with my father’s side of the family. One thing that really struck me was how the Irish stuck together (marrying only other Irish, etc.) I am interested to see if my family’s anecdotal history is borne out by your research and your book.
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Okie, I think the experience of the Irish was different in cities than in small towns such as New Harmony, Indiana, the home front for Suite, with probably more assimilation in the small towns where there wasn’t the critical mass of Irish to band together, establish a church, and so forth. Some of my great-grandfather’s relatives settled in Chicago, and their experience, bits of which are in the book, was quite different from his. Basically, there’s more than one Irish story. But one of my favorite things about writing the book was the Irish back story and being able to put Ireland on the page.
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okie, one of my great-grandfathers emigrated here to the US from Ireland ca 1900, also, first to Detroit and then to northern MI. Family legend has it that the lumberman on the far right of this monument in Oscoda, MI is Great-Grandpa O’Kelley, although I’ve never been there myself to check it out. I think ABC is right about the small-town vs big-city experience was different for the Irish back then, because Grandma, Great-grandpa’s youngest, ended up marrying a good Scotsman. Scandalous!
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Thanks, abc and michi. That makes intuitive sense about big-city vs small-town. Coincidentally, my grandfather’s family settled in Chicago as well (he was young when they immigrated). Apparently it was a “scandal” when he went off the reservation and married a French woman. My grandfather was a gambler by profession and made his living from it most of his life. It took a long time for me to connect the dots: the time frame, gambler, Chicago. lol.
Michi, what a great story. How is it that you have never been to see that monument? And do you have pics of your GGpa to compare to it?
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okie,just one of those things. . . you grow up in an area and the local sights-to-see never get seen (although ashot can be a good witness for me in that Oscoda is WAY off the beaten path). Family pics, the few that we have of Great-grandpa, bear out the resemblance, so that’s why the legend endures.
Ask me sometime about great-uncle Paul (G-ma’s brother, the oldest). He was the Black Sheep of the family!
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So tell me about great-uncle Paul. Brother to the same G-ma that had the audacity to marry a Scot? There is a great “black sheep” story in my mother’s family. Many stories about him. I’d have to really think through how many generations this goes back, but I have pics of this particular ancestor in civil war uniform (confederate). He performed in a wild west show and reportedly had 7 or 8 wives. One enduring story is that after only two weeks he delivered one of them to the town sheriff and demanded a “bill of divorcement” from “that disobedient redheaded devil.”
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ABC, does Owen’s Utopia play a role in the book? I will read it anyway, but I wrote an economic critique of Owen and communitarianism in 1963 taking positions Scott would have admired.
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Mark, Owen’s story is part of the book, as well as the Rappite utopian experiment it followed in New Harmony. Both preceded the Civil War period by decades, but their influence was still felt in the town, which was very much about pursuing knowledge and the arts. Many of the descendants of Owen and the Rappites are part of the population of characters in the book who actually lived and left behind documents for a researcher. Interestingly, a sort of class system developed with the utopian descendants on an upper tier and newcomers such as the Irish Given family on a lower one, though striving.
I am looking forward to the Reich book, which looks provocative.
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