What do you think?
Rate this book
Queens Never Make Bargains
QUEENS NEVER MAKE BARGAINS is the engaging, evocative tale of three spirited Scottish-American women who carry on their lives through two world wars, a flu pandemic, and a Great Depression. The story opens with young Jessie Menzies who takes ship to America to live in a Vermont machine tool town as nanny to her pious Uncle Wallace's bereaved children. The action moves in and out of a boarding house filled with eccentrics like the feisty artist Llew Arthur, whose polio forces him to paint propped up against a shaky card table. It propels us into the 30's N.Y.C. theater world where a small-minded congressman succeeds in silencing the actors; and into war-time London where rebel-pilot Victoria ferries her beloved Spitfires, has a failed love affair, and mourns a lost child. The novel explores the role of immigrants and their conflicting cultures and religions. It shows us how external events can shape and alter our lives, and how we cope with and survive them.
234 pages, Paperback
First published April 3, 2014
About the author
Nancy Means Wright
30 books32 followers I'm the author of 18 books of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, including 5 mystery novels from St. Martin's Press, 2 historical novels: Midnight Fires: a Mystery with Mary Wollstonecraft ('10)and the Nightmare ('11)from Perseverance Press.For those who don't know her, Wollstonecraft is the brilliant but rebellious and conflicted 18th century author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,and mother of Mary Shelley (think Frankenstein).
I've also published 2 mysteries for kids. The Pea Soup Poisonings, based on my own 4 kids'childhood shenanigans, won the '06 Agatha Award for Best Children's/YA Novel,and The Great Circus Train Robbery was a finalist. My latest mystery is Broken Strings, a spin-off from my St. Martin's Press novels with a puppeteer sleuth, and a novel, Walking up into the Wild for "tweens" (ages 10-14, set in 18th-century Vermont just before the end of the American Revolution. It's both suspenseful and romantic and based on family history. Not a mystery.
I've published poems and short fiction for Redbook, Seventeen, American Literary Review,Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, and many literary journals and anthologies (Beacon Press, Ashland Poetry Press, Univ of Illinois Press, et al.).
A longtime actress & director,I'm a former Bread Loaf Scholar and Scholar for the Vermont Humanities Council. I live with my spouse and 2 Maine Coon cats in bucolic Middlebury, Vermont. "Becoming Mary Wollstonecraft" Facebook page.
I've also published 2 mysteries for kids. The Pea Soup Poisonings, based on my own 4 kids'childhood shenanigans, won the '06 Agatha Award for Best Children's/YA Novel,and The Great Circus Train Robbery was a finalist. My latest mystery is Broken Strings, a spin-off from my St. Martin's Press novels with a puppeteer sleuth, and a novel, Walking up into the Wild for "tweens" (ages 10-14, set in 18th-century Vermont just before the end of the American Revolution. It's both suspenseful and romantic and based on family history. Not a mystery.
I've published poems and short fiction for Redbook, Seventeen, American Literary Review,Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, and many literary journals and anthologies (Beacon Press, Ashland Poetry Press, Univ of Illinois Press, et al.).
A longtime actress & director,I'm a former Bread Loaf Scholar and Scholar for the Vermont Humanities Council. I live with my spouse and 2 Maine Coon cats in bucolic Middlebury, Vermont. "Becoming Mary Wollstonecraft" Facebook page.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 29, 2015
Turn off your phone, curl up in a comfy chair, and don’t forget a box of tissues when you embark on the journey in Nancy Means Wright’s beautiful novel, Queens Never Make Bargains. On the outside of the pages, this is a story of how a young immigrant girl’s decision to move from Scotland to pre-WWI America results in generations of strong women who overcome obstacles…blah, blah, blah.
I’m not even talking about that here. I am talking about what you find on the inside. You begin reading, and suddenly, there are no pages, no sentences, no words. There is only story. Nobody wrote this! It happened! You are living within a memory.
Basically, this is a book that refuses to leave you outside. You are bustled into the parlor, placed into a chair, handed a cup of tea, and instructed to listen up, because you are going to learn some things here.
Nestled within scenes of simplicity, yet fraught with meaning, are those moments that capture you. It begins with Jessie and her struggle with duty and passion. You will smile, albeit tight-lipped, when you witness the tension between she and her mother, nodding your head at the obvious love between the two, but their struggle to let go off the past. Who else in your life but your mother can you both love and resent so strongly? You’ll sigh for Jessie’s predicaments and yearn for her happiness. Who else but your true love can bring so much joy and so much pain? You will watch her age, persevering in the face of so much change, both good and bad, and your pity will ripen into admiration and love. Maybe we really can look in the mirror, see what truly lies beneath, and accept the reality.
And, oh, darling, reckless, prickly, fragile Vicky! Will you want to smack her for her abrasive behavior, so antagonistic and hateful to those who love her? Will you want to shake her for taking what appears to be a shot at true happiness and throwing it away, while grasping for the fruit we know to be rotten? Or will you want to hold her in your arms until the ice in her veins thaws, allowing her poor broken heart to finally heal? I predict you will want to do all three.
I hate to leave out Flora, and Sophie, and gentle Grace, not to mention the men who prove to be the catalysts for such turmoil, but I want you, the reader, to meet them all on your own terms. I want you to fall in love with them like I did. When you turn the last page, I want you to feel richer for having known them. While your struggles may not seem like theirs from the outside, Nancy Means Wright show you that they are one and the same for many of us. And that makes me feel stronger in my own challenges in life. “I am a Jessie,” I shall now tell myself. “And I will not make a single bargain…in my heart.”
Wright crafts a novel with heart and polishes it with truly beautiful writing, ultimately bringing new insight into our own lives with characters that may be fiction on the outside, but are our sisters on the inside. There are no twists and turns, no scandalous reveals, no need to employ tricks to keep us invested. There is just the story of a group of women and their men, with their hearts laid bare for us, and that is enough. When I finally put down my tea, rose from the chair, and exited their parlor, I wiped away my tears. Then I smiled, because I knew that I was taking them all with me. The great ones stay with us always.
I’m not even talking about that here. I am talking about what you find on the inside. You begin reading, and suddenly, there are no pages, no sentences, no words. There is only story. Nobody wrote this! It happened! You are living within a memory.
Basically, this is a book that refuses to leave you outside. You are bustled into the parlor, placed into a chair, handed a cup of tea, and instructed to listen up, because you are going to learn some things here.
Nestled within scenes of simplicity, yet fraught with meaning, are those moments that capture you. It begins with Jessie and her struggle with duty and passion. You will smile, albeit tight-lipped, when you witness the tension between she and her mother, nodding your head at the obvious love between the two, but their struggle to let go off the past. Who else in your life but your mother can you both love and resent so strongly? You’ll sigh for Jessie’s predicaments and yearn for her happiness. Who else but your true love can bring so much joy and so much pain? You will watch her age, persevering in the face of so much change, both good and bad, and your pity will ripen into admiration and love. Maybe we really can look in the mirror, see what truly lies beneath, and accept the reality.
And, oh, darling, reckless, prickly, fragile Vicky! Will you want to smack her for her abrasive behavior, so antagonistic and hateful to those who love her? Will you want to shake her for taking what appears to be a shot at true happiness and throwing it away, while grasping for the fruit we know to be rotten? Or will you want to hold her in your arms until the ice in her veins thaws, allowing her poor broken heart to finally heal? I predict you will want to do all three.
I hate to leave out Flora, and Sophie, and gentle Grace, not to mention the men who prove to be the catalysts for such turmoil, but I want you, the reader, to meet them all on your own terms. I want you to fall in love with them like I did. When you turn the last page, I want you to feel richer for having known them. While your struggles may not seem like theirs from the outside, Nancy Means Wright show you that they are one and the same for many of us. And that makes me feel stronger in my own challenges in life. “I am a Jessie,” I shall now tell myself. “And I will not make a single bargain…in my heart.”
Wright crafts a novel with heart and polishes it with truly beautiful writing, ultimately bringing new insight into our own lives with characters that may be fiction on the outside, but are our sisters on the inside. There are no twists and turns, no scandalous reveals, no need to employ tricks to keep us invested. There is just the story of a group of women and their men, with their hearts laid bare for us, and that is enough. When I finally put down my tea, rose from the chair, and exited their parlor, I wiped away my tears. Then I smiled, because I knew that I was taking them all with me. The great ones stay with us always.
December 16, 2014
Queens Never Make Bargains is a multi-generational, rather episodic novel, based loosely on the family of the author. Starting with the seventeen-year-old Jessie arriving in America from Scotland, in 1912, it goes on to tell her story as well as those of her step-daughter and her daughter. The book ends at the end of World War II.
Jessie has been sent to care for the three children of her aunt who has died in childbirth. She is met by a rather dour uncle, and they spend the several hours' ride to Vermont in near silence.
In addition to being a nanny, Jessie, who had planned to become a teacher, teaches immigrants who have settled in the small Vermont factory town. She develops a relationship with one, a young Polish poet and, by the time he leaves for World War 1, she is pregnant with his child. When it becomes clear that he will not return, Jessie marries the father of the children she has been caring for. It's not the warmest of marriages, but it survives.
The book goes on to tell the story of Victoria, the headstrong daughter of Jessie's aunt. We follow her as she breaks hearts and rules with impunity, plunges into anything new or exciting and has a daughter whom she gives up for adoption. Victoria's true love is flying and, after toying with the idea of becoming an actress, she finds her calling as a pilot in World War II. As with the story of Jessie, we are left with an unfinished portrait of a rather unhappy woman.
The last section of the book is devoted to Grace, the daughter of Jessie and Pavel, her Polish lover. Again—there's frustration involved. She wants to be a veterinarian but is not accepted into the relevant school. She falls in love with Daniel who loves Victoria and has his child—a daughter, of course.
The last scene of the book has Jessie, her mother (who we find out had Jessie out of wedlock), Grace and Grace's daughter waiting at the dock for a troop ship. On it will be both Daniel and the last surviving child of the original group Jessie was hired to take care of, Duncan.
The book ends on an upbeat note but, after having read about 33 years of some happiness, much despair and depression and several factual errors regarding Jewish practices (there are no Saturday night services in a synagogue and incense is never used) I came to the end with a sense of unfulfillment.
by Helene Benardo
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women
Jessie has been sent to care for the three children of her aunt who has died in childbirth. She is met by a rather dour uncle, and they spend the several hours' ride to Vermont in near silence.
In addition to being a nanny, Jessie, who had planned to become a teacher, teaches immigrants who have settled in the small Vermont factory town. She develops a relationship with one, a young Polish poet and, by the time he leaves for World War 1, she is pregnant with his child. When it becomes clear that he will not return, Jessie marries the father of the children she has been caring for. It's not the warmest of marriages, but it survives.
The book goes on to tell the story of Victoria, the headstrong daughter of Jessie's aunt. We follow her as she breaks hearts and rules with impunity, plunges into anything new or exciting and has a daughter whom she gives up for adoption. Victoria's true love is flying and, after toying with the idea of becoming an actress, she finds her calling as a pilot in World War II. As with the story of Jessie, we are left with an unfinished portrait of a rather unhappy woman.
The last section of the book is devoted to Grace, the daughter of Jessie and Pavel, her Polish lover. Again—there's frustration involved. She wants to be a veterinarian but is not accepted into the relevant school. She falls in love with Daniel who loves Victoria and has his child—a daughter, of course.
The last scene of the book has Jessie, her mother (who we find out had Jessie out of wedlock), Grace and Grace's daughter waiting at the dock for a troop ship. On it will be both Daniel and the last surviving child of the original group Jessie was hired to take care of, Duncan.
The book ends on an upbeat note but, after having read about 33 years of some happiness, much despair and depression and several factual errors regarding Jewish practices (there are no Saturday night services in a synagogue and incense is never used) I came to the end with a sense of unfulfillment.
by Helene Benardo
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women
May 30, 2014
I was emotionally moved by this novel. As a reader I felt strongly connected to the three women who tell their life stories. This is a work of women’s fiction that I recommend to fellow readers and writers. I would compare this novel to The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough.
Parts I and II of the novel are narrated in the first person by Jessie Menzies and cover the period of 1912-1931. Jessie’s story begins in Scotland. Jessie’s Aunt Grace has died in childbirth and Jessie’s mother and grandmother decide that seventeen-year-old Jesse should go to America and care for her aunt’s orphaned children. Jessie was a top student and wanted to teach but she sacrifices her own aspirations to help her family. Jessie comes to live in the machine tool town of Cherry Valley, Vermont, to be the nanny to her religious Uncle Wallace’s three children. She falls in love with a Polish immigrant, a poet-pacifist named Pavel, and becomes pregnant. Pavel dies in the influenza pandemic of 1918. Wallace and Jessie then marry. Wallace is not the stuff of a young girl’s dreams. He is forty when they first meet, and becomes a Presbyterian minister like his father before him. When he dies, Jessie’s mother comes from Scotland to help her with the home and children. They also establish a school and Jessie eventually becomes the headmistress. Discussing the plot, however, does not give a true sense of the excellent use of vivid, descriptive language used by the author. There is a poetic quality to her prose.
Part Three covers 1935-1943. This is Victoria’s story. She is Wallace’s daughter by Jessie’s Aunt Grace, a young woman with a true lust for life. The spirited young woman had a passion for the theatre as well as her drama professor. She becomes a pilot in World War II ferrying planes in England.
Part Four, 1945, is Grace’s story. She is Jessie’s daughter by Pavel. Daniel is her love and she worries about his survival fighting for his country in the war. Each woman in this novel lives her life with courage and fortitude. But often their choices are limited by circumstance. The reader is reminded that history is what happens while ordinary people live their lives, but history impacts each life nevertheless.
Parts I and II of the novel are narrated in the first person by Jessie Menzies and cover the period of 1912-1931. Jessie’s story begins in Scotland. Jessie’s Aunt Grace has died in childbirth and Jessie’s mother and grandmother decide that seventeen-year-old Jesse should go to America and care for her aunt’s orphaned children. Jessie was a top student and wanted to teach but she sacrifices her own aspirations to help her family. Jessie comes to live in the machine tool town of Cherry Valley, Vermont, to be the nanny to her religious Uncle Wallace’s three children. She falls in love with a Polish immigrant, a poet-pacifist named Pavel, and becomes pregnant. Pavel dies in the influenza pandemic of 1918. Wallace and Jessie then marry. Wallace is not the stuff of a young girl’s dreams. He is forty when they first meet, and becomes a Presbyterian minister like his father before him. When he dies, Jessie’s mother comes from Scotland to help her with the home and children. They also establish a school and Jessie eventually becomes the headmistress. Discussing the plot, however, does not give a true sense of the excellent use of vivid, descriptive language used by the author. There is a poetic quality to her prose.
Part Three covers 1935-1943. This is Victoria’s story. She is Wallace’s daughter by Jessie’s Aunt Grace, a young woman with a true lust for life. The spirited young woman had a passion for the theatre as well as her drama professor. She becomes a pilot in World War II ferrying planes in England.
Part Four, 1945, is Grace’s story. She is Jessie’s daughter by Pavel. Daniel is her love and she worries about his survival fighting for his country in the war. Each woman in this novel lives her life with courage and fortitude. But often their choices are limited by circumstance. The reader is reminded that history is what happens while ordinary people live their lives, but history impacts each life nevertheless.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews