Alice & Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis by Alexis Coe

Coe explores Southern society in the 1890's from the perspective of sensationalist coverage of the trial that followed Alice Mitchell's murder of her former fiancee Freda Ward.  The public and doctors of the day were incapable of understanding the same-sex attraction that compelled nineteen-year-old Alice to propose marriage to seventeen-year-old Freda and then drove Alice to desperation when Freda's family discovered the affair and forbade any future contact between the two.  Terms such as deviancy, perversion, and insanity appeared often during the trial. Coe delves into the limited roles and possibilities of girls and women during the Victorian era.  The author also compares the type of justice applied to genteel white women to the lynching of three black men. The narrative is enhanced with primary source materials, particularly the impassioned love letters between Alice and Freda.  This is a fascinating glimpse of social mores in a distant place and time.  Recommended.

The Thicket by Joe. R. Lansdale

About 10 years ago HBO carried a series called Deadwood about the wild west as lived in Deadwood, South Dakota in the 1870's.   The series was memorable for its depiction of the squalor, ugliness, violence, and random acts of kindness in a free-wheeling frontier town .  The Thicket gives much the same feel, only this time in East Texas.  The story revolves around 16-year-old Jack Parker who loses his parents to smallpox, his grandfather to murder, and his sister to kidnapping by a band of low-lifes, all in a matter of days.  Determined to rescue his sister, Jack joins forces with a dwarf bounty hunter, his sidekick--a huge black man with an oversized shotgun, and, eventually, a prostitute, newly retired.  Their adventure has more than its share of evil doings by evil doers, all described in excruciating detail.  Nonetheless--or maybe because of--the slaughter and ever-present dangers, the book is hard to put down.  Jack tells his story with much dark humor and understatement, and he makes his partners at once engaging and ruthless.  Trigger warning:  some sex and frequent violence.

Audacity by Melanie Crowder

Membership in labor unions in the U.S. has significantly declined in the past 10 years, both as a result of legislative action to eliminate compulsory union dues and as a general disillusionment with union effectiveness in meeting member demands.  What we tend to forget, and what this novel by Melanie Crowder reminds us of, is the reason for the birth of unions.  Crowder presents a fictionalized account of the life of union activist Clara Lemlich.  As a young woman, Clara emigrated from a small village in Russia to escape the pogroms targeting Jews.  Clara and her family eventually arrived in New York City and Clara, needing to help support her family, took a job in a sweatshop, sewing for a garment manufacturer. Young women employed in these factories were forced to work 7 days a week and 10 hour days with only the briefest of breaks for lunch and bathrooms.  Each day, upon leaving work, they were searched and fondled by supervisors ostensibly looking for anything the girls were trying to smuggle.  Protests were met with immediate dismissal.  The author chronicles the women's struggles in the face of inhumane conditions and physical violence.  Clara's story makes for a fascinating and thoughtful read.