Since I posted a review about one of the current serials set in a universe slightly off-kilter from our own, I should probably write a review of the other serial that I'm currently following. While Recollections of a Reluctant Gelder is set in a universe far, far away (at the time of the Persian Empire), the Boys of Blue Creek is set very close to us in time and space.

In his story, Paolo drops us into the Blue Creek Home for Foundling Boys in the late 1920s, somewhere in the American Midwest. The castration of institutionalized boys (and sterilization of institutionalized girls) was more common in that time and place than most would like to recognize. The states of Kansas and Indiana were notorious for the practice (as were California and North Carolina). Much of the best medical information on eunuch health and physiology that we have today comes from research on adult eunuchs who had been castrated as boys in Kansas state institutions.

Blue Creek just castrates more of them (all boys who arrive) than was true of the time, when only some were castrated. The reasoning given for castration is accurate for the time. There are quotations from the contemporary and historic literature in the story justifying the many castrations. The quotations are all accurate. For example, we seem to have forgotten that corn flakes were first created by John Harvey Kellogg to add fiber to the diet and to help prevent masturbation in boys. There's a relevant quotation from him that moves the story line along. (Kellogg was greatly influenced by Sylvester Graham, the inventor of the Graham cracker, which was also invented to reduce masturbation. I always wondered why my grandmother kept feeding me Graham crackers, whether I wanted one or not....)

Paolo is able to capture the time and place well. His boys (and adults) speak in natural-sounding language. They seem all to be real people, of the sort we might meet any day. Maybe we have met them and just didn't know it....

The story (novel?) has 18 chapters already, and has a few more to go till the end. Most chapters end with a cliff-hanger that would have made Charles Dickens proud. If you want to be immersed in a nearly familiar world where the main difference is the frequency of castration, this is a story you want to read. It is well-written with a compelling plot.

[On a side note: I now live very near the Sonoma State Home where over 5000 girls (and some boys) were sterilized over the years it was in operation. When I was in college I even dated the daughter of a psychiatrist who worked there and was one to decide who was to be sterilized and who was not. It continued sterilizations until 1964. The law permitting it was only repealed in 1979 after well over 20,000 were sterilized in the state. At least 148 more were sterilized in state institutions between 2006 and 2010 without legal approval!]

Thanks.

I'm glad you're enjoying it.

The boys are taking the holidays off, though, as hard they work. They need a break.

Some credit also goes to Cainanite for helping me move it along and really getting it going.

The Great Depression has hit and

JesusA (imported) wrote: Sun Dec 13, 2015 4:47 pm the Blue Creek Home for Foundling Boys i

s now packed to the walls with boys. The city is making severe financial cuts in funding due to the Depression and Father Nelson and Sister Kristina have delivered a new flock of boys from a city orphanage. One blind boy, one deaf boy and a dwarf have been added to the herd.

Paolo has done a great deal of research on the time and place in which the story is set. Almost everything fits very well with real events. The only thing that doesn't fit is that fewer institutionalized boys were castrated then. But many were castrated and much of what we know of adult eunuch physiology comes from men who were castrated as boys in institutions not too different from Blue Creek.

Paolo is a great storyteller and there are several plot strings up in the air at any given time. Somehow they all seem to weave together into a fascinating plot. The latest chapter, number 22, like most chapters, ends with a great cliffhanger. I can hardly wait for the next chapter....

JesusA (imported) wrote: Sun Feb 21, 2016 2:16 pm The Great Depression has hit and

JesusA (imported) wrote: Sun Feb 21, 2016 2:16 pm 20]
the Blue Creek Home for Foundling Boys i

s now packed to the walls with boys. The city is making severe financial cuts in funding due to the Depression and Father Nelson and Sister Kristina have delivered a new flock of boys from a city orphanage. One blind boy, one deaf boy and a dwarf have been added to the herd.

Paolo has done a great deal of research on the time and place in which the story is set. Almost everything fits very well with real events. The only thing that doesn't fit is that fewer institutionalized boys were castrated then. But many were castrated and much of what we know of adult eunuch physiology comes from men who were castrated as boys in institutions not too different from Blue Creek.

Paolo is a great storyteller and there are several plot strings up in the air at any given time. Somehow they all seem to weave together into a fascinating plot. The latest chapter, number 22, like most chapters, ends with a great c
[/quote]
liffhanger. I can hardly wait for the next chapter....

Jesus has said all that I could only better. This is an awesome story, and I eagerly await each and every new chapter! 5 Stars, definitely

A little more Blue Creek historical background. I have posted an article by Dr. Everett Flood, M.D. on the Non-Fiction Articles board that gives some of the academic medical background for what Paolo has created in

JesusA (imported) wrote: Sun Dec 13, 2015 4:47 pm the Blue Creek Home for Foundling Boys.

Flood's article is a transcript of a talk that he gave to the 1896 annual conference of the American Medical Association. It is what medical doctors were thinking and talking about only a few years before Paolo's story began:

http://forums.eunuch.org/showthread.php ... ision-1896

Flood describes three things that he feels important to maintain the proper physical and mental health of the boys under his management: bowel cleanliness, castration, and circumcision. Flood writes, "Castration as well as circumcision, which, if not God-given rites, are certainly worthy to have come from the mind of Deity conscious of the need of correcting a structural error...."

While Dr. Carver, the central figure of Paolo's story is not religious, he certainly shares Flood's belief in the importance and power of genital surgery.

It's a great story, exceedingly well-written, and not too far from actual historical events. Kansas was still frequently castrating boys in state institutions until 1951, stopping even though it was still authorized under Kansas state law. The practice was sporadically carried out in other states as late as the 1980s, although not with the frequency practiced in Kansas.

Even after castration of boys in state institutions largely ceased, involuntary sterilization through vasectomy was practiced well into this century without any legal approval of the practice. (In California, at least until 2010, although the law authorizing it was repealed in 1979.)