Joker II Should be Subtitled Folly for Two

 

 

 

Joker: Folie á Deux

Directed by Todd Phillips

Warner Brothers, 138 minutes, R (violence, nudity)

★★

 

Joker (2019) made a billion dollars, garnered 11 Academy Award nominations, and won two: Best Original Score and Best Acting (Joaquin Phoenix). Joker: Folie á Deux (2024) is why many moviegoers hate sequels. It had the same director, Todd Phillips, Joaquin Phoenix returned as Arthur Fleck, many of the secondary actors reupped, and megastar Lady Gaga joined the cast. It cost four times as much to make as the first movie but earned 1/4 of what the first film raked in at the box office. Counting promos for overseas markets, it lost about $150 million. There were no Academy Award nominations, but 7 Golden Raspberries including Worst Remake and Worst Screen Combo (Phoenix and Gaga).

 

Was it bad? Yes, it was. It's again a thriller, but also a musical–if one has an expansive definition of that term that doesn't include staying on key or paying attention to melody. Whose bright idea was it to sign Lady Gaga, a seriously talented vocalist, and direct her to sing badly?

 

The thin plot picks up where the first movie left off. Party clown Arthur Fleck (Phoenix ) is in jail/mental hospital for five murders and that's not counting killing his own mother, which no one knows about. The scenes inside Arkham are depressing, bleak, and chilling. (Arkham is a now-empty isolation hospital in Bellevue, New Jersey.) Each day is like the previous. Prisoners are roused from their sleep and line up to dump their slop buckets, before being sent to a day room where  Arthur, the would-be clown, is badgered into  telling a joke. Dozens of seriously demented prisoners watch TV as guards look on, both to keep the peace and to seize opportunities to practice sadistic discipline. Jackie Sullivan (Brendan Gleeson) is the worst of the lot, though he feigns sympathy for Arthur. Outside the walls, street anarchists and attention-starved young people chant Joker’s praises.

 

Some of this might have been powerful had not Phillips and co-script writer Scott Silver turn the film into demented musical theatre devoid of logic. For some reason, there are also women in the institution, including self-committed Harley “Lee” Quinzel (Gaga). Well-behaved men can sit in group therapy sessions with the women. Hmm… what could go wrong? Lee sees Arthur as a hero to her outward rebel, poor girl persona. Before you know it, Lee is sneaking into Arthur’s cell where they pledge their love and bodies to each other.

 

How? Beats me. They also sing tuneless songs to each other. Is real or a fantasy?  Show tunes without the show? The central theme is “That's Entertainment.” If only it were. But nothing is quite as strange as the attempt of Arthur's attorney Marianne Stewart (Catherine Keener) to win a new trial for Arthur based on the grounds that he can’t be guilty of murder because he was insane at the time but is now recovering. Huh? Contrary to what most believe, the standard isn’t sanity perse; it’s whether a defendant knows the difference between right and wrong. Oh, Arthur knows! His in-house interview with a TV journalist doesn't go well and neither does his trial.

 

To put it indelicately, this movie stinks. Stop here if you’ve never seen it but still want to. Read on if you're convinced I'm saving you from the pain of doing so. Here come the spoilers!

 

Arthur does exactly what his character would do; he sabotages his trial. He would rightly be locked up for life, except a firebomb blows up the courthouse, and kills numerous people. Arthur stumbles out of the rubble to search for Lee. When he finds Lee and says she's the only one who has ever seen him as he really is, she’s no longer interested. She wants Joker, not pathetic Arthur Fleck. He is recaptured, sent back to Arkham, and is ostracized by guards and prisoners alike. Another psychotic stabs Arthur, who bleeds out.

 

Near the end Lady Gaga sings with power and authority. What a waste! The best that can be said of this misguided project is that the Looney Tunes-like “Me and My Shadow” at the movie’s beginning is beguiling. What was the point of the rest? A lampoon of woke lefty culture? How the young can be led by their nose rings? I hope not. Otherwise this film can add backdoor Trumpism to its list of sins.

 

If Joker Two really hemorrhaged $150 million, it deserved to lose every penny.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

 

 

Nobody's Fool a Harlan Coben Thriller

 

 

 

Nobody’s Fool (2025)

By Harlan Coben

Grand Central Publishing, 340 pages.

★★★★

 

A reminder: Book (and movie) titles can legally be reused. I suspect this is because most titles use ordinary words that don’t lend themselves to copyrights. Richard Russo’s Nobody’s Fool (1993) is one of his best-known books and there are at least two films of that name. It’s also the title of a new thriller from Harlan Coben. I wish he had chosen a different title. His protagonist Sami Kierce is a fool when we first meet him and 22 years later he still makes mistakes. Nonetheless, it's a very good novel, even if there’s a fairly major logic flaw.

 

Sami is of Pakistani descent who, in the present, is 40-something, is recently married to the lovely and supportive Molly, and they have a one-year-old son Henry. Some 20 years earlier Sami was a recent college graduate who partied way too much. In a trip to Spain he meets Anna at a disco and stayed with her for nearly a week. He awoke one morning covered in blood, a knife in his hand, and Anna lifeless beside him. He doesn’t think he killed her, but doesn’t know what to do. In a panic he called his father, who tells him to talk to no one and board the next plane to the United States: “You’re a brown kid in a foreign country.” He violated his father’s command in one respect. Before he scampered he tells the police that a woman had been murdered.

 

Five years later he was a police detective engaged to Nicole, who is murdered. The gunman, one Tad Grayson, was sentenced to life, but Sami had unresolved anger issues that led to mistakes and dismissal. Now he’s an unlicensed gumshoe-for-hire by sleazy divorce lawyers for tasks like taking photographs of unfaithful spouses. He also had a side gig of teaching criminal justice courses to night school adults. On evening Sami is startled to see Anna walk into the classroom, meet his eye, and race out of the room, though not before one of his students dropped a tracking device into her coat.  

 

Was it really Anna? Sami follows a fading signal to a Connecticut estate and gets beaten up by security for his trouble. Sami begins to act like a real detective and enlists his students in real-life lessons in research and surveillance. Sami’s life takes a series of dramatic turns. First, he comes to suspect that Anna is a bigger catch than he imagined: Victoria Belmond, an heiress who has been missing for 22 years. This is confirmed by her parents, wealthy philanthropists Archie and Talia, and eldest son Thomas. In fact, they’d like to pay Sami a $100,000 retainer if he will sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) and investigate what happened to Victoria in Spain; there are 11 years for which she has no memory. They offer another half million plus expenses for three months of investigative work. He’s not crazy about signing the NDA, but he and Molly are swimming in debt.

 

His lawyer friend Arthur advises him to sign and lays another shock on him. Because of past irregularities several criminals he investigated have been released; one is Tad Grayson for whom Sami has a hatred bordering on sanguinary. There’s no doubt in his mind, or that of his former partner, that Grayson murdered Nicole. The only solace is that Grayson’s were vacated–meaning he could be retried–not dismissed. Moreover, someone is stalking Molly.

 

First things first. It’s off to Spain with his family. Matters get super twisty. Was Anna/Victoria kidnapped? Used as a sex slave? A scammer? Who was the guy who appeared in the bedroom when Sami screamed 22 years earlier? Back in New York, who is “Scraggly Dude,” the lowlife making Molly’s life uncomfortable? Who was the last person to see Victoria before she disappeared at midnight on Y2K? Why do two more murders take place and why was Sami shot? Was Anna really Victoria? Are the Belmonds as they seem? Was Grayson a wronged man?

 

Coben is a wonderful thriller writer. His plots are dense and well-constructed. He also makes judicious use of humor. Get back to me when you figure out the massive logic hole.

 

Rob Weir

 

Note: I loved this quote from Sherlock Holmes via his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle: It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to fit facts. It’s used by Sami and is also a good way to read Coben’s novel.

 

Swede Caroline: Brilliant or ...?

 

 

Swede Caroline (2024)

Directed by Finn Bruce and Brook Driver

Belstone Pictures, 97 minutes, R (pixelated nudity, minor violence)

★★★★

 

Swede Caroline (note spelling) is the strangest film I’ve seen since Hundreds of Beavers and matches its production values as a homemade film made on a shoestring budget. It was made in Britain and made just $68,000 worldwide, so I doubt you’ve ever heard of it. If you can stream it or find on DVD, though, it’s worth trying. You will have one of two opinions about it; you’ll either find it so wacky you’ll hoot despite yourself, or you’ll think it’s amateurish and dumb.

 

We will get into this, but first consider that few people on the planet as obsessed by gardening and rural nostalgia as the English. If you’ve ever watched Masterpiece Theatre it’s practically a given that there were mentions of gardening. How many times have we seen some upper-class twit with a name like Lady Handspring Buffington Chicken-Plucker trimming her prize-winning roses, or a country fair with Farmer Bursten Pantstear showing off his sheep? (E’yup lads, look at yonder ryet nice yows by the sitch.)

 

Swede Caroline is a mockumentary on gardening. Caroline (Jo Hartley) grows big marrows (a courgette or zucchini) that can weigh hundreds of pounds. Alas, not everything is on the up and up at the agricultural fair in Shepton Mallet (Somerset). Somehow Caroline’s marrows never win because the veggie judge (Mark Silcox) disqualifies her for things no one else sees-like a hairline crack- and awards the cup to someone from the better classes. Caroline is not such a person; she’s divorced, a bit on the rough side, lives in a council flat, and has a bear-like goofball boyfriend Willy (Celyn Jones) who is more brawn than brain.

 

Rigged judging is scandalous enough, but a line is crossed when someone sneaks into Caroline’s back garden, smashes into her small greenhouse, and steals her plants and seeds. It’s the crime of the century in Shepton Mallet. Willy tries to calm Caroline, but another neighbor, Paul (Richard Lumsen) launches a full-scale investigation. He fancies himself an expert because he’s watched a lot of TV programs about detectives and has their techniques down. (Not!) Caroline knows that Paul is basically an ageing slobbish geek who has no life, wiles away time playing video games, and watches computer porn. Speaking of which, Caroline approaches Louise (Aisling Bea) who allegedly does know something about detection, though every time we see her she’s wearing a slinky robe, as is her husband Lawrence (Ray Ferron).

 

As the investigations proceed, one silly thing after another occurs. I shan’t reveal them other than to say: bad cellphone video, jealousy, an MP (Member of Parliament), a close encounter with a garden fork, demolition, plant napping, social class satire, mallows posing as mammaries, and a group of swingers. Through it all, Kirsty (Rebekah Murrell) gives us a meta backseat point of view. She is allegedly making a documentary about the investigation. (Get it? A documentary within a mockumentary.) I won’t pretend that the script will knock Shakespeare from his literary pedestal. Directors Bruce and Driver made the film for just $64k, cut every corner that could be cut, and turned them into roundabouts. I’ll leave it you to determine if what’s on the screen really is amateurish or whether it’s tongue-in-cheek deliberate. I suspect it was an absolute hoot to make what is akin to an extended Monty Python sketch. Perhaps the cast made a few quid on the video release and buggered off to the pub to laugh and hoist a few pints.

 

About the title. There is a passing mention to a Swede, but that part of the plot is too convoluted to connect the dots clearly. My theory is that it’s another of the film’s many in-jokes. It could be an oblique nod to the film’s (tame) sex subplot. Sweden is generally credited with being the first nation to legalize what was then called “pornography.”* Then again, it might just be a bad pun. Swedes are rutabagas in Britain, though rutabagas are not marrows.

 

Like Hundreds of Beavers, the best way to digest Swede Caroline is just to go with it. Let its absurdity wash over you like V8 Juice.

 

Rob Weir

 

* Many film histories consider Sweden’s I am Curious Yellow (1967) to be a forerunner in mainstreaming movie with overt sexual content. It was followed by Blue in 1968. The Swedish flag is yellow and blue, though the films are black and white.

 

If in Richmond, Catch this Exhibit

 

 

Frida as Toddler

 

Frida Kahlo: Beyond the Myth

Virginia Museum of Fine Art (Richmond)

Through September 28, 2025

 

Should you find yourself anywhere near Richmond between now and the end of September, by all means make a stop at the city’s Virginia Museum of Fine Art (VMFA) to see Frida Kahlo: Beyond the Myth.

 

A splash of cubism

 

 

Kahlo (1907-54) is, of course, one of the world’s most famed artists–so much so that perhaps you are, such as I was, suspicious that there’s anything new to reveal about her. Wrong! First of all, though Kahlo died at 47, she was prolific in numerous genres, including surrealism, cubism, symbolism, magical realism, and modernism. Second, she had an adventurous love life that remains shocking to some. Her great love was Mexican muralist Diego Rivera to whom she was married twice (1929-39 and 1940-54), but they had an open marriage. Kahlo was openly bisexual and among her lovers was Josephine Baker, Leon Trotsky, photographer Nikolas Muray, Japanese sculptor Isamu Noguchi (who might also been a Rivera conquest), singer Chavela Vargas, and possibly actress Dolores del Rio and painter Georgia O’Keeffe. Though she was a petite mite (about 5’3” tall and not more than 100 pounds), she didn’t apologize for her admiration for communism or her love affairs. 

 

Hit by bus 1926

 

 

These things have long been known about Kahlo, but what’s new in VMFA exhibit are images of her seldom seen outside of Mexico, including hurried drawings, self-portraits, and photos and paintings of her made by others. Kahlo was just 15 when she met 41-year-old Rivera. When they married the first time, Frida was already in the poor health that haunted her for most of her life. At 18, she was hit by a bus. In all, she endured 32 operations, including the amputation of her gangrenous left leg in 1953. (In all likelihood gangrene is what killed her in 1954.)

 

Suicide of Dorothy Hale 1939

 

 

 

Kahlo, Sun and Life 1947

 

 

Granted that two world wars and her love of surrealism and modernism predisposed her to favor gloomy subjects, but so too did her Mexican identity with its fixation on death, skeletons, and the supernatural. The VMFA exhibit is dotted with such material.

 

That said, most visitors are most likely to react most strongly to subjects that are about her. Kahlo was one of those people with plastic (as in malleable) features. Kahlo was something of a fashion plate, a bright quetzal-like presence who wore beautiful clothes based upon traditional Mexican dress. Yet, she retained her unibrow and, depending upon how she posed could look either alluring, coquettish, or masculine. The latter tendency was enhanced later in life when she seldom bothered to pluck her moustache-like upper lip. Her attractiveness also varied according to who was painting or photographing her. Or, how she felt. Naturally, she painted the body cast in which she was encased after one of her many surgeries. 

 

Age 19, first self-portrait

 

 

Photo by Imogen Cunningham, 1931

 

 

Seated nude self-portrait 1930

 

By Nikolas Muray 1939

Frida with Figurine 1939 by Muray

 

By Dora Marr 1939

 

 

 

 

 

Self-portrait with loose hair 19477

 

Today Frida Kahlo would have reaped NIL (Name, Image, Likeness) royalties. And you could bet she’d dictate the terms!

 

Rob Weir

 

Small Towns West and North of Richmond VA

 

When most travelers think of Virginia, the places that first pop to mind are suburban Washington, DC, the Chesapeake Bay, and Virginia Beach. Devotees might pay visits to  Civil War battlefields,* presidential homes (Monticello and Mt. Vernon top the list),  and specialty whiskey tours in the Appalachians. But how many think of Goochland County? Where you ask? Exactly!

 

Tuckahoe Plantation Exterior

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Interior

Interior

 

 

Mahala Boyd, enslaved at Tuckahoe

Where the enslaved quarters were located

 

Recently we visited some friends living near Richmond. Virginia’s capital has the usual sprawl and ring roads, but it’s amazing how quickly the pace slows when you leave it. We stayed at a Vrbo in Tuckahoe on Richmond’s western edge booked by our friends. We were shocked when we drove down a one-mile dirt lane to encounter an elegant white mansion. Tuckahoe Plantation was the childhood home of Thomas Jefferson. It was owned by the Randolph family but when William Randolph III died in 1745- one year after his wife- an agreed upon codicil in Randolph’s will made Peter Jackson the caretaker of his three children. (Easily done, as Peter’s wife was a Randolph.) Young Thomas spent ages 2-9 at Tuckahoe and, according to legend, developed distaste for slavery there. (That might be apocryphal given that TJ did precious little to free enslaved people.) For the record, we didn’t stay in the plantation house; we bedded in a farm house a few hundred yards away, but we got a private tour of the house with the James River running within sight of the back door.

 

The town of Tuckahoe was six miles away, near the campus of the University of Richmond. The town is prim and neat and its population of 49,000 is twice as large as all of Goochland County. Our friends lived in Manakin-Sabot, which has 4,634 people–if you can find them. Some maps list them as separate villages and our GPS didn’t recognize either until we put in Richmond in the address for our friends’ road. The county seat is Goochland, but GPS has trouble with it as well unless you ask for Goochland Courthouse (pop. 1,301), which is distinct from Goochland or Goochland Maidens! 

 

 

You are in horse country in Goochland County and many of the others heading north toward Front Royal and Winchester. We’re talking miles and miles of white fences to contain horses. If you had a lumber monopoly, you’d be able to buy New England and lease it to Canada. As for the livestock, we’re not talking heavy Percherons, Clydesdales, or swaybacked nags. These well-groomed beasties are thoroughbreds, riding horses, and polo ponies.

 

Our original homeward plan was to keeping going west, perhaps stop in Charlottesville, and then decide whether to follow the Skyline Drive or proceed to I-81N. Rain changed our decision–the Skyline Drive’s views would be limited and 81 is a high-speed curtain of trucks–so we decided to meander on some backroads. As for the towns of Goochland County, there pretty much aren’t any! Just dots of the map with names like Crozier, Gum Spring, Oilville, Fork Union, and Kent’s Store. 

 

 

 

As we drove west and north of Richmond, we witnessed Virginia’s contrasts. Make no mistake, horse country is beautiful and you’ll see lots of Virginia’s signature architecture, large white homes with second-story front-facing verandahs upon which no foot ever trod. You’ll also see rural life many steps down from McMansions. Local businesses tend to be repair shops, farmstands, antique shops, fabricators, and visitor centers to tell you what you can do in the area. Hint: If you’re enjoying the scenery and tranquil pace of life, you’re already doing what you can do there!

 

Unless you wish to veer east again to Culpepper or forge northward toward Front Royal, there’s not much in the way of a full-services town. Front Royal is generally considered a supply center for the Skyline Drive, the Appalachian Trail, or the Shenandoah Valley, though it’s a fairly sleepy place and many people push northeast to Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. Since those two towns sort of defined the southwestern edge of our childhood explorations we headed north to Winchester, grabbed some food, connected with Route 81, and joined the trucks trekking northward. But I’ll say it again, Virginia horse country is mighty pretty–even in the rain. 

 

 

 

 

Rob Weir

 

* Virginia is littered with Civil War sites, so it scarcely matters which part you visit.

 

 

 

 

 

A Call to Spy: Remarkable Women, Flat Film

 

 

 

A Call to Spy (2020)

Directed by Lydia Dean Pilcher

IFC Films, 124 minutes, PG-13 (war violence)

★★★

 

A Call to Spy (incompletely) tells the story of two unsung heroes of World War II: Virginia Hall (Sarah Megan Thomas) and Noor Inayat Khan (Radhika Apte).

 

Many Americans assume that World War II began on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Europeans, Russians, and the Chinese know it started two years earlier. By 1940, the situation was dire, with much of Europe and North Africa occupied (or controlled) by fascist Germany or Italy and North Africa indirectly so. In Europe, only Britain stood against fascism and suffered near-constant bombing by the German Luftwaffe.

 

Virginia Hall grew up amidst gentility in Virginia and yearned to be a diplomat. She had three strikes against her; she was a woman, she lost her left leg in a hunting accident in 1933, and she did not suffer fools gladly. After being disqualified for serious work, Hall made her way to Britain and was accepted in Winston Churchill’s SOE (Special Operations Executive). Because of her language skills, she was sent into Vichy, France,* to set up networks, report on German activity, recruit members of the French Resistance, and organize sabotage raids. There was scarcely time to train agents like Hall; as late as 1943, the average lifespan for spies was just six weeks.

 

Noor’s story is woven into Hall’s though the two shared only the fact that they were part of SOE Section F headed by Vera Atkins (Stana Katic). Noor, was born in Moscow to an Indian father and American mother, was a Sufi Muslim pacifist, a poet, a talented musician, and happened to be good with electronics. She was recruited to be a radio operator. If anything, she was in more danger than Hall as she and her 34-pound transmitter had to change locations constantly to keep ahead of Nazi detectors. Unlike Hall, she would be captured, taken to Dachau, and executed.

 

That could have been Hall’s fate as well. Infamous Nazi monster Klaus Barbie (Marc Rissman) considered her the most dangerous spy of the war and obsessed with trying to capture and torture her. Hall (1906-82) operated under code names such as Marie and Diane had an uncanny abilities to organize, recognize potential allies, disguise herself, and avoid capture. She also had a remarkable ability to tolerate pain. Few knew she was missing a leg and, in her one major slip-up of trusting Father Robert Alesch (Joe Doyle), a double agent, got out of Germany ahead of Barbie’s pursuit by walking across the snow-covered Pyrenees into Spain and making her way to Portugal for transport back to England. (Those who knew often heard her joke about “Cuthbert,” her name for the leather-and-steel prosthetic she wore.) She returned to France in 1944, disguised as an old woman after having her teeth ground down and stained. This time she was a radio operator and still avoided capture while collecting vital information in advance of D-Day.

 

U.S. General William Donovan recommended her for a Distinguished Service Cross to go with her Croix du guerre and an MBE. He vouched for her when she sought to join the newly formed Central Intelligence Agency after the war. Alas, her CIA career was marked by extreme sexism and was an unhappy one. To this day, Hall’s name is revered in France and nearly forgotten in the United States.

 

Both Hall and Noor deserve to be known. Alas, A Call to Spy serves only as an  introduction.  Even if you are not a big reader, pick up Sonia Purcell’s ironically named A Woman of No Importance to learn about Hall–even if you merely skim it. The movie leaves out so much, including her family’s disapproval and her marriage to French agent Paul Guillot, though he was 8 years younger and 6 inches shorter than she. The film provides enough to imagine Hall’s gallantry, but not the scope of the prison breaks, sabotage, and smuggling airmen and POW escapees out of France. Overall, the film is flat and lacks sparks.

 

I suspect Hall’s story was conflated with that of Noor to add notes of political correctness to the film. There was no need to do so. Almost no one saw this film, and Noor bloody well deserves a film of her own!

 

Rob Weir

 

*When France fell in 1940, it was divided into two zones, one controlled by the Nazis directly from Paris, and a southern collaborationist government from Vichy. Hall operated as “Marie” in Lyon (Vichy zone).

The Jackal's Mistress: Chris Bohjalian's Novel of the Waning Confederacy

 

 

 

The Jackal’s Mistress (2025)

By Chris Bohjalian

Doubleday, 308 pages.

★★★★

 

The Civil War is the most written about subject in American history, hence it’s hardly surprising to see novelists try their hand. Vermont’s Chris Bohjalian is the latest. That surprised me, but he seldom repeats himself.

 

This review is headed by something I saw at the Valentine Museum in Richmond as I was reading Bohjalian: the remains of a statue of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy. It was spray-painted and pulled from its base on Monument Avenue in 2020, a leafy street that used to be lined with “heroes” of the Confederacy before anger over police killings of African Americans led young people to counterattack symbols of the Lost Cause. Romanticism of a noble experiment prevailed throughout the South for a century and a half after the Civil War ended. It was as if slavery had nothing to do with the conflict, which just happens to be the biggest load of horse exhaust in our history. The second is that Confederates were gallant and gentlemanly.

 

The Jackal’s Mistress takes us to the Shenandoah Valley in 1864, where Union generals such as Sheridan and Hunter conducted a scorched earth policy to break the Confederacy. Forgotten is that Confederacy also looted the region, especially General Jubal Early and the brutal John Mosby and his gang-like “rangers.” Early and Mosby commandeered slaves, confiscated farm animals, raided food larders, and summarily hanged “traitors.” By 1864, though, Grant was nearing Richmond and the Confederacy’s only hope was that Lincoln would lose reelection and a favorable peace could be negotiated. That’s not what happened.

 

Bohjalian reminds us that people die and are maimed until the ink is dry on the surrender papers. Maiming is the fate of Captain Jonathan Weybridge of the 11^th Vermont regiment. As his troops regrouped, he was hit so badly that he lost two fingers and a leg. He lost so much blood that it was near-certain he’d die. His comrades left him in an abandoned house near Berryville, Virginia, with minimal supplies because any attempt to move him behind Union lines would kill him.

 

Instead, an elderly freeman named Joseph and his wife Sally discover Weybridge. They  inform Libby Steadman, their white employer who lives with her younger niece Jubilee, and shares work, food, and occasional shelter with Joseph and Sally. Her husband Peter, last she heard, was wounded and in a Union POW camp in Ohio. When Joseph kills Libby’s potential rapist–probably one of Mosby’s Rangers–Libby must dispose of the body. Libby has been lucky in one respect; she runs a mill necessary to the Confederacy, but she must maintain the fiction that Joseph and Sally are her slaves. Libby hates the “blue-bellies” from the North, but decides to nurse Weybridge solely on the hope that some Yankee woman might have done the same for Peter. But Libby has a house full of trouble. If Mosby or Early find out about the dead attacker or that she’s hiding Weybridge, the entire makeshift household will be a postmortem one. 

 

What could go wrong? All Libby needs are guns and ammunition for protection, a doctor to bribe into silence, ways to prevent anyone from discovering Weybridge, unavailable medicines, whiskey to sterilize his wound, protein to help him regain strength, ways to keep neighbors from talking, and more luck than a riverboat gambler.

 

Do you suspect a potential romance? The discovery of shared humanity and mutual understanding? Forgive and forget? Don’t be so sure! Jubilee is so contemptuous of their Union patient that she dubs him “Jackal,” though she’s intrigued that he was a professor at Middlebury College before the war and shares the household contempt for slavery. (Peter Steadman freed Joseph and Sally before the war.) Besides, Weybridge has a wife and two sons back in Vermont. Lots of things happen, but not aways in predictable ways. The Jackal’s Mistress is a veritable page-turner that is touching, thrilling, tragic, and tense.

 

Several final notes. First, Bohjalian based his tale on the true-life tales of Lt. Henry Bedell of Westfield, Vermont, and Bettie Van Metre of Virginia, her imprisoned husband James, and her black friends Ginny and Dick Runner. Second, Berryville is about 20 miles from the Union stronghold of Harper’s Ferry, an indication of how close the Confederacy was to defeat. Finally, the Confederacy raided my Pennsylvania hometown three times and burned it in 1864. Not so gentlemanly!*

 

Rob Weir  

 

* One of Bohjalian’s characters provides a perfect postscript from 1937. Commenting on Richmond’s statue of J.E.B. Stuart on Monument Avenue she says, “… it’s hollow…. I find that telling. A hollow statue for a hollow cause.”