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.