I have a love/hate relationship with horror. I don’t want to be completely freaked out, reading only a page or two at a time and peeking at those from between my fingers, and yet horror that doesn’t fill you with some dread is probably not very good. Cherie Priest’s Four and Twenty Blackbirds sat in that middle ground fairly well for me and I quite enjoyed the story.

Eden Moore sees ghosts. As a girl, they are sometimes scary and sometimes helpful. As an adult though, it turns out that Eden is the target of a 165 year old ghost’s plan for resurrection. The resurrector being a mysterious resident from her family’s past, living in a remote swamp in southern Florida.

I really liked the character Eden Moore. She’s frightened at times, stoic at others. Came off very strong to me, not the least a one trick pony. Most of the other characters are very much supporting characters and they only stayed around for a while until the next supporting character stepped up to the plate. I kind of wish some of them had stuck around longer, because they were interesting.

The story was scariest when Eden was a kid early in the book. Good ghost stories don’t have a punch line, as a character in the book states. At the end, we know who the bad guy is, and we know what he’s doing. Effectively, the story becomes action-adventure with ghosts and blood and gore. Priest’s action scenes don’t overdo things, and she does make them somewhat original. I particularly enjoyed Malachi’s inept but almost effective attempts on Eden’s life.

Plot-wise, the major story line was pretty good, though a little on the convoluted side. It was all set up by Eden’s adopted mother Lulu refusing to explain the whole ghost/family history thing. The episodes where Eden encountered her family’s past got more and more intense. Sometimes they were ghosts, sometimes they were real people. The final confrontation didn’t disappoint.

On the whole, while there’s a lot of small things to question, the well-done ghost story makes up for the imperfections.

Title: Four and Twenty Blackbirds
Author: Cherie Priest
Cover creator: John Jude Palencar
Series: Eden Moore; 1
Imprint / publisher: Tor / Macmillan
Format: PDF download
Length: 285 p.
Publication date: 2008 (originally 2005 with this text)
Subject: Orphans—Fiction
Subject: Young women—Fiction
Subject: Blessing and cursing—Fiction
Subject: Racially mixed people—Fiction
Subject: Signal Mountain (Tenn.)—Fiction
Subject: Birthfathers—Fiction
Subject: Georgia— Fiction
LC classification: PS3616.R537F685 2005

I read Geoffrey Stone’s Perilous Times a couple of years ago. Daniel Farber’s Lincoln’s Consitution has a similar focus, but covers only the Civil War rather than the entirety of the history of civil liberties during troubled times. In addition to examining whether the Lincoln administration’s curtailment of civil liberties during the Civil War was constitutional, Farber also looks at the question of secession and use of military force against the south. Farber’s conclusion is that most of Lincoln’s actions were constitutional.

For the most part, Farber’s analysis was understandable to this non-lawyer. Irrespective of his personal views on the proper framework for constitutional analysis, Farber looks at each of the situations under several of the analytical paradigms currently advocated: originalism, textualism, and that of the constitution as a living document. The book is somewhat dismissive of textualism, at least as practiced today. The drafters didn’t nit-pick every word or phrase for exactness, so such analysis done today isn’t very valid according to his writing. His greatest focus is on analyzing in terms of what the framers and the country originally understood the document to mean. One big caveat though is that even then many of the clauses were ambiguous, by design or by inattention. Farber writes that we shouldn’t ascribe detailed meaning to the framers when it didn’t necessarily exist at the time.

As to the question of secession, Farber writes that under all but the most radical of interpretations, the south did not have the right to secede. The union was meant to be perpetual; no clauses for secession were included. Under standard rules of contracts, entering into one has to be universal, but unless the terms for abrogating it are written into it, other parties must approve a release. So unless the south got the permission from the entire country, it could not secede from the U.S. or de-ratify the constitution. He also dismisses a right of revolution as the south had not endured any indignities from the U.S. or the north. In fact, until Lincoln’s election is had exercised a great deal of control over U.S. policy. At best, international law and norms meant the south could enter into negotiations to secede. It did not. It unilaterally seceded and then started the war by firing on Fort Sumter.

James Buchanan, the president prior to Lincoln, came to the conclusion that while the South had no right to secede, under the Constitution he could not use the military to stop them absent a congressional declaration of war. So he did nothing. Lincoln, and Farber in retrospect, disagreed. To them, the south clearly had started insurrection, which gave the President the right to defend the U.S.

Civil liberties were more questionable though. Lincoln ignored a writ of habeas corpus, summarily arrested opponents, and shuttered newspapers critical of the war. Not all actions did he take himself. Some were attempted by his subordinates, but Lincoln usually supported those actions after the fact, at least publicly. In some cases these might have been legal, such as the preventive arrest of southern sympathizers. Others, such as the shuttering of newspapers critical of the war probably were not. Most of the time Lincoln was pretty careful to not abuse his authority.

One nice thing Farber did in summation was to look at Lincoln’s evolving theory of the rule of law, which was his ostensible reason for prosecuting the war. While he was against slavery, he was fine with a decades long slow death for the practice. He fought the war to preserve the rule of law and to preserve the United States. But his ideas for what that meant changed over his lifetime.

Having read Perilous Times, I thought the chapters on civil liberties were somewhat redundant to my earlier reading. However, I learned some things from his examination of secession and the sources of the theory of the unitary executive. (He doesn’t embrace that theory.)

Interesting, but not really enough a-ha moments to rate it as a must-read. A worthy read, definitely.

One blogged review:

• Brian Flanagan excerpted at Legal History Blog

Title: Lincoln’s Constitution
Author: Daniel Farber
Imprint / publisher: University of Chicago Press
Format: Hardcover
Length: 200 p.
Publication date: 2003
ISBN-10: 0-226-23793-1
Subject: Lincoln, Abraham — 1809 – 1865 — Views on the Constitution
Subject: United States — Politics and government — 1861-1865
Subject: Constitutional history — United States
LC classification: E457.2.F216 2003

I finished Tobacco Road nearly two days ago. It’s taking me a bit to figure out what to write. In fact, I’m still not quite sure what I think about the book, but my memory will fade so I have to get something written for now.

Tobacco Road is a couple of days in the life of Jeeter Lester and his poor white trash family on a former tobacco plantation in Georgia. Where once the family owned the land for miles around, Lester is now a cotton sharecropper on the property. Only he has no money or credit for buying seed or fertilizer and hasn’t for years. Only the landlord’s disinterest in the place allows Lester and family to continue to live there. At this point in the description, you’d think this would be a Southern version of John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.

But it’s no Grapes of Wrath. The Lesters are racist, ignorant, lazy, and sex-obsessed. All except for racist are of the most extreme variety, and of the most callous sort for racist. The first chapter is a confrontation between Jeeter’s son-in-law Lov Bensey and Jeeter. See, Jeeter married off his 12 year old daughter Pearl to Lov, and a year later Lov isn’t so happy with the deal. Pearl won’t talk, sleeps on a pallet, and won’t let Lov touch her. He wants to know if Jeeter thinks it’s a good idea to tie Pearl down. The confrontation begins because when Lov stops by for this chat, he’s carrying a bag of turnips. Jeeter and family haven’t had food in so long that the entire conversation is a big dance around Jeeter getting the turnips. Eventually, Lov becomes distracted (and by distracted I mean dry-humping) by another Lester daughter, Ellie May, and Jeeter takes his opportunity to grab the bag of turnips and run. This is the start of the book.

The Lesters and kin are a caricature of the worst of the Southern white trash stereotypes. So much so that who Caldwell is satirizing is lost on me. Is this a parody of the South? Perhaps. It just seems too obvious. I don’t know enough about the perception of the South during the Depression to know. I’ve purposefully not looked for any deconstruction of this on the web. Tobacco Road has lost it’s relevancy to a general audience if it needs explaining.

Without that explanation, a lot of the humor fell short with me. The Lester’s are just so over the top stupid that I got bored. It’s kind of how I view clowns. It takes a rare clown to make me laugh. Jeeter Lester is not that clown.

Other blogged reviews:

• The View from Graustark
• Pechorin’s Journal
• The GB Club

Title: Tobacco Road
Author: Erskine Caldwell
Illustrator: David Fredenthal
Imprint / publisher: Signet / New American Library
Format: Mass market paperback
Length: 159 p.
Publication date: March 1947 (originally 1932)
LC classification: PS3505.A322 T6 1932

A quick review of a young adult book, Sounder. I can’t recall if I actually read this growing up or not. I read a lot of the Newbery Award books in my youth, but I got no sense of deja vu as I read this, so perhaps I didn’t.

The story is that of a young black boy, the son of a sharecropper in the south. His family lives in a small shack with him, his parents, two siblings, and Sounder their redbone hound/bulldog mix. The family isn’t doing so well, so our protagonist’s father steals some meat to feed the family. The white sheriff quickly tracks him down by the smell emanating from the family home and drags father off in chains. Sounder chases after and gets shot for the trouble.

Despite the title, the book really isn’t about the dog. He’s missing for the largest part of the book after he’s shot and runs off. The boy searches and searches for him, as he later searches and searches for his imprisoned father.

The setting is what makes the book for me. Want a picture of how bad a sharecropper’s life could be? Read Sounder. Want an idea of how black men were treated in the South? Read Sounder. This isn’t a tale of a lynch mob or even Jim Crow laws. It’s a tale of the effects of run-of-the-mill treatment of blacks by whites under trying economic circumstances. He doesn’t get to go to school. The owner of the fields separates his sharecroppers cabins so they can’t be part of a community. Whites routinely harass blacks. The jailer breaks apart the boys gift to his jailed father.

I do hate the cover of this edition though. The cover pictures a setter or something like that. I don’t know my breeds that well. But I do know that isn’t a redbone hound/bulldog mix. The cover picture overall is just too clean to portray what’s in the story.

A quick editorial note: my free books roundup for tomorrow will be posted late. Normally it will be posted just after midnight, but I’m off to see the new Batman movie so it may come in mid-day.

Title: Sounder
Author: William H. Armstrong
Imprint / publisher: Scholastic
Format: Mass market paperback
Length: 116 p.
ISBN-10: 0-590-40212-9
Subject: African Americans — Juvenile fiction
Subject: African Americans — Fiction
Subject: Dogs — Fiction
Subject: Family life — Fiction
Subject: Poverty — Fiction
LC classification: PZ7.A73394 So

Sourcebooks Landmark isn’t an imprint I would normally turn to for a good mystery, but indeed Michael Malone’s mystery set in North Carolina is very good.

Justin Savile is a member of one of the more powerful families in Hillston, North Carolina, the Dollards. He’s not exactly the black sheep, but he hasn’t exactly turned out quite like the family intended him to. After a stint in a sanatorium to dry him out after some extensive drinking, he’s managed to get himself a law degree funded by the family. But rather than go into the family business, politics, he’s become a detective on Hillston’s small police force. Cuthbert Cuddy Mangum is the force’s other detective. He’s from the other side of the tracks, but he got himself fairly educated. Despite the trappings of a cop/buddy novel, the entire novel is told from Justin’s point of view.

The mystery is who killed Cloris Dollard, the wife of Justin’s uncle Rowell, Hillston’s state senator. The Dollard household is missing a lot of silverware, jewelry, and a collection of old coins that belong to Cloris’ first husband, Bainton Ames. The first suspect who turns up is Preston Pope, a member of the less genteel class of the south. While at the Pope house on a domestic violence call, Justin stumbles across several bags of Cloris Dollard’s jewelry. Cuddy doesn’t think Preston Pope did the dirty deed though, primarily because Preston Pope was too stupid to leave no evidence at the crime scene.

And the monkey-wrench thrown into the whole thing is Joanna Cadmean. The Cadmean’s are the other powerful family in Hillston. Joanna married into it though. Years ago, when Rowell Dollard was the prosecutor, Joanna had been a psychic who assisted the police on numerous cases, including that of the accidental death of Bainton Ames. Now a decade and a half later she’s returned to Hillston claiming that her psychic abilities are telling her that Cloris’ death has something to do with Bainton Ames death years before. Her information turns out to be backed up by actual evidence, though it isn’t definitive.

What makes the book interesting is that the Cadmean and Dollard families put lots of pressure on Justin to not dirty the family names during the investigation. Now, it seems like that could easily be because there’s lots of dirt to dig up. But who exactly has done what? There are a lot of names involved (you try to keep all those names above straight!). But because Justin doesn’t exactly like his family heritage, though he doesn’t refuse the help his connections give him, he does stir the pot some. It doesn’t hurt that Joanna Cadmean is gorgeous and Justin has a bit of a crush on her.

My only real criticism is how Malone chose to end the book. Since there are later books in the series, it will come as no spoiler to anyone that Justin lives through the end and solves the crime. Justin figures out who did it. I won’t say whether he catches the perpetrators of the various crimes that occur. But Malone uses a mystery writing setup that I’ve decided I don’t like much. Towards the end after Justin has figured most everything out, he gets himself shot by one of the bad guys. The reveal of how everything ties together is told to him in his hospital bed and afterward. I’d rather our hero participate in wrapping up loose ends. Or even better sometimes, leave some loose ends untied. There are some big ones here that I think could easily have been left a mystery and it would have made the book better.

I like the characters in the book, and not just Justin & Cuddy. There’s some friendly cop/buddy banter going on between the two detectives, but it isn’t overbearing like some get. It sounds remarkably like my friends, outside of the fact that we aren’t detectives. Justin doesn’t get along with his uncle, his boss, and a few other people. But they aren’t his nemeses either. They all manage to work together despite disliking each other. A few of the characters, like old Briggs Cadmean and Ratcher Phelps the fence, like to play coy and hold cards close to the vest. It’s kind of fun watching them dance around saying the obvious in the scenes where they play a part.

Malone has some skill. I will likely pick up a few more of this series eventually. Eventually. I really need to dig myself out from under the pile I already have.

Title: Uncivil seasons
Author: Michael Malone
Series: Justin & Cuddy; 1
Imprint / publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark / Sourcebooks
Format: Paperback
Length: 324 p.
Publication date: 2001 (original publication 1983)
ISBN-10: 1-57071-755-9
Subject: Police — North Carolina — Fiction
Subject: North Carolina — Fiction
LC classification: PS3563.A43244 U5 2001