Seldom have I read a book that I find a waste of time. I usually read at least a fourth of a book, maybe a third, before setting it aside. In this case, I was curious enough to plow through it, wondering how it would end, even though I was tempted to read the last chapter. My chief complaint was out of the three main characters, two were unlikeable. If you add the mother as a main character, it would be three characters. Add to that, the fact that the book was depressing - the setting, the mood, the dialogue. I realize that death is a sobering subject, but that doesn't mean the characters, especially the main ones, should cause eye-rolling. Many of Finn's actions and choices were questionable at best and weird at worst. At some point, I will read Scrivenor's other book, Dirt Creek, for which she won an award. I have no complaint with her writing. This just wasn't the book for me.

Starting the book, I was a bit unsure if it would fall into my "unfinished" pile. But Anderson's plot development kept me going. I am glad I did. Being from Missouri and familiar with the setting, I found myself completely invested in Daisy, Violet, and Rose. With a town named "Possum Flats" and a 50-year-old tragedy taking the lives lives of so many young people, I realized I had to follow Daisy's path to finding out the secret that the older population was keeping.
Anderson's development of Daisy's relationship with her grandmother was a joy to explore. Daisy hates that her mother "dumped" on her Rose and is determined to make the best of a bad situation. When Fence, the editor of the local newspaper hires her, she finds an article on the explosion, she sees her chance to make her mark by writing a series of articles.
Unfortunately, the townspeople who remember do not want to share their memories with her, but she wears down many of them who find her "hippy" attire (this was the 70's after all) a bit strange.
She writes letters to her mother every few days, and they all go unanswered. But Daisy just believes her mother has not found a place for them to live yet and hopes that she has dumped the latest in a long line of loser boyfriends.
In the meantime, she finds a friend in Joe, the town jock whose grandfather, Dash, is the local preacher of the fire and brimstone ilk who is trying to escape his memories of that fateful night.
However, one of her articles starts a chain of events that sets the town on its ear and causes Daisy to lose her job at the paper. And that is just the first link in a chain of events that will, eventually, answer the questions of the Lamb's Dance Hall explosion.

For those of you who haven’t experienced pregnancy, try to keep in mind that this is fiction…we hope!
Danielle Valentine has penned a RIVETING story of one woman’s journey through pregnancy. Millions of women give birth. Some were happy, some not.
Actress Anna Alcott wants a child more than anything. Even though she is successful – so much so she is up for an Academy Award.
She and her husband, Dex, have been trying for years, and Anna is 36. She feels the time is running out, so they decide to in-vitro fertilization.
Having known a few women who have undergone this procedure, and they have described it as “uncomfortable” at best, what Anna goes through certainly ranks as more than “uncomfortable.”
Afterward, things really start going awry. She forgets appointments, then someone breaks into their apartment.
She and Dex are overjoyed when she finally finds out that the IVF has been successful. But, instead of the blissful pregnancy women see on television and in movies, along with the kindly obstetrician, Anna’s experience begins to take on the form of a nightmare.
So much so that Anna begins to wonder if someone, somehow, is interfering with her body – does someone not want her to have this baby?
Enduring pain in prenatal yoga classes adds to Anna’s fear, and she questions everything going on in her body.
Not wanting to stay in their apartment after the break-in, Anna accepts her friend’s offer to stay in her beach home on the coast.
Then she has a miscarriage – or so she thought, as did her doctors. However, she later finds out she did not lose her baby. By this time, she is suspicious of her doctors and everything happening to her body.
While her husband tries to be supportive, he obviously thinks she is overreacting to all that is happening to her.
Anna is a woman who is always in control. She set her goals high in her acting career and met them. Now, she is not in control, and not knowing what is “normal” and what isn’t regarding her body changes, and food cravings, she views everything as a threat to the baby (?) growing inside her.
“A real page-turner” is a cliché we’ve seen hundreds of times. Still, Danielle’s novel will keep readers up at night, desperate to see the conclusion of Anna’s pregnancy journey.
But more than another novel about pregnancy, Danielle hits on a theme that many women have thought about and probably have not voiced. “Why won’t anyone listen to me? Why won’t my doctor, husband, or friends who’ve had a blissful pregnancy take me seriously?”
The United States, for all its ballyhooed healthcare system, has one of the highest pregnancy mortality rates in the world. Why is that? Are we, as women, supposed to line up to our obstetrician like the lame going to Lourdes and not question what is happening in our bodies if we feel something could be wrong?
I, like thousands of other women, had a normal pregnancy. But I feel I was lucky. I know women who have had miscarriages, including my daughter and myself. I’ve known women who had IVF, and while they mentioned how difficult it was, I had no idea.
I believe Danielle’s book will prompt women with any questions or worries about what is going on with their bodies to insist that their doctors LISTEN to them or find one that will.
In the meantime, immerse yourselves in this fantastic book!

While most of us are familiar with WW2 such as how it started, Hitler's insane racism and anti-Semitic views, Omaha Beach, and the bombing of Hiroshima. However, I for one had no idea a plot to assassinate Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin at their first "Big Three" conference was hatched and thwarted. Author Brad Meltzer has done an excellent job of researching this event and addressing the questions of how the Soviets found out about it and squashed it - or did they? Many questions remain, but I found this book riveting from beginning to end.

Anyone wanting a primer on how the wandering homeless manage to conduct their lives will certainly become educated reading "The Sunset Route." I admit I got rather bored at first, thinking it was another "poor me" book. What kept me going, however, was Carrot's unique writing style. I felt like she just started writing and telling her story without going back and doing endless edits and rewrites Her "free writing" style kept me engaged. I felt like she was sitting across a table from me, and telling her story. The further I got into her book, the more I crawled into her mind.

Raised by a schizophrenic mother, Barbara, who thought she was the reincarnation of the Virgin Mary, Carrot never knew, from day to day, if she would eat. She attended school, which made me wonder why her teachers seemed to be unaware of her circumstances. Adopted by her strict catholic grandparents when she was 14, Carrot left that home when she was 17. She starts her odyssey across the country, first by hitchhiking, then graduating (if you can call it that) to trains. I did not realize that people still hopped trains and this huge segment of society prefers this way of life. They scour dumpsters for discarded food that they resurrect for meals, and clothing deemed unwearable for anyone but their new owners. They live in punk houses or sleep under the stars, depending on their whereabouts and circumstances at the time.

Carrot is incredibly self-sufficient, and the more I read, the more impressed I was with her survival skills. She finds jobs to give her enough money for a few months, then she is off again, sometimes with a new friend, sometimes alone. The one constant is her love for her mother, even though Barbara was incapable of love. Carrot wonders where she is, if she's alive, and if so, what should Carrot do?

Underneath her bravado is the knowledge that her mother had not loved her enough to take care of her. Her traumatic childhood left its mark, and reading Carrot's memoir with her childhood memories is painful, especially realizing that there are many people like Carrot who travel the country, healing themselves.

I finally realized that she liked her way of life. She did what she wanted to do, with someone or not, whenever she wanted, and going wherever she wanted. From the frigid Alaska landscape through forests, mountains, and deserts, Carrot learns about herself, her limitations (few) and capabilities (many).

If you could only speak 100 words a day, how would you decide when and where to use them?

That is the all-too-realistic future where Christina Dalcher has set her debut novel, “Vox.” The election of a conservative president and his psychotic religious advisor causes all women to lose their jobs, “cleave unto their husbands,” and speak no more than 100 words a day. Women and girls are fitted with counters, or “bracelets,” which administer a paralyzing shock if the wearer goes over 100 words.

Dr. Jean McClellan is a cognitive linguist who spent her college days immersed in getting her degree, rather than being politically active. Now, she is regretting that choice, and she fears for her six-year old daughter, Sonia, who is growing up where choosing your words carefully is a normal way of life.
When the president’s brother suffers an accident that involves his brain, she is called upon to help by completing a treatment she had started before the “Pure Movement” came into office.
By doing this, her counter will be removed for the time it takes for her to complete the treatment.
McClellan agrees to help if she can have her original team on board, which includes her former lover, Lorenzo.

How she decides to upend the status quo makes for an exciting read, even if the ending is a bit over-the-top, I thought. “Vox” reads like a thriller and kept me turning pages long after my normal “lights out” time. Each chapter ended like a cliff hanger.

Dalcher has written a book that will, no doubt, draw comparisons with Margaret Atwood’s, “A Handmaid’s Tale,” the difference being is that the possibility seems more real in these times.

If you have ever wondered what America might look like for those immigrating from India, then Leah Franqui's debut novel, "America For Beginners," will provide some insight, good and no-so-much.

After her abusive husband's death, wealthy Indian widow Pival Sengupta decides to come to America and find her son, Rahi, not knowing if he is dead or alive.

Rahi had come to America after his father threw him out of the house when Rahi told him he was gay, then the father received a telephone call from a man telling him Rahi had died, but Pival refuses to accept the news.

She leaves her cloistered existence and books a trip with the First Class India AAA Destination Vacation Tour Company, a haphazard company run by Ronnie Munshi, himself an immigrant wanting a piece of the American dream.
He hires a guide and a "companion for modesty's sake" for Pival. Neither of these hires has the slightest idea of what their duties will entail.

Pival's guide, Satya, has been in America one year and knows nothing of life outside of the five boroughs of New York.
Satya's best friend who came with him has disappeared after Satya took a job that his friend wanted. Now he feels guilty and spends hours trying to find him.

The "companion" is Rebecca Elliott, a young aspiring actress who has more one-night stands than acting parts. She needs the money and figures a two-week working vacation is the answer. "How hard could it be?" she thinks.

Unbeknownst to the group, Pival's trip is not for sightseeing, but to travel to Los Angeles to find Rahi, and, failing that, she will commit suicide.

Satya's attempts to act like he knows what he's doing promotes eye-rolling from Rebecca who tries to explain what they are seeing, even though she herself is not an expert.

Munshi has planned a rigid trip for each stop, right down to the Comfort Inns and Indian restaurants which cannot compare to the food Pival had at home, and her distaste is obvious.

Readers follow the travelers from New York (which Pival describes as "being inside a fireworks display") to Niagara Falls, to Philadelphia, to Washington DC where they have an impromptu, and disastrous, dinner with Rebecca's parents.

Pival imagines Rahi traveling to these same places and wonders what he found so enticing about this country. She grapples with his homosexuality, and thinks, "Perhaps he really was dead or perhaps he would be there in the end, waiting for her, and he would leave the strange man who had enslaved him with desire and run away with her."

The three unlikely travelers slowly form a bond, almost without realizing it, and begin to learn more about themselves.

Franqui interweaves Rahi's story and how he falls in love with Jake, a less than perfect relationship because Rahi never fully accepts or understands his being gay.

The book is a perfect balance of description and narrative which, I believe, kept the plot moving along at a good pace in telling the story of the characters coming to know each other and opening their hearts to recognize the sorrows, joys, and fallibilities that people all over the world experience.

I look forward to reading more books by this author.

I can only describe Dawn Davies debut novel, "Mothers of Sparta: A Memoir in Pieces," as a book that I will return to again and again, if only to make sure that I absorbed it all.

The book is a series of essays, many of which have won awards.

Although the book does start at her early life, and moves into her first marriage and pregnancies, after that it does not follow any chronological order, and can be hard to follow, at times, but in realizing that the chapters are essays, it does make sense.

The book is not written in chronological order, and can be hard to follow, at times, but in realizing that the chapters are essays, and tackle a particular subject or time of her life, it begins to make sense.

Fans of Nora Ephron and Anne LaMott might recognize some of their traits in Davies' writing.

At times funny, at times heartbreaking, and at times brutal, Davies pulls no punches in her telling of her life.

The tagline on the back cover says it all – "Some women are born mothers. Some achieve motherhood. Others have motherhood thrust upon them."

Davies was that last mother.

Born into a family that moved a lot, Davies learned after a while not to get too close to her classmates because she knew that, in a few months, the family would be off again.

Being taller than any other girl in her class, she was also bullied at times, and this also played a part in the shell she built around herself.

As a teenager, she threw herself into the music world and the essay, "Two Views of A Secret" describes this love in the most unusual words I have read. When I finished the chapter, I thought, as a lover of music, "That is so true."

Although her first marriage produced three children, and she suffered with postpartum depression with each one, her husband was more involved in his work than his wife, and then, the "other woman."

She takes her children and returns to her last home state – Florida, which she never liked in the first place.

Each essay tackles a period of her life, and while some are written with a good dose of humor, one can sense the sadness lurking in the background.

Near the end of the book, she moves into the most heart-wrenching part – the trials with her son diagnosed as an autistic sociopath.

In her essay, "Mothers of Sparta," she explores the history of these mothers and what she experiences with her son. To read about her pain in raising this son, and knowing that there is no end to this road for her brought me an absolute admiration for what she goes through day after day.

Plus, I now have a deeper understanding of what parents of children with debilitating disabilities have to endure, knowing it will not get any better for the child, and the only thing they can offer is unconditional and undying love.

I hope Davies writes another book, because I would like to know how she is doing. Her writing dug into my soul, and I found myself re-reading each chapter, finding something new each time.

This book is one that will stay on my bedside table.

Once again, Anita Shreve, one of my favorite authors, has penned a novel that snares the reader's interest from the first sentence.
It is the summer of 1947 and Maine is suffering through an unbearable drought. The spring rains have long since dried up and the sun parches the state. Even the coastal towns have no relief save the slight ocean breezes.
Grace Holland is 24 with two children under the age of two, and is suffering through a drought of her own in her marriage.
She married Gene, thinking life would be wonderful. It hasn't turned out that way. She performs her wifely duties of washing, ironing, and cooking, but the occasional "nightly duties" are unsatisfying, nothing like her vivacious friend and neighbor, Rosie, describes in her relationship with her husband Tim.
After one "nightly duty," Grace finds herself pregnant, and realizes she is truly trapped.
Then, the unthinkable happens. A fire starts miles from town, and all the men, including Rick and Tim leave to build fire breaks.
Word comes that the fire is spreading, and Grace waits for Gene to come for them, but he never does.
The fire overtakes the town. Grace and her children along with Rosie and her children run to the sea, thinking that is their only salvation, and cover themselves with soaked blankets.
When rescuers finally find them, Grace is deathly ill, but she has saved her children. When she finally regains consciousness, Gene is still missing, their house is gone with all their possessions, and her baby is stillborn.
Tim comes back to Rosie, but does not know what happened to Gene. They leave the destroyed town and travel to Nova Scotia to be with her parents.
Penniless, with two children and her mother, Grace goes to the only place she knows for shelter – her deceased mother-in-law's coastal mansion which, she assumes, is now Gene's since his mother died.
But it is not unoccupied. Walking into the house, she hears a beautiful melody being played on the piano.
Aiden, an Irish pianist, his tour cut short by the fire, has been living in the deserted mansion until he finds another job.
With Aiden, Grace finally finds the joy that had been missing in her life, but when he finds a job, he leaves, promising to see her again.
By this time, Grace has gotten a job she likes, a car, and is discovering all the freedoms she had never known.
Then, her life is turned upside down again, and she has to summon all the strengths that she has learned through her previous experience to cope with this unexpected turn of events.
Shreve has written a novel of love, loss, and triumph in the face of a force that threatens to tear away all that Grace has gained.
She gets inside Grace's head to the point where readers can identify with her struggles, her fear, and her triumphs.
I found it to be a quick read, because I couldn't put it down.

“Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to.”

So said famous author Henry James and his typist, Frieda Wroth, fervently wants to heed his maxim.

“The Typewriter’s Tale” by Michiel Heyns tells the story of Wroth, a young girl who does not know what to do with her life. Her mother of modest means had died and while Wroth was not penniless, she had few options, save a stodgy suitor whose offerings were equally modest.

She enrolls in the Young Ladies’ Academy of Typewriting, and after graduating, she goes to work for James as his typewriter or, “amanuensis,” as James refers to her.

While she admires him, she cannot help but feel marginalized, caught between the valued servants and literary guests that frequently visit.

When James is not dictating, Wroth works on what she hopes to be a novel someday, using James as her unknown mentor.

When the dashing American expat Morton Fullerton comes to visit, she becomes drawn into an intrigue that, while she knows cannot possibly end well, she nonetheless agrees to his request.

After a short dalliance with Fullerton in Paris where she agrees to find some, what he believes to be, compromising letters, he wrote to James.

Finding the letters is no easy feat with the comings and goings of literary figures such as the flamboyant Edith Wharton who immediately distrusts Wroth.

Wroth does not see Fullerton again for over a year, during which she found she could communicate with him through her typewriter, sending him her thoughts and receiving his which flowed through her fingers to the keys.

Being young and naïve, Wroth has more invested in this relationship, while the worldlier Fullerton knows this and wants to use her investment to his advantage.

While the novel is slow paced, Heyns conveys Wroth’s thoughts as she ponders her possibilities in a way that holds interest.

Not paying close attention, readers might miss the touches of a dry sense of humor that Heyns instills every so often, relieving the heavy, somewhat embellished, wording.

Heyns has blended fact with fiction and those interested in Henry James will find it a worthy read.

In “News of the World,” Paulette Jiles, author of “Enemy Women,” has written a story of courage, compassion, and dedication.

In the sparsely-populated Texas plains, news is hard to come by, so Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, an elderly widow who has fought in two wars, travels from town to town reading from newspapers to audiences interested in what is happening in the world such as the Irish immigration, erupting volcanoes, and the westward progress of the railroad.

He is happy with his solitary life. Then, in Wichita Falls, he is offered a $50 gold piece to deliver an orphaned 10-year old girl, Johanna, to her relatives in San Antonio. Joanna was taken four years earlier by the Kiowas who murdered her parents and sister. Rescued by the U.S. Army, Johanna has little memory of her life before her capture, and has completely assimilated the Kiowa life.

Kidd and Johanna set out on the hazardous 400-mile journey, not understanding each others language. Feeling that she has lost the only family she ever knew, Johanna attempts to escape several times, throws away her shoes, eats with her hands, and even steals a chicken from a friendly soul who gives them a place to camp for the night.

At each town along the way, when they stop for the night, Kidd finds someone to watch Johanna while he gives a reading to the interested townspeople. He still needs the dime-a-head admission, and readers will find out later in the book just how handy those dimes turn out to be.

As they travel, they begin to understand each others language, and Kidd tries to teach her table manners and the proper way to eat. Johanna starts calling him “Kep-dun,” then, one day, she calls him “Kontah,” the Kiowa word for “grandfather.”

“The Captain never did understand what had caused such a total change in a little girl from a German household and adopted into a Kiowa one. In a mere four years, she completely forgot her alphabet. She forgot how to use a knife and a fork and how to sing in European scales. And once she was returned to her own people, nothing came back,” Jiles writes.

They forge a bond on their journey as they face Comanche raids, bandits, and bad weather, while Kidd tries to prepare her for her German aunt and uncle.

The closer they draw to San Antonio, the more Kidd worries. Johanna was yanked from one family, then from her second one that she recognized as her true family. Now, becoming familiar with Kidd, she is about to undergo a third separation for, once again, an entirely different existence.

Jiles writes "She felt the arrival of something chilling, something wrong. Something lonely. He was the only person she had left in the world and the only human being she now knew. He was strong and wise and they had fought together at the springs. She ate with a fork now and wore the horrible dresses without complaint. What had she done wrong?"

Jiles captures the feel of the Texas landscape, from the plains of north Texas to the Hill Country to the desert of San Antonio. Moreover, she writes a beautiful story of courage, acceptance, and love.

When I first started "The Dark Lady's Mask," I had some mixed feelings about how this book would go. I liked author Mary Sharratt's descriptions of life in 17th century England and Italy, and Queen Elizabeth's court.

Then, the writing seemed to get a little melodramatic, especially when Aemilia Bassano kept referring to Lord Hunsdon as "my love."

By then, however, I was caught up in Aemilia's story and I started overlooking some of the, what I thought, overly dramatic prose.

Sharratt has written a compelling story about a little known Renaissance woman who may or may not have been William Shakespeare's muse or "Dark Lady."

Born the illegitimate child of Battista Bassano, an exiled Jew from Venice who was a musician in in Queen Elizabeth's Court, Aemilia would listen to her father and brothers play music in the basement when they would visit.

While the family was far from well-to-do, Bassano made an adequate living and loved his family dearly, especially Aemilia.

She dreamed of being a poet like her neighbor, Anne Locke, who spent much time with 8-year old Aemilia, reading to her and encouraging her to be educated and continue her musical abilities on the virginals and lute.

Life begins to change when Aemilia's sister marries a cad who goes through what money the Bassano's have, and when Baptiste dies, Aemilia goes with Anne to live with Locke's family at their elegant country home, Grimsthorpe.

There, under Anne's tutelage, Aemelia becomes a well-educated young woman, but her idyllic life comes to an abrupt end, and she becomes the mistress of Lord Hunsdon, Queen Elizabeth's cousin....

[Edited for potential plot spoilers]

I read the story of the real Aemilia Bassano Lanier, and was impressed by how Sharratt weaved the fiction and non-fiction together, although one could see how Aemilia was, indeed, Shakespeare's "Dark Lady."

The term "Dark" was a term used to describe anyone with dark features, usually of Moorish/Italian descent. Aemilia's black hair and dark eyes caused many to look at her as "black."

One could say that Sharratt's Aemilia did "suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," in her life.

When I closed this book after finishing it, I felt like I had been privy to both a heartwarming and heartbreaking story. When starting a book about Alzheimer's Disease, one knows that it will not end well. It's about the journey and how the patient's family copes with their loved one losing his or her grip on reality. This book is no different except that the patient is a 38-year old woman, Anna, who receives the diagnosis. The other main character Eve has suffered a traumatic life-changing experience that leaves her and her daughter, Clementine, trying to find their way.They all intersect and Sally Hepworth has written a novel that takes readers through emotional highs and lows. I don't know how she got inside Anna's head and managed to tell her story from her point of view. Her descriptions of Anna's thought processes as the disease takes more and more of her mind make for fascinating reading. Hepworth draws in her readers so it's impossible not to become emotionally invested in the story. I have heard that Reese Witherspoon has bought the movie rights to this book, and I will be first in line to see how she tackles this subject.

Mimi Baird was six years old when her father was taken away to a mental institution. She never knew why. Her mother dismissed his absence with a wave of her hand, saying "He's away."
Dr. Percy Baird, a rising star in the medical field in the 1920s and 1930s was researching the biochemical root of manic depression, just as he was beginning to suffer from it himself.
He had discovered that the blood of manic patients differed from healthy subjects, and had published a paper on his findings.
Unfortunately, his condition worsened and in 1944, he was committed to the first in a series of hospitalizations where he was subjected to inhumane treatments such as electroshock therapy, ice baths, beatings, and being wrapped in a straitjacket for long periods of time – the recommended methods for those days.
During this time, he wrote constantly. This is what makes this book so fascinating. Readers can track his journey from his lucid moments to his manic episodes.
"I pray to God that in the future I shall be able to remember that once one has crossed the line from the normal walks of life into a psychopathic hospital, one is separated from friends and relatives by walls thicker than stone; walls of prejudice and superstition," he writes during a time when he was thinking clearly.
Later he writes "Another morning came. I detected an odor of exhaust gas coming through the window as I lay there in my straightjacket(sic). I surmised that everyone in New England except us had been killed by gas released by the Japs."
Ultimately, his medical license was revoked, his wife divorced him, most of his friends deserted him, and he was left to a life devoid of any meaning, save his own thoughts.
During this time, he was released, committed, released, and recommitted to different mental hospitals. In December, 1949 he underwent a lobotomy and died in 1959 of a seizure. His research unfinished and his accomplishments unrecognized.
His daughter, however, had not forgotten him. Through all the years of his absence, she continued to ask her mother, his friends, and colleagues about her father. After his death, through a series of coincidences, she ran across the papers he had written on onion skin paper throughout the years, and resolved to write a book about him.
She found that he had completed a first draft of his article 'Biochemical Component of the Manic-Depression Psychosis,'" which was published in 1944 in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease,'
However, with most of his peers overseas in World War 11, there was no one to promote his article, and, as Baird write, "My father had run out of time – the race to cure himself was lost."
The first part of the book consists of Dr. Baird's observations of his condition and experiences along with some clinical notes from the institutions in which he was hospitalized.
Mimi Baird tells her story in the second half of the book. How, through the years, she had wondered about her father, but was unable to get any answers from her mother, only that he was "ill."
After his death in 1959, she was determined to find out her father's story. She began visiting her parents' friends, asking questions about him.
One woman said to her, "Your father, he couldn't help himself. You know, Mimi, he wanted the moon."
She finally tracks down a manuscript, written in pencil in her father's hand, detailing his illness and barbaric treatment.
With this manuscript along with his medical records, she writes a compelling story of a father she never knew, who was on the brink of discovering a way to treat his condition. Unfortunately, as she said, he "ran out of time."

Those looking for a legitimate page turner need to look no further than "Descent," a novel with a "ripped from the headlines" feel.

The Courtland family goes to the Colorado Rockies for a vacation. One morning, their daughter, Caitlin, takes her younger brother Sean and goes for a run in the mountains. She does not return and Sean is found seriously injured, unable to give any details.
A fruitless search follows. Parents Grant and Angela stay for months while the police follow up. Finally, Angela and Sean return to their Wisconsin home while Grant stays behind, unable to leave.
Johnston tells the story of a family torn apart by tragedy in unflinching, microscopic detail.
Sean has surgery to put his leg back together, but carries the scars inside him from not being able to help his sister.

Living with her sister, Grace, Angela tries to piece her life back together, but not only does she grieve for her lost daughter, the memories of when her twin, Faith, drowned come back to compound her grief.
Grant finds a job on a ranch not far from where Caitlin disappeared, and he battles his own demons of unfaithfulness. He and Angela were trying to put their marriage back on track. Now, instead of bringing them closer, Caitlin's disappearance has pulled them apart.
Sean leaves Wisconsin and heads west, picking up jobs here and there, and winds up with his father.

Johnston does a masterful job of character development, even those who might not seem relevant at the time, but play a part, no matter how small, in the storyline. He has studied family dynamics, and more than giving readers a description of their lives and emotions, he makes them live them.
This book held my attention from the first page, and I'm hoping it is made into a film. It would be great!

I love books about food, and the title "Soy Sauce For Beginners," intrigued me. Maybe it wasn't as grandiose as "Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously" or "Chocolat," but tempting nonetheless. I wasn't disappointed.

Gretchen Lin, a graduate student in San Francisco, is in the midst of an unraveling marriage and decides to return to her home in Singapore where her family owns an artisanal soy sauce company. I never knew there were artisanal soy sauces, so that, in itself, piqued my interest.

On her return, she is drawn into a power struggle between her father, her Uncle Robert, and his son, Cal, concerning the company, and she finds that her mother has gotten a full-blown drinking problem so bad that she is on dialysis.

While she is trying to process all of this turmoil, her best friend, Frankie, from San Francisco arrives, loving Singapore and wanting to live there. Gretchen gets her a job at Lin's Soy Sauce, and Frankie gets drawn into the drama surrounding the company. This begins to cause a rift in their friendship.

Add to that the fact that Gretchen gets involved with the son of a client, and it doesn't take too long to get completely immersed in this book.
Gretchen finds herself torn between her parents. Cal had previously made a disastrous business decision which caused Gretchen's father and his brother, Robert, to banish him from the company. Now, with some clients willing to pay for a soy sauce of lesser quality, her uncle has invited him back to the company, while Gretchen's father refuses. He wants Gretchen to take the lead.

Gretchen's mother, however, wants her to return to her studies in San Francisco and make her own life. Then there's the issue of her separation from her husband that she needs to solve.

Chen keeps the action at a steady pace with well-placed dialogue and setting, making it hard to put down, even for sleep.

Plus, one finds out a lot about the nuances of soy sauce. She describes how Gretchen's grandfather, Ahkong, developed the delicate sauce and aged it in clay pots, making it the premier sauce of Singapore and beyond. The conflict begins when Uncle Robert on Cal's suggestion, wants to short cut the process making a less palatable product for more profit.

My only problem with the book was that Chen made Gretchen seem a bit selfish or shallow at times. Even though one could empathize with her problems, she could come off as less than likeable. Chen does, however, capture the personalities of all the characters and their interactions.

Added to great story telling, I learned all sorts of things about soy sauce that will make me more judicious in selecting the proper sauce for my next recipe. Who knew?

Hard to Put This Book Down!

William Eng's last memory of his mother was seeing her taken from their apartment after he found her unconscious in the bathtub. He was five years old, and was spirited away to Sacred Heart Orphanage where now, at the age of 12, he has never given up hope of finding her.
Set in Seattle, WA during the depression years, "Songs of Willow Frost" by Jamie Ford, tells the poignant story of 12-year old William Eng, a Chinese-American boy whose last memory of his mother was when he was five years old and found her semi-conscious in their bathtub. She was taken to the hospital and he was spirited away to Sacred Heart Orphanage where he has never given up hope of finding her again.
On an outing to a movie theater, Eng believes that moment has occurred when he sees the woman he believes to be his mother singing on the screen. Her name had been Liu Song. Now, she is Willow Frost.
He sees where she will be performing live and decides to run away from the orphanage and go to her. His friend, Charlotte, a blind girl at the orphanage, wants to go with him, and together, they sneak out and make their way to downtown Seattle, teeming with unrest because of the depression.
Ford weaves Liu Song's back story into William's present day life with vivid descriptions of Chinatown and Chinese traditions.
With the first sentence, "William Eng woke to the sound of a snapping leather belt and the shrieking of rusty springs that supported the threadbare mattress of his army surplus bed," he draws readers in and never lets them down.
The theme of a parent separated from his or her son or daughter could easily become maudlin, but Ford never lets this happen. He strikes the right balance, while never tipping his hand as to how their story ends.

"Hard to put down" is an over-used term, I believe, but in the case of "Walk Me Home," I would have to use just those words. Author Catherine Ryan Hyde wrote "Pay It Forward" so it should come as no surprise that her newest book would deliver. 16-year old Carly and her 11-year old sister leave their home in the dark of night under circumstances not fully divulged until halfway through the book. They are walking from New Mexico to California to find their Mom's ex-boyfriend, Teddy, who Carly believes will take them in. In Arizona, they are caught trying to steal chickens from an old Native American woman, and the story really takes an interesting turn.
A typical stubborn teenager, Carly can easily exasperate readers until they realize her motives, however misplaced. Jen is content to follow Carly to a point, and when that point is reached, Hyde leads readers down a path that makes one wonder how this can have a good outcome. This book is well worth the time spent.

History buffs will thoroughly enjoy "The Hour of Peril," a little known story about a foiled assassination plot on Abraham Lincoln as he traveled by train from Springfield, IL to Washington, DC for his inauguration. Author Daniel Stashower starts with how Allen Pinkerton formed his famous detective agency, then moves to how he uncovers the plot that could destroy the Republic, should it succeed. He has done a masterful job of narrating and building suspense, even though we know the outcome. My only complaint was the number of characters – I found myself having to go back several times to find out who was who. That aside, Stashower moves the story along, ferreting out the details of the planned attempt, all the while keeping Lincoln in the dark until the last minute, since Lincoln is dead set on meeting the public at each train stop. I predict "The Hour of Peril" will have a good run.

What a delight this book is! If you like Key West and are captivated by lighthouses, this book will keep you turning pages and wondering what will happen next. Joanna Brady did her research on women who "keep the light" in lighthouses, and has spun a tale filled with romance, mystery, and heartbreak. Emily Lowry was born in a well-to-do New Orleans family. After a whirlwind romance, she moves with husband Martin to Key West, then to Wreckers' Cay, an island off the coast, where Martin runs the lighthouse. One day, he disappears leaving her with their two children in charge. When a runaway slave finds the island, the story takes off. Spanning 45 years, the story is perfectly paced. Brady has captured the feel and atmosphere of the time when society had much different rules. How Emily copes with what life throws at her makes this book a compelling read.