HOUR OF GOLD, HOUR OF LEAD
by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
(Mariner Books)
So the other night I could NOT find something to read. Consecutively tried and abandoned two books by authors I've loved in the past -- one of them considered among the year's best YA novels, no less. In a fit of frustration and morbidity I picked up a book that'd been languishing on my library loan shelf since before Christmas: Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead, by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, hoping maybe the lurid bits about the Lindbergh baby kidnapping would pacify me until bedtime.
Manalive, did they ever, though not in the way I expected. Anne Morrow Lindbergh's letters and diaries let you crawl way down deep inside her head as the tragedy and aftermath unfold, turning what began as ghoulish curiosity into one of the most affecting reading experiences I've had in a long, long time.
Kidnapping is bad enough, but I didn't know Anne Lindbergh's father had also died less than a year earlier. I didn't even know Anne was pregnant with their second child when Charles Jr. was snatched from his crib. And I certainly didn't know Anne was younger then than I am now. All that sucked me in and kept me reading long beyond the police investigation and the grisly discovery in the woods near the Lindbergh's home 10 weeks later. (A discovery made more disturbing for me when I realized I've seen the crime scene photo that Anne Morrow Lindbergh never did.) If ever you've wondered how people manage to find their way through horrors like this, dig in.
