Call me Zelda by Erika Robuck- 2011 - 339 pages

Call me Zelda by Erika Robuck- 2011 - 339 pages

This is sixth work of historical fiction by Erika Robuck I have so far read. She has published seven novels.

My first five  were 

The Invisible Woman - 2021 - set largely in occupied France during World War Two

Sisters of Night and Fog -2022.  Set also largely in France during WW Two

Fallen Beauty - 2014. Set in upstate New York in the 1920s and 1930s - focusing in part on the poet Edna Saint Vincent Millay

Receive Me Falling. - 2009- Set mostly on the Sugar Cane Plantations on the Caribbean Island of Natal.  Shifting from the 1830s to the 1990s.

Hemingway’s Girl - 2012. - focusing mostly on his Key West Years 

Zelda Fitzgerald 

Born: July 24, 1900, Montgomery, Alabama

Died: March 10, 1948 - Asheville, North Carolina

Spouse: F. Scott Fitzgerald (m. 1920–1940)

The Great Gatsby - 1925

Call me Zelda is narrated by Anna, who first meets Zelda Fitzgerald while working as a nurse in a psychiatric hospital.  Anna is in her late twenties,made a widow by World War One. She lost her daughter when she was five, her only child, to pneumonia.  The focus of the book is on her very long involvement with Zelda and her husband as well as developments in Anna’s own life.

There is a lot of space devoted to Zelda’s time in psychiatry hospitals, her diaries and her paintings.  We get a good luck at progressive mental healthcare in the 1920s and early 1930s.  Zelda’s husband comes across as a serious alcoholic whose behavior toward Zelda fluctuates from loving to abusive.

There are long extracts from fictional diaries of Zelda.  We follow Anna through her own romances and eventual happy marriage.

“Erika Robuck is the national bestselling author of The Invisible Woman, Hemingway’s Girl, Call Me Zelda, Fallen Beauty, The House of Hawthorne, and Receive Me Falling. She is a contributor to the anthology Grand Central: Postwar Stories of Love and Reunion, and to the Writer’s Digest Essay Collection, Author in Progress 

In 2014, Robuck was named Annapolis’ Author of the Year, and she resides there with her husband, three sons, and a spunky miniature schnauzer.” From Erikarobuck.com

I hope to read her The House of Hawthorne soon

Mel Ulm

 

Hemingway’s Girl by Erika Robuck - A Novel - 2012- 338 Pages

 

Hemingway’s Girl by Erika Robuck - A Novel - 2012- 338 Pages

Hemingway’s Girl, a marvelous work of historical fiction, is set in The Florida Keys and Bimini from 1935 to 1961

This is fifth work by Erika Robert I have so far read.

My first four were 

The Invisible Woman - 2021 - set largely in occupied France during World War Two

Sisters of Night and Fog -2022.  Set also largely in France during WW Two

Fallen Beauty - 2014. Set in upstate New York in the 1920s and 1930s - focusing in part on the poet Edna Saint Vincent Millay

Receive Me Falling. - 2009- Set mostly on the Sugar Cane Plantations on the Caribbean Island of Natal.  Shifting from the 1830s to the 1990s.

Ernest Hemingway (1899 to 1961) won The Nobel Prize in 1954.  He was married to Pauline Pfieffer from 1927 to 1940, she has a central role in Hemingway’s Girl. In the 1930s he lived mostly in Key West, where his fame and powerful personality made him into a local celebrity  and a tourist attraction.  

Key West in 1935 was in the Middle of

the impact of The Great Depression, a ten year down turn in America. Jobs were very hard to get.  Maribelle is about 16 when we meet her.  Her father was very recently killed on his fishing boat.  Her mother was Cuban.  Her mother Eva is emotionally distraught.  Maribelle supports her and her two much younger sisters through work as a waitress and other various jobs.

Through a contact she gets a job as a maid for the Hemingway family.  There is also a cook and a governess for two young sons.  Mrs Hemingway is very much in charge as well as being quite possessive of her husband.

Hemingway, portrayed as ultra-macho, invites her to go to Sloppy Joe’s Bar with him.  She begins to become infatuted.  Her mother warns her.  Much of the story line follows Maribella’s developing relationship with him, his wife, and others in the Hemingway household.

In the mean time she meets a World War One Veteran, Gavin, working on the highway linking the Keys. He falls in love with her.  This relationship is kind of in competition with the one with Hemingway.

There are exciting developments in every chapter.  The depiction of the 1935 Hurricane that killed thousands is very powerful.  Anyone who ever lived through a powerful tropical storm will be mesmerized, as I was.  

There is a fishing trip to Bimini which was a lot of fun to read about.  There are Prize fights, lots of heavy drinking, exciting fishing episodes, great food, unexpected romances and much more.  Key West in the 1930s is vividly brought to life.

Hemingway’s Girl is a fast moving work.  The charaters are very brought to life..  Hemingway readers will have their own reaction to his depiction.

There is great emotional depth in Hemingway’s Girl.

Erika Robuck is the national bestselling author of The Invisible Woman, Hemingway’s Girl, Call Me Zelda, Fallen Beauty, The House of Hawthorne, and Receive Me Falling. She is also a contributor to the anthology Grand Central: Postwar Stories of Love and Reunion, and to the Writer’s Digest essay collection Author in Progress. In 2014, Robuck was named Annapolis’ Author of the Year, and she resides there with her husband and three sons.

I hope to read her The House of Hawthorne in June.

Mel Ulm

Fallen Beauty by Erika Robuck - 2014 - A Novel - 386 Pages

Fallen Beauty by Erika Robuck - 2014 - A Novel

Earlier this month I read Sisters of Night and Fog by Erika Robuck.  Set largely in Europe during World War Two, it centers on the resitance activities of young English woman in recruited into The Special Operations Executive to fight The Nazis in France and an American woman with a French husband who helps downed fliers escape.  They both end up in Sisters of Night and Fog by Erika Robuck - 2022 - A WW Two Novel - 2022

Based upon the experiences of renowned WWII SOE agents Violette Szabo and Virginia d’Albert, Sisters of the Night and Fog is set mostly in London, France and Germany during World War Two.  Virginia is an American, from Florida, who against her family’s wishes elects to stay in Nazi occupied France.  Events draw her into the resistance, she helps downed fliers get out of France, at great risk to herself and her husband.  She loses her comfortable life as rationing gets worse. The search for food becomes never ending.

Violette is a 19 year old English woman, a crack shot and desperate to fight the Nazis any way she can.  She ends up being recruited into the Special Operations Executive and trained for clandestine attacks on the Germans in France.  The training is very tough but Viollétte ends up being dropped by parachute into Occupied France.

The two women are both captured and sent to the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp.

There are lots of minor characters ranging 

from Nazis, downed Fliers, fellow resistance fighters and  family members of the women.  All are marvelously done.  The descriptions of Europe are very well done.

I was very glad when i was able to acquire her novel Fallen Beauty on sale as a Kindle.  Set in a small town in upstate New York, it centers on the Pulitzer Prize winning poet Edna Saint Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 Rockland Maine to 

October 19, 1950 Austerlitz, NY. 1923 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry) and a woman who becomes her seamstress and close friend.  The novel begins in 1928.

Laura Kelly is an unwed mother in a time and place where this is a terrible scandal.  Millay, living on a nearby fabulous estate maintains a live of sensual and sexual indulgence, married to a completely devoted man, who seeks new partners to inspire 

the passions she needs to write.  She is on a constant emotional roller coaster.  Laura runs a seamstress shop, mostly just barely getting by, taking care of her beloved daughter Gabriel. In the minds of those in her town, she is a “Fallen Beauty”.

Through an intricate  series of happenstances Lilly is engaged to make the gowns Millay will wear on her nationwide tours.  They become close in a strange way. Gabriel calls Millay “The Witch Lady”. There are dramatic connections of all sorts complicating relationships.

Millay is potrayed very much as a demanding diva, taking as her near divine right to be worshipped. I concede at times she seemed overwrought.  

For Lilly I enjoyed and was emotionally gratified by her close of narrative life.

I enjoyed Fallen Beauties a lot.  The Kindle edition contains a bibliography on Millay, a list of Robuck’s favorite of her poems and an interview.

Robuck has five other works of historical fiction.  I hope to read them all.

Mel Ulm