The Blue Box

June 15, 2014
The matrilineal heritage of a successful author.After her mother's death, Bingham's sister found a blue box in the closet, a box "designed for some mysterious purpose, although it had rested undisturbed for decades." Opening the lid, Bingham (Mending: New and Selected Stories, 2011, etc.) discovered a treasure trove of papers, a diverse collection saved by her great-grandmother Sallie, her grandmother Helena and her mother, Mary. Marriage certificates, letters between two brothers enlisted in the Civil War, manuscripts for short stories and personal essays, and letters between Bingham's mother and father as they danced around the idea of marriage for four long years filled the "soft cornflower blue" box. Using the contents, Bingham melds together a timeline and history of her three maternal ancestors, allowing readers a lovely glimpse into the lifestyles of women raised in the South. Excerpts from her great-grandmother's memoir tell a story of vast change as Sallie experienced the Civil War firsthand. Parties led to suitors, which led to marriage to an Irishman who died an early death from tuberculosis. Helena's short stories weave in and out of her personal narrative of an early marriage and children and the regret she felt over the punishments she doled out to keep her children in line. Bingham's mother's entries round out the trilogy, with clips from love letters between Mary and the author's father showing their passions and fears as they circled around their love for each other. In the modern world of emails, Skype and a decided lack of handwritten correspondence, Bingham's box of documents traverses time, offering insights into a world of women who knew their own minds long before the word feminist was ever considered.A memoir of three generations of women rich in historical detail.

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August 1, 2014
Fiction-writer Bingham (Mending, 2011) made waves in her earlier family memoir, Passion and Prejudice (1989). Here she explores the lives and letters of three previous generations of women in less tell-all mode than tribute. She makes wonderful use of primary sources to piece together the lives of her great-grandmother Sallie, born during the Civil War in Virginia; Sallie's daughter, Helena, who raised numerous daughters herself; and, finally, Mary, whose Radcliffe education and long courtship reflect the changing times of the 1920s. Although this chronicle gets weighed down in detail, Bingham's fine sentences move the reader along. It is her admiration for the writing of her forebearsand the link a love of letters provides between generationsthat drives this homage. She also takes time to stress the effects of southern patriarchy on these women, and it's interesting to see the progression out of those constraints after several long generations. Bingham also appropriately acknowledges the racial and class injustices that these privileged, white women represent or, more likely, espoused. Her mindfulness is further proof of that progress.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)