Finished: A Wrinkle In Time (Le'Engle) A book my kids read in middle school and I finally read it! A girl, Meg, whose scientist father has been missing for a year, is taken on a fifth dimension, time traveling, tesseract adventure by three unique individuals, along with her super smart, other-worldly little brother, Charles Wallace, and her new friend, Calvin,  to try and rescue her father. Her father is being held by an evil force, which nearly takes over the mind of Charles Wallace as well before Meg realizes that the answer is that love conquers all. Once she does that, they are all whisked back to their own planet and dimension....with the very real promise of more adventures to come.

Finished: The Dry (Harper) Another page turner! The Dry is about Aaron Falk, a detective in the fraud division in Melbourne, Australia, who goes back to his small hometown for the first time since a scandal twenty years before, to attend the funeral of his childhood best friend, Luke Hadler. Drought conditions have driven people to even killing their own cattle that they can't keep watered, and the unchallenged theory is that a drought distraught Luke took the life of his young wife, and his young son, before killing himself. Luke's father thinks otherwise, though, and he has reached out to Aaron to come home and figure out what happened. The motherless Aaron and his own father had left Kiewarra twenty years before, run out of town more like it, when Ellie Deacon, the girl sixteen year old Aaron was in love with, was found drowned in the river. Many people thought she'd taken her own life, especially since they suspected she was physically abused by her father, but having found a note in a pair of her jeans that had the date of her death written on it, and the name "Falk", the entire town turned against Aaron and assumed he'd killed her. Luke offered up Aaron a false alibi, since they were both off separately just fishing and whatnot. Luke didn't want Aaron to be pinned with something he didn't do. Nonetheless, the town was relentless in it's harassment of both Aaron and his father, so they picked up stakes and left the family farm. When Aaron comes back twenty years later, many of the town folks remember him and still shun him. Ellie's father and cousin are particularly brutal bullies, but Aaron is determined to stay and see what happened to Luke, his wife and little Billy. Their 13 month old baby girl had been left unharmed in her crib, so it was all a big mystery. Of course, most of the town had already judged the dead Luke and determined that financial and farm troubles had lead him to the murder/suicide. With the help of the local police chief, Aaron uncovers what looks to be motives in a few different people who may have wanted Luke dead, but each one becomes a dead end. In the meantime, he's also meeting up with Gretchen, the fourth in their quartet of teenage friends, and trying to figure out what really happened to Ellie...one week after they shared their first kiss at the secret "rock" tree by the river. When Aaron and the chief finally stop looking at who might have a grudge against Luke and look at his wife, Karen, they hit the jackpot. Karen had uncovered $50,000 of mishandled funds at the elementary school, which had received the much need money grant from a charitable society. The principal, who had moved to town in recent years, had a gambling problem and owed some nasty men some money. When confronted by Karen, the school bookkeeper, he decided that it would be better to kill her and Luke and blame it on Luke than to face the consequences of admitting he'd stolen the money. He had thought little Billy would be at his own home on a play date with his own seven year old daughter, but Karen had canceled that at the last minute. So, when Billy saw his principal shoot his own mother, he ran to his room to hide, but the principal tracked him down, found his hiding spot and killed him. :-( That part of the book is very sad and awful, but the majority of the book doesn't focus on the gruesome details. Instead, we delve into Aaron, Luke, Ellie, and Gretchen's past...and into Aaron and Gretchen's current lives. We also find out that it was the evil Mal Deacon himself, who killed his own daughter Ellie, when he tracked her down to the river preparing to run away like her own mother had five years before and he killed her. Twenty years later, Aaron found her backpack tucked in the crevice of their secret rock tree and in it her diary where she explained that her father had become more and more abusive so she was going to leave town...even though she'd just found someone she really cared for....Aaron. This was a really good book, and I believe the author's first. I will definitely be reading her next book which apparently also has Aaron Falk in it, solving another murder mystery in Australia! :-)

Finished: The Child Finder (Denfeld) A suspenseful, thought-provoking, page-turner of a book! Naomi is a nearly thirty year old woman whose job and mission in life is to find missing children. Her current case involves five year old Madison Culver who went missing deep in the snowy Oregon woods when she ran ahead of her parents as they were out to find a Christmas tree. It has been three years now, and Madison's parents are convinced she is still alive and that someone has her. The story flashes back and forth between a few point of views...mostly Naomi's and the snow girl's. The snow girl is, of course, Madison, who was found nearly frozen to death by a deaf and mute mountain-man trapper. He takes Madison back to his cabin, nurses her back to health, but also keeps her locked in his basement. We come to find out that he was kidnapped as a seven year old boy by a horrific pedophile, and brought to this very cabin. Beaten and sexually abused, eventually as a young adult, he got the courage up to kill his tormentor. He had been so physically and psychologically damaged, and stunted in how to socialize with people, that he remained living the cabin by himself for years until he stumbled across Madison. Then, he did all he had ever known, and though he treated Madison better than he was treated, she became his possession and he abused her sexually. Madison, upon awaking away from her parents, felt herself thawing out from freezing and immediately decided that she must be the snow girl from her fairy tale book, and that Mr. B, as she came to call him, was her creator. Though she definitely suffered a bit of Stockholm Syndrome, she also knew deep down that she had a family somewhere, and once Mr. B started taking her out with him to do animal trapping, she began leaving little threads from her sweater tied to low tree branches in case she ever needed a pathway out of the cabin if she escaped. Meanwhile, Naomi continues her searching. She has demons of her own. She was also taken as a child, but she remembers nothing but running from an underground prison, across a strawberry field, towards a fire where some migrant workers took her to the sheriff. There were no parents who claimed her as missing, so she was brought up by a loving, kind foster mother. She has nightmares about what happened, and each missing child that she finds, whether living or dead, helps her towards realizing her own past. Eventually she remembers that she also had a little sister with her, and that they ran as fast as they could across the field, but when she turned to tell her that they made it, her little sister wasn't there....she had not kept up. Naomi refuses to give up on Madison, and through methodical work, looking at years old claim records of hunting cabins, and diligent searching, finally finds the colorful threads! Through a very suspenseful portion of the book, where Mr. B knows she's coming and sets a trap, and through Naomi and Mr. B having an all out physical fight, and through Madison working her way out of the basement trap door, Mr. B is killed by a knife that Madison hands Naomi. Madison is reunited with her parents, and stays in touch with Naomi. Naomi sets off in search of her next missing child...her little sister! Not very pleasant subject material, but it's not graphic. It's more about defeating the kidnapper and not letting the experience ruin the lives of the victims. And, wow, it was, as I said...a page-turner!

Finished: Black Beauty (Sewell) I can't believe I went my whole life never reading Black Beauty...especially being a horse owner, with a daughter who has ridden and been a horse lover since 2nd grade! Now that I've read it, though, I was a little disappointed. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it was different than I thought it would be. The story is told from Black Beauty's point of view. He talks and tells the story of his life, from owner to owner, and horse friendship to horse friendship. He seems to understand what humans are saying when they talk! And, he has lovely conversations with other horses. :-) His life starts out pretty cushy. He's well bred and treated royally, and taught in all the proper ways how to act, how to take the bridle, and saddle, and desensitized to scary noises so he won't shy away. Then, he's sold, and though every time he's sold, the previous owner tries to make sure he goes to other people who will treat him with the utmost respect, he does suffer through some bad owners, thus leading him to nearly breaking down. He spends time being a cab driver, a carriage driver, a driver for private owners, etc. He nearly dies of ignorant mistreatment a couple of times. But...at the end, he ends up back on a farm with a horse groom who was actually one of his grooming boys years before! The biggest problem I have with the book is the section where Black Beauty is owned by a cab driver in London. His owner is just wonderful, and treats him great. However, the book takes far too many tangents delving into what the cab driver has to pontificate about on life issues, morals, drinking, churchgoing, etc. They are all good, valuable things for a child reader to learn, but it's just odd that Black Beauty is relating these pages long human conversations that really have nothing to do with his horse life, lol. Anyway, I'm so glad I finally read the book...but also glad I'm done with it. Can't wait to ask Jenny Cate if she actually ever read it! I know she has several copies. :-)

Finished: Little Fires Everywhere (Ng) A very good book that hooks you at the beginning with the family home of the Richardsons, the main characters, burning down and then flashing back to how it all reached that point. The Richardsons are the perfect family living the perfect life in Shaker Heights, an overly pre-planned suburb of Cleveland. Mr. Richardson is a lawyer and Mrs. Richardson is a town journalist. They have four teenage children Lexie, a senior in high school, Trip, a junior, Moody, a sophomore, and Izzy a freshman. They are kids who have never wanted for food, TVs, cars, etc. They aren't bad kids, just privileged and not overly insightful to other people's needs...except for Izzy. Izzy is the rebel of the family who is always arguing for the underdog at the family dinner table. She's been suspended from school a few times, but rather than sit her down and really talk about why, her overbearing mother just assumes the worst of her and is always at odds with her. Each of the members of the family is delved into pretty deeply, and we learn that they all have their motivations and insecurities, just like the rest of us. Mrs. Richardson is so hard on Izzy because she's afraid of losing her. After three easy births with her first three children, Mrs. Richardson faced the terrifying experience of Izzy being several weeks premature and battling several of the problems that go along with preemies. Izzy, though, grew up just fine with no residual affects. Her mother, though, turns her fear of losing Izzy into a harsh over-protectiveness and harsher expectations, more so than with any of her other kids. They can all feel it, and because of it, Izzy becomes more of the rebel and the loner, not really getting along with her siblings. Lexie and Trip are the popular good-looking ones of the bunch; and Moody is the smart, thoughtful one. He understands Izzy the most. The author writes very beautifully as we see what makes each of these characters tick. So...enters into their little Shaker Heights world the enigmatic Mia Warren...an artist who uses her photography, along with other materials that appeal to her, to create very moving, meaningful pieces of art. She's an Asian woman and a single mother of fifteen year old Pearl. Mia and Pearl have moved from city to city as long as Pearl can remember. Mia will get an idea for a project, and plant roots for awhile to see her vision come to life...and then when she's done, they will pack up their VW Rabbit and be on their way. As an early art school student, Mia met a very influential photography professor who, recognizing her raw talent, put her in touch with a gallery agent who occasionally sold pieces of Mia's artwork. This bit of money, plus what she made taking whatever job she could where they moved, kept Mia and Pearl scraping by. When they move to Shaker Heights, Mia tells Pearl that they will finally stay put just as Pearl is entering high school. Pearl meets Moody Richardson first, and they become fast friends. Pearl is smart, and shy, but shares his same love for poetry and sense of humor. They do homework together and walk back and forth to school together and have all the same classes. Of course, Moody falls hard for Pearl...but when he finally takes her home to meet his brother and sisters, Pearl falls hard for Trip! It's more than just a teenage romance story, though. We see how all the Richardson kids are drawn to Pearl for different reasons. They accept her as one of their friends, and she begins to spend all her afternoons there. Her crush on Trip doesn't become known for quite awhile. We also learn about Mia's past. Her big secret is that she agreed to be a surrogate mother for a couple in New York to pay her second year of art school. Her parents had refused to pay, thinking photography and art in general were stupid things to build a future on. About six months after becoming pregnant (by sperm in a turkey baster!!) with the couple's child, Mia realized she'd fallen in love with her baby and couldn't go through with it. It was the beginning of her packing up what little she owned and running away. It was also right when her beloved younger brother, the only person who didn't judge her...the person with whom she even had a secret language from childhood, died in a car accident while with a friend. It was his VW Beetle that she ended up taking and making her own. There are just layers and layers to the story that I can't do justice to with a recap. Anyway, as Pearl grows close to the three oldest Richardson children, Izzy discovers that she gets along well with Mia. She goes over to Mia's rental every day after school and helps her with her photo development. Mia just seems to "get" Izzy and is warm and understanding to her, much more than her own mother. It is also Mia who Lexie turns to after she has an abortion (which Pearl drives her to). No way could she face her own mother, or ever let her know she got pregnant. In the midst of all the goings on between the Richardsons and Mia and Pearl, Mrs. Richardson's best friend has just thrown a first birthday party for the little Asian baby girl that she and her husband will be adopting after years and years of trying to get pregnant. They've had little Mirabelle since she was two months old, since she was left on a winter evening on the doorstep of a firehouse. However, just as they are about to do their final adoption proceedings, Mia finds out that she actually works with the baby's biological mother at her afternoon job at the Chinese restaurant. And...the mother wants her baby back now that she's back on her feet. A custody battle ensues, and battle lines are drawn. Mr. Richardson becomes the lawyer for the friends who are adopting, and Mrs. Richardson, Lexie, Trip and Moody all feel that Mirabelle should be placed with the loving parents she's been with for the past year. Izzy, and Mia and Pearl all think that she should be able to go back to her biological mother. In the midst of all this, Pearl and Trip finally realize they have feelings for each other and begin their own secret and sexual relationship! All kinds of drama, and secrets, and misunderstandings come to a head that end up blowing up all the relationships. The friends of the Richardsons win the custody battle, but then the biological mother sneaks into their house and takes her daughter and head back to China. Moody finds out about Trip and Pearl and is very upset. Mrs. Richardson, in trying to find out if the biological mother had an abortion (a bit of a side story) finds instead the name of Pearl Warren in the list of young girls who had recent abortions at the clinic! Of course, Lexie was the one who had the abortion, but she used Pearl's name since her mother knew the director so well and she didn't want her to recognize her name. It's all a huge misunderstanding that leads Mrs. Richardson to accusing Moody of getting Pearl pregnant; Moody lashing out that it was Trip who was "screwing" her; Izzy hearing it all; Mrs. Richardson barging over to Mia's rental (which is owned by the Richardsons) and railing against Mia's inappropriate daughter, Pearl, when Mia knew it was actually Lexie who had the abortion; Mrs. Richardson telling Mia she'd done some digging and knew about how Mia had fled from the couple whose surrogate she was, keeping Pearl from her real father; Mrs. Richardson insisting that Mia and Pearl leave right then, thus ripping Mia away from Izzy's one person who understood her; Izzy confronting Lexie after she figured out is wasn't Pearl who had been in trouble, but her own sister; Mia telling Izzy that sometimes you just had to have a scorched earth policy, like burning everything down and starting over, to explain why they were leaving; and finally, Izzy taking that very literally, and waiting until everyone was out of the house, and setting little fires everywhere to burn down her family home and all it represented before taking off in a bus to try and find Mia and Pearl. That all sounds a bit convoluted, but it was so well written! And, it was so heart wrenching! There wasn't really a character that wasn't given depth and a background, so you could feel what they were feeling. A really good story and, having already read her other novel, as well as this one, I will definitely read more of Ng's books. :-)

Finished: Silas Marner (Eliot) One of those books I'm sure I should have read earlier in my life, but didn't, Silas Marner is my third George Eliot book, after Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda, and I'm safe saying it's my third favorite of hers. Still a good book though. :-) Silas Marner is a church-going, honest and earnest man in his early twenties when we first meet him. He has no living parents, but has a dear best friend since childhood, is engaged to be married to a nice girl, and is involved and respected in his community and church. All this changes when he is set up for a robbery, which he is completely innocent of, by his best friend no less. Silas figures out the betrayal of his best friend, but cannot convince any one of his innocence. His fiance breaks off their engagement, and they absolve him of his sins through the church, and he leaves the town...heartbroken, disillusioned, and no longer believing in people OR in a higher power. Silas travels to the small town of Raveloe, which is predominantly working class, with a few upper crust families in the mix. Silas becomes a weaver and lives on his own in a cottage, not befriending anyone. He just does his job and makes money for his weavings from the richer clientele in town. Most of the people in town are actually afraid of him because of his reclusive personality. Silas lives in his own little world for fifteen years, in an old cottage of the muddy rock pit's former overseer. And, for those fifteen years, he collects his money, rarely spending a penny, as he comes to love his growing pile of riches. Silas hides his coins in two large leather bags in a hole in his floor under his weaving loom. Meanwhile, we also meet a couple of the richer families. Squire Cass is one of the richer men in town, and he's raising his sons on his own since his wife's death years before. His oldest son, twenty-five year old Godfrey, is a typical, aimless squire's son who has not been made to work a day in his life or be accountable for anything. He's actually the GOOD son. The next youngest son is Dunstan, and he's a piece of work. He has taken to gambling, drinking and now blackmailing his own brother, Godfrey. It seems that Godfrey, even though he's in love with Nancy Lammeter, the other rich family's daughter...has been giving into his baser needs and has actually married an opium addicted, poor woman who he now detests. His brother has found out his secret, and continuously blackmails him to give him the money he has collected from the various farm tenants for their father. When Godfrey is at a point of being desperate to pay his father the money he collected, which Dunstan took from him, he agrees to let Dunstan sell his beloved horse and bring him the money. Of course, Dunstan makes the deal, but then runs the horse wildly over a fence with spikes, accidentally killing the horse. More upset that he's got to walk home than at the thought that he actually killed an innocent animal, Dunstan tries to figure out what he'll do for the money now. As he walks, he devises a plan to steal the old weaver, Silas Marner's, money! He figures he must have it hidden somewhere, since the town knows he never spends a penny, and he's right. When Silas is out of the cottage, Dunstan goes in, quickly finds the hole, and makes off with the very heavy bags of coins, which he can actually barely carry! When Silas realizes he's been robbed, he finally goes to town for the first time in distress to report what has happened. Several of the townsfolk are actually sympathetic towards him, and an investigation is opened, but it is a fruitless one. One woman in particular, Mrs. Dolly Winthrop, kindly comes by, and without judgment or disdain, offers her help whenever he needs it and tries to talk him into going to their church. She's very upset that all Silas will do now is sit in his cottage and moan and lament. Meanwhile, back at the Cass home, Godfrey comes clean to his father that he gave the farm money to Dunstan, who then killed his horse. Dunstan has never returned home, and his father says good riddance! Squire Cass encourages Godfrey to straighten up and step up his pursuing of Nancy Lammeter, and ask her hand in marriage at the upcoming New Year's party at their home. Godfrey is tormented inside, though, because even though he's glad Dunstan has disappeared, his wife, Molly, has threatened to come and tell his father about the clandestine marriage. On the night of the party, Godfrey does dance with Nancy, but she makes it clear that she doesn't like the changes in him...that she's heard he has become more like his gambling brother, and she will not marry him. It is clear that she does actually love him though. As the party continues on, Molly, dressed in rags and clutching a two year old child to her chest, makes her way through the snow storm to get to the party. She is determined to finally tell Godfrey's father about their marriage and THEIR CHILD! Molly gives in to her craving to use her opium, though, and soon grows tired from it's affects and passes out in the snow. The baby crawls from her arms and sees a bright light. She toddles on to what ends up being Silas Marner's cottage!! She pushes the door open and gets all cozy on the hearth before Silas ever sees her. When he does see her, he is smitten by her golden hair and the way she looks at him. He wonders if it's his gold come back to him in the form of this beautiful baby. When the baby cries "mamma", Silas realizes she wasn't alone and follows her little footprints in the snow to her mother, who appears to be dead. He gathers the child up and runs to the where he knows the town doctor is...at the New Year's party at the Cass home. When Godfrey Cass sees the child, he knows that she is his and that the woman in the snow must be Molly. He insists on going as well, not to see if she's ok...but to see if she's going to say anything if she is. Alas, she is dead. Godfrey's mind goes to how he is now free of the "hateful" woman, and free to pursue Nancy. He has a small pang of guilt about his child, but keeps quiet and doesn't claim her as his. Silas insists that since the child came to him and she has no parents now, that he will keep her and raise her. The town wonders if he can do it, and all kinds of advice comes his way, especially from women...but the only woman he takes kindly advice from is Mrs. Winthrop. She convinces Silas that the baby needs to be Christened and that Silas needs to become a church going man. Silas agrees, and names the baby Eppie after his little sister who'd died as a child. For sixteen years he does everything he can for Eppie. He does become a church goer. He makes sure she gets schooling. And mostly he spends all the time in the world with her and loves her dearly. They spend time in the meadows where she loves the flowers, and he continues his weaving, earning money, but not hoarding it as he did in the past. Godfrey, in his tiny bit of guilt, does provide some things for them over the years disguised as acts of charity. So, for sixteen years, Silas and Eppie live happily together. And what's more...Mrs. Winthrop's son, Aaron, who has come with her on her visits to the Marner house all his life, has fallen in love with Eppie, and she with him. Aaron wants to marry Eppie and move in with her and Silas and become a dutiful son-in-law to Silas. He's a good guy! Meanwhile, over in the Cass household, Dunstan has never returned home to threaten Godfrey again, Squire Cass has passed on, and Godfrey and Nancy have lived the same sixteen years in a childless, married life. Nancy has resigned herself to the fact, but Godfrey cannot stand not having children. Over the years he brings up adopting a child to Nancy (thinking that he'll "adopt" Eppie from Silas), but Nancy always says no. She feels like they should not mess with God's will that they be childless. On the same night that Silas and Mrs. Winthrop discuss Aaron and Eppie getting married, the draining of the mud pit near the cottage for farming reasons, has lead to a gruesome discovery! The bones, and identification of Dunstan Cass are found in the bottom of the pit....along with the two heavy leather bags fulls of Silas Marner's coins! The evil Dunstan had walked right into the watery pit all those years before and drowned! Silas, though not obsessed with money anymore, is happy to have it back so he can give it to Eppie and Aaron to provide for them. When Godfrey finds out his brother is the one who stole Silas' money, something in him snaps and he finally tells Nancy the truth after all these years. He tells her the reason he wanted to adopt Eppie from Silas is because Eppie is his child by a lowly woman he married...the woman in the snow who died. Much to his surprise, Nancy sticks by him and goes with him to see Silas and Eppie and let them know that he's her real father, and what's more, he wants Eppie to come and live with him and Nancy so he can provide for her in the way she should be. Needless to say, both Silas and Eppie are stunned and upset! Eppie insists that she wants no father but Silas, and after going around and around about it, Godfrey concedes and leaves them alone. Again, what a selfish bastard. After all that is said and done, Eppie marries Aaron is a small town ceremony, in a dress provided by Nancy....because Godfrey and Nancy decide that what they really want is for Eppie to be happy, but they will provide for her if she ever needs it. So....even though Silas Marner was done so wrong by his original friends, and then initially treated poorly by his new townsfolk...he finds true love in this young baby who loves him unconditionally as a daughter for the rest of his life. :-) A pretty good book!

Finished: The Moonstone (Collins) Just what I needed...a refreshing mystery written in the 1800's, told by each of the main characters writing letters about what their involvement was in the theft of a one-of-a-kind Indian diamond given to Rachel Verinder on her 18th birthday. The book is over 700 pages, so I'll not be doing a detailed recap.It was very nice to read something for the enjoyment and not be depressed by too realistic of a story. The diamond, the moonstone, is a sacred stone that has been guarded for centuries by Indian religious men. When it is taken by an English Colonel during the Seige of Seringapatam and whisked back to England, the Indian guardians vow to pursue it and bring it back, no matter how many years it takes. Colonel Herncastle is shunned by his own family for taking the jewel in the first place, and so on his deathbed, he bequeaths it to his sister's daughter, Rachel, hoping that it will bring as much discord to his own sister as it did to him. He charges his nephew, and cousin to Rachel, Franklin Blake with delivering the diamond on her birthday. Franklin arrives a month before the birthday and keeps the diamond safe at the bank. In the month that he's at the Verinder estate, of course, he and Rachel fall madly in love (as cousins in the 1800's often did...at least in novels!) After presenting the diamond to Rachel on the day of her party, everything goes awry when the diamond is stolen from Rachel's bedroom that night! Suddenly, Rachel will have nothing to do with Franklin...won't even speak to him, and he doesn't know why. There are many lively characters in the book...from Rachel's mother, Lady Verinder; to the wise, faithful, head servant, Gabriel Betteridge, who has served first Lady Verinder as a young girl, and now her daughter; to the crafty police detective Sergeant Cuff, who is called in when the diamond is stolen; to the charming aristocrat Godfrey Ablewhite, who is also pursuing Rachel's hand in marriage; to Rosanna Spearman, the former thief who has been given a chance at being a housemaid by Lady Verinder; to the three Indian Brahmins disguised as jugglers who have come to town to retrieve the diamond. Everyone becomes a suspect of taking the diamond at some point or another, even Rachel herself! As everyone writes their version of what happened, the details emerge as to what actually happened, what happened to the diamond, why Rachel turned on Franklin, and exactly who the thief ends up being! I will say that this one actually has a happy ending! It is written much in the way that a Sherlock Holmes story is, but a little less dry. This one really kept my attention, kept me guessing, and kept me wanting to know whodunnit! :-)

Finished: Tinkers (Harding) Rather intense Pulitzer Prize winner about an old man who is dying, and while lying on the hospital bed set up in the middle of the living room, has hallucinations about the house falling down around him, and reminisces back on his life, to his childhood, and his father. George Washington Crosby is dying. He's beloved, and surrounded by his wife, his children, and his grandchildren as he lies in the living room going in and out of consciousness in his last days of life. He's an antique clock repairman by trade, a tinker, and his thoughts drift to the intricate workings of clocks and time pieces. Someone is always there with him, but he's pretty unaware of them except for a few lucid moments. The book has very little dialogue, and quite a bit of stream of conscious thinking. George imagines the house coming down on him bit by bit, and then drifts into memories of his childhood. He was the oldest of four children, and his parents counted on him to do all the chores. His father, Howard Aaron Crosby, was also a tinker, but he put his skills to use by driving a wagon full of drawers around rural Maine, selling necessities to his rural customers. He was away from home alot, but usually made it home for dinner. He also suffered from severe epileptic fits. His wife was a rather unloving, no-nonsense kind of woman, but she always shielded the kids from their father's epileptic fits....but years of taking care of Howard finally took their toll on her. One day, when George witnesses an episode, she is at her wits end and actually talks to a doctor about having her husband committed to the "insane" hospital. When Howard sees the brochure on the dresser, he leaves to drive his cart that morning and never returns! He leaves his family and heads to Pennsylvania where he changes his name, marries another woman, and lives as a grocery store clerk for the next twenty-five years. His new wife actually takes him to a medical doctor who prescribes medications that help Howard immensely. There are times that the book goes into Howard's point of view, so then we learn about his own childhood. His father was a preacher, a much loved preacher, who loved his son, but rarely spent time with him as he was always up in his study creating his sermons. When Howard is a young teen HIS father begins to deteriorate, showing signs of what I assume was probably Alzheimer's or dementia. Sadly, Howard's mother has his father sent someplace with four men in black suits one day, as Howard witnesses through the window. He goes to try and find his father, nearly succumbing to hypothermia, but is taken home by some local hunters. It is also around this same time that Howard has his first epileptic seizure. So, all three of the men have very sad stories. George actually has a very happy marriage, lovely children, and a long life. It's just sad for him because he had a tough childhood which is prevalent in his mind as he dies. We flash back to Howard again, and when, after 25 years of marriage, his second wife must travel at Christmas to take care of her mother, Howard borrows a car and drives to George's house. It seems he had kept up with all his children. He leaves the car running, knocks on the door, says hi to George, meets his grandchildren. George is stunned, but happy, and invites his long lost father in for Christmas dinner, but Howard says, no thanks. He just wanted to say hi. This becomes the very last memory that George has as he leaves this earth. As I said, this was an intense one. Many emotions if you've had parents deteriorate before your eyes or pass away not really understanding what's going on. I had no idea this book would be so depressing. I'm on the lookout now for a more light-hearted book!

Finished: The Optimist's Daughter (Welty) Pulitzer Prize winning novel written by Mississippi born Eudora Welty, about a grown daughter who rushes home to be by her father's side when he needs cataract surgery, only to have him never recover his will to live after the surgery. Following doctor's orders to lie as still as possible, Judge McKelva, does that after his eye surgery, with either his daughter, Laurel, or his second, younger wife, Fay, by his side. Laurel reads from him every day from some of their favorite classics, but when the self-centered Fay is there, all she does is complain about the situation he's left her in and bitch at him to finish healing up. It eventually becomes clear that the judge isn't improving, and one night, he seems to give up on life, and dies. Laurel and Fay react differently, Fay making it all about herself. Laurel takes her father home to be buried in Mount Salus, Mississippi, the house she grew up in with her father and her beloved mother, Becky, who died twelve years before. Surrounded by loving neighbors and old family friends, Laurel, though in shock, is able to mourn her father. No one in the town has ever understood what the highly loved and respected Judge McKelva saw in the younger, shriller Fay. True to form, Fay arrives late to her own husband's viewing, and then makes a scene. At least Laurel has the time before she arrives to truly mourn with the people who loved their family. Fay's uncouth, equally self-centered family arrives at the funeral from Texas, and Fay decides to go home with them for a few days. She makes a point of reminding Laurel that the house and everything in it belongs to her...AND...that she can't wait to get rid of some of this "junk" that was important to the judge. :-( Though those closet to her try to convince Laurel to move on back home, Laurel is determined to just spend the weekend there, and then head back to her job in Chicago before Fay gets back. So...the rest of the book is spent with Laurel reminiscing in the house, and it's a tear-jerker! I think it affected me so much because my own mother's death still seems so fresh on my mind....and I will never get over losing my dad, who was also a very beloved and highly respected person...and also happened to be from a small town in northern Louisiana, which is about the same as being from a small town in Mississippi. It all just seemed so familiar and tugged terribly at my heart. Anyway, Laurel spends time in her father's library, looking at his old books, and going through his desk drawers, which she never dared do as a child. The desk alone had been his great-grandfather's and held so many memories for Laurel of her dad sitting there. One of her dearest memories is that of being a girl drifting off to sleep at night to the sound of her father and mother taking turns reading to each other every night from whatever book they were reading. Laurel also spends time outside tending to her mother, Becky's, beloved rose bushes. She keeps drifting back to when she was a little girl, as far as she could remember, once a year she and her mother would take the train to West Virginia where her mother had grown up, to the house in the mountains. When Laurel finds her mother's old writing desk stored away in a little sewing room, she then goes even further into her memories as she finds every letter her father ever wrote her mother, and also finds their "beginning of courtship" memory album. I kept saying to myself, surely she's going to keep some of these things?? Take them with her?? But instead, she just relishes the memories, lives all the feelings all over again, and then, sure enough, heads back to Chicago after the weekend. I tell you, she was a much stronger person that I! It's exactly how my husband is, though...memories and people, not things, he says. I know what he means, but I also like having the few old things I have of my grandparents, and now my parents. I love sitting in my dad's old easy chair, as much as Laurel sunk down into her father's desk chair and let the feeling of him envelope her. This was a very good book, and I wish so much that I had read it while my hubby's Aunt Barbara was still alive. She was born and raised in Mississippi and became a writer and Eudora Welty was her favorite author. I would love to have discussed this book with her. Just one more lesson learned by me....don't put off talking to the people you love about things from the past, memories, or anything at all!

Fnished: Early Autumn (Bromfield) This Pulitzer Prize winner from 1927 is a story of the wealthy Pentland family living in the early 1900's New England. The Pentlands are one of the founding families of the area, and as such, are expected to maintain a level of respectability, even at the expense of happiness. Olivia Pentland is 39 and married to patriarch John Pentland's son, Anson. Anson, is a emotionless, wimpish man, whose only passion in life is working on his genealogy book. Together, Olivia and Anson have two children, 18 year old Sybil and 15 year old Jack. Sybil has just returned from a year of schooling in Paris, and has no interest in the other local, wealthy boys who the Pentlands are trying to set her up with. Jack has been deathly ill since birth, and spends most of his weak days in bed. Their grandfather, John Pentland, has more respect for his daughter-in-law, Olivia, than his own weak-spined son. Olivia, however, is unhappy in a marriage that has been void of physical intimacy since before Jack was born, and has always been loveless. When she chances upon their new neighbor, Irishman, Michael O'Hara, she instantly feels the tinglings of wanting and love that she's never felt before. After many horseback riding mornings, Michael declares his love for her. He has worked himself up from the working class to being quite wealthy. He hopes that she'll leave her husband for him and finally be happy. Meanwhile, Olivia is determined that her own daughter will not be stuck living a loveless life like she has. When a passionate young Frenchman, Jean, who Sybil had met in Paris comes to the estate, Olivia realizes they are in love! When she finds out they'd like to be married, she encourages Sybil and Jean to run off and elope, since she knows her husband will never approve of their marriage. When young Jack finally succumbs to his weak heart, the family is distraught, but mostly Olivia and John Pentland, who adored his grandson. Just when Olivia is beginning to weaken and think she should leave being a Pentland all behind now that Jack has died and Sybil has gone to be happy, old man John Pentland calls her into his study and lets her know that he's leaving everything to her in his will. She's the only person he trusts to handle the finances, maintain the Pentland name and reputation, and keep the family together. She almost defies John, but when he dies in a horseback riding accident, Olivia decides it IS up to her to stay. She loves Michael so much that she also decides that running off with him would not only ruin the Pentland family name, but would ruin Michael's business chances. She begs him to let her go, and he reluctantly does. A bit of a sad ending for Olivia, but a pretty good book. It was written in that way that many older books were written...with lots of prose, and descriptions, and internal thoughts, and little dialogue....but a very good book! :-)

Finished: Bear Town (Backman) I loved this book! I've been thinking about reading it for a long, long time and so glad I did. Frederik Backman does amazing character development, even with the characters who are normally non-sympathetic....he finds something human in them all and puts it all on the page. Amazing. This could have just been another teen hurts teen, teen gets revenge, etc. etc., but it was so much more than that. Beartown is the name of the small northern town, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, that is resting all it's hopes and dreams on their junior hockey team....a team made up of 15 to 17 year old boys. Hockey dominates the town history, the town businesses, the town economy, the town hearts, but the town is fading. Many of the hockey backers in the town feel that the only way the town will stay afloat is if the proposed "hockey" high school gets built there, along with a new rink, bringing in more jobs, more businesses, etc. The hope for this now exists because the best 17 year old to come along since the General Manager himself was a 17 year old is leading their team. His name is Kevin, and he's a machine. He's the boy next door. He's the straight A student. He's the boy all the other boys want as a best friend and all the girls want as a boyfriend. He's obsessed about being perfect in his hockey games. He's got rich parents who expect the world of him, who support the team, but who, oddly enough, don't personally support him. He longs for their affection, but his father is more about teaching lessons, doing his business, going over game stats after games that he doesn't attend, and on and on. His mother basically goes along with his dad. We feel early on for Kevin. He's got one person in the world who understands him, and that's his best friend Benji. Benji is the muscle who protects Kevin on the ice and allows him to score. Benji is also and exceptional player, but he and Kevin have been best friends since they were seven years old, and Benji has always protected Kevin. Benji's father committed suicide when he was young and he was raised by his mother and three older sisters, all who play different, but positive roles in his life. Benji has a tendency to get in trouble alot at school, but is also forgiven quite often as he's got the soulful eyes and personality that make teachers, etc., want to nurture him. Kevin and Benji's friendship is tested and eventually severed when Kevin does the unthinkable and rapes a 15 year old high school girl that he's been flirting with. The girl just happens to be Maya, the daughter of the General Manager, Peter Andersson, who was the last huge star of the town. Peter had been recruited to the NHL and played for a few seasons, but battled injuries. He married his high school sweetheart and they had a son, Isak and little Maya. As Peter learned that he would no longer be able to play hockey, their young son fell incurably ill and died. Shattered, Peter was offered by his old coach and mentor, Sune, to come back to Beartown as GM of the hockey club. The author writes all these characters so, so superbly. He puts you right in the skin of Peter, his wife Kira, Maya, Sune, Benji, and even Kevin. Before his daughter is raped, Peter's biggest dilemma is that the hockey board and sponsors want to fire Sune as the A coach (the level the boys go after juniors), and move the junior coach, David, up with his boys Kevin, Benji, Bobo, Lyt, and the rest....and they expect Peter to do the firing...to let go his lifelong friend and mentor. Before the rape, we learn all about the main team players and we meet Amat, a 15 year old on the boys team, who is so amazingly fast on the ice that he will uncharacteristically be moved up to the junior team to help them win the upcoming semi-final. Amat and his mother live in the poorest part of town, and his mother is the janitor for the ice rink. He would love nothing more than to be successful at hockey and provide for his mother. He's also in love with Maya, and has been since they were kids. In Beartown, the town is so small that all the kids, from primary grades to high school share the same building. They all know one another and have forever. We meet parents, hockey-crazed parents, and more. We meet the teachers and principal that try to guide the kids. We meet the crusty old bar owner whose husband passed away years before, but she's still the respected matriarch of all the old hockey players who never made it to the big leagues, but now work in the town factory, or garage, or anywhere they can get work. We meet Amat's best friends, who along with Amat, came from another country and are outcasts at school...and basically bullied by the members of the junior hockey team on a daily basis, with the huge Bobo and Lyt leading the charge. We meet Bobo's family, who are really good people, and see the dynamic between them and their son and how, truly, Bobo is a good person who is just caught up in trying to fit in himself. When Amat is moved up to the junior team, the day before the semifinal, many of the team are furious, but not near as furious as their parents! The team, you see, has complete faith and trust in their coach, David. He's had them all since they were seven years old. Though disappointed, David manages to make Bobo feel good about himself, while at the same time telling him that Amat will take his place in the semi. In an unexpected turn, Amat and Bobo become friends, as they are really far more alike than either of them ever knew. There's so much detail to the book, that, as usual, I can't possibly recap every detail of every character. That's what reading the book is for. :-) I will say that I adore Benji and he is going to go on my Favorite Character's list, which I don't update often.

So, when the book opens, it starts with two teenagers out in the woods...one who puts a gun to the other's head and pulls the trigger. Then, the story is how they got there.  So, as I read, I kept trying to figure out which of these kids was going to kill who. Kevin's rape of Maya happens about halfway through the book, at the after party at his house, after they win the semi-final. As usual, his parents are out of town, and all the kids from the town are at his house and drinking at the party. As Kevin flirts with Maya, we see Benji get disgusted and leave the party much to Kevin's objection. When Benji indicates that he disapproves of Kevin chasing after a 15 year old, it's the first sign that maybe Benji' knows that Kevin gets his way no matter what, and sometimes it's not a good way. So, Maya goes up to Kevin's room with him, giddy thinking maybe Kevin will kiss her or want to be her boyfriend, never in her wildest dreams thinking anything more would happen, but Kevin is so used to nobody saying no to him, that he just assumes she will want to have sex. As she says no and struggles, he holds her down forcefully, coming close to strangling her and rapes her. When Amat, one of the heroes of the semi-final game, goes looking for Maya and is told she went upstairs with Kevin, he dashes upstairs. This is the girl he loves, and he doesn't know what he's going to do, but he certainly doesn't want her to fall for Kevin. He bursts into Kevin's room in time to see Kevin raping Maya. Amat is a distraction enough for Maya to get free and run. Maya makes her way home and won't return any of Amat's frantic calls. She locks herself in her room, showers away the shame, washes all her clothes, burns her ripped blouse, tells her parents the next few days she is sick, misses school, and basically decides she will bear the brunt of this horror by herself. She knows it will destroy her parents if they know what has happened to her. Amat tries to go about his week, but he's basically in shock. Benji skips school alot and even a couple of practices. As the week passes and leads up to the final game that will be played that weekend, everyone is on edge for far different reasons. Maya's been raped. Peter is going to have to fire Sune. David needs his team to win the final. Amat is struggling between being part of the team and telling someone about Maya. Benji is completely out of sorts. Kevin has the weight of the game and town on his shoulders, and possibly the fact that he raped Maya, but it's hard to tell. Finally, on the day of the final game, right before her father is about to leave to get on the team bus, Maya's breaks down and tells her best friend, Ana, what happened, who convinces her to tell her parents right away so Kevin doesn't rape anyone else. So, Maya goes outside moments before her dad gets in his car to go, and tells her parents the whole story. They are devastated, furious, distraught, and they contact the police. As the team bus is about to pull away from the rink to go to the final, the police board the bus and remove Kevin. None of the team or parents know what's going on and everyone gets in an uproar....everyone but Amat and Benji, who sit quietly on the bus. Amazingly, it's Benji who comes to the team's morale rescue and gives a better pep talk to the team than coach David ever could, and they head off for their final not knowing what is going on with their star player, who they will now play without. As you would expect, most of the town tries to place the blame on Maya. They say she willingly went with Kevin and consented to sex. They say the fact that her parents waited a week to report it, until the day of the big game, is all about revenge for the board making Peter fire Sune, and on and on. It is horrible the way everyone reacts. We see a few glimpses, though, of people who think that Kevin might have actually raped Maya, among them Kevin's own mother. As Kevin is interrogated by the police, along with his father and his powerful attorney, the team goes on to play their hearts out in the final, most of them "for Kevin!!", but lose in overtime. When practically the entire town decides to meet and vote Peter out as the General Manager of the hockey club, Amat finally finds his guts (despite the fact that Kevin's father has tried to bribe him with money and a new job for his mother to stay quiet), and he marches in and speaks to the town meeting. He tells them exactly what he saw in detail. Many people do then believe Maya, but most still do not. Amat is then hunted down by his team, who believe that no matter what, a team should stay loyal to each other, and he is mercilessly beaten. As we see Bobo run to put on his hoodie and join the other team mates, a huge disappointment falls, until you realize that Bobo is there to protect Amat, and they basically both get the tar beat out of them. And, most sad of all, the police finally close the case and drop it due to insufficient evidence, since in a weeks time it was basically all wiped away and has become a he-said, she-said case. So, we come to the end and it's Maya who goes with Ana's father's shotgun and hunts down Kevin where he is running in the forest at night. She pulls the gun and forces him to his knees. He cries, and wets himself and begs her not to do it. She pulls the trigger and he feels himself dying. However, he's not dying, because she took the shotgun shell out. She walks away happy in the knowledge that he will forever be as afraid of the dark as she now is. In the wrap up, the town, mostly due to the crusty old bar owner and the former hockey players, vote to keep Peter as GM of the Beartown hockey club. Sune is not fired as the Beartown A team coach. They're not even sure they'll have an A team or a hockey club if they have no sponsors left. One of the main sponsors, who played on the same hockey team as Peter, finds his conscience and stays in Beartown instead of abandoning to Hed, and says he'll promote the team. Coach David is offered the job of coaching the Hed A team, the team that beat Beartown in the finals. Most of the team and their rich parents, including Kevin, Lyt, and the rest, abandon Beartown and join the Hed team. Kevin's mother believe Amat, and comes to Maya's house to apologize for her son, even though the case has been dropped. She falls to her knees, sobbing, and Maya falls to her knees to help lift her back up. Peter, Kira, Maya and little brother, Leo, grow closer as a family again and do family things. Needless to say, no hockey high school will be built in Beartown. As Peter walks through the stadium halls, up walks Benji. He wants to stay and play in Beartown, even though he'd have far more opportunity to shine in Hed. He's no longer Kevin's best friend. So, as the little kids come to skate camp, the four teenagers who are there who will go on to play Beartown hockey the next year are Benji, Amat, Bobo and Amat's bullied best friend, Zacharias. I can't say enough how well written this book is. AND...I didn't even realize that it was set in another country until the amount that Kevin's father tried to bribe Amat with was 5000 kronor. That is Swiss money!!! The whole time I thought I was reading about an American town and all along it wasn't in America. Just shows you had sad it is to know this could happen literally anywhere, and in my brain, it was happening in America. There is going to be a sequel to this book in June and I will definitely be buying that to read!!!!

Finished: The Underground Railroad (Whitehead) Heart-rending Pulitzer Prize winning novel about a Georgia slave girl named Cora in the 1800's who uses a literal underground railroad to escape her deplorable plantation life. Cora is left on the Randall plantation by her own runaway mother, Mabel, when she is just ten years old, and considered to be a "stray". She makes her way on the plantation and is known for her toughness, but when she's 15 or 16, she stands up for a young slave boy and takes quite a whipping. Being a young woman now, she is also raped by two men. When a young slave man, Caesar, tells her of his plan to escape north, at first Cora refuses...but after these incidences, she sees that things are only going to get much worse as the slave owner's most cruel son has just been put in charge of her portion of the plantation. She agrees to run with Caesar, and is utterly amazed to find that the underground railroad is not a system of safe houses and people willing to help. It is actually a tunneled out, underground, functioning railroad with stations hidden underneath the houses of anti-slavery sympathizers. Thus begins Cora's journey. Cora meets some amazing people along the way who are willing to risk their lives to hide her and protect her. She and Caesar make it to their first stop and it's in South Carolina. They are still not free, but allowed to live in their own area and put to work in rich white people's homes or the factory. They are lulled into a false sense of security and skip taking the next few trains to continue north. Little do they know, the black people of the town are also being medically experimented on and part of a planned sterilization project that will keep their race from procreating. By the time they figure this out, and Cora realizes that they are still being controlled and imprisoned, just in a different way, the twisted slave-catcher, Ridgeway, who has been sent to haul them back to the Randall plantation has entered into their South Carolina town. Ridgeway is doubly motivated. He was the slave-catcher the few years back when Cora's mother, Mabel, ran away and escaped uncaught. The Randall's had never let him forget his failure to bring her back, and Ridgeway is determined not to be humiliated by Mabel's daughter as well. When Ridgeway makes his presence known in town, Sam, the kindly station master is able to get to Cora and send her to the tunnel, but he's too late to get to Caesar and he his mercilessly killed. The book is written so deeply, and the characters so real, that it makes your heart break reading about what they must endure...and makes your blood boil to experience the ignorance of the white people who are claiming they are the superior race. I always feel deeply when I read books about slavery, or about the persecution of the Jewish people during the Holocaust, and this book made me feel so deeply. Just when you've read a chapter about Cora or Caesar, the author throws you for a loop by having a chapter solely dedicated to Ridgeway the slave-catcher, or Ethel the reluctant underground helper, who is only helping because her husband insists, or, sadly, a chapter on Mabel, who while she did runaway, didn't get far before she turned back around to head back to the plantation for her girl...to let her know how far she DID get and what freedom there was out there for both of them under the sky, before she was bitten by a water moccasin and fell dying into the swamp, never to be heard from again. Cora, devastated that Caesar never makes it to the tunnel, takes the next train that comes along, even though the train operator tells her that things are bad and he's not supposed to pick anyone else up. He does so, but he leaves her in North Carolina. A  reluctant station master there, Martin, tells Cora that they are all in danger because North Carolina has just declared itself a white only state. All blacks are being kicked out, most just hung from trees along what is known at the "freedom trail", the road out of town. It's a horrific sight for Cora as she hides in the back of the wagon, and Martin takes her home to his wary wife Ethel where they hide Cora in a little alcove above the attic. Cora stays there for months, in yet another prison, with only a peephole out onto the white people's park, where rallies are held every Friday to string up a random black person who is caught. Cora learns to read a bit there,  with the help of Martin, and develops a love for almanacs, the only books Martin has up in the attic. Eventually, though, Ridgeway makes his way there and finds Cora. Sadly, Martin and Ethel are hung as Cora is dragged out of town in chains. Before taking Cora back to be tortured and killed by Randall, Ridgeway has another runaway slave to pick up in Tennessee, so they head there. In one Tennessee town, Cora is noticed by another black man named Royal who, along with two other men, meets Ridgeway and his two helpers on the road, battles with them, and rescues Cora. Unfortunately, they only chain Ridgeway up and don't flat out kill him! Royal is actually a free and educated black man from the north who has made his way down to help as many of his people as he can.  He takes Cora to a farm in Indiana owned by the Valentine family...a family of mixed black and white blood. Mr. Valentine is all about rescuing and bringing anyone onto the farm to live as long as they pitch in and help. When the farm actually becomes prosperous and starts to become it's own little town with even a few buildings erected, the white people who live in nearby towns get very nervous to have such a large black contingency so close. So, once again, they are raided by evil white people during one of their evening get togethers. Royal and Cora had just become lovers after months of courtship when Royal is gunned down during the melee. His last words to Cora are for her to make her way to the cabin he showed her and take the tunnel under it and go north. But, of course, Ridgeway is sitting right there and hears his words. He grabs Cora and forces her to take him to the cabin to see the actual underground railroad, which he has always suspected to be a real thing, before taking her back to Georgia. Once there, as they are making their way down the steep ladder, Cora throws her arms around Ridgeway, and the weight of the movement makes them fall down and down into the tunnel, leaving Ridgeway severely injured. Cora is injured as well, but not severely. She takes the hand cart, the only thing available in the tunnel, and starts pumping her way down the track. She doesn't even know if she's going to find an exit or a dead end, but she keeps going. Eventually she gets to a cave opening and comes out to the fresh air. A group of three wagons passes, and in the third wagon, an old black man with a brand on his neck is driving. Cora can tell he's a runaway. He stops to offer her food and a ride, and she hops up. He tells her they are going out west to Missouri and then California, and that's where the book ends. It's just a mesmerizing journey that I can't really do justice to in this little recap...definitely a book worth it's reputation. So many descriptive, deep, and poignant passages...and hovering over it all, that horrific, inescapable, most shameful part of our American history, slavery.

Finished: The Woman in Cabin 10 (Ware). This was a perfect page-turner for travel reading, but not as good as one of my Harlan Coben thrillers. It was nicely suspenseful, but a little slow in getting started. It's the story of Lo Blalock, a journalist who works for a magazine. She's sent in place of her female boss, who is on maternity leave, to cover an intimate, super-luxury cruise on a private yacht. The yacht is owned by a wealthy businessman who is providing this maiden voyage to potential investors and journalists to make sure the business is a success. The catch is...the wealthy businessman is only wealthy because of his wife's money. His young wife, who has just survived a four year battle with breast cancer is on board. One her first night on board, Lo hears a scream and a huge splash from the cabin next to hers, a cabin which is supposed to be empty. Lo goes out on her balcony and sees a woman's body sinking in the North Sea, and she sees blood smeared on the balcony glass next door. Of course, by the time the yacht's security arrives, there is no blood and no body, and no one believes her...especially because she was pretty inebriated that evening at dinner. There are about ten other guests on the voyage, so Lo runs through them all as possible suspects in this murder she's sure she witnessed. She is also warned to quit "digging" and threatened, so she knows she's not imagining things. The tail is rather twisty, but it does turn out that no on on board has ever met the rich wife, so as she appears at the yacht dinners, weakly and apparently bald and recovering from chemo, no one suspects that it's not really her at all. Lo finally figures it out. She figures out that the body that went overboard was actually the real wife, and that the person pretending to be the wife is in cahoots with the husband. The fake wife then locks Lo away in a cabin below and when all the other passengers disembark at the journey's end, fake wife tells them that Lo disembarked earlier. Lo is actually able to get through to the  young woman, who has been physically abused by the husband and feels like she has no chance but to go along now. Lo convinces her that once the husband is successful in getting his wife's money, that she, the fake wife, will be next on his list of victims. Together, they concoct a plan to have Lo escape and fake wife stay there to handle the husband, pretending that Lo knocked her out and fled. In another twist, it is reported that the husband is found on the yacht with a gunshot wound to the head....apparently suicide...or is it? Lo is extremely worried about what could have happened to fake wife. A few weeks later, Lo gets a deposit into her bank account for $40,000 Swiss francs, and she realizes that the young woman made it out alive and has access to all the money. So...a pretty good tale, but not the best I've ever read. :-)

Finished: Don't Let Go (Coben) Another great page-turner by Harlan Coben! Napoleon Dumas, Nap as he's known, is a 33 year old New Jersey detective, still living in the same town he grew up in. Fifteen years before, when Nap was a high school senior, his twin brother, Leo, was killed in a horrific train track accident, along with his girlfriend, Diana...the daughter of the town police chief. Though many theories were tossed around, from double suicide, to drug induced tragic accident, Nap has never been able to put the past behind him. He's always wanted to know exactly what happened that horrific night. It also happens to be the night that his girlfriend, Maura, ran away from town, never to contact him again. Both of those losses, plus the death of his father in the recent years, has left Nap flapping in the wind. He's very close to retired police chief, Augie, Diana's father. As a matter of fact, Augie brought Nap into the Police Academy and taught him everything he knew, which has created in Nap, an excellent detective, but one who will not give up. Never able to get over Maura leaving him, Nap is shocked when he's called into consult on a case where another of his old classmates, Rex, now a cop as well, has been executed by the side of the rode. The shocker, though, is that Maura's fingerprints have been found all over the car! As Nap does further digging, with the help of Diana's best friend in high school, Ellie, and now Nap's only and best friend as well....they scrutinize their old yearbook and realize that Leo, Maura, Rex and two other students, Hank and Beth, all wore little pins that indicated they were members of the secret "Conspiracy Club". They were very keen on speculating about the old missile base that was constructed in their town in the 1950's, and abandoned in the 1970's. The Conspiracy Club was convinced that there were still secret government doings going on. And, they were correct. The old missile base was being used to interrogate post-911 terrorist suspects. When the kids get too close one night, Maura's face is caught on camera, and she is chased mercilessly by scary men. She gets away and stays on the run for fifteen years. Leo and Diana aren't so lucky. They are also in the woods that night, seemingly also scoping out the base, but at the same time Maura is spotted by the men, gunshots ring out, and Diana and Leo are killed (or so we think). Their bodies are then placed on the railroad tracks to make their deaths look like a terrible, teenage accident. The bad guys never realized that Hank, Rex and Beth were also part of the club, and they were left alone. However, fifteen years later, Rex has now been executed by the side of the road, and a few days later, Hank is murdered! Beth, now lives in Michigan as a surgeon, and has changed her name and is basically off the grid. Nap, the dog with a bone, begins to put all the pieces together, and confronts the bad guy who was on Maura's tail for so long. The bad guy gets the best of Nap, and is water boarding him to find out what all he knows, when he is killed from behind. Maura has come to the rescue. She's been watching Nap from afar and risks her life to save his. Yes, they fall into bed and declare their love for each other...and Maura promises not to run from Nap again. She had done it only to protect him all those years ago. She will stay with him now and see this through. Nap finally finds Beth, and when he hears the real truth of that night, he's shocked. It's not at all what he expected, and sheds a bad light on his beloved brother Leo...who, by the way, Nap talks to throughout the book. It's so poignant and sad. :-( Anyway, in the end, it ends up that Diana had been planning to break up with Leo, so Leo had convinced the Conspiracy Club to take Diana out to the woods that night and get her high on drugs, which she never did. They agreed to help Leo...well, all but Maura. Maura refused, which was why she was by herself in another part of the woods that night, actually scoping out the base. When Maura got too close, and was captured on camera, and the spotlights flew on and she ran....Diana, who was completely out of it on the drugs, ran screaming towards the spotlights from their different spot in the woods. The men at the base opened fire, thinking maybe one of their prisoners had escaped. Their gunfire did kill Diana, but not Leo. When Police Chief Augie was called in to investigate the ruckus, he arrived to find Leo cradling his only daughter, babbling about how he was sorry and what a horrible plan they had to drug her just because she was going to break up with him. Augie, completely distraught, takes out his gun and shoots Leo in the head. :-( The government guy helps Augie place the two kids on the train tracks and then Augie went home to put on the best act of his life. The bad guys continue to hunt for Maura so they can see what all she saw...and the other kids are safe until the day fifteen years later that Hank, in a mentally unstable rant, talks about the whole thing in front of Augie! When Augie realizes that Hank, Rex and Beth were also involved in Diana's death, he begins taking his revenge. Thankfully Nap gets to Beth before Augie, but he's devastated to find out that Augie was responsible for Leo's death. The only good thing is that Nap and Maura are finally together and can close that high school chapter of their lives. Nap finally, sadly, says goodbye to Leo. Naturally there's so much more detail to the book, much more character development, which makes you feel close to each of the characters, but recapping all that would take way too long. Love my Harlan Coben books!! :-)

Finished: Column of Fire (Follett) Another great (and very long) Follett book...the third book in the Kingsbridge series which began with Pillars of the Earth, and continued with World Without End. Even though the book is hundreds of years apart from the other books, many of the characters are descendents of the characters from the first two books. The town, Kingsbridge, and it's incredible buildings, which were practically characters in the first two books, also remain in tact. Column of Fire centers around a few main characters who spring up out of Kingsbridge and become involved in various ways in world politics. Its is now the 1500's and the big battle of the times is between Catholics and Protestants, and the rulers who support each of those religions. The young Queen Elizabeth comes into power and believes in religious tolerance, to the point of keeping her sister, Mary Queen of Scots, a devout Catholic, who many consider the rightful heir to the throne, as a prisoner. Mary believes in killing Protestants who have broken from the Catholic faith. Elizabeth doesn't want people killing other people over religion. However, in trying to keep this ideal, she ends up being responsible for the death of nearly as many people as the Catholics had been. The main fictional characters end up being instrumental in the support of the various kings and queens. Ned Willard and his brother, Barney, are Protestants. Barney becomes a sailor and spends his life fighting in the open seas, even being part of the group led by Francis Drake who defeats the heavily favored Spanish Armada when it tries to invade England. Ned, after being spurned by the love of his life Margery, travels to London and becomes a right hand man to Queen Elizabeth, basically serving under the men who comprise her secret service, and becomes instrumental in foiling many plots to take her life. Margery Fitzgerald is a beautiful, feisty girl who is as in love with Ned Willard as he is with her. However, after they have declared their love and hope to marry, her father forces her to marry the local son of an Earl. Margery is also a devout Catholic, and so after she and Ned go their separate ways, Margery focuses on helping to smuggle Catholic priests into the country to be paired with wealthy Catholic-sympathizing families. Little does she know that her own brother, Rollo, who is particularly heartless and self-serving, and has ALWAYS been a bully and nemesis to Ned, has gone to work his own Catholic agenda...which actually involves murdering Queen Elizabeth and having Mary of Scots restored to the English throne. He's convinced then that his beloved Catholicism will come back into power, and that he will be made a Bishop at Kingsbridge. The fact that he's willing to kill anyone who foils his plan is beyond his moral comprehension. Ned spends years unmarried, his only devotion his work and Queen Elizabeth, when he meets Sylvie Palot...an equally feisty woman who is just as determined that Protestants be allowed to practice their own religion as Margery is about the Catholics. Ned and Sylvie meet and fall in love right before the horrific massacre of Protestants on what became known as the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. Surviving the bloody day by the skin of their teeth, they realize they are in love and marry. They are happy for many, many years, even traveling back to Kingsbridge at times and seeing Margery and her family. Another major character, who is truly evil and does everything he does to promote himself higher in society is Pierre Aumande. As a young man, he courts Sylvie, then a very young, vulnerable woman, and works his way into her family, gathering information about her father, who is an illegal printer and seller of Protestant bibles. He amasses a huge list of secret Protestants, and on the day he is to marry Sylvie, he arranges for the power-hungry Duke of Guise, who he is working for, and his men to come and raid the wedding party and arrest all the Protestants. It is truly heartless, and Sylvie is heartbroken. Her father is executed and she and her mother become destitute. That is...until she realizes that no one ever found out where her father's secret warehouse of illegal bibles and other literature was! Sylvie takes over the clandestine spreading of "the word" and that is what she's doing when she meets Ned. Pierre is responsible for many other evil plots, and attempts on the lives of important people. He is also a nemesis of Ned's, who in the end, gets his satisfying just rewards...his death at the hands of another woman he has tortured and humiliated for years. The book is so long and detailed, that a more in depth recap would take forever! I did enjoy this book, as I have the others, and hope that Follett keeps writing more about characters from Kingsbridge!! Ned was still alive, and an old man, at the end of the book, and his great-grandson, Jack, has just informed him he'd like to be a builder. If you read Pillars of the Earth, you know that Jack the Builder, step-son of Tom the Builder, was one of the major characters! Love that full circle moment. :-)

Finished: The Secret History (Tartt) My second Donna Tartt book, and it was very good, but so emotionally draining, once again. I'm not sure what kind of a recap I'll give. She certainly creates tragic, heading-down-the-wrong-path characters that you just long to take in hand, maybe shake, but most definitely hug and love. In The Secret History, the narrator, Richard, is a 20 year old young man whose low-life parents could care less about him. He lives in a California town where he has done two years of college studying English literature, but he longs to escape his very poor, very unloving life. He applies to Hamden, a small college in Vermont, and surprisingly is accepted with financial aid. He's completely alone, and has about zero self-esteem. When he discovers that there's an eclectic, mysterious teacher that teaches only Greek studies, and only accepts a handful of students, he decides that's the course of study for him. Refused by the professor, Julian, at first, Richard persists and finally becomes one of the only six students who Julian takes on. You think of Julian at times (at least the young, highly intelligent, but very impressionable students do) as a benevolent father figure who only wants to instill in them his beliefs in everything ancient Greek. However, you can see once we meet each of the students that what he really does is surround himself with students who don't really have good family support...students who will worship him and come to emotionally depend on him. Julian doesn't really do anything bad in the book; he just doesn't really deeply care about the students the way he leads them to believe he does. Once a student joins Julian's classes, those are the ONLY classes they take at Hamden...all Greek, with the exception of one of the Romantic languages if they choose. Richard's fellow students, who have all already taken the Greek classes for two years, are all very close and know each other very well. At first it's hard for Richard to fit in, and for them to trust him with their secretive, Bacchanalian ways...but they all adapt, and Richard becomes one of the group and they all grow to care for each other in their dysfunctional ways, and more importantly, to completely depend on one another.

The other students are Henry, the perceived leader of the group...highly intelligent, but with little emotional affect. He is from a family with money, so has no problem financially, but he is perhaps the most deeply "into" the Greek teachings, language, thoughts, and basic philosophy. He and Julian are very close, and all the others always look to Henry for a final decision or solution when problems arise. Henry's got only a mother, but they are not very close. Francis is the red-headed, wealthy, most dramatic of the gang. He's a hypochondriac, but he'll do anything for his friends. They all will really. He's gay, but must hide it from his family to keep the money rolling in. They all spend many weekends out at his family's estate in "the country". His father is not around, and his mother is an alcoholic who has been to treatment once, but it didn't help. She's got a younger husband. Edmund, known for some reason as Bunny to family and friends, is the big, loud, ex-football playing, gregarious one who is always copying everyone else's homework, borrowing everyone else's money, and accepting no responsibility for his own actions. He's likable in some ways, is well known on campus, but is grating as all get out. He pushes the boundaries of friendship with what he expects his friends to do for him. He's one of five boys who has grown up in a family that likes to pretend it's wealthier than it is. His father is a bank president, whose house is mortgaged to the hilt, and his mother is more concerned with appearances than she is with actually caring for her children. Bunny constantly borrows money from Henry, and Henry doesn't mind...but it's even to the extent of planning elaborate vacations for the two of them, always at Henry's expense. And, if Bunny is somewhere where he can't pay for a bill, he picks up the phone and calls Henry. Henry is always there. Bunny is also bigoted and would probably have a fit if he knew Francis was gay. Charles and Camilla are the beautiful twins. They were orphaned as children and have been raised by their grandmother in Virginia. They are ethereal and seemingly a bit naive, but very complex individuals. They can be the kindest of the friends, but also are the most mysterious. And then, of course, there's Richard, the insecure follower. He has the tendency to have leadership thoughts, and know right from wrong, but he doesn't appear to have a huge conscience that would make him DO the right thing most of the time. All the kids drink loads of alcohol and experiment with different drugs: uppers, downers, cocaine. They are all highly intelligent, and maintain their studies and their classes with Julian for the most part, but they seem to always be under the influence of something or another. In all honesty, they exude an intellectual superiority that doesn't endear them to the rest of the students on campus, but doesn't completely alienate them either.

So, one night, before the group had grown to trust Richard, they went and participated in a wild Bacchanalia night that Henry had planned. He wanted to experience all the primal feelings of the ancient Greeks. Henry, Francis, Charles and Camilla planned the event without including Bunny, who they didn't think would understand the depths of what they were trying to transcend. I'm sure some manner of drugs was involved, given the hallucinations they had, and possibly even some animal sacrifice. Sadly, though, they happened to hold their little event on a private farm. When the farmer comes out to see what the ruckus is, and confronts the gang, Henry kills him in a semi-conscious fit of rage or euphoria or whatever he calls it. All the others witness it, and so it becomes their secret. Bunny, who had not been able to get in touch with anyone, figures out what they did when the news of the farmer's animal-like death is in the paper. He confronts them and they finally admit what they did. He's more hurt that they left him out than he is shocked that they actually murdered someone. They don't let Richard in on the secret until events escalate between Henry and Bunny. By escalate, I mean, Bunny starts demanding more and more money from each of them, draining their bank accounts, but especially from Henry. He holds the event over their heads, so they bend over backwards to make sure he won't go to the authorities. He doesn't ever come out and say he will, but the implication and his loud mouth, especially when he gets drunk, worries them. Henry finally confides in Richard one night because he thinks that if Bunny tells anyone first, he will tell the newbie. Bunny goes so far as to plan another elaborate trip with Henry to Rome where he insists on the best suites, the best foods, etc., all the while Henry's bank account is shrinking. They get into a huge fight and Henry leaves Rome early. He convinces the others that the only thing they can do is kill Bunny and make it look like an accident. So they do. Henry doesn't intend for Richard to be there or be involved, but Richard knows the plan, and when it looks like it might not go as planned, he rushes to the others to tell them that Bunny isn't going to be where they thought he would be that night. As they're all talking in the woods by this ravine, Bunny comes bursting through the bushes, drinking, and surprised to see them all there. It takes only a moment for Henry to push Bunny over the ravine, killing him.

All of these kids are just so broken, that even if they feel tinges of remorse or nostalgia for Bunny, none of them realizes the deep mortal sin they have committed. They worry about being caught, and emotionally, they all fall apart in different ways, most of them involving heavier alcohol and drug use. The rest of the book deals with them all being welcomed with open arms by Bunny's father at his funeral, dealing with the investigation once Bunny's body is found, bailing each other out of scrapes with the law, and finally, to the shame of Julian finding out that it was actually these students of his that killed Bunny. They actually have more shame for Julian knowing what they did, than for what they actually DID. Julian, up and leaves the students and the college, and doesn't give them another thought (at least he doesn't turn them in), which lets them all know that Julian doesn't want his name involved in any of it, i.e., he's always just been out for himself and using them to puff himself up. In the end, with the twin bond between Charles and Camilla breaking down due to her budding relationship with Henry, and due to Charles' excessive drinking, Camilla moves out of their apartment and Charles goes into a tailspin. He's hospitalized with bronchitis, and once out, he's still so furious at Henry, who he feels put alot of the load of dealing with the authorities off on the charming Charles, that he's nearly despondent. He shows up at Camilla's, where he knows Henry will be, but doesn't expect to see Francis and Richard there as well. He's got a gun. He aims it to shoot at Henry, but Camilla jumps at him and then Henry jumps at him, and the gun goes off several times, shooting only Richard, and not mortally. However, the commotion is enough to bring people running. Henry knows that soon the authorities will come, and with things unraveling, the truth of Bunny's death is bound to come out. Henry wrestles the gun away from Charles and whispers something to Camilla, then tells her he loves her, then saying this is for the best for all of them, he shoots himself in the head. They are all stunned and terribly upset. Yet, once again, Henry has fixed things for all of them. The authorities will think that he shot Richard and took his own life. In the end, he bails Charles out, even though Charles was at fault. After that, the students all go their separate ways, and in an epilogue, see very little of each other over the years. Richard goes on to get a degree in English literature and enter a doctoral program. Francis basically still lives off his trust fund, but must marry a girl he doesn't love when his grandfather catches him with a man and gives him the ultimatum, the money or the men. Camilla and Charles go back to live with their grandmother and take care of her. Charles goes into a treatment program, but leaves after two weeks, and then runs off to Texas with a married woman he meets in the program. When Francis tries to commit suicide three years later, Richard and Camilla both rush to Boston. They see Francis through, and he goes on then to marry the girl. Richard walks Camilla to her train and confesses that he's always loved her, and asks her to marry him. She actually considers it, but tells him she loved Henry and will always love Henry. And that's the end. I have no idea how I came to care about these people who could kill with such lack of conscience, except that they all had such terrible childhoods, either through desertion, over indulgence, loss, etc. Donna Tartt, in any event, is a very, very good writer and creates characters that will stay with me for a long time after finishing the book.

Finished: Buried Child (Shepard) Funny, I never thought about reading any of Sam Shepard's works until he passed away. I don't think I even knew he was a Pulitzer Prize winner. I just always really enjoyed his acting. :-) Anyway, I read this play, his Pulitzer winning one, and it was very, very intense, but very vibrant. I could actually hear each of the characters speaking, and imagine their actions. It was really just a portrait of this broken down family who had a secret from the past. Not a long play, but it packed a punch! Dodge and Halie are a married couple in their 60's and 70's. Dodge appears to be very ill, pretty much an invalid, plus an alcoholic. He's ornery, but has some of the best dialogue. The play isn't funny at all, but the bickering and conversations and nagging and interruptions and non-listening to each other between Dodge and Halie can definitely make you smile and see real life in the process. Halie professes to be the good church-going woman, but she's more about going to see the "good" Father Dewis at the church than actually being church-going. Their 40-something son, Tilden, has moved back home to live with them...not to take care of them, but to basically be taken care of. He's emotionally stunted...has been in trouble in New Mexico and moved back home. He was a high school All American in football, but his life went off the rails. Younger son, 30-something Bradley, lives nearby and accidentally cut his leg off below the knee years before with a chainsaw. He's bossy and bullying to his parents and his big brother, but also a whining, sniveling mess. It's a very dysfunctional family! One day, when Halie goes off in her nice dress to go to church, a couple of visitors come to the door. Tilden's son, 22 year old Vince, who the family hasn't seen in six  years and his girlfriend, Shelly, come in. Neither Dodge or Tilden recognize Vince...to the point that Shelly wonders if Vince has made a mistake about this being his family. Tilden goes out to wander around in the farm out back, which hasn't been farmed to grow anything in over thirty years. He keeps coming back in with corn and carrots. Dodge accuses him of stealing the food from other farmers. Dodge doesn't know or care who Vince is. He just berates him and begs him to go and buy him some liquor. Vince leaves Shelly there to go buy liquor, much to her dismay, but she handles Dodge and Tilden just fine until Bradley comes in and starts berating HER. He also berates Dodge and Tilden. Soon Dodge starts spouting off about the big family secret, and it comes pouring out. Years before, an age isn't given, but Tilden and Bradley were at least teenagers, Halie (their mother) got pregnant again and had a baby son. Dodge knew it wasn't his son because he hadn't "had relations" with her in six years. Dodge, unwilling to have the baby around, had drown it and buried it out back on the farm. The creepy part is that the baby was the product of Halie having sex with her own son, Tilden. This rather explains Tilden's emotional instability. Halie and Father Dewis come back to the house after a night on the town in quite a flirtatious mood, but as they walk in to the confession of Dodge, things get dark. Father Dewis hightails it out, but not before Dodge announces that when he dies, which he expects to be soon, he wants Father Dewis to witness that he leaves the house and all his belongings to his grandson, Vince. Halie goes moaning and groaning upstairs. The belligerent Bradley has become the whimpering whiner because he had taken his wooden leg off to take a nap, and Shelly was now holding it and threatening to leave with it if these crazy people didn't let her go. Vince has never returned with the alcohol. Tilden has gone out back to wander the farm again. Finally, Shelly tosses Bradley's leg and heads for the porch just as Vince is coming back in, clearly drunk. She tells him they need to go, and instead he goes in and lays down on the couch. He had heard Dodge's last will and testament, and it turns out to truly be that, because Dodge has died on the floor without anyone noticing. Vince plops down on the couch and declares that he thinks he'll stay. Shelly says adios. Bradley crawls off stage to get his tossed leg. And, then Tilden walks back in cradling the tiny covered bones of a small child in his arms and walks upstairs with it. Honestly....you can truly taste each character. It's very well written, but oh so dark and tragic.

Finished: Giant (Ferber) A very good book about a Texas cattle rancher who falls in love with an educated girl from Virginia, marries her, and brings her back to the vast, ranching world of 1920's Texas. The book was the inspiration for the movie Giant with Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean, which I haven't seen in many years. I can't be sure how true to the book the movie stayed, but I know for a fact that the way Jett Rink, the crass, chip-on-his-shoulder cowhand, from the book was certainly not as swoon-worthy as James Dean. :-) Anyway, the cattle rancher Jordan "Bick" Benedict owns the 2.5 million acre ranch, Reata, and it is his life. He's the third Jordan Benedict and was born and raised riding horses and raising livestock. His parents died when he was young, and he was practically raised by his older, no-nonsense, "old maid", very opinionated sister, Luz. When Bick brings his equally opinionated, but beautiful, smart, compassionate bride, Leslie Lynnton, back to the ranch, Luz is immediately threatened by their closeness and doesn't do anything to make Leslie welcome. The entire book tackles Texas politics, cattle breeding, the plight of the Mexicans and Mexican-Americans who barely scraped by working on the ranch, the rich versus the poor, the weather, the heat, the oil boom (that Bick wants no part of on his ranch), and the ongoing, underlying tension between Bick and his fired ranch hand, Jett. It's a grand book, with flawed characters...but characters who do stick together through thick and thin. I like that Leslie and Bick remain married, always love one another, even though they disagree on so many basic tenets, and that Leslie comes to think of Texas as her home. Leslie and Bick have two children of their own, who are grown by the end of the book, Jordan the 4th, called Jordy and daughter, Claire, who Bick insists on calling Luz, even though that's nothing like her name, lol. Of course, Bick expects Jordy to follow in the footsteps of him, his father and his grandfather, but Jordy wants nothing to do with ranching. He wants to be a doctor. Luz is the one who takes to the ranch and has Bick wishing that his son and his daughter had switched personalities. Bick never really lets up on Jordy about this, showing how set in his ways he can be. The only disconcerting thing is that the book starts in the 1950's when Bick, Leslie, friends and children are all headed to the huge opening of the Jett Rink airport and hotel. Yes, Jett did go on to strike oil on his tiny piece of land, and he ended up buying up all the oil rights on most of the land around him, and now he's a billionaire...still a crass, unlikable, drunkard of a man, though. The Benedicts and all the other powerful guests are up on the dais for a special dinner as Jett enters with his bodyguards. Just then, Jordy hops up on the dais and punches Jett in the face!! It seems that Jordy's wife, who is Mexican, was not allowed in the hotel beauty shop to get her nails done that morning because she was Mexican. Of course, Jett lays into Jordy and injures him pretty badly. With that opening, we flash back to Leslie and Bick meeting and marrying and going home to Texas to live on Reata. We meet Jett, and all of Bick's friends and family. We watch Leslie grow accustomed to Texas, and make friends. We go through Luz (the sister's) death. We enjoy a visit by Leslie's family out to this foreign "country" of Texas. All this, and at the end of the book, we get right up to the week before they're all going to go to the big Jett Rink airport opening, and the book ends. It's just rather abrupt, and never goes back to the event that opened the book. I think that's my only problem with the book. :-) A lot of really nice prose describing both Texas and the different cities they visit in Texas and the politics and mindset of the time.

Finished: The Goldfinch (Tartt) I knew from one of the first passages I read of this Pulitzer Prize winner that this would be a very moving, very intricate book, this story about a boy who loses his mother and how that deeply affects the rest of his life, and it was all that, plus a pretty wild ride. It was such a good, good book...a book that makes you feel really deeply. If this is a book you are seriously considering reading, then I wouldn't read this recap, because there are spoilers that may ruin the reading for you! Theo Decker is thirteen years old, and his mother has taken the day off from work to go to a meeting with the school principal. It seems that Theo was seen smoking by the principal, and he fears he will be suspended. Theo knows his mom can't afford to take off work, since she's been raising him on his own, with no financial aid from his dad since his dad, a mood-swinging alcoholic, walked out on them over a year before. As they walk to the meeting, the skies open up and pour down raining. Since they are early, they dash into the Metropolitan Museum of Art where there is a visiting art show exhibiting, The Goldfinch, the famous painting by Dutch painter, and student of Rembrandt's, Carel Fabritius. It is one of the few remaining pieces of art created by Fabritius before he died, and Theo's mother has loved the painting nearly all her life. To see it in person, is a great joy to her, and she wants to show Theo. As they look at the painting, Theo sees a red-headed girl about his age who is also looking at the painting with what looks like her grandfather. He falls instantly in love with her, even though he's never seen her before. As his mother and he make their way to the gift shop, Theo's mom says she's going to go and have one more glimpse of the painting. Theo sees her off and then heads towards the gift shop, where he sees the red-headed girl and her escort. Just then, a horrific blast occurs. There is a bombing at the museum! Theo is thrown unconscious amid tumbling concrete, wires, etc. When he awakens, the only person he sees is the older man, laying, grievously wounded. The red-headed girl is no where in sight, and his mother isn't either. The man, who's name is Welty Blackwell, takes off his family heirloom ring and gives Theo instructions on where to take it. He knows he's dying. He then points to the smokey painting of the goldfinch, which has miraculously survived, and begs Theo to take that too. As a matter of fact, he won't calm down until Theo puts it in his backpack....which he does...because he's in a daze, he's in shock, he doesn't know what to do. He thinks his mother must surely still be alive, and so after Welty dies, Theo makes his way out through the rubble and, despite the blood on him and his pounding headache, makes it back to their apartment to wait for his mom. Of course, his mom never shows up because she was killed in the blast. From this point on, Theo is in a state of shock and then in the hands of child protective services. He is very confused and knows only to bring his backpack with him when he is taken to the wealthy home of his best friend from elementary school, Andy Barbour. He and Andy are no longer close, but the Barbours take Theo in, no questions asked, and make him feel as much a part of the family as they can. They will take care of Theo until arrangements can be made with his grandparents if his father never comes forward. His ne'er do well, selfish grandparents, the ones who raised his ne'er do well, selfish father, don't want anything to do with him. So, Theo settles in at the Barbours and is there for several months. He struggles with nightmares and PTSD since the bombing, and he misses his mother terribly. :-( He also has no idea what to do with the painting now that months have gone by and his head has cleared. He wants to turn it into the museum, but is afraid he will be arrested or kicked out of the Barbour's house. One day, Theo makes the trip down to the Village and finds the address that Welty had given him when he asked him to deliver his ring. A giant of a man answers the door. His name is James Hobart "Hobie" and he is the kindest man Theo has ever met. He's overwhelmed that Theo brought his business partner's ring back, and he embraces Theo. Hobie is an antique restorer and Welty had been the purchasing partner. With Welty gone, Hobie has been at a loss and has not reopened the shop, but keeps up with the bills by repairing antiques for people. Hobie listens to Theo and feeds him and tells him if there's anything he can ever do, to let him know. Theo asks about the red-headed girl, assuming she died in the bombing, and Hobie tells him that Pippa survived the bombing, but is still in pretty bad shape from her head injury and doesn't like visitors. Theo is happily stunned. He learns that Pippa was Welty's niece who he had raised since she was a toddler. She was a talented flutist who was also suffering her own PTSD after the bombing, and especially traumatized by the death of Welty and by her loss of musical ability. Theo begs to see her, so Hobie takes him to Pippa's room and she instantly wants to see him too. She remembers him from the museum and they form an instant bond. She can't handle too long of a visit, and unfortunately her aunt is taking her to recuperate in Texas the very next day....but they have this brief moment of connection. Theo says his goodbyes, but then continues to make his way down to Hobie's once a week or so for the genuine kindness of the man. Hobie begins to teach Theo about restoring antiques, and knowing an antique when he sees one. Theo wonders if he should tell Hobie about the painting, but again, he's too afraid that he'll lose Hobie if he does, so he does nothing.

Just when the new school year is about to start, and Mrs. Barbour has indicated to Theo that he will most likely becoming a permanent fixture of their family, Theo's miscreant father turns up with his cheap girlfriend, and they whisk him off to live with them in Vegas. Theo doesn't want to go at all, but he must.  He panics about the painting, but wraps it up in some clothes and puts it in his suitcase and brings it along! He runs to see Hobie before he goes and they have a heartfelt goodbye. Hobie tells him to call him if he needs anything at all after he gets there, and promises to write (which he does).

From here on out, Theo's life goes even further downhill. I might as well type 600 pages to go into everything in detail. Suffice it to say, Theo's dad and Xandra are terrible parents. They leave Theo to his own devices, alone in a near empty street, in an unfinished neighborhood in the desert near Vegas. They give him a little attention, but mostly focus on themselves. Theo becomes even more lonely. After meeting another motherless, absentee-father boy at school, Ukrainian immigrant, Boris, Theo falls into skipping school, marijuana, shoplifting (for food mostly), alcohol, and then harder drugs. He and Boris become like brothers, but are terrible influences for each other. Theo's dad gets used to having him around, and has a couple of good moments here and there, but basically, he's a gambler...so his good and bad moods are determined by his wins at the casinos any given day. One day when he's in a generous mood, he gives Theo some cash, and then asks him for his social security number so he can open a savings account for Theo. Of course, it comes to light that he really just wanted to use that social security number to try and access the bit of money that Theo's mother left him in a trust for schooling. It's so sad when Theo realizes that. Also, Theo is still chronically worried about the painting and being arrested. He takes the painting out to look at it, and he loves it like his mother did, but then he wraps it in a pillowcase and keeps it taped behind his bed, always fearful that someone will find it. When it becomes clear that Theo's dad is now on a losing streak after a man comes to the house to collect money, and after his dad actually punches Theo in the face to make him get on the phone to the lawyer to try and access his school money, Theo sinks even lower. He and Boris dip further into their drug dependency, and their dependency on each other. Everything changes again when Theo's father is killed in an auto accident. Theo panics and tells Boris he must leave that very night and go back to New York. He will go to the Barbour's. Theo has now been living in Vegas for two years but Boris can't convince Theo to stay for even one more day. Theo does not want to be put back in social services, and he's again panicked about the painting! Theo gets the wrapped painting and a few clothes, and heads for a bus to New York. When he arrives, he heads towards the Barbour's, but as he approaches the house, he sees the formerly friendly Mr. Barbour, who doesn't recognize him and yells at him to leave him alone. It is clear that Mr. Barbour is off his depression medication, and Theo has never seen him like this. Despondent, Theo goes to the only place he knows to go....he knocks on Hobie's door. When Hobie sees him, he embraces him, and Theo breaks down in tears (and so did I) at the first indication of human warmth and kindness he's had in his life, basically since his mother died. Hobie puts the very sick Theo to bed and he and Pippa nurse him back to health. Pippa, however, doesn't stay for long because she's in a school for "crazy girls" in Switzerland. Theo and Pippa do have a little bit more bonding, but clearly he's head over heals in love with her, and she's more just trying to forget the past and move on. When Theo is well again, Hobie takes him to see his lawyer, and the lawyer agrees that Theo is old enough (almost 16 now) to decide where to live, so he sets him up with a small allowance from  his mother's money and agrees that he can stay with Hobie. Theo goes to pre-college (he's very smart) and does marginally well, but what he really likes is helping with the antique restorations!

Flash forward eight years and that's exactly what Theo has done. He's still living with Hobie and now has become his partner! For all those years, Hobie still concentrated on the furniture restoration and repair and left the financial part to Theo. Theo inherited a shop in debt, and in order to get them out from under the debt and to keep Hobie from losing his shop, Theo sells several of Hobie's own creations, which are not antiques, but bits and scraps of different pieces that he puts together, as true antiques to some pretty serious collectors. Hobie has no idea that Theo is taking the pieces from the store room, where he puts them after he's done, and so is completely oblivious to how Theo has re-engergized the shop. In the meantime, Theo, who has never even taken the painting out of the pillow case to look at it again, has paid for his own temperature controlled store room and stored the painting there for years! He goes through a very frantic few months when it is in the news that some of the paintings that were stolen from the museum on the bombing day have been found with an illegal art dealer in Miami and those people are sentenced to prison. He still has no idea what to do, and considers trying to turn the painting in some how, but then he always gets busy and goes back into avoiding the subject. Pippa has moved to London, and it's clear they won't be together, so even though he's deep down still in love with her, Theo becomes engaged to Kitsey Barbour, Andy's little sister. He hooks back up with that family when he runs into Andy's big brother, Platt, on the street one day and Platt tells him that both Mr. Barbour and Andy were drowned in a boating accident earlier in the year. :-( Theo feels terribly guilty because he came back to New York, and after running into Mr. Barbour and being yelled at, he has never resumed communication with any of the Barbours. He can't believe that Andy, one of the only people who had really been a friend when he was younger, is now dead. When he goes over to visit Mrs. Barbour, who has now gone from being a huge socialite to pretty much a recluse, that's when he gets back in touch with the now college-aged Kitsey and they have a whirlwind romance and get engaged! Mrs. Barbour is thrilled and it brings some life back into the family. However, even that can't be just a simple happiness. It turns out, Kitsey is really in love with one of Theo's old middle school friends, Tom Cable. As a matter of fact, Tom Cable is the "friend" who has left Theo holding the cigarette way back when they were seen by the principal, and is indirectly responsible for Theo's mother having to take off work the day of her death. This is the way Theo sees it, anyway, as Theo continues to blame himself for his mother's death, thinking if only he hadn't screwed up at school and forced his mother to have to miss work for the meeting. Anyway, Kitsey loves Tom, and Tom supposedly loves Kitsey, but her family can't stand him and they love Theo, so Kitsey and Theo actually agree to stay together for the sake of Mrs. Barbour for the time being. A few days later at their engagement party, Theo is still reeling a bit, but he's putting on the smiling face. Who should show up but Boris!!! Boris, who Theo hasn't heard from in years. Boris, who for the first few months after Theo left Vegas, would text him every once in awhile, but had basically fallen off the face of the earth! Boris barely gives the shocked Theo time to embrace him when he tells Theo that he must come with him immediately for a few days. Theo, being a bit ticked at Kitsey anyway, tells Hobie he's off for a few days, and leaves with Boris. Boris, who by the way, still looks like he's up to no good!!

Boris talks a mile a minute trying to explain something or other to Theo as Theo throws clothes into a suitcase. Boris says they're going to Amsterdam. He keeps apologizing to Theo and begging his forgiveness, but tells him that he's finally tracked it down and they're going to get it back together. Theo has no idea what Boris is talking about and Boris finally realizes that. It turns out, that years ago in Vegas, Boris had taken The Goldfinch from behind Theo's bed and replaced it with a book, re- wrapped it in the pillow case and re-taped it to the back of the bed!! All these panicky years that Theo thought he had an illegal painting he was keeping safe in a store room, he had not. Theo is furious with Boris. Boris explains that he just did it for kicks and was going to give it back to him, and if Theo remembered correctly, Boris had tried to talk him into staying just one more night when his father died, and then he was going to slip the painting back in, but Theo insisted on leaving right then. As Boris had become further and further entrenched in drugs, then dealing, then petty crime, he had began using the painting and it was actually one of the paintings involved in the Miami art debacle! However, someone Boris knew had made it out with the painting, but then THAT guy had started loaning the painting out as a way to take collateral money from people (or something like that). Anyway, Boris now had an exact location of the painting and he needed Theo to go with him and pose as the rich guy to get it back! Flabbergasted, Theo told Boris that when they DID see exactly where it was and who had it, that he was going to call the police and turn that person in and have them retrieve the painting, finally, after all these years. It would be tough for Theo not to have it in his possession, since it was what he saw as a final connection to his mother, but it would finally be over. Boris was incredulous....no way would they turn it in!! He wanted Theo to have it back. It was very valuable. The retrieval of the painting ends up being fraught with danger as fake money and guns (much to Theo's horror) are involved. Theo, Boris and his men end up getting the painting after Boris pistol whips the man who had stolen it. Theo and Boris unwrap the painting and Theo has a brief moment of absolute delight and wonder in seeing it's beauty when two other men come up with guns and take the painting back. Not only that, they are going to kill Theo and Boris. Boris makes a move and takes one guy down, and Theo grabs a gun and kills the other guy, and then basically goes into shock. Even worse, a third guy has grabbed the painting and fled. Boris knows who the guy is, but they can't catch him. Boris is shot in the arm, but he insists that Theo go back to the hotel and clean up and wait for him there. Theo is distraught from killing the man who was about to kill him, and in a daze, but goes back to the hotel where he waits for days and days. He can't even leave town if he wants to because Boris has his passport in his car. He has no way to get in touch with Boris because his cell phone dies, and then he fries it when he tries to charge it without a converter. Theo falls into fear and despair and seriously contemplates suicide. He's at his lowest low when he sees the one and only vision of his mother that he ever sees. It's clear and he knows it's her there trying to comfort him. She opens her mouth to speak to him, and he wakes up and she's not there. Just that bit of feeling his mother makes him snap out of the suicidal thoughts. He, instead, decides he will turn himself in at the American consulate for murder. Just as he's given up on Boris, thinking maybe even he is dead, Theo cleans up and orders breakfast for a last meal, and is about to eat when Boris turns up at his hotel room! Boris is fine and in a great mood. He's been gone for so many days because he tracked down the guy who took the painting, and then using Theo's "brilliant idea", he had one of his men act as an eyewitness and go to the police and say he thought he knew where The Goldfinch painting was because....the painting had a $2,000,0000 reward on it!! All this time, says Boris, if he'd only used his head, he could have turned the painting in long ago and made them all the money. Theo is at once sad about the painting, but glad at the same time, that's it's finally back in safe hands. Boris insists that he take a huge chunk of the money, and won't take no for an answer. They spend a couple of days together, and then Theo flies back to New York where he is immediately faced with a very troubled and sad Hobie, who has been worried sick about Theo. It turns out, an unscrupulous antique dealer who had tired to blackmail Theo before, when he found out he'd been sold a fake, has gone to Hobie and told him about ALL the pieces that Theo has faked. On top of that, Hobie has now heard in the news about the recovery of The Goldfinch in Amsterdam and wonders if Theo has somehow been involved with that. Theo begs Hobie to let him explain, and says he's got the money to pay back anyone who he sold a fake antique to, and then he goes about the long explanation about the painting. After hearing everything from the moment of the bombing til now, Theo assumes Hobie will want him to leave, but he instead embraces him and tells him that The Goldfinch had been one of two paintings that Welty had loved from childhood on. Since it is now back where it belongs, there's no reason to do anything about that.

So, at the end of the book, Theo is traveling around making amends for all the "mistaken" fake antiques. He's paying all the people back their money, and he's still engaged to Kitsey, though they aren't really doing anything about getting married. Just having Theo around and part of the Barbour family makes Mrs. Barbour happy, and that's all Theo and Kitsey really want. Theo reminiscences and comes to terms with the fact that he and Pippa will never be together when she tells him that she has always loved him too, but that they could never be together because they both have too much of a propensity to fall apart at any moment due to their shared tragic experience, and that they both need people in their lives who will be their rock instead. Theo has grown up and realized his own morals by the end of the book, but I think, still has a long way to go to actually loving and forgiving himself. It ends there, but I found myself really hoping that Theo went on to find real happiness!