Finished: My Sister's Keeper (Picoult) An exceptionally beautiful and heartbreaking story about a couple who decides to have a third child, picking the IVF embryo that is an exact match to their two year old daughter who is diagnosed with a rare and deadly form of leukemia. Years later, when that baby, Anna, is 13 and her ill sister, Kate, is 16, and after Anna has been through numerous medical donation procedures for her sister, Anna brings a lawsuit against her parents to sue them for the right to make her own decisions about donating a kidney to Kate. Kate is finally out of hope when it comes to her cancer treatments, and to make matters worse, her kidneys are failing and she doesn't have long to live. What follows is the beautifully written, emotionally wrenching viewpoint of each party involved: Sara, the mother of both girls; Brian, the father of both girls; Jesse, the older brother of both girls who is spiraling out of control because when tested years ago, he was the one who wasn't able to save his baby sister; Kate, the dying sister; Anna, the donor sister; Campbell, the attorney Anna hires; and Laura, the guardian ad litem assigned to Anna. You will feel as conflicted as Anna does, feel as fiercely as Sara does, feel as protective as Brian does, and feel as hopeless as Jesse does at different times during the story. Just when all is said and done and the trial has been decided, and Anna confides in her lawyer about what she'd really like to do now, one of the biggest shocking endings I've ever read in a book happens and decides everything for everyone. I truly believe my mouth hung open as I read the remaining pages of the book after the shocking event. It's a story that will stay with me for a long time. I'm so thankful I never had to make any of the decisions the members of this family had to make! Thank you to my dear friend Marla for gifting me with this book! :-) 

Finished: Walk the Wire (Baldacci) The next in the Memory Man series which has FBI partners Amos Decker and Alex Jamison heading to North Dakota to investigate a murder in a small fracking town. The two is torn between two powerful families and situated right next to a U.S. military facility. All sorts of characters become suspects, but the game is really upped when  Decker is stalked one night and nearly killed while investigating. To the rescue? Another one of Baldacci's characters with a book series of his own, Will Robie. Will Robie is basically a trained assassin who can get himself out of most any situation. You know if Will Robie is sent in, then it must be serious. It was lots of fun reading this book with  Decker and Robie brought together in one Baldacci book. Though, as busy as December was, I only picked the book up every few days, so the reading was a bit disjointed, but still another clever who-dunnit! :-) 

 Finished: Leave The World Behind (Alam) I haven't read a book this quickly in a long time! This is a page-turning story of a couple, Amanda and Clay, and their children, Archie, 15, and  Rosie, 13, who head out to a remote rental on Long Island for a week long vacation. ***  Warning: This entire blog post will be spoilers, so if you want to read this book, then don't read this. *** The house is lovely, but so remote that there is very low cell service. Despite that, they have a great first day and seem to be a typical family. The first night there, however, they are greeted by unexpected visitors...the owners of the house! A couple in their sixties, Ruth and George, have fled to their second home, because the power has gone completely out in New York City, where they have a 14th floor apartment. Amanda and Clay are shaken to have the couple come to their door so late, and then actually want to stay in their own basement guest room, but they can tell that something strange is happening because Amanda received four "this is not a test" alerts on her cell phone before all the service went completely down. The television channels are all showing just a blue screen, so the young family, and the older couple, though wary of each other, realize they must make this new arrangement work. After a restless night's sleep, the next day Clay leaves to drive into the nearest small town to see if there is any news, but promptly gets lost on all the small roads. Archie and Rosie head to the nearby woods to explore, and Amanda, Ruth and George make small talk trying to get acquainted. That's when it happens...the horrific sound that nearly shatters the window glass and leaves them all squatting on the ground. A sound none of them have ever heard before....like a sonic boom, only 10 fold. The author lets the reader know in various small asides what the characters don't know: some cities have been flooded and people are dying; Ruth and George's elevator man is trapped in the elevator and will suffocate; and the government has sent a super-secret airplane to intercept what they see as a threat off the east coast of the U.S., hence the booming noise. As Amanda, Clay, Archie, Rosie, Ruth and George all have their various reactions, they also try to maintain some semblance of normalcy. In the dark as to what is happening, though, their panic rises bit by bit. When Archie comes down with a fever, and then his teeth begin just falling out, hysteria sets in and they decide they must get him to a doctor! Rosie has disappeared though. Clay and George leave to take Archie to the doctor in the nearest town while Amanda and Ruth search for Rosie. They don't know that she's simply gone off on another trek into the woods to see if she can find the other vacation home she'd seen yesterday before the boom threw them all off. George decides to stop at the only neighbor he knows before heading to the town, but that neighbor, Danny, receives him rather coldly. He is also going through the unnerving weirdness and has a young wife and 4 year old daughter who are frightened. The author lets us know: little does Danny know, but his own wife's teeth will begin falling out soon. Ack!!! As Amanda falls into a further panic unable to find Rosie, she and Ruth begin to snap at each other. Meanwhile, Rosie finds the house and sees that no one is inside. The author lets us know: the owners of the house are stuck in San Diego, unable to get a flight because there are no flights any more AND the mother will never see that house again because she will die in a medical tent set up at the San Diego airport! :-O !! Rosie breaks into the house and finds batteries, flashlights, canned food, and loads her backpack up. She is proud that she has found something that will help out her gang since they never listen to her suggestions. She heads back to the vacation house and THAT IS THE END OF THE BOOK!!! We never find out exactly what is happening in the country or the world, but we are left to wonder how long before worse happens to them all and if anyone will survive whatever is going on! This is a really well written book and I honestly find myself wanting to know more...maybe a sequel?? It's also very scary, especially in these current times, to realize something like this could really happen. 

 Finished: The Vanishing Half (Bennett) Twin sisters Stella and Desiree Vignes have grown up in the small town of Mallard, Louisiana...a town specifically designed by a "light" black man to be a community for "light" only black families. When the twins are sixteen, they run away to New Orleans to try and make new lives for themselves. When Stella finds work as a secretary passing as a white woman, it is the beginning of the end of the close relationship the sisters have always shared. Stella falls in love with and marries her white boss and leaves for California without so much as a goodbye to Desiree. From there, we witness the two different lives of the sisters, but also how they come back together briefly many years later. Desiree stays away from Mallard and her mother long enough to marry a very dark black man and have an even blacker daughter. When she flees her abusive marriage and heads home to Mallard, the entire town is shocked when beautiful Desiree Vignes comes back to live with her mother, with a "dark" daughter in tow. The little girl, Jude, is never accepted by the other children at school, but she finds solace in track and field. In high school she is offered a track and field scholarship to a college in California, and she sets off leaving her own mother and Mallard for good. Desiree, who was the twin who always WANTED to escape Mallard, ends up living there and working in the local diner until decades later when her mother dies. Meanwhile, Jude falls in love and to make extra money, works for a catering company that caters to the rich. She's fired from her job when she drops and shatters a bottle of wine on the floor at a posh party when the hostess of the party finally comes downstairs and Jude sees that she is the spitting image of her mother. It must be her Aunt Stella, who her mother talked of often and, mad as she was at her for leaving, longed to one day see again. Jude is fired by her boss on the spot, but is determined to see if this beautiful woman is, in fact, her aunt. If she is, then she is married to a handsome, rich white man and has her own beautiful, blonde-haired, violet-eyed, sixteen year old daughter, Kennedy, who seems quite the diva....Jude's cousin, if it's true. We finally then get Stella's story and how she lived in constant fear of being found out...so much so that when a black family tries to move into her neighborhood, she's one of the most vocal, speaking out that they can't let any of  "those" people start moving into their neighborhood. Of course, eventually the black family moves in, and Stella becomes friend with the wife, but is ashamed to be seen with her by the other women. Meanwhile, she's so closed off to her own daughter, who longs to know more about her mother, that she doesn't realize she's raising a nightmarish daughter who is going to act out  just to get her attention. When Jude finally finds Kennedy again, Kennedy has dropped out of college and is acting in a show in a local theater. Jude insinuates herself into Kennedy's life by getting a job at the theater, hoping that she'll see Stella one evening if she comes to watch Kennedy. Stella finally shows at one of Kennedy's last shows and Jude confronts her during the intermission...insisting that they are related. Stella freaks out and leaves. She can't have her husband or daughter finding out she's been lying all these years. When Jude and Kennedy have an argument a few days later, Kennedy says something very mean to Jude and Jude, in return, blurts out that Kennedy's mother is her black mother's twin sister. This sets a great journey of discovery in motion for Kennedy, who actually reacts differently than you think she might. She just wants to know if it's true and know about her mother's family. Her mother, though, keeps denying it. Kennedy goes off for a couple of years, traveling the world, trying to find herself. Panicking when she can't get a hold of Kennedy, Stella actually, desperately, heads to Mallard to see if maybe Kennedy has gone there. She has a bittersweet reunion with her own mother, who now has Alzheimer's and acts as if Stella is just home from work, as if she'd never left. The reunion between Stella and Desiree, however, is fraught with much more emotion. Angry at first, Desiree doesn't want Stella anywhere near her, but Stella begs for her forgiveness, and the sisters spend a few days completely wrapped up in each other as if they'd never been apart. Stella must leave and go back to her white life, though, and once again leaves without telling Desiree goodbye. She arrives home only to hear from Kennedy who wants to come home. Stella goes to pick up Kennedy at the airport, and as they embrace, she tells her to get in the car and she'll tell her everything she wants to know...and she does. They just agree to never tell Kennedy's father. Finally, though, Kennedy has the closeness with her mother that she'd missed all her life...and she now understands the fear her mother was living in. Jude, who is still in love with her longtime beau, is now living her dream of going to medical school. When Desiree and Stella's mother finally passes away, Desiree is free to leave Mallard for good and moves to Houston to start her own new life. This is a very moving, well written story which makes me want to investigate more of what this author has written! 

 Finished: Clanlands: Whisky, Warfare and a Scottish Adventure Like No Other (Heughan & McTavish) What a funny, informative and heartwarming book chronicling the road trip around Scotland that Outlander stars Sam Heughan and Graham McTavish took. They took to the road in a camper, taking themselves on an adventure to learn about the history of several different Scottish clans, various wars between clans, visiting iconic battle sites, and even exploring the history of whisky, all while careening around in their camper, or a tandem bike, or a motorcycle with a side car, or a rowboat, etc. They bantered back and forth the entire time, but also shared some very poignant moments together, each one also opening up and sharing a bit about his private life and what his early years of the acting business were like. They are a likable pair and the book was such a fun read. :-) 

Finished: Verity (Hoover) Oh my! This was a creepy, thriller story that ended a bit differently than I thought it would! Near broke and struggling with personal issues, writer Lowen Ashleigh is hired by the husband of best-selling thriller author, Verity Crawford, to finish writing her last three books in her series after Verity is left critically injured in an automobile accident. Jeremy appears to be everything Lowen could want in a man, except he's married to his unresponsive wife who is cared for by a nurse upstairs in their mansion, paid for by Verity's successful writing career. Lowen agrees to finish the books, mainly because the paycheck is huge. When she packs her bag to spend a few days at the mansion, going through Verity's notes and outlines, what she finds instead is a chilling autobiographic manuscript written by Verity, ending just days before her recent accident. As it turns out, Jeremy has suffered more than just the tragic loss of his wife as he knew her. In the past six months he's also suffered the tragic death of one of his eight year old twin daughters, due to a peanut allergy and the tragic death of the other twin daughter in a boating accident. He's left with just himself and his five year old son, living in the house with the semi-comatose Verity. As Lowen reads a different chapter of the manuscript each night, she dives more and more into the nightmare of Verity's psychotic mind...how obsessed she was with her husband loving her more than anyone else...how she tried to abort her twins with a hanger...how she didn't love her daughters but was jealous of them....how she thought for certain that one twin daughter was responsible for giving her sister the fatal peanuts at a sleepover...how she purposely took her remaining daughter out in a canoe and tipped it over, letting her drown without helping her. It's honestly horrific! So, you do end up rooting for Lowen and Jeremy to fall in love. But when Lowen starts seeing Verity up and moving around, without proof for Jeremy to believe her, things start to really get crazy. What a book! I spent the second half of the book convinced that it was Jeremy who had written the manuscript to implicate Verity because HE was really the one who did all the evil things...but that wasn't the big twist at the end. Definitely one of those books that was hard to put down, but also incredibly creepy! 

The Evening and The Morning (Follett) The prequel to one of my favorite books, The Pillars of the Earth, this was a lovely book, with wonderful characters and vividly described towns, churches and homes of the Dark Ages, as Viking attacks on England were quite rampant and women were clearly at the mercy of men, and the poor even more so at the mercy of the rich and ennobled. The story starts in 997, about 140 years before the start of Pillars, and centers on three main characters, Edgar the intelligent young boat builder, Aldred the godly young Prior and the beautiful, smart Lady Ragna, and how they survive one power hungry family, the Ealdorman of Shiring, Wilwulf, and his loathsome step-brothers, Wigelm and Wynstan. Their lives are forever intertwined after a Viking raid on Edgar's small village leaves his father dead and his boat-building business in ruins. He and his mother and two brothers must go inland and begin farming to keep from starving. Meanwhile, young Lady Ragna from Normandy becomes smitten with the older Ealdorman Wilwulf when he comes to ask her father to quit allowing the Vikings to moor their ships off his coastline. Wilwulf becomes equally smitten with Ragna, and she soon makes the journey to England where they are married, happily so for awhile. When it comes to light that Wilwulf had actually been married and "set aside" his other wife and son so that he may marry Ragna, she is devastated. And, although she gives him three sons in quick succession, he soon finds another younger woman to spend his nights with. Aldred is a good man who is a prior at Shiring and wants only to keep his holy vows, as he's also a monk, and to grow the church according to God. Every step of the way he is thwarted by the conniving and deceptive Bishop Wynstan, the oldest of the step-brothers. Wynstan is determined not to lose any control over Shiring to his brother's new wife, but she proves a formidable foe. Ragna, Aldred and Edgar all face setbacks and devastating losses due to Wynstan's manipulations and lies, but they have also become friends who stand up for each other and share the common goal of seeing Wynstan pay for his crimes. In the end, justice is served, but not until after many years of harassment. Towards the end of the book, we realize that the bridge that Edgar had helped build in the town of Dreng's Ferry actually became the "king's bridge" and thus, the name of Dreng's Ferry was changed to Kingsbridge, which is the town at the center of the story in Pillars. After many ups and down, and 900 pages worth of other characters, things finally turn out positively for all three protagonists and I would say that all of the evil people get their due. Another great book by Follett! Now, I hope he writes one that is in between this one and Pillars! 

Finished: Anxious People (Backman) A very moving book by an author I really like, who wrote both Beartown and A Man Called Ove. In this story, a group of people who are viewing an apartment for sale, a first time bankrobber, at risk of losing a custody battle, who only wants to steal enough money for one month's rent, and a father and son police officer team of the small town they all live in, are strangers who all come together in the most unlikely and poignant of ways. When the bankrobber realizes the bank to be robbed is a cashless bank with no money, the police are alerted and the bankrobber dashes across the street and barges in on the apartment viewing, gun in  hand. I really came to love each of these imperfect characters, including the bankrobber, as they went through this ordeal together, opening up to each other about life, marriage, worries and hopes. So many of the characters connected in ways we didn't know when we started the story. At the center of a couple of the character's stories was the bridge that could be seen from the apartment balcony where ten years before, a man who'd lost all his money in the real estate market crash, unable to provide for his family or keep his home, took his own life by jumping off the bridge....AFTER begging a steel-hearted bank manager for a loan and being turned down. That bank manager carried a letter from the man in her purse for ten years, feeling responsible for his death. Of course, she is one of the people looking at the apartment! I love the way all the characters are tied together either in the past, or in the future, as they develop unbreakable bonds. Great story! :-) 

 Finished: Here Is The Beehive (Crossan) Beautifully written book with stunning, unique prose and a gut-wrenching story that makes the book very hard to put down. Married mother of two and attorney, Ana, meets married father of three, Connor, when he walks into her office for some legal work. They begin a three year love affair that sends Ana spiraling, always wondering if Connor will leave his wife for her, while she slowly destroys her own marriage and puts her own desires ahead of her two very young children. We are meant to have compassion for Ana, I believe, but I simply cannot muster up feelings for a character who is so thoughtlessly ruining her family. And, there is absolutely nothing wrong with or unlikable about either of the spouses, Rebecca and Paul. As the story begins, Ana finds out that one of her clients has died in an accident and she needs to call the bereaved wife. Of course, that client is Connor and Ana is devastated. The rest of the story deals with Ana and her pain and her memories, her conversations with Connor, and her present, where she actually goes to meet Rebecca to attend to legal duties, but really to see what Connor's life was like and see if there is any hint of her there in his office. I can't imagine myself ever cheering for a character who so selfishly destroys his or her family, and that's ok. I will say that this is a beautifully written book, though, and Ana is an extremely raw character! 

 Finished: The Nickel Boys (Whitehead) As tragic as it is compelling, The Nickel Boys, set in Florida in the 1960's, tells the story of the horrific reform "school" for boys known as Nickel. Based on the real life Dozier School for Boys in Florida, the atrocities that happened at the school to, primarily, the African American boys ranged from beatings, to starvation, to rape, to torture, and even to death. The story follows Elwood Curtis, an outstanding high school student who is excited about starting college classes a couple of times a week. He makes the mistake of hitchhiking to the college early on start day to get the lay of the land, and the man he catches a ride from has just stolen the car he's driving. I don't know if it's sadder that Elwood got sent to Nickel for something he didn't do, or that he and his grandmother were helpless to put up any kind of legal fight for him. The horror of both the real life Dozier school and the fictional Nickel were uncovered over 40 years later when excavation teams uncovered a field full of unmarked graves. In The Nickel Boys, Elwood befriends a couple of other boys, and one boy, Turner, tries to teach him how to keep his head down and just do what he's told to eventually work his way out of his sentence. One of the two boys survives and goes on to tell what went on at Nickel. My heart just ached reading about the horrible treatment of these boys...some as young as five years old. I feel like this was a timely read with what's going on in the United States right now and I sadly feel as if there are some misguided, evil people who would still gladly send away young black men for no good reason. 

Finished: When You See Me (Gardner) The continuation of the previous book with Detective D.D. Warren, FBI Agent Kimberly Quincy and confidential informant/victim advocate Flora Dane all working together to uncover the previous victims of Flora's deceased kidnapper, Jacob Ness, while at the same time discovering that what they think will be all about Ness, instead becomes about the terrifying, and still ongoing, secrets of a small Georgia mountain town. Flora does discover a surprise connection to Jacob Ness, and she also finds love, which is nice to see since she spends most of her time in either defensive attack mode or extreme survivor's guilt mode. Another page-turner, with some typical Gardner twists and turns, a multitude of red herrings as the possible bad guy, and then finally, the satisfying demise of that semi-surprise bad guy. :-)

Finished: Never Tell (Gardner) Another great page-turning mystery by Lisa Gardner that brings together three of her main characters from her previous books: Detective D.D. Warren, who has a complete series all her own; FBI agent Kimberly Quincy, who is the daughter of FBI Special Agent Pierce Quincy, the character who originally got me hooked on Gardner's books; and Flora Dane, a victim of an abduction that lasted for over a year until she was finally rescued when Kimberly Quincy figured out the case! In subsequent books, D.D. has recruited Flora to be her confidential informant on a few cases that were similar to hers, and she's now become invaluable to D.D. When a young husband is shot in his own home, and the police arrive to see the wife standing at the top of the stairs with a gun in her hand, D.D. is on the case. She's shocked to see that the wife is a woman who accidentally killed her father 16 years before when D.D. was a new detective. When it looks like the case could indirectly involve the monster (now dead) who kidnapped Flora six years before, all three women work together to solve the complicated case. The nice thing about this book is that it came out last year so I literally don't have to wait for the next Gardener book...I just got it as well! And that book is a continuation of the three ladies working together again...this time to figure out of Flora's kidnapper had other victims before her. :-)

Finished: Ransom (Garwood) A fast-paced tale of a Englishwoman during King John's time who travels to the Highlands of Scotland to search for a lost jewel box that she can return to her beloved uncle's captor, who ravaged her home when she was only 5 years old, killed her father, and separated her from her sister. A historical novel that is more romance novel than historical, but it was very entertaining. Full of intrigue, with two main "couples" who fall in love, but of course, are first always at stubborn odds with each other. It reminds me just a bit of Outlander, but not written in as much depth. Still, it has the gruff, warrior highlanders, who despite their intimidating appearances are loyal to women they fall for. Thank you to my dear friend Leslie for giving me this fun book for my birthday! :-)

 Finished: The God of Small Things (Roy) Beautifully written and equally tragic story of a divorced mother in India, Ammu, whose actions, and those of her seven year old twins, inadvertently lead to the tragedy that befalls them all, and in particular, the "untouchable" man, the man beneath their station, who they all love, Velutha. Orchestrated behind the scenes by Ammu's malevolent aunt, Baby Kochamma, with the telling of lies and emotional blackmail on the innocent children, the tragedy unfolds due to Baby Kochamma's hatred of Ammu for coming back home to the family after the shame of divorcing, as well as to protect herself after she lies to the police, telling them that Velutha has raped Ammu and kidnapped the children. The story goes back and forth between current times, when the twins, Estha and Rahel are now in their twenties, and completely emotionally damaged, and when they are seven and living the lives of privileged children in India whose family owns a pickle factory. Arundhati Roy's prose takes the reader into every situation and location she describes in amazing detail. Here's just a sample of her writing when the twenty-something Rahel has gone back to her hometown in India in hopes of getting through to her beloved brother, Estha, and stops in the square to listen to an old story-teller, the Kathakali Man: 

It didn't matter that the story had begun, because kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they HAVE no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don't deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don't surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover's skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don't. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won't. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn't. And yet you want to know again. 

 Lovely, lovely writing. Tragic, sympathetic characters. Manipulative, hateful antagonist (who will join my list of Least Liked Characters!) A story that unfolds in the eyes of Esta and Rahel, and from the emotions of Ammu, Velutha and Baby Kochamma. There are other integral, fleshed-out characters, but for me the heart of the story is with Ammu & her children. 

Finished: Run (Patchett) A moving story about a man left with three young boys to raise after the death of his young wife. Always wanting a huge family, but only able to have one child of their own, the Doyles adopted two brothers, one a newborn and one 14 months old. They were fortunate in their lifestyle, and Bernard had been mayor of Boston. He continued to be a hands-on, good father, raising his three sons, Sullivan, twelve at the time of the adoption, and the babies, Tip and Teddy, after his wife's passing. The unusual thing about their family, but not at all unusual to any of them, was that Tip and Teddy were African American while the Doyles were Caucasian. The story picks up with Bernard still active in the lives of his college-aged younger boys, while Sullivan, who probably had the hardest time of all with his mother's death, is working in Africa, but really not living a great life. Ann Patchett is such a beautiful writer. She takes the reader into the depths of what each character is feeling and we see how each of them misses their mother and wife, and we see how much the younger boys adore and respect their father, but don't feel like they can live up to the expectations of what he would like them to do...follow a "meaningful" professional career of some sort like he did. Tip, the older, just wants to be an Ichthyologist. He's got a brilliant mind for science, and his father would like him to continue on to medical school, but he just wants to study fish! Teddy, the youngest, is very close to his mother's brother a priest, Uncle Sullivan, and finds himself being called to follow the same profession. One night, as Bernard insists that the boys meet him on the Harvard campus, where Tip goes to school, for yet another political speech, this one by Jesse Jackson, Tip finally decides to tell his dad after the speech that he's definitely not going to medical school. They are trudging through a downfall of snow, and Tip is walking backwards in front of his dad, talking to him, when an SUV comes out of nowhere headed straight for Tip, who has accidentally stepped off the curb. In the blink of an eye, a woman throws herself at Tip, pushing him out of the way and taking the full brunt of the impact. Her eleven year old daughter, Kenya, is beside herself and rushes to her mother's side. Both Tip and the woman are transported to the hospital, but while Tip gets away with just a sprained ankle, the woman, whose name is Tennessee, is fighting for her life and needs surgery. Kenya sits alone at the hospital and Bernard realizes that she means to stay there with her mom all night. When Kenya starts talking to them, though, she reveals that she already knows each one of them. Her mother is the biological mother of Tip and Teddy and has watched over them their entire lives with Kenya in tow. Needless to say, all of the Doyle's are flabbergasted and are not sure whether to believe it or not. However, the most important thing to Bernard at the moment is that Kenya has no other family and no where to go, so he insists that she come home with them and they'll take her right back to see her mother in the morning.  When they arrive home from the hospital they are shocked that 33 year old Sullivan has arrived from Africa for a surprise visit. And so, begins the story of the relationship between each of the Doyle men and Kenya. They are all very kind to her, in particular Sullivan, who has always cherished his little brothers, even though you'd think that he might resent them suddenly getting all the attention when they were adopted. Now, he sees that this bright young girl has entered their lives and might just take all the attention away from the boys. Both Tip and Teddy grapple with the notion that their biological mother is lying in the hospital hovering between life and death. I'm not going to give any more details, because there are a couple of surprises, but it is a lovely book. Oh, and Tip is so excited when Kenya is genuinely interested in all the fish in the jars when he takes her to his lab at Harvard! Also, Kenya is an amazing track runner, hence the name of the book. She is destined to be in the Olympics some day! Even though there were some sad moments in the book, it was, for me, a heartwarming book that made me feel good at the end. :-)

Finished: The Last Flight (Clark) The fastest I've read a book in a long, long time! The Last Flight is a gripping, page-turner. It's the story of two women, strangers, running from their lives, who meet briefly in an airport and desperately exchange boarding passes and ID's to take the other's flight and assume a new identity. Claire is running from a powerful, rich, yet physically abusive husband who is about to run for senate, but who is suspected of killing a former lover who crossed him. She's attempted to divorce him before, only to be beaten into submission. Everyone knows her, and the family's philanthropic nature, outwardly at least. Eva is running from a life of manufacturing drugs for rich Berkley students. She's caught between the ruthless man who set her up in the business, and the DEA agent who insists she turn evidence against the man, even as the agent can't promise her protection after she testifies. Neither telling the other the complete truth of what they'd be meeting on the other end of their landing flight, both women see no other choice but to run from everything and everyone they know. The story unfolds very quickly when the flight of one of the women crashes in the middle of the ocean with no survivors, and the remaining woman's face is splashed all over the papers as lost in the flight. It's not a very deep story, but just the kind of suspenseful drama I needed to keep me reading to see what happens to Claire and Eva, and to see if the men in their lives get their comeuppance as well. :-)

Finished: How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi. This book was powerful at moments, but very redundant. I had higher hopes for the prose, but the ideas are still very solid and eye-opening. Maybe non-fiction is just harder for me to read. I may have gained the most from the book by some of Kendi's earliest comments such as this one: 

"The only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it--and then dismantle it." "The common idea of claiming "color blindness" is akin to the notion of being "not racist"--as with the "not racist", the color-blind individual, by ostensibly failing to see race, fails to see racism and falls into racist passivity."

This really struck a cord with me personally. Those words, plus what is going on in the world today, have made me much more aware that I need to be proactively antiracist. I don't want to be racially passive. Kendi's own personal journey from being racist himself towards his own black people, thinking he, as an educated, middle-class black man was above the poorer, uneducated black man, was very powerful. Towards the end of the book, Kendi and his future wife, Sadiqa, experienced a situation in a restaurant where an obnoxious, drunk white man climbed up onto a stage and started fondling a statue of Buddha to the laughter of his table-mates. Kendi says:

"I had learned a long time ago to tune out the antics of drunk White people doing things that could get a Black person arrested. Harmless White fun is Black lawlessness."

I hope this statement can be overcome in the future, but, sadly, I fear our country has a long way to go to make this happen.

Finished: Scarlet Sister Mary (Peterkin) The 1929 Pulitzer Prize winning novel about the lives of a Black community in South Carolina, in the early 1900's, who still live on the grounds of an old, empty plantation on which their forefathers served. They are a town and community like any other, raising crops together, going to church together, helping each other with hardships, and gossiping about each other when there is news to spread. This is a captivating story about Mary, a girl who has just become a young woman, and how she is torn between being a member in good standing at her church and her need to live her life with wild abandon, doing as she pleases, even if it is a "sin" in the eyes of the people of her church. Mary is known as Sister Mary, because at the beginning of the story, she IS in good standing. She was raised as an orphan on the plantation by Auntie Maum Hannah and her son, Budda Ben, who has been crippled all his life. They all attend church together and work hard in the fields to bring crops in for the town. When Mary falls in love with July, the more charismatic, yet less dependable, of the twins, June and July, she falls hard and before they have a chance to get married, she's already pregnant with his child. Enough of the church folk figure it out, and she then becomes Scarlet Sister Mary, for her scarlet sin. Even though she is married at the church as planned, Mary is then cast out and no longer allowed to be a member. Mary and July are in love and happy enough until July gets the wanderlust after their child, Unex, is born. He runs off with another woman, and Mary morns pitifully until she almost starves herself. It takes her months to recover and realize he is gone and not coming back. As she starts to spring back to life, she starts a relationship with June, who has always loved her, and they have a child together, Seraphine. Soon, though, June too decides to leave. He can never marry Mary, since she's already got a husband, and he wants to go and find better work. Mary's heart hardens to actually loving one man, as in her mind now, they are all alike and will leave you as soon as you love them. As the years go on, Mary continues to have relationships with different men and isn't at all ashamed about it. She also has children by those men, and raises healthy, happy, children, having nine children in all. She provides for them by continuing to be one of the best workers in the field and by tending her garden, chickens and goat. She continues to be ostracized by the church, but loved by Aunti Maum and Budda Ben. Soon, twenty years has gone by since July deserted her, and Mary has just had twin boys. Who comes knocking at her door, but July! He thinks that Mary will welcome him back with open arms. He is her husband after all. However, Mary, though she's torn to pieces inside, stays strong and makes him leave, even as he tries to hug and kiss her. A few days later, her firstborn, Unex, shows up at the door. He's lived away for awhile now, and not stayed in good touch with Mary. He's got a little bundle in his arms....his new baby daughter, Emma. He wonders if Mary could raise his little daughter because her mother has died. Mary takes the baby and piles her in with the twin boys. She's so thrilled to see Unex, but her happiness is short-lived when Unex falls sick with a fever and dies within a few days. The town mourns with Mary, but she needs to be alone so goes out into the woods to mourn alone. She doesn't realize she spends all night there, but she has a dream experience where she sees Unex and he talks to her and tells her to pray to Jesus for her sins. He is fine, but he brings a white silk cloth with a red mark across it for each of her children. Mary frantically prays all night, begging forgiveness for her sins, one child at a time. And, the red marks disappear one at a time. When Mary wakes up, it's because the town has been searching for her all night and found her. She's lighter inside than she's been in a long time, and no longer mourning Unex, but rejoicing that he has gone to heaven. She is asked to attend church to tell about her experience and also see if she'll be accepted back into the fold. She does so, and the deacons decide that she can rejoin the church if she's rebaptized. She says she has no problem being baptized again. When the plantation healer comes up to her, the last person to leave, he tells her he guesses she better give him back that charm/potion necklace he gave her years ago to make July love her again. He figures, since she never saw July again to use it on him, that she must have used it on all those other men. She just smiles at him and says, she's happy to be rejoining the church, but she thinks she'll keep her charm necklace just the same. And that's the end. The prose used in the book is so good! The dialogue is written as the people talked to each other, and was at first hard to read, but I got into the rhythm, and with it written the way it was, it really took me right there as if I was witnessing the whole story first hand. :-)

Finished: The Snow Child (Ivey). A lovely, rather spell-binding book, about a couple, Mabel and Jack, who cannot have children, so they move away from their families and up to the harsh wilderness of Alaska to make a go of it, just the two of them. When they create a snow girl, complete with red hat and mittens, their lives change forever. They are just into their 50's when they move to Alaska, barely making ends meet, trying to scrape out a living by farming. They are still grieving the loss of Mabel's only pregnancy, a stillborn baby in the late term. They stick to themselves and don't wish to meet or rely on neighbors, going into town only for groceries and other supplies. Life has become monotonous and hard, with very little joy. One night, during a heavy snow, Jack and Mabel suddenly get unusually playful and start having a snowball fight! Mabel then insists they build a snowman, and like giddy children, they do. With the addition of some red hat and mittens, they decide to make it a snow girl, and Jack intricately carves a lovely face. The next morning, the snow girls is just a pile of snow, but the red mittens and hat are gone. Soon after, both Jack and Mabel keep seeing a snippet of a girl in a blue coat, red hat and mittens, and white-blonde hair dashing in and out of the woods with a red fox always at her side. They worry that this child is alone in the wilderness, and wonder if they are imagining her. About this time, they meet their closest neighbors in town, the Bensons. George, the father, insists on bringing his sons and helping Jack get his fields done, as Jack is struggling and about to go under. Then he introduces them to his wife, Esther, a whirlwind of a person, and suddenly, Mabel and Jack have good friends that they never expected to or wanted to have. It was so nice reading a story where there were actually people who grew fond of each other, and helped each other with genuine concern and compassion with no ulterior motives! Still, most of Jack and Mabel's time is spent thinking of the little girl who appears at random times. Finally, one day, she comes closer and even comes into the house for a meal with them. It takes a long time, but she comes to trust them, but always runs out and back to the woods by nightfall. Her name is Faina. Mabel thinks back to a storybook her father used to read her about a Russian couple who couldn't have children, but created a girl out of snow who became real. She begins to think that Faina must be more than human, as she has a deep need for the cold and outside. When Faina tells them goodbye as the spring thaw arrives, they are devastated. They think they'll never see her again, but she comes back year after year once the snow arrives. She becomes the daughter they never had and she grows to love them just as much. When she is 16 she meets the Benson's youngest son, Garrett, who is passionate about living off the land, trapping and hunting, and they seem to be soul mates. They fall for each other immediately, much to the dismay of Jack, who doesn't like to think of the hours alone they spend out in the wilderness. Mabel can see that they are in love. Sure enough, Faina becomes pregnant with Garrett's child, and they marry and settle into a cabin built by Jack and Garrett. They all worry that Faina will never be able to stay put and have a "normal" lifestyle, caring for her child. Faina gives birth to a healthy baby boy, but her own health deteriorates.  She loves the baby fiercely, as she does Garrett, but she has a high fever and begs to be taken outside to the cold. Garrett fashions her a bed outside, and in the middle of the night, Faina disappears, leaving just her marriage quilt and her bed clothes on the ground. Mabel and Jack grieve the loss of another child, but Garrett searches and searches for her throughout the woods. They all know in their hearts that she is truly gone, though. A few years later, Mabel and Jack are still there, helping Garret to raise Little Jack, along with the Bensons who delight in their share of grandparenting. A finalist for the Pulitzer, The Snow Child is a lovely story, beautifully written, but heartbreaking at the end with the loss of Faina. However, you never really feel like she's far away. :-)

Finished: Laughing Boy (La Farge) Pulitzer Prize winner of 1930 about a pair of Navajo teens, Laughing Boy and Slim Girl, who meet, fall in love, and marry against the wishes of Laughing Boy's family. Slim Girl had been taken from her home as a young girl, after her parents died, and sent to an American school. When sent to work for a preacher's family, she ended up becoming a prostitute when the only people who would care for her when she became pregnant by an American who deserted her were the "working girls". She eventually meets another American who becomes enamored of her and returns to the town again and again, lavishing her with money if she'll be his alone. He wouldn't ever think of marrying her though. When Slim Girl travels to a traditional Navajo dance, which takes place over several days, she meets Laughing Boy. They are instantly drawn to each other, and Laughing Boy asks his uncle for permission to marry Slim Girl. (Interestingly, it was tradition for the family of the boy's mother to make the decision, while his own father just had to go along with whatever was decided.) The uncle, having heard rumors about Slim Girl, first that she'd been "Americanized" and second that she had a certain way of making money, emphatically declared no. In defiance of his family, Laughing Boy returned with Slim Girl to her town, where she had a house on the outskirts. She made up an excuse as to why he could never set foot in the town, and pretended to still go into town to work for the preacher's wife, while she continued to see the American. She loved Laughing Boy, but she wanted to also set them up with a good life so they could go back to his home and live the Navajo way, but start off comfortably. Laughing Boy was a talented silversmith, creating bridles, bow guards, jewelry etc., while Slim Girl learned to weave nice blankets. They were together for a year and a half, traveling back to Laughing Boy's home for a visit, with almost everyone accepting Slim Girl...except his uncle. Eventually Laughing Boy finds out about the American and vows to leave Slim Girl. But then, she tells him her entire story and how she was deserted by everyone but the prostitutes and how she came to live the life she did. She tells Laughing Boy that she loves him and him alone and that she'll leave with him right now to go make their home near his family. Laughing Boy forgives her, and they set out with most of their belongings, to go and live among their own people. Tragically, Slim Girl is killed by the gunfire of a jealous Native American man, Red Man, as they travel home. Set in 1915, Laughing Boy was billed as the "greatest Indian love story of all time". I don't know if that's true, but it did keep me reading, and I'm glad I finally read the story. :-)

Finished: The Overstory (Powers) Pulitzer Prize winner of 2019. A very good book, delving into several characters you get to know very well and their lifelong relationships to trees, and some, to each other. It's more than that, though. I just spent a month reading it because it's definitely not a page-turner, but a read-a-bit-at-a-time-and-absorb-it. So, I'm not going to recap it....but just copy here the description of the book from Amazon. It's pretty succinct and describes the book fairly well. The characters...you'll just have to read and get to know for yourselves. :-)

The Overstory, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of―and paean to―the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours―vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.

Finished: Normal People (Rooney) This book will have to sit with me for a bit while I figure out how I feel about it. It's the story of two small-town Irish teens, Connell and Marianne. Connell's mother is a single mom who works as a housekeeper for the wealthier mother of Marianne. Connell and Marianne have known each other for a long time, and probably know each other better than anyone else knows them, but they are totally different...in totally different "groups" at the high school, and even though they like each other, must pretend to barely know each other at school. When their relationship turns sexual, they realize how much they mean to each other, but Connell is the popular one at high school, despite his economic background, and he doesn't want to lose his place among his friends by admitting he likes the very weird, stand-offish, but extremely intelligent, Marianne. He asks Marianne to keep their relationship a secret, even though he's crazy about her. When he asks someone else to the spring "deb" dance, it breaks Marianne's heart and she breaks up with Connell. They end up at the same college in Dublin the next year and it seems the tables have turned. Connell is the one who is completely out of place amidst the super-rich kids (he's there on scholarship) and Marianne suddenly has a group of friends who think she's the best. The book explores the ups and downs of their relationship as they get together on and off during their college years, while also dating other people. When it comes to light that Marianne's older brother has always physically and emotionally abused her, we see why she's got such a low self-worth and why she tends to pick partners who are controlling and abusive towards her, except for Connell. The book is very well written and delves deep into both  Connell's and Marianne's emotions and confused minds. They seem to always give so that the other one can shine, but almost always at their own expense. I wanted more closure when the book ended, so am wondering if there will be more down the road between these two.

Finished: The Boy From the Woods (Coben) A nice page-turner from my favorite mystery/who-done-it author! The boy is actually a man all grown up now called Wilde. He doesn't remember how he was left in the woods or by whom, but he spends a few years of his young childhood living off the land while also befriending the son of one of Coben's other recurring book characters, defense lawyer, Hester Crimestein. Wilde is now a person who can be called on to help find people or solve mysteries. (I have a feeling Coben is going to do another book with this character!) Wilde is contacted by Hester's grandson, Matthew, the son of the now deceased boyhood friend, when a friend of his at school, Naomi, goes missing. Naomi is not a popular girl and is mercilessly bullied by the popular crowd. Matthew feels guilty for standing by and not intervening. While figuring out what has happened to Naomi, Wilde comes upon a much larger scandal involving a fanatical politician with murder in his past, and the wealthy parents of one of the bullies who are trying to cover the tracks of their own involvement in that long ago murder. A pretty good read to take my mind off these stressful times! I hope Coben DOES do another book with Wilde. He's a great character! (And, of course, he solves all the mysteries lol.)

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. :-)

Finished: The Wives (Fisher) A psychological kind-of thriller about a woman named Thursday who marries a man who already has two other wives. Well, not really, because his first wife divorces him when he meets Thursday. And, after Thursday miscarries their late term baby, he finds solace in another woman, who he proceeds to get pregnant. He tells Thursday that his first wife never wanted children, so he wanted children with her, therefore, they agreed that he could go back and forth between the two. After Thursday miscarries, he then adds the third "wife", even though they're not legally married...but now splits his time between the three. At least...that's what he tells Thursday. He also tells her that the other two wives are aware of the situation as well, so Thursday feels like they're all in the same boat loving this "amazing" man, Seth. When Thursday accidentally finds a receipt for the OBGYN in Seth's pocket, she suddenly knows the name of the third wife. They've never known each other's names. Against her better judgement, she googles the name and actually goes and meets the third wife, Heather, without telling her she is the second wife. Things spiral downhill from there after Seth finds out Thursday has spent time with Heather, and that Heather has confided that Seth has a temper. When Seth confronts Thursday, she had been about to confront him about bruises on Heather. She ends up falling and hitting her head and Seth has her taken to a psych ward, where he proceeds to tell the doctor she has had delusions before. He also tells Thursday when she wakes up that she's had delusions and a fantasy life ever since they traumatically lost their baby. It gets pretty convoluted not knowing who to believe...especially when wife number one, Regina, decides to take her revenge. It seems she NEVER agreed to any arrangement and Seth flat divorced her for Thursday because she wanted to focus on her career and not have children. It ends up pretty wacky and you still don't know who to believe...or whether to believe that Thursday really is mentally unstable, until the very end. :-) A pretty fast read, but not high on any favorite books list for me.

Finished: American Dirt (Cummins) Heartbreaking story of the grueling journey of a Mexican mother and her young son, Luca, as they flee the imminent danger of the cartel in Acapulco and attempt to migrate to the United States. Lydia works at a bookstore, and her husband is a journalist, who writes an expose about the local, very powerful, and very ruthless leader of the cartel in their area. When the cartel leader orders the execution of her entire family at her niece's Quinceanera, Lydia and Luca miraculously escape harm when they just happen to leave the party and go into the house so Luca can use the restroom. Sixteen of her family members lay slain in the courtyard, including her mother, her husband, her sister, nieces, and nephews. Without the time to grieve them for a single minute, Lydia throws some essentials into a backpack, takes her mother's purse that contains their family money, and runs with Luca. What ensues is their dangerous, horrific journey to the north....learning the ropes from other migrants...riding on tops of trains, putting their lives in the hands of a "coyote" to smuggle them across the border...constantly looking over their shoulders for the cartel to find them. Lydia and Luca meet two teenage sisters on the journey, and they become like family. Most of the other migrants are helpful as well, but there are always a few bad seeds in any good bunch that add to the terror of the journey. This is a beautifully written story, and one that hit very close to home in terms of current events, as Lydia and Luca witness the huge wall with barbwire fence, cameras and border patrol in  the cities along the border which prevent them from crossing over to the U.S. They hear first hand stories from people who have lived in the U.S. for years, but who have just recently been deported, while their children, who are American citizens, are permitted to stay behind. The plight of these people is brought to heart wrenching light in a powerfully written book.

Finished: The Tattooist of Auschwitz (Morris) The true story of a young Slovakian Jewish man, Lale, who is taken to the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1942, where he spends three years doing whatever he can to survive. Since he speaks several languages, he is put to work by the SS as the person who tattoos the incoming prisoners.They call him Tatowierer. He gets a few special privileges, such as a bit of extra food, and much less harassment from the guards. He uses whatever he can to share  his extra food with his fellow prisoners. One day he looks up at the arm that is shoved in his face to tattoo, and it's a frightened young girl. Lale falls in love with her on the spot, and from that day on is determined to meet her. Her name is Gita, and she falls in love with Lale as well. They do everything they can to survive the tortures of the camp, including frightening encounters with the evil doctor, Mengele. The story goes on to detail the atrocities of the camps and explores how Lale and Gita survive, with the help of many of their fellow prisoners and friends, most of whom do not make it out alive. In 1945, as the Russian army gets closer and closer to the camps, the Germans begin rounding up prisoners and shooting them or marching them out to other camps. Gita is marched out with the other women and she and Lale are devastatingly separated. Lale makes his way out of the camp on a train as the camp basically falls apart. Gita manages to escape from the march with four other women and makes her way back to Slovakia. Lale is taken by the Russian army to once again use his language proficiency to help them procure women for their parties at night. He's given all the food and showers he needs, and a bedroom to stay in, however, he's always under armed guard when he's taken into town to talk to the women and give them money and jewels to come back to the Russian headquarters. When the Russians finally trust him and send him on his own, Lale takes more money and jewels than he needs and makes his escape. He also makes his way back to Slovakia. He searches and searches for Gita with no luck until one day a towns person suggests he triy the Red Cross lists where many former prisoners returning home are registering to find loved ones. Then, one day in the streets (it's not really explained if it's because of the Red Cross lists) Lale and Gita finally cross each other and fall into each other's arms. They are married and finally have the child they always wanted. It's with the help of this son that the author has written this true story of two survivors of the horrors of the Holocaust.

Finished: The Testaments (Atwood) The much awaited sequel to The Handmaid's Tale was excellent, and a satisfying read if you've been wondering what happened after the end of the first book. You might have to brush up on that book before reading this one to remember the different characters. If you watched the series on TV, then you will be pretty much in tune with all the characters! This recap will have major spoilers, so I really suggest you not read past this point if you're going to read the book. The book was hard to put down and so well written. It's told from the viewpoints of three main characters, whose identities you figure out rather quickly. However, the different time periods that the story is told in may throw you at first, as you think they're all being told at the same time. I never thought I'd enjoy a book where one of the main narrators was Aunt Lydia! However, her back story was tragic, as are all of the women's back stories in the Gilead world. She survived and made herself into what she was, which rather seemed like a monster both in the first book and in the series. She did that to ensure her own safety. What is stunning in The Testaments is that she's actually working from deep inside, from her position of power, to bring down Gilead! Her machinations are deft and always ten steps ahead of the man in charge, Commander Judd. The other two narrators are girls when we meet them, and one is about 16 and the other about 23 as their identities are revealed. They are giving testaments to their own life stories, again, both tragic in the Gilead world and the Gilead-influenced Canadian world. They end up being the two daughters of June, otherwise known as Offred. Her oldest daughter, whose name is now Agnes, loves the mother who has raised her, and believes her story that she "rescued" Agnes from terrible people, chose her from all the other children, and ran with her to safety from the forest. Agnes has no memory of her real parents, but comes to know her story as she gains access to the genealogy trees of all the handmaids in Gilead. Agnes refuses to get married when she's 14, threatens to take her own life, and begs the Aunts to take her into their charge where she will become an Aunt herself. Aunt Lydia agrees. Meanwhile, baby Nicole, who had been rescued from Gilead by her mother, has also grown up with parents who are not really hers. She is now known as Daisy. They have loved her and protected her, but they have also been deeply working for the Mayday organization which helps women and children escape from Gilead. When they are murdered on what Daisy thinks is her 16th birthday, Daisy is spirited away by a good friend of her mother's, Ada. Ada moves her around and finally explains to her that she's the baby Nicole that all the children of Canada have learned about in school...the famous baby who was rescued from Gilead that Gilead has been searching for for years. Her real mother gave her up as an infant to protect her, but has kept her eye on her all these years. As it turns out, the only place to keep Daisy safe is Gilead itself! Ada and the Mayday organization have been in touch with their deep cover mole (who we all know is Aunt Lydia) and Aunt Lydia says she will be able to blow the entire Gilead operation apart if they can send her baby Nicole to help with the cause. So, Daisy is smuggled back IN to Gilead, and put under Aunt Lydia's charge. When Aunt Lydia finally explains to Daisy and Agnes that they are actually sisters, both daughters of a handmaid who'd been quite a rebel, they agree to transport all Aunt Lydia's knowledge of the evil doings of Gilead back over the border to Canada with a microchip implanted in Daisy's arm. Of course, the trip back is very suspenseful, but the sisters finally make it, and are embraced by their real mother at the hospital. Gilead is brought down by these brave women (and a handful of men). The last we see of Aunt Lydia, there is loud knocking on her door and we assume she is arrested. We don't witness her demise, but she had been ready to give her life for the cause. This was such a good book and a great wrap up of the stories of these characters. It might also be nice, though, to see another book that explores exactly what June was doing all that time.....though we may see more of that in the TV series!

Finished: There There (Orange) Eye-opening and heart-breaking book about a group of current day Native Americans, some related, some not, who all end up converging at the Big Oakland Powwow, after we spend the book reading about their lives, their back stories, their heartbreak, and their hopes for the future. Most of them live in Oakland, have had very tough lives, and are still barely hanging on, which causes some of them to do desperate things. Others of them find out they are actually related to one another in one form or another. Hearing the modern characters telling the stories of their ancestors, usually when relating the horror and oppression to a younger generation, was deeply moving. Great book! Thank you to my son for picking it out for me for Christmas. :-)

Finished: The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse (Mackesy) I read this book in early December, when I saw it advertised and thought I might want to get it for my daughter, Jenny Cate, seeing as how she's a horse person, and had lost her beloved horse, Sara, recently. I loved the book, so got one for me too. The illustrations are as powerful as the prose. The message...friendship, family, being yourself, loving others. I was pretty much hooked from the beginning, when I read this exchange between the boy and the mole:

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” asked the mole.

“Kind,” said the boy."

Just a lovely, lovely book full of lessons we could all learn from, especially in this crazy world today.

Finished: The Dutch House (Patchett) The story of the bond between two siblings, Danny and Maeve, who grow up in a huge, ornate house called The Dutch House...that is until their father remarries and the brother and sister are asked to move out of the house after their father dies, when Danny has just started college. Deserted by their mother when they are very young, Maeve and Danny are raised by their rather distant father and their nurturing housekeeper and cook until the remarriage. They are very supportive of, and protective of each other. Their step-mother marries the father more so because she's in love with the house rather than their father. She's got two young daughters of her own and they are shown favoritism as Danny and Maeve get older. As the years go by, Maeve and Danny will get together in her car, parked across the street from the house and wonder what their step-mother is up to, and if the house still looks the same inside. When their father dies, he leaves the entire house and all it's contents to his wife...but he does set up an educational fund for all the children to go however far they want in college and beyond. The book is very compelling and develops each character so deeply that you really come to care for Danny and Maeve. It's one of those books that stays with you even after you finish reading it. As they go on with their lives, Danny and Maeve always put each other first, much to the dismay of Danny's wife and children. And, when Maeve is in her early 50's and is debilitated by a heart attack due to her lifelong battle with diabetes, their mother comes back into the picture to spend time with Maeve, who was eight years older than Danny when she left, and longs to have the relationship back. Danny can't forgive his mother for leaving them and going off to help less fortunate people. She'd always hated the ostentatious house, was uncomfortable living in it, and just wanted to help the poor. Sadly, she did that at the expense of her own children. Maeve and Danny are finally able to put the Dutch House in the past when they go with their own mother to visit their step-mother and find her deteriorating from Alzheimer's. As is typical of their mother, she decides to move into the house and care for their step-mother. Maeve succumbs to her heart condition, and her namesake, May, Danny's daughter, eventually become a successful actress and buys the Dutch House after both her step-grandmother and grandmother have passed away. I really like this book and all the relationships that were developed in the telling of the story! Last book read of 2019!