AMAZON UK £1.19 £12.47
AMAZON US $1.60 $15.00
AMAZON CA $2.55 $18.61
Family drama
19oos
Baltimore
“On March 7, 1913, the steamer Alum Chine explodes in the Baltimore
harbor. Charles Sherwood, the founder of the company that insures the steamer,
is among the first to hear the blast. As he struggles to keep calm, Charles
suspects that if it is the Alum Chine
that has been decimated, he is now in the midst of a nightmare. While he
attempts to cope with the consequences that include his son’s diffidence to the
calamity, the disaster touches two other families. Helen Aylesforth is the
imperious matriarch of her family whose stern demeanor belies her love for
those around her, including her daughter, Cantata, who is married to Nicholas
Sherwood. The Corporals have served the Aylesforths for generations. Among
their six-member family is Lillian Gish, Helen’s shy, forgotten, and observant
granddaughter who must somehow find her place in the world, despite the chaos
around her.”
This is not an action, page-turner of a
novel, except for the explosion of the ship nothing much actually happens … but … this is a story of
ordinary people coping with extraordinary consequences. The story is of two
families, of how they lived life in Baltimore in the early years of the
twentieth century, and had to get on with that life even though enormous things
were happening all around and to them.
The description of the period and of
Baltimore itself is very well written – as a social history this is an
excellent novel, but as character development or an action novel, maybe it
doesn’t quite hit the mark?
However, do you need constant action to
make a novel an interesting one? Echoes From
The Alum Chine has a gentle and sedate rhythm to it, the relationships
between the two families is interesting,
how they cope is interesting ... as a
depiction of family drama in the pre-World War One era of American life, this is an interesting read.
© Ellen Hill
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