Six Degrees of Separation – from Western Lane to Music in Western Civilization

It’s time for #6degrees, inspired by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. We all start at the same place, add six books, and see where we end up. This month’s starting point is Western Lane by Chetna Maroo, a coming-of-age story about a girl whose only escape is squash after losing her mother. It is too new to have reached my library but got a great New York Times review and is a finalist for the Booker Prize.

First Degree

Another coming-of-age book is Heart of the West by Penelope Williamson (1995). I am not a big fan of western historicals but this book captured me from the beginning as a proper young Boston miss, Clementine Kennicutt, yields to her hidden longing for adventure and follows cowboy Gus McQueen west to Montana, only to find it is really his brother who captivates her.

Second Degree

Clementine finds adventure by going west, young woman, but in this link, the threat goes the other direction – across the Atlantic, as teens Nicholas and Charlotte also face great upheaval when they learn their father has remarried and they have to share their vacation with American step-siblings they have never met before in Storm From the West by Barbara Willard (1963).

Third Degree

I have quite a few coming-of-age-type links today! In West Point Plebe by Colonel Red Reeder (1956), young Clint Lane arrives at the U.S. Military Academy in New York determined to live up to the memory of his deceased war-hero father. He also wants to play football but has such difficulty with math that he is removed from the squad and forced to march around the grounds while other cadets are having fun. It would be easier to drop out and he is tempted, but he buckles down and gets the grades needed to survive his first year.

I went to West Point for a football game a few weeks ago and told my brother and nephews all about Clint’s struggles (they seemed unimpressed but maybe that was the effects of the monsoon-like rain that ruined our day; they'll probably beg for a copy for Christmas). I only own the first book but my childhood library had four, covering his career at West Point. Apparently, there are two more, one taking him to Korea and one to Berlin. Reeder was a WWII war hero himself, a commander at the D-Day invasion of Normandy, who later taught at West Point.

Fourth Degree

My next link is World War II. Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, was the third son of George V and uncle to Queen Elizabeth II. He served in the military during the war, primarily in France. He caused a scandal with a very public affair he conducted with (married) aviator Beryl Markham. Her memoir, West with the Night (1942), chronicles her experiences growing up in Kenya in the early 1900s.

Fifth Degree

My fifth link is the British Royal Family. In Trumpets in the West by Geoffrey Trease (1947), young Jack Norwood goes to London in 1686 to make music his career. His great aunt, widowed when her husband fell at Naseby, is not optimistic about his prospects: “The new king, they say, does not care a great deal for musicians. The late King cared much for them, but neglected to pay their salaries, sometimes for years at a time. So it is all one.”

Sixth Degree

My final link is music: Music in Western Civilization by my grandfather, Paul Henry Lang (1941). As the Atlantic said when it came out, “As a history of the art of music from the Greeks to our own time, Mr. Láng's study has a value impossible to overestimate.” And they even got the accent mark right!

So this month’s #6Degrees took me from London to Montana, back to England, then to West Point, Kenya, and London (I like reading about London, if you hadn't guessed). Have you read any of these?  Next month (December 2, 2023), Kate has chosen Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain.