There are some Santa Barbara authors you ought to read.
Everyone knows T.C. Boyle and Sue Grafton, and you no doubt have read and enjoyed their works.
But we have such a wealth of interesting people with incredible experiences and knowledge … and when they write books, you should know about them.
These are not new, hot-off-the press books. They are just cool books you should read for the reasons provided herein.
And I think the running theme is that children know more than your realize: take the time to hear them out carefully, and especially when they are afraid to say much.
The Quiet You Carry
By Nikki Barthelmess
Local award-winning author Nikki Barthelmess grew up in the foster-care system from the age of 12 to 18, living in six different towns in Nevada.
She has written several books for the (YA) young adult reader, and her debut book five years ago was The Quiet You Carry.
What Nikki knows from experience goes into this first novel about a girl in the foster system.
While the story is absolutely engaging and interesting, the psychological/emotional culture behind it is compelling and important.
I remember in high school, there was a gal, “Patricia.” She was in the “fast crowd,” and I heard she was living with another family as a “foster child” and I wondered what that was and why, and was told “she does not get along with her mother.”
I guessed she did not have other relatives in town to stay with; perhaps her dad was not in the picture, but no big deal.
I did assume she was maybe too much to control because she ran with the wild crowd, but I knew nothing more. I did not attach any shame or negativity to her just because she was not living at home.
But reading Nikki’s book opened my eyes to how foster children feel about all that. They see things differently.
They do feel shame and embarrassment, and they do feel ostentatiously “different” from the others.
It is a very unsettling and uncomfortable place to be, especially at a time in life when being like everybody else and “fitting” in is so important.
And the issues that put them into foster care to begin with are quite unsettling: abandonment, mental illness, addiction, incest.
I remember years ago, my husband (a school psychologist working with K-6 grades) telling me about what happens after Child Protective Services (CPS) comes into a home in which a child is not being properly cared for.
A typical scenario could be a home in which the father is absent (desertion, imprisonment) and the mother is using drugs or alcohol.
When a child is taken out of a home where the caregiver pays more attention to their addiction than to the child, and where the child is not fed properly, not put to bed on time, and instead is placed in a home environment where they are given clean clothes, regular meals and bedtime, and helped with homework — that is the time when the kid starts acting out in school!
A change in environment and status quo — however dysfunctional — is very unsettling to a child.
So Nikki’s book opens our eyes and our heart (you’ll feel weepy in some pages) to how a teen sees their world, and their school environment.
You’ll understand how they process what is happening around them and to them, and why sometimes it is hard to speak up.
It is a great read regardless, but the importance of this book — sez I — is not only for other foster children to identify with the character BUT it really ought to be required reading for those who are foster parents themselves and also for Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA).
You know who you are. Get the book. Read it.
Montecito Boy: An Irreverent Memoir
By Nevill Cramer
I have written before on Montecito Boy. This is history and it is such a “Santa Barbara” story. But fabulous, fabulous writing.
Author Nevill Cramer was a local boy through and through.
A native son, Cramer (1922-2013) was spawned from well-known, well-bred society-page family names infiltrating Montecito from Chicago after the turn of the last century.
He was also headmaster at Laguna Blanca School for years. Sooo, he is one of us locals.
Montecito Boy: An Irreverent Memoir revisits his childhood. Cramer recounts the life and times and behind-the-scenes events of Montecito in the 1920s and ’30s with glib insouciance; his name-dropping is simply naming relatives.
I love this book because it describes so much of Santa Barbara in another more innocent (?) era: Montecito life on La Vereda Road, the Van Hornes on La Patera Ranch & Stow House, Sedgwick Ranch, and an extensive romp through boarding school life at Cate School (when it was an all-boys domain).
But the real treat is Cramer’s writing. His phrasing, descriptions and characterizations are just so delicious.
(Why isn’t this a contemporary classic, English class required reading? Yes, it is THAT good.)
You’ll squeal with delight at Cramer’s parodies, suffer through his grade school agonies and high school angst, laugh outright at his anecdotes.
Oh, to feel his pain and visceral loathing for his stupid and insensitive step-father. (Perhaps this should be required reading for parents who do not realize what children observe and retain — yes, even, and especially, at the tender age of 8.)
Nevill Cramer is the Tom Sawyer of a later day and lifestyle. His devilish cleverness and pranks, his intelligent observations and prodigious appraisals of his family life are fantastic reading.
Trust me, this is well worth the visit.
• • •
Now for a Serious History Moment …
Never Tell Your Name
By Josie Levy Martin
Josie Levy Martin, author of Never Tell Your Name, is one of the declining number of German Jews who have lived through the Holocaust.
An only child, Josie was born in Alsace-Lorraine in 1938. When World War II started, the family fled to the southern region in unoccupied France.
They kept a low profile and their identity a secret — not only from the Nazis coming through, but more so from French collaborators.
In 1943, the war began turning downhill and the Nazis were fierce about scouring the south to find the Maquis — Resistance fighters.
The Levy family had to frequently hide away in the forest, farms and barns from the Germans on patrol to find the Maquis.
For the Levys, their accent would give them away as German Jews and the Vichy government was more than willing to send them away to appease the Nazis.
Sympathetic French villagers tried to protect them, but everyone knew the Jewish families were in extreme peril.
Josie’s parents were told of a Catholic nun, Sister St. Cybard, who had been working for the French Resistance.
Sister St. Cybard’s superiors had sent the nun to run a small Catholic girls’ boarding school in Lesterps to keep her out of trouble with the Nazis.
An intermediary had arranged for the Levys to send Josie to the school under the care of Sister St. Cybard, to keep her safe.
The nun was the only one who knew that Josie was Jewish, and Josie was carefully instructed by her father “Never tell your name. You will now be called ‘Josie D’Or’” (a typical French girl, rather than Jewish).
So the book is a bit of an eyewitness account, a day-to-day unveiling of activities at this time in France.
Intriguingly, the narrative is actually related through the eyes of 5-year-old Josie.
Her protector, Sister St. Cybard was so often mysteriously rushing off to do something secret, leaving the child once again to feel abandoned.
One of the staff members was a collaborator, who suspected Josie might be Jewish and tried to manipulate her into revealing so.
Then Josie heard about the Nazis who were wantonly destroying whole villages.
She overheard the village doctor relating to the other grownups that the Gestapo had raided the children’s home run by the Jewish Relief organization. All 41 children and the staff were deported, and were never heard from again.
Josie’s school was only about eight miles from Oradour, which was left in ruins after German Waffen-SS troops brutalized, mutilated and massacred 642 men, women and children before burning the entire village to the ground.
Sister St. Cybard was stern but kindly and protective of Josie. Yet as I read through the lines, the good nun and the staff do seem to lack a certain understanding of the basic psychological/ emotional needs of a 5-year-old.
This child was surrounded by tension and fear, yet lacked the comfort and presence of her parents.
She was separated from her mother and father for eight months, which felt like outright abandonment to the youngster.
(So it was no surprise to learn that later in life little Josie would become a teacher and child psychologist — an opportunity to address the hidden and unheard child with her lost childhood.)
Wonderfully told, Never Tell Your Name is simply a shoes-on-the-ground history of civilians and the plight of Jews in Vichy and Free France.
And we see how children lack the context in which to place all the disparate events taking place in their lives during wartime.
• • •
Then, so often the universe comes full circle. Just weeks, after I finished reading Josie’s book, Ensemble Theatre Company presented The Pianist of Willesden Lane.
The true story is about Lisa Jura, a young piano prodigy from Vienna who dreams of being a concert pianist.
When Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s armies advance on Vienna, Lisa’s parents make the hard decision to send her to England as a refugee in 1938 as part of the Kindertransport rescue operation.
Lisa ends up in a hostel for Jewish children in London. She tries to find opportunities to play piano and practice, while remembering how her mother carefully coached and trained her to hear the stories in the music. And to always keep her music as an inspiration and a comfort.
The story line, by the way, is not about the Jews and Nazis per se.
The larger theme is about holding on to beauty and truth and uplifting activities to carry one through troubling times — to give hope for better times.
It is about pursuing one’s dreams and talents, to “make something of oneself.” And then pursuing perfection toward that end.
This play was based on the wonderful book, The Children of Willesden Lane, recounting stories from Lisa’s life, as told by her daughter, Mona Golabek.
The show portrays Lisa’s time leaving Vienna and living in the Jewish refugee children’s home, re-enacted by her daughter who stars in this one-woman presentation.
Lisa also trained her daughter as a concert pianist, so this becomes a very pointed and poignant performance. We were warned to bring Kleenex … and it was not because it was sad, but rather heart-rendering and moving.
And what a fantastic production this was — interesting and fascinating in terms of the actual production staging.
It incorporated classic piano masterpieces (performed live) and historic footage, and some enactments of scenes in Lisa Jura’s life.
Really really well done.
Ensemble Theatre Company is planning to bring it back in about a year to perform for locl schools.
I love this idea because it addresses something missing among younger people today: to have a passion to make something of themselves.
So many do not have ambition or an underlying interest to so something that their community would be proud of.
Their very culture seemingly has no interest in dreams or goals. (Other than to be have a lot of money without knowing how to work for it, or to become an “Influencer” … hmmm … kinda the same thing!)
I look forward to the return of this performance for students, with the hope that they might be truly inspired to think of making something of their lives and future.
In the meantime, get The Children of Willesden Lane, read it, and give it to a young person you know who needs to hitch their wagon to a star …
