Finished: The Dreamers (Walker) Page-turning book about a mysterious virus that begins at a small college campus in California causing a freshman girl to fall asleep, unwakeable to her room mate, Mei, or anyone else. She's hospitalized and does not survive. Soon, other students on the same dorm floor are falling asleep the same way. As the town realizes the "sleep sickness" is a virus and is spreading very easily, it is forced to self-quarantine, even closing its borders to incoming or outgoing people. The book follows the story of the room mate, Mei, as she escapes the college quarantine and works to help all the people who are falling ill; a survivalist father and his two young daughters; a college professor; a husband and wife, new to the area, with their days old infant daughter; and one of the other young women from the dorm who had just had sex for the first time before falling asleep. Inside her, a baby grows as the young man who she slept with falls into his own bout of sleeping sickness. The strange thing about the sickness is that you can tell that the people are all dreaming by the movements of their eyelids and occasional arm movements. After a few weeks, and much drama where people drop at the most inopportune times, or where one father is shot trying to cross the barrier of the town, some of the people start slowly waking up. Some of the people die. And, some of the people keep on sleeping. The people who awaken have all had dreams of their past in detail, or what they believe is their future. The father of the new baby wakes thinking he's dreamed about a bunch of events that will happen in the future, only to have his wife tell him that everything he thinks is in the future, they already did in the past. The survivalist father has dreamed there will be a fire that destroys the town library, and sure enough, the library, where they have established a children's ward of sleepers, burns down. He manages to save his daughter who has fallen asleep. One heroic boy from the dorm floor saves the tiny newborn baby, but in doing so, he makes the choice to go for the baby first before Mei, who he has worked closely with and fallen for, and Mei succumbs to smoke inhalation. :-( At long last, everyone who doesn't die, wakes up...except for Rebecca, the pregnant girl. She sleeps through her pregnancy, contractions, c-section and her baby's first few months. She dreams that she has a son and goes through life with her son at various ages, very vividly, until she's a grown woman with an adult son. When she wakes up, all she can do is ask where her son is. She can't believe she's only 19 and has a new baby daughter. People eventually return to their normal lives, or as normal as can be, but everyone who fell into the sleep is profoundly affected. It was really surreal reading this book at this moment in time when we are facing this pandemic of the corona virus!

Finished: Sea Prayer (Hosseini) A beautifully written and illustrated book written as a letter from a father to a son just before they are set to journey on the perilous ocean as refugees, escaping their once idyllic, now war-torn Syrian city. The book is less than 50 pages, but powerful and heart wrenching in every word. Inspired by the horrific image of three year old Alan Kurdi, the Syrian boy who washed up on the shore in 2015 after trying to flee Syria, Hosseini paints a vivid picture in his words, and illustrator Dan Williams, beautifully haunting watercolor pictures on every page. Definitely worth buying the real book for this one. I'm not sure the electronic reader would do it justice!

Finished: Greenwood (Christie) A very good book about four generations of the Greenwood family and how deeply trees and forests affect their lives and determine their choices. It begins in 2038 with Jacinda "Jake" Greenwood as she works on the last remaining forested island in North America. The trees all over the rest of the U.S and Canada have been destroyed by a fungal blight and people live in perpetual dust and poverty. Though her last name is Greenwood, she doesn't know she is related to the rich and powerful lumber tycoon, Harris Greenwood. What unfolds in beautiful prose is the history of her family going from 2038 to 2008 to 1974 to 1934 to 1908 and back again until the story ends with Jake and exactly what she's going to do with the family history she has partially discovered. 2008 tells the story of her own father, who she never knew, Liam Greenwood, who has become a master carpenter, a maker of fine furniture and beams from reclaimed wood. He had been in love with Jake's mother, and crafted for her a beautiful viola, but she rejected his proposal of marriage. When she discovered she was pregnant, she sent pictures of little Jacinda, but Liam was so heartbroken that he never responded. 1974 tells the story of Willow Greenwood, Liam's mother and an extreme activist against cutting down trees! When her rich father, Harris Greenwood, leaves her his entire estate upon his death, including that last island which Jake now finds herself working on, Willow gives it all to charity! She takes her son Liam and decides he will not be raised by the money like she was...raised to destroy things of beauty. 1934 tells the story of the Greenwood brothers, Harris and Everett, and the very divergent paths they took in life. Harris, who has been blind since macular degeneration took his sight at 16, has built himself up from nothing to one of the wealthiest lumber/business men in North America. He wants for nothing, except maybe for his illicit love with poet, Liam Feeney. Everett's life takes the opposite turn. When Harris enlists to fight in World War I right before his eyesight begins to fail him, Harris refuses to be medically dismissed. The day before Harris is to sail off, Everett ties him up and takes his place in the military...so all the awards that Everett gets for bravery go to Harris. Harris is livid with Everett and it causes a rift that takes many, many years to heal. Everett suffers from his experiences in the war and becomes a sort of vagabond who lives off the land when he returns home. It is simple fate one day when he is tapping some maple trees while squatting on the land of another rich man, R.J. Holt, when he finds a squalling newborn baby in a blanket cocoon hanging by one of his tapping nails, left for dead he presumes. He takes the baby to warm her up, intending to find her a good home, but falls in love with her along the way. He takes her train jumping, etc., and makes his way to his rich brother, Harris, who he hasn't seen in years. The baby ends up being Willow Greenwood. 1908 tells the tale of how the brothers came to be brothers and live off the land themselves. There is a horrific, fatal passenger train wreck, where one train collides with another, in which all the passengers are killed except for two young boys who seem to be about 10 years old....one from one train with dark hair, and one from the other train with blonde hair. They instantly bond and become wards of the town, though no one will take them in to live with them. The town asks an unmarried woman with a shack on her land if she'll take them in and she says yes, but she only lets them live in the shack. From then on, they are brothers. Their mishaps and purposeful misdoings become well known all around...but both boys survive and grow up, of course, to be Harris and Everett Greenwood. They were given the last name Greenwood by the town because they survived their teenage years by chopping and selling wood, but always selling it green before they were supposed to. So...the story is long, but compelling. I can say there are quite a few unlikable characters, but also some characters who you really root for! I will definitely look and see what else this author has written. :-)