It is the summer of 1919 and Constance Haverhill is without prospects. Now that all the men have returned from the front, she has been asked to give up her cottage and her job at the estate she helped run during the war. While she looks for a position as a bookkeeper or—horror—a governess, she’s sent as a lady’s companion to an old family friend who is convalescing at a seaside hotel. Despite having only weeks to find a permanent home, Constance is swept up in the social whirl of Hazelbourne-on-Sea after she rescues the local baronet’s daughter, Poppy Wirrall, from a social faux pas.

Poppy wears trousers, operates a taxi and delivery service to employ local women, and runs a ladies’ motorcycle club (to which she plans to add flying lessons). She and her friends enthusiastically welcome Constance into their circle. And then there is Harris, Poppy’s recalcitrant but handsome brother—a fighter pilot recently wounded in battle—who warms in Constance’s presence. But things are more complicated than they seem in this sunny pocket of English high society. As the country prepares to celebrate its hard-won peace, Constance and the women of the club are forced to confront the fact that the freedoms they gained during the war are being revoked.

Whip-smart and utterly transportive, The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club is historical fiction of the highest order: an unforgettable coming-of-age story, a tender romance, and a portrait of a nation on the brink of change.

Dear Ms. Simonson, 

Huzzah. A new book from you. I’d almost given up when I saw it on a “to be released” list and sprang at the chance to read it. It’s a complicated and at times melancholy and heartbreaking book. It also, yeah, takes a while to get into gear and truly had me guessing how certain things would be resolved.

Constance Haverhill is drifting in the early summer of 1919. She has been firmly eased out of the job she did to “do her part” for the war effort. Dreading becoming a governess, she gladly agrees to be a companion to a (truly sweet) elderly lady at a seaside resort and there becomes acquainted with a group of women similarly looking for the means to support themselves. The War has changed social mores and expectations, or so Constance and the other women hope. But has it really and is Constance truly a part of this society or merely there for a summer?

Rereading my review of “The Summer Before the War,” I should have remembered that your style is to slowly introduce the characters, set the scene, and only then allow the story to get going. This mimics the slower pace of life in a smaller seaside vacation town of 1919. People are not flicking and scrolling their phone screens and rushing around. Even with the gentler tempo, things are still going too quickly for middle aged characters who decry the sudden changes that are jolting their world. Meanwhile (usually wealthy) young women who see new opportunities are champing at the bit to enjoy life or, if they’re working class, are desperately attempting to find a job and scrounge a living. Those who fought and survived are learning how to live with their new realities.

Tertiary characters fill out the background and show how various social outcasts ease through this world. Naturalized German Klaus was once a sought after waiter in better hotels but made it through the war working hard in low rent jobs in London. Captain Pendra, a skilled Indian pilot, had to approach the French to get a commission before the embarrassed British would accept his credentials. Simon and Matilde de Champney have always faced racism due to their mother and the fact that their parents weren’t married. Sam might have money but it was made through trade so he’s not quite totally accepted into the golden circle. Meanwhile as one working class man says the rich live by different rules. 

Constance is inhabiting a middle ground. She’s not truly a part of the wealthy titled world that she lives in and can easily see herself sinking into the unnoticed working class. She knows that she must forge her way in the world which still views women as wives and mothers even though there is now a generation of women who will never find a husband. The camaraderie she sees in the motorcycle club draws her though some women are dilettantes and others are looking for money to supplement woeful pensions. I liked Constance and felt she was standing up for herself as well as she could in her situation. Yes, she bites her tongue at times but she has to keep on on the good side of certain characters who control her employment. But she does stick up for Mrs. Fog and that woman’s lovely second chance.  

She’s not at all sure about the brother of her new friend, Poppy. Harris has inherited a barontency but is mired in depression due to his amputation and the feeling that he should have died in the war with his friends. He is (usually) well mannered but also brittle and given to retiring from social events. A strong sense of responsibility for his former mechanic and a gift from his sister might be what drags him back even before the stark realities of the financial situation of his estate yank him out of his funk. I could understand Harris’s desire to withdraw from company, especially as we learn of past relationships that have been broken. Poppy is a character who both charmed and annoyed me. Often her heart is in the right place but she can also duck responsibility when she feels like it and makes a decision that causes a stunned Constance to tell Poppy that she just doesn’t understand the people in this (rarified) world. 

There are events and revelations that call out the racism and classism of this world. Some people will end up having to reap what they have sown. Some innocents will pay the price for jingoistic attitudes. I was annoyed at how a few people seemingly abandoned those who depended on them but at the same time, some of this was caused by the post war government policies dictating what genders could be employed. Still it stung. Rigid conventions almost upend a relationship until one person’s true colors emerge which allows the changing social mores to finally deliver what I’d been waiting for. This story is much more historical fiction with romantic elements than a romance. The pace is  leisurely. Bad things happen to some people. Other people get off the hook. But Constance’s eyes are open to what she’s going into and Harris knows that he’s found the woman he can respect and admire. B  

~Jayne

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Nothing brings an estranged family together like a murder next door.

High-powered businesswoman Lana Rubicon has a lot to be proud of: her keen intelligence, impeccable taste, and the L.A. real estate empire she’s built. But when she finds herself trapped 300 miles north of the city, convalescing in a sleepy coastal town with her adult daughter Beth and teenage granddaughter Jack, Lana is stuck counting otters instead of square footage—and hoping that boredom won’t kill her before the cancer does.

Then Jack—tiny in stature but fiercely independent—happens upon a dead body while kayaking near their bungalow. Jack quickly becomes a suspect in the homicide investigation, and the Rubicon women are thrown into chaos. Beth thinks Lana should focus on recovery, but Lana has a better idea. She’ll pull on her wig, find the true murderer, protect her family, and prove she still has power.

With Jack and Beth’s help, Lana uncovers a web of lies, family vendettas, and land disputes lurking beneath the surface of a community populated by folksy conservationists and wealthy ranchers. But as their amateur snooping advances into ever-more dangerous territory, the headstrong Rubicon women must learn do the one thing they’ve always resisted: depend on each other.

CW/TW – one of the main characters has cancer and is getting treatments. 

Dear Ms. Simon, 

I don’t read too many contemporary murder mysteries but this one sounded interesting. The dynamics of the Rubicon women caught my attention and made me want to read about them. In a way, solving the murder was kind of a side interest to watching the way Lana Rubicon power walked into a scene and grabbed it with both hands. Lana is the kind of woman who can make grown men fear and obey her and now she’s passing on some of her skills to her granddaughter – while solving a murder. 

Beth Rubican and her mother have never really gotten along well. When seventeen year old Beth announced she was pregnant and keeping her baby, Lana didn’t take the news well. Beth ended up moving out of LA to Northern California and making her own way. But when her mother calls her from the hospital with a new cancer diagnosis and needs a place to recuperate and get her chemo, Beth drops everything, drives five hours each way and hauls her mother, along with five suitcases of designer clothes, back to her small bungalow by a marshy slough near Monterey. 

It’s not all happy families though as Lana is going bonkers away from the powerful career she built for herself by the sweat of her brow and the abandonment of her young daughter after her asshat husband left them. Waking up in the middle of the night, Lana sees something down by the slough – a man hauling something via a wheelbarrow. It’s not until her granddaughter Jack (for Jacqueline) is guiding a kayak tour and two of the participants find a dead body on the mudflats – and the detectives show up directing pointed questions towards Jack – that Lana puts two and two together. Too bad the police aren’t interested in what she tells them. Lana realizes that she needs to protect her mixed race granddaughter from a bigoted. misogynistic cop and then solve this murder. It’s time for her to pull out her Chanel suits, power stilettos, and “take no prisoners” attitude.   

Beware of reading the prologue without a warning. A harbor seal has died on the beach near Beth’s house and, in the third paragraph, readers are “treated” to a fairly gross description of it. Skip the third paragraph and you’ll be okay.

I was correct to pay more attention to the women of the book and how they go about solving the murder rather than be focused on the “who-dunnit.” The Rubicon women are tough each in their own way. Lana, as mentioned, has built her own career and makes men sweat merely at the sound of her heels coming down the hall. She’s a steamroller and lets little stand in her way. Cancer? She might be staggering a bit in exhaustion a few days after her chemo sessions but can still shove the weakness aside and pull off a power suit and designer shoes while intimidating Jack’s loser boss with a direct stare. Though I would love to believe that Lana could pull off all she does, it seems a little bit of a stretch for a woman at the end of five months of chemo.

Beth seems like the quiet, gentler one but she stuck to her guns, kept her baby, renovated her house, went to nursing school, and has raised Jack alone with no help from the father and little from her mother. She might not be able to completely rein her mother in but she can curb her a little. Beth has also dealt with the stares and comments about her biracial daughter and unlike Lana, Beth knows things can be stacked against Jack just because of the color of her skin. She is fiercely protective of her daughter but also doesn’t let Jack get away with breaking rules they’ve made.

Jack loves the slough, loves being on the water, loves seeing the natural world around her and is horrified at what her tourists found. Even after her grandmother’s spirited defense and the investigation turns away from her as “person of interest,” Jack is keen to help figure out what really happened and why. The more time she spends with Lana – or Prima as Jack calls her – the more life lessons and negotiating skills Lana imparts to her about getting men to do what you want.

These women are tough and fierce when they need to be. Do they eventually crack the case? Well, eventually. There are a plethora of possible culprits with motives, secrets, and means to have done the crime. There’s also a police detective who is determined to shoo Lana and her interference off the case. I enjoyed watching them put their skills and knowledge to work as well as following along via the clues lightly scattered along the way. The final paragraphs hint at possible future books which I would be happy to read. B        

~Jayne     

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