The Reason for Flowers

If you think about all the ways flowers are in our lives, you’ll find they’re everywhere. That’s what Stephen Buchmann covers in “The Reason for Flowers,” a pleasant, well-written read. One of the main reasons I enjoy natural history writing is to learn, and there is a lot to be learned here. A well-published researcher, Buchmann writes with the organizational precision of a scientist, and the editing breaks down the chapters into linked nuggets. Due to this polished style, it makes for a long read; some might be better served if this were an audiobook – my only complaint. The author travels all over the world, and has a global audience in mind. As he lives and works in Arizona, many of his anecdotes come from there.

The Truth According to Us

The WPA writers’ project sounds like a good gig, even for a spoiled senator’s daughter in West Virginia of 1938. Board with a family in a new place, interview people, see the sights, write about it and get paid to do so. Macedonia, West Virginia is this new place, a small town in the Depression, between the World Wars, with old families, ice cream, and a sock factory. This senator’s daughter is Layla Beck, who stays with the Romeyn family on Academy Street. The father, or grandfather, was the “beloved” president of the textile mill when he was still alive, but in 1938 no one in the family works there. Felix, the father of twelve-year old Willa and her younger sister Bird, is often away. It doesn’t take long to work out that Felix is a bootlegger, in a dry town. His charm and subtle force over others lets him get whatever he wants, with a grin. He is sneaky and has a creepy habit of moving very quickly and silently; he is a monster under the surface. His sister Jottie, the girls’ aunt, raises the girls in a pretty full house. Twin aunts Mae and Minerva (I couldn’t help but think of The Simpsons) stay there during the week, but  go back to their husbands on the weekends. Somehow the family also has at least one farm that they run, in addition to running the household, but these feature little in “The Truth According to Us.”