Review of Rest for the Wicked by Naida West

While I miss the rigor of school, I do not miss the insistence of my instructors that I write with an academic style.  Because it is summertime and there is no Dr. Rose to tell me to write more formally, this review of Naida West's Rest for the Wicked will sound like the casual me, not the scholastic me.

A few years ago, my beloved beautician, Carol Huson, handed me a book called Eye of the Bear by Naida West.  I was immediately skeptical.  I don't much enjoy reading about Native Americans--too sad, too much (or too little) white-girl guilt, whatever.  But Carol raved about the book, and insisted that both she and her husband Bob had loved it.  And, after all, I was trying to be an historian with a California focus.  So, after Carol had colored and cut my hair, I took the book home and gave it a shot.

I was enthralled!  Eye of the Bear was an amazing read.  From the beginning, it was clear that West had a beautiful writing style, a deep knowledge and understanding of California's indigenous peoples, and a vivid imagination that enabled her to take her readers back in time.  The book was gritty and realistic enough, but the emphasis on native culture and the belief system within it spoke volumes to me. 

Carol insisted on having her book back after I had finished it (can you imagine?).  But I very much wanted a copy for my own, so I checked the usual places, Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com.  While the book could be had from used booksellers on both sites, the price was staggering.  Sadly, that seemed to be the end of my time with author Naida West.

Fast forward to this year's California State Fair and Exposition.  Coerced into attending by friends, I was resisting the temptation of cinnamon rolls when I came across an exhibit dedicated to California authors.  I wandered over, and at the first table I approached there were copies of Eye of the Bear.  Not only that, there were other books there by Naida West.  One in particular caught my eye--Rest for the Wicked, billed as a story set in the Sacramento region during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.  As those are the time periods in U.S. history that most interest me, I decided then and there to spend some of my Fair money on the book.  I wish I could have purchased Eye of the Bear at the same time, but I am on a tight budget these days and had to resist. 

There was a woman seated behind the table, clearly there to sell the books.  In my enthusiasm (and I am very enthusiastic in moments like these), I began babbling all about how excited I was to see Eye of the Bear and to learn that the author had written other works.  "You liked it?" she asked, referring to Eye of the Bear.  "Oh, yeah," I babbled further.  "That's me," said the lady, now with a shy little smile. 

There I was, at the State Fair, meeting Naida West, the woman who had created Eye of the Bear!  Then the babbling really started.  She was a lovely woman, kind enough to talk with me about writing styles, about education, and more.  She graciously autographed my copy of Rest for the Wicked, and I stepped away to let her speak with other customers.  Well, "stepped" isn't exactly the right word.  I "floated" away from the table and back to my friends, who were now sticky with the remains of their cinnamon rolls. While I enjoyed the rest of my visit to the Fair and the company of friends and family, I was secretly chomping at the bit to get home and start reading.

Finally, on a Saturday morning, life settled into enough stillness that I took up Rest for the Wicked.  As it began with some of the very same elements that had enchanted me in Eye of the Bear, I was immediately hooked.  At over 600 pages, Rest for the Wicked took me four days to finish, but it was well worth it.

The main protagonist of Rest for the Wicked is Mae Duffy, a spoiled young girl who comes to California with her parents and brothers from Iowa in the early 1890's.  The family settles in the region around Sloughhouse and today's Rancho Murieta, rubbing elbows with familiar folks from that area's past, including the Sheldon and Miser families.  Sadly for Mae, her parents are completely unsuited for the challenges of starting a new life in a new place.  Mae soon strikes out on her own, leaving the Sierra foothills for life in the "big city" of Sacramento.

Mae's story then unfolds like a roller coaster, many dips and few climbs.  She is used and abused by men in Sacramento, including both a corrupt policeman and an ambitious political hack, but she also manages to meet many figures from Sacramento's past, including Hiram Johnson and Lincoln Steffens.  She even catches a glimpse of an aging Collis P. Huntington, by the 1890's the only member of the Big Four still alive.

New trials await Mae at every turn.  Even when she finds love, with half-Indian Billy McCoon, it ends in tragedy.  Mae's life, as imagined by Naida West, is filled with all the pain, dirt, nastiness, beauty, and splendor of real human existence at the close of the nineteenth century.  Nothing is held back, from a botched back alley abortion to the brutality of the railroad strike of 1894.  Yet Mae is resilient enough to grow and learn from her experiences, to open herself to new ways and new ideas, to find love again, and to eventually live a happy and contented life. 

The research Naida West must have done to complete Rest for the Wicked is amazing.  She made use of the usual secondary sources, but I can also spot her use of contemporary newspapers, city directories, census records and other sources common to genealogists, interviews with descendants of the real-life characters in the book, and much more.  This was fiction written by an historian, with all of the historian's drive for accuracy coupled with the novelist's flights of fancy.  If at times it seemed that West tried too hard to bring her fictional characters into contact with historical figures (i.e., the introduction of Butch Cassidy and Gertrude Stein), it was all in keeping with the way historical fiction is written.  Amitav Ghosh did the same thing when writing Sea of Poppies and River of Smoke.

For me, Rest for the Wicked brought to life the very historical period that I find so fascinating.  It was the time in which my great-grandparents were coming of age, marrying, starting their family, in Sacramento.  They were living through the same times as the fictional Mae Duffy, experiencing the same highs and lows of life.  West's meticulous research and spellbinding storytelling make me feel as though my own ancestors are just as accessible as the characters in her novel.

If you love a good piece of historical fiction, check out Rest for the Wicked and the other works of Naida West at http://www.bridgehousebooks.com/.  You won't be disappointed.

An Ancestor to Remember, Part III

The Great War was over, and the American doughboys who had served so valiantly in Europe came home again to their families.  For Guy Evan Blake, it was a return to North Dakota and a decision to make--what would he make of the rest of his life?

As the 1920's began, readers of the Daily Northwestern in Oshkosh followed the political maneuverings surrounding the newly formed League of Nations.  While French Premier, Georges Clemenceau, was sending invitations to an initial council meeting of the League, American politicians were hotly debating the question of United States participation.  With a presidential election on the horizon, the debate over the League played a large role, as did the issue of the prohibition of alcoholic drink.  A "Red Scare" also made headlines as Americans worried over the importation of Bolshevism from the newly formed Soviet Union.  "Reds" from Milwaukee and Racine were rounded up, and Oshkosh citizens must have worried about radicals in their own midst.

When the census taker came around to the town of Wing in Burleigh County, North Dakota, in January of 1920, he found Guy Evan Blake, then 25 years old, living in a rooming house belonging to one Albert Little.  Little, a 35-year-old Canadian, managed his own farm while his wife, Iva, kept the rooming house.  Other roomers included Alec Miller, a British-born citizen who had come to the United States in 1907 and worked as a day laborer, and young Naomi Henderscheid, only 20 years old and living with her two-year-old daughter, Ellen. 

Guy Evan got work when and where he could during the warm North Dakota summer of 1920.  His experiences during the Great War remained with him, the things that he had seen while serving in the ambulance corps, the work of the doctors and nurses who had tended so faithfully to the fallen soldiers.  Inspired by their dedication, Guy Evan considered returning to school in the fall of 1920, this time with the idea of training to become a doctor.

But during that summer, he had to earn the money to turn his medical dreams into reality.  Getting work on a crew building Burleigh County roads, Guy Evan found himself performing difficult and dangerous labor, often involving dynamiting obstacles to the proposed roadway.

Back in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, John Arza Blake, Guy Evan's father, had moved into the home that had belonged to his parents, originally built in the 1880's by John Arza's grandfather.  This house at 277 Vine Street would eventually pass to John Arza's daughter, Emily.  (The photograph to the left came from Emily's daughter, Mary, who added the notations.)


As the sun set on the evening of June 9, 1920, there was a knock at the door of the little house on Vine Street.  A telegram passed into the hands of John Arza Blake notified him that his son, Guy Evan, had been seriously injured in North Dakota.  John Arza made plans immediately to travel to his son's bedside, stopping in Shawano, Wisconsin, to pick up son James Harvey Blake along the way.  The two made their way to Bismarck.  The train ride to North Dakota must have evoked terrible memories for John Arza as he recalled the long ride to Seaside, Oregon, just seven years before at the time of the death of his youngest son, Lester.  Now it was an accident happening to his second-youngest son, Guy Evan, that called him from home at a moment's notice.


Bismarck Railroad Station
1910-1930

Upon arrival in Bismarck, John Arza and James Harvey found Guy Evan's condition to be grave; he had lost both hands, one arm, and the sight in both eyes in a dynamite explosion while working on a Burleigh County roadway.  While there was a chance that Guy Evan would survive his injuries, the prospects for his future, blind and crippled, were not good.

Recovery was slow and arduous, but Guy Evan almost certainly benefited by the advances made in medical science after the treatment of men wounded in the Great War.  He was also fortunate that North Dakota had an effective workers' compensation program, a legacy of Progressive Era politics that remains with us today.  According to an estimate given in the Bismarck Tribune on July 24, 1920, Guy Evan would be eligible for benefits of $18 per week for the rest of his life.  This may not seem like much now, but it would have allowed Guy Evan to rent a room and live a modest life at the time.

Workers' compensation benefits were not the only services available to Guy Evan as a result of his injuries. The Civil Rehabilitation Act (CRA) of 1920 was enacted effective June 2, 1920, just one week prior to Guy Evan's accident.  Originally entitled the Smith-Fess Act, the CRA called upon each state to institute a program to address the rehabilitation needs of its injured citizens.  The states and the federal government would share the costs on a 50-50 split.   

Each state was required to submit a plan for the establishment of its rehabilitation program to the newly formed Federal Board for Vocational Education which would oversee the program on the federal level.  North Dakota began their program on September 1, 1920, although their plan was not officially accepted until March 11, 1921 (even back in the 1920's, the Federal government was slow to act).  By the end of June, 1923, North Dakota had spent just over $16,000--a portion of it on Guy Evan Blake.

An Ancestor to Remember, Part II








John Arza Blake with his 11 children.
Daughter Allie sits to the far left,
Daughter Eva Ann to the far right.
Son Guy Evan sits next to Eva Ann,
while the baby of the family, Lester,
sits on his father's knee.






When last we left the family of young Guy Evan Blake, the nineteenth century was drawing to a close.  The family was still feeling the loss three years before of 43-year-old Ann Eva McCammond Blake, whose death occurred just a few weeks after the birth of her last child.  But a new century was about to begin....

In Oshkosh's Daily Northwestern newspaper, readers learned of troubles far away in South Africa as English colonizing efforts met resistance from local Boers.  In Chicago, a huge fire took the lives of nine firefighters.  And from the Philippines, readers learned of the death of Spanish-American war hero, General Henry Lawton, whose remains were to be transported back to the United States.

Residents of Oshkosh could find plenty to entertain them as they contemplated the future on New Year's Eve 1899.  At the Grand Opera House, the comedy Hogan's Alley would star Joe Flynn and feature "13 Big Vaudeville Acts" and "12 Handsome Girls."  For those seeking a less secular way to ring in the New Year, the Blake family's church, the Algoma Street Methodist Episcopal Church (now Algoma Boulevard First United Methodist), was featuring sermons entitled "The Voices of the Centuries" and "The Bloody King."

When the census taker visited the family of John Arza Blake on June 4, 1900, he found a full house of people.  Eldest daughter Allie had married in February, and she and her husband August Gumz, along with their daughter, Ollie, were living with John Arza and six of the children.  The three oldest sons, John Orva, Franklin, and James Harvey had left home prior to the census visit.  John Orva, suffering from asthma, had left school after his junior year in high school and in 1900 was working as a day laborer in Wells, North Dakota.  Perhaps his adventures in North Dakota proved enticing to younger brother, Guy Evan, as he would follow his brother to North Dakota more than a decade later.  While the whereabouts of John Arza's second son, Franklin, are unknown in 1900, younger son, James Harvey, left a colorful memoir of his life that sheds light on the adventuresome nature of the Blake boys.  Leaving school at 13 (over his father's objection) to take a job in town, James Harvey Blake by age 20 was working as a lumberjack in the northern woods of his native Wisconsin, a career choice that he would pursue for a decade. 

Ida Belle Gallagher



Changes happened rapidly for the Blake family in the first decade of the new century.  The year 1902 saw John Arza and at least one of his daughters stricken with small pox.  In 1904, the second-oldest daughter, Eva Ann, married grocer Bert Bessex and left the small house on 10th Street.  And in 1907, ten years after the death of his first wife, John Arza married schoolteacher Ida Belle Gallagher.  They would welcome John Arza's 12th child, daughter Emily, in 1910.

By 1910, John Arza's parents, Norman and Hannah Blake, were getting along in years, and John Arza purchased a home on Vine Street nor far from their home.  John Arza, his wife, Ida Belle, new baby Emily, and the two youngest boys, Guy Evan and Lester, were counted there in the 1910 census in April of that year.  By this point, Guy Evan was 16 years old and would soon follow in the footsteps of his older siblings by dropping out of school. 

According to son James Harvey's unpublished memoir, John Arza understood the value of education and wished to see all his children graduate from high school.  This was not to be, however.  Of John Arza's dozen children, only Emily, the daughter of former schoolteacher Ida Belle, would actually finish high school; sadly enough, she graduated one month after her father's death.

An Ancestor to Remember, Part I

Every now and again a family historian runs across an ancestor that comes as something of a surprise.  Perhaps you trace your geneology to Richard the Lionheart, to a Mayflower Pilgram, or maybe to a famous Civil War general.

Researching my maternal grandmother's Blake-Gumz family line, I found an ancestor who really amazed me.  He was an uncle of my grandmother, Fern Gumz Stratton, the brother of her mother, Allie Buella Blake.  While he was not a crusading King of England, he had just as much courage and fortitude.  I share his story now as an example of the amazing people family historians run into as part of this fabulous geneology hobby.

Guy Evan Blake

Oshkosh, Wisconsin, 1867

"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen, nor touched...but are felt in the heart."  ~~ Helen Keller.

The family of John Arza Blake and Ann Eva McCammond was already well established by the time their tenth child, Guy Evan Blake, arrived on the scene.  John Arza Blake, born in New York in 1851, had come to the frontier community of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, on the shores of Lake Winnebago, when he was just a toddler.  Ann Eva McCammond was born in Canada and immigrated to the United States when she was just six years old, settling with her parents and siblings in Janesville, Wisconsin.  By the time she was 16, she, too, was living in Oshkosh.  We will never know how the two met, but on September 15, 1875, John Arza Blake married Ann Eva McCammond in an Episcopal ceremony in Oshkosh.



By June of 1877, John Arza and Ann Eva welcomed their first child, son John Orva Blake.  In quick succession, a series of brothers and sisters appeared for John Orva, including:  Allie (1878), Franklin (1880), James Harvey (1881), Eva Ann (1883), Elbert (1885), Margaret (1887), Mary (1889), and Willie (1892).  





C&N W Railroad Depot in Oshkosh

On October 24, 1894, another son, Guy Evan Blake, joined the family.   At that time, John Arza was working as a yardmaster for the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad in Oshkosh.  The family lived in a home at 346 10th Street.  With so many children in the home, the new baby would have gotten the lion's share of his mother's attention, while older sister Allie would have played a large role in helping to care for her younger brothers and sisters.  Older brothers John Orva, Frank, and James Harvey would have been responsible for the upkeep of the home and yard, in addition to jobs outside the home, while their father worked hard at the railroad.

By the time Guy Evan was two years old, his mother was pregnant again, this time with her eleventh child.  On January 4, 1897, the family welcomed son Lester, but the happiness brought by the new addition was tinged with sadness.  At 43 years old, Ann Eva did not seem the same after this last birth.  In fact, her condition deteriorated rapidly, with her doctor diagnosising a case of peritonitis, an inflammation of the membrane lining of the abdomen. 

Ann Eva's suffering would not have been easy for her family to watch.  According to a 1911 encyclopedia offering, a patient suffering from peritonitis:

[symptons] usually begin by a shivering fit or rigor, together with vomiting, and with pain in the abdomen of a peculiarly severe and sickening character, accompanied with extreme tenderness, so that pressure, even of the bed-clothes, causes aggravation of suffering....the breathing becomes rapid and shallow....  The face is pinched and anxious. These symptoms may pass off in a day or two; if they do not the case is apt to go on to a fatal termination. In such event ... the temperature falls, the face becomes cold and clammy; the pulse is exceedingly rapid and feeble, and death takes place from collapse, the mental faculties remaining clear till the close.

For two-year-old Guy Evan, the illness and then death of his mother must have been devestating.  The new baby, Lester, was sent to live with his material grandparents, Charles and Mary Ann McCammond, while John Arza kept the rest of the children with him, relying more than ever on his older sons and daughters to help run the household and rear the younger children.

The Blake family would not bid farewell to the nineteenth century without more turmoil.  The year 1898 saw labor unrest across the nation, including in the lumber industries in and around Oshkosh.  At this time in its history, Oshkosh had grown to a population of 28,000 and was known as the "Sawdust City" thanks to the proliferation of lumbermills and other outgrowths of the timber industry.  There were seven companies in town that manufactured doors, blinds, sashes, and custom millwork, between them employing approximately 2,000 workers--over seven percent of the total population.