Josephine Baker's Last Dance: The Story of A 20th Century African American Performer

I won Josephine Baker's Last Dance by Sherry Jones about two years ago through Goodreads Giveaways and I recently finished reading it.  Yes, I know.  I'm a disgrace.  It's just that I tend to prioritize blog tours because I need to post on a definite date. Then there's the authors, publishers and publicists who contact me directly about a book asking me to review it within a certain time frame.  Having a specific deadline works best for me.   Goodreads Giveaways don't even require reviews.  I still like to post reviews of those I won from that source when I have the time.  The last time I reviewed a Goodreads Giveaway win, it was 2019, and I reviewed it only on Goodreads. That's what I tend to do when the review is going to be relatively short, and I haven't been asked to review the book on a blog.

I've read three novels by Sherry Jones previously.  The first two were the books devoted to Mohammed's daughter, Aisha.  They were The Jewel of Medina and The Sword of Medina which I reviewed on Goodreads.  I participated in the blog tour for Jones' Heloise and Abelard novel, The Sharp Hook of Love. That post appeared on this blog here .   I didn't expect that it would take this long for a review of a  fourth Sherry Jones book to appear.

                                           

                              

I've never read a novel about Josephine Baker.  In fact, the only other one that I found online is a graphic novel that can be found on Goodreads  here.  So Josephine Baker is an unusual subject for a novel.  I had heard of her, and wanted to know more about her life.  That's the reason I entered the Goodreads giveaway.

 Although Josephine Baker was born in the U.S., as a Black woman she couldn't be a great star in  America during the first half of the 20th century, as she was in Paris.  This is why she lived in Paris for almost her entire adult life.  The French song that is most associated with her,  "J'ai Deux Amours" expressed her affection for her two loves, her country and Paris.  As a narrator, Sherry Jones commented that her country didn't love her back.  When she was in the U.S. , Josephine had to contend with race prejudice and segregation.   She wasn't immune to them because of her success in Paris.  She came back to the United States at one point with the purpose of organizing a campaign against segregation.  I had no idea that Josephine Baker had briefly been a civil rights activist during the 1950's.  I considered that aspect of her life, the biggest revelation in Josephine Baker's Last Dance.

I tried to understand Josephine Baker's orientation toward marriage. On the one hand, she seemed to believe that she ought to marry a man if she was in love with him.  This happened a number of times.  On the other hand, she didn't want a man to control her life.  Husbands and men who aspired to be her husband were likely to try to make decisions for her.  One man who wasn't legally married to her actually pulled off a masterful effort to keep Josephine under his thumb that I  thought was only possible for husbands.  I could only imagine that she was too involved in her career to notice what he had done.   I am happy to say that she extricated herself from that adverse situation without the help of a man. 

My only disappointment with this book is that Sherry Jones tantalized me with the idea of Josephine Baker as a pilot, but never gave me any more than two bare mentions of it.  I love reading about women in the history of aviation, and in fact woman pilots is a major focus of this blog.   So don't tell me that Josephine owned a plane and had flying skills, but never give me even one scene of her flying.  I felt deprived.   I would have given this book five stars on Goodreads if  there had been piloting sequences during the period of Josephine's life when I thought it most likely that this could have happened. 

I could have loved Josephine Baker's Last Dance, though I did like what we were given very much.  Josephine was really an extraordinary woman with great gifts that have lived on in the history of performing artists. Yet I did want to have more detail about her contributions in other areas.   Perhaps another author will one day write that Josephine Baker novel.  On that day, I will celebrate.

 

Crossing The Horizon: First Female Transatlantic Flight Also Rans

Female aviators are one of the focuses of this blog.  So when I won a copy of Crossing The Horizon by Laurie Notaro from Goodreads, I knew that I'd be reviewing it for Flying High Reviews.  This novel deals with three women who wanted to be the first to fly across the Atlantic.   All three really existed. Two of them were female aviators. We know that Amelia Earhart is credited with having been the first woman to have accomplished this goal.  So why should readers invest their time in a book about women who were also rans?  Well, I was interested in the stories of the two women who could fly a plane. 

                         

As far as I'm concerned, the aviator protagonists were the only ones who counted.  They were British Elsie Mackay and American Ruth Elder.  I absolutely loved both of them. Elsie was a courageous rebel against the expectations of her aristocratic family.  Ruth was a pragmatic survivor who could have made a success at any career given the opportunity.

Unfortunately, it seems to me that the third woman included weakened the book.  Not only couldn't she fly a plane, but pilots refused to work with her.   Frankly, I think that Crossing The Horizon viewpoint character Mabel Boll had a personality disorder, and that she didn't belong in this novel.  Wanting to be the first woman to fly across the Atlantic isn't enough.  I might want to be the first woman to fly to Mars, but I have no space training or any skills relevant to such a mission.  So I wouldn't expect NASA to accomodate me.   At the time, flying across the Atlantic was just as dangerous as a flight to Mars would be now.  Mabel Boll was also surplus weight. An extra fuel tank would have been more valuable for an Atlantic flight than a passenger who couldn't pilot the plane in an emergency. Notaro thinks that Boll provided comic relief, but I found her an irritant.  I am not the only one who thinks so.  I've encountered other reviews from readers who could have done without Mabel Boll.

Although Amelia Earhart's 1928 transatlantic flight made Elsie Mackay's and Ruth Elder's 1927 attempts seem irrelevant, Notaro does point out in an interview that Earhart was a passenger on that flight.  Amelia Earhart's solo flight across the Atlantic in 1932 was much more significant for the history of aviation.  Yet it seems to me that Elsie Mackay particularly ought to be honored for her flight because not only was she an actual pilot of the plane, her east-west transatlantic attempt was more challenging.  It wasn't until 1936 that Beryl Markham managed to become the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic in the east-west direction.

I feel that it was important for me to learn about the existence of Elsie Mackay and Ruth Elder through the pages of Crossing The Horizon.  I'm glad that Laurie Notaro chose to remember them in her first historical novel.







                           

The Exiled: Anna Fekete Demands Justice In Serbia

The Exiled by Kati Hiekkapelto is the third in a series of mysteries dealing with police detective Anna Fekete who lives and works in Finland.  In this book, she goes home to see her family in Serbia and encounters murder in Kanizsa, her home village.  I won this novel in a Goodreads giveaway in 2016. It is the last of  five Goodreads giveaway wins from last year.  I have finally gotten it read while it's still  Women in Translation (WIT) month. Kati Hiekkapelto originally wrote this book in Finnish.  For more information about WIT month see an interview with the Israeli woman scientist who originated it here .

                                 

This is the first novel I've read in this series, but my perception is that Anna Fekete is not a noir detective.  She believes in values that are considered old fashioned in the 21st century like integrity and justice.  The violence in this novel also isn't on the level of the really dark Scandinavian noir that I've read.  There are no stomach churning details.  Although there is 21st century cynicism and corruption on the part of the local authorities in Serbia, I would call this noir lite, and I definitely prefer that. I hate finishing a book feeling totally disgusted as happens with most noir.

I was also glad to see a woman who wouldn't back down no matter how many people told her not to investigate the death of the man who stole her handbag.  It seemed to me that she's a rare woman. Someone else wouldn't have cared about the death of a thief--especially when the thief had stolen from her.  He was Romani and Anna thought he deserved justice.    Anna relied on the assistance of her loyal friend, Reka, a local journalist who gave her information and contacts.  Another woman that I really liked in this novel was Judit, a Romani community leader.

The parallel between Romani in Serbia and African Americans in the United States was very clear in The Exiled.  Romani lives didn't matter.  Whites in Serbia made the exact same sort of  contemptuous comments about Romani as white racists tend to make about African Americans in the U.S.   The people in Anna's village were Hungarians, an ethnic minority in Serbia.  They didn't like it when the government of Serbia discriminated against them, but too many of them looked down on Romani and considered them worthless.

Anna reflected about the village where she was born, and wondered about what home meant.   Could she really feel at home with people who didn't share her values?  I identified with Anna's inner struggle over this issue. 

The current massive refugee problem is part of the background of The Exiled .  The same people who denigrate Romani were equally prejudiced against refugees.  Anna went to the refugee camp with the village's Orthodox priest to see if she could help them.  

The genuinely decent woman protagonist, and her fight against both bigotry and corruption gave The Exiled stature.   It's a cut above the usual mystery.  I look forward to reading the next in the series when it becomes available in English.