Book of the Day Roundup: March 4-8, 2024
The Witch of New York
The Trials of Polly Bodine and the Cursed Birth of Tabloid Justice
Alex Hortis
Pegasus Crime
Hardcover $29.95 (336pp)
978-1-63936-391-9
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
A riveting true crime story from history, Alex Hortis’s The Witch of New York chronicles the misogynist frenzy surrounding a notorious murder trial.
On Christmas in 1843, a gruesome discovery horrified the close-knit community of Staten Island. Emeline Houseman and her baby daughter were found beaten and burned to death in their home, with the child’s head appearing to have been “seared off” by “hellfire.” In addition to the murders, valuable items were stolen. Polly Bodine, the victim’s sister-in-law, became the primary suspect.
Polly had no reputation for violence, but she was a woman of “adulterous” character; she left her abusive, bigamist husband and found a new lover in Manhattan. Pregnant at the time of her arrest, Polly suffered a stillbirth in jail. In telling her story, the book recreates the ribald energy of 1840s New York—a decade of capitalist excess, prostitution, and a burgeoning tabloid press. The newspapers exulted in Polly’s case, fighting over each new piece of information and inventing stories if no new facts were forthcoming.
The book includes a wealth of enticing historical details, as of newspaper carrier pigeons waiting for their next delivery and the lighting of candles in the courtroom chandeliers. And Polly’s three trials are recreated with the gripping pace of a novel. Her defense attorneys worked to improve her general image; they also used scathing antisemitism to discredit the testimony of Jewish pawnbrokers. Meanwhile, the tabloid hysteria continued, along with showman P. T. Barnum’s wax effigy display of Polly as a “murderous witch.” Walt Whitman reported on the case with an anti-death penalty stance, while gambling houses took bets on the verdict.
Rollicking and unnerving, The Witch of New York spotlights one of the first media-driven trials and a continuing social climate of biased and sexist judgments.
MEG NOLA (February 13, 2024)
Chicano Frankenstein
Daniel A. Olivas
Forest Avenue Press
Softcover $18.00 (222pp)
978-1-942436-59-1
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
In Daniel A. Olivas’s wry, entertaining novel inspired by the Mary Shelley classic, a “reanimated” man in near-future Los Angeles searches for love and identity while contending with bigotry and an uncertain past.
Herein, scientists resurrect the dead by reassembling body parts. Millions of “stitchers” are created worldwide; these reanimated beings are wiped of their pasts and often take on menial jobs. One of these beings is a quiet, thoughtful man who works as a paralegal. The unnamed man is conscientious at his job, reads books, cooks, and goes running every day, but he has no family or memories. With “no sense of what it means to be me,” he feels “like half a man” and struggles to hide his awkward, mismatched hands.
When the man begins a relationship with Faustina, a smart, beautiful woman who is a partner at a law firm, they navigate the complications of his origins and social prejudice. Prompted by a children’s book that the man possesses, they track down his creator and uncover life-changing secrets. Echoing the themes of Shelley’s great work, the man’s creator says, “It is one thing to set something—or someone—in motion; it is something else to give that act of creation meaning.”
With witty dialogue and beguiling glimpses of Chicano life, the book probes existential questions about identity and political questions about immigration and race. Interspersed with the man’s story are press releases and transcripts featuring the US president, who foments fear of stitchers as part of her Make America Safe Again reelection campaign. MSNBC and CNN news stories add to the clever political commentary.
Chicano Frankenstein makes the most of its sharp futuristic premise with its compelling characters, fast-paced story, and biting political satire.
KRISTEN RABE (February 13, 2024)
Snail
Minu Kim
Mattho Mandersloot, translator
Pushkin Children’s Books
Hardcover $22.00 (44pp)
978-1-78269-406-9
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
A little boy approaches a group of older boys on bicycles, eager to join them on their ride, but his older brother tells him he is too slow. Determined to prove him wrong, the little boy sets out after the group, but he cannot keep up, and his brother sends him home. The boy’s red helmet is the only spot of color within the intricate black-and-white landscapes—until an unexpected detour leads the boy to a new, colorful perspective.
DANIELLE BALLANTYNE (February 13, 2024)
The Translator’s Daughter
Grace Loh Prasad
Mad Creek Books
Softcover $24.95 (272pp)
978-0-8142-5897-2
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Grace Loh Prasad’s memoir The Translator’s Daughter is about her life as an assimilated immigrant.
Prasad left Taiwan when she was still a toddler. Even after her parents returned to Taiwan years later, she elected to remain in the US, locking herself into a lifelong tug-of-war between two worlds: the one she was born into but would never be a full part of, and the one where she tried to build a life far away from the people who made that life possible.
Separated from the nation of her birth by the largest ocean and unable to speak the language, Prasad enjoyed her visits to Taiwan despite feeling like a perpetual foreigner. She recounts the tumultuous feelings associated with the loss of her original language and name and with living far from her family members as they aged, got ill, and died without her. Every new health challenge required a scramble of last-minute planning and multihour flights, with no guarantee that she would get there in time to help. With her parents’ physical and mental deterioration, the language barrier grew ever higher: they could no longer translate for or even communicate their needs to their admiring yet guilt-ridden daughter.
After her immediate family passed away, Prasad felt more isolated than ever. Digital connections narrowed but never closed the gap that separated her from her surviving relatives. It took decades for her to find peace within the in-between space she occupied. The book’s touching final chapter passes her hard-won knowledge on to her son, who, like her, has to learn how to navigate the multiple, wonderful worlds he was born into.
The Translator’s Daughter is a poignant memoir about the joy, sadness, struggle, and complexities of being an immigrant.
EILEEN GONZALEZ (February 13, 2024)
Penny Bloods
Gothic Tales of Dangerous Women
Nicole C. Dittmer, editor
The British Library
Hardcover $24.99 (256pp)
978-0-7123-5418-9
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Edited by Nicole C. Dittmer, Penny Bloods collects sensational tales of “monstrous women” from the penny newspapers of the nineteenth century.
The stories are arranged in chronological order and are complemented with historical context, paralleling the development of the “monstrous woman” trope in British fiction and society. At the times of their publication, Britain’s newly literate working-class citizens lined up in droves to buy the penny newspapers and feed their imaginations. The tales reflect the tasty bits of Gothic literature, with fortune-telling hags, sequestered madwomen, seductive mistresses with secret supernatural powers, powerful men brought to their knees, blood-sucking maidens, and demons who barter for souls.
Entertaining and compulsive, the stories are an entry into the minds of their first readers. Published and republished throughout the nineteenth century, often with increasing popularity, these popular tales affronted the era’s literary elite, who squirmed with disgust at their profuse descriptions, mawkish dialogue, and convoluted plots. Today, these over-the-top flourishes are all part of the fun, with the stories polished and represented to reach new audiences who enjoy atmospheric supernatural tales.
MICHELE SHARPE (February 13, 2024)
Barbara Hodge
