“How do you take your entire life with you if you have to walk out the door with only what you can carry? How?”

It’s the aftermath of the crash, and now the men have to figure out a way to continue on with their lives. They are forced to find cheap housing for the three couples and new jobs for the men to have. Luckily, they do succeed on both fronts, but at what cost? Another thing that was important in this chapter was the idea of knowing who your true friends are. Despite the fact that Jonathan no longer had any money to pay his former staff, they were the ones that came back the next day and helped all three families prepare to move, packing anything they could take that wouldn’t get them in trouble, and helping to clean the apartments that they found to rent for the rest of their distant future. When Jonathan ran into someone he considered one of his oldest friends, that man – Milton – immediately dismissed him when he believed that Jonathan was going to beg for money. To think that the ones who were friends with Jonathan when he was rich are the ones that are nowhere to be found when he lost everything was a real eye opener for him, and it taught him a hard learned lesson of character.

I can already see that there is going to be trouble ahead for the three couples, especially Jonathan and Ava since the landlord they are renting from was a very prominent figure from their past. He and Jonathan are arch rivals and it is unsure just how horrible he treated Ava. There seem to be some hints that maybe he was abusive, both physically and mentally, but I don’t want to confirm it just yet. Since he is the only one that has cheap apartments left, however, Jonathan and the rest of the group will have to suck it up and make the best out of their dire situation.

While the men work on moving things over from their lavish mansions to their shoddy apartments, the girls stay home and end up having a little going away party of their own. Ava and Claire were always posh ladies, never wanting to make their husbands embarrassed. Their behavior was always perfect, never straying for anything or anyone. However, Arianna is a different story, and now that they are no longer “proper ladies”, she convinces Ava and Claire to finally try some liquor. This, of course, leads to a drunken party that allows the women to forget everything that is going on around them. Hopefully they will remember that night when they finally have to move in to their new homes.

A figure was free falling from an adjacent building.

Everything that happened to Jonathan and his two friends Aryl and Caleb occurred in the blink of an eye. I felt like I was in their shoes, watching the world fall apart right in front of me, except I didn’t quite understand what happened. This story takes place in 1929, beginning at the exact time the Stock Market crashed, and as I read through it, all I could think about was just how quickly life could change. It wasn’t just Jonathan and his friends that were affected though. Their wives and the families of everyone investing in stock so heavily at the time lost everything. There was panic everywhere, and I could feel it as I read it. I can only imagine what they plan on doing to survive, a real riches to rags tale that will test the kind of character they have in the worst of times.

It was also interesting to see how each wife reacted in the same situation. Ava (Jonathan’s wife) seemed to be the strongest out of the three, even though when she first heard the news she almost went into shock. She seems like the type of wife to stick with her husband through these troubling times, even if they will have to start all the way from the bottom and eventually work their way back to the top. Not a lot of background is provided on the wives, although there is a story for one of them that will be interesting to read when you get to this section. Claire (Aryl’s wife) and Arianna (Caleb’s wife) also react differently to the news that their husbands bring home, with Arianna reacting in the most dramatic way out of the three.

I will promise to keep this blog spoiler free, so I won’t go into any more details on that bit. Just know that the men have a lot of work to do if they are going to make a living for their wives, and the wives are going to have to decide on whether love will keep their family together, or was the money the reason why they stayed.  Keep on the look-out for another post regarding Chapter 2. Looks to be a long one, so hopefully in the next day or two I’ll have one up.

Happy New Years!

Is ea, is cuimhin liom go maith e.

The first part of this story takes place in the distant future: June 1972. Assuming that the main character of the story is Jonathan (as the title of this book is sometimes called Jonathan’s Cross), we first meet him as an old man, bedridden due to a stroke that left the right side of his body paralyzed. He feels like he is a burden to his son, despite what his old friend Maura says. Maura is close to Jonathan, and has been a part of his life for so long that she knows everything about him. He appreciates the little scoldings and quips that come from Maura, and even though he pretends like it annoys him, it is something that he looks forward to. Judging Maura on her actions, we can assume that she either used to work as a maid, or still does. Her first instinct is to clean up the room around Jonathan, even if he doesn’t want her to. As she goes through the room, dusting different pieces of furniture and keepsakes, she silently remembers the story behind each piece, showing the reader that her place in this family goes deeper than just keeping the house clean.

Jonathan’s son, Robert, brings his father a few items that he had requested, most notably an old typewriter and dozens of journals that documented Jonathan’s life. It is then that Jonathan asks Maura to finish his story, write anything and everything that happened to him in his life and give it to his children when he does. Even though she hesitates in the beginning, she eventually agrees, having free reign of where to start this epic tale.

Judging from the prologue, I get a sense that there was something incredible that happened to Jonathan, something that Maura had the opportunity of witnessing first hand. It must be something important enough to make him want to leave it to his children in writing, rather than just telling them the story. His son Robert is already grown, as Jonathan is living in his son’s house rather than his own, although it is not said how old Robert actually is. We also don’t know how many children Jonathan has as of right now, or what happened to the mother of his children. All in all, I feel like the prologue is a great start to what I hope to be a very interesting story of Jonathan’s past, something that shaped his future and made him decide it was worth immortalizing.

-Leelynn