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Her Twentieth Century

BOULDER, COLORADO—We look to fiction for entertainment and escapism but also to expand our understanding of the world and to nourish our sense of what it means to be alive. In her debut novel, Saint Clements Bay, author B. L. Lang has produced a work that satisfies on both counts. The narrative cuts back and forth between different eras: the dramatic past of Della Elzina Mabrey and the more serene present, in which Della’s grandchildren have come to visit her cottage on the bay for the summer.

We see the past through Della’s eyes, in the stories she relates to her grandchildren. The first of her tales takes us back to a previous generation, before Della’s own birth, to a time just after the Civil War when her mother struggled to begin life again. Crucial to the narrative technique is an association between events important to the personal lives of the main characters and events that shaped the larger history of the nation and the world. From the Civil War, we move to the turbulent era of World War I and the deadly influenza pandemic of 1918. This is the time during which Della comes of age, while working at the Government Hospital for the Insane. The reader begins to see her both as a strong individual and as a representative of the modern, independent woman. She is not afraid to show her love of her family or her respect for her fellow human beings, even during a time when race and class placed more obvious constraints on interpersonal relations.

Meanwhile, in the narrative present of the summer of 1959, Della’s grandchildren, awed by her knowingness, begin to discover their own individuality through their adventures, culminating in an ill-fated boating excursion. Throughout, an evocation of place is central to the novel’s atmosphere. Lang describes the natural beauty of the bay area vividly and conjures up a remote, simple (but not necessarily less complex) world of yesteryear. The novel belongs squarely in America’s rich tradition of regional fiction, descending from Mark Twain and Kate Chopin to such modern masters as Eudora Welty and Wallace Stegner.

Lang includes as an appendix regional recipes for the various delicious meals that Della prepares for her grandchildren, making the book even more attractive. Saint Clements Bay is a touching, lighthearted, and often funny novel that nonetheless has a quite serious side that shows us much about personal development and the development of the modern world. It will appeal to readers of all ages.

Saint Clements Bay can be purchased in bookstores or by sending $15.95 (plus $4.95 shipping and handling) to Plangent Press LLC, P.O. Box 976, Boulder, CO 80306-0976. Call credit card orders to: (717) 404-5806 or, Purchase this Book.

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