grandmother – ~*LunaSea*~

Joe, Yolanda. The Hatwearer’s Lesson. Plume, 2004.

Reason read: Yolanda Joe was born in March. Read in her honor.

When Grandmother Ollie speaks, her granddaughter, Terri, best sit up straight and listen with both ears wide open. Ms. Ollie knows a thing or two about life, love, and loss. When she couldn’t write Terri’s fiancé’s name (Derek) in her Bible she knew trouble was brewing. Terri might be a successful Chicago lawyer and one half of a gorgeous power couple soon to be married, but what is she to do when Grandmother says there is bad luck coming? Derek is wealthy, sexy, and smart. Terri, only thinking about image, cannot afford to lose Derek so she does what any practical woman would do. She ignores the mystical warnings. Terri thinks she has it all with her career and Derek, but her luck goes from bad to worse when first, she discovers her hunk of a boyfriend has been stepping out on her with a rival. Then her grandmother suffers a fall that lands Ollie in the hospital and in need of an operation. This health scare couldn’t come at a better time. Going back home to Alabama to care for Ollie gives Terri the much needed time away to clear her head. Except. What about her professional legal career? Will her absence jeopardize her place in the firm? She does have rivals sniffing around her clients. And what about her heart? Will she ever be able to trust Derek again? She has rivals sniffing around her man, too. Life becomes even more confusing when she meets an Alabama country boy who wears his heart on his sleeve and trustworthy honesty on his tongue.

Head scratcher: correct me if I am wrong, but I do not think you need to block your number when calling from a cell phone. No one will know if you are standing in your own bathroom or at the North Pole when you make a call from a cell.

Author fact: I am reading four Joe books for the Challenge. I finished Bebe’s By Golly Wow. Still to go are He Say, She Say and This Just In.

Book trivia: According to Joe, hat wearer is one word: hatwearer. My spell checker hates me right now.

Playlist: Gladys Knight, James Brown, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Stevie Wonder, Sammy Davis Jr., Lena Horne, and Luther Vandross.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “African American Fiction: She Say” (p 12).

Settle, Mary Lee. Addie: a Memoir. University of South Carolina Press, 1998.

Reason read: Mary Lee Settle was born in July. Read in her honor.

There is something to be said for honoring one’s past. The oral histories of yesteryear are the cornerstones to who we are as people today. When Mary Lee Settle decided to write about her grandmother, Addie Settle, she chose to recognize not only a blood relative, but historical events: World War I, the Great Depression and mining strikes with Mother Jones leading the way. Settle honors her own personal tapestry of life by remembering family holidays from her childhood, coming of age, and the natural beauty of Kentucky and the Kanawha Valley of West Virginia. My favorite section was the poignant moment when Settle went back to Pineville, Kentucky. Sixty-five years after leaving the area as a six year old little girl, sharp memories rushed to meet her at every turn.
As an aside: when Mary Lee Settle was nine or ten years old she wrote a poem. When that poem was published someone had changed a word in the finished copy. In childish indignation she vowed never to write again. I just love that self righteous ardor for the integrity of her craft at ten years old!

An another aside: was it a typo to call it Wail Street instead of Wall Street?

Line I liked, “When your childhood has been spent on the river, the river will, wherever you are, flow through your dreams forever” (p 177). This quote reminded me of Natalie Merchant’s song, “Where I Go” – a song about finding solace on the banks of a river.
And this: “We had learned to watch for signs of that happiness as you watch the weather” (p 125). Confessional: my sister and I ask each other about the weather when we are really asking about our mother’s mood. Like weather in New England, it can change in a heartbeat.
Here is another one: “Since my mother never forgave anybody, she refused to go to the funeral when her friend died at ninety” (p 185). Does this kind of obstinate stubbornness come with old age? I see this in my own mother.

Author fact: Settle is in the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.

Book trivia: I am reading ten different books by Mary Lee Settle. This is my first one off the Challenge list.

Music: “Little Corey”, Guy Lombardo, “The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi”, “We shall Overcome”, “It was Sad When the Great Ship Went Down”, “In the shade of the Apple Tree”, “Down on the Farm”, Mozart, Nellie Lutcher, Flagstad & Melcior’s “Liebestod”, Hal Kemp, “If I Had the Wings of an Angel”, Tchaikovsky’s Second Piano Concerto, and “the Valley of Kentucky”.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Companion Reads” (p 62) to be read with Charms for the Easy Life because they are both about the south.