Review: Learning to Breathe Again by Tonya Cam
LearNing to Breathe Again: A Novel
Blurb:
Two women. Lives they didn't choose.
A friendship that dares them to want more.
Miami, 1933. Mary Simons was supposed to fill her scrapbook with photos of her baby's first smiles, locks of fine hair, and handwritten milestones. Instead, she records respiration rates and temperatures, hoping science can save what love can't. When her baby dies, the future she imagined dies with her.
A thousand miles north, Elena Wagner has spent years trying to bury the girl who nursed her mother and sister through their final days. Silk dresses and a husband who adores her keep the grief at arm's length. But an unplanned pregnancy, and a Depression that won't end, threaten to pull her back into the one role she swore she'd never play again.
A chance encounter at the Chicago World's Fair brings the two women together. When circumstances relocate them both to the sugarcane fields of Depression-era Florida, an unlikely friendship becomes the one thing they can't afford to lose. In a time when women are expected to endure in silence, Mary and Elena must decide: keep performing the lives they're supposed to live, or risk it all for the women they might still become.
A character-driven novel about loss, friendship, and courage. Sometimes the hardest thing isn't holding on. It's learning to breathe again.
For readers of Fiona Davis, Kristina McMorris, Marie Benedict, and Lisa Wingate.
When you pick up a book to read and review by an author you don’t know, you never know what to expect. Sometimes, you find a hidden gem.
Learning to Breathe Again is such a gem.
Told in alternate chapters by Mary and Elena, this novel is one you can’t put down. The two very different characters draw you in. Straight away, I found myself completely immersed in their – at first, very different – lives.
Whilst Mary dotes on her sick baby daughter, Janie, Elena enjoys the high life in New York – eating out, theatre, dancing. But the Depression looms, and by the end of the novel, both women’s lives have changed completely.
When Janie dies, followed soon after by her own mother, Mary is distraught. Her home becomes an empty shell full of painful memories, and she is left with no one to care for, deeply feeling her loss. A bus ride – alone – to the World Fair in Chicago is a way for her to distract herself, and learn about what’s going on in the world. Little does she know that a brief encounter with Elena, by then pregnant, and her husband, William, in search of new opportunities, has wide-reaching consequences.
During her trip, she discovers an interest in medical science. Keen to deepen her knowledge with the help of her doctor, she’s dismayed when Elena and William show up a few weeks later. Both men are keen to explore a more secure way of making money, by growing sugar cane in a small swamp town.
Elena cares little for the place, and seemingly has no interest in her new baby daughter, Gertrude. She wants the buzz of New York, not a Florida backwater.
But in an era where men decide what their wives should – and shouldn’t – do, both Mary and Elena are forced to accept their fate, meekly. But with Elena’s husband’s growing indifference, Mary’s increasingly poor health, and Elena’s insecurities, their new life turns out to be more than challenging.
Whilst Mary and Elena are quite different in character, their actual back story is similar – something they discover only over time. Where Mary lives for looking after Gertrude, Elena feels more and more left out. Neither woman is truly happy where they are. Yet, a good wife shouldn’t criticise her hard-working husband. She should accept his decisions, whatever.
The marital situations, against the backdrop of the Depression, and the women’s own histories, are portrayed incredibly realistically. We sense the women’s frustrations, and the men’s ignorance of their unhappiness. The attitudes of the times may grate on 21st century readers, but in an era where married women were meant to focus their lives around husband and children, their submissive reactions were expected.
My heart went out to Mary, with her losses and health woes. The way she cares for young Gertrude is moving, but also overbearing at times. Elena is an equally fascinating character. Superficial on the surface, she makes silly mistakes, but there is more to her than the beautifully made-up party girl. She just hides it well.
Learning to Breathe Again provides us with great insight into the era’s daily life, the dangers of missing opportunities, and the haphazard nature of paid work. Fun was for the rich; everyone else had to fend for themselves.
I found this a novel I couldn’t put down, nor could I read it quickly. The two women’s stories moved me, and they left me thinking. The men’s attitudes were – from our modern perspective – arrogant and presumptuous. Except Dr. Brown, Mary’s doctor. He pushes her to scientific research, not to give up, and he gets her to focus on her health the way her husband doesn’t. I found this particularly compelling. A rare modern man.
Learning to Breathe Again is the first in a trilogy about Mary and Elena, and I’m looking forward to reading the next instalment, The Seduction of Belonging, which is now available, too.
Highly recommended.
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