Tag: Nebraska

Review 2583: The Magician’s Assistant

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Sabine was very much in love with her husband, Parsifal, when he died unexpectedly. A handsome, affectionate, and charismatic man, he was also gay. For Sabine, it was love at first sight, which he hired her as his magician’s assistant.

Sabine lived with Parsifal and his lover Phan before Phan died from AIDS. Parsifal was also diagnosed with AIDS (this was the 90s when it was a death sentence), but he died unexpectedly of a brain aneurysm. Sabine is devastated and finds it hard to get out of bed. Phan was wealthy, so she is alone in a large house with Rabbit.

Although Parsifal had told her he was from Connecticut and had no family, Sabine has a shock coming. He does indeed have a family, a mother and two sisters in Nebraska, and his real name is Guy Fetters. She learns from his lawyer that Parsifal has been sending them money and left them some in his will. Sabine hypothesizes reasons why she has never heard of them but decides to call Mrs. Fetters. Eventually, she agrees to take her and her daughter around a visit of L. A. Sabine’s parents think she should have nothing to do with them.

Sabine likes Dot Fetters and her youngest daughter, Bertie. She begins learning new things about Parsifal. When they are leaving to go home, she agrees to visit them and attend Bertie’s upcoming wedding.

This story is an absorbing and touching one. Sabine learns to deal with her grief and finds out more about Parsifal. His family hears stories from her about their exotic-seeming life. The truth about why he left Nebraska is a difficult one, but Dot Fetters has regretted not trying to find him.

I love this novel. I thought I had read it before when I picked it up for A Century of Books, but it was unfamiliar. Patchett knows a lot about human nature.

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Review 1313: Obscure Destinies

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Cover for Obscure DestiniesObscure Destinies is a collection of three longish stories by Willa Cather. They are all character studies of people living in small prairie towns. I distinctly felt that the stories were based on people Cather knew during her days in Nebraska, even though one story is set in Colorado.

“Neighbor Rosicky” is about a farmer, an old Czech man whose doctor tells him at the beginning of the story that he must stop all hard work. He has a heart condition.

Rosicky has not prospered as well as some of his neighbors, but he is a kind man who enjoys life. He has an affectionate relationship with his family, but he is afraid that his oldest son, Rudolph, and Rudolph’s wife, Polly, will become discontented with the difficult life of farming and move away to the city. Rosicky has lived in London and New York and felt that he was never free until he owned his own land.

“Old Mrs. Harris” is about a woman who lives with her daughter’s family. Mrs. Rosen, her neighbor, thinks she is mistreated. Her room is a passageway in the house, and any treats intended for Mrs. Harris are either resented or appropriated by her daughter, Mrs. Templeton.

Mrs. Harris is from the South, where it was apparently commonplace to spoil young women, and where some older woman usually ran the household behind the scenes. But here she has no help besides a hired girl, and Mr. Templeton’s career has not been successful.

Young Vicky has an opportunity for a scholarship, and she has been encouraged to study by the Rosens. But the Templetons see no reason why she should go to college. Only Mrs. Harris understands.

“Two Friends” is about the friendship between two prominent businessmen in town, Mr. Dillon and Mr. Trueman. The narrator as a child loves playing at their feet each evening as they discuss Mr. Dillon’s tenant farmers, the history of the area, and other interesting topics. However, the friendship eventually founders over politics.

These stories are interesting and insightful character sketches. “Neighbor Rosicky” even brought tears to my eyes. I believe I’ve enjoyed these stories more than I have some of Cather’s novels, which is unusual for me.

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Day 445: Annals of the Former World: Crossing the Craton

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Cover for Annals of the Former WorldIn the final short book of Annals of the Former World, John McPhee examines the craton, the flat land that lies in the central Midwest of the continental United States. If you have read my reviews of the other books, you might remember that McPhee wrote each one about a separate geologic area near I-80, along which he traveled with different geologists telling the story of the formation of the country. Each of those four books was published separately, but Crossing the Craton was added when the complete volume was published, perhaps for completeness. (I think it was published separately at a later time.)

Because there are few outcroppings in the Midwest, little can be seen of the rock underlying this area, a thin veneer over the basement rock that comprises 90% of geologic time.  McPhee explains that until very recently this basement, or Precambrian, rock was neglected in geology texts. Because Precambrian rock by definition has no carbon in it from living things, carbon dating was not available. Nothing was known about the rock.  For a long time it was thought to have been there since the creation of the earth, but that idea has been found to be incorrect.

Just in the last 40 years or so, new kinds of dating methods and other technological advances have allowed geologists more insight into what is going on beneath the surface in these older rocks. Gravity maps have revealed a huge tectonic rift, for example, that runs from eastern Nebraska through Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin and under Lake Superior, where it joins one rift shooting north into Canada and another running right through Michigan. This three-pronged rift is similar to the one that runs down the Red Sea to meet the rift in the Gulf of Aden and the East African Rift, only that one is much younger.

In this book McPhee explains how the Canadian Shield and the central portion of North America were mostly likely created. He also looks at recent technologies such as zircon dating and aeromagnetic mapping, and speculates on the discoveries about the basement rock that could emerge in the future.

Although this is the shortest book in the volume, more the length of an essay, its emphasis on technology makes the subject matter of lesser interest to me than that of the previous books.