Those Jordan Girls

Four generations of uninhibited and unconventional women (the Jordan ""girls"") live together in a big old house in a small Minnesota town in Drury's well-intentioned if wandering novel. The narrator is Madelaine Iris Jordan, called Maddie, who is 10 years old in 1962 when the story begins. Maddie's great-grandmother, Iris, called Gummie, is the recently widowed matriarch of the family and a lifelong social activist. As publisher of the local weekly newspaper for 53 years, she promotes left-wing causes ranging from early 20th-century women's rights to civil rights in the '60s. Her daughter, Hester, named for Gummie's favorite literary heroine in Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, is known as Gramma. She acquired her self-assurance by becoming a nurse and supporting her daughter, Jane, and herself after being abandoned by her husband early in her marriage. Jane, the third generation female in this socially defiant clan, calculatedly bore Maddie out of wedlock; she wanted a child, but not a husband. Maddie has a prodigious curiosity about the lives of her forebears, and the narrative is knit together out of q&a sessions between Maddie and Gummie. These sessions serve not only to reveal the family history, but also to showcase iconoclast Gummie's commitment to atheism and communism, as well as to justice, friendship and self-assurance. Part social history, part spirited defense of unconventional female behavior, the narrative lacks plot and reads more like a tribute than a novel, but the Jordans' story is warmly told and honestly inspiring. (June)