This historical novel describes the first steamship on its first voyage on the Mississippi River. But that's not all. It's also the story of the very brave people who not only were leading the voyage, but they took a toddler and the owner's 8 month pregnant wife who planned to deliver the second child on the journey While the boat wasn't huge, it was definitely larger than the flatboats that they took on their investigating trip to see what the obstacles would be for a larger boat. The detailed description of the trip was definitely a page-turner!

It is also a book about the relationship between Nicholas Roosevelt, the builder and owner, and Lydia, his wife, some 30 years younger. She seemed to be full partner in the venture. She had her share of critics, some of whom came to the launching of the steamer. An interesting read for feminists as well as historical fiction fans.

Crystal Hana Kim's historical novel, The Stone Home, introduces us to a Korean "Home" for a wide range of people: men housed in the Big House and women, housed in the Little House. In 1980, they have been taken off the street for a wide range of reasons. Most have been homeless. It was a Korean state -sanctioned reformatory, not a home in the usual sense, to make them "good citizens." They weren't criminal in the usual sense, just living outside the norms. Kim reveals the reality slowly.

It's Eunju and Sanchul who narrate the novel, and their fates are connected in unexpected ways.

The novel begins with a young woman, Narae, knocking on Eunju's door, holding a knife. She believes she has found her mother, Eunju.
Her father, Sanchul, has died, and he told her to take the knife to Eunju. Eunju was shocked, but she decides to tell Narae how she and her father meet, and under what painful circumstances.

Eunju was taken with her mother from the street to this place where they would be "reformed." Sanchul was "arrested" on the street with his brother. Both are young when they found themselves at Stone Home, and it took a while for them to understand the perimeters of their spaces.

They were closely supervised by other inmates who had been promoted to Keepers. The Keepers were supervised by Teacher, a man without mercy, should they fail in their assignments of getting the most work out of the group they supervised. Ironically, The Chapel was the name of the place where the offenders were punished. The priest was also the Warden. Ugly public punishments were one of the methods of control.

The women were in a gentler environment, and they were responsible for cooking for the institution. They ate last, but at least they had some more freedom. The boys were forced to provide large quotas of products for the state, and the violence they endured was memorable.

The results of the environment were lasting. Narae wants to expose The Stone House but Eunju is more hesitant. It would mean dredging the whole painful experience again.

It's not an easy read by any means, but exposing this reality is important lest we forget what we have done and still do to one another. Readers interested in social justice and government mistreatment of its citizens would appreciate it.

I did wish for a glossary of Korean words in the back.

The title is indeed apt. The difficulties of being black and poor in South Africa are painfully clear. The inner landscapes of these stories is bleak, but also important. I can see why the author chose to use dialect, since several of the stories are focused on the "innards" of the person. However, I felt in need of a mini dictionary at the back, especially in the first two or three stories. I hope the published/author will add that to make this important work more accessible

This novel puts an entirely different spin on segregation and integration. We've often heard that it is important for Blacks to have the opportunity of education with white folks. Integration has been an important goal throughout the civil rights movement. This novel takes a different approach to the issues.

Alice Young leaves a typical Alabama small town, segregated. She accidentally learns about living in and all-Black community by getting off the train she's on to buy a coke. She looks for the Colored door and doesn't find one. She ends up living in New Jessup, Alabama where there are no Colored entrances. Neither are there white people to look down on her. New Jessup's black population bought their own land, and they have their own quite self-sufficient community. She marries Raymond Campbell, one of the young men whose family helped to establish it. Her possibilities expand to a good job and close connections in the community.

Its young black men, including Raymond, become secretly invested in making their lives better by declaring their town a municipality so that the white folks across the river don't get to make all the decisions about what they get from the town coffers. That is, until some members become interested in wider social justice issues such as voting and education.

The book makes a clear case for what is lost in integration by the tensions explored between Alice and her husband as well as the rest of the community. There is no easy solution, of course, as we've learned the hard way.

The Family Chao is a family saga, covering only a few weeks, but with enough flashbacks to help the reader get a sense of the background. The father came from China to make some money, and he knew a little about restaurants. As the children came along they joined the work force with their parents until they leave for college. As you might expect, there a lot of tensions between the father who worked very hard to succeed, and the children who want to leave Haven, Wisconsin as soon as possible. If you know people who ran a restaurant, some of the issues will be familiar. If you owned one, you might not want to revisit this one! While it wasn't a book that I loved, I kept reading. That says something about a compelling plot. Struggles between parents who worked hard and children who want to get away happen in any culture, but the strain between the father's culture and his children's are more predictable in immigrant families. I do recommend the book. Several of the characters have stayed with me.