Two Good Witches
August 27, 2008
THE FRONT is the perfect size for summer reading. It's spare and smart. Patricia Cornwell has a somewhat new set of characters -- Massachusetts State Police investigator Win Garano and DA Monique Lamont, who debuted in AT RISK. Very different from Cornwell's well-known character, Kay Scarpetta, but still as sharp a read.
Lamont "owns" Garano, which is all the more perturbing when he realizes that she is creating a connection between a victim of sexual homicide and the Boston Strangler -- that may not exist, and for her own gain. I bristle at the improper use of power and the lack of integrity in Cornwell's female DA. And I really like Garano, even though he seems confused and insecure at times.
My favorite is Garano's grandmother -- Nana, a woman of the Craft -- a good witch. Those two powerful forces -- Nana and Lamont -- both lay pressure on Garano.
His Nana reminded me of my grandmother. Her name was Blanca, and there was a mysterious silence about her. Every afternoon, at four, she would dress in her nurse's uniform, and head for Lenox Hill Hospital in NY. She'd worked there for decades as the head RN in the ER. She giggled when they finally figured out that it was time for her to retire. They thought she was 65. By then, she was close to 80. She knew things. In the 70's -- long before the body-mind connection was in the mainstream -- she would say "Don't keep that anger inside you. It is a toxin -- it will poison your body if you don't release it." There was also a back-story I found fascinating.
Blanca came from a family of about eight children, but several passed away along the journey from Peru, over the Andes, eventually to New York. I met two sisters -- my great-aunts Lola and Raquel. Lola played piano at Carnegie Hall when she was four. Raquel was an artist who invented pop-ups. Blanca's daughter -- my mother -- was born around the time of the Lindberg baby's kidnapping, and Blanca invented a baby intercom so she could hear my mother -- as a baby -- sleeping in the other room. The kids in school teased me wickedly, not believing me, until I showed them the newspaper clipping documenting that. Another sister was a dancer. And Marguerite, whom I never met, was said to be a lawyer.
The story goes that Blanca wanted to be a physician, but her father forbid her -- simply because she was a young woman. After he died, Blanca got her RN in the early 1920's, and worked in the ER -- as close as she could to make her dreams come true.
She would make predictions -- and I never knew her to be incorrect. And, she could read cards and palms. She knew about salves and healings. And, I always wondered if maybe, just maybe, she wasn't a doctor or a nurse...but a good witch. Like Garano's Nana.
THE FRONT is the perfect size for summer reading. It's spare and smart. Patricia Cornwell has a somewhat new set of characters -- Massachusetts State Police investigator Win Garano and DA Monique Lamont, who debuted in AT RISK. Very different from Cornwell's well-known character, Kay Scarpetta, but still as sharp a read.
Lamont "owns" Garano, which is all the more perturbing when he realizes that she is creating a connection between a victim of sexual homicide and the Boston Strangler -- that may not exist, and for her own gain. I bristle at the improper use of power and the lack of integrity in Cornwell's female DA. And I really like Garano, even though he seems confused and insecure at times.
My favorite is Garano's grandmother -- Nana, a woman of the Craft -- a good witch. Those two powerful forces -- Nana and Lamont -- both lay pressure on Garano.
His Nana reminded me of my grandmother. Her name was Blanca, and there was a mysterious silence about her. Every afternoon, at four, she would dress in her nurse's uniform, and head for Lenox Hill Hospital in NY. She'd worked there for decades as the head RN in the ER. She giggled when they finally figured out that it was time for her to retire. They thought she was 65. By then, she was close to 80. She knew things. In the 70's -- long before the body-mind connection was in the mainstream -- she would say "Don't keep that anger inside you. It is a toxin -- it will poison your body if you don't release it." There was also a back-story I found fascinating.
Blanca came from a family of about eight children, but several passed away along the journey from Peru, over the Andes, eventually to New York. I met two sisters -- my great-aunts Lola and Raquel. Lola played piano at Carnegie Hall when she was four. Raquel was an artist who invented pop-ups. Blanca's daughter -- my mother -- was born around the time of the Lindberg baby's kidnapping, and Blanca invented a baby intercom so she could hear my mother -- as a baby -- sleeping in the other room. The kids in school teased me wickedly, not believing me, until I showed them the newspaper clipping documenting that. Another sister was a dancer. And Marguerite, whom I never met, was said to be a lawyer.
The story goes that Blanca wanted to be a physician, but her father forbid her -- simply because she was a young woman. After he died, Blanca got her RN in the early 1920's, and worked in the ER -- as close as she could to make her dreams come true.
She would make predictions -- and I never knew her to be incorrect. And, she could read cards and palms. She knew about salves and healings. And, I always wondered if maybe, just maybe, she wasn't a doctor or a nurse...but a good witch. Like Garano's Nana.
Labels: books, dreams, grandmother, Patricia Cornwell, THE FRONT
posted by Diana Page Jordan @ 10:26 PM
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