Finished: The Scarlet Pimpernel (Orczy) A delightfully fun book! :-) Set in 1792, early in the French Revolution, the Scarlet Pimpernel is the much respected leader of a secret group of English aristocrats who go on rescue missions from England to France to spirit French aristocrats out of France before they can be ordered to execution by the bloody guillotine. Fear is running rampant in France, and the Scarlet Pimpernel, whose identity is known by no one but his trusted group, has become a beloved hero of the uppercrust throughout France and England. His brilliant mind has come up with all kinds of escape plans that keep fooling the French guards. The newly appointed French envoy to England, staunch revolutionist, Chauvelin, is determined to bring the Scarlet Pimpernel to justice, i.e., to the guillotine! Chauvelin approaches Marguerite, the wife of rich, respected English aristocrat, Percy Blakeney for her help. Chauvelin is evil though. Marguerite is a former French citizen who was swept off her feet by Percy's fierce love. They married, but almost immediately became estranged due to something from Marguerite's past. Chauvelin knows that Marguerite has a beloved brother, Armand, who is still in France who is secretly working against the French Revolution and actually helping the Scarlet Pimpernel get people out of France. He threatens Armand's life if Marguerite, who is very socially astute and respected, does not help him uncover who the Scarlet Pimpernel is. Marguerite, like everyone else, adores the bravery of the Scarlet Pimpernel from afar, and is loathe to help capture him, but her brother means the world to her...so, when she finds out that the Scarlet Pimpernel will be meeting one of his group at a certain time, she gives Chauvelin that information. Lurking in the shadows, Chauvelin now knows who the Scarlet Pimpernel is! Little does Marguerite know or suspect that her unassuming, "foppish" husband, Percy, is actually the brave and dashing Scarlet Pimpernel! By giving Chauvelin the information, she has put her husband in grave danger. She has always loved Percy, even though his pride has kept him from showing his love since the beginning of their marriage because of her past transgression (which involved inadvertently sending a French aristocrat and his family to the guillotine). Percy has assumed all this time that Marguerite did so heartlessly and willingly, and not unknowingly...but he never took the time to find out the truth, and her own pride kept her from explaining the truth to him. Anyway, when Marguerite suddenly discovers that her husband, her own Percy, is in fact the Scarlet Pimpernel, and that he has already sailed for France to bring her own brother safely to England, along with some other aristocrats, she frantically sets off with his best friend Sir Andrew Ffoulkes in tow to warn and rescue Percy from Chauvelin's clutches, and at the same time make sure her brother isn't disposed of by the evil Chauvelin. She also wants to declare her undying love to Percy before he boldly risks, and possibly loses, his life. Another one of the Scarlet Pimpernel's elusive disguises plays an important role in the ensuing adventure (though it's pretty easy to figure out), and, along with the warning he receives from Ffoulkes via Marguerite, he is able to both save Armand and the other hiding aristocrats from Chauvelin, and send Chauvelin off onto a wild goose chase by giving them a false lead to his rendezvous pickup point. And, he also sweeps Marguerite up off her feet, as she has followed along to try and save him, and she has collapsed in exhaustion. As he carries her down the rocky ledge to the REAL rendezvous point, they finally open up to each other, forgive the past, and declare their love. :-) I know there are many sequels to this first book and I might just read a few of them!

Finished: Wild (Strayed) I've had this book on my reader for a long, long time. I knew it was about a woman who walked the Pacific Crest Trail alone, but I never knew her driving motivation in doing so was getting her life back after losing her mother when she was 22 and her mother only 44. How appropriate, then, for me to finally feel like reading it, at this time when I'm missing my mom so much. Missing talking to her every day. Missing her same old stories and tales about her younger years. Missing being able to ask her any old thing like: What were the names of Grandpa Shorty's horses again? Or, where was that street in Gearhart where your grandparents lived? Or, who in the world did we get our red hair from? Or, explain to me one more time how your turkey dressing turns out so perfect, because I can't seem to replicate your recipe? So, this book, deeply introspective as it is, was also a much needed and appreciated surprise. I went right along with the author on her journey, and am so glad she took me there.

"It hadn't occurred to me that my mother would die. Until she was dying, the thought had never entered my mind. She was monolithic and insurmountable, the keeper of my life. She would grow old and still work in the garden. This image was fixed in my mind, like one of the memories from her childhood that I'd made her explain so intricately that I remembered it as if it were mine."

Just one of the few passages from the book that deeply affected me. Cheryl Strayed was raised by her mother, a force of nature, but a loving one, who kept her and her older sister and younger brother all together after finally leaving for good their abusive father. It was not an easy life, but they had each other. Then, Cheryl's mother met Eddie, and he became their step-father, and he loved them. He was a wonderful man and showed them what a father should have been like all those years. It was with great despair that Cheryl, her siblings and Eddie had to watch her mother die from stage four lung cancer at the age of 44 less than two months after being diagnosed. Cheryl's description of those days and hours spent with her mom are so heartbreaking. Cheryl's world fell apart after that. Her siblings each went their own way, and Eddie remarried and didn't maintain the only fatherly relationship Cheryl had ever known. And, even though she was happily married, Cheryl sabotaged her own marriage to Paul, her very loving husband, and started being promiscuous and having affairs with numerous men. She also developed a heroin problem, which went along with her latest boyfriend. Finally, after divorcing Paul, even though they both wept, since they still loved each other tremendously, Cheryl decided that she had to do something to save her own life. She decided that hiking the harrowing Pacific Coast trail, from the Mojave desert in California, all the way to the Bridge of Gods in Oregon, a bridge that connects Oregon to Washington over the Columbia River, was the journey she needed to take. And, take it she did. She had no experience hiking, and basically did very little research. She packed way too much stuff in her barely liftable backpack, and she bought her hiking boots a size too small....a really huge deal when you're going to hike hundreds and hundreds of miles. She mailed herself resupply boxes with more food and money to several outposts, but grossly underestimated the time it would actually take her to hike to each outpost. She met mostly friendly, encouraging people along the way, but also had a few scary instances being a woman hiking alone in the wilderness. She had to divert many times to skirt around impassable mountain passes that had been snowed in, hiking several miles off of the trail to a town to then hitch a ride farther up the road to what she hoped would be a cleared spot. She (and other hikers) relied on reading notes from each other at each trail entry point that were housed in little tin boxes. There were logs signed by everyone, so that if she did catch up with someone, or someone with her, then they'd already know her name! She made lifelong friends, that she never saw again. Try explaining that one. I just mean, they shared a closeness and experience that no one could ever understand but themselves, and she felt close to them for life, even if she never saw them again. Her body was battered and her feet more so, as she lost more toenails than she kept, but she never gave up. Through all the hardships, she knew that this was something she had to complete. It became a life-affirming, cleansing journey, where she was finally able to accept her mother's dead, forgive her mother for dying, forgive herself for her own selfish deeds, and come to terms with the fact that she still had alot of living to do. Once she finally reached the Bridge of Gods in Oregon, she finally let the tears flow that she'd kept at bay for most of the trip.

"Thank you, I thought over and over again. Thank you. Not just for the long walk, but for everything I could feel finally gathered up inside of me; for everything the trail had taught me and everything I couldn't yet know, though I felt it somehow already contained within me." 

It was a deeply moving book, and I'm so blessed that my own mother was actually FROM Oregon, and that our parents showed us the importance early on of traveling to that wondrous part of the country and reveling in the mountains, the trees, and the ocean. I could feel the air when Cheryl described it's chill and I could hear the trees when she described their movements. I'm so glad I finally decided to read this book, and that Cheryl's experience is one that will stay with me, much like my own mom does.

Finished: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Adams) Well, that was probably the oddest book I've read, but at least it was goofy and weird and not depressing. :-) Moments before earth is blown up by aliens, earthling Arthur Dent is swooped to safety by his friend, Ford Prefect, who is really an alien himself who has been living on earth for the past fifteen years. I say safety, but really he's just thrust into the galaxy, along with Ford, who happens to be a researcher for the famous Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He's been hitchhiking around the galaxy on various spaceships doing research for years and years. So, anyway, apparently earth is just the 10,000,000 year old experiment that is being conducted by the true brightest species, mice. They have been on a quest to find the answer to the big question, what is the meaning of life? Through a super-dooper computer, they got the answer "42". But now, they had no idea what the actual question was! Moments before the computer was about to spit out the question, after the 10,000,000 years, the earth was eradicated by the Vogons. Off Ford and Arthur go on an adventure where they "hitchhike" a ride on the Heart of Gold spaceship, which has recently been stolen by Galaxy president Zaphod Beeblebrox, who is on the quest to find the planet, Magrathea. Zaphod had also paid a visit to earth in recent months, and come back with the only other earthling in the story Tricia (or Trillion as she is now known). The story is basically a bunch of nonsense about them finding the planet and escaping the planet and continuing on their adventures. Rather silly, but silly is what was needed at this point in time. :-)

Finished: A Little Life (Yanagihara) One of the most tragic, intense books I've ever read, but a mesmerizing, beautifully written book. It is the story of so many people; the story of four boys who meet their first year in college, thrown together as suite mates, who become lifelong friends, even as they move onto completely different career paths; the story of a compassionate professor and his doctor wife who adopt a grown man when he's thirty, finally able to shower love on another human being after the professor lost his own son at the age of four; it's the story of the utter goodness, true goodness, in some people who display the meaning of friendship in their every thought and deed towards others; it's the story of unconditional love; but mostly it's the tragic story of Jude. Jude, a tortured soul who could never believe he was worthy of accepting that true friendship, or being loved enough to become someone's son, or being loved unconditionally for who he was. Jude, who could never fathom that he could bring joy to other people's lives. I'm too emotionally drained to recap this very long book, but will just write a little bit about it. Jude is abandoned as a baby, on top of a trash bag, near a dumpster. He's taken in by a brotherhood of monks, some who are kind, but a few who believe in harsh discipline (i.e., setting his hand on fire as a small child for taking something he shouldn't have), a few who believe in corporal punishment, a few who believe in sexual punishment, and one in particular who is a pedophile hiding out in the brotherhood. That brother takes Jude into his confidence when he's only 10 years old. He's kind to him, and teaches him music, and history, and math, and all about plants. He takes him under his wing and is never abusive to him like some of the other brothers. He cultivates Jude very carefully and deceptively until he is the only person who Jude trusts. Then, he easily talks Jude into running away from the monastery with him to go and build their own house and life together. Once on the road, however, he starts bringing men in to their hotel rooms to have sex with Jude, and makes Jude feel responsible for doing this to earn their money. After all, they want to eventually get a house together, right? It's just awful, awful, awful. Eventually, the pedophile also begins having sex with Jude, telling him they love each other and this is what people do who love each other. This horrific life for Jude goes on until he's 13 and the FBI actually close in on the pedophile, who've they've been searching for for years. The pedophile kills himself and Jude is placed in a group home where his sexual abuse continues by a few of the male counselors. They figure, why not, he's already ruined. It's so sad. One thing about Jude is that he's extremely intelligent. He's already taking classes at the community college, which is his only saving grace from the group home. Finally, Jude can take it no longer and when he's nearly fifteen, he runs away from the group home and hitchhikes across the country. Of course, the truckers also want sexual payment for giving him rides. Some are kind about it and some border on cruel, but already Jude's self worth is less than zero, so why not do the only thing he knows how to do...sell his body. Jude has had so many men rape him from the time he was a young boy to now that he gets very sick with venereal disease. After his last truck hitching, he has a high fever and is found in the parking lot of a convenience store by a man, a doctor, who takes Jude home and feeds him and gives him antibiotics to clear up the diseases. He also locks him in the cellar and plans to ALSO use Jude for his own sexual pleasure as soon as he's no longer contagious. Jeez....are there ANY good people out there?? So, the doctor makes Jude better, but then begins his cruel physical and sexual abuse. He intimidates Jude with a hot poker so he won't think of fighting back, but it never crosses Jude's mind to fight back. He must surely deserve this life for some reason. One day, when he's fifteen and has been in the doctor's clutches for six months, the doctor tires of him and takes him out into a field in the car. He then tells him to get out and run. He chases Jude in the car until Jude falls down in exhaustion and the doctor runs him over, crippling one leg for life. Jude wakes up in the hospital and the doctor has been imprisoned, admitting what he has done to Jude. Finally, the first kind person in Jude's entire life shows up...his social worker, Ana. Ana is kind and loving to Jude. She sees his potential. She sees his scars and his awful car injury and loves him no matter what. She helps him fill out college applications, and encourages him to apply for the best. And, of course, right after he's been accepted to a very prestigious college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Ana dies of cancer. Of course. The one person Jude has grown to trust is now gone. Ana's girlfriend sees to it that Jude gets settled in at the college, whose name is never said, but I'm assuming Harvard, and then he never really sees her again. Jude is only 16 and entering college. He decides that no one will ever know what his life was before, what HE was before. He blames himself for what he was and doesn't see himself at all worthy of friendship or love. He always wears long sleeves, never taking off his shirt, because he doesn't want anyone to see the whipping scars on his back...or the massive cutting scars on his arms...the cuts he made himself, that the pedophile taught him how to do when he was so young, to escape the pain of life. :-( It's in college, though, that Jude meets his best friends for life, all of them eighteen, two years older than him, and all of them loyal to each other for the rest of their lives. JB is the flamboyant artist of the group, the most emotional one, and the one most likely to think of himself before others. He's also the life of the party most of the time. Malcolm is the more quiet, introspective one. He's the one who's always building little buildings out of scraps of paper...the one who becomes a successful architect, and the one who comes from money, but never uses that as an excuse to think himself better than anyone else. Willem is the actor of the group....the good looking guy with the blond hair and heartbreaking smile. The one who dates all the girls...but also the one with the most compassionate heart! He himself had a big brother who he worshiped who had cerebral palsy, Hemming. Willem always felt like his parents were rather cold and didn't really show either him or Hemming much love...they were hardworking farmers who had moved from Norway and experienced hardships that led them to be less emotional. Willem, the basic caregiver for Hemming, once he could push his big wheelchair around, is devastated when Hemming dies while he's in his first year of college, and less devastated when both of his parents die within months of each other later in the year. He's such a lovely, lovely person. The four of them, JB, Malcolm, Willem and Jude become suite mates in college, and room together in one fashion or another until they are all in their mid-twenties and finally making something of their degrees and dreams. Willem is closest to Jude and completely takes him under his wing. There isn't a day that goes by that Willem doesn't talk to Jude or be there for him in some way. JB gets busy in his art world with his art friends, and Malcolm gets busy trying to make his own architecture firm a success...but Willem and Jude are always in each other's immediate lives. Willem is a successful actor, and finally gets a few good breaks that make him successful and well known. Jude, as brilliant a mathematician as he is, goes to Law school in Cambridge, while also getting some Math masters at MIT. While in law school, Jude meets Harold and Julia. Harold is the law professor that changes his life! And, Julia is Harold's second wife. Harold is the person who lost a young son years ago, and he also takes Jude under his wing. He sees his brilliance and his potential and can tell that he's had problems and probably a rough childhood...but Jude never tells anyone anything about his past...not even Willem. He's too ashamed. They all know something bad happened to him, because Jude, with the gorgeous face and hair, walks with a devastating limp and gait because of the car injury. Anyway...I could go on and on, but the main gist of the story is that Jude ends up with Willem who cares for him, and Harold and Julia who care for him, and Andy, the doctor he meets when he's sixteen...the only one who ever sees all his scars, who cares for him. Andy he goes to day or night whenever he gets an open wound on his fragile legs that won't heal. The years of diseases that have ravished his body, in addition to the accident, have made Jude's feet and legs very precarious. Eventually, when Jude is thirty years old, and a very brilliant litigator, Harold and Julia tell him they would like him to stay an extra day at Thanksgiving that year...they've got something to talk to him about. Years earlier they had begun inviting the four friends to Thanksgiving and enveloped them all into their family. Jude is frantic thinking he must have done something wrong, or that Harold and Julia found out about his past, and are going to tell him they can no longer be his friends. However, the opposite is true! They've known and loved Jude for eight years now and they want to adopt him!! They think of him as a son and want him to officially be a part of their family. Of course, Jude is ecstatic and happy, but it also throws him into worse cutting on his arms than he normally does (yes, he still does it) because he couldn't possibly deserve their love and kindness. It all goes through, though, and the group of them has their various ups and downs for the next few years, but they are basically happy years. Willem is gone alot filming various films, and even though he seriously dates a couple of different women, they can never quite understand his attachment to Jude, so the relationships always end. Whenever Willem is gone, the demons from the past do come and haunt Jude more. He even tries having a relationship with a man who he meets at a dinner, who finds him attractive. This man, Caleb, turns into a nightmare though. He's highly embarrassed by Jude's disability and after what starts as a relationship, ends up beating him and raping him and humiliating him and throwing him down some stairs!! It is like his previous life come back to haunt him....all while Willem is gone to Europe on an extended movie shoot. He's beaten so badly that Andy has to put him in the hospital, but once Jude goes home, he tries to commit suicide by slicing his arms horribly. He really wants to die. He can't imagine being of value to anyone after what Caleb has done. Another friend finds him and saves him and when he wakes up in the hospital, Willem is there. He's come home from the shoot to be with him. When that movie is done, Willem tells his agent all work in the near future must be in the New York area (which is where the four now live) so he can be with Jude. The agent, like the girlfriends, does not understand his attachment to Jude. However, we see that Willem is a truly bighearted person who adores Jude. One day, when they are in their late thirties and have been living together, Willem very successful in his acting career and Jude very successful at his law firm, Willem realizes that he actually loves Jude more than just a friend and asks Jude if he would consider a real relationship...an intimate one, between them. Willem still does not know what Jude suffered in his past, or what Caleb did to him. Jude, though, loves Willem, and says yes. He has sex with Willem, but never enjoys it. He suffers through it and can't wait until it's over. He does this for a year and a half until one day Willem finds out about Caleb. Willem finally puts his foot down and makes Jude tell him about his past, and about Caleb, and Willem is genuinely horrified at the suffering that Jude has been through. He loves him and tells Jude that, but Jude doesn't feel worthy of the love. Willem insists that he's not going anywhere, ever...but he wants Jude to be honest about the sex. If he doesn't enjoy it, they won't do it. Jude is honest and says he doesn't. He's afraid he'll lose Willem by being honest, but Willem just holds him and tells him he'll never leave him. Willem is such a good, good person! So, they have what the chapter calls "the happy years", which is about the happiest Jude will ever get. JB has had several successful art shows and has space in a gallery. Malcolm has a very successful architecture company and has married his sweetheart, Sophie. Willem, despite being labeled now as gay, has a career that hasn't been hampered by his "coming out" one iota. Harold and Julia are happy, seeing their son and his friends often, and still teaching and doctoring away. Andy is still there for Jude whenever he's got a problem. And Jude, he's thriving at his work and living with and loving Willem. Jude's worst problem is that his legs are getting infected all the time, leading to several life-threatening bone infections. When Jude is 48, Andy finally convinces him that it's time to amputate his legs below the knee and get prosthetics that will actually allow him to walk easier than he has in years, and also take away his chronic pain. Jude has the surgery and has a long painful recover, but eventually is up and walking around on his new legs. Again, they are still in the happy years. One day, though, when Willem is 51 and Jude is 49, they are all set to gather at Willem and Jude's house in the country for a celebration. Willem goes to pick up Malcolm and Sophie in New York, and on the way to the country house, a huge truck runs a light and smashes into their car, killing all three of them. :-( :-( Jude's face flashes before Willem's eyes, and then Willem sees his brother Hemming sitting in his wheelchair, looking up and right at him...something he could never do in real life, and Willem goes towards him. Precious Willem (and Malcolm and Sophie) are all dead. It is just so tragic. Jude falls into despair and becomes suicidal again. Though he still goes to work and works all hours, he quits eating and is nearly dying from starvation when Andy, JB, Harold and Julia hold an intervention. They force him into a hospital with a feeding tube and create a schedule for when he gets out for someone to always be with him, making sure that he eats. He's simply awful and bratty to Harold and Julia, like a true child. He's certain they will tell him good riddance, but instead, they embrace him. He finally comes to realize after all this time that they truly do love him like a son. However, the loss of Willem is just too much for Jude to bear. After nearly three years without him, he gets all is affairs arranged, letters written, and then is successful in taking his own life. It's so, so sad. He's 51 and practically his entire life has been a tragedy, at least to him. So, I said I wasn't going to write much, but that's about as little as I can write to explain just the gist of this book. There is so much beautiful writing, and so many conversations and descriptive nuances and deep thoughts by the characters. I'm just exhausted, though, emotionally. I really need to find a happy book next! This was a great book of powerful love, though. Oh how I loved Willem and felt for Jude!

Finished: A River Runs Through It (Maclean) "Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise. Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it." Wow, a beautifully written book that immediately takes you into the world of two brothers, brought up by their preacher father in Montana, learning the intricacies of fly fishing, along with life. I was drawn in from the first line, "In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing." Then, I was kept there by the beautiful prose and the relationship between the two brothers as they grew into young men. There wasn't any animosity between them, which I vaguely (but possibly wrongly?) remember from the movie years ago, but there was that closeness that only siblings can have, even when they're world's apart different. The younger brother, Paul, has become the far better fisherman than his brother, the author of the story, Norman. Paul has also become the wilder of the two, holding a steady job, but imbibing far too much, and apparently in debt to some bad men who run a major poker game. This doesn't ever really become part of the story, though. Norman knows that Paul may be in trouble, and tries to offer his help, but Paul won't take anything from him. Instead, Paul, now in his early thirties, says, let's grab dad and go fishing, just the three of us. It ends up being the last fishing trip they ever take together and has some beautiful, poignant moments. They don't know it will be their last trip, but the memory of everything they did that day, every fish they caught, and every movement of the river will be forever etched in the memories of the father and brother left behind. Paul is found murdered in a an alley not too many weeks after. The story is short, but very powerful, and apparently a true one from the author...and it has really moved me.

Finished: Golden Age (Smiley) The third book in the wonderfully written trilogy about the Langdon family, the farming family from Iowa, whose saga began in 1920 in the first book, and moves 100 years, to the end of 2019 in this final book. In the first book, Some Luck, Rosanna and Walter Langdon buy a farm and build it into a worthy, workable place in Denby, Iowa. They have their children there, and we meet each one as they are born, getting to know them as they grow into young adults. In the second book, Early Warning, which opens in 1953, Walter Langdon has just died, and we see which of his children stays behind to take over the farm, and follow the lives of the others as they make their own way, some with spouses and children, some not. Each chapter in both books takes place during one year as we follow these people who we know so well:  Frank, the oldest son; Joe, the second son; Lillian, the beloved daughter; Henry, the youngest son; and Claire, the baby of the family. Other than Henry, who is gay, each one has married and had children by the end of the second book. That generation of Langdons becomes the focus of the third book, which begins in 1987, as the five Langdon siblings grow old and pass away, one by one, except for Claire, the last of the siblings left alive in 2019. It's so sad to see those characters go, and the two spouses we came to know and couldn't help but care for, Frank's wife Andy, and Lillian's husband, Arthur, who are both very powerful presences in their children's and grandchildren's lives. As a matter of fact, Andy, in her late nineties, is the last character who we love to love who passes away in the last book, and her peaceful death marks the end of the book and the trilogy.

I can't possibly go into all the detail of all the characters in the book. It's hard enough keeping them straight while reading. Thankfully, there's a family tree in the front of the book. :-) However, I will say that we do see the good times and the  hardships of each of the family members as the country goes through the oil boom and stock markets, the recessions and scandals, the political and housing market upheavals, the mortgage and finance company affects on the farmers, the constant arguments about global warming, the conflicts in the middle east, 911, and finally the very current political situation, and a couple of years beyond. Interestingly, not all of the characters are focused on. For instance, Lillian and Arthur's daughter, Debbie, who has figured prominently in the last book and this one, has two siblings who are barely mentioned and two children who never get a story. However, all three of Frank's children, Janet, Michael and Richie get the brunt of the story. Henry, has a big part of the story as well...possibly the biggest part for one of the remaining original Langdon siblings. Debbie's older brother, Tim, who was killed right after enlisting in the last novel, has a son, Charlie, who no one knew existed because he impregnated his teenage girlfriend before leaving to enlist. Charlie becomes a beacon of light and everyone in the family loves him. He's incorporated into the family quickly, and marries a feisty proponent of global warming who refuses to have a child until they can make the world a better place. Tragically, and I mean my gut sank. Charlie is killed on the airplane that crashed into the Pentagon on 911. :-( He had just decided to fly out to California to meet his birth mother for the very first time, but of course, never makes it. It turns out, a devastated Riley IS pregnant, and she gives birth to daughter Alexis. Henry who had grown very attached to his nephew, becomes the surrogate father figure for Alexis, and he and Riley and Alexis form a wonderful bond. After Joe, the second Langdon son who had stayed to run the farm, dies, his own son, Jesse and his wife, Jen, take over. They do so naturally, as they love the life and living on the farm. Their own children, however, Guthrie, Perky and Felicity, have no interest whatsoever in taking over the farm one day. Guthrie enlists and is tossed into the Gulf War. He's another character you grow to love and it's heartbreaking to watch him go through PTSD and never quite get his life together until it is one day taken by a group of teenage boys who rob him for the $100 he has in his wallet when he is 34 years old. Perky also enlists and he thrives in the environment, becoming a career soldier. Felicity, the smart, practical one in the family, stays in constant touch with her parents, but goes on to be a micro-biologist, worrying about issues in the country, and eventually finding a male version of herself to marry, Ezra. The underlying main story line is that of Frank and Andy's twins, Michael and Richie. Michael exhibits no moral compass at all, yet has three children with Loretta. He makes money off of other people's backs by being one of those ponzi scheme type investors. He even illegally signs over his own mother's millions to himself and "invests" her money as well. Of course, he loses it all and leaves everyone broke! His own mother, his own sister, Janet, whose husband subsequently leaves rather than kills himself, leaving her to continue raising their two children, Emily and Jonah, and countless others. Despicably, Michael had been socking away money in a foreign account, so he actually comes out of the mess with thirty million dollars, NONE of which he shares with his sister, mother, or anyone else he helped to ruin. He's also not prosecuted. Richie, who is the older twin, but who has somehow always lived in Michael's shadow, and been intimidated by Michael, becomes an amiable, yet fairly worthless, congressman who keeps getting re-elected because there's no one better to take his place. His wife leaves him a few years after their son Leo is born, but we do get to see snippets of Leo growing up. Anyway, even as I write this it sounds so jumbled. Too many details and relationships to get it all down right. There's story about Janet's daughter, Emily and Michael's son, Chance, who both go off to do their own thing involving horses! Towards the end of the book, Michael creates a secret investment company and buys the mortgage to the old farm...the family farm...the one that Jesse now runs...the one that Jesse's father and Frank's brother, Joe, took over when no one else wanted to stay. Michael has always resented that his father, Frank, just gave away his share of the farm to Jesse once Joe passed away...more than he left for any of his own children when he himself died. (Oh yeah...Frank was, rather appropriately I think....struck dead by lightening when he got out of a turboprop airplane in the middle of terrible storm to urinate by the side of the runway, lol.) Anyway, in his last despicable act, even though Jesse and Jen don't miss a payment on their new mortgage, bought from their bank by this new company, Michael's secret company forecloses on them and forces them to sell the farm that has been in the family for nearly a hundred years. :-( He's so horrible! Richie, who has made excuses for much of Michael's behavior in the past, cannot stand it when he finds out Michael owns the company. We never know for sure if Richie is just dreaming or what, but he vividly recalls getting in his car one night and driving to the drug store, but seeing Michael on the road and running him down, killing him! The next day there is no dent in his car, or no blood, clothing or hair in the car grille, but the police do come to the door to inform him that his brother, Michael, was the victim of a hit and run the night before! Maybe it was a just a twin thing, but finally Micheal is gone from the earth. On and on I could write, but instead, I think I'll just reflect on the characters that I liked and will miss, and the beautiful writing of Jane Smiley! :-)