Book Recommendation: LEARNING TO SEE
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“I lean over to open a drawer and retrieve a file. California, 1936. Black-and-white photographs spill out across my worktable. Faces of men, women, and children. All as dry, dingy, and cracked as the land in the background. I glance at the other folder tabs. New Mexico, 1935. Texas, 1938. Arkansas, 1938. Arizona, 1940. I’ve visited many states, taken thousands of photographs. They gave a face to the masses struggling to make ends meet. They started conversations. Few would argue that my work wasn’t important and useful. And while I don’t regret my choices, I’m saddened that I’ve hurt people dear to me. Can I find peace with the sacrifices I made?” ~Elise Cooper, LEARNING TO SEE
Publisher Synopsis:
In 1918, a fearless twenty-two-year old arrives in bohemian San Francisco from the Northeast, determined to make her own way as an independent woman. Renaming herself Dorothea Lange she is soon the celebrated owner of the city’s most prestigious and stylish portrait studio and wife of the talented but volatile painter, Maynard Dixon.
By the early 1930s, as America’s economy collapses, her marriage founders and Dorothea must find ways to support her two young sons single-handedly. Determined to expose the horrific conditions of the nation’s poor, she takes to the road with her camera, creating images that inspire, reform, and define the era. And when the United States enters World War II, Dorothea chooses to confront another injustice—the incarceration of thousands of innocent Japanese Americans.
At a time when women were supposed to keep the home fires burning, Dorothea Lange, creator of the most iconic photographs of the 20th century, dares to be different. But her choices came at a steep price…
My Recommendation:
Elise Hooper is a writer whose talents at clarity and empathy bring out the humanity of her historical subjects. Like her debut novel, THE OTHER ALCOTT, Hooper’s LEARNING TO SEE is an intimate portrait of one of history’s great, shadowed, female artists, photographer Dorothea Lange.
Most readers will be able to draw to mind the iconic Depression-era image of the poor, exhausted mother–gaze toward an uncertain future–flanked by dirty children. LEARNING TO SEE tells the journey of the woman who captured that image and hundreds like it. We see a girl of courage and spunk become a life-hardened woman of integrity and fire. The images Lange captures through her lens inform her growth, her choices, and the American public.
Hooper deftly balances the fascinating historical fabric of the novel with the personal life of its complicated protagonist. What results is a vivid and deep story that will send the reader to the internet seeking more.
Fans of Dawn Tripp’s GEORGIA and Depression to WWII-era historical fiction will be enthralled by Elise Hooper’s LEARNING TO SEE. I give it my highest recommendation.
