Alana Cash

Only after I finished reading the book, did I discover that Alana Cash’s Jolie Is Somewhere is described on the Amazon website as “Madame Budska Book 2,” proving, I suppose, that the book works equally well as a standalone novel. I cannot be certain that there are no references to the first Madame Budska book, Saints in the Shadows, but if so they are subtle enough not to be distracting to first-time readers of the series.

Madame Budska, better known to her young friends as Lina Sandor, the psychic who comes into the coffee shop to do free readings for staff and customer, is a rather mysterious woman. As it turns out, Lina also works her “magic” on a number of wealthy, prestigious clients (as Madame Budska) who have come to depend upon her input when time to make key decisions in their lives. Even these clients, though, do not pay Lina in the normal sense of the word, instead tipping her enough in cash and gifts to have made her a wealthy woman many times over. Best of all, Lina Sandor is a kind woman, someone always willing to help those struggling to survive in a world that is proving to be a little too much for them to handle on their own.

Jolie is one of those people. She is an Oklahoma girl who came to New York on her own to start what she hopes is going to be an exciting new life. She knows no one in the city, and she is struggling to make enough money to do much more than survive from month to month. But her troubles really begin on the night that she is sexually assaulted in a dark alley by the New York policeman she met just that evening. Jolie has no idea the man is a cop; what she does know is that if she does not defend herself, something terrible is about to happen to her. Instinctively, she uses her spike heels to fight back, only to learn later that she is being charged with assaulting a city policeman.

Remanded to Rikers Island jail to await trial, Jolie somehow gets lost in the system. By the time she is released, there are four people she wants to get even with: the roommate who failed to speak out in her defense, the cop who made up the story that got her arrested, the inmate who destroyed her nose by smashing it into a concrete wall, and the well-paid lawyer who never showed up to defend her. Now released back onto the streets of the city with no place to go, Jolie does not consider herself a lucky person. But that all changes on the night she sleeps in a coffee shop dumpster.

Jolie Is Somewhere is a story about moving on and letting go of the past so that something good can be made of the future. But that is easier said than done, especially for someone like Jolie who so strongly feels betrayed not only by those who aggressively wronged her, but also by those who failed to protect her. This small-town girl is ready to take care of herself now, but first she has some unfinished business to attend to – unless someone can save her from herself.

Jolie Is Somewhere has a message that we would all be wise to consider, one that would ease the burdens we all insist on carrying around for way too long. Madame Budska is my hero.… (mehr)

The years of America’s Great Depression were particularly tough ones for a young woman to find herself trapped inside an abusive marriage. The struggle for family survival often placed unbearable stress on relationships that may have thrived in better times, but most women of that period could do little but endure the hand dealt them. Nineteen-year-old Annie Huckaby, the heroine of Alana Cash’s Tom’s Wife, is one of those women. Barely literate, Annie cannot imagine how she might provide for herself and her young son if she were to flee her marriage. Her mother offers little comfort and has reminded Annie that “a good woman don’t go off on her husband.” So Annie will do her best to be a good wife to Tom Huckaby.

That Tom comes home only on weekends from his coalmine job is one of the things that make Annie’s life bearable. The rest of the week, she is happy enough, though still lonely, to have only her young son to worry over as she goes about her tasks caring for the little Huckaby farm. Only as the weekend approaches, does her mood begin to darken. Annie is grateful, too, for her friend Twila, a much worldlier young neighbor woman who pays her regular visits from a nearby farm. Twila even manages to introduce Annie to the experiences of smoking and drinking moonshine, two indulgences she would probably have been too timid to try on her own.

Annie’s life, however, had been somewhat complicated by the two males who entered it almost together: her baby and the traveling salesman from New York who happened by just as Annie was about to deliver the boy on her own. Jake Stern is such a contrast to her rough-edged husband that Annie often fantasizes about a new life with Jake even though she sees him only every few months when he passes through the area selling the latest batch of gadgets he has carried down from New York. Annie considers herself a good woman – and, more than anything, she wants to do the right thing by Tom – but she is finding it harder and harder to ignore her feelings for Jake Stern.

Alana Cash has created a cast of memorable, and believable, characters through which she vividly illustrates the Great Depression’s impact on rural America. Annie, Tom, Jake, and Twila are complicated human beings, and that is what makes them real. Tom may be the book’s “bad guy,” but there are moments during which his compassion is own display; Annie is the heroine of the piece, but she is sorely tempted to desert her husband; Jake is a compassionate man but he does not feel at all guilty about trying to steal another man’s wife; and Twila, jaded and hardened as she is by life, is still a good woman.

Tom’s Wife is further strengthened by the fact that Cash used the Arkansas farm of her own grandparents as the book’s setting. Her intimate knowledge of the farm’s physical layout, the lifestyle associated with a farm of that period, and the people who lived around it, add another degree of authenticity to the story she tells.

Rated at: 4.0… (mehr)