Operation: Nebraska Author- The Reluctant Canary Sings

It has been over two months since I last posted here and a lot has happened in that time. In addition to an overall lack of satisfaction with my life, my roommate/landlord had some big changes happen in his life that rippled to include changes in the living situations of everybody in the house. Instead of attempting to find somewhere to live locally that I could afford (Kearney is notoriously expensive for housing and not very pet friendly), I started looking for a new job elsewhere. I got one with a large company in Lincoln, NE, packed up my entire life, and moved halfway across the state. Today marks week 5 in my new apartment and I feel my creative juices finally flowing again, abet slowly. I'm sure they'll pick up with some work (fingers crossed).

I read The Reluctant Canary Sings by Faith A. Colburn probably two months ago and due to everything above and not enough time in the day, I wasn't able to sit down to write a review until now. And I had to reread it a second time to give it justice with this review... and because it's great.

Warning: I personally know Faith. We met about two years ago when I joined the Central Nebraska Writers Group and we've grown into pretty good friends. I'm going to try to keep this review as unbiased as possible. Let's see how I do. 😁

The Reluctant Canary Sings follows Bobbie Bowen, a 15 year old girl growing up in Cleveland, OH in 1937. Bobbie had been blessed with the voice of an angel and cursed with a father with a gambling problem.

Would you just look at this beautiful cover?!

The book starts with a brief overview of what the city of Cleveland was like during the '30s. There was a serial killer called the Butcher of Kingsbury Run who not only was real, he was a significant factor in many things that happened in the book. The country was in the middle of "the second dip of a double-dip depression" and majority of the country's men, women, and children worried about where their next meal was coming from and if they were lucky enough to have a roof over their head, how long they'd be able to keep it.

It is here we meet Bobbie, enjoying what free or cheap entertainment she could with her friends in the summer, working at a popcorn stand and swimming in Lake Erie, dreaming of becoming an artist and only singing for herself. Her mom cleaned banks at night and pounded the pavement during the day looking for more work while her dad applied for any and all WPA jobs he could and tried to earn a little extra money betting the odds on the ponies.

When Bobbie's friends convinced her to enter a singing contest (the grand prize was $100 and a job for the summer) at the Pavilion , a local dance hall, she had never sang for anybody but herself but the lure of a steady income, even if it was just for the summer, was too good to pass up. Winning the contest set her on the path to becoming a canary (a band's singer) at a number of different clubs and eventually out on the road with a band that traveled up and down the eastern seaboard.

Russ Peterson's Big Band performing Blue Moon.

Blue Moon was Bobbie's theme song.

She was on the road when Pearl Harbor was attacked and as fear and the threat of war swept the country, jobs for bands and singers dwindled down to next to nothing. The band broke up with singles or pairs taking any and all jobs they could until the draft notices came in. Bobbie took a solo job in Buffalo, NY, spending almost all her cash on a bus ticket to get there and a room for the week just to find that the club that hired her was foreclosed. She called home to have her dad wire her enough money from her savings to pay for a bus ticket home and a few meals on the way only to find out he had lost her entire savings, almost $2000, at the tracks. Desperate for a job to earn enough for a bus ticket home, Bobbie went from club to club, nearing starvation with each passing day. After being turned down time and again and being attacked by one bastard club owner, Bobbie was reaching the end of her hope and her strength when she finally got a job at a club that paid just enough to get her home to Cleveland.

It was Buffalo that was the turning of the tide for Bobbie. She was tired of being force to rely on unreliable income, tired of wondering where her next meal was coming from, and tired of being groped, pinched, leered at, and taken advantage of.

It was 1942, America was at war and Bobbie joined the Woman's Army Auxiliary Corps.

I was constantly forgetting that for the majority of the book, Bobbie was only fifteen. Even from the beginning, she showed great sense and maturity that only grew with life's harsh lessons. She went from being a school girl to the family's major breadwinner in just a few short weeks and she surprisingly harbored very little resentment toward her parents for it, aside from the anger she had toward her dad for losing her savings. She faced a loss that almost broke her, and while she will probably feel the loss for the rest of her life, she eventually got up and faced the day.

I think some people would try to label The Reluctant Canary Sings as a Young Adult/coming-of-age story but I don't agree with that. Yes, Bobbie is only fifteen and grows up during the course of the book, but even at the beginning she is far more mature than many adults are today, just because of the hard time she grew up in and while I think some older YA readers would be okay reading it, The Reluctant Canary Sings is for adults.

Now for my opinion of The Reluctant Canary Sings. Simply put, I loved it.

Faith is an avid historian and researcher (check out her multiple non-fiction books) but she does something that many scholars can't do, she created a rich story with rounded characters that continue to grow throughout the book. She gives the reader an entertaining story that also touches the soul. Her dedication to historical accuracy and detail only give the story more depth and perspective instead of drying it out.

I wholeheartedly recommend The Reluctant Canary Sings to anybody who likes historical fiction (Depression/WWII era specifically), stories with strong female characters, Big Band music, and stories of people overcoming the odds time and time again.

Hopefully, I managed to make that as unbiased as possible, and if it doesn't seem like it, I won't apologize. I loved the book and I admire the woman who wrote it.

Meet part of my writer's group (left to right): Wayne Anson, Jennifer Hansch,
Me, Mari Beck, and Bruce Schindler.
Front (left to right) Brook Brouillette and Faith Colburn.
I stole this picture from the Central Nebraska Writers Group Facebook page.
Mari, I hope you don't mind!

Other books by Faith Colburn:
Prairie Landscapes
Threshold: A Memior
Virtue and Faith
From Picas to Bytes: Four Generations of Seacrest Newspaper Service to Lincoln
Driving: A Short Story
Storm Watch

You can find out more about Faith on her website faithanncolburn.com and on her blog faithanncolburn.com/wordpress