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. :-)