Flying in from Stateside

Plenty of books arriving here and many as the result of e mails asking if I'd be interested to see them, and three of US origin in the last few days. At this point please can I say I am terribly behind with my thank you emails for books received and can I send my apologies to anyone who has sent a book recently and not heard from me. I'm sure it's arrived, we couldn't see Jim's head for the stack yesterday but it still feels very rude and impolite not to acknowledge.
We've been Tinker visiting daily (he is father of dgr not the dog, for all those who have been very kindly enquiring and I do agree, it can be very odd suddenly falling into the dovegreyreader world as many have done this week) and then I get home and seem to fall asleep. The Tinker's had a few ups and downs this week, we still await the pacemaker and can only assume they are building a special go-faster one perhaps with a remote control etc. Needless to say he's chipper and being a very patient patient whilst also thanking Sony for the invention of his beloved e reader which is making day and night Dickens reading possible, currently Oliver Twist. We even did a clever exchange yesterday, my fully-charged one for his flat-as-a-pancake one so that I could bring it home to recharge.
But back to book arrivals and who knows where that 'thank you so much for contacting me...yes please' reply leads and there was one book I was ecstatic to receive, a proof copy of Libby Cone's War on the Margins, the Nazi occupation of Jersey and the subsequent Jewish persecution, to be published by Duckworth in July. Written about here last year as a result of one of those 'would you be interested...yes please' e mail exchanges, noticed by publishers and soon to be on the shelves here in the UK. I wish Libby so much success with this book, it's been very exciting to follow the progress and my e mails back to Libby just got bigger in font and brasher in colour as events unfolded so to hold the book is a joy, more big-brash-font emails ensued.
Next an absolutely enormous 4lb tome arrived air mail from New York, An American Experience - Adeline Moses Loeb (1876-1953) and Her Early Jewish Ancestors.
I'd said yes to this for the same simple reason that I'd said yes to Libby's book, I never say no to anything about Jewish history. My recent experience of reading Plumes by Sarah Abrevaya Stein was enough confirmation if it were needed that for me, Jewish history and heritage is an endlessly fascinating and informative reading subject. Who'd have thought ostriches could be so interesting after all.
It was no hardship to prop the 4lb book on a pillow and browse the life and history of eight generations of this incredible family through the eyes of the descendants, of whom there are  hundreds. The family tree enclosed is vast and clearly a huge amount of research has taken place to document and preserve this family's history; life in the South at the time of the Civil War and thence to New York. All peppered with memories and recollections of day to day events, whilst there, overseeing everything, the most stunning portrait of Adeline painted by the English artist G.L.Brockhurst (1890-1978). Part of Augustus John's circle and famous in his day for portraits of Wallis Simpson, Marlene Dietrich and Merle Oberon, Gerald Brockhurst's forte seems to have been the portraiture of women, the Oxford DNB describing him as 'a portraitist of rare power and vision.'
Rarely does a portrait seem to say quite so much with the eyes and the demeanour, but as the book slid out of the package I was completely intrigued because there is something utterly transfixing about Adeline's direct gaze and expressive eyes that drew me in and kept me there. The deportment suggestive of grace and propriety, the eyes reflecting an innate sympathy and understanding.
If a portrait ever has the power to say 'please listen to what I have to tell you' I think this one does. I doubt an artist could paint such qualities if they weren't somehow radiating from the subject and as I browsed this book I knew I was holding a fitting legacy to a family steeped in pride for its country and heritage, Adeline would doubtless have been delighted.
Adeline Moses Loeb's portrait now hangs on the third floor of the Fraunces Tavern Museum at 54 Pearl Street, close to Wall Street in lower Manhattan.
Did I know it was here that General George Washington bade a tearful farewell to his officers back in 1783 after the British had left the city?
Well no I did not, but I discover this was our final trouncing at the end of the American Revolution. I see we're lending the museum one of our Magna Cartas later this year so all must be forgiven.
The next parcel held the lives of yet another American family, this time the Carnegies, Songs of Three Islands A Memoir, by Millicent Monks, a personal tale of motherhood and mental illness in an iconic American family. I rarely say no to books about childhood, motherhood or mental illness either, all such great levellers no matter the wealth and status of the subjects, always revealing a new perspective to explore and I know little if nothing about Family Carnegie beyond the existence of the Hall. I have much to discover with this book.
Never a very dull moment as they say.