Finished: Force of Nature (Harper) Another great page-turner featuring Detective Aaron Falk, a federal agent in Australia who was introduced in Harper's first novel, Dry. In this one, five women employed by the same family run company head off onto team-building retreat in the remote bush land, and only four come back alive. The retreat is run by an adventure company, but the participants are sent off for three days on their own with no guides. Aaron Falk is called in, along with his partner, because they have been investigating the company for illegal activities, and their mole in the company, Alice Russell, is on the retreat, along with the owner's grown daughter who helps run the company, Alice's young assistant, the assistant's newly employed and troubled twin sister, and a co-worker of Alice's who went to high school with her and has known all her good qualities and bad qualities for years. With absolutely no reception in the remote area, Alice is the only person to get a brief phone signal and the phone call she makes is to Aaron where only a few fuzzy, but frantic, words can be heard before the message cuts out. Working with local police, Aaron helps interview the women who do make it out alive. The narrative goes back and forth between the current investigation and the days that the women actually spent on the retreat, detailing exactly what went wrong and who was responsible for the death of the very unlikeable Alice. With the threat of a former serial killer's son possibly roaming the same remote location which his father used to kill young women thrown in, we're left until the very twisty, turny end to find out exactly what happened. Meanwhile, during the ordeal, Aaron Falk faces some of his own demons as he remembers time spent with his father who died before Aaron could truly make amends with him about past troubles of their own.

Finished: Intuitive Eating (Tribole & Resch) A book about giving up the yo-yo-ing of dieting and relearning what you knew instinctively as a baby...how to eat when you're hungry and to stop when you're full; how to enjoy foods in moderate proportions and not get so stuck on depriving yourself of food that you love that you binge that food compulsively. A pretty interesting book! Much of what was said makes sense. There are some basic principals to the program, some of which I think I can really try to work on. 1) Reject the diet mentality. "Restricting food triggers primal hunger which leads to binge eating." 2) Honor your hunger. "Eating regularly will help you get in touch with gentle hunger, rather than the extremes that often occur with chaotic eating. Ultimately, you will trust your own hunger signals." 3) Make peace with food. "Take risks, try "fear" foods when ready and not vulnerable." i.e., eat what you've always considered to be "bad" food and find out it's ok in moderation. 4) Challenge the food police. "Take the morality and judgment out of eating." Especially your judgment of yourself. 5) Feel your fullness. "Transition away from experiencing the extreme fullness that is associated with binge eating. Once regular eating is established, gentle fullness will begin to resonate." 6) Discover the satisfaction factor. "If satisfying foods and eating experiences are included regularly, there will be less impetus to binge." 7) Cope with emotions without using food. "Take a time-out from compulsive eating to start experiencing and dealing with feelings." 8) Respect your body. "Respect the here and now body." i.e., don't lament about the past body you had or the future body you want. 9) Exercise. "Moderate exercise can help manage stress and anxiety." Don't associate exercising with losing weight, but with getting and feeling healthy. 10) Honor your health. "Learn to remove the rigidity of nutrition." Recognize that the body needs essential fat, carbohydrates, protein and a variety of foods. There is definitely alot I can implement from this book, but as all changes, this will take time. I've got my exercise program going to smoothly that it would be nice to finally "make my peace" with food. :-)

Finished: Empire Falls (Russo) Pulitzer Prize winner about the inhabitants of a once prospering, now defunct industrial town in Maine. Going back three generations in the Whiting clan, the wealthy founders of the town and owners of the textile companies that keep the town afloat, the tale of their influence, power trips and selfishness is told directly through the people they have affected most. We see most of the story through the eyes and experiences of Miles Roby, now forty-two and manager of the Empire Falls Grill. His life is intricately woven with Francine Whiting, the widow of the last Whiting male heir. She now owns and runs most everything in the town, including the Empire Grill. She had also been the employer of Miles' mother, Grace Roby, when Miles was in high school and college. Grace had worked her fingers to the bone, and despite her worthless husband, Max's non-efforts, had seen to it that Miles got out of Empire Falls and off to college. When Grace was diagnosed with terminal cancer with Miles one year shy of getting his college degree, Miles came home to care for his mother in her final days and never went back for his degree. Twenty years later, he's divorced from his wife, Janine, and has a daughter, Tick, who is a sophomore in high school. The books is very, very good and shares chapters from the viewpoints of the different characters, telling in humorous and compelling prose the thoughts, fears, hopes, disappointments, feelings, etc. of each of the characters. We get to know Max, Miles' self-centered, codger of a father; Tick, his sensitive, independent daughter; Janine, his weight-losing, sexually hungry, engaged to the town blowhard ex-wife; Francine Whiting, the hard-nosed, cold, shrewd, but not feelingless town matriarch; Jimmy Minty, the deceitful deputy sheriff and childhood nemesis of Miles; his son Zack Minty, Tick's ex-boyfriend and class A jerk; David Roby, Miles' younger brother who helps him run the grill; Charlene Gardiner, Empire Falls waitress who Miles has had a crush on since high school; John Voss, the emotionally stunted, abused in childhood, bullied in high school, ticking time bomb schoolmate of Tick's; Cindy Whiting, Francine's daughter, crippled, physically and emotionally, who has always loved Miles Roby; and, in flashback, Charley Maine, the rich, charismatic man who nearly swept Grace Roby off her feet and away from Max when Miles was little...who turns out to be none other than C.B. Whiting, husband of Francine. As Miles struggles to make ends meet by keeping the Empire Grill going, he tries to juggle keeping up with Tick, volunteering at his church by painting the steeple, keeping tabs on his father, and bowing down to Francine Whiting as she has promised to eventually leave the Empire Grill to him. The book itself was not a page turner. I could only read a few chapters at a time, and then I had to put it down and process all that I was reading about each of the characters. I'm going to keep with my promise to myself to keep my recaps shorter, so will not recap the entire book. I will just say that I was lulled into the sense of this just being a book about these people's interactions and lives when a dramatic incident occurs involving a school shooting that thrusts the main characters into chaos and within months, resolution to many of their lives as they make decisions to move forward after realizing life is so fleeting. I'm very glad to have read this book, but glad I'm finally done as well. :-)

Finished: Winter Garden (Hannah) Another page-turning historical novel by the author of The Nightingale. Winter Garden is the story of two grown sisters, Meredith and Nina, who have been shunned by their cold mother all their lives. They've never felt any love from her, but their beloved father has held the family together and loved them all their lives. The only thing their mother has ever done that was at all mother-like was tell them the fairy tale of the Russian peasant girl who fell in love with the prince, and vice versa, in the magical white wonderland of Russia. When their father dies, first eliciting the promise that they will listen to their mother's entire fairy tale to the end, Meredith, whose marriage is on rocky ground, and Nina, the photojournalist who can barely stay in one place for long, are forced to spend time with their mother to try and get to know her before the three of them are shattered irrevocably. Unreceptive at first, their mother finally agrees to tell them the fairy tale at her own pace, a bit at a time every night. In the mean time, the trio finally starts to get knowing each other slowly over shared dinners. As the nightly fairy tale unfolds, it becomes clear that their mother, Vera, was actually the Russian peasant girl who fell in love and married her prince, Sasha, at the age of seventeen. She's lost her poet father through Stalin's Russian purges, and has only her mother, her grandmother and her sister left. After a few happy years of marriage, Vera and Sasha have five year old Anya and four year old Leo. The happiness is short lived, however, as they begin to live through that time in history when the Germans are invading Russia in WWII. Soon, Sasha must join the Red Army and go to fight the Germans. Vera, her children, and her family are left to fend for themselves in Leningrad. They go through horrific nightmares, bombings, starvation, separation from children, frigid temperatures, people dying in the street, and then it gets even worse as Leningrad is surrounded by the Germans and cut off from any outside food supplies. Vera's beloved sister, Olga, dies, as well as her grandmother, and her mother. Finally, Sasha manages to arrange for Vera and his children to escape Leningrad, but wee Leo is dying. :-( Vera must make the heart wrenching decision to send Anya alone on the train to her father while she spends Leo's last two days with him in the hospital. After his tragic ending, she then gets on the train and when she steps off at the end of her journey, there are Sasha and Anya waiting for her....for a split second, until a German bomb drops on them right before her eyes and blows them sideways. Vera is knocked unconscious and wakes up in the hospital, and told that there were no other survivors. No longer caring if she lives or dies, she walks through the snow and gives herself up to the Germans, spending the rest of the war in one of their prison camps until she is finally liberated by an American soldier who ends ups falling in love with her, marrying her, moving her to the United States and becoming the father of Meredith and Nina! It becomes clear to Meredith and Nina, after all these years, that their mother couldn't open herself up to loving other children, only to possibly lose them, so their father tried to supply love enough for both parents. They have extreme empathy for their mother and what she bravely went through and come to understand her, finally. And Vera finally tells her daughters that she IS proud of them and that she loves them both. They decide to take their mother on a cruise to Alaska to meet a Russian historian who had, years before, written to Vera to hear her story for his book on the Leningrad millions who lost their lives during the horrific war conditions. When they arrive in the small, predominantly Russian, Alaskan coastal town, they meet a cafe owner, Stacy, who is happy to meet the elderly, Russian Vera. When Vera sees the old, frayed wedding picture of herself and Sasha among Stacy's belongings, they all come to the realization that Stacy aka Anastasia aka Anya, is really Vera's long lost daughter!! It turns out that both she and her father, Sasha, had survived the bombing and searched for Vera for years, not knowing she was in a prison camp, and later in America. It's a basically happy ending, as the sisters all meet one another, and Vera is reunited with her beloved Anya, but there is so much tragedy throughout the book. I enjoy reading the historical novels like this, but there is so much sadness in history.

Finished: A Visit From the Goon Squad (Egan) Pulitzer Prize winning novel that jumps about in time and is about several people who weave in and out of the lives of record producer Bennie Salazar and his assistant Sasha. Most of the characters could be called tragic, but many of them rise above that and come to a future they are happy with. Told in vignettes focusing on the different characters, the book is mostly centered in the music scene. We first meet Sasha, Bennie's kleptomaniac assistant. She's with him for over ten years, and he finally has to let her go for her "problem". When we meet her, she's still his assistant and she's taking a man she meets off the street, Alex, up to her apartment. They have a one night stand and while he's not looking, Sasha takes an old fortune cookie message out of Alex's wallet that he keeps to encourage himself. He's an up and coming sound engineer, or so he hopes. After their one night stand, they never see each other again. We learn, though, that Sasha is independent and quirky and smart and good at her job, as well as being a kleptomaniac. Next the book focuses on Bennie, who is now divorced from his wife Stephanie, but has a nine year old son, Christopher. On his visitation day, Bennie takes Christopher with him, along with Sasha, to the house of one of the bands he's managing. Christopher doesn't think his dad is very cool until they get to do that...and until his dad let's him experiment with his gold flakes that he has purchased for a pretty penny that he dusts in his own coffee every morning. For some reason he thinks it will make him find his sexual mojo again. Next we go back in time to when Bennie is a senior in high school and he's got his own band with his best friend, Scotty, called the Flaming Dildos. They are pretty bad, but they do get a gig at a punk rock bar. They have a friendship with Jocelyn and Rhea, but Scotty loves Jocelyn, and Bennie loves Rhea, but Rhea loves Scotty. Scotty ends up with Rhea because the teenage Jocelyn ends up dating millionaire, thrice married, thrice divorced, six time father, Lou. Jocelyn convinces Lou to come and see the band where he discovers that while they are terrible, he sees great potential in Bennie as a record producer, and becomes his mentor. The next chapter goes back to when Lou's oldest children are young teens, and he takes them on an African safari with his third wife-to-be, Mindy. The lead singer of one of the bands he represents is also there, and disregards the safety measures when they are near the lions, and is nearly mauled until the tour guide jumps in and saves the day. Mindy likes this and so Mindy and the tour guide have a one night fling which Lou finds out about. He's been planning to dump Mindy when he got home, but this just makes him propose to her instead. He is a screwed up person, but he does have some touching moments with his kids and truly seems to love them, so that is nice. In the next chapter, it has been over twenty years since Jocelyn and Rhea have seen Lou when they were younger and they go to visit him after he's incapacitated by a stroke. They wheel him out in his bed to the pool so he can be in the sun and they basically say their goodbyes to each other. I could go on and on, but there are just so many characters, and they all lead back somehow to Sasha or Bennie. We find out that Sasha runs away from home when she's seventeen because her father and mother have divorced due to her father's violent temper. She goes to Asia and Italy and scrapes by with her stealing. She had also spent time as a young teen in Florida where the thrill of stealing hooked her up with an older man who paid kids money for the things they stole off tourists...a modern day Fagin! The older man also has sex with thirteen year old Sasha for quite a while. Sasha finally goes to college and meets her boyfriend, Drew, and her best friend, Rob. Rob is in love with Sasha, but missed his chance of telling her so and now she's with Drew. Rob knows every sordid detail about Sasha, though. Rob has recently tried to commit suicide by slashing his wrists, so all his friends are on eggshells around him. It's possible that he's gay, but they never come right out and say it. He seems just as envious of Sasha being with Drew though as Drew being with Sasha. One night, they all go out to party and Sasha doesn't agree when they pull out some pills to do, so she goes back home. Drew and Rob get very high and Rob kind of indicates that he'd like to be with Drew. This freaks Drew out somewhat and he pulls away from Rob emotionally. Rob is stung so he blurts out to Drew all the sordid details about Sasha just to hurt him...about the man in Florida, about the stealing, everything. Drew gets really mad and goes and strips down and jumps in the East River (I think) in New York. He's a strong swimmer. Rob, of course, follows, and Rob is not a strong swimmer. Rob is pulled by the currents and drowns. We leave that chapter without seeing how anyone else reacts to all of that. Meanwhile, Bennie has been married, had his son, and created a very successful record company of his own until his own board fires him for actually feeding them bowls of shit at one meeting as he complains to them that all they are bringing him is shit talent, or something like that. One of the coolest chapters, and I think my favorite, is when we flash to the future and Sasha, after many years apart, has found her college boyfriend, Drew, married him, and has two children, 12 year old Alison and 13 year old, slightly autistic, Linc. This chapter is told completely in power point slides by Alison! It's how she writes her diary. It's very unique and focuses on how they all really love each other as a family, and how they love Linc and go along with his obsession with the breaks or pauses in famous songs. This is just how Linc relates to everyone, even though he plays sports and does things with his family, this is his "thing". I think the reason this is my favorite chapter is because right in the middle of it, on one of her slides, Alsion has written "mine and Linc's rooms are right next to each other, with just a wall dividing us. At night Linc knocks twice on the wall to say good night, and then I knock twice to say good night back". This actually brought tears to my eyes because it's exactly what my little brother (who is no longer living) and I used to do as kids!! Only we would knock back and forth until the knocks got lighter and lighter and one of us was clearly falling asleep. We even did this through college when we were both home for the weekend at the same time. sigh.  I had no idea anyone else ever did that. Anyway, I loved this part of the book. That wraps up Sasha's story. Then, to wrap up Bennie's story, he's got to climb his way back up after making a mess of his own, huge company. By now it's the age where everything is texted back and forth and word of mouth on social media goes a long way. He goes back to his old band mate, Scotty, who has just scraped by all these years, and asks him if he wants to do a comeback concert. He's heard some of Scotty's recent music and thinks this could be huge. He hires a young father named Alex (see sound engineer wannabe from first chapter) and gets him to create buzz on the internet by paying people to drum up business for Scotty's concert. Thankfully, when the huge outdoor concert in NY comes to fruition, it's a huge success and the people love Scotty's new music. We leave the book there as both Bennie and Scotty have made their comebacks. :-) I really avoided reading this book for awhile, because it just did not sound appealing...but I'm glad I read it! It goes into so much more depth, and cleverly so, on the life adventures of the characters, many of whom I haven't named. It's tragic, but a bit uplifting at the same time, at least for the people who manage to survive their young adults lives and head into maturity!

Finished: The Nightingale (Hannah) A haunting WWII story about two French sisters, both brave women, who battle the German forces in occupied France, each making a huge impact, and each suffering unspeakable losses and hardships during those war years. The book opens in 1995 as an elderly woman, who has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer, makes her way up to her attic to look through her old steamer trunk. Her son will be moving her to a caring facility soon, and she wants to reminisce. She picks up an identity card with the name Juliette Gervaise on it, and suddenly she is thrust back into the year 1939...right before the Germans invaded France in WWII. We then begin the story of the two sisters, and throughout the whole book, we wonder which of the sisters became the elderly woman. After their mother's death, Vianne and Isabelle Rossignol are dumped by their grieving father, a WWI survivor, on the doorstep of the housekeeper of their family home in Carriveau, France. Isabelle is nearly ten years younger than the 14 year old Vianne, and a crying handful. Both girls feel abandoned by their father, who, already deeply changed from WWI, cannot handle the young girls...does not WANT to handle them, and therefore, leaves them. Vianne, the more level-headed, almost instantly falls for Antoine, who will become her husband. Being a young girl herself, she doesn't know how to mother Isabelle, so doesn't fight hard to keep her there when she is shipped off to boarding school. Flash forward to Isabelle at age 18, and she's been kicked out of several boarding schools for speaking her mind and  being rebellious. She has made her way back to Paris to try and live with her father, only to be rejected by him and put into another school. Vianne, meanwhile, has married Antoine and after three devastating miscarriages, has an 8 year old daughter, Sophie. They live a happy life in their family home, the old housekeeper long gone. They have picnics and sing together, laugh together. Antoine is a mailman and Vianne a teacher at Sophie's school. Vianne's best friend since she arrived in Carriveau, Rachel, lives next door with her own husband, 8 year old daughter, Sarah, and 1 year old son, Ari. They have a happy life. Vianne doesn't think much about her sister, sadly, especially since she spent years grieving her miscarriages. Meanwhile, Isabelle is kicked out of her latest boarding school, and once again heads back home to Paris. She tells her father she wants to do something important, but he is heavy into drinking and doesn't want her around. He lets her stay there for a few days, but insists she must go to live with her sister in Carriveau. The year by now is 1939 and suddenly all their lives are about to change. Antoine, and Rachel's husband, Marc, both get called into the French military, along with most of the other men in Carriveau, and throughout France, to go and fight the approaching Germans. The French are quite confident and believe in their government when they say they can hold off the Germans. While Isabelle is at her father's, however, it becomes clear that the French soldiers have NOT held off the approaching Germans, as they see battered French soldiers retreating for their lives through Paris. Monsieur Rossignol arranges for a fleeing friend and his family to take Isabelle along with them in their car and drop her at Carriveau. Isabelle is devastated by this. She doesn't want to be rejected by her father again AND she wants to do something to actually help the French win this new war instead of running away. On the road to Carriveau, the masses of fleeing, mostly women, children and elderly men, are mercilessly gunned down by German airplanes. Isabelle is spared, however, and meets up with a French resistance fighter named Gaetan. He instantly likes her spirit, her bravery and her willingness to help. They fall in love, but he will not admit it. He tells her they will stop by her sister's on their way to fight together however they can. They spend one last night together out in the open near Vianne's house, and finally share their first kiss. When Isabelle awakens the next morning, there is a note pinned to her dress. Gaetan has gone on without her. He doesn't want her to risk her life. Isabelle is heartbroken, but goes to live with Vianne and Sophie. The sisters, never close, remain at odds because Vianne is trying to fly under the radar and do as she's told, mostly to protect her daughter...and Isabelle is still outspoken and stubborn. This does not sit well when a German officer comes to "billet" at Vianne's house, as was commonly done during the war. Captain Beck takes over the bottom bedroom of the home and is actually not one of the evil ones. He has his own family back home and he respects Vianne, her sister and her daughter while he is in the house. He still goes off to his day job as a Nazi, however. At least whenever he is there for dinner, they get more food than their meager, long-lined rations allow. Vianne is guiltily thankful for this, while Isabelle finds it hard to hold her tongue! Isabelle secretly gets involved with the local French resistance group and begins delivering flyers to local French people, giving them news of the French resistance. As she gets more involved, Vianne thinks the worst of her and thinks she's sneaking off every night to meet a man. When the resistance group decides to take on helping downed British airmen by hiding them and figuring out how to get them back across the border so they can once again fight the Germans, Isabelle becomes the go to girl. She finds out that Gaetan has been part of the group all along and watching out for her. He has also recommended her for this job. She asks Captain Beck if he can get her a pass to go to Paris because their father is ill. Once there, she meets up with her father once again and finds out that he has actually also been working with the French resistance as a forger! He creates a new identity for Isabelle so they can put their plan in action. She is now Juliette Gervaise. Isabelle begins the daunting task of taking the downed airmen in small groups up to a herding cabin in the Pyrenees mountains that border on Spain. She meets with the herdsman who will guide them up and over the mountain, then across the river that separates Spain and France, through the border guards, and into Spain. Once there, Isabelle alone will take the men to their embassies, where they will make it home. Then Isabelle will take the train back to occupied France, and start all over again. Her code name is the Nightingale, which is what Rossignal means in French. The treks over the mountains are brutal and freezing and dangerous, yet Isabelle never flinches. In all, she makes 27 trips over three years before she is caught and arrested. (This is actually based on the true story of an Austrian woman who bravely took downed airmen over the border during WWII.) Meanwhile, the Germans have started cracking down on the Jewish people...beginning by refusing them jobs, then making them wear the yellow stars, then carting off first the non-French born Jews. It gets more and more alarming, especially for Vianne because her best friend, Rachel, and her children are Jewish! Rachel has already lost her job as a teacher. One evening, Captain Beck comes home and tells Vianne that she needs to hide Rachel, Sarah and Ari the next day. He can't say why, but she needs to trust him. Vianne convinces Rachel to hide with their children in the hidden cellar in their barn. At a risk of being caught himself, Beck has also brought home documents that should see Rachel, Sarah and Ari safe across the nearest border crossing into unoccupied France if they can make it through what is going to happen the next day. Rachel says she would rather try going across the border now than hiding the next day. So, Vianne takes Rachel, Sarah and Ari to the border and watches from the woods as they approach the checkpoint in the slow moving line. Just as they are about to make it through, Germans pull up and just randomly open fire at all the people. Rachel runs with her children back to the woods, but little Sarah is shot. :-( Vianne runs with Rachel and the children and gets them to the barn. They finally stop to look at Sarah and she is riddled with bullets. She takes a last breath and dies. :-( :-( Devastated, but with no time, Vianne convinces Rachel to hide with Ari in the cellar. After hiding out in the cellar all the next day while Vianne buries Sarah, and no sign of any Germans coming to their home, Vianne and Rachel both think they are safe to bring her out, and suddenly the Germans come to Rachel's home! Rachel thrusts Ari at Vianne and is taken away. It is punishable by death for Vianne to harbor a Jewish child, but Captain Beck brings her blank identity papers and looks away while Vianne turns Ari into her own "dead cousin's son", Daniel. As the situation grows worse in Carriveau, there is less and less food to be found, and even worse, now all Jews are being loaded onto buses and separated from their young children who will be eventually taken somewhere else and dumped. Another Jewish friend thrusts her 5 year old son at Vianne one day and Vianne takes him to the orphanage at the Catholic church she belongs to. She begs the Mother Superior to take the boy in, and the Mother does and then asks...how many more Jewish children can we help? Thus begins Vianne's contribution to the war. In three years time, she becomes responsible for saving 19 Jewish children. She keeps a hidden list of their real names as she forges new identities for them with papers supplied by Isabelle's French resistance friends. Vianne still has no idea that Isabelle is risking her life trekking over the mountains with Allied airmen. Both women do their part, though, even though at times they are scared out of their minds. One day, when she is sneaking back to Carriveau to meet with her resistance friends, Isabelle sees an airmen shot down right near Vianne's house! She can hear the Germans coming after him and she rushes him into the secret barn cellar. Vianne hears the ruckus and goes to the barn and finds Isabelle with the airman. She is furious with Isabelle for endangering Sophie's life by bringing the wounded soldier to her home. She can't believe how irresponsible she is. She can't stop for one minute to hear what Isabelle has been doing in the war. She tells Isabelle to be gone by that night and tells her never to come back. :-( When Captain Beck comes home that night he is furious and his own life is on the line because right there in his own territory there is a downed enemy somewhere and someone is hiding him. He sees a strange look on Vianne's face and realizes she knows something. He looks throughout the house and then goes to the barn. For the first time, he spies the trap door to the cellar and draws his gun and opens it. Vianne picks up a shovel to hit him. She can't let him hurt her sister. As he shoots into the cellar, Isabelle fires a shot at him and Vianne hits him in the head with the shovel. Needless to say, they kill him. Meanwhile, the downed soldier has died from his wounds. Isabelle comes up the steps and passes out. She has been shot! Right then, Gaetan and the resistance friends show up. They clean up everything, get rid of the two bodies, and Gaetan takes Isabelle from Vianne. He tells her he will take care of Isabelle, and Vianne realizes that this is the man from long ago who left the note on Isabelle's dress and that he loves her. Gaetan takes Isabelle across the border into unoccupied France and nurses her back to health for a couple of weeks. Finally, Gaetan and Isabelle consummate their relationship, but both know that their time is fleeting. They must both go separately back to what they were doing to help the war effort. They part ways assuming they may never see each other again. Then, things get even bleaker. Isabelle is finally captured on one of her Nightingale missions. The Germans beat her mercilessly, wanting information on who The Nightingale is. They can't believe it could be a woman, but think she knows who it is. Her father, goes to see Vianne one last time. He tells her of his regrets and that he loves her, and then he goes and turns himself in and claims to be The Nightingale. Isabelle screams no, but her father is taken and executed in the courtyard. She watches him die trying to save her.  :-( Isabelle is not released, though. She is taken to a horrible women's only concentration camp in Germany. Vianne, having been told by her father where Isabelle is, is able to make it to the prison just in time to see her being loaded on a bus. She is able to at least tell Isabelle that she knows what she was doing so bravely and that she loves her. Isabelle suffers horrific treatment, frozen conditions, and all the atrocities that we know  that the Jewish people were subjected to as a prisoner of war. She spends over a year in the camp, and by the time the Allies free them, she has survived but barely...she is terribly ill with typhus. Meanwhile in Carriveau, an evil German officer has taken the place of Captain Beck in Vianne's home. Sophie is now a young teenager and "Daniel" is 5. To protect her daughter from any wrongdoing, Vianne doesn't fight back when the new officer rapes her over and over, most nights. Thankfully, it is not long before the Germans pick up and move away because the Allies are making their way through France, freeing occupied towns! However, not before Vianne discovers she is pregnant with the evil officer's child. She is barely pregnant, when one day, who should come walking wearily down the path but Antoine!!! He had been a prisoner of war and has finally escaped. Vianne and Sophie are both thrilled to see him, but they have all changed physically and emotionally. Sophie tells her mother privately that she can never tell her father that she is pregnant by the German soldier...she will need to pretend it is her father's. It will be their secret for the rest of their lives. As they try to put the pieces of their life back together, Vianne, Antoine, Sophie and Daniel, who they now consider their son..and who doesn't even remember his real mother, wait for the birth of the new baby. As Vianne nears her due date, they finally have a family moment of happiness when Sophie and Daniel put on a little song for Vianne on a wooden stage built by Antoine. They are a family trying to find their happiness when a car drives up and two Jewish men get out. They are there for Daniel. By Vianne's own doing, with her list, they are there to reunite Ari with his family in America. Sadly, they inform her, Rachel died only one month after she was taken away, and her husband died in the prisoner of war camp. However, Rachel has a first cousin in America who wants to take Ari and raise him with her family and in his own religion. Sadly, Vianne and Antoine agree that it is best, and heatrbreakingly, little Ari is driven away screaming for his maman, Vianne. :-( That drama is short-lived when Vianne finds out that Isabelle is alive and has been freed from her concentration camp. She is coming home! When she meets her at the train, though, Vianne can tell that Isabelle is critically ill. She takes her back to their home and bathes her, feeds her and lies with her. Together they read the last letter from their father which he had left with Vianne. He tells them both that he's sorry for abandoning them and wants them to know he's proud of them both and that he loves them, as much as he was capable. They cry together. As the very pregnant Vianne and the very ill Isabelle sit outside the next week, who should appear shakily walking across the field but Gaetan! He has also survived the war! He looks about as good as Isabelle, but neither of them care as they fall into each other's arms, call each other beautiful, and then murmur that they love each other. Then, Isabelle dies in his arms. :-( :-( So, we now know that the elderly woman who has survived in America is Vianne! She has also decided that she will accept an invitation to appear at an event to honor all the people who helped the French resistance during the war. She has never spoken of the war to her son, Julien, who is the son of the German officer, and named after her father, Julien Rossignol. She has never even let him go to France to explore his roots, and now she is setting off on her own to attend the event. When she phones him to let him know, he scurries around and arrives at the airport to go with her. He insists that she tell him what is going on, and finally tell him about her life which she has never shared...and she says she will...soon. At the event, Vianne discovers that the posthumous guest of honor is actually her sister, Isabelle "The Nightingale". She realizes that all the people in the audience are family members of all the downed airmen she risked her life for, and eventually died for. She speaks a few words, as Julien looks on, dumbstruck. And, at the end, as she makes her way to find Julien, she is stopped by a man who she instantly recognizes as Ari! He embraces her and tells her he never forgot her. Sigh. This was such a good book, though extremely heartbreaking and brutal, but sadly a reality for so many, many people. It was suggested to me by a young friend of mine, Amanda, and she was so right...I could hardly put it down!

Finished: Call Me By Your Name (Aciman) After seeing the movie twice, I'm so glad I read this book which is basically a stream of conscious telling of how Elio was feeling from the first moment he met Oliver, to the last moment he spent with him. It was so good to read how he was feeling, because in the movie it was often hard to tell what was motivating his turmoil, or hesitation, or frustration, or happiness. And, in Elio telling this story, we were also able to figure out a bit what Oliver was feeling as well. The story is just so very touching. Oliver, a 24 year old graduate student, travels to Italy to spend six weeks as an assistant to a professor, who in turn will read his dissertation to give notes on it before it becomes a book. The professor and his wife have a 17 year old son, Elio. Elio is extremely intelligent and musically gifted. Oliver and Elio hit it off pretty instantly in terms of sharing intellectual and artistic conversations. However, they are both awkward with what from the very get go seems to be an underlying physical attraction. Oliver is the tall, good looking, seemingly confident American who just breezes into Elio's life. They spend quite a bit of time together and apart, before finally giving into a kiss that Oliver insists should not happen again. He knows that he shouldn't go down that road, yet he's truly fallen for Elio. With only a couple of weeks of the stay left, Oliver and Elio finally admit how they feel about each other and consummate their relationship with Elio's first same sex sexual experience. Elio has had sex with a few of his town girl friends before, so he's so confused about what he's feeling and after it happens, also feels extreme shame for desiring what he did with Oliver. While they are laying in bed, though, Oliver whispers to Elio "call me by your name and I'll call you by mine". It is just so heartfelt and intimate and indicates how strongly they feel for each other when they are willing to essentially become one with each other down to their very names. When it comes down to Oliver's last few days, he must travel to Rome to meet with his publisher and fly from there back to America. Elio's parents, who I strongly suspect have caught onto the relationship by now, suggest that Elio go with Oliver to Rome so they can have those days together. They adore Oliver, as everyone does, and want things to work out for him as well as their own son. So, Elio and Oliver go to Rome and have the best three days of their lives...days neither ever forgets, before Oliver goes back home with promises to stay in touch and come back to the villa for visits. Elio, though, know that this will likely not happen. He travels back home and is so sad. :-( I must say that Elio has some super cool and wonderful parents! His dad sits him down and first makes sure he's not overstepping his bounds, but then proceeds to tell Elio that he suspects that Elio and Oliver had become much more than friends. He says that while most fathers would send their sons off somewhere to get them "fixed" of this behavior (this is the 1980's by the way)...that he would rather see his son feel everything he should be feeling, and be himself, and at the same time, feel the pain of this loss of his love. Better to feel it now than squash it away and then have nothing to give to the next relationship he may have. It's hard to describe the conversation, but his dad was truly just the best father! So, in the movie, six months go by and it's Christmas time and Oliver calls from America. They all get on the phone to talk to him and then Elio's parents say their goodbyes to let him talk with Oliver. Oliver says he hasn't forgotten a single moment, and Elio hasn't either. However, Oliver also tells Elio that he's engaged to be married to a girl he's dated on and off for two years. Elio takes it ok, and tells Oliver he's pretty sure his parents know about them and were fine with it. Oliver says, I wish my father would be so understanding...that he'd ship him off somewhere if he knew. The movie ends with Elio staring into the fire and crying. The book continues on! In the book, Oliver actually travels to Italy for Christmas, where they are all thrilled to see him. So, it is in person that he tells Elio he is engaged. They part ways a few days later and of course Elio is heartbroken, but so is Oliver. Nine years later, after Elio has attended college in the U.S., he decides to go and see Oliver at the college where he is lecturing. Oliver is still married and has two young sons. He's thrilled to see Elio and wants him to come and meet his family, but Elio doesn't think he could handle it. Oliver and Elio go for drinks and talk, and it's clear that neither of them has forgotten what they meant to each other, but this is just the way things must be. They again part ways. Then, Oliver comes back to the villa 20 years after he was first there. Elio's father has died and his mother isn't doing well. Oliver is still married with older boys now, lol. They decide to go and visit all their old haunts as Elio thinks to himself "please, call me by your name so I can call you by mine." sigh. It was a good book, but the story itself is very heartbreaking. These two have a real and true love, but they weren't able to spend their lives together.

Finished: Look For Me (Gardner) Another kind-of page-turner from one of my favorite mystery authors. The author brings back Detective D.D. Warren for a case where a mother, step-father, thirteen year old daughter and 9 year old son have all been killed in the home, while the sixteen year old daughter is missing, along with the family dogs. What ensues is a mystery of who killed the family and why. Could it have been the missing Roxanne Baez, who by all accounts is the smart, responsible one who was basically a mother to her brother and sister when her mother spent many alcoholic nights not being responsible? Roxy, though, adores her brother and sister and would never do anything to hurt them. Could it have been one of the other foster children from the home that Roxy and her sister, Lola, were put in for a year at the ages of eleven and eight when they were taken away from their mother; their mother who cleaned up her act, got sober, and got a steady job as a nurse...but not before both Roxy and Lola had been emotionally and sexually abused at the hands of an older foster boy, Roberto. Could it have been the female gang that young Lola is now a member of lashing out in retaliation for some gang related activity? Or, could it have been the girlfriend of the Roberto, seeking revenge for his apparent suicide, which she believes Roxy and Lola are responsible for years later? Also added into the mix is a character from another of the author's novels, Flora Dane. Flora was a kidnap and torture victim who had been found and rescued by D.D. Warren, but not before Flora herself had finally escaped her coffin cell and burned alive her over  year long tormentor. Flora now helps other victims of violence become whole again, not to mention self-sufficient in their own protection. She also runs a website chat room for victims which Roxy Baez has recently joined! So, between D. D. Warren's detective work and Flora Dane's street work, they finally figure out who had the motive to kill Roxy's family, and they also locate Roxy. A final show down with the major players reveals the killer in the end, and it is the one person who Roxy had ever been able to count on at the foster home and later in high school, her one friend, Mike. He was so worried that Lola's involvement in the gang would bring Roxy into a dangerous situation, or that her mother would fall off the wagon, or that her little brother would become so dependent on her that she'd give up everything for him, that he killed her entire family. hmmm. Anyway, so, the book itself was a pretty good page-turner, but not enough to keep me reading day and night until I finished. I don't know if I've just grown a little tired of these books or if this one just wasn't quite as up to snuff as Lisa Gardner's others. I'm still a huge fan of her books though. :-)

Finished: A Bell For Adano (Hersey) Pulitzer Prize winning novel about an American WWII major who is assigned the Italian town of Adano to oversee after the Allies take over the former fascist towns. Major Joppolo is a good and fair young officer. He starts with a town that is distrusting of town leadership, since their last mayor was a fascist who treated them all terribly. The town is starving, in need of water, and in very low morale. Former town leaders make their way to Joppolo within his first few days of being there and let him know that their biggest need is not food or water...but that Mussolini had taken their 700 year old bell from the city square bell tower and had it shipped to his military to be melted down and made into weapons. If they could only have their bell back, they would know freedom for certain and all be able to heal as a town. Major Joppolo promises to look into getting a new bell, but at the top of his list, he makes providing the town with food, water and the ability to start their businesses running again his top priorities. When the hard-core, blustering, unyielding General Marvin is trying to move through the town on Joppolo's first day there, he is held up by a man with a donkey cart in the middle of the road. The townsman has fallen asleep in his cart and the donkey will not move. Enraged, the general orders his men to dump the cart over into the ditch, with the man in it, and then to shoot the donkey in the head. Reluctantly, his men do so. He then stops in to see Joppolo and commands that it be put in writing that there shall be no more carts on the roads into or out of Adano. Period. Joppolo lets the townsfolk know about the edict, and he enforces it...for one day. When the people of the town come to him to let him know they are starving and without water unless the carts can come through, Joppolo tells the men under him to ignore the edict and directly go against the general's order. One man, who is afraid to do it, decides to write up a report and have it sent to the general. In several interspersed chapters that remind me much of the dark humor of Catch-22, various military men under the major purposely make mistakes and reroute the report or bury the report on various desks in order to keep Major Joppolo from getting into trouble with the general. This goes on until the end of the book, when finally the report accidentally ends up in the general's hands and he blows his lid. He calls for Joppolo to be on the very next transport out of Adano and to Algiers to be reassigned. (It is said that General Patton actually shot a mule that was blocking his way on a small Italian road, so maybe this general is representing him?) Anyway, before the reassignment ever comes at the end of the book Major Joppolo does wonders with the town. He sees to it that they are thriving with water and food, mostly by making sure that there is no one there to mess with free market prices like the old mayor did. He finally gets the town to trust him and realize that he will NOT be taking any cut of any money the people make. He gets permission from the Navy (since they are a port town) to let the fisherman go back into the water as long as they have maps and know where to stay away from possible mines. This truly makes the town thrive again with the fishing business underway. Joppolo also handles all the town disputes with fairness, hearing all sides. The people come to respect whatever punishment he doles out, which is usually nothing more than teaching a moral lesson. He also never keeps searching for how to get a bell back into the town. He approaches the Navy captain again, and tells him the tale of the bell, and then cleverly almost makes it seem like the captain's idea to look for a replacement for the bell. And, lo and behold, one of the Navy men just happens to know of an American destroyer that is captained by a fellow who he went to school with. When he reaches out to that captain, he gives up his ship's bell for the town of Adano. The town has come to love Major Joppolo so much, that they decide to have a portrait painted of him and throw him a party of thanks. When the bell arrives the morning of the party, Joppolo works feverishly to get the bell installed so he can surprise the town people that night. One piece is needed, though, that the Navy can't get until the next morning. At the party, Joppolo is touched by both his portrait and the people there who have come to love him. He also sees one of his officers drunk, and when he goes to help him out, he finds out the officer had intercepted the major's mail that morning and had in his pocket the order from the general reassigning Joppolo. Saddened, Joppolo keeps a happy face through the rest of the party, and then packs his belongings to leave the next morning. He doesn't want to leave the town, and mostly, he hopes that whoever replaces him will have the welfare of the townspeople in his heart. Too emotional to say goodbye to anyone, Joppolo hops in the jeep that has come to get him, and when they are a bit of the way out of town, he asks the driver to stop and listen. They hear a bell peeling at the 11:00 hour that the old city bell used to peel. Joppolo is at least happy to know that the bell has been installed and is ringing. This story is based on the true actions of a major in World War II who made sure that the small Italian town he'd been put in charge of got it's bell....and the bell did come from an American destroyer! This was such an uplifting story to me, and Major Joppolo was such a good man! Definitely glad I read this one! :-)

Finished: Shadow of Night (Harkness) The second book in the All Souls Trilogy (i.e., the sequel to A Discovery of Witches). A good continuation of the story of witch, Diana Bishop, and vampire, Matthew Clairmont, who fall in love in the first book and realize at the end of that book, they must travel far back in time to find the ancient manuscript (Ashmole 782) that supposedly holds the key to their origins. And, also while there, they must seek out a witch who can help unbind the spell Diana's mother put on her before she died to keep Diana from realizing her own witch powers, to keep her safe. So, in this second book, Diana and Matthew travel back in time to Elizabethan England. The book starts off a bit slow. (I must admit, these books are not a fast read for me at all...not page-turners, so it's taking me so long to read each one.) Anyway, they travel back in time where the Matthew de Clairmont of the 1500's hangs with the likes of true historical figures Walter Raleigh, Christopher Marlowe, Henry "Hotspur" Percy, and even Queen Elizabeth herself. We meet some new characters, like a vampire nephew of Matthew's, Gallowglass, who is loyal to both Matthew and Diana. Basically, the married couple continues to go through the trials of being married to another "kind". They also get pregnant, but lose the baby, but then get pregnant again by the end of the book. Diana does finally meet a powerful witch, Goody Alsop, who helps her discover that she's not only a witch who can time travel, but she's also a weaver, which is very rare, meaning she can weave spells that deal directly with life and death. Diana discovers her "familiar" is a firedrake. And, both Diana and Matthew see and interact with their fathers who are deceased in modern times. Matthew's father is a very powerful vampire, Philippe de Clairmont, and though he objects to her at first, he comes to respect and love Diana and adopts into his family officially (after throwing Diana and Matthew a legitimate wedding) so she will always have his protection. Diana's father, Stephen, had been killed when she was only seven, but he was also a time-traveler, so when they run into him in 1500's England, he realizes he's meeting his grown daughter, and they have some very poignant moments together. After Diana's binding spell is broken, and she learns how to come into her own power...and...after they finally get their hands on the Ashmole 872 to see what it's all about, Diana and Matthew realize they must go back to their modern time to be with the families they left behind and fight the battles that were begun there with the Congregation, who were dangerously opposed to the union of witch and vampire. At the end of the book, Diana and Matthew arrive back at Sept-Tours, the de Clairmont home in France, and are reunited with Matthew's mother Ysabeau, his son, Marcus, and Diana's aunt Sarah, along with the other friends and family who had gathered at the fortress in preparation for the coming war with the Congregation. Oh, and Diana is carrying twins. :-) I will definitely read the third book of the trilogy, but think I'll take a little break with some other books in between first!