5 comments about Waterbaby: A Novel.

1. Filmmaker Werner Herzog has written, "There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization."
   
   Cris Mazza takes this one step further with her seductive book Waterbaby, giving us a protagonist who seeks to create a present by recreating her past -and the possible pasts of her ancestors as well. Tam not only attempts to piece together her ancestor's lives through research and genealogy, she delves into lore so thoroughly she finds herself literally recreating the sea-legends that are intertwined with her own familial history. Mazza is able to juggle the various stories and mix them with imagined pasts and historical pasts, even using the occasional cutaway page of a blog or an electronic archive. Links between legend and historical fact--as well as Tam's personal past and her family's history--begin to accumulate pretty quickly, leaving the reader dazzled by Mazza's ability to keep all the plates spinning without wobble.
   
   All this plus Waterbaby is a funny and compelling page-turner to boot.



2. The greatest pleasure of "Waterbaby" is the sense of being in the hands of a master storyteller. The voice alone, deceptively simple and straightforward, intrigued this reader to relax and let it take me. This is a rare quality, quite independent of compelling character or driving plot. Yet "Waterbaby" provides characters and plot aplenty. It has been called a ghost story, which it is, even an erotic ghost story; but of a surprising post-9/11 kind. (One character, a search-and-rescue professional, is more than haunted by what he and his search-dog find in the still-burning ruins of the World Trade Center.) In Shakespeare, ghosts are the past penetrating the present. In Mazza the present invades, recreates the past, in every sense. One ghost, Tam, the main character herself, a relatively young (late 40's) retired stockbroker, takes imaginative and spiritual possession of an unremembered, long-dead ancestor who once helped keep a light-house on the dark and stormy coast of Maine. Family is the mysterious presence disturbing Tam - not only the hostile "hero" brother who disappears to pursue her, but all the alien great-great aunts and uncles, grandfathers and grandmothers who never knew her but now will not leave her in peace. Central to her exploration of who they were and how they persist in her are a shipwrecked baby, a newborn found in a toilet, and a drowned woman whom the locals continue to see walking at twilight the light-house rocks. Not the least ghostly of the people leading Tam into her terra incognita is the graveyard lover who insists she play the drowned woman - for prospective renters of the modernized light-house. No one writes with more comic poignance about the guerilla warfare of intimacy between women and men than the author of "Your Name Here_____" and "Is It Sexual Harassment Yet?" But I have long hoped she would enlarge her canvas and here she does: reaching out to the loves and wars of siblings, children, and parents - Maine to California - and 21st century back to 20th and 19th, with assurance, depth, compassion, and inexhaustible, penetrating wonder.



3. What a deliciously conceived novel about personal redemption! The protagonist, Tam, suffers her first epileptic seizure at 12. Her condition will steal her swimming career and estrange her from her brother, Gary. But it will not impede her journey into her troubled family's complicated past, a journey that takes her to the Maine coastline, going back to the early nineteeth century. Here tales of thwarted love and shipwrecked babies haunt the landscape. Tam will unlock more than one story, connecting newspaper acounts, oral history and her own search for understanding until she unfolds a broad historical panorama, a fascinating past. Particularly terrific is Mazza's interweaving of contemporary tools of communication, from websites, to blogs, to email mixed with archival accounts. Reading Waterbaby is a thrilling intertextual adventure that feels immediately ours, but simultaneously layered with a fresh understanding of nineteenth century economic and legal conditions for women and their children. As always, Mazza, is a wise voice, deeply concerned. This novel is a thrilling non stop read.



4. Cris Mazza has for many years now been on the radar of readers who admire technical skill and innovation. Her latest, Waterbaby, demonstrates the same technical mastery of her earlier writings, but adds an imaginative dimension to result in her most satisfying effort to date. She begins, not unusually, with a character flawed in body as well as spirit. Tam suffers from epilepsy and has been tormented since childhood by the memory and consequences of a seizure during a swim-meet. She would have drowned had her athletic brother Gary not saved her--or possibly he selfishly used her to appear the hero, in the process dahsing Tam's own girlhood dreams of athletic excellence. Tam has been haunted by this early memory and its consequences for the long forty-something years before the novel begins. Through another series of mishaps (also perhaps resulting from personal failings) she ends up in the rich setting of a Maine lighthouse, haunted by her memories, by a hard-luck single mom and kid she chooses to harbor, by a distant ancestor she researches, and, finally, by an actual ghost. Mazza pieces the various stories together in a pastiche of different verbal media (including letters, emails, websites, and traditional past tense narrative). So much for the technical mastery, which is accomplished and assured as usual. The great achievement of Waterbaby is the investment the reader comes to feel in Tam, in wanting her to accept/transcend her past and become a more whole person. The magnetism of this main character keeps the many different quirky minor characters, asides, episodes, from eroding reader interest.



5. "Waterbaby" is somewhat of a departure for Cris Mazza. While she generally sets her stories in Southern California, or at least populates them with people from that region, this novel takes place in a Maine coastal town. The other side of the country though has some similarities to the hardscrabble desert; the landscape becomes a character as much as any person in this novel. The continuity of the rocky shore and lobster industry across generations makes up a large part of the main character Tam's dilemma. As she tries to find her place in her own family, the various family dynamics of past generations intrudes on her psyche as well. The story then incorporates several lost baby stories as Tam investigates her ancestors and her relationships with her family, especially her brother. As in several of Mazza's works, the theme of regret and the conflict that arises from trying to negotiate being a woman play a large role in the novel. Additionally, like other American writers (i.e. Cormac McCarthy, Annie Proulx, Faulkner), Mazza merges style and place in a masterful way. Family relationships, sex, and self-reliance might be as dangerous as the rocky shore of Maine. Mazza does a wonderful job of portraying these dangers with honesty and engaging storytelling.

No comments about Runaways, Deserters, and Notorious Villains from Rhode Island Newspapers. Vol. 1: The Providence Gazette, 1762-1800.

No comments about Second Supplement to Torrey's New England Marriages Prior to 1700.

No comments about Shaking Your Family Tree: A Basic Guide to Tracing Your Family's Genealogy (2nd Edition).

No comments about Ancestors of American Presidents: First Authoritative Edition.

No comments about A Guide to Massachusetts Cemeteries.

2 comments about Ancestral Roots Of Certain American Colonists Who Came To America Before 1700: Lineages from Alfred the Great, Charlemagne, Malcolm of Scotland, Robert the Strong, and other Historical Individuals.

1. This book has an extreme amount of valuable information contained in it, but for the novice researcher, you may want to wait on this one. There's no plot to this book, simply titles, dates & places of birth/death, spouses and parents. Occasionally you'll get tidbits like 'participant in War of 1066' or 'Sheriff of Berkley Castle'.



2. Just cut to the chase. This book is in its 8th edition due to the devotion of Weis and his colleagues who carry on his life work. Do NOT spend hundreds of dollars buying research that the geneologist gathers from free online sources. FIRST, if you have ancestors from Massachusetts, New York, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Conneticutt and Virginia you very probably are descended from or cousin to many lines documented from about 350 A.D. Gallo Roman period right through to the Pilgrims, Puritans, etc. Why? Because as Nathaniel Philbrook states in his book, 'Mayflower,' 35 million AMericans are descended from the 52 survivors of the first winter in Plymouth. Why are they related to uddles of British and continental nobles? Because the some 2,000 Norman families who ruled England married the rest of Europes nobles and by 1600 they had grown to 20,000 and had more spare children than Davey Crooket has money. The spares took up Puritism and or wanted to flip properties in the new world. SECOND, load up a good family tree software program (about $30.00)... Spent 2 years entering...

No comments about Researching Your Colonial New England Ancestors.

4 comments about New England Court Records: A Research Guide for Genealogists And Historians.

1. It is so well organized, it will be handy for many future projects. I am impressed with its depth of coverage and its human tone with what could be an unfriendly presentation. Thanks immensely for putting this reference into the hands of those of us scrambling for answers to our New England genealogical puzzles.



2. Rapaport, a former trial lawyer, has worked for years as a legal practitioner with court records. This thorough and important work on a little known subject, outside the legal profession, will become a standard for genealogists and historians. For the first time, we have an extensive but readable guide to the intricacies of the often surprising riches found in court records. She provides an overview of the American legal system, the specifics of New England courts, types of court records, and where to look for them in each of the states, county by county.
   
   This book is a must-purchase for any serious genealogical library, personal or professional.



3. 
   This is a timely and wonderful reference work. For those interested in uncovering information about seventeenth-century New England ancestors, this is an excellent resource guide. As many family researchers know, court records for the 1600s are one of three important sources of genealogical information, the others being vital records(town and church)and wills. The early settlers were litigious, being able to file their complaints easily and cheaply in the courts, without lawyers. Hence, there is a wealth of family information in these court files -- often highly amusing.



4. Very highly recommended to all genealogy researchers, whether novice or expert, New England Court Records: A Research Guide For Genealogists And Historians by Diane Rapaport (former trial lawyer with a B.A. in History and a J.D. degree in Law) is an in-depth 470-page collective study of the locations and contributions of New England's facilities and resources which would historians and genealogical researchers to better understand the history and citizenship of New England. Introducing the reader to a detailed description of each facility, along with contact and location information, and employing an easy-to-use format exploring a state, county, and city/township locator reference ideal. A major work that could well serve as a template for other regions of the country, New England Court Records is a thoroughly "user friendly" reference ideal for the purposes of genealogists and local historians researching the New England area.

3 comments about Plymouth Colony: Its History and People.

1. In doing research on my own ancestor who was a passanger on the Mayflower and one of the original Pilgrims, I have used over 50 books. This one is by far the best. Very readable, this book provides an excellent narative of many of the events of the first 70 years at Plymouth, and detailed descriptions of many of the Pilgrims. For anyone interested in this era, this book is a must.



2. There are hundreds of books out there about the Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving and all that goes with the subject. But the majority of these books are written either in a stodgy, encyclopedic (read: Boring!) format, or they are written for children. Well, now I have one that is actually written for adults, as well as in an easy to read manner. Written mainly from a genealogical stance, the author, Eugene Aubrey Stratton, did his "putting flesh on the bones" research; that is, he sought out how the pilgrims lived their daily lives in all aspects of their time and place. Instead of the cartoonish figures we all see come November, Mr. Stratton actually gives an authentic look to these early Americans. He makes the reader feel that they now know the pilgrims, not only through their historical prominence in our early history, but by name, and we feel their hardships, especially of their first winter here. After the first time reading this book, I re-read it, only this time I read the 'Biographical Sketches' section, located toward the back of the book, first, THEN I went to the beginning. My advice to the first time reader is to do the same. You will then know who you are reading about as names are mentioned.
   This book is, simply put, the best of its kind. Maybe more genealogists should write our history books! At least they bring history to life!



3. My husband & I are both descended from The Mayflower - He from William Brewster & Stephen Hopkins and I from William Bradford. This book has added so much information for our Genealogy. I cannot tell you how many times I have used it to add information to our family history file. It has many years of use.