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Summary
Summary
From the bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet comes a powerful novel, inspired by a true story, about a boy whose life is transformed at Seattle's epic 1909 World's Fair.
"An evocative, heartfelt, beautifully crafted story that shines a light on a fascinating, tragic bit of forgotten history."--Kristin Hannah, author of The Nightingale
For twelve-year-old Ernest Young, a charity student at a boarding school, the chance to go to the World's Fair feels like a gift. But only once he's there, amid the exotic exhibits, fireworks, and Ferris wheels, does he discover that he is the one who is actually the prize. The half-Chinese orphan is astounded to learn he will be raffled off--a healthy boy "to a good home."
The winning ticket belongs to the flamboyant madam of a high-class brothel, famous for educating her girls. There, Ernest becomes the new houseboy and befriends Maisie, the madam's precocious daughter, and a bold scullery maid named Fahn. Their friendship and affection form the first real family Ernest has ever known--and against all odds, this new sporting life gives him the sense of home he's always desired.
But as the grande dame succumbs to an occupational hazard and their world of finery begins to crumble, all three must grapple with hope, ambition, and first love.
Fifty years later, in the shadow of Seattle's second World's Fair, Ernest struggles to help his ailing wife reconcile who she once was with who she wanted to be, while trying to keep family secrets hidden from their grown-up daughters.
Against a rich backdrop of post-Victorian vice, suffrage, and celebration, Love and Other Consolations is an enchanting tale about innocence and devotion--in a world where everything, and everyone, is for sale.
Praise for Love and Other Consolation Prizes
"Exciting . . . [Jamie] Ford captures the thrill of first kisses and the shock of revealing long-hidden affairs." -- Kirkus Reviews
"Strong . . . A laudable effort that shines light on little known histories."-- Library Journal
"Poignant . . . Vibrantly rendered." -- Booklist
"Combining rich narrative and literary qualities, the book achieves a multi-faceted emotional resonance. It is by turns heart-rending, tragic, disturbing, sanguine, warm, and life-affirming. Perceptive themes that run throughout culminate at the end. A true story from the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition inspired this very absorbing and moving novel. Highly recommended." -- Historical Novel Society (Editors' choice)
"Ford is a master at shining light into dark, forgotten corners of history and revealing the most unexpected and relatable human threads. . . . A beautiful and enthralling story of resilience and the many permutations of love." --Jessica Shattuck, author of The Women in the Castle
"All the charm and heartbreak of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet . . . Based on a true story, Love and Other Consolation Prizes will warm your soul." --Martha Hall Kelly, author of Lilac Girls
Author Notes
Jamie Ford graduated from the Art Institute of Seattle in 1988 and worked as an art director and as a creative director in advertising. He is also an alumnus of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers and the Orson Scott Card's Literary Boot Camp. His books include Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet and Songs of Willow Frost.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this uneven novel from Ford (Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet), the 1962 Seattle World's Fair brings back memories for Ernest Young, né Yung Kun-ai, a man in his 60s. In 1902, Ernest travels in steerage to the United States and ends up in a Seattle orphanage. In 1909 he's auctioned off at the World's Fair, becoming a houseboy in an upscale brothel in the Tenderloin district. There he befriends Fahn, a Japanese girl who was in steerage with him seven years prior, and Maisie, the madam's daughter, falling in love with both of them. Back in 1962, it's made clear that Ernest's ailing wife, now called Gracie, shares his difficult past-but which girl he married frustratingly isn't revealed until late in the book. Their grown children, Hanny, a Vegas dancer, and Juju, a journalist, don't have the full story about their parents' history until Juju discovers an article about a boy auctioned off at the 1909 fair whose name was "Ernest" and wants to delve further into it. Despite the book's flaws, Ford nevertheless excels at juxtaposing Seattle in the 1910s, with its Temperance movements, prostitution, and political involvement in the city's underbelly, against the glitter and promise of the 1962 World's Fair. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Too old to dream of being adopted, Ernest Young is raffled off at the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific World Exposition to Madame Flora, who runs a notorious brothel. His adventures have just begun.Ernest has already lived a lifetime of surprises and indignities. After his starving Chinese mother secured her only son a spot on a freighter to America, Ernest, only 5 years old, had to learn swiftly how to navigate a world that denigrated him not only for being an orphan, but also, and perhaps worse, for being of mixed blood. Ernest never knew his white father, but his youth and mixed heritage enabled him to make friends with both the Chinese girls on the ship and the lone Japanese girl, Fahn. Once Ernest survived a month captive in the hold of the ship, not to mention a near drowning, he became a ward of the state in Seattle and eventually attracted a wealthy sponsor, who sent him to an exclusive boarding school, where he endured racism and discrimination, and then, when he has the temerity to tell her he would rather go to another school, she has him raffled off at the World's Fair. Surprisingly, life in the bordello is exciting, not least because there Ernest meets Madame Flora's tomboyishly charming daughter, Maisie, and reunites with Fahn. Falling in love with both, however, can only lead to heartache, since life in a brothel exacts certain prices. Ford (Songs of Willow Frost, 2014, etc.) casts this complex love story against the backdrop of the little-known history of Chinese and Japanese orphans, who found slavery and indentured servitude rather than opportunity in America. Now in his 60s , Ernest faces his wife Gracie's declining control over her memory, which endangers the secrets he has kept from their daughters. But now their eldest, an investigative reporter, has begun to discover some potentially scandalous secrets. Alternating between Ernest's past and present, Ford captures the thrill of first kisses and the shock of revealing long-hidden affairs. A lively history of romance in the dens of iniquity, love despite vice. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Seattle's two world's fairs frame Ford's (Songs of Willow Frost, 2013) new novel. Twelve-year-old Ernest Young, who at age five was sold by his desperately poor Chinese mother and put on a freighter headed for Seattle, is the prize in a raffle at the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. The highest bidder turns out to be Madame Flora, proprietor of a high-class brothel called the Tenderloin. There Ernest finds a home, works his way up from houseboy to chauffeur, and falls in love with two girls, Maisie, Madame Flora's daughter, and Fahn, a Japanese girl who works at the Tenderloin as a kitchen maid. More than 50 years later, Ernest's daughter Juju, a journalist, decides to write a then-and-now piece to coincide with the opening of the 1962 Seattle World's Fair, and this triggers a flood of memories, all the more poignant because Ernest's wife is suffering from memory loss. Ford is a romantic rather than a realist, keeping the novel buoyant despite some difficult subject matter human trafficking, for example. A vibrantly rendered setting adds to the appeal.--Quinn, Mary Ellen Copyright 2017 Booklist
Library Journal Review
In his third novel, Ford returns with a story framed much like his debut best seller, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. A historical romance with a Chinese American boy and a Japanese American girl as its centerpiece, the story moves between two time periods: that of the 1909 Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition and the 1962 Century 21 Exposition. Basing his narrative on research of actual events and people, including one unfortunate child named Ernest Young, who was raffled off at the 1909 World's Fair and a notorious "madam" of elite companionship, Ford ambitiously attempts to highlight social movements and ills of the time. The novel starts off strong, weaving Ernest's tale with the flourishing of human trade from East Asia to the United States (more than 50 years after the Emancipation Proclamation), then going on to portray the height of Seattle's red-light district against the peak of Washington state's suffrage movement. The latter half of the book feels rushed, with what is perhaps a too-tidy ending. Still, it's a laudable effort that shines light on little-known histories. VERDICT With its chivalrous protagonist, this coming-of-age story-cum-romance has just enough emotional resonance to move most readers. [Library marketing.]-Suzanne Im, Los Angeles P.L. © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Overture (1962) 4 Ernest Young stood outside the gates on opening day of the new world's fair, loitering in the shadow of the future. From his lonely vantage point in the VIP parking lot, he could see hundreds of happy people inside, virtually every name in Seattle's Social Blue Book, wearing their Sunday best on a cool Saturday afternoon. The gaily dressed men and women barely filled half of Memorial Stadium's raked seating, but they sat together, a waterfall of wool suits and polyester neckties, cut-out dresses and ruffled pillbox hats, cascading down toward a bulwark of patriotic bunting. Ernest saw that the infield had been converted to a speedway for motorboats--an elevated moat, surrounding a dry spot of land where the All-City High School Band had assembled, along with dozens of reporters who milled about smoking cigarettes like lost sailors, marooned on an island of generators and television cameras. As the wind picked up, Ernest could smell gasoline, drying paint, and a hint of sawdust. He could almost hear carpenters tapping finishing nails as the musicians warmed up. Saying that Ernest wished he could go inside and partake of the celebration was like saying he wished he could dine alone at Canlis restaurant on Valentine's Day, cross the Atlantic by himself aboard the Queen Mary, or fly first class on an empty Boeing 707. The scenery and the festive occasion were tempting, but the endeavor itself only highlighted the absence of someone with whom to share those moments. For Ernest, that person was Gracie, his beloved wife of forty-plus years. They'd known each other since childhood, long before they'd bought a house, joined a church, and raised a family. But now their memories had been scattered like bits of broken glass on wet pavement. Reflections of first kisses, anniversaries, the smiles of toddlers, had become images of a Christmas tree left up past Easter, a package of unlit birthday candles, recollections of doctors and cold hospital waiting rooms. The truth of the matter was that these days Gracie barely remembered him. Her mind had become a one-way mirror. Ernest could see her clearly, but to Gracie he'd been lost behind her troubled, distorted reflection. Ernest chewed his lip as he leaned against the vacant Cadillac De Ville that he'd spent the better part of the morning polishing. He felt a sigh of vertigo as he stared up at the newly built Space Needle--the showpiece of the Century 21 Expo--the talk of the town, if not the country, and perhaps the entire world. He was supposed to deliver foreign dignitaries to the opening of the Spanish Village Fiesta, but the visitors had been held up--some kind of dispute with the Department of Immigration and Naturalization Services. So he came anyway, to try to remember the happier times. Ernest smiled as he listened to Danny Kaye take the microphone and read a credo of some kind. The Official World's Fair Band followed the famous actor as they took over the musical duties for the day and began to play a gliding waltz. Ernest counted the time, one-two-three, one-two-three, as he popped his knuckles and massaged the joints where arthritis reminded him of his age--sixty-four, sixty-five, sixty-something, no one knew for sure. The birth date listed on his chauffeur's permit had been made up decades earlier, as had the one on his old license with the Gray Top Taxi company. He'd left China as a boy--during a time of war and famine, not record keeping. Ernest blinked as the waltz ended and a bank of howitzers blasted a twenty-one-gun salute somewhere beyond the main entrance, startling him from his nostalgic debridement. The thundering cannons signaled that President Kennedy had officially opened the world's fair with the closing of a telegraph circuit sent all the way from his desk at the White House. Ernest had read that the signal would be bounced off a distant sun, Cassiopeia, ten thousand light-years away. He looked up at the blanket of mush that passed for a northwestern sky, and made a wish on an unseen star as people cheered and the orchestra began playing the first brassy strains of "Bow Down to Washington" while balloons were released, rising like champagne bubbles. Some of the nearby drivers honked their horns as the Space Needle's carillon bells began ringing, heralding the space age, a clarion call that was drowned out by the deafening, crackling roar of a squadron of fighter jets that boomed overhead. Ernest felt the vibration in his bones. When Mayor Clinton and the City Council had broken ground on the fairgrounds three years ago--when a gathering of reporters had watched those men ceremoniously till the nearby soil with gold-plated shovels--that's also when Gracie began to cry in her sleep. She'd wake and forget where she was. She'd grow fearful and panic. Dr. Luke had told Ernest and their daughters, with tears in his eyes, "It's a rare type of viral meningitis." Dr. Luke always had a certain sense of decorum, and Ernest knew he was lying for the sake of the girls. Especially since he'd treated Gracie when she was young. "These things sometimes stay hidden and then come back, decades later," the doctor had said as the two of them stood on Ernest's front step. "It's uncommon, but it happens. I've seen it before in other patients. It's not contagious now. It's just--" "A ghost of red-light districts past," Ernest had interrupted. "A ripple from the water trade." He shook Dr. Luke's hand and thanked him profusely for the late-night house call and the doctor's ample discretion regarding Gracie's past. Ernest remembered how shortly after his wife's diagnosis her condition had worsened. How she'd pulled out her hair and torn at her clothing. How Gracie had been hospitalized and nearly institutionalized a month later, when she'd lost her wits so completely that Ernest had had to fight the specialists who recommended she be given electroshock therapy, or worse--a medieval frontal-lobe castration at Western State Hospital, the asylum famous for its "ice pick" lobotomies. Ernest hung on as Dr. Luke quietly administered larger doses of penicillin until the madness subsided and Gracie returned to a new version of normal. But the damage had been done. Part of his wife--her memory--was a blackboard that had been scrubbed clean. She still fell asleep while listening to old records by Josephine Baker and Edith Piaf. She still smiled at the sound of rain on the roof, and enjoyed the fragrance of fresh roses from the Cherry Land flower shop. But on most days, Ernest's presence was like fingernails on that blackboard as Gracie recoiled in fits of either hysteria or anger. I didn't know the month of the world's fair groundbreaking would be our last good month together, Ernest thought as he watched scores of wide-eyed fairgoers--couples, families, busloads of students--pouring through the nearby turnstiles, all smiles and awe, tickets in hand. He heard the stadium crowd cheer as a pyramid of water-skiers whipped around the Aquadrome. To make matters worse, when Gracie had been in the hospital, agents from the Washington State Highway Department had showed up on Ernest's doorstep. "Hello, Mr. Young," they'd said. "We have some difficult news to share. May we come in?" The officials were kind and respectful--apologetic even. As they informed him that his three-bedroom craftsman home overlooking Chinatown, along with his garden and a row of freshly trimmed lilacs in full bloom--the only home he'd ever owned and the place where his daughters took their first steps--all of it was in the twenty-mile urban construction zone of the Everett-Seattle-Tacoma Freeway. The new interstate highway was a ligature of concrete designed to bind Washington with Oregon and California. In less than a week, he and his neighbors had been awarded fair-market value for their properties, along with ninety days to move out, and the right-of-way auctions began. The government had wanted the land, Ernest remembered, and our homes were a nuisance. So he'd moved his ailing wife in with his older daughter, Juju, and watched from the sidewalk as entire city blocks were sold. Homes were scooped off their foundations and strapped to flatbed trucks to be moved or demolished. But not before vandals and thieves stripped out the oak paneling that Ernest had installed years ago, along with the light fixtures, the crystalline doorknobs, and even the old hot-water heater that leaked in wintertime. The only thing left standing was a blur of cherry trees that lined the avenue. Ernest recalled watching as a crew arrived with a fleet of roaring diesel trucks and a steam shovel. Blossoms swirled on the breeze as he'd turned and walked away. As a young man, Ernest had carved his initials onto one of those trees along with Gracie's--and those of another girl too. He hadn't seen her in forever. As an aerialist rode a motorcycle on a taut cable stretched from the stadium to the Space Needle, Ernest listened to the whooshing and mechanical thrumming of carnival rides. He caught the aroma of freshly spun cotton candy, still warm, and remembered the sticky-sweet magic of candied apples. He felt a pressing wave of déjà vu. The present is merely the past reassembled, Ernest mused as he pictured the two girls and how he'd once strolled with them, arm in arm, on the finely manicured grounds of Seattle's first world's fair, the great Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, back in 1909. When the city first dressed up and turned its best side to the cameras of the world. He remembered a perfect day, when he fell in love with both girls. But as Ernest walked to the gate and leaned on the cold metal bars, he also smelled smoke. He heard fussy children crying. And his ears were still ringing with the echoes of the celebratory cannons that had scared the birds away. He drew a deep breath. Memories are narcotic, he thought. Like the array of pill bottles that sit cluttered on my nightstand. Each dose, carefully administered, use as directed. Too much and they become dangerous. Too much and they'll stop your heart. Excerpted from Love and Other Consolation Prizes by Jamie Ford All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
