Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict: The Kinship of Women

This book tells the story of the extraordinary friendship between renowned anthropologists Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict. First as mentor and protégé, later as colleagues and lovers, these two remarkable yet temperamentally different women forged a bond that endured for twenty-five years, defying convention as well as easy categorization. Drawing on a broad range of sources, including recently released correspondence between Mead and Benedict, Hilary Lapsley reconstructs this complex relationship and situates it in the context of its time. She explores the ways in which Mead's and Benedict's professional work grew out of concerns in their own lives—about sexuality and friendship, identity and difference. Lapsley also shows how Mead and Benedict used their anthropological studies to call attention to the cultural foundations of American life, Benedict seeking to make the world more tolerant of deviance and Mead to liberate the individual from the artificial constraints of gender and race. Overall, the book charts the course of a relationship that persisted in the face of numerous obstacles, including separations of long duration, the competing claims of other partners, secrecy about lesbianism, the tensions of professional rivalry, and the clash of different personalities. 376pp. ed by University of Massachusetts Press. $US 25.95. https://www.umass.edu/umpress/title/margaret-mead-and-ruth-benedict

The One That Got Away

This crime novel, by writing partnership Lois Cox and Hilary Lapsley under the penname Jennifer Palgrave, is published by Town Belt Press, 2019, ISBN 978-0-473-50007-8.

Lauren Fraser is easing into a comfortable retirement when her historian friend Ro reveals a shocking secret. Ro’s research has uncovered the attempted poisoning of a New Zealand prime minister.

Despite herself, Lauren is drawn into the mystery. Who was the would-be murderer and can they be brought to justice after thirty years? Who has been involved in covering up the plot and why? As they get closer to the truth, Lauren and Ro find themselves in danger. One death follows another, and it is no longer a cold case they have on their hands.

This gripping novel is set in Wellington, New Zealand’s capital city, where Lauren and her friends are celebrating Jacinda Ardern’s fresh new  coalition government. Will Lauren and Ro succeed in exposing malign global forces that destroyed a former government, and still operate today?