I like to be surprised – and BLACK CAKE by Charmaine Wilkerson (Ballantine Books), our staff pick of the month for March, begins on a literal cliffhanger.
“He stood at the water’s edge, now, watching the waves crash white against the rocks, waiting for his daughter’s body to wash ashore.
… He remembered a clattering of plates, the splintering of glass on the tile floor, someone crying out. When he looked toward his daughter, she was gone and her satin-covered shoes lay strewn on the lawn outside like tiny capsized boats.”
– Black Cake
In a family shaped by secrets, siblings Byron and Benny sit down with the family lawyer to hear about their mother’s past, revealed only after her death. She asks them the share a Black Cake, a recipe that has been an important part of their family traditions and gains significance as the story unfolds. Before the cake is shared, we learn there should be one more at the table.
These are people who have never heard Dr. Phil’s adage: Would you rather be right or would you rather be happy? But they are compelling characters and the plot is propulsive. This book is the whole package: beautiful cover, good writing, strong plotting, relatable characters.
Twisty, fun and moving, you’ll enjoy this book where everyone has (a lot of) secrets.
****
“Survival is not enough. Survival has never been enough.”
Black Cake
I love this quote, which comes late in the book, because in a story about Black characters it makes sense out of context, but in the larger context it pulls together the themes of the book. Love and inheritance and all the bigger problems of the world that we can’t ignore or escape.
Here’s a bit more of the quote, from page 372 of the hardcover,
“Etta is swimming for her children now, and for their children, too, not for the records. She uses every chance she can to talk about the health of the oceans. Seafloor damage, runoff, plastics, rising water temperatures, overfishing. She calls for the designation of additional protected zones. But she also take the time to show the audience old photos of herself as a girl in a swim cap, plus her favorite snapshots of Patsy and the boys when they were little, poking around a tide pool in Wales, their shoes clumped with wet sand. She never forgets to show the joy, to show the love. Because, otherwise, what would be the point of anything?
Survival is not enough. Survival has never been enough.”
We are delighted to host Erika Robuck at 6:30pm on Wednesday, March 23, in-person, outdoors at Hugh’s View on the roof of The Studios of Key West (register here). Robuck will be discussing her newest historical novel, SISTERS OF NIGHT AND FOG (Berkley). She is the bestselling author of novels including THE INVISIBLE WOMAN, and store favorite HEMINGWAY’S GIRL.
We had the opportunity to ask a few questions in advance of her upcoming event.
Q: Is there a short excerpt that you think works well to introduce SISTERS OF NIGHT AND FOG?
A: I chose the following scene, at the start of the German occupation of France, because it felt relevant to the way the beginning of the pandemic felt. The start of rationing, the restriction of movement, and the disbelief were unsettlingly relatable.
“It takes many cuts before she comprehends the truth: France is bleeding out—sliced with a mortal blow—and with it, Virginia’s old life is dying.
Like the early days of grieving a loved one, Virginia awakens each morning not knowing, but rather having to remember. That remembering brings fresh pain with each wave, and the waves are drowning her. She thinks it will be better when she simply knows the world has turned upside down—to have the thing dead and buried and not have to recollect. Then maybe she can move on. But there’s no knowing, at least not now. There is no certainty and no timetables, and that’s the hardest part. Though she knows it’s not for her ultimate good, Virginia continues to grasp the ever-vanishing vapors of the memories of before, but they’re getting increasingly hard to grasp.”
SISTERS OF NIGHT AND FOG
Q: How do you do your research? Has the pandemic disrupted or changed how you work?
A: My research process usually begins with visits to sites important to my story. Because of the pandemic, and the difficulty of traveling overseas, I had to settle for books, YouTube videos, interviews, and Google Earth, all of which are surprisingly helpful (and economical). I tend to begin by reading nonfiction about the subjects, events, and locations. Then I moved to archival material and interviews of the subjects or their loved ones. If there is any first person or autobiographical writing, that is my last stop in getting to know the characters before I can inhabit them to write them.
Edit note: Erika Robuck made a great interactive map of key locations from SISTERS OF NIGHT AND FOG? Check it out at https://bit.ly/3vhS0k2
Q: I saw a fun teaser on your Facebook page, involving vinyl records. Can you tell us anything about your current work-in-progress? If it is indeed, a near-past historical, will this be the first time you have set a story post-WWII?
A: Yes, my new work in progress is a dual period, multigenerational family drama—moving between 1978 and the 1930s—tied together by one of the most studied and debated artifacts of all time. My first, self-published novel, was also a dual period, multigenerational family drama that took place partly in the present day and in the 1800s. I love working in this form because it ties the past to the present in interesting ways, and creates natural suspense as the reader moves back and forth in time.
Q: What’s your favorite thing to do when visiting Key West? What’s one thing visitors should not miss?
It’s hard for me to answer this question, because I want to say so much. Key West is my home away from home. Aside from visiting Books & Books to find that perfect vacation read, my heart turns to The Hemingway House. You don’t have to like Hemingway to be enchanted by the home, gardens, and cats.
Q: What are you reading and recommending these days?
A: I recently rediscovered my love of Rosamunde Pilcher, the queen of multigenerational family dramas, and have been recommending WINTER SOLSTICE to everyone I meet. I also loved the re-released LOOKING FOR TROUBLE: THE CLASSIC MEMOIR OF A TRAILBLAZING WAR CORRESPONDENT, by Virginia Cowles (out in August). From the Spanish Civil war to the London Blitz, readers are travel companions on the most astonishing pre-WW2 itinerary imaginable. Finally, I loved THE PERSONAL LIBRARIAN, by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray. It tells the story of JP Morgan’s dazzling, brilliant librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, whose secret—that she is a Black woman who passes for white—could destroy both her personal and professional life. It was incredibly beautiful and eye opening.
Perfect for fans of The Soul of an Octopus and The Genius of Birds, this “revelatory book” (Sy Montgomery, New York Times bestselling author) explores how we process the world around us through the lens of the incredible sensory capabilities of thirteen animals, revealing that we are not limited to merely five senses.
There is a scientific revolution stirring in the field of human perception. Research has shown that the extraordinary sensory powers of our animal friends can help us better understand the same powers that lie dormant within us.
From the harlequin mantis shrimp with its ability to see a vast range of colors, to the bloodhound and its hundreds of millions of scent receptors; from the orb-weaving spider whose eyes recognize not only space but time, to the cheetah whose ears are responsible for its perfect agility, these astonishing animals hold the key to better understanding how we make sense of the world around us.
“An appealingly written, enlightening, and sometimes eerie journey into the extraordinary possibilities for the human senses” (Kirkus Reviews, starred), Sentient will change the way you look at humanity.
Already excerpted in the New Yorker, Black Cloud Rising is a compelling and important historical novel that takes us back to an extraordinary moment when enslaved men and women were shedding their bonds and embracing freedom
By fall of 1863, Union forces had taken control of Tidewater Virginia, and established a toehold in eastern North Carolina, including along the Outer Banks. Thousands of freed slaves and runaways flooded the Union lines, but Confederate irregulars still roamed the region. In December, the newly formed African Brigade, a unit of these former slaves led by General Edward Augustus Wild–a one-armed, impassioned Abolitionist–set out from Portsmouth to hunt down the rebel guerillas and extinguish the threat.
From this little-known historical episode comes Black Cloud Rising, a dramatic, moving account of these soldiers–men who only weeks earlier had been enslaved, but were now Union infantrymen setting out to fight their former owners. At the heart of the narrative is Sergeant Richard Etheridge, the son of a slave and her master, raised with some privileges but constantly reminded of his place. Deeply conflicted about his past, Richard is eager to show himself to be a credit to his race. As the African Brigade conducts raids through the areas occupied by the Confederate Partisan Rangers, he and his comrades recognize that they are fighting for more than territory. Wild’s mission is to prove that his troops can be trusted as soldiers in combat. And because many of the men have fled from the very plantations in their path, each raid is also an opportunity to free loved ones left behind. For Richard, this means the possibility of reuniting with Fanny, the woman he hopes to marry one day.
With powerful depictions of the bonds formed between fighting men and heartrending scenes of sacrifice and courage, Black Cloud Rising offers a compelling and nuanced portrait of enslaved men and women crossing the threshold to freedom.
A memoir of a decade in prison by a well-educated young addict known as the “Apologetic Bandit”
In 2003 Daniel Genis, the son of a famous Soviet émigré writer, broadcaster, and culture critic, was fresh out of NYU when he faced a serious heroin addiction that led him into debt and ultimately crime. After he was arrested for robbing people at knifepoint, he was nicknamed the “apologetic bandit” in the press, given his habit of expressing his regret to his victims as he took their cash. He was sentenced to twelve years—ten with good behavior, a decade he survived by reading 1,046 books, taking up weightlifting, having philosophical discussions with his fellow inmates, working at a series of prison jobs, and in general observing an existence for which nothing in his life had prepared him.
Genis describes in unsparing and vivid detail the realities of daily life in the New York penal system. In his journey from Rikers Island and through a series of upstate institutions he encounters violence on an almost daily basis, while learning about the social strata of gangs, the “court” system that sets geographic boundaries in prison yards, how sex was obtained, the workings of the black market in drugs and more practical goods, the inventiveness required for everyday tasks such as cooking, and how debilitating solitary confinement actually is—all while trying to preserve his relationship with his recently married wife.
Written with empathy and wit, Sentence is a strikingly powerful memoir of the brutalities of prison and how one man survived then, leaving its walls with this book inside him, “one made of pain and fear and laughter and lots of other books.”
“As you patiently await season two of Only Murders in the Building, cozy up with Lucy Foley’s latest whodunnit.” — Parade
“Exceedingly clever.” — Booklist
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Guest List comes a new locked room mystery, set in a Paris apartment building in which every resident has something to hide…
Jess needs a fresh start. She’s broke and alone, and she’s just left her job under less than ideal circumstances. Her half-brother Ben didn’t sound thrilled when she asked if she could crash with him for a bit, but he didn’t say no, and surely everything will look better from Paris. Only when she shows up – to find a very nice apartment, could Ben really have afforded this? – he’s not there.
The longer Ben stays missing, the more Jess starts to dig into her brother’s situation, and the more questions she has. Ben’s neighbors are an eclectic bunch, and not particularly friendly. Jess may have come to Paris to escape her past, but it’s starting to look like it’s Ben’s future that’s in question.
The socialite – The nice guy – The alcoholic – The girl on the verge – The concierge
Everyone’s a neighbor. Everyone’s a suspect. And everyone knows something they’re not telling.
Last March, we had the pleasure of introducing you to Michael Patrick F. Smith, when he was a Studios of Key West Artist-in-Residence. We are delighted to welcome him back to celebrate the release of the paperback edition of THE GOOD HAND Friday, Feb. 25 with an in-person, outdoors event. (Register here.)
Watch the 2021 author event:
Watch the replay of Michael Patrick F. Smith discussing his book with actor Shawn Hatosy.
Read last year’s Q&A:
Photo credit: Zach Pontz
Michael Patrick F. Smith is a folksinger and playwright currently based in central Kentucky. His plays, including Woody Guthrie Dreams and Ain’t No Sin, have been staged in Baltimore and New York. As a musician, he has shared the stage with folk luminaries such as Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, as well as several prominent indie rock bands. Smith has also worked as a stage actor, a bartender, junk hauler, furniture mover, book store clerk, contractor, receptionist, event producer, driver, office temp, stage hand, waiter, security guard, set fabricator, legal assistant, grocer, oil field hand, and now writer. THE GOOD HAND is his first book.
Q: How did you come to work in an oil field? What were you looking for at that time in your life and did you find it?
A: I went to work in the oil field for the same reason most people go to boomtowns, I wanted to make money fast and I was out of options. You could say my demons were catching up to me. I was surprised by what I found, because it wasn’t much money. It was better than that: a crystallization of my world view. It probably sounds strange to say it, but I also found a lot of healing, although it took writing the book for me to really realize that.
Q: When did you know you would write about the period of your life depicted in THE GOOD HAND? How did writing about those experiences change your understanding of them and of yourself at that time?
A: I started writing emails to a small group of friends as soon as I arrived in North Dakota looking for work. I got encouragement from these friends and my emails to them grew longer and longer to the point where I was sending them twenty page word docs. I was alone a lot at first, and the correspondence became a lifeline for me. When I left I had something like 130,000 words, so that is the source material for the book. It took me six more years to turn it into what it is now, so I think time is an important ingredient in the finished product. I spent a lot of time really meditating on the experiences and investigating my own thought process and emotional state, figuring out how this particular point in time tied together other aspects of my life.
Q: The audiobook includes some of your music. What do you think that adds to the experience of reading the book?
A: For me, music and prose are just different tools to use when telling a story. Music gives an immediate visceral emotional reaction: it is joyful or sad or haunting. I also write a lot about music in the book, which is difficult! I like to tell stories when I perform as a musician so weaving music throughout the audiobook felt really natural to me.
Q: Which came first for you, writing or music? Please tell us a little about how your work as a writer, playwright and musician come together.
A: I went to a public high school and a state college and I had incredible teachers. My high school drama teacher wrote plays with music, he played guitar and he designed and built the sets, too. He showed me how it was all woven together just by doing it, and he also encouraged me.
Later, when I was pursuing theater as a way to make a living there were long fallow periods and I began playing guitar more seriously so that I could pick up a little money, and also to get the joy that comes from performing. My closest friends have always been musicians. Music is also a way to communicate to musicians. It works better than words in many circumstances.
I also used to draw pictures of the plays I wrote as part of my writing process. I think I’ve just always been compelled to tell stories and I’ll use whatever is at hand to do it. One reason I wrote a book, if I’m completely honest, is that I kept getting screwed over by record labels and I was having trouble getting my plays produced. I was frustrated by the business side of those pursuits. I knew very little about publishing, but I knew when I sat down by myself and wrote, I could tap into that sacred space without anybody else around to muck it up.
Q: What are you finding are the most interesting or useful things you’ll take away from your time as a TSKW Artist in Residence? Do you want to share anything about what you’re working on now?
A: I’m working on some articles to support THE GOOD HAND, and also beginning research for what I think will be my second book. I’m also reading a ton from writers associated with Key West. I’ve been reading Hemingway, Jim Harrison and Thomas McGuane so far. For me, I get a lot of juice being in new places. The best writing looks through the world with a traveler’s eyes. This is my first time in Key West, so I’m just soaking in as much of the culture and the ecology and the experience of being here as I can. I fear it sounds a little lazy, but the truth is I know the more I dig into having a good time here, the more I’ll get out of this experience over the long run. I write every day because otherwise I feel insane, but I’m focused more on the experience.
Q: What are you reading and recommending these days?
A: Jim Harrison is blowing me away. Reading Legends of the Fall now. I’ve been living in Kentucky the past year and the writing of Wendell Berry, Thomas Merton and bell hooks have all become indispensable to me. The three of them, in their own different ways, write prose that calms the nervous system, and that is very valuable in these neurotic times. I always recommend Don Carpenter’s book Hard Rain Falling. It’s a criminally overlooked stone cold classic. Elizabeth Gilbert’s City of Girls is probably the best piece of newer fiction I’ve read all year.
The notorious Shel Silverstein classic you won’t want your children to read.
Dive into this a satirical, entertaining alphabet book for adults with quirky humor and Shel’s signature black-and-white art! No, this is not for your kids—this is just for you!
“You will be chuckling over Uncle Shelby’s ABZ Book.” —New York Times
“Delightful and…zany, Shel Silverstein is a gifted cartoonist.” —Chicago Daily Tribune
“It’s very, very funny.” —Pittsburgh Post Gazette
Generations have grown up with the works of Shel Silverstein, known not only as a poet and illustrator but also for his work as a cartoonist, playwright, performer, recording artist, and Grammy Award-winning songwriter. With the timeless magic of his work, Shel has encouraged all to dream and dare to imagine the impossible with his extraordinary poetry and unforgettable characters. With Uncle Shelby’s ABZ Book, adult fans of Shel Silverstein have a book of their own.
“Masterfully flips the first installment on its head… James makes the mythic tantalizingly real.’” —Esquire
“Even more brilliant than the first.” —Buzzfeed
From Marlon James, author of the bestselling National Book Award finalist Black Leopard, Red Wolf, the second book in the Dark Star trilogy.
In Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Sogolon the Moon Witch proved a worthy adversary to Tracker as they clashed across a mythical African landscape in search of a mysterious boy who disappeared. In Moon Witch, Spider King, Sogolon takes center stage and gives her own account of what happened to the boy, and how she plotted and fought, triumphed and failed as she looked for him. It’s also the story of a century-long feud—seen through the eyes of a 177-year-old witch—that Sogolon had with the Aesi, chancellor to the king. It is said that Aesi works so closely with the king that together they are like the eight limbs of one spider. Aesi’s power is considerable—and deadly. It takes brains and courage to challenge him, which Sogolon does for reasons of her own.
Both a brilliant narrative device—seeing the story told in Black Leopard, Red Wolf from the perspective of an adversary and a woman—as well as a fascinating battle between different versions of empire, Moon Witch, Spider King delves into Sogolon’s world as she fights to tell her own story. Part adventure tale, part chronicle of an indomitable woman who bows to no man, it is a fascinating novel that explores power, personality, and the places where they overlap.
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by Literary Hub and Goodreads A playful history of the humble index and its outsized effect on our reading lives.
Most of us give little thought to the back of the book—it’s just where you go to look things up. But as Dennis Duncan reveals in this delightful and witty history, hiding in plain sight is an unlikely realm of ambition and obsession, sparring and politicking, pleasure and play. In the pages of the index, we might find Butchers, to be avoided, or Cows that sh-te Fire, or even catch Calvin in his chamber with a Nonne. Here, for the first time, is the secret world of the index: an unsung but extraordinary everyday tool, with an illustrious but little-known past.
Charting its curious path from the monasteries and universities of thirteenth-century Europe to Silicon Valley in the twenty-first, Duncan uncovers how it has saved heretics from the stake, kept politicians from high office, and made us all into the readers we are today. We follow it through German print shops and Enlightenment coffee houses, novelists’ living rooms and university laboratories, encountering emperors and popes, philosophers and prime ministers, poets, librarians and—of course—indexers along the way. Revealing its vast role in our evolving literary and intellectual culture, Duncan shows that, for all our anxieties about the Age of Search, we are all index-rakers at heart—and we have been for eight hundred years.
