Testimony by Paula Martinac is a captivating and heart-tugging historical fiction novel.
Dr. Gen Rider is a history professor and she has finally secured tenure at Baines College in 1960. It is an elite private school for white women and it is tucked away in Springboro, a small town in rural Virginia. Gen Rider has shattered the glass ceiling at Baines College because she is a woman in a man’s field. She teaches African American History and this puts her at odds with an influential male colleague. Even though Gen is celebrating her good fortune, she is heartbroken and she is having a hard time with moving on after Carolyn ended their long-distance relationship. Gen prefers to be discreet when it comes to her private life and she doesn’t want to talk about her agonizing break-up with her straight female mentor and friend.
When Gen thought that things couldn’t get any worse in her life, she was proven wrong when a male colleague was arrested for having sex with a man in a park. The quiet town was gripped in a witch hunt that was geared toward finding out who were homosexuals and reporting them to the authorities. The police investigation is a huge threat to Fenton’s freedom and his livelihood because he is gay and he’s the theater director at Baines College. Gen is also under the spotlight because someone is leaving weird presents for her at the college and at her house.
Gen is slowly opening up to the possibility of having a relationship with another woman who lives and works in Springboro. However, her budding romance is put on hold when a neighbor reports she has seen Gen kissing a woman and the college administration launches an investigation to determine if she is morally fit to teach at their institution.
Everything is falling apart and Gen has to make a painful choice: Would it make sense for her to try to save the career she has spent years building or should she put her right to a private life at the top of her list?
The Characters
Gen Rider had recently acquired tenure as a history professor at Baines College. She has always been passionate about Black History and she wants to inspire her students to be the best women they could be. Fenton is a theater director and he is Gen’s closest confidant. Ruby is a professor and she is a well-established member of the tenure committee. Plus, she is Gen’s mentor and she is like a mother-figure to most of the female professors at Baines College.
These characters were well fleshed out and I could easily imagine how they would look if they were real people and there was a point in time where I even thought about what their voices would sound like. Gen, Fenton and Ruby’s personalities came through loud and clear and I really felt as though they were some of my dearest friends by the time I got to the end of the story.
The Writing Style
Paula Martinac has gone above and beyond to give me a touching and well-written historical novel that brought me to tears more times than I would like to admit. I was seriously hooked on this story after I got past the first paragraph because it started off with the right amount of tension, suspicion and foreshadowing of the dilemmas the main characters had to deal with. This author definitely deserves the highest of fives because this story was told through the eyes of several characters and I was given unrestricted access to their conflicting thoughts and emotions.
Pros And My Favourite Parts
This story brought the early 1960’s to life for me. Thanks to this author, I could easily picture what life was like for queer professionals and people of color during the Civil Rights Movement. Plus, The House Un-American Activities Committee still had a heavy influence on the personal and professional lives of many Americans in the 1960’s. During that turbulent period, many LGBT people could easily lose their jobs and they could be arrested if their neighbors or colleagues reported their behavior to their employers or the police. In spite of those heartbreaking issues, I really enjoyed tagging along with Gen, Fenton and Ruby because they strived to broaden the minds of their students, they fought back against the blatant inequalities that existed at Baines College and they supported each other through the good times as well as the bad.
Cons And Heads Up
Zero complaints.
The Conclusion
This story is so much more than a historical novel that portrayed how people of color and queer people were treated in small-town communities in the 1960’s. It is also a story about the way women banded together to support each other and the things they did in order to fight back against the misogyny that was prevalent in the academic world at that time. You’re going to get sucked into this unforgettable story so clear your schedule and make sure that you’ve got your favorite snacks nearby (trust me, I ended up in an epic reading marathon that went until the wee hours of the morning!)
TLDR (too long didn’t read)
I must admit that this is one of the best historical fiction books that I’ve ever read and I don’t think you’ll want to miss out on reading this gem!
Excerpt from Testimony by Paula Martinac
Ruby gave Gen a skeptical sideways look. “That sounds fine. We’d probably just spend it talking about Mark, anyway.”
“Mark?”
Ruby’s face turned grave. “Patton. You didn’t hear? It was the lead story in the morning paper.”
“I skipped breakfast.” The Springboro Gazette was folded in her briefcase, to be perused at lunch.
Gen knew the college art gallery director casually, through Fenton. Mark had been at Baines a few years. She’d fallen into a conversation about modern art with him at a cocktail party at Fenton’s apartment—the place was so small they were squeezed in next to each other—but that was probably last fall. She suspected he and Fenton had had a “thing,” her friend’s word for love affairs, by the easy way they joked and touched each other’s arms.
“He was arrested in the park.” Ruby coughed discreetly. “With… another man. A Negro.”
“Oh! Poor Mark.”
“He’s been fired, of course.”
“A police car was at Timmons this morning,” Gen said. “Do you think that’s related?”
Ruby had been hovering in the doorway, but now she stepped into the office and closed the door behind her, resting her books on the corner of Gen’s desk. She took a dramatic breath. “It’s likely. Apparently, they raided his apartment and confiscated… personal material. They must have come to look in his office, too. There’s some sort of police investigation being launched.”
Gen’s stomach burned as if someone had struck a match in it.
“It’s all so sordid. Mark always seemed like a lovely man. A confirmed bachelor, for sure, but his private life should be his own, shouldn’t it? I would have never suspected something like this. I hope—”
Ruby let her sentence drop off, but Gen guessed she was hoping something about their mutual friend, Fenton. The administration tolerated its effete theater director because he knew how to style wigs and apply theatrical makeup, and was a student favorite. His productions drew audiences from Roanoke and Staunton, raising revenue for the college. But all that would mean nothing if he was caught in a public scandal.
Ruby picked up her books. “Well, I’m sorry to start the day on such a sour note. I hope the rest of it is cheerier for us both.”
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Bits and Bobs
- ISBN number: 9781612941806
- Publisher: Bywater Books
- Paula Martinac Online
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