Susan E. Sage’s historical fiction, Dancing in the Ring presents also as memoir with two historical figures and ancestors with an unforgettable story. I cannot easily walk away from this novel without feeling somewhat haunted from the characters and that makes Dancing in the Ring a distinct text for me that I recommend for other lovers of historical fiction, especially for the literary community based out of the Detroit area.
Set in Detroit in the 1920s and up until the second world war, the reader is pulled into the passionate and often volatile romance of Catherine McIntosh and Robert -Bob- Sage. Catherine and Robert are law school students studying together, but their uniqueness lies in Catherine being one of the first women to successfully pass the bar and practice law in Detroit. Robert is a boxer -The Battling Barrister- and supports his schooling with these fights. Interestingly, this plot is based as closely as possible as Sage could write it on the lives of two real people, relatives of Sage, a great aunt and great uncle. “My story’s based on my actual great aunt and uncle—both lawyers in the 1920s and 30s. It is their love story with each other, as well as with Detroit, considered to be Paris of the West back in its heyday. My father used to tell me about them a lot over the years. He always encouraged me to write their story. I now understand the meaning of ‘never say never’ because I finally did write about them in this work of Historical Fiction.” The couple are a part of the tonne legal circles of judges, cops and even some members of the Purple Gang who congregate in the local speakeasies and dance halls. Known for their work in social justice and having started their own legal practice, Sage & Sage, what is rifling among their careers, the boxing and commitment to human rights and equality is an extremely human relationship of hardship and personal sabotage.
Susan E. Sage is known for her fiction and poetry. Her stories are enmeshed within her locality having been born and raised in Detroit. She earned a degree in English from Wayne State University. She began publishing her poetry, and was a recipient of WSU’s Tompkins Award in Creative Writing while a student at University. She is an experienced educator and taught for 23 years while working in positions of coordination and student success. Sage has published two novels prior to Dancing in the Ring, Insominy (2010) and A Mentor and Her Muse (2017). She has appeared in Five on the Fifth, Arlington Literary Journal, Illuminations, Twisted Vines Literary Journal, The Birds We Piled Loosely, Referential Magazines, Storyacious, E.T.A. Literary Journal, Digital Papercut and Back Denim Lit. She resides now in Michigan.
Sage has accomplished bringing the 1920s Detroit social and legal spheres to life with full and human characters orienting through it. The reader can enter societal spaces exhibiting ideologies of the time and, from our retrospective reading might be made uncomfortable with character behaviour and conduct. The setting is edged in an eye for detail of streetcars and speakeasies. Character dress, slang and abuse of illegal alcohol during a time of prohibition shows just how chained the characters are to their own flaws, despite glamorously. “Neither the bride nor the groom would remember much about the day. They could blame it on their nerves and the whirlwind of the wedding, but the simple truth: they’d both gotten smashed.” Sage navigates the discrimination against people of colour in society and the legal world as well as the dynamics between Robert and Catherine herself. A play on the title exudes that both main characters are indeed dancing together in their own boxing ring. “When Catherine didn’t answer, Bob went back to his car without even looking back at her. He delivered a blow that would knock her flat and he wasn’t about to help her stand back up in the ring.” They spare, square off, retreat to corners and come back to the centre again and again. The romance is cyclical and shows a sticking together despite challenge to the relationship.
Each character throws themselves into alternative outlets as their relationship becomes tumultuous. Catherine focuses on social justice cases and Robert coaches’ younger boxers and councils those struggling within society. They are both champions of the underdog. Sage plugs in expert foreshadowing that builds throughout that sets a foreboding tone. There exists a looming sense of catastrophe and risk of demise. “She burned her finger lighting a match, as she reached for her next Lucky Strike.” This foreshadowing plays well in parallel with the character of Robert’s Grandmother who I enjoyed. Nana is a woman of Irish Catholic descent whose spiritual and religious fabric blends with the old ways of premonitions, superstition and the importance of dream-work. Overall, she is a witty and sharp woman who balanced out Catherine’s academic and new world modernism.
This novel has left me jilted in a way but the depth of the world these character’s spiralled through remains distinct and almost touchable, which makes for a good book. The characters are relatable and not out of reach and Sage shines with her historical groundwork.
Sara Hailstone
Sara Hailstone’s writing is born from navigating the raw and confronting connections that living in rurality projects by scouring domestic landscapes. She is an educator and writer from Madoc, Ontario who orients towards the ferocity and serenity of nature and what we can learn as humans from the face of forest in our own lives. A graduate of Guelph University (B.A.) and Queen’s University (M.A. and B.Ed.), she has also finished her Masters in English in Public Texts at Trent University which has set her along a path of passion of literature.
Sara has had poetry, short stories and essays published in various publications. She is now working on her debut novel with Running Wild & RIZE Press. Sara has grown up immersed in the tones of Canlit, her navigation of the Great Lakes brushstroked by writers like Jane Urquhart and her novel The Underpainter of frozen snowdrifts and expanses of water horizons. She has been inspired by conversations around Survival and the imagination of a Canadian Shield crowning the lakes like a sleeping lizard and terrain that early settlement braced against and ancient societal formations thrived upon. The waterways as a portal to sacred movement, remembered with petroglyph, Sara looks forward to expanding her literary impression of the Great Lakes more south and in textual consciousness unknown.