Audrey Schulman, House Named Brazil, literature, literary, book groups, reading groups, fiction, adventure, heroine, strong female character
When the phone rings
at precisely six o'clock one evening, it shatters the silence of the farmhouse
where Fran has lived alone since her mother abandoned her at age fourteen.
She recognizes the
voice on the line immediately. Though it has been four years since she left,
Fran's mother offers no apologies or explanations. She is calling to tell Fran
the family stories. And though Fran longs to hang up on her, she can't help but
be drawn in by the strange and wonderful tales her mother has to tell.
Over the course of
several weeks, in her nightly phone calls, Fran's mother unfolds the amazing
history of their large and colorful family: tales of saints and murderers;
world-renowned pickpockets and fabulously talented bakers; bitter rivalries and
unconditional loves; adventures across continents, tragedies and transcendence.
What Fran urgently
seeks is an explanation for her mother's abandonment, but all she gets are tall
tales of a family exodus from a desolate Canadian farm to a new home in the
Florida swamplands. In the sprawling house named "Brazil," there is
more than enough room for every larger-than-life member of this family --and
all the noise, heat and passion they generate.
Excerpt
The time is the
1890s. Celia, at the age of 14, has just escaped from her siblings who tried to
kill her.
Celia settled down 3 towns away from the house where her siblings still lived. She
worked as a waitress while she thought about what it was she had been promised.
The promise became more evident each day for by the time she was 15 her chest
had developed so much she had to assume the habit of keeping both hands on the
small of her back or on her hips to offset some of the weight, and her face was
so luminous that even little children sucked in their breath. But in the whole
of the town where she lived, not a man would touch her, because --as well as
her beauty-- her spirit and muscles had developed from the time when she was
simply the bully of children. For waitressing is no easy job. Her new muscles
were how, as a 15-year-old, she had beaten with 1 fist the first man who had
tried for her.
She had not fought him because she thought that was what she was supposed to
do. She had not fought him because he was 20 years older and drunk. She fought
him because he simply grabbed a handful of her body without any warning or
permission as she passed his table. Her reaction was immediate and strong. In
front of the entire restaurant, she twisted her upper body away from him --so
for an instant he probably assumed she was pulling away in fear-- and, then she
swiveled back out of her wind-up into a straight-armed backhanded swing with her
whole body behind it. She hit him so hard his head shot backwards like a puck
and the rest of his body tumbled leisurely after it to hit the floor heavy and
limp. Celia and another waitress dragged him out to the sobering cold of the
snow and thought no more of it.
Unfortunately, from then on the townsmen thought about nothing else. They
thought it unnatural. They thought it terrifying. It became more scary and
vivid in their minds and in their talk. Before the end of the second month it
was accepted as common fact that Celia and the other waitress had not dragged
him outside at all. No, instead that was where the slap had landed him, clear
through the door and down the front steps. From that day on, the men in town
did not dare do anything but sit around in the restaurant where Celia worked
and watch her body forlornly. Not a man among them ever again raised a hand to
touch her, especially as the years passed and the legend of her fighting
exploits grew with her figure, to the point where most believed that she had
actually been a pro-fighter who toured with the circus for a while, that she
had beaten in a fair brawl the entire Ottawa Whalers hockey team. The legend
and myths building each year without any man flirting with her, much less touching
her, for those years when she was 17 and 18 and 19. In frustration 1 day, she
actually pushed 1 of the younger men in town into the backroom of the
restaurant and stripped herself slowly and with ceremony in front of him until
he was presented with such luscious curvature of flesh that every ounce of his
body became as limp and useless as a wet rag and he cried.
Instead the town's men seemed content to own her through talk and to caress her
with their stares as she flowered before their eyes into a 20-year-old whose
beauty made even old women touch their cheeks and remember.
Thus, Celia was forced to apply for a mail-order husband. She required this
husband be from the States as she thought they might build them better down
there. In 1894, she left on the
day of her twenty-first birthday, leaving by boat on the Ottawa River, a boat
bound for New York City, and was seen off by all the men in town who went down
to the harbor only to look at her, but nothing more.
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