Emily Meier, RIP

Posted on January 12, 2013 by Michigoose

On behalf on Lulu:

I just received this email from Emily’s husband.

Linda,

Emily died last night at a little after 9. She was peaceful and without pain. She stopped breathing for 15 seconds or so, and then took a big breath. Then stopped again for longer, and then took another breath, not as strong as the first. Then a third, and a fourth. And then no more.

She was a wonderful person and a wonderful wife.

Bob

I’m really going to miss my correspondence with her. She was a terrific friend, a wonderful writer, a devoted wife, mother and grandmother, and a political junkie extraordinaire. She’s at peace now dammit.

I will never forget her generosity, humor, and intelligence, especially demonstrated when she discussed Suite Harmonic with us.

Filed under: Book Review, Emily Meier, Suite Harmonic | Tagged: , , | 14 Comments »

Discussion of Suite Harmonic by Emily Meier

Posted on May 4, 2012 by lmsinca

There’s something about the words below that resonate with me and remind me, again, how truly awful war is.  This is toward the end of John Given’s enlistment in the Union Army and he’s quite close to returning home to Harmony, a greatly changed man, in a greatly changed nation.

……it struck him even more how blasted Decatur was.  It was very easy to get tired of looking at nothing except a soldier’s face and, without women, there was singular lack of beauty.  And color was missing.  Clothes were the sea of uniforms, faded to a vague blue, which the men, in the heat, shed as often as they could.  In a place where a normal year would have meant a host of summer flowers everywhere, the ground was unplanted-chewed up and battered by the boots of so many men.  There were no blossoms of any color.  There was no foliage.  There was only the wasted, treeless town and the mud and wood of the fort.

Emily will be checking in periodically so if you want to leave a question for her I’m sure she’ll be more than happy to respond.  It’s impossible to pin everyone down to a specific discussion time so just come in and out as time allows over the weekend.

***

Mark adds:

Suite Harmonic is a lovingly crafted narrative of war and family woven from personal written histories, especially from the letters of John Given and his sister Kate.  It is essentially a novel of manners interspersed with battle scenes.  For those of us who love Civil War stories, as I do, it is satisfying.  The main characters, John and Kate, become known to us as they become assimilated, as their Irish Catholicism fades, as they mature, and as they internalize the issues of their time.

That John survives Shiloh is amazing, that he learns that he will keep his head in combat is what gives him resiliency throughout the War.  Kate, back home in Indiana, is an interesting study in both duty and stepping out of her “place” as an Irish maid to wealthy Protestants.  Both siblings are smart and literate, which is how so much of their material survived.

The eventual love stories, after the War, especially Kate and Harry’s, are truly sweet.

The tragedies of 19th C. health care follow the characters into peace time.

A picky critic might find two anachronisms of speech, but I was not picky and did not catalog them.  My own disappointment with the novel was limited to my high expectations for it – I love historical novels.  I have been through all of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin novels twice.  Suite Harmonic has no plot.  Think of a lifetime series of interconnected events as told through the eyes of two siblings, in which there is no struggle between good and evil, no climax, no anti-climax, and no denouement.  John and Kate were surely so likable and admirable as presented by ABC, and the incidents themselves so fascinating in detail and social (or combat) observation, as to allow Suite Harmonic to stand without a plot.  I think it does actually present a harmonic suite of the interplay of lives shaped by the Civil War, and by the integration of immigrants into society, and by the daily struggles of people we can still recognize, although their hardships were of a different time.  I am sure it does what Emily intended it to do, and that my expectations were irrelevant.

Filed under: 2012, Book Review, Suite Harmonic | Tagged: | 61 Comments »

Book Review – New ATiM Feature

Posted on February 10, 2012 by lmsinca

Welcome 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: , , | 20 Comments »