Bookworm: January 2025
'All In,' 'A Fever in the Heartland,' 'The Citadel,' 'The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.,' 'Sister Snake'
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Hope your new year of reading is off to a good start. About five or six years ago I started keeping track of the books I finish. For several years I used the iPhone Notes app. Last year I used a paper log, given by a bookish friend, but had to staple several more pages to it. This year I’ve got an actual journal, made by the same friend, which has become a bit of a scrapbook/art project. It’s a fun creative outlet.
Do you track the books you’ve read and if so, how?
Table of contents
Autobiography: “All In,” by Billie Jean King
U.S. history: “A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them,” by Timothy Egan
Fiction: “The Citadel,” by A.J. Cronin
U.S. history: “The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.,” edited by Clayborne Carson
Fiction: “Sister Snake,” by Amanda Lee Koe
“All In: An Autobiography”
I admit I was less than enthusiastic when my book club chose Billie Jean King’s autobiography, “All In,” written with Johnette Howard, as our January title.
I enjoy watching sports, but tennis never grabbed me. I’m tempted to give it another try, though, after reading King’s book.
I had a vague sense that King had contributed more to the world than her athleticism. I had no idea how much she did to level the playing field for women athletes in areas such as equal compensation. She writes passionately about how her victory in her much-hyped “Battle of the Sexes” match with Bobby Riggs became a rallying cry for women in ways she hadn’t anticipated. One group of women told her they’d been inspired by her win to ask for the raises they’d wanted for a decade.
King writes movingly about her years-long struggle to come to terms with her sexuality. She was still married to her college boyfriend, Larry King, when the woman who’d been her secretary and then became her lover outed her in 1981. She’s now been with her wife, Ilana Kloss, for more than 40 years — and the two of them are close with Larry King, his wife and their children.
King’s book also has plenty of fun tidbits from her life as a celebrity. Did you know that Elton John wrote his hit “Philadelphia Freedom” for her?
I may never become a tennis player, but I’m all in on Billie Jean King now.
“A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them”
Growing up well north of the Mason-Dixon line, I was taught that the Ku Klux Klan was a Southern thing. Of course, hate can be found everywhere. But I had no idea that the Klan was an Indiana thing until I picked up “A Fever in the Heartland,” by award-winning journalist and author Timothy Egan, in honor of his January appearance in my city.
I summarized the book to my kids this way: “It’s the story of a man you never heard of who came this close to putting the Klan in the White House.” Egan has a macabre protagonist in David C. “Steve” Stephenson, who arrived in Indiana in the 1920s with a plan to leverage the Klan as a national political machine. He accomplished this within two years.
Stephenson was also a sexual predator. In 1925 he was charged with murder in the death of a woman he had kidnapped, raped and mutilated. By then he had in his thrall federal and state lawmakers, governors, mayors, sheriffs, judges, police officers and lawyers. The Klan had a women’s auxiliary and a children’s corps called the Ku Klux Kiddies. Klan rallies, parades and other events regularly drew attendance in the tens of thousands in numerous states.
It seemed quite likely that Stephenson’s trial would be a mere bump in his road to the highest echelons of power. But as Madge Oberholtzer lay dying of complications from his attack, she dictated a detailed narrative of everything he did to her. This so-called dying declaration was admitted as evidence in his trial, and it swayed the jury.
Reading Egan’s book at this particular moment was — well, during his talk he used the quote “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” The Klan as an organization may have been stopped, to use Egan’s title, but the animus that drove it continues.
“The Citadel”
When the author and doctor Abraham Verghese spoke in my city last fall, he recommended a novel I hadn’t heard of, “The Citadel,” by A.J. Cronin, a Scottish author and doctor. Verghese noted that this 1937 novel is credited with inspiring the establishment of the United Kingdom’s National Health Service. After that, I had to put a copy on hold at the library.
“The Citadel” tells the story of a young Scotsman named Andrew Manson, who at the start of the book has just completed his medical studies with the help of a loan. As we follow Andrew from a tiny Welsh mining town to a bigger and wealthier Welsh town to London over the ensuing years, we see him evolve from a naive community doctor eager to make use of the latest scientific findings to a social-climbing city physician eager to line his pockets. Cronin calls out both the corruption at every step of his hero’s journey and the conditions that allow the corruption to take root and flourish.
Not only can Cronin tell a compelling story, but he’s also a wonderful writer. I found myself thinking of “The Citadel” for days after finishing it.
“The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.”
With Inauguration Day and the federal Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday coinciding this year, it seemed an apt time to pick up one of King’s books.
King never wrote a full account of his life. After his assassination, his wife, Coretta Scott King, called Stanford historian Clayborne Carson and offered him the chance to edit her husband’s papers. Carson used this opportunity to create a thoughtful, insightful autobiographical narrative.
Though Carson notes readily that the book is “largely a religious and political autobiography rather than an exploration of a private life,” I appreciated its comprehensiveness, which illuminates how much King’s legacy has been condensed a half-century after his death. My older child used to come home from school every January commenting that his class had listened yet again to the “I Have a Dream” speech and that there must be other things to learn about King.
Indeed there are. Carson gives a good foundational account of King’s childhood, education and early career before plunging into the civil rights activism and nonviolent resistance with which he’s become synonymous. The book is well structured, with pithy chapters on key movements King led or took part in, from the Montgomery bus boycotts to the Chicago campaign against segregated housing. Carson offers excerpts aplenty from King’s letters, sermons, speeches, newspaper columns and other writings.
Many thanks to Professor Carson for such a fine piece of work.
“Sister Snake”
Lunar New Year was Wednesday, so we’re now in the Year of the Snake. As part of my celebration, I picked up Amanda Lee Koe’s latest novel, “Sister Snake.”
In 9th-century China, a white krait is attacked by several other snakes and left badly wounded. She’s found by a green viper who helps her recover. The two reptiles pledge sisterhood to each other.
The pledge turns out to be an eternal one, as the snakes find a way to achieve immortality. They become human, too, though they can revert to their snake forms at will. As Su and Emerald, they strike out across the globe, trying on various identities, sometimes together and sometimes apart. They experiment with what it’s like to be human and explore what it’s like to be women.
Koe picks up their story in the 21st century. Emerald is single and penniless in New York; Su is married and “Crazy Rich Asians”-rich in Singapore. They haven’t spoken in years. When Emerald finally swallows her pride and calls Su for help, the conversation is, well, venomous. But when Su learns Emerald is in real trouble, she’s on the next flight across the Pacific Ocean.
Koe’s novel is inspired by a classic Chinese folk tale, “The Legend of the White Snake” (author Andrea Lawlor calls Koe’s version a “freaking genius queer feminist spin”). Coincidentally, I was simultaneously re-reading another novel about sisters: Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility.” Like Austen’s Dashwood siblings, Koe’s serpentine duo each take different approaches to navigating their lives — and each keep secrets that poison their bond. Only when they shed those secrets do they finally start to find their way back to each other.
Happy reading!
When I was in high school I read the complete works of A.J. Cronin and I promise you his writing does not hold up. But what a very interesting reading list Amy. Thanks so much for your recommendations.
A Fever in the Heartland is truly an eye-opening novel. I've done some research into DC Stephenson and the woman he terrorized, Madge Oberholzer. It is a truly chilling story.