The Wakefields of Sweet Valley (part one)

or an epic tale of sloppy seconds.

Come sail away We begin our Sweet Valley Saga (a magna edition, for those keeping track) in the stormy Atlantic Ocean in 1866. Alice Larson battles the sea, only to be saved by Theodore Wakefield and his “high cheekbones, the strong, straight line of his nose, the cleft of his chin.” Dreamy. Good thing an ugly guy didn’t save her. Ugly people don’t deserve to be heroes.

The pair becomes a regular steerage-class couple. Alice – as we will learn about all women in this family line – is a quick learner, so her Swedish soon dissipates. No language barriers for this fine couple. They plan to marry once they reach America. But no! Theodore is swept away into quarantine as he is believed to be carrying “the dreaded typhoid.”

Oh, dear.

Go west Alice, too distraught to think to ask around as to where he might be, joins her extended family in the ride to Minnesota (where I immediately give them all the appropriate accent). But we all get over our greatest loves, don’tcha know? Alice marries my favorite male character, George Johnson. I feel kind of bad for him, as he will never compare to our hunky stud, Theodore. The couple gives birth to the first set of twins, Elisabeth and Jessamyn, after their eldest son, Steven, dies of scarlet fever.

You’ll never guess which is the quiet twin and which is the adventurous.

The circus comes to town many years later, where Jessamyn runs off to see the horses and comes back to tell her mother of the Magnificent Theo W. It can’t be! But it is! Alice runs through the muck to find him, clutching the wooden rose he once carved for her before their first date on the ship, only to arrive at an empty field. The circus, it seems, has left.

And we are sad.

A glimpse into the future? Elisabeth shucks corn and receives a kiss from Tom Wilkens. Baseball is just a fad. And those radical feminists are getting young ladies to wear “those ridiculous bloomers.” (I’m torn every time I read a Sweet Valley book. Sometimes I feel like I’m in the women’s movement groove, and then sometimes I feel like I should be by my man’s side – or making him a sandwich.)

The more you know…(shooting star) “Blue cloud nodded. ‘The history of my people is often sad.’ He was quiet for a long time. When he spoke again, his voice wavered. ‘Once there were many of us in this land, hunting and finishing, dancing, and teaching our songs and daughters our ways for generations and generations.’”

I feel more enlightened already. Which reminds me. Part of the appeal of the Sagas for me when I was in elementary school was the history in them. I’m a sucker for a good historical setting, especially as we edge closer to, say, the turn of the Twentieth Century and the Roaring Twenties. Some things, like the San Francisco earthquake, first came into my life through this book. (We didn’t get to that era in history until seventh grade, when it was no longer cool to read Sweet Valley.) So, I mean, it wasn’t totally worthless.

Jessamyn dresses like a boy to sneak off into the circus. Why she does this is never exactly explained. After many years of going, the circus people know who she is, know she is a girl. But whatever. She joins up to be a bareback rider (which she has been learning how to do from Peter Blue Cloud).

The more you know…(shooting star) “‘Did I ever tell you about how it felt the day I got my freedom, Miss Elisabeth?’

“Elisabeth had shaken her head.

“‘It was scary. About the most scary thing that ever happened to me, suddenly not knowing what the next day was going to be like. But then I got to thinking about how it used to be. When I was a slave, my day was either bad or worse. That’s it. Always the same. Bad or worse. Then I thought how it didn’t have to be that way anymore. I didn’t know how the next day was going to be, but I just knew it could be better than bad or worse. You see what I’m saying, Miss Elisabeth? Getting my freedom was like getting a future. For the first time in my life, the next day could be different from the one before it.’”

Affirmative Action friends Elisabeth takes this opportunity to become friends with Peter Blue Cloud and learn to ride just like Jessamyn. But, alas, P.B.C. suddenly falls ill and Elisabeth jumps a train (she’s channeling her sister, you see) and follows the circus route until she finds Jessamyn. Elisabeth, in a moment of daring (which always seems to end badly for the good girl twin, regardless of the generation), takes Jess’s horse around the ring, going faster and faster until she is thrown. “Elisabeth did not move. The life was gone from her body.” Maybe she would have been okay if Jessamyn hadn’t “flung herself on top of her twin” as her “anguished cries filled the tent.”

I feel the earth move In the year 1900 in San Francisco, twenty-two-year-old Jessamyn has somehow been managing a premier hotel for the last several years. See my feminism issues? But we are taken away from that into a torrid choice between Taylor Watson and his friend – but someday mortal enemy – Bruce Farber. Whom will wild-child Jessamyn choose? The years pass and Bruce and Jessamyn picnic upon a hill overlooking the city. They fall asleep in the grass and are woken by the great earthquake. The city burns below them, and all Jess can think of is Taylor Watson. As we learn in various Sweet Valley High books, people named Bruce are pussies, so Jess’s affections ultimately go to Taylor. “Out of the ashes of sorrow, she could feel the flames of love burning.”

And they, too, have twins! Only they’re in Detroit. For a brief moment, we break away from family names with Samantha and Amanda. We do not, however, get away from family characteristics. Samantha is a daring, darling little actress, and Amanda is a quiet, thoughtful writer. She’s even on the school paper. And wears old lady clothes.

The more you know…(shooting star) “Taylor, darling, that’s how the girls dress these days. Samantha looks very fashionable. Don’t forget that things are different now. Women can even vote.”

Return of a Wakefield Amanda and Samantha have an older brother, Harry, who brings home his roommate, none other than Ted Wakefield. I know, shut up! The twins feel there’s something familiar about him. Could it be that he “was definitely handsome with high cheekbones, a strong, straight nose, and a slight cleft in his chin”? Why is no one ever ugly? Why can’t Ted be a genetic mutant with a soft press of a beer belly, a gimp leg, and a wandering eye? Maybe even a stray nose hair? Alas, none of my dates will ever show up in a Sweet Valley book. Then we get a scene that I’m pretty sure comes out of the Beer Baron episode of The Simpsons. And more witty, foreseeing comments about people like Louis Armstrong, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Hemmingway.