Amy Stewart (1)

This is one of the most innovative detective stories I've read in a long time. Portraying strong women as  protagonists in a decidedly non-feminist setting made for some interesting situations.  I kept seeing early silent film reels running through my mind with Al Capone style gangsters, tin lizzies, fainting flappers, and stereotypical "Little House on the Prairie" homemakers.  But......these women were far from stereotypes.  They were strong (and headstrong), competent, organized, show more innovative and at times able to be quite stubborn in their quest for justice. 

Several reviewers commented that they were able to guess the outcome from the "spoiler" printed on the book's cover.  Since I read this as an e-galley, I didn't pay attention to the cover, and it was only at the end that I realized the story is based on a true but long forgotten adventure. That said, I won't add anything else to spoil the fun.  I will say though that I look forward to more adventures of the Kopp sisters. show less

As the first female deputy sheriff in Bergen County, New Jersey, Constance Kopp has responsibility for the female prisoners. And she thinks there are way too many of them. In Amy Stewart's “Miss Kopp's Midnight Confessions” (2017), the third novel in this excellent series, Constance is troubled by the fact that a runaway boy is just a runaway boy, while a runaway girl is a criminal, or at least treated as one.

Her prisoners include Edna, a young woman who believes the United States will show more be pulled into the war in Europe (the year is 1916) and, wanting to make a contribution, runs away from home to work in a munitions plant. Minnie, 16, runs away from home with a man who promises to marry her but doesn't. Her parents don't want her back, and now she faces years in a reformatory until she reaches adulthood.

Constance must really put her convictions to the test, however, when 18-year-old Fleurette, her youngest sister (actually her own daughter from being seduced as a teenager), runs away from home to join a vaudeville troupe. Her other sister, Norma, wants to bring Fleurette back by force, if necessary. Constance is torn.

Stewart bases her novels not just on a real person but on actual newspaper accounts from the period. Much of what takes place in Miss Kopp's “Midnight Confessions” actually happened, as Stewart shows at the end of the book. Her fiction fills in the blanks with remarkable success.

I have been impressed by each of the Constance Kopp adventures so far and look forward to reading the next one. show less

This was my favorite of the three thus far, and oddly, it's because there really wasn't any single plot that stretched from beginning to end. In fact, it's a stretch to call it a mystery.

Some background for those unfamiliar with the books: This series is based on the life of Constance Kopp, one of the first female deputy sheriffs in the United States, and the first to be granted a shield, gun, authority to apprehend, and be paid the same wage as her male counterparts (likely the last one show more too, on that score). Amy Stewart uses historically accurate events and characters, with as many details as she can find, then fictionalises the spaces in between. At the end of each book, she includes a detailed accounting of what is factual and what is fictional, along with a detailed list of notes and sources.

While the first two books had, more or less, a single story line as the focus, ...Midnight Confessions is more a collection of smaller stories, each centered on a real person and event, that Stewart has woven together into a cohesive narrative.

All of these smaller stories have a single theme: the very real vulnerabilities women had, and the rights they didn't. We're all vaguely aware that society really frowned upon "loose morals" – a state unique to women, as men weren't expected to have any morals – and we've all made jokes about the "morality police", but when you read about a woman over 18 who is arrested because she left home to move into a strict, all-female boarding house to work in a powder factory so she could contribute to the war effort...well we've certainly come a long way in 100 years. Waywardness this was called - and guess who brought the charges against her? Her mother.

Anyway, there are a few characters in this book that all have to face this lack of agency, whether they deserve the charges against them or not. (Deserve, as in guilty or innocent of the charges, not morally deserving.) All of their stories play out over the course of the book, but there's no sense of tension or climax. Some might find that disappointing, but it worked really well for me; it kept the pace snappy, and I didn't feel like Stewart was manufacturing drama for the sake of drama. I was able to enjoy and appreciate these women's stories on their own merit; if she'd tried to twist them and manipulate them to create some fictional plot, I doubt I'd have liked the book half as much.

She ends the book with an election year just beginning and an inevitable shake-up in the local politics. I'm looking forward to the next book, scheduled for September, to see what happens to Constance and Sheriff Heath. show less

Yep. Earthworms. Unsung heroes.

Amy Stewart has become one of the few authors I'd wait in line for a signature for - have I mentioned that before? She makes a great spokesperson for these unfairly maligned little earth movers. In a chatty but informative style she covers the earthworms' role in history, agriculture, backyard gardening, forestry and even sewage treatment and soil reclamation.

Did you know that Australia has an earthworm that grows over 3 feet long, and when it moves around show more under the earth, farmers can hear a gurgling sound? They're native to a farming area called Gippsland, here in Victoria, so of course I want to go and stand in the middle of a pasture like an idiot in hopes of hearing them gurgle along beneath me, while trying not to think of the movie Tremors.

There's no denying this is not a book for everyone. But gardeners, environmentalists, and armchair scientists will all find something interesting and fascinating here. show less