What I'm Reading #45

My second Kingsolver book has me smitten with this prolific and inventive novelist. Her strength is character and in this oddly historical novel she doesn't disappoint.

The reader is treated to events as far ranging as the Cristero War of 1910 in Mexico, the Bonus Army riots in Washington, DC in 1932, the assassination of Lev Davidovich Bronshtein a.k.a. Leon Trotsky in 1940, and a front seat at a hearing of the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1950.

Two souls adeptly navigate the cavalcade of history with us in their tender care; Harrison W. Shepherd and Mrs. Violet Brown. Through them we meet the likes of not only one of the masterminds behinds the Russian Revolution of 1917, Leon Trotsky; but also Intellectual logician Jean van Heijenoort, painters Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, and a host of little cameos by the likes of General MacArthur to California Representative Richard M. Nixon. To say it is a tour de force twining of Twentieth century personalities and ideas is the least best compliment. I for one will never have the opportunity to meet Freda Kahlo, but she will always speak to me in the voice that Ms. Kingsolver has created for her. This is the degree to which she recreates history both real and imagined.

This is a wonderful novel.