More from the “Vintage Hardcover” collection at the TTCS library.

Today we will take a look at “Showboat Round the Bend” by Dorothy Shirley Miller, published in 1957.

First off, I love reading books that were written before I was born. I was attracted to this one by the cover art, knowing it would have appealed to me as a teen. Just as they would have then, the turn-of-the-century dresses and hair styles immediately caught my attention. I always wanted to read (and write) stories about this time period when I was in high school, and I was surprised that I didn’t remember reading this book before.

While checking for the publication date, I happened to notice this. I wondered if using photos of a book on a blog 68 years later would count as “in any form”, but I didn’t feel guilty enough to write the publisher for permission. I’m going to guess that by now, it’s all in the public domain anyway.

According to this quote from Wikipedia, “a showboat, or show boat, was a floating theater that traveled along the waterways of the United States, especially along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, to bring culture and entertainment to the river frontiers.” You can click on the quote to read the whole article.

Julie is a teenage girl who lives with her grandmother and helps her run a small family-owned pharmacy. Her parents have both passed away. Her two best friends are Nan, who is visiting her grandparents for the summer, and Melissa-Lou, who lives in the same town. Julie’s life dream is to become a showboat singer like her mother had been, Nan wants to be a drama teacher, and Melissa-Lou wants to be a concert pianist.

Much to the chagrin of her grandmother, Julie wants to follow in her mother’s footsteps and even tries on one of her mother’s dresses to sing and dance for her friends. Her grandmother feels that the difficult showboat life was what brought her daughter to an early death, and she doesn’t want the same for her granddaughter. Still, Julie is determined to be a showboat performer someday.

While looking for more information for this post, I learned that because Melissa-Lou is black, “Showboat Round the Bend” had been included in a 1969 paper entitled “Children’s Interracial Fiction”.

The fact that the girls’ friendship is “interracial” doesn’t seem unusual to them or anyone else in the town, although Melissa-Lou’s seems to be the only black family mentioned. However, when through an unexpected turn of events, the girls get a chance to actually go onto a showboat and be part of the play “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, they are surprised to see that all the black characters are played by white actors. There is a point where the Julie is called upon to sing a solo, and she requests that Melissa-Lou play for her. At first, the managers don’t want to let Melissa-Lou play because she’s black. (Because the book was written in 1957, they use the term “Negro”.) But after Julie comes to her defense they relent, and the song is an immediate hit with the audience.

At one point in the story, the girls meet Lillian Russell, who was a famous singer of that time. Lillian is friendly and kind, and she encourages Julie to keep up her singing practice. Later, Julie meets Lillian in her dressing room at a performance, and Lillian gives her a string of Mississippi baroque pearls to remember her by. By the end of the book, Julie decides the showboat life is not for her, but realizing that she has real talent, her grandmother agrees to let her take professional voice lessons.

As a side note, I looked up “baroque pearls” and found that they are pearls with an irregular shape. They can be from freshwater or saltwater. The pearls given to Julie by Lillian Russell were freshwater pearls from the Mississippi River.

In all, I enjoyed reading “Showboat Round the Bend”, but it wasn’t one of my favorites. I liked the way the girls made a stand against racism toward the end, but it seemed a bit far-fetched that a leading lady of a showboat drama would get sick and that they would be in the right place at the right time and get asked to stand in for her. Also, while I know it’s every teen’s dream to meet a celebrity they admire, I didn’t see their meeting with Lillian Russell as all that believable. They did have other adventures in between the showboat scenes, and there was a bit of a mystery about items disappearing from the family pharmacy, and that very tiny hint of romance as one of the boys from the town shows an interest in Julie. I think I would have enjoyed the book had I read it as a teenager in the 1970s, but based on my observations as a “librarian”, I’m not sure it would be a hit with teen girls of today. Still, it’s going to stay on my “Vintage Hardcover” shelf, because it does have a certain amount of historical value, and besides that, it’s pretty.