If Tenderness Be Gold

As an academic who wrote extensively on rural and remote communities and its people, i read this book with this analytic framework to guide my review. What I discovered was quite unexpected...a rich tapestry that explored in detail, the natural helping processes, the suffering and the grit of surviving in remote areas with limited social resources and the incredible spirit of human beings who found tenderness in harsh realities. The story follows a generational evolution of an Irish family, an Italian immigrant and host of interesting characters as events brought them together and challenged each in very human ways. I was particularly impressed with the author’s command of natural remedies and potions brought from Italy and enriched by First Nation wisdom. I highly recommend this book for those who are interested in rural and remote life, especially students who want to operationalize theory into real life situations. The book is well written, the story interesting, the context harsh and sometimes brutal but throughout shines the human spirit.

Mary Moore traveled to the new land on a ship from Ireland with her ten siblings, Mammy and Da. Many "...made their graves of the salt water seas, overcome with typhus...". Mary snipped buttons from coats, dresses and sweaters, one button for each family member lost. She cut the threads from five mother-of-pearl buttons from her Mammy's dress. "From that day onward, I kept the buttons in safekeeping not parting with a single keepsake-until the day I gave Fiorella three buttons from my mother's dress."

Aspen Bluff, Manitoba, 1897. Fiorella lived in a "tumbledown farm...a clothesline was stretched alongside the length of the woebegone house with dried herbs, flowers, and branches with berries...". Gossip mongers called her "the Italian Witch". Both Mary and Fiorella felt alone in the world. Mary said,"no matter what others thought of her, she found a friend in me...I now had a friend, a true friend who changed my outlook from bleak to buoyant."

Discovering that she was pregnant, Mary shared her news with husband, James. James had "great love of the bottle...turns to whisky for comfort...how do I know [the baby] is mine?" Mary decides, "...I'll return to the herb woman. I'll soak up her tenderness, as the earth draws in the rain." James insisted that their youngest son, Faolan, accompany her to the Italian herbalist's shack "as his spy".

Fearful of the upcoming spring birth, Mary begs Fiorella for assurances. She does not fear a miscarriage but her own demise. Fiorella promises not only to attend the birth but to ensure the newborn's safety. "I make promise to Maria...But I no like this promise. This promise have one part angel, one part devil."

Twenty years later, in Autrecourt-et-Pourron, France, Faolan awakened in a room decorated with blue linen curtains, his right leg "cocooned...in a hot soaked woolen blanket". "To keep myself from going down a tunnel of fear, I picture my life before the madness of war...[he] tried to conjure up the sights and sound of the farm back home." What really happened on the night when his mother, Mary birthed a baby, a difficult delivery performed by Fiorella and Scottish midwife, Mrs. Watts?

"If Tenderness Be Gold" by Eleanor Albanese is a work of historical fiction relating a promise made in 19th Century Manitoba with ramifications well into 20th Century Ontario. The generational ripples are conveyed by well fleshed out characters. It is an excellent read I highly recommend.

Thank you Latitude 46 Publishing and Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

There is something familiar and comforting about Albsnese's 'If Tenderness Be Gold", it feels almost as if a loved one is singing to you sleep with an old beloved hymn.

Gentle, rhythemic writing about the hardships of life, of familial hardships, of death, of questioning of humanity, of generational secrets that leave behind the scars of those that came before us.

You will also celebrate new life, and of winter giving way to the blooms of spring, of lost last understandings, and the glorious reunification of loved ones. The pages of life are stained with tears of heartbreak as well as tears of joy, as will the pages of If Tenderness Be Gold, as you mourn along side Primrose and rejoice along side Jerome.

'If Tenderness Be Gold' envelops you in open arms, into generations of families as they live out their lives in rural Canada; as the chapters slip by and the pages come to an end, in the hush of reading it's final words, you'll find that you're right where you needed to be, you find that your heart is welcomed home.

Thank you to Netgalley and Latitude 46 Publishing for an advanced copy of If Tenderness Be Gold in exchange for my honest review.

I love historical fiction and “If Tenderness Be Gold” tells a memorable story of a family across three generations in Canada. The book begins with Mary, a lonely, abused and pregnant Irish immigrant wife and her alcoholic and abusive husband, James. Mary is a loving mother of three sons but is greatly in need of a female friend whom she finds in Fiorella, an eccentric Italian herbalist. Mary is concerned about the upcoming birth of her child and insists that Fiorella be present. Her husband disapproved of his wife's friendship with Fiorella and insisted that an officious midwife from the neighborhood also be present to deliver the baby. Mary was right in her concerns about the birth of her child and the outcome has ramifications throughout the rest of the book.
The book is told from the point of view of several different characters and in different time and location settings. Later in the book, we meet Mary’s youngest son as a soldier during the First World War and a few years later as a husband and loving father.
You must read the book to discover how the birth scene early in the book is connected to the conclusion.
I thoroughly enjoyed “If Tenderness Be Gold” and highly recommend it.