Certain books just grab you and won’t let you go until you’ve finished. Others move you so much, you want to re-read them the moment you put them down. How is it done? How does the author put together a narrative that you just can’t resist? The honest answer is (really) – no one knows. That’s the one special writing skill that can be neither taught nor indeed defined.

Certain books just grab you and won’t let you go until you’ve finished. Others move you so much, you want to re-read them the moment you put them down. How is it done? How does the author put together a narrative that you just can’t resist? The honest answer is (really) – no one knows. That’s the one special writing skill that can be neither taught nor indeed defined. Some authors like to play games with the reader, others are firmly convinced that the more information they cram into one paragraph, the better the results. (The dictionary is the most informative book on earth, more or less by definition; and yet it’s hardly a page-turner). The bottom line is true talent has its own way of engaging the reader in any format – fiction, music lyrics, poetry, it’s all the same. (In the case of music lyrics they will tell you that the music is more important. This is certainly true of some songs. More often than not, though, it is that catchy phrase that makes a song register in your memory; there are no guides nor manuals that teach you to come up with catchy phrases).

“Jenna Jameson: the Chief of Two Dozen Hideous-looking Highway Robbers” is funny the way life and history are funny: major history-changing decisions are made by its characters for oftentimes flimsy reasons, which include the meaning of names and poor weather conditions. (As for the meaning of names, I still don’t know what the narrator meant by the “old-fashioned love novel” some of the characters seem to have read, from which Lady Crawford seems to have gotten her moniker “Jenna Jameson” – I have a feeling the author is pulling my leg, but I may be wrong).

The novel is a historical comedy/action/adventure/romance, all in one, set in the period between the American War for Independence and the French Revolution. While her estranged husband, Miles Crawford, is away on shady business in Great Britain or elsewhere, Ruth Crawford keeps their New England estate together by robbing her wealthy neighbors under the name of Jenna Jameson. The decisive battles of the War throw her off somewhat, and she has the imprudence to fall in love with a shipbuilder while appearing at a high-brow soirée under her own name. The shipbuilder betrays her (or so she thinks). She spends the next five years slumming it, after which she returns to her hometown in order to take revenge (in order to do so, she must marry the shipbuilder – a test of sorts, a weird twist in the plot stemming from the aforementioned poor weather conditions). The estranged husband returns and gets in the way (as estranged husbands always tend to do). That’s when a portrait painter and his girlfriend (a former prostitute) enter the picture, along with Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, King George III, et al (I’m not kidding you. Didn’t I mention that the book is funny the way life and history are funny?). The subject of love is broached several times in the book, more or less seriously. The resulting sex scenes are very convincing despite the exotic surroundings and mores (remember, this is the end of the Eighteenth Century, when folks had different ideas about hygiene, clothes, etc).

Some novels have tragic endings; others end happily. Some, like “Jenna Jameson: the Chief of Two Dozen Hideous-looking Highway Robbers” ends with a bang, and yet it is difficult to say whether it’s tragic, happy, both, or neither. According to the narrative, there are two different Jennas: one, carefully preserved in the nation’s memory as a fearless hero, a girl who answered the call when the time came to stand up for her country, the American Joan of Ark, the heroine of legend and music lyrics, the one whose statute (modeled on the painter’s girlfriend, the former hooker, but that’s a secret) towers over the main square of her hometown, and whose likeness still adorns the logo of the local newspaper; the other, a level-headed, selfish, oftentimes brutal avenger looking out for her own interests first, an egocentric plotter, a woman who would not mind sacrificing her own children’s happiness (she has two of them) for the sake of her very personal idea of justice.

Of all Ricardo’s novels to date, this one stands out as the weirdest; and yet, it is weird as life and history themselves are weird. Its comedy is reminiscent of O.Henry and Mark Twain; its epic scope reminds thoughtful readers of the best works of Walter Scott and Alexandre Dumas; Ricardo’s unmistakable touch, however, is what makes it so enjoyable for today’s readers. In today’s literary climate of pseudo-sophisticated historical monographs, “Jenna Jameson” reminds us that there is only one way to write a historical novel properly: with humor and passion. And talent. Let’s not forget the storyteller’s talent.

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