Starlight Book Review – Elizabeth Wetmore’s Valentine

Cover of Book – Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore – centered on a rich terra cotta orange background with the “Starry Night Elf” Logo in the lower right hand corner | Cover Image Source: Goodreads

Set in the Day Stellar Reading Challenge – 1970s

Set in the Year 1976/ Published in 2020

Trigger Warning – rape/ abuse/ substance abuse/ and violence

3.78/5 The Book Girls’ Guide brought my attention to Elizabeth Wetmore’s Valentine during my search for books about the 1970s. Click here to check out their link for Books Set in the 1970s. Valentine became my entry for my own Set in the Day Stellar Reading Challenge (SRC) as it met my criteria for this reading goal.

Click here for more information on this SRC.

“An astonishing debut novel that explores the lingering effects of a brutal crime on the women of one small Texas oil town in the 1970s… Mercy is hard in a place like this . . .
It’s February 1976, and Odessa, Texas, stands on the cusp of the next great oil boom. While the town’s men embrace the coming prosperity, its women intimately know and fear the violence that always seems to follow… In the early hours of the morning after Valentine’s Day, fourteen-year-old Gloria Ramírez appears on the front porch of Mary Rose Whitehead’s ranch house, broken and barely alive. The teenager had been viciously attacked in a nearby oil field—an act of brutality that is tried in the churches and barrooms of Odessa before it can reach a court of law. When justice is evasive, the stage is set for a showdown with potentially devastating consequences… Valentine is a haunting exploration of the intersections of violence and race, class and region in a story that plumbs the depths of darkness and fear, yet offers a window into beauty and hope. Told through the alternating points of view of indelible characters who burrow deep in the reader’s heart, this fierce, unflinching, and surprisingly tender novel illuminates women’s strength and vulnerability, and reminds us that it is the stories we tell ourselves that keep us alive.”

A poignant beginning, Wetmore pulled me into Valentine with young Gloria Ramírez’s nightmarish plight. I found Mary Rose Whitehead’s first person accounts compelling, too. In addition, I felt Corinne and numerous other characters sparked my interest in Valentine. While I thought I kept the characters straight as I read this book, I wished to know more about Gloria who later changes her name to Glory and even Mary Rose. By the time Wetmore gets around to the second person chorus of women in Karla Shipley’s chapter, I wanted to shrink the scope of the book and focus on the first few characters. Also, Wetmore endeavored to share about the problems many females and Vietnam vet Jesse suffered in the 1970s. I appreciated this but preferred to zoom in for three or four characters’ lives than a dozen.

This book straddled a time and place adjacent to my own existence. The time predates me and I grew up in the Texas Gulf Coast region as opposed to the dry, rugged terrain of oil town Odessa. So, some of this seemed vaguely familiar but also quite different from my own experience coming of age in late Twentieth Century Texas. That pleases me as I aim to diversify my reading with every SRC I craft. Also, Wetmore endeavored to share about the problems many females and Vietnam vet Jesse suffered in the 1970s. Still, I read this around the same time as Justin Deabler’s Lone Stars and sometimes confused the overlap of certain parts of these two books. I don’t blame either Wetmore or Deabler for my bad timing, though.

Click here to read my review of Lone Stars.

Quotes come from book flaps/cover and are featured on color blocks.

Starlight Book Review – Justin Deabler’s Lone Stars

Cover of Lone Stars by Justin Deabler on a medium blue background | Cover Image Source: Goodreads

4/5 When Gulf Coast Reads (GCR) announced they selected Justin Deabler’s Lone Stars as their 2022 book, I imagined I might read this novel. The GCR designation led Lone Stars to becoming the book club read for October. The title tipped me off that this book likely took place mostly in Texas. While I decided against counting this towards any of my Stellar Reading Challenges (SRC) this year, this book works well as parts take place in the latter part of the Twentieth Century as well as the 2000s. So if you’re seeking something for the Set in the Day SRC, you might want to check this out, Gnomies.

Learn more about GCR by clicking here.

Click here to check out more on the Set in the Day SRC.

“Lone Stars follows the arc of four generations of a Texan family in a changing America. Julian Warner, a father at last, wrestles with a question his husband posed: what will you tell our son about the people you came from, now that they’re gone? Finding the answers takes Julian back in time to Eisenhower’s immigration border raids, an epistolary love affair during the Vietnam War, crumbling marriages, queer migrations to Cambridge and New York, up to the disorienting polarization of Obama’s second term. And in these answers lies a hope: that by uncloseting ourselves–as immigrants, smart women, gay people–we find power in empathy.”

I knew early on in my reading of Lone Stars that Deabler and his main character, Julian Warner, were around my age and that his parents, Lacy and Aaron, were contemporary to my own mom and dad. I found this both a realistic and relatable read. A few things threw me, such as name changes for the bedroom community where Julian grew up and not being informed of when certain events took place. In some ways, things seemed neatly tied up while others loosely dangled to the point of wondering about a sequel. I liked the family saga and the genealogical bents of Lone Stars but I wanted Julian to learn a little more about his roots.

Quotes come from book flaps/cover and are featured on color blocks.