RAIN DODGING

Godwin’s scholastic mission in Oxford inspires a flood of memories from her own troubled past in this memoir.

The author’s task was to gather information on a late-17th-century woman who was married, by proxy, at the age of 14 to the Duke of York, the man who was to become King James II (until he was deposed three years after ascending the throne). Shipped off to England on her 15th birthday to begin life with her husband, Maria Beatrice Eleonora Anna Margherita Isabella d’Este, more commonly known as Queen Mary of Modena, presided over an extraordinary court of published women writers, unique in that time. Godwin grew up in Shaker Heights, Ohio. Her father was a nationally prominent attorney; her mother was mentally disturbed and emotionally and physically abusive. Her goal was to get out of Ohio before she turned 30. She begins her narrative as a middle-age, accomplished academic—a librarian, an English literature teacher, and a writer—abroad in Oxford, England to research Mary’s life and her influence on early feminism. In between voluminous hours spent perusing the antique papers and tomes sequestered in Oxford’s Bodleian Library (“Heaven, for me, was spending the day reading and writing there,” Godwin enthuses), she visited the castles and towns frequented by Mary and James. The author is a stickler for the details of royal lineages; at times, the minutia she provides on the subject are fascinating—in other instances, it proves mind-numbing. But this book is more than a comprehensive history lesson with a feminist slant: It’s a meticulously recorded, travelog-style, picturesque jaunt through 17th-century England, as well as an artfully composed, emotional, and edgy personal memoir. Through intermittent narrative jumps, Godwin reflects on her life story, painfully raising the curtain on her traumatic childhood and its consequences into adulthood. In these sections, the reader discovers a surprisingly adventurous young woman who repeatedly courted the wild side in the search for a place she could call “home.” These are the most poignant and compelling sections of the narrative, along with a stunning reveal of a disturbingly dark secret from the past.

Alternately heartbreaking and witty, filled with intriguing historical nuggets.