Women's fiction writer Debbie Macomber says The Charm Bracelet by Viola Shipman, is “Utterly Charming!” And
another back cover blurb sums up the story this way, “Through an heirloom charm
bracelet, three women will rediscover the importance of family, love, faith,
friends, fun, and a passion for living as each charm changes their lives.”
The story centers around a 70 year woman, Lotty, who lives
in rural Michigan, close to a small town that everyone in my book club thought
was patterned after Saugatuck, a popular tourist place on Lake Michigan. Her daughter
gets a phone call from someone who’s worried about Lotty so she and Lotty’s
granddaughter take vacations to go to stay with Lotty for a few weeks to assess
what’s going on with Lotty’s memory loss and while they’re visiting they learn
the stories behind the charms on the bracelet that Lotty hasn’t taken off since
she was a teenager. I found it hard to believe that a person could get that old
without having already told those stories to her daughter and granddaughter, but
a book has to have some structure to hang its chapters on so I could overlook
that head scratcher. All but one person in the club thought it was a nice,
light summer read, an unabashedly sentimental story. The odd man out called it “corny”
and note it wasn’t me. I found it fascinating, though, that three others reported
crying through out the read while the book didn’t milk even one tear out of my
eyes. The only emotion it stirred in me was a burning curiosity about where the author
lives and an increased fear of not having family closer by if dementia shows up at my dinner table.
A google search turned up the fact that the author is
actually a guy---a gay guy who lives in Saugatuck. His ‘Viola Shipman’ pen name
belonged to his grandmother, and he’s a critically acclaimed author with nine published books---six of which are non-fiction
memoir-style under his real name (Wade Rouse) and three fiction books under the pen. I’ve probably mentioned before
that I have a love/hate relationship with my book club and I couldn’t wait to
share this detail on book discussion day, knowing several members belong to
churches that condemns homosexuality. Ya, I know. That’s Mean Girl thinking,
isn’t it, wanting to taunt them with reality, but on the other hand I could talk
myself into believing I had an altruistic goal of illustrating without words that you can’t judge a person’s worth by their sexuality. You be my judge---devil or
angel. If I had to put a label on my big reveal I’d called it passive aggressiveness.
I didn’t bring the pen name thing up until after everyone
had shared their opinion of The Charm
Bracelet. Then I told the group I had tracked down one of the author’s memoir books
and it covered a period of time when he and his partner bought a cottage near
Saugatuck and he quit his job to write full time. The cottage was the same one
he described in The Charm Bracelet. I
never got to the part about how they occasionally referred to Saugatuck as Gayberry, a
nickname that’s been around since the 1920s when it first appeared in an
underground tourist guide of gay friendly places. (The things you learn when
you collect antique maps and travel guides, like my husband did!) But I never got a chance to mention Gayberry---the open secret most tourists don't know about---because another book
club member challenged me by saying, “Oh, no, the author is married and has four
children! I’m sure I read that somewhere. Can't be gay.” I replied, “I just finished reading
one of his memoirs and at 40 he’d been in a ten year relationship with his
partner and he didn’t have any kids.” She insisted again and she started
talking about the son in the book at which point we all knew she had her books
and authors mixed up because there was no son in The Charm Bracelet.
After that little “oops!” I shared the fact that Wade Rouse’s
memoir had me laughing out loud so many times that the dog got up and left the
room, giving me a dirty look for disturbing his sleep. Before the move to rural
Michigan, Wade was a city guy who, like me, loved his Starbucks. Even his dog, he
wrote, was so citified she didn’t know how to walk on a leash without cement
underneath her feet. The book---titled At
Least in the City Someone Would hear me Scream---was one of those books I
didn’t want to end. When I finished sharing these last few sentences, no one
said a word. Not. One. Word. It’s not unusual for us to talk about other books besides
the one we’d all just read, so that wasn’t it. They just stared at me, looking
like goldfish waiting for someone to drop some floating food pellets into their tank. The little devil on my shoulder
laughed, but the angel on the other shoulder felt guilty for shocking the
ladies speechless. Either way, I couldn’t help it. I found this author’s memoir
humor to be too good not to share. (Humor was all but absent in the book club selection.)
On Wade’s website I found out he does library talks from
time to time in my hometown and you can bet the next time he’s in town to hawk
a book or host a workshop for to would-be-writers, I’ll be there. And I’ll be wearing my charm bracelet with its fifteen
silver charms. ©
Note: the photo at the top is my bracelet, started when I graduated
from high school and finished ten years later with the love birds---Don and me. Now, that's what corny looks like.
