Ladies of Pagodaville by Bennett, Ellen

on the back cover, she knew she was going to be up late reading, if not all night. She was immediately drawn in from the description of the woman in the early 1930s who wanted to play flamenco guitar in a society where women did not do such things. Where women were married off to men before they were twenty, where women did not take women lovers. The protagonist, Juliana Benedita, born to a father of business notoriety and a “society” mother, was an enigma to her parents from a young age … When Lorna closed the book and laid it gently on her lap, it was almost seven o’clock in the morning. With the story still so fresh in her mind, Lorna slipped out of bed and went downstairs. She made the coffee, waited until she could fill her mug, then quietly stepped out the back door and walked down to the beach, book in hand like a talisman. A slim mist surrounded her as the sun peeked out over the ocean, the water calm, tide out. She loved this time of the day, as if no one else existed. She felt the immediate chill of the water on her insteps as she walked, and purposefully squeezed the cool sand between her toes. She was lost in the world Vasquez created, lost in the character who struggled with having to live two lives. In the aftermath of reading, Lorna found herself immersed in the descriptive imagery, in the flow of the words and action. She enjoyed how the information regarding flamenco guitar was woven into the narrative. She never knew how complex the art of playing the guitar