Coast to Coast Book Blog

I’m a dog lover. That’s probably why I chose to read Pete Nelson’s book, I Thought You Were Dead as my second Massachusetts book. I loved The Art of Racing in the Rain by Seattle’s own rock star author Garth Stein, but had to wait a couple of years to read it since its publication date followed too closely after the death of my precious Golden Retriever, Maddy.

I loved the beginning of the book. The protagonist, Paul Gustavson, getting home late one night, fairly drunk, fumbling with his keys by the light of his front porch, as the snow falls heavily around him. His dog, Stella, greets him with “I thought you were dead!”  Paul explains that since dogs have no sense of permanence, Stella believes he’s dead whenever he’s not around. Okay, must get this off my chest early. If one believes this about dogs, one cannot also believe that dogs are as intelligent, philosophical and conversational as Stella proves to be throughout this book. I know it’s a nit-pick, but it bothered me from page one.

That said, the book is great.  At the outset, Paul is a mess. He drinks too much, his job—writing a series called, Nature for Morons— is not fulfilling, he’s been unlucky in love, and his father has just had a stroke. Could things possibly get worse?  Not really. But over the course of the novel, we get to know Paul and root for him as he works his way through a new (difficult and possibly doomed) relationship, struggles with  impotency, maneuvers through the family dynamics of dealing with aging parents and finally comes to terms with himself. I Thought You Were Dead is a coming of age sort of novel where the main character’s best friend, confessor and confidant, is a dog.

Paul and Stella have conversations about love, sex and impotency, drinking and stress. Their witty repartee had me laughing out loud. Like this conversation about drinking and impotency. Stella has just explained what everyone who has ever slept with a dog in their bedroom understands: she has been watching. From Stella’s point of view, here is Paul’s problem:  And what I’ve seen with my own two eyes, as a noninvolved observer, is first you get sad or stressed and then you don’t get a boner, or first you get happy, and then you do. And drinking makes you sad. That’s my observation. So Paul sets out to drink less and exercise more.

But the poignant parts of the story involve Paul trying to connect with his father after his stroke. Paul’s job is to communicate with his father through computer chatting because Paul lives in Northampton, Massachusetts and the rest of his family is in Minnesota. His father can hit a yes or no key on the keyboard so Paul’s sessions with his dad become like therapy — Paul does the talking and his father can only agree or disagree. Through these intimate sessions, we get inside Paul’s head and learn his deepest thoughts.  We discover how confused and frightened they both are at these different stages of life:  Paul, at the thought of losing his father and the grim trajectory of his personal life, and Paul’s father, at the thought of losing his memory and control of himself.

I Thought You Were Dead is a very good read. The writing is sharp and intelligent, sometimes funny and often moving. The themes here are universal, and exploring them through Stella’s eyes is a bonus.

What about the sense of Massachusetts that comes through the narrative? Well, it seems this story could take place in just about Anywhere, USA. However, when Paul first takes up running, we get a very thorough feel for Northampton as he runs down Main Street past a furniture store, a high-end clothing shop, a lingerie shop, a diner, several used book stores, importers of third-world knickknacks, a dozen ice cream parlors “dairy being the last vice the local Birkenstockers allowed themselves,” He passed a laundromat, the “Healing Cooperative” complete with homeopathic remedies and “a pamphlet rack by the door offering flyers for all the various local shamans and magical practitioners and caregivers.” Typically, he tells us, he would run past “petitioners getting signatures . . . girls’ soccer teams collecting donations, and New Age people offering incense or poetry, and disturbed zanies  . . .  Main Street was generally alive, seven  days a week and year-round with trust fund mendicants, panhandlers and mooches, crow babies and white Rasta kids in Jamaican black, yellow, green, and red knit caps, Goth waifs and death punks who asked for spare change to make ‘phone calls,’ and one-time, a kid squatting on the sidewalk with a sign that read, PARENTS SLAIN BY NINJAS — NEED MONEY FOR KUNG FU LESSONS!”

Now I get the picture. Here’s a fairly typical New England college town—

though Northampton’s website would beg to differ. There, the town’s mayor describes Northampton as a slice of paradise. And it looks lovely to me—the Connecticut River on one side and Mt. Holyoke on the other, home of Smith College, former home of Amelia Earhart, Calvin Coolidge and Sylvia Plath, among others.  I’d love to visit.

The Celestials by Karen Shepard takes place in the town of North Adams, Massachusetts, in 1870.  It’s the story of Julia and Calvin Sampson —she, a childless woman in her early forties grieving the recent loss of her thirteenth pregnancy, he the wealthy owner of the town’s shoe factory responsible for bringing seventy-five Chinese young men “the Celestials” to town to work in his factory.  The Celestials are strikebreakers but don’t understand that until after they arrive. Three hundred members of the largest labor union in the country, The Order of the Knights of St. Crispin “a force to be reckoned with” await the Chinese workers on the train platform as the book opens.  Surprisingly, an altercation is avoided between the two groups. Sampson has paid a large contingent of constables to keep the peace and the Chinese foreman, Charlie Sing, has proven quite capable of protecting his charges during the train ride east.

At the end of the nineteenth century, North Adams was “the largest manufacturing center in the Berkshires, boasting thirty-eight factories and two hundred cotton mills.”  According to a local historian of the time, it was “the smartest village in the smartest nation in all creation: The concentrated essential oil of Yankeedom.” But, of course, one third of the town’s citizens were foreign workers:  Irish, French Canadian and Welsh. The Chinese though, proved to be the most “foreign” of all. Shepard’s novel portrays the difficulties inherent in cultural assimilation, but especially for the Chinese.  She reminds us that the Chinese Exclusion Act effectively stopped Chinese Immigration into the United States after 1882.

Immediately I am drawn into the world of the novel. Shepard paints a clear and nuanced picture of this place in this time.  And, too, I am drawn into the unlikely love triangle which develops between Julia Sampson, Calvin Sampson and the Chinese factory foreman, Charlie Sing. Charlie is caught between two cultures from the outset.  He wears the traditional Chinese braid and embroidered silk shoes at home, but Western clothes in public and has converted to Methodism.  And, although Charlie claims to be descended from a European Duke and taken in by missionaries in California, he was more likely a son of poor peasants who made their way to California seeking a better life. And while Calvin

and Julia Sampson have never been able to have children of their own, these Chinese workers seem to bring out the paternal instincts in Sampson. He asks his wife to help organize a school for them — Sunday school to teach English, but also the teachings of the Methodist bible. Ironic, of course, that Calvin has to coax Julia into a relationship with the man who becomes her lover and sad that she will abandon her Celestial once she has the one thing she has been longing for all of her married life – a child.

The baby is born with clearly Asian features and Julia returns to North Adams (from an extended trip to visit relatives in Michigan during her pregnancy) with her new baby in her arms and proudly refuses to hear any gossip about the child’s paternity.  In fact, Julia manages to silence the gossips and convinces her husband to accept the child as his own – no small feat at any time, but astonishing in a small town in nineteenth century New England. Charlie Sing, of course, is confused and bereft but powerless to claim his paternity under the circumstances.  There is a scene late in the book where the girl goes into her father’s shop and they spend time together.  The moment is lovely, but it is brief.

Along side of the story of Julia, Calvin and Charlie is the parallel narrative of Alfred Robinson, his sister Lucy and her friend Ida – their stories of love and loss. They come to North Adams from Virginia looking for work and a better life where their lives become intertwined with the Sampsons’ in an Upstairs, Downstairs kind of way.  Alfred is a former employee of Sampson’s factory, a union man; Lucy eventually goes to work in the Sampson’s home as a servant and Ida ends up with Charlie Sing. For me, their stories are not always as compelling as the Sampsons’.  Maybe that’s just my nature –more fascinated by the lives of the rich than the lives of the poor. I found the stories of Alfred, Lucy and Ida sometimes confusing – possibly because it is the framework on which Shepard hangs much of the history embedded in the narrative.

The Celestials is a novel of a cultural prejudice and assimilation. It is also a love story and a convincing tale of life in a factory town in New England in the late nineteenth century.