Villa Coco by Andrew Sean Greer – Book

From a Google Image Search – Literary Hub

I almost didn’t read Villa Coco by Andrew Sean Greer. I thought it might be another sexual coming-of-age story. And in a way it was. But if you are in the market for making the transition from youthful folly without arriving at a stodgy adulthood, you can’t do it better than in the company of the Baronessa. Our guy is called Giovedi (Thursday) by the Baronessa. He describes himself as “as inexperienced as an Amish teenager, as carefully reared as a cosseted Pekinese, insufferable, officious, a cable knit sweater over a cable knit heart.” Clearly, he could use a bit of ego boosting.

The Baronessa hires Giovedi as an archivist, to make an inventory of her collections. But when he arrives at the villa tucked away in the Tuscan hills, she keeps diverting him to other tasks. The Villa Coco is old, and it has been awkwardly updated. The sewer backs up and someone must be called in to unclog it. The Baronessa must teach Giovedi to prune the roses. Then it’s time to harvest the olives in a quick hurry. When he reminds her that he is the archivist she says, “the rooms are not ready.” She has a cook, the cook’s husband (who has the job of killing the faina) and she has Gazelle, the driver, all like family to her. Giovedi meets the faina (marten) one night when it tries to enter his bedroom. After that he leaves his window closed. 

The Villa Coco may not be what Giovedi bargained for, but it ends up being just what he needs. The Baronessa is ninety-one, but she has goals, secret goals. Giovedi meets her old friend Oscar, her nephew Giacomo-Giacomo, the next door neighbor, Estella, and stuff happens. When there are no guests, the Baronessa will proclaim, “there has been a murder” which means Giovedi will watch a murder mystery on the downstairs TV and the Baronessa will watch on the TV in her bedroom, and they each will try to guess the murderer. The Baronessa insists that Giovedi must learn Italian. He suspects she’s up to something, but what?

Italians do not all have the hang ups about their sexuality that Americans do. Some brave souls go where their feelings take them, and the Baronessa and her friends do not expect every romance to be permanent – another life lesson for Giovedi. This novel is so much fun and may make your life views a bit looser and more adventurous. She is certainly one of those “originals” you run into in romance novels. However, this is not a romance novel. It is a love story though. See if you can guess what the Baronessa is up to and who Pullman is? If you are not too strait-laced you should find that this book is immensely enjoyable.

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

From a Google Image Search – LA Times

The topic of “tradwives” is trending which makes Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke very timely indeed. Conservatives are upset that Americans are having too few children. They’re upset that men are feeling challenged by women seeking fame and fortune. Right-wingers believe that men are being left feeling emasculated, and angry. The rest of us are upset that so many men are unwilling to entertain the idea of evolving to a mental state in which they can enjoy sharing power with women. The answer is, supposedly, to return to an earlier time when men were dominant and women submissive, when men “brought home the bacon” and women were “barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen”. 

Natalie Heller, born in rural Idaho, a Christian girl with unbending ideas about life, morality, and the immoral behavior of modern women, accepts a scholarship to Harvard as if enlightenment will win out over culture shock. Her judgmental signals alienate roommates and dorm mates who then punish her with isolation. When Natalie attracts the son of a wealthy politician, she decides that she’ll show them all, so she leaves school to get married. However, Caleb Mills turns out to be spoiled and aimless. For a while they live with his parents. Eventually Natalie takes the wheel and talks Caleb’s father, Doug, into buying them a farm and bankrolling them. Doug agrees but his support has financial limits. Five million dollars sounds like a fortune, but Caleb has no concept of what things cost. He has an image of what a farm should be like, so he buys big equipment he doesn’t need, milk cows he can’t care for properly, and farm workers to do all the farm work. He decides that he will only grow vegetables which Natalie knows will not produce the income needed to keep up with the costs of having this farm.

Natalie, facing the end of Doug’s financial support and Caleb’s rather dreamy approach to life, decides to become a “tradwife” in an online podcast. Natalie’s mom advised her “to remember to be kind.” Although this sounds like the typical advice to women, “smile, honey”, in Natalie’s case it is simply good advice. Natalie is not kind. We see her thoughts because the author lets us in on them. She judges her followers, she judges her husband, and she has no intention of being an actual “tradwife,” although she does produce plenty of offspring (Clementine, Stetson, Samuel, Jessa, Junebug, Mary, Maeve, Noah and Abel). She has two kitchens, one without modern appliances, and around a corner in an adjacent room she has all the appliances found in modern kitchens and laundry rooms. She mistakenly hires a producer for her Instagram posts who learns all her secrets and sees the two nannies Natalie has hired to keep her children from being a burden and from being neglected by a mom who has no interest in being a mom. Natalie is, to say the least, as inauthentic as most of us would suspect a modern “tradwife” to be.

The author transports Natalie and Caleb back to 1855, to a time when life required women to occupy traditional roles. Even in this setting, Natalie avoids reality by imagining a kidnapping situation and with the help of a way moms dealt with the realities of being a tradwife in the 50s, “mother’s little helper.” (pills, drugs, alcohol)

It takes a while to put together the 1855 chapters and the present-day chapter, to see how they connect, to decide if time travel is involved. It leads to a truly surprising ending. Burke has written a book that will make you think deep thoughts about the changing roles of men and women, about parenting, about authenticity, love and kindness, and about social media’s ability to prevaricate, to present the unrealistic as real. Interesting subject, interesting book.

1929 by Andrew Ross Sorkin – Book

From a Google Image Search – The Today Show

Given all the parallels between the stock market crash, the Great Depression, and today’s economy, Andrew Sorkin’s book 1929 seemed as if it would be a very timely read. So, I downloaded it in the haul of rewards books I had built up on Audible. It ended up being a good book to listen to because it’s complex but not overly academic and it’s interesting. “Andrew Sorkin is an American journalist and author. He’s a financial columnist for the New York Times and co-anchor of CNBC’s Squawk Box” (the internet tells me.)

I was most surprised to find Sorkin’s explanation of the events that relate to the Stock Market did not feature the famous names I thought were key players in the crash. His account begins with Charles Mitchell and National City Bank. Many investors had become wealthy by essentially gambling on stocks. The Stock Market at the time was the wild west in that there were few rules or limits on trading. Buying on margin (basically betting that a stock will go up in value and taking out a loan allowing the trader to trade on future profits, that may or may not happen) and short selling (an investor borrows shares of stock from their broker, then sells those stocks at the current market rate, buys them back at a lower rate, pays back the broker, and keeps the profits, if any) were some of the most speculative transactions and they were totally unregulated.

Thomas Lamont, Jr. was the acting head of J.P. Morgan on Black Thursday, 1929. He had an international footprint and helped Germany get better terms after WWII. He was attracted to Mussolini and secured a $100 million dollar loan for him in 1926 but later soured on him. Although Lamont talked his wealthy friends into putting millions back into the Stock Market, they could not stop the carnage. It was later revealed that J. P. Morgan had a preferred customer list to try to save big investors.

Charles Mitchell saw that only wealthy people “played” the stock market, so he began selling stocks to people with fewer financial resources, letting them buy on margin and even short sell stocks. Millionaires could accept loses and repay loans on stocks if they used some common sense. When stocks did well ordinary folks did well for a while, but they didn’t have any flexibility when stocks fell or did poorly. Too much credit was being extended. If it looked like market matters were putting banks in jeopardy, if the public decided that a bank would not be able to give people back their savings, then there could be a run on the bank. If the panic gets too great the bank will fail. In 1929, banks did not have enough money if all their customers wanted to cash out at the same time. The federal government did not insure deposits.

Calvin Coolidge was a Republican and US President in the years before the crash. He believed in very limited government and a totally laissez faire approach to the economy. Although Sorkin mentions Coolidge and his approach to the economy, he doesn’t place much blame on Coolidge’s policies. He stresses that opening an unregulated Stock Market to the public boosted credit debt to dangerous levels and weakened banks. Herbert Hoover was also a Republican and was President during the first four years of the Great Depression. Although Carter Glass, a Democrat, had been pushing a bill to separate traditional banks from investment banks for years, no one was listening until Steagall joined with Glass and FDR was the President. The Glass – Steagall law passed in 1933. 

Sorkin does not mention political parties. He credits the actions of Charles Mitchell, and Thomas Lamont, Jr, but he doesn’t treat them harshly. He limits his analysis to the years just before 1929 and to some of the aftereffects on key players. Winston Churchill ended up losing his shirt in the Stock Market, but a contemporary bailed him out. However, this is not Dorothea Lange’s views of the Great Depression nor does Sorkin sing the praises of FDR.  Still, well worth a listen.  

The Women by Kristin Hannah – Book

From a Google Image Search – Pan Macmillan

“There were no women in Vietnam.” When Frankie McGrath comes home from two years of nursing soldiers wounded in Vietnam, she is not thanked for her services. Her father doesn’t add her photo to his wall of heroes. Of course, coming home from Vietnam was nothing like coming home from WWII. America’s role in the war was hotly contested at home. Because Americans felt it was not our war, some of their anti-war emotions were displaced onto our soldiers who had few choices and usually could not avoid being sent off to the war.

Kristin Hannah’s account of the war and the roles of women in it is not a dainty matter. She did not withhold the gore or the emotional turmoil army nurses experienced in Vietnam. Her book may be fictional, but that allows her to include us in the devastation as we identify with the characters in her book. 

Frankie’s much beloved brother joined the Navy but was killed in action almost as soon as he arrived in-country. Helicopters played a huge role in the Vietnam War, both taking soldiers in and out of combat and in and out of medical camps, some of them MASH units, located near the front lines of the battle. Frankie’s decision to join the army to become a nurse was motivated by a desire to please her father, but also it was for Findley, her brother.

The soldiers Frankie treats gave proof of the fragility of human bodies when confronted with weapons of war. Their wounds are terrible. Experience eventually replaced her nerves with skill. She earns a place as an excellent surgical nurse, and she finds friends who will have her back for life.

However, Frankie is young and soldiers flirt, especially helicopter pilots. Frankie falls in love and despairs when she learns her sweetheart is dead. And, what Frankie faces when she gets home does not meet any of her expectations. Finally, after PTSD, addiction, and other heartaches we leave Frankie in Washington, DC at a ceremony dedicating the wall honoring the veterans who died in Vietnam, and a ceremony honoring the nurses and doctors and the soldiers and sailors who didn’t die in Vietnam. 

I have left out many important events from this story because I recommend that you read the book and I don’t want to spoil it. In a meaningful coincidence I finished reading The Women by Kristin Hannah about the women who served in Vietnam on our designated Memorial Day.

Platform Decay by Martha Wells – Book

From a Google Image Search – Space

Our hero in Platform Decay by Martha Wells, as with all the Murderbot Diary books, used to be a murderbot. He found a way to override his governor switch because he found killing distasteful and lacking as a nuanced approach to solving problems arising between corporations or corporations and humans in space. With each entry into the diary, murderbot becomes more organic and less of a bot. Eventually he was adopted by Dr. Mensa and the Preservation colony. He is on a mission to bring two endangered citizens with close personal ties to Dr. Mensa home. 

Our murderbot is now a SecUnit, a security unit, with skills that make him the perfect one to mount a rescue mission to a decaying platform surrounding a dead planet. When he arrives at the designated platform, he learns that there are a few more people who need to be rescued, but he doesn’t totally trust the woman who is seeking his help. 

Once again, his old enemy, the powerful BE corporation is involved and the story becomes an action-packed race through well-kept parts of the platform that rings the planet and old, abandoned parts of the platform. Will SecUnit get everyone out safely this time? It’s a tense situation. It helps that SecUnit can turn off surveillance cameras or wipe them after the fact. It helps that he has pockets full of drones to use as scouts. 

When SecUnit is stressed, he watches old movie episodes. He especially loves Sanctuary Moon, but he has expanded his internal library. I use the Murderbot Diaries in the same way that SecUnit uses Sanctuary Moon. The books are a brief adrenalin rush that refreshes because they are fictional. Long live our increasingly human Murderbot. 

The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett-Book

From a Google Image Search – Penguin Random House

The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett started in an old folks’ home with a killer cat named Pancakes, and I almost quit reading. But, although this was a story of heartbreak and grief, it was also a story about how taking risks might mitigate grief or at least give a person the tools to handle life’s next blows. 

The story ended up being a kind of a romp. PJ and Ivy lost their oldest daughter, Kate, on prom night. PJ deals with the loss by drinking, a lot. Ivy divorces him and moves in with a mutual friend, Fred. Ivy, in other words, moves on. Fred and Ivy, seeing how PJ is flailing and failing, take care of him as a family member. When Fred and Ivy announce that they are going to Alaska and that they will be unreachable by phone or text for a while, it appears that PJ might not make it. Then he sees an online post about a death in Tucson, Arizona of the husband of a woman he knew in school. She lives in the Tender Hearts community. He falls in love. It’s fate. He decides to travel to Tender Hearts. Should he take his old beaten-up ride?

However, fate has another path in mind for PJ. Luna and Ollie are headed for foster care because of parental stupidity (murder and suicide). Pancakes had a hand in this, maybe. Their father was PJ’s estranged brother. These children are not happy to accept PJ, Luna especially, but their only other option is foster care. Luna believes that her real father is a movie star who used to go to her mother’s high school. 

What was a rather iffy situation becomes tolerable for everyone when PJ decides that they will all go on a road trip to find Luna’s movie star and ask him to complete a paternity test. Meanwhile they can also stop by Tucson to meet PJ’s intended at the Tender Hearts Senior Community. PJ’s grown daughter, Sophie, recently fired from her job, reluctantly decides to go with them. Hartnett’s novel tells the story of their journey. They take Pancakes along and leave a small trail of deaths behind them. We learn that Pancakes doesn’t kill indiscriminately. 

Once we lose someone we love, the grief never leaves us, but Hartnett’s story gives hope that there is life after loss, even if fate has to beat us over the head and send us off on a wacky road trip to figure it out. There’s a lot more to this journey, but, of course, I won’t tell you.

Cal Hooper Trilogy by Tana French – Books

From a Google Image Search – Amazon

I’m still enjoying the booty of rewards from Audible. I listened to the Tana French Cal Hooper books, The Searcher, The Hunter, and The Keeper almost without coming up for air. The books are read by Roger Clark who easily switches from an Irish accent to an American accent. Cal Hooper, an ex-cop from Chicago retires to the small village of Ardna Kelty expecting to be surrounded by the beauty of the land and getting in some fishing. He doesn’t have much time to get tired of too much peace and quiet though. 

In The Searcher, Cal finds himself being stalked by a wild creature, which eventually reveals itself to be a very paranoid 11-year-old boy with a furtive manner, hand-me-down clothes and a shaved head. What could turn a modern child into the mess that is Trey Reddy? As it turns out, a small Irish village where families have long histories is not as peaceful a place as you might expect. Trey wants to know about her brother Brendan. (Cal discovers that Trey is a girl) She needs to know what became of her brother. She knows that there is someone or perhaps several someone-s who know what happened to Brendan, but the locals can keep secrets, especially the deepest, darkest secrets. It’s not all gothic drama. Cal is settling in, getting to know his neighbors, planting vegetables, and tempting Trey to do some carpentry. He tries to avoid the widow they are trying to fix him up with, but when he meets Laina, he immediately sees her excellent qualities.  Does Trey eventually get her answers? You know I can’t tell.

When I learned there were three Cal Hooper books (a trilogy) I downloaded the other two and the “lost weekend” happened, pleasantly lost though. In The Hunter, Trey’s father comes back from London, and he is a man with a plan. John Reddy has always been a dreamer (with no moral boundaries). His wife, Trey’s mom, Sheila seems more anxious than pleased. Johnny tells guys he knows down the pub that a man he met in London is related to the Feeny’s in Ardna Kelty. The man’s great-grandmother told him that there was gold buried along a path through the mountains in Ardna Kelty made by an old stream that ran into the river. This begins a village gold rush. Johnny got all his friends to invest in a fake gold trail that would inspire the investor to look for the real buried gold. Trey is happy to have her dad back, but she doesn’t put her trust in him. Laina, Cal, and Trey have settled into a peaceful life. However, Cal is finding that peace in Ardna Kelty has little permanence. Is there gold in them thar hills? Read and find out.

Some quiet years must have ensued because in the next book, The Keeper, Trey is sixteen, and although she will always be socially different, she has made friends and it’s looking like she may be headed for a more intimate relationship. When Rachel, a young woman from the village who is about to marry the son of a successful, but rather overbearing local developer, comes to talk to Laina about her cat (and her life), Laina doesn’t want to involve herself in Rachel’s decision-making, so she sends her off without any satisfying bits of wisdom. Soon after, Rachel is found dead by what looks like suicide-by-drowning. Plenty of small-town speculation goes into deciding who’s to blame. Laina, as supposedly the last to see Rachel is devastated and it doesn’t help that most of the villagers blame her for Rachel’s death also.  (Side question: Can an old woman who sits all day in a gloomy parlor really have such influential behind-the-scenes power?) Cal can’t get through to Laina, and he is grieving the loss of their relationship. Mart, Cal’s neighbor and friend with an irascible personality that may make you laugh out loud, also ends up dead. Is there any way to stop a man determined to get his way at all costs without ruining the lives of innocents in the town? Better call Cal. 

So, you might want to explore the dark undercurrents in that small village in Ireland whose beauty and peaceful appearance is tempting you to throw over your old life and begin a new one. Your in-depth research could start with Tana French’s, Cal Hooper trilogy. But be prepared to lose track of time and be unavailable for socializing due to a pleasurable excursion into the dastardly deeds done in gorgeous, isolated places, and to meet a new set of memorable characters..

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford – Book

From a Google Image Search – Amazon

I had many Audible credits so one of the books I downloaded was about the Mongols, Genghis Khan, and Kublai Khan. There are many books on this subject. The one I listened to was written by Jack Weatherford, with the title, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. The Mongols rose to power under Genghis Khan in the 12th and 13th centuries. His beginnings were not auspicious, but his abilities soon made him a leader. 

The Mongols were herders of horses who worshipped the sky which loomed over the steppes and brought all the weather conditions that must be heeded when you live a nomadic life in homes that can be assembled and disassembled. Like people everywhere Mongols were often jealous of their siblings or neighbors, although they met in kurultai to resolve differences and make decisions.Genghis (which the reader pronounced as “jenghis”) was eventually able to inspire loyalty in most of the Mongol men. They raided into China and came back with beautiful textiles, items fashioned from gold, jewelry, and many luxuries. The spoils of war were distributed to all by Genghis Khan. 

When Genghis was in power the Mongols used their superior war tactics including catapults, trebuchets, and the element of surprise to move into Russia, the Baltics, India, and further into China. The goods they spread from one culture to another brought about “the making of the modern world.”

After Genghis Khan died the Mongols lost their mojo for a while as the power went to men who were too flawed to be good leaders. Eventually Genghis Khan’s grandson, Kublai Khan created another golden age for the Mongols.

The author attributes his facts to the “secret histories” which, although found, proved difficult to translate. The Mongolian alphabet did not use discreet letters for each sound. The Mongols had their days and what days they were. But farming eventually won out over herding as cities proliferated. So, although Mongol culture still exists, the Mongols may have to wait for another age to come back into power. We seem to be in the process of helping to depopulate the world, which could make nomadic life popular once again. It was not an easy life though, especially for women.

Weatherford’s book reinforces the fictional history in Ken Follett’s newest book, Circle of Days. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World might be a great book to listen to on a long family trip or a lazy summer by the sea while you worship the great blue sky. 

Upon consideration, I need to say that the Mongols helped make modern life by accident, by pulling one culture into another often accompanied by violence, terror, and death. Sadly, powerful men have often been driven to conquest for one reason or another. Genghis Khan killed thousands of people, even though some conquered people became allies. He created an excellent war machine and he did not have a game over button.

Vigil by George Saunders – Book

Vigil by George Saunders is full of death and ghosts, at least these eternal figures, many continuing to inhabit the site of their death and only able to see others who have died, seem to be ghosts. Some ghosts can travel, can “refresh” themselves. If they agree to perform a task assigned by God and become “elevated” they have many powers, but they must give up who they were in life. 

Jill ‘Doll” Blaine is elevated, and she has been assigned the task of comforting people just before they die. She has comforted almost 340 people, but K. J. Boone looks to be the most difficult assignment she has had. Plus, she is suddenly wondering whether she wants to be elevated or not because she misses being Jill. Other ghosts who are not elevated remember their lives. She was very young when she got blown up by accident (when she turned the key in her husband’s car).

Of course, the whole ghost thing is just a conceit for some high-level philosophical thinking. K. J. Boone rose from humble beginnings to become a wealthy and powerful man. He and his wife Vivian, daughter Julie, traveled extensively when he became the owner of a large gas and oil company. It took skills to locate the best places to find oil and gas, to arrange to have it brought to the surface, and to refine and deliver it. Of course, he knew that people came to believe that pollution from burning fossil fuels was harming life on the planet. But he believed that oil and gas offered the best energy sources and that not using these fuels would cost him and his rivals profits. So what if he faked some science to convince the peons that burning fossil fuels had nothing to do with climate change and that men were too puny to affect nature on such a grand scale.

Now he lay dying and here was this young lady, this nobody, in her pink blouse, beige skirt and black shoes trying to get him to admit that he has been selfish, greedy, and mean, and that he had hurt the earth and everyone on it with his lies. Then there was that pesky Frenchman, the one who invented the engine that jump-started the Industrial Revolution, who kept popping in and out of his bedroom, who also wanted him to confess and admit that he was wrong to have inverted the scientific method. The ‘Mel’s came and went, toadies and rivals, long dead, who kept spawning new ‘Mel’s in unconventional ways. 

There was a wedding going on next door in this upscale neighborhood and when the stench of the dying man’s sins became too great Jill would observe the party or even mingle unseen with the guests. This is how she became homesick for simple things she had enjoyed like lipstick. This is how she started to wonder if she had made the right choice to be elevated. This is when she begins to see that perhaps how people turn out is inevitable because of their birth and the events in their life. The world was certainly declining from its former beauty and the weather offered little certainly that houses would stand or there would be enough to eat. But what good did it do to try to get Mr. Boone to change his mind as he lay dying? 

Plenty to think about in Vigil by George Saunders. (I did not realize that we reside in the same city, just a side observation.) Did I like the book as well as Lincoln in the Bardo? That story was so poignant, and so clever with all the ‘ibids’ and ‘opcit’s. We feel no grief for the dying K. J. Boone. We may feel some for Jill ‘Doll’ Blaine, but that’s not the point of the story. Perhaps placing blame for climate change is not important unless we can change the minds of powerful people who are living and can still do something about saving the tiny planet where we all live. 

NB 

My cousin William (Bill) Goodenough, now deceased, wrote a book that offered fake evidence intended to disprove climate change, so I was well prepared for Boone’s backwards science. (The Three Concepts of Climate Change: Is AGW Politics or Science?) If you begin with your conclusions (although you call these statements your hypotheses) and then set out to collect evidence that backs up your conclusions and ignores evidence that negates your conclusions, that is cheating. That isn’t science at all. It’s propaganda.

Nobody’s Girl by Virginia Roberts Giuffre – Book

From a Google Image Search – CBS

Kudos to Virginia Giuffre for writing about this very tough subject; a subject you are encouraged to keep hidden. A woman who is sexually abused, beginning at a very young age (or any age) often believes that she is responsible for what men did to her, that she somehow caused these things to happen. She bears twin burdens of both grief and shame. Often abused girls and women are threatened with repercussions if they reveal these “secrets.” Born Virginia Roberts, Giuffre writes about sexual abuse by her father and a friend of her father; abuse ignored by her mother. She becomes Nobody’s Girl, which is the title of her memoir and exposé of the sexual trafficking of Jeffrey Epstein and his partner-in-crime, Ghislaine Maxwell.

Roberts was working in the spa at Mar-a-Lago when she was recruited by Epstein and Maxwell. What began as a massage session quickly turned into what is commonly known as “a happy ending.” Happy perhaps, but not for all participants. People ask Giuffre why she kept coming back to the pink house in Palm Beach at 358 El Brillo Way. As she describes it, she came back because she was experiencing some kind of Stockholm syndrome, where the consequences of leaving loomed in her mind as more fearful than the consequences of staying. Epstein and Maxwell were criminals, involved in, apparently, more than one criminal activity so they used threats to keep their victims from revealing their secrets. If you were a good girl, you were praised and treated well. If noncompliant, you were chastised and ostracized. 

Epstein was worth millions, earned for dubious services to some very famous people, most from the world of politics. He had a compound in New Mexico, an expensive property in Manhattan (done up in black and red), and the island visited by men for unrevealed reasons, in most cases. Virginia would travel with the pair to parties in these places and eventually she would meet some of the famous men and be ordered to have sex with them. She had a firm belief that if she tried to leave, she would not be allowed to, considering the intimate knowledge she had of famous men (and a few women) who liked sex with young women (women who were often girls). Jeffrey would often tell his visitors that marriage with very young women was an accepted custom in many places around the world.

Eventually Virginia reminded Jeffrey and Ghislaine that they promised to help her get genuine credentials as a masseuse. They sent her to a school in Thailand to study. Virginia might have already planned to never return to America, but she met and fell in love with Robbie Giuffre. They married in a temple, and he took her to his home in Australia. For a while Virginia experienced some calm moments until her new address was discovered by Jeffrey and Ghislaine. By this time the pair were being tried in US courts for sex trafficking and other victims were being asked to testify. Guiffre felt that she had to tell what she knew. She doesn’t name all the famous men who abused her except for the former prince, Andrew and a famous scientist. She recognized faces but did not know their names until the names were later attached to the pictures.

Some people believe Virginia’s (Jenna’s) story. Some place blame on her for her involvement in the situation. Women who have been abused do not. They understand the skills of those who dominate and the fear they engender in their victims. When Giuffre finishes her book, she is still alive. Afterward she supposedly committed suicide. We know that Jenna attempted suicide because she writes about it, but she later vows in print that she will never do that again. She says that if there is a suicide, then we would know that she had been murdered. She is survived by her mother, her father, her husband, and their three children. She is also survived by Ghislaine Maxwell.

Jeffrey Epstein’s reach has shocked us all. He knew so many of the powerful people of our time. He intimated that he had videos of the famous men and the young girls he trafficked (usually from overseas) and that he could destroy their lives if he pleased. That could certainly explain how he came to be worth millions. Although extortion may explain some of his wealth, the favors he did in secret for people in power also were well paid. Was it the zeitgeist of the times to be invited to his parties and partake of forbidden pleasures. The truth is unraveling, but we may never know everything. It was very brave of Virgina Roberts Giuffre to write this book, and it did take a toll on her health, her mental state, and her family.