Review of Poplar Hill
“Another branch snapped on the
tree outside as a sense of doom overcame her.” (Pg. 30 Poplar Hill)
The narrator speaks the mind of
Catherine (“Kitty”) Stevenson, and the image could stand for her life. So
begins a book with two timelines – one of the Nova Scotia of 1998/99, where
Kitty lies gravely ill in Shiretown Nursing Home; and one on 1930s Germany, to
which she travels into the Nazi hornet’s nest.
This is a tale of intrigue,
deceit, danger, espionage, and living on the edge. One would think the
contemporary times would serve as relief to all of that stress. However, in the
hands of author, Steven Ramey Glines, the end of Kitty’s life is fraught with
its own perils and moments of harrowing decision.
The tension between life and death seems always present with
Kitty. Born into great wealth, she never feels entitled, probably due to the
fact that her father, founder of United Coal Company, lost his fortune in the
Great Depression. The family, forced to move into the caretaker’s cottage at
their liquidated mansion, develops a sense that nothing is permanent. Kitty
says, “The Depression and the War colored the rest of our lives, my whole
generation. Prosperity and austerity are measured against the Depression and
security against our experience in or, in my case, just before the war.” As her
mother did before her, Kitty had been sent off to convent school for a
childhood of withholding and discipline. But it is in the travelling there that
her life attitude had come through, as she had to contain all her belongings in
one valise. Later, when she packs for Germany, she takes a steamer trunk in
posh fashion, but when she has to flee, she does so with only that one valise.
That piece of luggage – the title of a chapter - is a bellwether of her life of
plenty or sacrifice.
Kitty is a woman of class, although that means nothing to
her. Her son, Jimmy (whom she insists on calling James) says of her, “Mom can
tell the difference between a real Gucci bag and a Chinese knockoff but is
perfectly content to use something she found at a thrift shop.”
Notwithstanding, she never feels above or below anyone. She can fit into any
situation and make it look so effortless, Jimmy explains. Her real test was
shaking hands with Hitler. She’s in Munich, as are other young Americans, to
spend her father’s money which is trapped in Germany. The Nazis will not allow
it to be taken out of the country in any form, so Kitty and her circle of
friends live it up with parties and endless liquor. This is also Kitty’s chance
to attend voice school, which she could not at home.
Yet it’s not a story of spoiled
rich kids whooping it up in a dictatorship; as we shall see this bunch – cell,
really - take it upon themselves to be impromptu journalists and, indeed, spies
for America, which is not yet at war. Reporting what they see on the streets
during Kristallnacht, they are able to sell their reports to the news outlets
and earn some of their keep.
The duality between hedonism and
hardship turns into a travelling show, as the group actually escape the
pressures of impending war by going on vacations in the midst of diplomatic
breakdowns, such as setting out for Austria the day before the Anschluss.
Foolhardiness? Probably, but that’s youth! Or else, it’s their way of cheating
death, as Kitty proclaims in general, adding that the fall of 1938 was the most
exhilarating time of her life.
A woman of great intelligence and
courage, she also exhibits calculated nerve (and impudence) in appearing at a
U.S. embassy party with likenesses of the Polish, French, and British flags
sewn on the bum of her dress. Most nervy of all is that she assists in aiding a
Jewish family in either surviving or getting out. Her resolve will come to a
shocking conclusion with a great revelation at the end of the book.
You would think her departure on the very last passenger
ship out of Germany in August, 1939 would cap the story, but the later chapters
of her life test Kitty as much. Diagnosed with diabetes, causing two heart
attacks, and finally organ failure, she must face survival and mortality yet
again.
Glines interweaves the two storylines masterfully. For
example, though Shiretown is a quiet provincial nursing home, there are moments
there recalling the war. Her friend, Vince, lights a match by her oxygen tank –
perhaps emblematic of the tinderbox of world war. And just at the point Kitty
tells of the invasion of Czechoslovakia and therefore her inability to return
to Germany, Shiretown closes due to a blizzard. In the same vein, James pushes
the point that we wants his dying mother’s stocks early. Could that evoke the
Nazis confiscating property? And Kitty thinks Heaven is a garden, recalling her
sickly delirium in which she thought geraniums spoke to her. The reader will
find that in Munich she determined whether the U.S. Consulate would stay open
depending on whether its flowerpots remained. Flowers mean life, and singing
means life. All she ever wanted to do was to sing like an angel, and Glines
implies the day she does make it to Heaven may give her that chance that she
never had in the Munch Opera.
Kitty lives by the idea of ‘L’Appel du Vide,’ the idea of
going to edge of cliff and having the urge to jump, so you run away. She says
she looks over the cliff at the end of her life but has no choice but to jump.
The circumstances are beyond her control. What is not is her voice. The author
states, “So long as she could tell stories, she didn’t need to look into the
abyss.” With her resolve and powers of influence that voice saved lives,
including her own, in war, and later shapes the town of Pictou to carry out an
unusual request for Kitty and to afford her the dignity of a final story.
