Bourke's Bookshelf: Murder, mesmerism and a woman’s place in the world

BRAINERD — My favorite way to learn about history is through novels.

Textbooks and documentaries don’t interest me nearly as much as a good story that’s rooted in truth and will teach me something interesting about a period in history.

Caroline Woods does this excellently.

Woods is one of the featured authors at this year’s Wine and Words event, hosted by the Friends of the Brainerd Public Library July 24-25 at Grand View Lodge in Nisswa. She’s written three historical novels — “Fraulein M.,” “The Lunar Housewife” and “The Mesmerist.” I was able to listen to audio versions of the latter two books, diving headfirst into New York City during the Cold War and Minneapolis in the 1890s.

It wasn’t until finishing each book that I learned in the author's notes about the real-life bases for the stories. Set amid real events, with a mixture of historical figures and invented characters, Woods’ narratives blend fact and fiction beautifully.

“The spheres women had the permission to occupy felt so tiny compared to those of men. Men were allotted the whole world; we the narrow parcels.”

It’s a man’s world, but Louise Leithauser plans to make her way in it.

It’s New York City in the 1950s, set against the backdrop of the Cold War and Korean War, when heightened fear of communism runs just as rampant as propaganda. The literary likes of Ernest Hemingway and James Baldwin feature as characters in the story, giving an authentic element to the fictionalized narrative.

While her name hasn’t yet appeared in print, Louise is the writer behind a feature story in this month’s issue of Downtown magazine. Her identity is hidden behind a male pen name, but it’s still her work.

She’s dating Joe Martin, one of the co-founders of the literary men’s magazine. She’s convinced herself she loves Joe but can’t deny his publishing connections are a huge draw. Louise was only a cocktail waitress when they met, but she’d never let him know that. The longer their relationship goes on, the harder it is to come clean about who she really is — and the more Louise realizes Joe is hiding from her, too.

Interspersed throughout the novel are excerpts from Louise’s romance novel in-progress, “The Lunar Housewife.” It tells the story of an American woman named Katherine, a defector to the Soviet Union, sent into space on a lunar mission of sorts, where she’s relegated to the role of housewife for Soviet army-deserter Sergey. The secret manuscript horrifies Joe when he learns what his girlfriend is working on.

As the story unfolds, Louise and Katherine’s lives begin to parallel, as they both unravel the lies fed to them and fight for their place in the world.

Is mesmerism real?

Surely the sheer power of suggestion isn’t strong enough to compel a person to do another’s bidding — to hand over their hard-earned money, deceive a friend or commit a heinous crime. The human mind can’t possibly be that easily manipulated.

Or can it?

When a woman in a ragged purple dress with bruises around her neck and a bag full of gold shows up at the doorstep of the Bethany Home for Unwed Mothers one October day in 1894, the inmates of the Minneapolis boarding house quickly determine there’s something not quite right about her.

She appears to be mute, earning her the nickname “ghost girl,” but has the most beautiful freckled face, framed with long, dark hair. Faith Johnson is the moniker she’ll take while at the home, which serves as a place of refuge for women with nowhere else to go.

Girls show up after finding themselves pregnant without a husband, many times due to their work in the city’s many brothels. On the heels of a national financial crisis, when a surge of counterfeit money pegs gold as the only trusted currency, so many women turned to the “sporting” life, giving them an independent income and a place to stay.

Abby Mendenhall, treasurer and secretary of the Sisters of Bethany, spends her days scouring the streets and the brothels, looking for women in dire straits to take back with her to the home.

Faith moves into May Lombard’s room, and the two develop a friendship that’s a source of amusement for the rest of the girls. No one else seems to trust Faith, who wiggles her fingers, blows in her hands and seems to make inexplicable things happen.

May’s attention is elsewhere, though, as she hopes to soon marry her suitor and finally have a respectable man to bring home to her family, proving she isn’t the screw-up she was made out to be upon leaving Chicago.

As chapters alternate from the perspectives of Abby, May and Faith, readers slowly learn the characters’ backgrounds and how everyone’s stories fit together. Woods weaves fact and fiction together for an excellent story of murder and mayhem in 1890s Minneapolis.

THERESA BOURKE may be reached at theresa.bourke@brainerddispatch.com or 218-855-5860. Follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/DispatchTheresa .