It's been a while since I have read one of Ursula Hegi's novels, but in reading "The Patron Saint of Girls" I was quickly reminded of why I like her books so much. Hegi has again written an original and moving novel with a huge cast of fantastic characters that weave their way into your p head. I loved this book and the people in it, they are lovable and tragic and very human.

The nuns take in young pregnant girls, care for them, teach them and their children or arrange for the adoption of their babies. Tillie's baby is torn from her arms although she is desperate to keep her. However, poor Tillie is only eleven years old and has nowhere to go as her parents will not take her back. She is too young to be responsible for a child as she is a child herself.

The story is set in the land of dikes and windmills in the 19th century where the land floods frequently. This is primarily the story of Lotte and Kalle and of their tremendous loss. Three of their four children are pulled into the sea and drown in a hundred-year wave.

The year is 1878, a glorious summer day when the circus (zirkus) is in town, an event looked forward to all year. We meet the members of the circus, considered misfits or outcasts by some, but Hegi draws them with tremendous respect and tenderness. Each of these people are worth knowing and enriches the story of Lotte, Kalle, and Tillie.

Sabine, who sews costumes and the beekeeper who loves her and her and her daughter, Heike, who will always have the mind of a child but has the gift of playing the cello, even the jugglers and acrobats all enrich the story.

Part of the book goes back to 1842-45 when the nuns establish the school and home for the young unwed girls. But it is the year of Lotte's and Kalle's denial and unimaginable grief and their creation of an alternate reality the builds up a terror of what might lie ahead that grips the reader with fear.

The Mountains Sing, is a gorgeously written story of love and devotion between a grandmother and her granddaughter during the Vietnam War. The war brings a tremendous loss to the countryside, destroying fields, crops, and forests, and the people.

Although leaders declare war its people suffer and families are torn apart, while neighbors turn against one another. Wounds of war are not only physical but those who live though them continue to suffer. It destroys not only the body but the spirit and soul.

This book begins when Tran Dieu is forced off the family farm during the Land Reform and at the rise of the Communist government in the North. Tran flees with her six children but because of the violent attacks and severe starvation loses them one after another in order to save their lives. She continues to search for each of them until she is able to bring those who survive together.

The language is vivid and poetic while showing us the cost in lives during a violent war. However, we also are shown the importance of family, kindness, love and hope for the future.

Memories and the stories that make up her family's history are missing from Esther Safran Foer's childhood. When she discovers that her father had another wife and child she sets out to find out what happened to them and to learn their names. Her parents lost their entire family and all that was familiar to them during the Holocaust. The shtel's that they knew growing in Ukraine no longer exist, they were completely destroyed and burned to the ground. No Jews live there today. How did her parents survive and who risked their life to help them.

The author takes us along with her on her journey to find the spot where these shtels once existed and anyone who might have known any member of her family. Each mass grave site is located and prayers are said, songs are sung and a photograph of her family is left to tell the dead "that we're still here".

A fascinating story of an isolated community and people that I knew very little about. The people are extremely poor, uneducated, suspicious and yet proud and independent. They can be prejudiced, dangerous and cruel but some show tremendous kindness. The countryside is hard and unyielding but also has a rare beauty. Cussy is a character that is one I am not likely to forget. I would recommend this book to others.