cbr16bingo And Also —for the Part 1 square
For CBR15 I read Courtney Milan’s The Brothers Sinister series (based on recommendations from fellow Cannonballers) and loved it. When I initially asked for advice on where to start with Milan’s work, The Duke Who Didn’t came up frequently. While The Brothers’ Sinister series deals a lot with women’s rights and the suffrage movement, this start to the Wedgeford Trials series has a focus on minorities in England, discrimination, and appropriation. Milan, as ever, is careful and thorough with her research, and in this case she is able to draw on her own family history for information and inspiration.
This story takes place in the 1890s in a quaint rural English town called Wedgeford. The Duke of Lansing, who owns the entire place, is absentee and never collects rents or bothers the locals, which is how they prefer it. They refer to him by several snarky epithets, including The Duke Who Didn’t. Every summer Wedgeford hosts a special event known as the Trials, which attracts a lot of folks from all around. The Trial is a team game that involves hunting for specially marked stones and involves a certain amount of subterfuge. People love it and business during the days of the Trials is booming — folks need places to stay and they want to eat.
Chloe Fong is in her 20s and is the daughter of an excellent chef. Chloe is a hyper-organized, no-nonsense kind of woman who is helping her dad prepare not just for providing food during the Trials, but also for launching the sale of his new “brown sauce.” Mr. Fong actually was the inventor of the most famous sauce in England, but the two Englishmen who had promised to promote him and his product actually stole if from him, left him in poverty, and enriched themselves. This new brown sauce has tremendous importance to Chloe and her dad both for financial reasons and for revenge. Chloe, a perfectionist, is tying herself in knots trying to come up with the right name for this product and make sure it is ready for sale at the Trials. Wouldn’t you know, that’s when “Posh Jim,” a handsome rich guy from her past, comes back to Wedgeford after being absent for several years. Chloe doesn’t want to admit that she has feelings for Jeremy and has been hurt by his absence. She likes his attention but feels that she is only going to set herself up for heartbreak when he inevitably leaves again.
“Posh Jim” is Jeremy, a guy who has come to the Trials every summer since he was about 13. Everyone knows he is rich but what they don’t know is that he is in fact the Duke of Lansing. Jeremy never told anyone the truth about his past because when he is in Wedgeford, he fits in. Wedgeford is a community with a large Asian and non-white population. The people there have always liked him and treated him as one of their own, something that has definitely NOT happened when he is in “society.” Jeremy’s father was English and his mother is Chinese; when they married, his father’s family made their displeasure clear, and Jeremy has had to deal with all kinds of racism both at home and in English society. He is back in Wedgeford because his English aunt wants him to marry, and Jeremy has his heart set on Chloe. There are several formidable obstacles in his way though: Chloe, as a Chinese Englishwoman and the daughter of a merchant, will be unacceptable to Jeremy’s family; Chloe’s dad knows the truth about Jeremy and is fiercely protective of Chloe (his treatment of Jeremy is actually pretty funny); and most importantly, Chloe herself is wary of Jeremy and afraid of being hurt again.
What unfolds is a story of Chloe learning to trust others, not trying to take on everything herself, and of Jeremy learning to be brave and honest about himself to Chloe, the people of Wedgeford and his own family. In this charming story, Milan incorporates a lot of great information about colonialism, the treatment of minorities, the problems of assimilation and of appropriation. Also sex. There is good sexy stuff in there. So another winner from Courtney Milan.