Second Lives: A Novel of the Gilded Age

Rating:
Summary: " Like eatin' spaghetti with nuttin' on it ! "
Review: After reading Badlands , Goldfield and Sierra, and becoming quite a fan of Richard Wheeler, this latest work was dull to say the least.

Second Lives left me feeling hollow and found it difficult to get through the unimpressive and boring storyline given. I had no connection to the misplaced characters.

Rating:
Summary: intelligent, absorbing storytelling at its best
Review: Second Lives is not the typical Western fare. Superbly written, this book is much more character driven than most other offerings from this genre. Incident is not the major emphasis. Here, instead, are very real people who shift and change as a result of forces both within and outside of themselves. Those readers who appreciate fine writing, sharply delineated characters, and a novel that causes the reader to truly care about its players will find much to admire here. Each person in the book is pushed into examining his or her existence, and the choices necessary to achieve some sort of fulfillment. Most of the characters seem to have arrived at a rapproachement with themselves, and with the vicissitudes of life by the novels end. The title here suggests a certain rite of passage in which the old rules and landmarks these characters used to guide their existence no longer work. It is now up to these people to fashion a future based upon the abiding lessons that experience has painfully taught them.

I read this selection for a genre fiction class I have in a graduate Library Science program, and this is the best book I've run across during the course of my assignments. Based upon the evidence of what I have just read, Richard S. Wheeler is one very fine writer. Quite frankly, I did not anticipate such a richly rewarding reading experience.

Rating:
Summary: Never give up
Review: This one was from Wheeler's heart, though it began as an idea about entwined storylines in one city, Denver, at a time when the fortunes of folks were as much tosssed about by fate as by intention and skill -- something like Seattle today.

One character, Lorenzo the Magnificent, is loosely based on the Emperor Norton of San Francisco, an historical person famous enough to have his own website. Lorenzo, like Norton, hit bonanzas but was always broken back to scratch by simple mistakes and bad luck, until he simply gave up on reality and insisted he was a fabulous millionaire though he had to depend on handouts for his food, clothing and shelter. His flair and good will were so welcome that even one of his victims, a partner in a silver mine who had been reduced to working as a parlormaid, takes him into her embrace. When she ends up happily running a beanery, she makes room for him in her life.

An over-romantic young consumptive poet is cured in spite of himself (Denver air was reputed to be curative in those days) and ends up succeeding at a job in spite of himself. Not all second lives are successful. One fun-loving barmaid gets repeated chances to pull herself away from drink and drugs, but doesn't take them. She defines herself as defiant and stubbornly pays the consequences. An old failing lawyer ends up finding a life through a young society woman desperate for a divorce, and she finds a life as well.

These stories don't tie together, though the characters pass each other on the street and lunch at the same fancy place when they can afford it. Wheeler subtly shifts his rhetoric to suit the milieu and vocabulary of each set of characters, which can confuse some readers into thinking they are all Wheeler's thoughts instead of realizing that the author is the piano player rather than the music. This is more sophisticated and researched than most genre books -- it might not belong in the category.

When my mother was dying of blood cancer (painless but slow), she kept asking me to find her books that would be absorbing and entertaining enough that she could just sink into that other world and forget her own problems. Librarians I consulted said, "No one writes that kind of book anymore." But "Second Lives" was exactly the kind of of story my mother wanted to read: no violence, not much sex, just absorbing characters surviving reverses, some unpredictable plot twists, some social insights, and a few thoughts about human life and dying. Not for teenagers.