{"id":14666,"date":"2018-07-28T22:12:50","date_gmt":"2018-07-29T02:12:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/?p=14666"},"modified":"2021-03-06T16:34:43","modified_gmt":"2021-03-06T21:34:43","slug":"timely-tale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/?p=14666","title":{"rendered":"Timely Tale"},"content":{"rendered":"

Black Rainbow<\/em> by Barbara Michaels<\/strong><\/p>\n

Grade: B<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Black Rainbow <\/em>a young governess is hired by a wealthy family. In this family are a young woman who runs the family’s mill while her brother is away, a man (the brother) who has higher aspirations than merely making a living from trade, and their small ward (the one who needs a governess). The governess becomes obsessed with the man. The man becomes obsessed with status. Their single-mindedness could cause trouble for the whole neighborhood.<\/p>\n

Black Rainbow<\/em> seems like it ought to be a romance novel, but really it’s about what happens when a man takes all the money and power for himself and leaves everyone else around him in untenable positions. Published in the early 1980s and set in the post-Industrial Revolution 1800s, it is nonetheless a timely story. We are still living in a mostly male-dominated age in which a tiny minority controls the majority of our country’s wealth and power. Such inequity is always recipe for disaster.<\/p>\n

But, however much truth and justice may be in Black Rainbow<\/em>, it’s not a great book. It starts slowly and drags on for quite a while. It switches viewpoints twice, leaving you uncertain as to which character is the main character. It has frustrating suggestions of the supernatural that don’t lead anywhere.<\/p>\n

It’s worst fault, though, is that it isn’t what you want from a Barbara Michaels novel. In the end, the reader’s reaction is likely to be similar to the restaurant patron who asks for a well-done hamburger and is served sushi instead: “Um. That’s not what I ordered.”<\/p>\n

P.S. I keep reading Barbara Michaels’s books because I hope to find another that will be as dear to me as the two I discovered when I was a teen. I realize that this is a long-shot, because my reading tastes have changed, and because I am a less forgiving reader. Still, many of her books have come close, so I have not given up hope yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Black Rainbow by Barbara Michaels Grade: B In Black Rainbow a young governess is hired by a wealthy family. In this family are a young woman who runs the family’s mill while her brother is away, a man (the brother) … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14666"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14666"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19653,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14666\/revisions\/19653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}