A Google search of Ethiopian women warriors turns up the little-known history of many strong African queens and women warriors throughout time. Mengiste states "The story of war has always been a masculine story, but this was not true for Ethiopia and it has never been that way in any form of struggle…" The Shadow King is a her fictionalized account of these female leaders in Ethiopia's fight against two Italian invasions and ultimate occupation of their homeland.

In 1896, "Ethiopia's military victory over Italy secured it the distinction of being the only African nation to resist European colonialism with a decisive show of force." To avoid a second defeat, in 1935 El Duce sent tanks, planes and mustard gas. The bloody invasion is considered the first real conflict of World War II. During both fights Ethiopian women were integral in both fighting and support roles.
War is a grizzly topic at best. The Shadow King is no exception. There are many dirty deeds perpetrated over the weak and innocent by the strong and powerful, received and given by both genders. Forced weddings, prisoners tortured, female spies, coercion and deception of the whole kingdom are just a few of the scenarios wrapped into the story. Mengiste's characters are undeniably human as even the evilest among them have moments of lucidity when they question their motives, actions and consequences making them and the story they tell unforgettable.

Mengiste has given us a more earthy and unrestrained view of the history of women in combat than any Google search can. Worth reading.

My interest in Sounds Like Titanic, by Jessica Hindman began as a fellow violinist's kinship but was quickly peaked by the no nonsense perspective with which she interprets her life journey. Hindman's memoir is written in second person where she is you instead of I, enabling the reader to feel a hint of responsibility for the narrative and its truths amidst the fakery.
What fakery you ask? During Hindman's college years she was forced to work as hard at paying for her education as she did getting it. So when the opportunity to play professionally, on tour even, presented itself she happily accepted. Who would have guessed that the music the ensemble played, to entice cd buyers, sounding very much like that of the soundtrack from Titanic, was actually emitted from a cd player attached to a large sound system. The smiling musicians essentially mimes with large smiles. Because the gig was better than selling her eggs for IVF, Hindman played on and on…
Realizing there wouldn't be a career in music, Hindman studies to be a Middle Eastern expert/journalist. Through study and travel she becomes fluent in the language and customs, yet can't secure a position in which she can help others understand the nuances of the Mid East. Her thoughts lead to how America became entwined in the current debacle. "For when your grandchildren ask you, "What were you doing when the snake was slithering toward them?" you have an answer for you saw them, thousands of Americans…listening to music….hypnotized soothed. Couldn't get enough of it. Bought twelve CDs at a time. Millions of albums. Music that sounded just like a movie about an entire society - rich on the top deck, poor on the bottom---headed for disaster."
Hindman's experiences and lessons learned dispel many of the philanthropic notions of the "fortunate" souls who grow up in rural America, are "granted" an Ivy League education and gratuitously launched as an adult into another level of American society. She sees much of what others do not. Or are they/we just not believing it?
This book is recommended for everyone but especially those who need a reality check on life's expectations.

John Jay Osborn states in the preface of Listen to the Marriage that his wife found "an amazing marriage counselor…" when their marriage was falling apart. Together they put the marriage back together. His novel is intended to help others save their marriages with counseling.

The book is set entirely in the counselor's office. Sandy, the shrink, narrates while Steve and Gretchen reveal their indiscretions, which of course includes sleeping with other people; multiple people on multiple occasions. Osborn's characters are selfish, childish and shallow and the story is so predictable. While it may have been a noble idea to want to enshrine talented marriage counselors, Osborn got buried in the couple's stale miseries instead. Perhaps non-fiction would have been a better vehicle convey how professional therapists use couch confessions to heal marriages.

A Muslim man immigrates to the United States, arranges a marriage, has a family and settles into life in California. Rafiq and Layla are very traditional parents fully embraced by their religion and way of life it demands. Their children, Hadia, Huma and Amar must feel their way into adulthood navigating the safe yet complex practice of their religion while testing the free will of American life. As can be expected it is a bumpy at times treacherous road.
Author Mirza's prose is littered with descriptive sentences that provide a vivid image but may or may not be germane to the action. Mirza also spends much time inside the head of her characters, switching people and time periods with little warning. These methods drag down an already slow moving novel to a snail's pace.
That being said there is a lot to like about A Place for Us. The dictates of the Muslim religion are detailed and enlightening. The all too common parental angst about raising children into successful adults are touching and heart felt. A Place for Us makes clear there is no one manual with all the answers to how to live life, regardless of religion.
Recommended for those who have the time to wade through what at times seems tedious melodrama to harvest some common ground between religions, parents and children.

"The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-19 was the deadliest disease in history...Fifty million people worldwide are estimated to have died from Spanish Flu." acknowledges author Susan Meissner. Her novel As Bright As Heaven chronicles the disease through one family's experiences. Pauline and Thomas are moving to Philadelphia to take over Uncle Fred's undertaking business. No longer do families care for the deceased in their own homes. Now they deliver the body to the undertaker, allow him to do all the preparation and funeral planning. What is thought to be a new beginning for them and their three daughters begins to unravel as friends and family begin to fall ill. The story unfolds slowly at first but each character is well known by the time the unraveling begins.
I found this book fascinating and difficult to put down. While we generally remember 1918-19 as the time period of the Great War, which also figures prominently in the novel, the Spanish Flu is usually a mere footnote to the time. This novel puts these events in grisly perspective with the intimate telling of one family's story and leaves one to wonder how others, possibly those close, were similarly impacted. Highly recommended to gain a most humbling respect for those who endured the era.

A naked young man is running against traffic on the Pacific Coast Highway, weaving through cars that have reluctantly stopped to avoid hitting him. Tony, a commuter, is uncontrollably compelled to chase him. In Wonder Valley, author Ivy Pochoda slowly unravels the tale that brought the young man to the freeway through Tony, Blake, Britt, Ren and James uncovering the chaos that is life for those unfortunates living in the underbelly of California.

Wonder Valley is the location of a farm where "lost kids pretend to find themselves in the middle of nowhere…" James, whose parents run the farm, has yet to find himself. Britt is running from secrets while Blake is seeking revenge in all the wrong places. Ren is looking for his mother and redemption for a mistake made when he was twelve.

The plot of Wonder Valley is really secondary to Pochoda's description of life on the streets of California. "…the sound of semis booming up Sixth and the slow roll of garbage trucks kicking up an even worse stench than what already hung in the air. The streets were up early, banging with the rattle and clatter of shopping carts being loaded and pushed away before the cops or the red shirts came." Tony, whose LA is "…palm tree lined streets and houses covered in bougainvillea" finds himself on Skid Row. "…what he should do is go home. Get a coffee on the way and maybe some hand sanitizer."

There is a lot to keep straight in this novel. At times it feels like speeding down the freeway trying to find an exit, any exit. But isn't that what California is all about? Recommended for those who seek a more intimate view of the not so beautiful people in the Golden State.

Whatever happened to Joan Ashby? Cherise Wolas's character Joan Ashby is an author who achieved the ultimate literary success at an early age. "Enthralling, riveting, often shocking, her stories are as undeniable as her talent." touts the opening review of Joan Ashby in the fictional Literature Magazine. Wolas then inserts a few of Joan's early stories as proof, a risky technique at best.

Interrupting the main story is at first tolerable then bothersome and later, as it was employed numerous times, absolutely off putting. Also tedious were detailed descriptions of mundane scenes that have little bearing on the story such as listing all possible genres in a book store or a two page depiction of boarding an airplane in which Joan worries "She should have flown first class. Business class at least." One wonders that Joan even knows about coach. Her early notoriety coupled with her husband's lucrative skill as an eye surgeon leave her wanting for little, except a return to her life pre husband and children.

While Joan Ashby is resurrected in this novel there is no redemption. Even after she finally makes her move to get back her life, she blames "…the steep price she paid" on "…a man who breached his promise about having no children; an unexpected child who made motherhood precious; and an expected child who destroyed years of her life…what she had tried desperately to prevent had happened anyway—the stirring and mixing and coalescing of motherhood and life and writing." Ashby is selfish and needy, not an endearing character and definitely not deserving of the end that Wolas pens. This book is only recommended for those who have the time to wade, mostly aimlessly, through 500 plus pages seeking some overall rational for this story and be disappointed.

"…nothing inhibited Mr. James as painfully as the need for conciseness…" laments his typewriter, 23 year old Frieda Wroth. In 1908 rural England, Frieda is employed by Mr. James to transform his dictation to written word by means of the new invention by Remington, typewriter referring to the person who uses the mechanism rather than the modern application of the word to define the machine itself. Frieda, being the person most qualified to comment on Mr. James penchant for wordiness due to the nature of her position.

Heyns, a South African English professor and James expert, has written a novel from the perspective of the typewriter, who Mr. James assumes to be a tool to make his writing task more efficient. Yet, the typewriter is privy to all comings and goings in the rustic abode and gets caught up in the trite intrigues that appear to have occupied Mr. James and his literary colleagues when not attending to their creative profession.

The best, though for some quite possibly the worst, aspect of The Typewriters Tale is the verbose nature of the prose. "These great cosmopolitan caravanserais combine in the most absorbing way in the world an air of cynical lawlessness and extreme fastidiousness; one feels they would countenance everything except one's being late for breakfast." is but one example. Heyns has considerable depth of knowledge about Henry James and utilizes it to craft a rather ordinary story. But his understanding of James artistic talent of molding the English language into feasts of words is coveted. This book is recommended for those who enjoy gorging on the language used to create the story as opposed to supping on the tale.

Victor Lodato begins his tale of eight year old Edgar and his mother Lucy with a recounting of Edgar's birth. "Size of a dinner roll…And so white, I thought you were a friggin' ghost." Lucy's son is albino and she's a young widow reeling from her husband Frank's apparent suicide. The two live with Florence, Edgar's paternal grandmother. Deeply religious, Florence provides a stability for Edgar and Lucy that is safe yet stifling, especially for Lucy who rebels by hooking up with anyone available. All three huddle under the cloud of Frank's mental illness and subsequent death. And when Florence passes away suddenly Edgar and Lucy are left to figure it all out on their own.
Lodato's characters have qualities and foibles that make the course of the story inevitable. Edgar is both innocent and wise yet angry and curious. Lucy, impetuous and deeply wounded by the loss of Frank can't shake her past. And Conrad, who may or may not be Frank in purgatory, tries to mend his broken heart by breaking those of others. Not all is dark however. Ron, the butcher, whose delivery truck sign reads "Let us MEAT your needs!" is fairly normal except for his choice of lovers. The dry goods store owners, Netty and Henry Schlip and the neighbor's mentally challenged daughter Toni Ann who is in love with Edgar, are in and out of the lives of Edgar and Lucy but provide a thin but strong glue that hold Edgar and Lucy together even as they appear to be bursting apart.
Reading Edgar and Lucy is a descriptive treat. A delicious example includes: "The little party of five was sitting in the dining room—a narrow, ill-lit rectangle with a faux-candle chandelier that offered the greater part of its light to the ceiling, while leaving the under-gatherers in a cloud of luminous neglect." However, early in the book Edgar thinks "Love is so exhausting." This quote precisely describes not only the plot but the feeling that one gets while navigating the five hundred plus pages that comprise the novel—exhausted. Recommended for those who have the time to appreciate an exhaustive yet very imaginative creation.

It's New Year's Eve, 1984 and Lillian Boxfish, 84, is walking to her dinner reservation while reminiscing about her life. Since the early 1920's she has lived and worked in the heart of New York City as both a copy editor and contemporary poet, remaining at the same address for the last fifty years. At the height of her career she was known not only for her witty poems, volumes of which were best sellers when people actually bought and read poetry but also as the most highly paid copy editor in advertising for R.H. Macy. Quite a feat for a woman of that time. As can be expected her fame and fortune came at great personal cost, especially considering the social norms and bias of the day. The story moves through the evening as the narrative weaves through Lillian's life. At most street corners there is a memory recalled. With every personal encounter Lillian reveals the tenacity that was honed when navigating the man's world in which she had excelled.
Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk is a novel based on the real life story of Margaret Fishback. Rooney has closely mirrored Fishback's life story, so much so that at time if feels like creative non-fiction. Boxfish/Fishback's life was interesting and consequential for women as a whole especially for those who followed in Fishback's footsteps. However, the assumption of familiarity of New York City geography and culture may be presumptuous for some.
I have a friend who frequently laments that she doesn't want to read stories that haunt her at night…I will recommend this book to her. While there is no murder or mayhem, there are lessons to be learned about women's rights or lack thereof and the stamina of women who created successful careers regardless. And Lillian is the master of the fine art of making a point while remaining civil and distinguished something we could all take note of today. Recommended for all who desired a story that won't haunt them once the bedside light is turned out.

It is present day America except for this: the Civil War did not happen and four states have legalized slavery. The main character is a quasi-freed black man living outside of the Hard Four states. Victor grew up on a plantation but escaped when he was a young teen. Although recaptured he is microchipped and has been trained to hunt down and capture fellow escapees. While he is bound to answer to his manager, Bridge he is not geographically enslaved, his life is not unbearable and he is proud of his accomplishments thus far. But things are starting to get complicated; he is beginning to reminisce about his past and question his present.
Winters alternative history thriller is just that—a tightly wound page turner that twists traditional standards into confused pretzels. The legal slave states, the Hard Four, provide the labor force that produce goods for the rest of the country, legally and covertly. This labor force is the oil of the Hard Four economies and along with the various private corporations, they protect and defend their status vehemently. Utilizing people like Victor to track down and recapture their chattel is one such defense. Inevitably the seeds of oppression produce corruption and revolution into which all are drawn.
Underground Airlines may require the reader to consent to the alternate history premise of the story: slavery of black people is legal and exists in four of the United States of America. The premise is a foundation upon which the story is built but the resulting consequences are more familiar to present day than we may want to acknowledge.
Underground Airlines is highly recommended. Winters prose is face paced and readable. The resulting wonder at what could have been takes a lot longer to digest, if at all.

Ava, recently divorced mother of two adult children is "desperate to fill her empty hours." A long awaited invitation to join her friend Cate's book club results in making a promise she has no idea how to she will keep. The author introduces additional baggage for Ava through her daughter Maggie, a young woman trying to write the great American novel by following Hemingway's footsteps through Paris yet only succeeding in copying his addictive and destructive ways. From tragic accidents, love affairs past and present, mysterious disappearances and slightly unbelievable circumstances Hood uses literary references radiating from the book club's selections to move her plot and characters.
Reading this novel felt like floating down a stream. There are rapids that deal with drugs, suicide and divorce amid ripples of memories and remorse. Hood has a gift of expertly inserting innuendo and intrigue peaking anticipation of either a falls or calm water. Yet at the end of the journey the fastidious tying up of all the loose ends felt almost too complete; unreal at times. While The Book that Matters Most is not America's greatest novel, there is a lot about those tomes to be learned within it. And reading it is not as great a chore as reading Moby Dick. Recommended as a fast enjoyable read for summer days or winter evenings.

Art. What is it? Why do it? Who cares? Using fiction in an attempt to answer these questions is commendable and daunting. Prentiss does a respectable job. At times her prose rambles but her believable characters carry themselves and the reader through some most unbelievable situations mostly unscathed.
James Bennett, an art critic of some repute, is hopelessly addicted to the sensual nature of his passion. His wife, Marge, loves James so much she gives up her passion to enable his eccentricities. Raul Engales, Argentinian/American, new to the 80's New York art culture striving the find his way while running from past demons. Lucy, naive 20 something, escaped Ketchum, Idaho "…pulled the trigger on the move…to what people called…The Big Apple—because of a book and a postcard, which she believed to be signs." Set in New York City among artists of all stripes. Mix in a horrific accident or two, love, jealousy, fame won and lost and a story vaguely reminiscent of Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch emerges.
Prentiss peppers her writing with sentences that require a second look making the plot almost secondary. Describing Raul as "… he had perhaps become old, in spirit at least, much earlier; when your parents die, so does the idea of infinite time on the planet. Instead, you are forced into becoming weirdly wise, gaining too soon the knowledge that life is both precious and perfectly meaningless, neither philosophy leaving much room for boredom." Lucy, months into her adventure muses: "…the men adored her and then disposed of her. With each of them she felt briefly and tightly tethered, hopeful that they would deliver her to that place that she craved: the deep dark cavern of love and lust, the place where longing stopped. But none of them did and in between her encounters with them, and usually even during, she felt deeply alone." And in a lighter vein, the description of a gallery owner working an opening. "Winona was like a sponge, wringing herself out onto someone and then moving on to soak in someone else."
Underneath it all is the question of why—why pursue a passion? For whom? Walter Pater has written that "…art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass." Tuesday Nights in 1980 merely attempts to chronicle the depth of energy and passion that enables art to grace our moments, successfully.
Highly recommended for lovers of art and contemporary literature and/or enjoy a story that demands an engaged reader.

"The seeds laid by any given karma were not entirely known, the outcomes could not be foretold with any accuracy and it was likely, in any event, that one would remain floating and turning within the circle of eternal suffering." Though this passage is found towards the end of Lawrence Osborne's "Hunters in the Dark" it captures the atmosphere of his intriguing story.
Robert, a thirty something, teacher of English literature "in a little provincial schoolroom" is spending his holiday in Cambodia. "The sweet bird of youth, in his case, had nowhere to perch and had not taken flight to begin with. His youth was a wingless dodo. One could go on and on and that bird would still not sing. You waited for life to begin and yet for some reason it did not begin. It hesitated while you wondered about the risks. You stood in the wing of your own play, afraid to walk onto the boards and begin."
Within the foggy, damp and steamy backdrop of Cambodia, author Osborne nudges Robert onto "…the boards…" and into what predictably becomes an intricate web of con, retribution and confusion. There are beautiful Khmer women, an American con man and the network of taxi drivers and hotel attendants who observe all. Osborne has written a story that is hard to put down as each obvious solution is derailed and the intrigue becomes more so. The author also expertly portrays the complicated relationship of the Anglo-Saxon and the people of Asia as not always as hospitable as may be perceived.
Likened to Graham Greene, Osborne uses excellent prose to weave an exciting story. His experience as an ex-pat in Asia gives the occasional rambles about the countryside and/or those who inhabit it an astute credibility. Recommended for all who enjoy a well written yet spellbinding tale.

Early twentieth century was not a welcome place for women on their own. Not having "a man" meant no protection from other men and the numerous dangers, either real or perceived that could be encountered. Constance and her two sisters were heading to town in their horse drawn buggy when they are unceremoniously hit by an automobile. Unfortunately the driver is a rich, unhinged ne'er do well who refuses to compensate them for the damage. And when provoked by Constance's insistence that he do so, he decides they are easy targets for he and his friends harassment. The story is based on newspaper accounts of real life happenings. Amy Stewart embellishes some but uses clippings about the actual incident and others from the time period in ingenious ways. While reading this gently paced account one has the feeling that the author is building a foundation for future adventures of Constance and her sisters. If as entertaining as Girl Waits With Gun they are sure to be a hit. Recommended for easy entertaining reading in any weather.

Everyone at some time or other has been too busy to take note of what needs immediate attention. Mind a million miles away until a tragic incident forces all focus on the present moment. A small family attempting to navigate the permanent consequences of distraction is the idea upon which James Sie's book is built. Still Life Las Vegas is about the slender thread upon which we balance ourselves and what happens when it is stretched, frayed and finally broken. Teenager Walter Stahl lives with his father, a former professor of Greek mythology, now spending his days abed in a drugged stupor. They have moved west looking for Walter's mother who ran away sometime "earlier." Against the plastic backdrop that is Las Vegas, including Liberace and the gondolas of the Venetian, Walter navigates toward adulthood searching for the Vietnamese woman that was his mother. Enroute, he learns more than he wants to know about his family's past and the world in general. Sie expertly creates believable characters in unbelievable yet plausible situations, especially considering the Las Vegas environment. The mixture of prose and graphic novel styles works mostly, especially in the beginning. Recommended for those who like their contemporary fiction thoughtful and a little bit crazy.

The Well might be a good story, if the plot was slightly more apparent. Halfway through the book there are still just a few dangling clues as to what happened in the past that has Rose locked up under house arrest while the world outside of her luscious, well watered farm is enduring a disastrous drought. Seems there was a murder, or not. Her daughter is a reformed, or not, addict now roaming around with a group of hippies. Her husband, a falsely accused pedophile, or not, seems to think the drought is someone else's problem. While some of the text reads well, too often it rambles down an alternate path. Too many story lines with not enough glue to make the book interesting enough to stay in The Well.

"Many people just assumed from listening to his confident tone that my uncle Poxl knew what he was talking about." Thus Daniel Torday begins to weave his story of an impressionable teen and the adventures of a good friend of his deceased grandfather who he calls uncle. Torday intersperses the narration of the nephew recounting his adventures with Uncle Poxl with the memoirs written by Poxl himself. While the core of the story deals with Poxl's relationships during the war, the war itself and the young nephew's perception of his uncle, the heart of the book explores the role of stories in the retelling of history, the meaning of love, and who are heroes and why. This may sound like a monumental undertaking but Torday handles it well. His prose is quick and pointed and the action moves fluidly. Yet in the midst of it all he writes a thought that requires rereading and contemplation. "…I do not know if a conversation like this is what it is to be in love—to disagree but to stay around and find out why, so it is no longer a disagreement. To do something so simple as to talk honestly, and then to listen. But I do know it's what it means to begin to know someone: confession, revelation, reconciliation." The Last Flight of Poxl West should probably be read twice, once to learn the story of a young man learning about the past while being taught life lessons and again for the truisms, fortunate and un, that are part of all of our histories. Recommended for those who understand that fiction isn't necessarily untrue.

The Same Sky is the story of two people trying to make sense of their lives in what appears to be a parallel universe. Alice and her husband are successful restaurant owners trying to reconcile their inability to have a child and the heart breaking ups and downs of failed attempts to adopt that have left them emotionally drained. Carla, a young Honduran, is longing for her mother to return from El Norte and help take care of her little brother. When it becomes too dangerous for them to stay in their home by the dump, Carla begins the journey to be reunited with her mother.
Alternating chapter by chapter Ward's depictions of both lives is captivating. Alice and her husband operate a successful BBQ restaurant in Austin yet the need to have a child is creating an emotional roller coaster for them both. Their attempts to adopt have been unsuccessful, the last one especially heart breaking. Enough so they unwittingly take on a foster child, again with fairly disastrous results. Though their relationship starts strong all the emotional upheaval around trying to become parents begins to take its toll.
In Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Carla's mother left her with her grandmother and headed north hoping to find a way to provide for the family from afar. When grandmother dies Carla is left to fend for herself and her little brother. Although she is fairly content in her home by the dump, she sees her little brother descend into another world as he sniffs glue to stave off hunger. Recognizing that no one she knows has returned from that world she decides to take him El Norte, find their mother and become a family again.
The Same Sky's plot is reminiscent of T.C. Boyle's Tortilla Curtain. I found Ward's prose succinct and easily read. The short chapters, alternating voices and stories kept the pace rapid. Ward waits until the last few pages to reveal her intent, which made reading that much more enjoyable. The Same Sky is a reminder that however we are different in circumstances and environment we are all under the "same sky". Highly recommended, especially for Book Clubs.