Lioness of Boston
Some books show up when needed, and this one found me. The Lioness of Boston by Emily Franklin mingles history, fiction, and poetic prose in a book that drew me in and held me tight. I wanted to linger in its pages.
While visiting Trident Books in Boston a couple of months ago, this book called to me. I may not have picked it up outside of Boston, but still on a high from my second visit to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, I needed it.
Our mancub called me his first week in Boston to tell me about Trident. When we visited he urged me to go. Great food, stacks and stacks of books. He was right! I loved it.
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Garden meets art meets architecture. There is inspiration in every room, every vista, every breath. If you are in or near Boston…GO!
While I have visited the museum a couple of times, I know little about Isabella Stewart Gardner (ISG), which makes me a perfect candidate for historical fiction about her. I found myself Googling to find the truth in the fiction – did she really ____? (Most of the time, the answer was yes). Honestly, I did not know where Franklin’s writing stopped, and ISG’s real life began. The two swirled together to create a woman I understood – one who spoke straight to my heart.
In the acknowledgments, Franklin says, “Above all else, I wanted to portray Isabella Stewart Gardner as a strong, quirky, determined, brash, and ahead-of-her-time person who triumphed over the loss.” Something about Franklin’s version of ISG gave me Anne Shirley vibes. As though in another life, the Prince Edward Island girl met high society Boston, and her mouth and antics stirred trouble wherever she went. I know that woman—the one who spends much of her life feeling as though she does not belong anywhere, wondering why even her friends shake their heads at her opinions, wondering if she’s more burden than blessing, and searching for her place in this world.
I wish I had highlighted every description that made me pause. (I do when I choose to annotate books, but I had no idea this book would give me so much. So, I did not read with a highlighter in hand.) The writer in me often paused to ponder a phrase or appreciate a detail. Franklin’s ability to describe plants, to paint a season, and to anchor a scene with sensory details makes her prose come alive.
Flipping through the pages, I found a few examples of her lavish writing:
“I looked around the chandelier-dappled room, everything evening golden…”
“An ocean of sand.
I stood amidst waves as though I Iooked at water and only then realized I’d seen it incorrectly. And perhaps this was what I was learning—the moment I thought I understood myself, the world shifted from water to sand. The desert view of Monet’s work.
I put my foot in the sand and felt it give way—solid and shifting at the same time.”
“Autumn that year was a reliable mixture of bright, colorful days that made me feel open and alive and other days where dark lurked at the edges and leaves skittled like street rats near my boots.”
I mean….whew. Don’t you just love Franklin’s words?
I adored the characters. I am a sucker for good character development and entertaining ancillary characters (the gardener, the Harvard guys, the artists, and people in Italy – this book had many).
ISG’s story (both real and fictional) arrived at the perfect time in my life. Here I sit in my late forties, weeks after completing my bachelor’s degree, wondering. Wondering if this is all there is. Wondering about my place in the world. Wondering where my gifts fit. And I find a kindred spirit in Franklin’s version of ISG. I love a book that makes me think. I love a book that makes me look at my life, wonder, and dream. Lioness of Boston did both.
It was hard to find something I did not enjoy about Franklin’s work. If I had to pick out something, I would just say the pacing felt off to me. There was so much time spent on younger ISG that the end felt rushed…really the truth is I just wanted more.
Parked here in midlife, I meet many women struggling to see what the next chapters contain or wondering where they fit in. Artists who are searching for a market and inspiration. Writers trying to honor their inner stories and silence their inner critic. Mothers with emptying nests struggling to see what life looks like when there are no chicks. Women who have worked for years in jobs that pay the bills but bring no inner fulfillment. For those searching for belonging and something more (at any age), I think we could see ourselves in the pages of Lioness of Boston – in ISG’s story as a whole (the real or fictionalized versions).
If it hasn’t come across already, I highly recommend this book.
