Jack Haldean's Post World War I Adventures

Dolores Gordon-Smith's Jack Haldean mystery series take place in an England that is still shook up from World War I. Polite society still goes on, but beneath the surface there is uncertainty. Veterans who are jobless. War profiteers who have given their fortunes for a peerage. The thousands of missing and dead who never made it home. And the spies who did.

Jack Haldean, former Royal Flying Corps pilot, has managed to eek out a living with his writing skills, contributing to magazines and writing two mystery novels. In A Fete Worse Than Death, he's just trying to relax at his relatives' country house and enjoy the village festival. To his surprise, he sees a former and unpleasant member of his old unit. And it is even more of a surprise, when that nasty fellow is discovered dead later that afternoon. Was it a local who did it? Or is this something left over from the war? Or is it blackmail?

Jack enlists the aid of his cousin and the local police inspector to figure out what happened at the fair and what really happened on a raid on the Somme.

Gordon-Smith has a great character in Jack, and it has been fun following his development and his -sometimes - action adventures. She has a great grasp of the post-war setting. And as a fan of this time period, I'm eagerly awaiting the next one in the series. Lots of fun.

Mad About the Boy (2008)- Jack's aunt and uncle are celebrating their wedding anniversary with a big ball at their country house. One of the guests commits suicide. Or was it murder? With various Russians running about and his cousin Isabelle's beaus hanging around, Jack has more than enough suspects.

As If By Magic (2009) - When Jack finds out an old war chum is in trouble, he comes to the rescue. But his friend's story of seeing a murder, and his tale of a missing legacy, has Jack puzzled. Is this all connected? Or is his friend just damaged from the war?

Defiant Gardens

Defiant Gardens : Making Gardens in Wartime by Kenneth I. Helphand, is a good book to read in the spring when the desire to garden and dig about in the dirt is very strong after a long winter. He studies very specific periods of history where gardening not only helped with physical survival, but helped people mentally survive.

He looks into the gardens that were created and documented in wartime. He starts with the trenches during World War I, proceeds to the horrors of the Jewish ghettos in WWII, and informs us about the gardens of prisoner of war camps in Europe as well as the civilian war camps in Asia. He ends with a chapter about the Japanese-American camps in the U.S. And in a final chapter mentions more recent wars in Serbia, Africa and in Iraq.

He explains the conditions of the war, the situations that these people found themselves in or were forced into. He goes into the documentation of the gardens - photographs and writings to show how these gardens sustained the people around them. And in some cases, he can tell us whether these gardeners survived their war.

This ended up being one of my favorite passages:

"In an extreme situation beyond an individual's control, such as is common during war, the manifestation of the human ability to wield power over something is a potent reminder of our ability to withstand emotional despair and the forces of chaos. Gardens domesticate and humanize dehumanized situations. They offer a way to reject suffering, an inherent affirmation and sign of human perseverance. In contrast to war, gardens assert the dignity of life, human and nonhuman, and celebrate it."

A very powerful book about a little known area of history. For serious gardeners and students of history.