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Police charge Gregory Strazdus in Harveys Lake hit and run

<p>Even before the 1929 Stock Market Crash, the Roaring &#8216;20s wasn&#8217;t the easiest decade for Americans, despite what we read in &#8220;The Great Gatsby.&#8221; Women struggled to be seen as equals to men, Prohibition was in full swing and those men who fought in WWI came back devastated by shell shock and grievous injuries.</p><p>Such is the setting of Cate Campbell&#8217;s &#8220;Benedict Hall,&#8221; the first of a trilogy set in 1920&#8217;s Seattle. It&#8217;s a city where the Victorian Era and modern world come crashing together. Motorized vehicles share the streets with horse drawn carriages. Women&#8217;s hair and hemlines get shorter. Jobs are hard to come by, especially for WWI vets.</p><p>One former soldier, Frank Parrish, returned from Europe missing an arm and desperate for work, a challenge for the engineer. Soon after arriving in Seattle, he runs into Preston Benedict, a fellow vet who he knew in Jerusalem. Preston welcomes Frank into his wealthy family&#8217;s mansion, despite Parrish&#8217;s reservations about his old war comrade.</p><p>Preston always was a cruel boy, but he came back from war even more nasty. His frivolous lifestyle never made him popular with his more serious father and older brother and he never bothered to disguise his dislike for his older sister, Margot. He clings to a sapphire medallion which he acquired through violent means during the war and he believes makes him powerful.</p><p>Margot is hardly the delicate, feminine creature her mother had hoped for in a daughter. While she has the bobbed hair, she is nothing like the fashionable flappers. She is a doctor, struggling to build up a clinical practice and be given surgery privileges at Seattle General.</p><p>Frank and Margot are two damaged souls who forge a connection despite Preston&#8217;s desire to keep them apart. Margot is more direct than Frank is used to in a woman, while he works to overcome his pride and the constant pain he feels in his arm. Despite this, they are drawn to one another and slowly begin to forge a relationship.</p><p>Preston, meanwhile, becomes a gossip columnist for a local newspaper, hardly the distinguished career his father had hoped for. He uses his articles to discredit both Frank and Margot, ruining the momentary good luck both found in their careers.</p><p>Along with the sibling/Frank drama, another point-of-view character is Abraham Blake, the family&#8217;s long time butler and a former slave. He views Margot as the closest thing he has to a daughter and is still trying to protect her from Preston&#8217;s cruelties.</p><p>The novel culminates in a tragic fire that changes the course of the characters&#8217; lives and leaves the door open for the sequel (&#8220;Hall of Secrets&#8221;).</p><p>This is a book &#8220;Downton Abbey&#8221; fans will love. The attention to historical detail and figures like William Boeing add nice touches to the story. While there is certainly a blossoming romance between Frank and Margot, this book is more than a romance. It&#8217;s historical drama, filled with fascinating details about 1920&#8217;s America, and what that time period was like for women, African-Americans and war vets.</p><style>
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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Dorothy Sasso</p><p>On the Books</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><factboxMeta><p>&#8220;Benedict Hall&#8221;</p><p>Author: Cate Campbell</p><p>Page Number: 384</p><p>Publisher: Kensington</p><p>Rating:&#9830;&#9830;&#9830;&#9830;</p></factboxMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Dorothy Sasso is a former Soap Opera Digest writer and a private school teacher. She is busy reading books and raising her daughter.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

On the Books: ‘Benedict Hall’ explores 1920’s America through historical drama