I was talking with my sister on the phone the other day, telling her about the recent success of my book, and she reminded me of something rather prophetic that I said to her during our annual Vegas weekend in January. I had announced several times that this is “the Year of Jane”. Some of you may recognize that phrase from the successful CBS sitcom “The Middle”. Last season Sue Heck declared her senior year of high school to be “the Year of Sue”. Everything she did that year was the culmination of all her past years, and the catalyst for what was to come…college life.

For the Year of Jane, everything I’ve done in the past to hone my skills as a writer has been in anticipation of this year, 2016, the year I publish my first novel. No, I don’t have a contract yet, but I have known from the moment I started writing this one that it will be published. I have never referred to “if” I publish, but always “when” I publish.

My blog is a success and I’m up to 121 followers with readers from all around the world. My Facebook author page is growing, as is my Twitter feed. (I’m finally getting the hang of using those hashtags!) Then last week the highpoint of my writing career so far. I get the phone call that tells me my book is a finalist in the historical category of WisRWA’s 2016 Fab Five competition.

WisRWA is the Wisconsin chapter of the Romance Writers of America, and the Fab Five is their annual competition for unpublished romance writers. To enter you need to have a completed romance novel and to have not published a romance novel before. I have a completed novel, Mary Bishop. Yes, I’m in the middle of some extensive revisions, but it was what I considered complete until my critique group pointed out some holes in my plot line. So back in February I submitted the first 2500 words of my novel. Lucky for me, this included my one-paragraph prologue and all of my first two chapters. Each chapter introduced one of my two timelines that run throughout the book so it was a good introduction for the judges. The first round is judged anonymously by my peers and the top five (Fab Five) from each category are chosen to continue to the final round. The final round is judged by an editor and an agent who work in that romance subgenre.

This is a huge opportunity to be read by someone in the industry, and possibly have my entire manuscript requested and, ultimately, my first novel published. You can see why I’m insisting that this is, indeed, the Year of Jane.

We all know what it’s like to feel lonely. You can be in a room full of friends and family, people you love, and feel lonely. They can all be talking, laughing, having a good time, and you feel like you’re outside looking in through glass. Being lonely is not the same as being “alone”.

I’m “alone” right now and enjoying the solitude, regenerating in the quiet. It’s Sunday the 10^th and my husband is on a road trip across Canada to Alaska with his cousin. I finished my errands yesterday and I don’t go back to work until tomorrow, so I have the treat of a day just for me. I spent the morning cross-stitching, drinking coffee, and catching up on some DVR’d shows. For lunch I finished my Chinese leftovers from last night out with a girlfriend (dinner and a movie). Now I sit at my computer drafting this blog and then working on my novel revisions. Classical MPR (Minnesota Public Radio) is playing in the background, a cinnamon-scented candle is lit (leftover from the holidays, but who cares), the sun is shining outside the sliding doors, and I’m enjoying every minute of it. Temps are supposed to be in the 50s today so I’ll even try opening those sliding doors to listen to the breeze tickling the still leafless trees, and the birds singing that spring is near. I don’t get many days like this. If I make good progress on my writing this afternoon my reward will be a bubble bath with wine and a good read. Does it get any better? I doubt it.

We all need a day like this now and then, a day to ourselves where we can shut out all the worries and concerns of our everyday life. Some people like a long afternoon nap, others a walk in the woods. Doesn’t matter how you unwind, the point is we all need to unwind…alone.

But I would argue being alone is even more important to writers. This is the time we can most clearly hear our characters speak. This is the time we can let our muse take over our thoughts, the time we can allow our plot to percolate through our brains and out our fast-typing fingertips. Writers are by nature solitary creatures. Oh, we do seek each other out from time to time to compare notes, share tips of the trade, and to reassure ourselves that we aren’t truly alone because all mankind has perished except for us and we somehow missed it while we were being alone. My local chapter of the Wisconsin Romance Writers of America (WisRWA, Chippewa Falls) is sponsoring a one-day workshop in Eau Claire this coming October the 8^th and I’m looking forward to meeting others who feel the creative urge the way I do. It’s also why I attend my critique group in Amery one Monday a month, and continue to correspond and share my writing with my old critique group back in western New York. These are the people who help me remember WHY I write, but most of the time I need a quiet day like this one to ACTUALLY write.

Alright, the door has to be closed. The breeze is still a little too cool and those birds are distracting me from writing.

Books have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I come from a family of voracious readers. My parents are retired school teachers and there were always books, magazines, and newspapers in our house. I remember being read to as a child and couldn’t wait until I was able to read for myself, starting with Golden Books, Raggedy Ann and Andy, Uncle Wiggily, Little House series, and oh so many more I can’t even remember them all. My parents censored what movies and television shows I watched, but they never censored my reading. While I wasn’t allowed to watch The Exorcist, I was allowed to read it; the same with Helter Skelter and In Cold Blood. But I also read, by choice, such classics as The Scarlet Letter, Silas Marner, The House of Seven Gables, and, of course, poetry.

And for as long as I can remember, I have made up stories. Not in the naughty child sense, although I’m sure that probably happened a time or two when I’d been caught doing something I wasn’t supposed to, but out of the desire to share with others all those characters living in my imagination. The desire to explore the places I knew certainly must exist outside my own little world.

As for the question of e-books or traditional, I read them both. I love my Kindle for travel. I love how it doesn’t close and make me lose my place should I fall asleep while reading (not an unusual occurrence). However, I would never take my Kindle into the bathtub with me. For bubble baths I tend to stick to magazines. They’re light weight, I can hold them in one hand, leaving the other free to hold my wine, and if a magazine does by chance fall into the water I’m not going to cry or get angry.

My Kindle is great when I want to read something particularly trashy and don’t want everyone in the airport or the park to know, such as Fifty Shades of Grey (book 1 only, too trashy even for me). My Kindle is perfect when I decide it’s time to read a great Russian novel like War and Peace or Anna Karenina because it’s not near as heavy as the traditional print version. But when I’m researching my current work-in-progress, or something I might want to write in the future, I need to have a traditional book so I can highlight passages and write notes in the margin and dog-ear important pages. I know you can do all these things with an e-reader, or so I’ve heard, but it’s not the same. And studying maps, diagrams, and charts just doesn’t work as well on an e-reader, especially if you have to flip back and forth to refer to them while reading.

When the sale of e-readers and e-books began to take off, the media predicted traditional publishing houses would soon be a thing of the past. No one would want printed books when they could get the same thing in a lighter, cheaper, electronic version in a blink of an eye, with just the push of a button. Why go out into traffic and/or bad weather to find your nearest Barnes & Noble when you could sit back with your bunny-slippered feet propped up all warm and comfortable while you drink wine (I’m beginning to see a pattern here) with one hand and browse your e-reader store with the other. You can make a selection, press the “buy now” button and there it is, ready to be enjoyed without having to leave your home.

Then the great publishing apocalypse never happened. The traditional publishing houses are all going strong. I could quote you statistics on the matter, but you can Google those for yourself if you’re that interested in the numbers. Suffice it to say, I am not the only person who continues to read print books while also enjoying my e-reader. Plus, e-books have opened up the publishing world to a much wider range of writers. While some, if truth be told, would be better off waiting until they’ve honed their skills a little more before making their debut, most are gems who would never even get noticed, never get read, because they’re not quite good enough for the big houses.

As for our young readers, the children just being introduced to the world of books, I believe we should stick to print. Let them feel the paper in their hands, smell it, experience the beautiful art work in all its brightly printed glory. They spend enough time in front of digital screens.

The exact origins of April Fools’ Day, or All Fools’ Day, are unknown. Celebrated for centuries by many different cultures, it is a day for telling jokes and playing pranks. Remember elementary school and all the silliness? The jokes that were only funny to other children your age? Tell the little girl who sits behind you there’s a spider in her hair and she might start screaming and swatting at her head. Tell your mother the same thing and she’ll just look at you with mild amusement and respond, “I don’t think so, but nice try.” Coat the edge of a quarter with pencil lead and bet some little boy that he can’t roll it down the center of his face without dropping it and before you know it he’s grinning at you, unknowing, with a black line dividing his face in two, certain he’s just proved you wrong while you and all your friends point and laugh. I got caught by that one.

Of course, pranking is not just a past time of the young and silly, it’s also enjoyed with great relish by some you would think too old for such nonsense. There’s the rubber spider on a co-worker’s chair, or the pool of fake spilled coffee across their desk. Playing pranks can be fun for all ages if done sparingly and with careful thought to the recipient. It’s only funny if the person being pranked thinks so.

Elaborate hoaxes have been played on the public over the years, often meeting with an unbelievable level of gullibility from the people. The media have reported outrageous fictional tales with great success. In 1957, the BBC reported Swiss farmers were having a record spaghetti crop and showed pictures of smiling people harvesting strands of pasta from the trees into over-flowing baskets. In 1985, Sports Illustrated amazed many of its readers when it ran a made-up article about a rookie pitcher named Sidd Finch who could throw a fastball over 168 mph. Does anyone remember 1996, when the Mexican fast food chain Taco Bell announced they were buying the Liberty Bell and renaming it the Taco Liberty Bell? How many of you, just for a brief moment, were horrified and outraged before you realized it had to be a hoax? In 1998, Burger King advertised a “Left-Handed Whopper” and scores of clueless customers tried to order the fake sandwich.

All done in the name of fun, good, clean, harmless fun. Do you have a favorite prank from your past? Or perhaps you’re planning your best one yet for this year? Tell me about it. Maybe I’ll tell my supervisor, the one who’s out on maternity leave, and the office manager that I’m quitting. Act all outraged and see if I cause a panic. (She has two weeks of leave to go before she comes back.) No, I better not. That could backfire on me. They could say fine, if that’s how you want it you can leave right now. That wouldn’t be very funny. Not funny at all.

Perhaps I should work an April Fools’ Day joke into my book. I think Mary would be a very good sport about it. She might even be the instigator.

Writers are compelled to put words on paper. If we don’t, our characters won’t let us rest. Their voices become louder and louder, forcing their stories upon us until we relent and write them down. Our characters are our best friends. They can also be our worst enemies. Their homes are our homes, their dreams/sorrows/joys, our dreams/sorrows/joys.

When writers don’t write we become irritated, sad, and sometimes just plain bitchy. Nothing feels right again until we can sit down at our computer, or pen in hand if a traditionalist, and start writing. To put it plainly, when I don’t have time to write I feel lost! I’m not me and I can become pretty difficult to live with.

Since we moved from New York State back to Wisconsin almost five years ago I’ve had lots of time to write. It took me four years to find a permanent job. I did temp work here and there, but I needed something permanent to get me out of the house, to introduce me to new people, and to have a little extra money in the pocket. Then I found the perfect part-time job, 2-3 days a week most weeks. It gave me enough time away from my writing to keep me fresh, yet not so much as to stop me in my tracks. Now I’m working full-time filling in for a co-worker on maternity leave. I know it’s temporary, but it’s really putting a crimp in my writing time and I’m getting cranky. I have to work extra hard at finding the time to work on my novel revisions.

Right now I’m writing new chapters to insert where my timeline has holes. I underestimated how difficult this could be. I have two parallel timelines running: my heroine’s past love with her husband, and her present day with her second chance at love now that her husband has died. Yes, this is a challenging approach for a first novel, but it’s the way Mary Bishop tells me her story and I can’t do it any other way. She won’t let me. She’s a woman who knows what she wants and is not afraid to stand up for herself. I admit, I’m a little intimidated by her strength, and also more than a little in awe of her. (Don’t look so shocked. I already told you our characters are very real to us.)

So, I struggled along writing insert chapter one, two, three, and then I got stuck; as stuck as if I’d stepped into the proverbial quicksand. The more I tried to move forward, the deeper I sank and I was getting desperate. So last weekend I went back to the beginning. It was the only way I could think to get out of the quicksand. I started reading from the beginning; reading, revising, reviewing, and taking notes. My second insert chapter brought a new character into the mix. I had to go back to the beginning to reference her as she was now going to play a key role in Mary’s story and couldn’t just suddenly show up in chapter 22. A dog was added, a dog that would save the life of an important person in Mary’s life. Again, couldn’t just have him appear unannounced in chapter 24.

So, now I’m back on my feet and running, a little wet and dirty for my struggle, but moving forward again, nonetheless, and hopefully avoiding all the other patches of quicksand I know are hiding out there. Unfortunately, right now I must take a break to tackle another obstacle to my writing time. There’s a pile of ironing that’s taking on a life of its own, and a button that isn’t going to sew itself back on my jacket. Mary will have to be patient for just a little bit longer.

The promise of spring is being dangled in front of us here in northwestern Wisconsin. One day you can touch it, almost believe you can grab hold of it and keep it, only to have it retreat from your reach the next day.

Birds are returning. We can hear them in the trees above our heads. The ice on the St Croix River is breaking-up with loud cracks echoing off the riverside cliffs. The snow is almost completely melted, only lingering where it’s been pushed in great parking lot piles by the plows. And some days the sun is actually as warm as it looks, tempting us to open our windows and step away from our offices to turn our faces up to the heavens and sigh. The only grumbling I’ve heard is from the skiers and ice fishermen who are not quite ready to end the season that for many had a late start this year.

A sure sign of spring in our neck of the woods is the start of maple syrup season, the time when taps are gently hammered into the thick trunks of waking maple trees and the sap drained into buckets to use in the making of maple syrup. Sugar shacks are firing up their boilers and soon a fresh batch of syrup will be hitting the local shops and breakfast tables. Forget that artificial big corporate brand you buy at the grocery store. It’s nothing more than high fructose corn syrup and caramel coloring. If you haven’t tried real maple syrup, I urge you to do so. There’s nothing like the flavor of natural maple to bring those pancakes (or french toast) to life.

But that’s not the only use for maple syrup. It makes wonderful candy, flavors your baking, even your home-brewed beer. Amazing! Google it and you’ll find so many recipes you won’t know where to start. Here’s a favorite in my house. I found it on allrecipes.com a couple years ago and it’s a keeper. It calls for pan-frying in a little butter and vegetable oil, but I bake them on a sprayed cookie sheet at 350 for about 40 minutes, or until cooked through. Moist on the inside and crunchy nutty sweet on the outside. Mmmmmm! If you try it, let me know what you think. And feel free to send me any other suggestions for what you do with real maple syrup.

Pecan Breaded Chicken Breasts
4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts
2 tablespoons real maple syrup
1 cup chopped pecans
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt

Combine pecans, flour and salt. Brush chicken breasts all over with maple syrup and coat completely with nut mixture.

Final note to make my point: It was 70° last weekend and now it’s snowing.

 

“Hold the door, say please, say thank you / Don’t steal, don’t cheat, and don’t lie \ I know you got mountains to climb but / Always stay humble and kind.”  Tim McGraw

 

 

Have you heard Tim McGraw’s new hit song “Humble and Kind”? I crank up the radio when it comes on, singing along in a slightly off-key but enthusiastic voice. Words to live by.

We’re in a world where bullies are applauded, where it’s entertainment to watch one person turn on another. Whether you’re a fan of reality television, or glued to the current political campaigns, you are being bombarded with arrogance and cruel personal taunts. I’m not just talking about the Republicans; the Democrats also have their hands stuck deep into that not-so-sweet honey pot. Each one of them could take a lesson from Tim McGraw.

I know what you’re thinking; political candidates who stay humble and kind don’t get the press, so they don’t get elected. True, but again, we have only ourselves to blame. Those are the stories we read/watch and the journalists know this. So do the candidates, so they keep up the attacks. Bad press is better than no press at all, right? Ask any ill-behaved young Hollywood actor/actress. Do we want to read about the actor who spends his weekends working at an animal shelter, feeding the homeless, or do we want to see more pictures of a drunken young train wreck of an actress climbing out of a car in a short skirt and no panties.

Look what’s happened to Dr Ben Carson. An intelligent man whose soft-spoken manner got him over-looked during every debate. He had some good ideas worth discussing, but he rarely got a chance to speak as he couldn’t be heard over the screaming and name-calling. After a recent debate viewers were asked who they thought won. Almost unanimously they said, Governor Kasich from Ohio. He was the only adult on stage, they said, refusing to take the bait. They were impressed by this, but will it make any difference in the polls? Probably not. They were shocked by Donald Trump’s defense of a certain male body part. If it were any other candidate, such a remark would mean the death of his candidacy, but will it harm Trump? No. People say they were disgusted by it, he wasn’t being “presidential”, but will that mean fewer votes? We can always hope so, but probably not. We can’t stop snickering about it. People like to watch bullies beat up on everyone else. Attacks don’t have to be physical, although a couple of women wearing too much make-up and too tight of clothing throwing their wine and clawing at each other always leads to a lot of water cooler gossip the next morning.

Why is a romance writer blogging about this? Because romance is all about the happy ending, and you can’t have that without a little humility and kindness from both your hero and heroine. It’s what gets me out of bed each morning. It’s why I love to read a good romance.

“Don’t take for granted the love this life gives you / When you get where you’re goin’ / Don’t forget turn back around / And help the next one in line / Always stay humble and kind.” Tim McGraw

It’s the story of kings and queens, knights and lords and ladies. The romance, rules, and art of Courtly Love and the Code of Chivalry were strict, allowing knights and ladies to openly express their admiration and love despite their marital status. It was common for a married lady to give a knight a token, perhaps her handkerchief or a flower, before a tournament to show favor. Love songs and poems were presented to married ladies without worry. A moment of flattery, a bit of harmless flirting, nothing more.

But such fun and games could grow to something far more dangerous, as described in legends like those of King Arthur and his Queen, Guinevere, who fell in love with her knight, Sir Lancelot. Their love brought about the undoing of the Round Table. Many illicit romances were fuelled by the practice of Courtly Love.

The art of Courtly Love was practiced throughout the courts of Europe. It is believed to have its origins in Aquitaine France in the 12^th Century and spread to the English court from the 1300’s to the 1500’s. It was a time when marriages were arranged and had little or nothing to do with love. Marriage was a contract used for power and material gain. It was acceptable that romance could be found outside of marriage, but only if the rules pertaining to chastity and fidelity were strictly followed.

The rules of Courtly Love were written by the 12^th Century Frenchman, Andreas Capellanus. Reading this list, you can see why playing this game could easily lead to trouble.

• He who is not jealous, cannot love
• No one can be bound by a double love
• It is well known that love is always increasing or decreasing
• That which a lover takes against the will of his beloved has no relish
• Boys do not love until they arrive at the age of maturity
• When one lover dies, a widowhood of two years is required by the survivor
• No one should be deprived of love without the very best of reasons
• No one can love unless he is impelled by the persuasion of love
• Love is always a stranger in the home of avarice
• It is not proper to love any woman whom one would be ashamed to seek to marry
• A true lover does not desire to embrace in love anyone except his beloved
• When made public love rarely endures
• The easy attainment of love makes it of little value; difficulty of attainment makes it prized
• Every lover regularly turns pale in the presence of his beloved
• When a lover suddenly catches sight of his beloved, his heart palpitates
• A new love puts to flight an old one
• Good character alone makes any man worthy of love
• If love diminishes, it quickly fails and rarely revives
• A man in love is always apprehensive
• Real jealousy always increases the feeling of love
• Jealousy, and therefore love, are increased when one suspects his beloved
• He whom the thought of love vexes eats and sleeps very little
• Every act of a lover ends in the thought of his beloved
• A true lover considers nothing good except what he thinks will please his beloved
• Love can deny nothing to love
• A lover can never have enough of the solaces of his beloved
• A slight presumption causes a lover to suspect his beloved
• A man who is vexed by too much passion usually does not love
• A true lover is constantly and without intermission possessed by the thought of his beloved
• Nothing forbids one woman being loved by two men or one man by two women

The ideals of Courtly Love can be seen in the literature of the time. Geoffrey Chaucer wrote of it in Canterbury Tales. The wandering minstrels and troubadours of the Middle Ages sang ballads to it. They were expected to memorize and recite lengthy poems about valor and the Code of Chivalry followed by the knights.

But if you’re looking for a good tale of chivalry and Courtly Love, and you’re not interested in trying to decipher the old English of the Middle Ages, all you have to do is search Amazon for medieval romance or medieval courtly love romance and you’ll be given pages of choice. Romance is not dead, nor is Courtly Love, but I suggest you stick to fiction. Your husband or wife will appreciate it.

Etymologists trace the word “chocolate” back to the Aztec word “xocoatl,” a bitter drink brewed from cacao beans. The Latin name for the cacao tree, Theobroma cacao, means “food of the gods.”

Cacao beans have always been valued, often used as currency in trade.  A 16^th century Aztec document reports one bean could be traded for a tamale, 100 beans could purchase a good turkey hen. The Aztecs and Mayans believed cacao beans to have magical, even divine, properties. They used them in their most sacred rituals of birth, marriage, and death. For example, Aztec sacrifice victims who were too depressed or anxious to participate in their pre-sacrifice festivities were given chocolate tinged with the blood of previous sacrifices in order to cheer them up. (I wonder how that worked out!)

It was the Europeans’ appearance in America that precipitated the addition of sugar to the drink. Legend has it that Aztec king Montezuma, mistaking Hernando Cortez for a reincarnated god, welcomed the Spanish explorer with a banquet including the sacred chocolate drink. One of the foreign invaders described it as “a bitter drink for pigs”, but it wasn’t long before they discovered that when mixed with honey or sugar the drink became quite enjoyable. By the 17^th century the popularity of chocolate had spread from Spain to the rest of Europe. It was a fashionable drink available only to the rich and was believed to have nutritious, as well as medicinal and even aphrodisiac, properties. It is rumored that Casanova was particularly fond of chocolate. It wouldn’t be until the steam engine made mass production possible in the late 1700s that the drink became available to everyone.

In 1828, a Dutch chemist devised a way to make powdered chocolate. His product became known as “Dutch cocoa” and it led the way to the creation of the solid chocolate candy we are familiar with today.  By 1868, Cadbury was selling little boxes of chocolates in England. Milk chocolate arrived on the market a few years later, thanks to another familiar company…Nestle.

Chocolate was so highly valued in America it was included in soldiers’ rations, and sometimes used in lieu of wages, during the Revolutionary War. It is now a more than $4 billion a year industry in the United States and the average American eats at least a half pound each month. Today’s chocolate comes in a wide variety of treats that often include more sugar and additives than actual cacao, and are made from the hardiest, but least flavorful beans. There is a chocolate revolution going on, though, with an ever-growing interest in high quality, hand-made chocolates and sustainable, effective cacao farming and harvesting methods. Consumers are willing to pay a little more for premium chocolate, but will never lose their taste for the less expensive Nestle or Hershey candy bars so tantalizingly displayed in every store checkout line.

As for the conversation candy hearts, they are only available for that brief window of time between New Year’s and Valentine’s Day. But don’t let that fool you; they are in high demand and they aren’t going away anytime soon. This year we celebrate the 150^th anniversary of the popular candy.

They got their start around the time of the Civil War. Daniel Chase, brother of the New England Confectionery Company (NECCO) founder, began printing messages on the wafer candies in the 1860s. They were popular at weddings, with such sayings as “Married in satin, love will not be lasting” and “Married in white, you have chosen right.” The candy hearts we recognize today began in 1902 and the sayings are updated every year.

I’ll leave you with a few interesting facts about candy hearts: NECCO makes more than 8 billion candy hearts every year. Daily production starts the end of February and goes through mid-January, weighing in at around 100,000 pounds of candy. The entire amount will sell out in 6 weeks! They are the best-selling Valentine’s Day candy…that beats even chocolate. In 2010, for the first time in 145 years, NECCO discarded all of the old sayings and replaced them with an entirely new line of expressions chosen by the public. Some of the most popular new sayings include “Tweet Me,” “Text Me,” “You Rock,” “Love Bug,” “Soul Mate,” and “Me + You.” You can still place a custom order for the old sayings, but you will have to buy a full production run…

That’s 1.7 million candy hearts! Sweet tooth, anyone?

 

The book to read is not one that thinks for you, but one that makes you think.

“To Kill A Mockingbird”

 

Harper Lee, author and Pulitzer Prize winner, has died. Like so many others, I was saddened by the announcement, not surprised because she was 89 years old and in failing health, but sad at the idea of a world without this woman’s keen sense of right and wrong, the moral and the ethical.

I won’t go into her biography here. You can get that easily by Googling her name. What I would like to comment on is the profound legacy she left behind summed up in this one simple quote from her debut novel…what would have been her only novel if she hadn’t recently published “Go Set A Watchman” in July 2015. Harper Lee’s books made you think! They opened up hearts and led to more than a few heated debates over the recent months.

I don’t know how many friends have told me they had to read Mockingbird in high school and still own a copy that they pick up periodically to re-read, me included. However, ask them about Watchman and you might get a completely different answer. Some refuse to read it because they’ve been told by others that they will be disappointed, that it wasn’t well-written and their beloved Atticus is portrayed as a racist rather than a saint. But others, like myself, loved the second book as much as the first, although for different reasons, and I encourage them to read it as a story of the changing times and a young woman’s struggle to reconcile her simplistic childhood image of her father with his true complex nature.

Yes, Atticus Finch is flawed in the sequel; but aren’t we all? I would argue even the most conservative and the most liberal view-holders actually fall somewhere in that wide middle ground. In Mockingbird Atticus defends a young black man, Tom Robinson, charged with rape. He does this not because the man is black, but because he is innocent and Atticus believes in justice. Scout, like the young Harper Lee, goes to court every day of the trial to watch Atticus argue before the jury. She idolizes her father, as so many of us do. She has a larger-than-life image of him that she carries into adulthood. In Watchman, Scout (now Jean Louise), is a young woman home from New York City to visit her father. It is the 1950s and her hometown of Maycomb, Alabama, is in the middle of the debate over the Supreme Court’s Brown vs Board of Education decision. Jean Louise is shocked to find her father is a member of a community group fighting desegregation, and he is not fighting for the rights of the black children.

Atticus Finch explains his views as paternal. He feels black people are not ready for equal rights yet, but that they will be someday with the guidance of well-meaning community members, father-figures, like himself. Of course, we now recognize this as blatant racism, but Atticus Finch was a complicated man living in an era that straddled the old belief system he grew up under and the new beliefs Jean Louise and her generation will fight to attain.

Too many people today sit back and wait to be told what to believe, what to think. I don’t know if they can’t be bothered with deciding for themselves, or if they are afraid of being told they’re wrong. If you read Watchman within its historical context and it leads you to think, even to debate others, if you walk away feeling like maybe you learned something, then the author has done what every good writer aims to do and you will be a better person for it.