I requested to review an ARC copy of Alfie and Me by Carl Safina, thinking that it was just another tale of the relationship between an eastern screech owl and the author. And, it is that to be sure.

But, it turned out to be much more. Safina and his wife Patricia rescued a baby screech owl that was near death, dirt-matted and full of fly eggs. Safina, an ecologist, had permits for wildlife rehab, falconry, and bird banding.

Not only did the bird grow and thrive under their care, it found a mate "Plus One" and had three owlets. This is an excellent chronicle of rehabilitating an orphaned screech owl and eventually the entire owl family.

Safina's ongoing relationship with this owl family was so powerful that it led him to research the history of human thought around the relationship between humanity and nature. His extensive footnotes and bibliography indicate that he not only examined the philosophy of indigenous people around the world, but the thinking of various world religions.

His research and experiences with the owl family led him to the conclude that "the world is sacred and that a web of relationship between nature and humans is fundamental". His lesson for the reader is that humans have a special role in caring for the world. "A good relationship with the world is fundamental to good spiritual life and health".

While he says that he doesn't want to oversimplify or idealize the beliefs of "indigenous" people and religious thought, he does. In claiming that "Platonist dualism-preference for mind as opposed to matter, and devaluation of the material world-has been the bedrock of Western thought ever since", I would argue that he has oversimplified the matter by repeating over and over again that "Plato's cancellation of attention and reverence for the seen world became a matter of faith".

That criticism aside, this book is not only delightful in its description of the owl-human relationship. but it is full of wisdom for living. The world would be a better place if we would follow his advice: "To snip some of the barbed wire that keeps us in the pens we erect for ourselves to "feel something in common" is to donate a piece of our isolation to a wider identity". IF ONLY,,,,

Margaret Verble, an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma has written a gut-wrenching novel that reveals the ugly side of Native American Boarding Schools in the 1950's.

According to The National Native American Boarding School Coalition, between 1869 and the 1960's, hundreds of Native American children in the United States were forcibly removed from their homes and placed in boarding schools operated by the federal government and the churches.

Kit Crockett, the protagonist in this well written novel, is placed in a boarding school somewhere along the Arkansas River after the death of her mother in the 1950's.

Kit, an outsider in the community, and her neighbor friend Bella, also an outsider, are accused of "improper" behavior, leading to the decision by community leaders, to remove her from her Father's care and send her to the boarding school. When Kit protests to Judge Prescott, who is in charge of her case, he tells her that "Right is hard to determine. Rev. Cunningham (a villain in the novel) believes that you getting a good Christian upbringing is the right thing to do...about ninety percent of the people in this town believe that, too." And with that decision, Kit's young years are "stolen" from her and she is placed in the boarding school as a ward of the state.

It is here that she and the other students are punished for speaking their native language, banned from acting in any way that might be seen to represent traditional or cultural practices, and stripped of traditional clothing, hair, and other personal belongings and behaviors of their culture. During this time she is sexually abused by the Director of the school.

In reviewing a secret journal that she had kept, Kit discovers truths about her life that even she had forgotten. Using this journal, Kit sees her life as a "jigsaw puzzle" and she slowly figures out how and why she eventually found herself in this boarding school. With each piece of her personal "puzzle", she realizes that her life, her family relationships, and her emotional, cultural, and spiritual being have been stolen from her along the way. The concept of "stealing" is woven throughout the story.

This heartbreaking novel has several intensely emotional scenes and the complex characters reach through the pages and tug at the reader's heart.

Margaret Verble said in an interview: "Writing historical fiction is a process of merging the facts with the imagination." The same is true of Kit's life, as she uses her journal to sift out the truth from the imaginings of her life.

This is a powerful novel that will stay with the reader for a longtime after the last page has been read. I was emotionally exhausted after experiencing Kit's sad life through this coming of age novel.

When Hurricane Ian struck Florida, the power was out and destruction reigned everywhere. It was a perfect time to occupy myself, using a flashlight, to read IN THE TIME OF OUR HISTORY by Susanne Pari. This is a fast paced story of an Iranian-American family caught between the pull of the traditional Iranian culture and the pull of the modern American culture. Mitra is the sister who rebels against the traditional ways of her parents and struggles to become "a girl who wanted to be as free as a boy in choosing her future". In this struggle Mitra finds that her life lacks balance, but, at the same time, she realizes that "living" required a purpose. She finds that purpose in both her professional life and in her mentoring of Sali, a young pregnant Iranian woman.

The themes included in this novel make it ripe for discussion: the oppression of women; the oppression of minorities; sexual abuse; generational conflicts within families; and the cultural conflicts experienced by immigrants in a new land.

As one who experienced such cultural conflicts within my own immigrant family, I was drawn to this book in a personal way. I found comfort in a profound statement made my Goli toward the end of the book: "Sister, we are all Americans-all of us from an elsewhere that only exists in memory".

The moment I saw this memoir I knew I had to read it. Based on the experiences of Ann Hood as a flight TWA attendant, it is an entertaining and informative telling of her experiences at the end of the "glamour days" of flying.

Hood was hired at a time when "perceptions of the job (flight attendant) and women's roles began to shift, as well as the start of airline deregulation, arguably the most crucial turning point in the airline industry".

Qualifications for flight attendants at the time were sexist. TWA required candidates to be unmarried, of a certain height and weight, a certain age range (28 years old and out), and willingness to relocate. There were unannounced weight checks, and measurements of earrings, heel heights, and hemlines.

American Airlines had a 32 age limit and argued the a basic requirement of attractiveness was found only in young women.

The training was rigorous. In addition to comportment classes "in the interest of grace, rhythm, and the body beautiful," candidates took classes in grooming, poise, food and beverage service, teamwork and customer service. if that wasn't enough, they also learned the safety practices for all planes in the airline's fleet, how to locate and operate the emergency equipment, and how to evacuate the plane in the case of an emergency.

One of the hardest parts of emergency training was studying plane crashes: what caused them, and how people were and weren't saved.

Hood tells us that after years of flying, she was no longer a small-town girl. She goes on to say that: "I'd flown thousands of miles, fixed countless mistakes, helped thousands of people, and navigated new cities-often by herself. Being a flight attendant had turned me into a confident, worldly young woman".

She details how hard flight attendants had fought for basic rights, like eliminating age, marriage, and pregnancy restrictions. As she says, "we were living examples of winning those struggles for equality and professionalism".

She concludes by saying, "I learned...that most people are pretty wonderful, to laugh at human foibles and myself, and to stop taking things too seriously. TWA made my childhood dreams come true and turned me into the person I am today, forty years later".

Thank you BookBrowse for the opportunity to review the ARC. I loved every page of this book, gained lots of historical information along the way, and laugh outloud at many of the episodes described. I highly recommend it.

Andrea Yaryura Clark has written a historical novel that propels us along to read chapter after chapter without putting the book down. Alternating between the years 1975-1976 and 1998, Clark tells the story of Paloma's search for the background of her father's (Santiago Larrera) involvement in the "Dirty War of Argentina". As a result of this search, Paloma also discovers her true parentage.

Woven through the story is historical information about the war itself. The war, waged by the Argentina military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983, hunted down political dissidents and anyone believed to be associated with the socialist, left-wing Peronism. "Peron's government stepped up its censorship of media outlets, and soon there would be no room for dissent, political humor, or political criticism" (pg. 103).

Clark relates that "paramilitary death squads roamed freely in unmarked Ford Falcon cars with the sole mission to hunt down, kidnap, torture and kill people on the list. Individuals were taken into custody for questioning, later turning up dead in ditches and empty lots" (pg. 145).

It was the historical thread in the novel that most interested me. While visiting Buenos Aires in December, 1976, as I walked down the street after leaving a restaurant, the unknown man walking next to me was literally picked up off the street by military members and carried off, screaming the whole time. The memory of this event is burned into my brain forever. I was stunned and terrified at the same time.

Paloma's investigations into her Father's background and her subsequent love affair with Franco help to quickly move the plot along, but for me, the integrated historical material was of the greatest interest.

I do wish that Clark had listed the research materials that she used in the compilation of the novel.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and look forward to any future novels that she writes.

We will include On A Night of A Thousand Stars during the next season of our Covenant Book Club discussions.

As a retired history teacher and lover of historical novels, I couldn't wait to dig into Bryn Turnbull's novel about Olga Romanov and her family during the days of the Russian revolution and beyond. I wasn't disappointed. It is a spellbinding tale of Olga and the Romanov family and their devotion to both Russia and to their immediate family.

Turnbull weaves rich historical detail throughout the telling of Olga's story and clearly reveals the impact of the historical events on the characters. She includes a Select Biography of sources used in her research for the novel.
I couldn't help but ask myself: Do the historical times make the characters who they are or do the natures and beliefs of the characters create the tide of historical events?

For 300 years the Romanov family held the reins of Russian power. Nicolas II and his immediate family firmly believed that their positions were destined by God. As Alexandra told Olga: "The tsar is Christ's emissary on Earth; it stands to reason that he would send a man of God (Rasputin) to provide His guidance in times of strife". This belief, together with the devotion of the family to one another, is what drove the behavior of each of its members. In Olga's case, she had lived her entire life "living on the margins of her parents' expectations: on the margins of her brother's Illness (hemophilia); and on the margins of her own comfort...her life was destined for Russia, for love and for duty".

Since I have read a number of the books listed in the bibliography, few of the facts of the Romanov story were new to me. However, learning about Jim Hercules and the small contingent of Black men who held court positions from before the time of Catherine the Great, was new and fascinating information to me. As Turnbull points out, Jim was a sign of change. "The men who had held such positions in the past had come from Ethiopia-many of them not by their own choice...Jim, however, had applied for the post after leaving his home in Tennessee, preferring the sophistication of the Russian court-and the position's generous salary-to America's Jim Crow South".

Even though I knew the end of the story of the Romanov family, the excellent writing kept me reading for hours at a time, just to find out what would happen next. Turnbull weaves a good story, while, on the whole, remaining true to the historical record.

If you're looking for a true life adventure story, then The Sunset Route by Carrot (Jenni) Quinn is for you. Quinn grew up in Anchorage, Alaska, with her schizophrenic Mother and her brother in extreme poverty. Her absentee father had no contact with his family. When Carrot was 14, she went to live with her grandparents in Colorado. She lived with them for 3 years and then hit the road, traveling on freight trains in the American West. She felt "lost and confused": and throughout her travels was looking for "a way to be in the world". The only solace she got was from the "natural world, the incredible unknowable ever present machinations of the natural world..the wonder and the magic". Throughout her many travels, she seemed to be running away from herself rather than trying to find herself. She says that while traveling, "I wouldn't have to hear my own thoughts, wouldn't have to feel the rough waves of grief crashing against my shore, threatening to pull me out to sea".
At the end she comes to the conclusion that "life is suffering".
The writing style was amateurish, disjointed, and choppy.
The book disappointed me in that there was no meaningful character development-no sign of emotional or intellectual growth on Quinn's part. At the end she concludes that "you couldn't escape the darkness entirely, but you could learn to live above it". She says that, "I am new. I am as clean and empty as the wind". In my judgment, she may be "clean", but she appears to be as "empty" as she was in the beginning of her journey.

When I was a high school history teacher back in the 1970's, I created and taught the first Black History course ever offered. One aspect of Black History with which I was unfamiliar was the role of African Americans in music history. For this reason I was interested in digging into Caseen Gaines book FOOTNOTES. I was not disappointed.

Gaines, an author and pop culture expert, has written an engaging and edifying history of the all-Black Broadway musical that changed the world - "Shuffle Along".

Gaines focuses much of the book on the four creators of the 1921 musical - Noble Sissle, Aubrey Lyles, Flourney Miller, and Eubie Blake. These men were tenacious in their efforts to bring Shuffle Along to Broadway theaters in a time when "...even the most well-meaning white folks wanted to hold on to the idea that Blacks weren't educated enough to have been taught how to play; their talent was innate".

Gaines goes into great detail about the historical events that were going on as these four Black musicians worked to bring their work to Broadway: a pandemic, poor economic conditions and a European war. All worked to make their mission even more difficult.

An important lesson to take away from this engaging read is the reality that each generation lives on the shoulders of the giants, like Sisle, Lives, Miller and Blake, who went before them.

FOOTNOTES is a well researched book with an extensive bibliography and 38 pages of instructive footnotes.

The only drawback to the book is the lack of an Index listing the multiple characters portrayed in the book. At times I found myself going back to earlier pages and chapters to clarify the stream of characters and events.

Otherwise, this is a book that adds to the reader's understanding of the times and the characters involved in moving history along.

I have loved all of Erik Larson's books but this one is his best in my never-to-be-humble opinion. Of course, I am a huge fan of Winston Churchill, so that may also influence my 5 star rating.

I admire Larson as a writer is because his writing style is so intimate. As I read each page, I felt as if Larson was speaking directly to me while sitting in my living room with a cup of tea. His research is deep and thorough. As he explains in his acknowledgments, he uses such documents as list of household expenditures, diaries, letters, telegrams, speeches and personal minutes of the personalities involved.

Using the year of the Battle of Britain (May 1940-1941) as an umbrella of the master narrative, Larson weaves a narrative using interweaving threads of the lives of various personalities: Churchill himself; Lady Clementine; daughter Mary; and various aides and governmental figures.

Churchill's 18 year old daughter Mary went to dances and parties, fell in and out of love, and visited friends at their estates all while the war was going on. Larson points out that "as the boss fell, libidos soared. No one wanted to be alone, so they date up way ahead ofttimes to ensure against an evening alone."

John Colville, Churchill's private secretary, who was 25 years old, dealt with his unrequited love with Audrey Paget, at the same time he worked with Churchill to meet the political and military pressures of the day.

Lord Beaverbrook continued to try to resign from various government positions, ever hoping that Churchill would refuse his resignations.

Larson's portrayal of Churchill is personal and detailed. While he had many shortcomings (his love of champagne and cigars, his pale blue body suit, his pink silk underwear, and holding meetings in the nude while bathing in 98 degree bath water), he was, says Larson, "the man for the occasion. "His spirit is indomitable and even if France and England should be lost...he would carry on the crusade himself with a band of privateers." His pattern of leadership throughout the war was to offer a sober appraisal of facts, tempered with reason for optimism.

This is a great book: well written and riveting. I thank BookBrowse for the opportunity to read and review an ARC.

I selected to review this title because I am a fan of animals. I hold to Abu Laith's belief that, "Within every living being...there was a personality, a life with needs and likes and things they hated".However, journalist Louise Callaghan has written a book that is so much more.

In addition to detailing how Abu Laith, known as the Father of Lions, tended the animals in the Mosul Zoo, where his own lion Zombie lived, she has written a detailed account of the horrors and perils of life in an ISIS-controlled corner of Iraq.

With bombs and mortar shells pounding the neighborhood, with the scarcity of food and other living essentials, Abu Laith put his own life in danger to save the few remaining animals in the heavily attacked Mosul Zoo. When someone asked him why he didn't kill the zoo animals for meat for his family, Abu Laith responded, "You don't eat animals who have earned your respect. We all went hungry to keep them alive. That's what respect is".

This is a book that inspires and demonstrates that respect for life, love, and devotion to human life exists in the midst of a hate-filled nightmare.

As a former history teacher, I am always fascinated with newly published accounts of historical events unknown to me. It is for that reason that the reading of Jack Fairweather's THE VOLUNTEER absorbed me for days and nights on end.

Fairweather, a former correspondent for both the Washington Post and the Daily Telegraph has written a thoroughly researched account of the resistance activities of Witold Pilecki. Pilecki, a Polish resistance fighter during World War II, volunteered to be in imprisoned in Auschwitz.His objectives were fourfold: (1) to help fellow prisoners to survive by ensuring that food was more evenly distributed throughout the Camp; (2) to develop resistance prisoners and; (3) to push for retaliation by requesting the cells among the prisoners; and, (4) to inform the British Government of the heinous treatment by the Nazis of the British to have the Camp, arsenals, and railways bombed.

Pilecki's memoir and private papers, which have recently been translated, serve as one of the main sources for this well-written and riveting book. While the book is overcrowded with characters, Fairweather does provide a directory of the characters at the end of the book. Constant reference to this directory did slow down my reading of the book but was most helpful in keeping me focused on each and every event and the individuals involved.

As Fairweather states in the Epilogue, "Witold's story shows us that the problem of distinguishing new evils from old, of naming injustice, and of implicating ourselves in the plight of others is a dilemma for every time".

This is an inspiring and suspenseful read. I highly recommend it to all who are students of World War II history and the horrors of the Holocaust.

As a retired teacher of both history and English, I thought I had read all there was to read at World War II and Hitler's Germany. I was wrong.

AT THE WOLF'S TABLE by Rosella Postorino details a little known aspect of Hitler's Germany in this well-written and engaging novel. The plot of the novel is based on life of Margot Work, the last living of Hitler's food tasters.

Wolk and other young woman were recruited from among the German civilian population to taste Hitler's food and to check whether or not it was poisoned. These women, who had no choice, took to Hitler's table 3 times a day and, by eating, risked their own lives to save the Third Reich.

The nightmare of these experiences bind these women together every day. They are hungry everyday; they eat everyday; and they survive together; which, helps to create a strong bond between them. They also are forced into a totalitarian and paranoid situation in which it is difficult to tell whether a person is a friend or an enemy. Throughout the novel the main character Rosa Sauer asks the questions: who is a friend? what makes a friend? what is a true friendship?

Rosa also struggles with feelings of guilt. As the author said in an interview, Rosa's dilemma was one of the cost of survival. "You survive because you can eat, when others can not, and you're even paid to do it; the condition of victim and culprit, of test subject and privileged person together, this privilege which means to be guilty because you are working for the Fuhrer; and the paradox that eating is what keeps your alive, but at the same time it's what can kill you."

As Rosa says: "The ability to adapt is the greatest resource of human beings, but the more I adapted, the less I felt human."

This is a fascinating and gripping read. I highly recommend it. It provides rich fodder for an intellectually stimulating discussion.

As a retired teacher of high school American history, I thoroughly enjoyed this historical gem. This is an area of American history with which I was totally unfamiliar, except for the story of Amelia Earhart. Had this book existed 30 years ago when I was teaching, I would have made it required reading for my students.

Keith O'Brien, a former reporter for the Boston Globe, has presented a thoroughly researched account of five of the daring American women who defied the odds to fly and race airplanes during the 1920's and 1930's. The stories of Amelia Earhart, Ruth Nicholas, Ruth Elder, Louise Thaden, and Florence Kingensmith are both riveting and inspirational.

O'Brien did an exceptional job of researching the history of these early aviators by: examining letters; both published and unpublished memoirs; news articles from the period; and material from a variety of archives.

Upset by the sexist rules that prevented women aviators from competing in any race against men, the women banded together to form the "Ninety-Nines" in order "to help women become true individuals industrially, mentally and spiritually."

I highly recommend FLY GIRLS to anyone who is interested in early aviation, the extreme sexism of the period, and the dangers of early flight. All young women of today should read this book, if only to see how far the so-called Women's Movement has come thanks to the courage and persistence of these women.

My ARC of Mothers of Sparta by Dawn Davies arrived a few days before Hurricane Irma struck Naples. While our power was off for five days, I was so captivated after reading the first paragraph that I continued to read it by flashlight and finished it in two days. Memoirs are my favorite genre and this one is at the top of my list of favorites.

The writing style was so striking so that I felt that Davies was sitting in my living room relating her experiences to me face to face. I laughed and cried with her as she talked about defining moments on her life's journey. Many of them were experiences and thoughts that closely paralleled many in my own life:

Her thoughts about God being "like a Santa Claus- a story told to,little kids so they would have something to grab on to when they faced realizations that death would one day happen to them..";

Her struggle with hypochondriasis and death;

Her fear that her husband would not like the real her;

The pie she made, unintentionally leaving the protective wax paper between the crust and the filling;

Her love of music, particularly jazz;

Her belief that "part of music was for sharing - the part that people can people can experience together";

Her thought that the children of other mothers are not as good as hers and that the carpool mothers talk too much;

Her conversation with her daughter who tells her that her public school is stupid, that she is not understood, and that she wants to punch her teacher;

Her experiences with her childrens' pets, leading her daughter to tell her: "You're the worst mom ever";

Her questioning the presence of God in the difficulties with her sociopathic son;

And, finally the excellent analogy she makes between herself and Spartan mothers.

This is a book I will recommend to my book club. I loved it and will definitely reread it again.

Everything I have previously read about about Queen Victoria had to do with her later years as a Mother, Wife, and grieving Widow. This book, dealing with her childhood years and her years immediately following her Coronation, gave me a much complete picture of how she become the woman she was after her marriage to Albert and in her later years. This thoroughly researched book, because of the Author's inclusion of Victoria's early diaries, included rich and intimate details that made me feel as though I was an eyewitness to all that was going on in her early life. We will be using this book as a Bookclub selection in March. I am anxious to hear the reactions of our club members to both the book and the way it is presented in Masterpiece Theater.

Mercies In Disguise presents a real life crisis situation that reads like a suspense novel. The advances of modern science have given us many positive things. However, they have also presented us with many critical choices that have to be made that can affect our attitudes towards life and our futures in both positive and negative ways. From the first page I was totally involved in the dilemma of both Amanda and the Baxley family. They each faced a question that is the product of the modern science of DNA: Should they take a DNA test that would offer them the chance to find out if they had an inherited mutated gene that leads to the fatal neurological disorder-GSS? Or, should they refuse to take the test and retain their innocence, "hopefully preserving a part of the person you were before faced with a such a dilemma"? Each member, after thoughtful consideration, answered this question differently.

This book touched me deeply because I was also faced such a dilemma and the accompanying fears that it involves. Amanda's decision was not my decision. However, the anxiety and stress of what decision to make is the core of the issue.
I would highly recommend this book for the use of book club discussions, as it presents a timely and real world dilemma for discussion: such as, we really want to know the perils of our future?
This is a riveting read that challenges one's thinking about life, death and knowing the future.